after london or wild england by richard jefferies contents part i the relapse into barbarism chapter the great forest chapter wild animals chapter men of the woods chapter the invaders chapter the lake part ii wild england chapter sir felix chapter the house of aquila chapter the stockade chapter the canoe chapter baron aquila chapter the forest track chapter the forest track continued chapter thyma castle chapter superstitions chapter the feast chapter aurora chapter night in the forest chapter sailing away chapter the straits chapter sailing onwards chapter the city chapter the camp chapter the king's levy chapter fighting chapter in danger chapter a voyage chapter discoveries chapter strange things chapter fiery vapours chapter the shepherds chapter bow and arrow chapter surprised chapter for aurora part i the relapse into barbarism chapter i the great forest the old men say their fathers told them that soon after the fields were left to themselves a change began to be visible. it became green everywhere in the first spring, after london ended, so that all the country looked alike. the meadows were green, and so was the rising wheat which had been sown, but which neither had nor would receive any further care. such arable fields as had not been sown, but where the last stubble had been ploughed up, were overrun with couch-grass, and where the short stubble had not been ploughed, the weeds hid it. so that there was no place which was not more or less green; the footpaths were the greenest of all, for such is the nature of grass where it has once been trodden on, and by-and-by, as the summer came on, the former roads were thinly covered with the grass that had spread out from the margin. in the autumn, as the meadows were not mown, the grass withered as it stood, falling this way and that, as the wind had blown it; the seeds dropped, and the bennets became a greyish-white, or, where the docks and sorrel were thick, a brownish-red. the wheat, after it had ripened, there being no one to reap it, also remained standing, and was eaten by clouds of sparrows, rooks, and pigeons, which flocked to it and were undisturbed, feasting at their pleasure. as the winter came on, the crops were beaten down by the storms, soaked with rain, and trodden upon by herds of animals. next summer the prostrate straw of the preceding year was concealed by the young green wheat and barley that sprang up from the grain sown by dropping from the ears, and by quantities of docks, thistles, oxeye daisies, and similar plants. this matted mass grew up through the bleached straw. charlock, too, hid the rotting roots in the fields under a blaze of yellow flower. the young spring meadow-grass could scarcely push its way up through the long dead grass and bennets of the year previous, but docks and thistles, sorrel, wild carrots, and nettles, found no such difficulty. footpaths were concealed by the second year, but roads could be traced, though as green as the sward, and were still the best for walking, because the tangled wheat and weeds, and, in the meadows, the long grass, caught the feet of those who tried to pass through. year by year the original crops of wheat, barley, oats, and beans asserted their presence by shooting up, but in gradually diminished force, as nettles and coarser plants, such as the wild parsnips, spread out into the fields from the ditches and choked them. aquatic grasses from the furrows and water-carriers extended in the meadows, and, with the rushes, helped to destroy or take the place of the former sweet herbage. meanwhile, the brambles, which grew very fast, had pushed forward their prickly runners farther and farther from the hedges till they had now reached ten or fifteen yards. the briars had followed, and the hedges had widened to three or four times their first breadth, the fields being equally contracted. starting from all sides at once, these brambles and briars in the course of about twenty years met in the centre of the largest fields. hawthorn bushes sprang up among them, and, protected by the briars and thorns from grazing animals, the suckers of elm-trees rose and flourished. sapling ashes, oaks, sycamores, and horse-chestnuts, lifted their heads. of old time the cattle would have eaten off the seed leaves with the grass so soon as they were out of the ground, but now most of the acorns that were dropped by birds, and the keys that were wafted by the wind, twirling as they floated, took root and grew into trees. by this time the brambles and briars had choked up and blocked the former roads, which were as impassable as the fields. no fields, indeed, remained, for where the ground was dry, the thorns, briars, brambles, and saplings already mentioned filled the space, and these thickets and the young trees had converted most part of the country into an immense forest. where the ground was naturally moist, and the drains had become choked with willow roots, which, when confined in tubes, grow into a mass like the brush of a fox, sedges and flags and rushes covered it. thorn bushes were there, too, but not so tall; they were hung with lichen. besides the flags and reeds, vast quantities of the tallest cow-parsnips or "gicks" rose five or six feet high, and the willow herb with its stout stem, almost as woody as a shrub, filled every approach. by the thirtieth year there was not one single open place, the hills only excepted, where a man could walk, unless he followed the tracks of wild creatures or cut himself a path. the ditches, of course, had long since become full of leaves and dead branches, so that the water which should have run off down them stagnated, and presently spread out into the hollow places and by the corner of what had once been fields, forming marshes where the horsetails, flags, and sedges hid the water. as no care was taken with the brooks, the hatches upon them gradually rotted, and the force of the winter rains carried away the weak timbers, flooding the lower grounds, which became swamps of larger size. the dams, too, were drilled by water-rats, and the streams percolating through, slowly increased the size of these tunnels till the structure burst, and the current swept on and added to the floods below. mill-dams stood longer, but, as the ponds silted up, the current flowed round and even through the mill-houses, which, going by degrees to ruin, were in some cases undermined till they fell. everywhere the lower lands adjacent to the streams had become marshes, some of them extending for miles in a winding line, and occasionally spreading out to a mile in breadth. this was particularly the case where brooks and streams of some volume joined the rivers, which were also blocked and obstructed in their turn, and the two, overflowing, covered the country around; for the rivers brought down trees and branches, timbers floated from the shore, and all kinds of similar materials, which grounded in the shallows or caught against snags, and formed huge piles where there had been weirs. sometimes, after great rains, these piles swept away the timbers of the weir, driven by the irresistible power of the water, and then in its course the flood, carrying the balks before it like battering rams, cracked and split the bridges of solid stone which the ancients had built. these and the iron bridges likewise were overthrown, and presently quite disappeared, for the very foundations were covered with the sand and gravel silted up. thus, too, the sites of many villages and towns that anciently existed along the rivers, or on the lower lands adjoining, were concealed by the water and the mud it brought with it. the sedges and reeds that arose completed the work and left nothing visible, so that the mighty buildings of olden days were by these means utterly buried. and, as has been proved by those who have dug for treasures, in our time the very foundations are deep beneath the earth, and not to be got at for the water that oozes into the shafts that they have tried to sink through the sand and mud banks. from an elevation, therefore, there was nothing visible but endless forest and marsh. on the level ground and plains the view was limited to a short distance, because of the thickets and the saplings which had now become young trees. the downs only were still partially open, yet it was not convenient to walk upon them except in the tracks of animals, because of the long grass which, being no more regularly grazed upon by sheep, as was once the case, grew thick and tangled. furze, too, and heath covered the slopes, and in places vast quantities of fern. there had always been copses of fir and beech and nut-tree covers, and these increased and spread, while bramble, briar, and hawthorn extended around them. by degrees the trees of the vale seemed as it were to invade and march up the hills, and, as we see in our time, in many places the downs are hidden altogether with a stunted kind of forest. but all the above happened in the time of the first generation. besides these things a great physical change took place; but before i speak of that, it will be best to relate what effects were produced upon animals and men. in the first years after the fields were left to themselves, the fallen and over-ripe corn crops became the resort of innumerable mice. they swarmed to an incredible degree, not only devouring the grain upon the straw that had never been cut, but clearing out every single ear in the wheat-ricks that were standing about the country. nothing remained in these ricks but straw, pierced with tunnels and runs, the home and breeding-place of mice, which thence poured forth into the fields. such grain as had been left in barns and granaries, in mills, and in warehouses of the deserted towns, disappeared in the same manner. when men tried to raise crops in small gardens and enclosures for their sustenance, these legions of mice rushed in and destroyed the produce of their labour. nothing could keep them out, and if a score were killed, a hundred more supplied their place. these mice were preyed upon by kestrel hawks, owls, and weasels; but at first they made little or no appreciable difference. in a few years, however, the weasels, having such a superabundance of food, trebled in numbers, and in the same way the hawks, owls, and foxes increased. there was then some relief, but even now at intervals districts are invaded, and the granaries and the standing corn suffer from these depredations. this does not happen every year, but only at intervals, for it is noticed that mice abound very much more in some seasons than others. the extraordinary multiplication of these creatures was the means of providing food for the cats that had been abandoned in the towns, and came forth into the country in droves. feeding on the mice, they became, in a very short time, quite wild, and their descendants now roam the forest. in our houses we still have several varieties of the domestic cat, such as the tortoise-shell, which is the most prized, but when the above-mentioned cats became wild, after a while the several varieties disappeared, and left but one wild kind. those which are now so often seen in the forest, and which do so much mischief about houses and enclosures, are almost all greyish, some being striped, and they are also much longer in the body than the tame. a few are jet black; their skins are then preferred by hunters. though the forest cat retires from the sight of man as much as possible, yet it is extremely fierce in defence of its young, and instances have been known where travellers in the woods have been attacked upon unwittingly approaching their dens. dropping from the boughs of a tree upon the shoulders, the creature flies at the face, inflicting deep scratches and bites, exceedingly painful, and sometimes dangerous, from the tendency to fester. but such cases are rare, and the reason the forest cat is so detested is because it preys upon fowls and poultry, mounting with ease the trees or places where they roost. almost worse than the mice were the rats, which came out of the old cities in such vast numbers that the people who survived and saw them are related to have fled in fear. this terror, however, did not last so long as the evil of the mice, for the rats, probably not finding sufficient food when together, scattered abroad, and were destroyed singly by the cats and dogs, who slew them by thousands, far more than they could afterwards eat, so that the carcases were left to decay. it is said that, overcome with hunger, these armies of rats in some cases fell upon each other, and fed on their own kindred. they are still numerous, but do not appear to do the same amount of damage as is occasionally caused by the mice, when the latter invade the cultivated lands. the dogs, of course, like the cats, were forced by starvation into the fields, where they perished in incredible numbers. of many species of dogs which are stated to have been plentiful among the ancients, we have now nothing but the name. the poodle is extinct, the maltese terrier, the pomeranian, the italian greyhound, and, it is believed, great numbers of crosses and mongrels have utterly disappeared. there was none to feed them, and they could not find food for themselves, nor could they stand the rigour of the winter when exposed to the frost in the open air. some kinds, more hardy and fitted by nature for the chase, became wild, and their descendants are now found in the woods. of these, there are three sorts which keep apart from each other, and are thought not to interbreed. the most numerous are the black. the black wood-dog is short and stoutly made, with shaggy hair, sometimes marked with white patches. there can be no doubt that it is the descendant of the ancient sheep-dog, for it is known that the sheep-dog was of that character, and it is said that those who used to keep sheep soon found their dogs abandon the fold, and join the wild troops that fell upon the sheep. the black wood-dogs hunt in packs of ten or more (as many as forty have been counted), and are the pest of the farmer, for, unless his flocks are protected at night within stockades or enclosures, they are certain to be attacked. not satisfied with killing enough to satisfy hunger, these dogs tear and mangle for sheer delight of blood, and will destroy twenty times as many as they can eat, leaving the miserably torn carcases on the field. nor are the sheep always safe by day if the wood-dogs happen to be hungry. the shepherd is, therefore, usually accompanied by two or three mastiffs, of whose great size and strength the others stand in awe. at night, and when in large packs, starving in the snow, not even the mastiffs can check them. no wood-dog, of any kind, has ever been known to attack man, and the hunter in the forest hears their bark in every direction without fear. it is, nevertheless, best to retire out of their way when charging sheep in packs, for they then seem seized with a blind fury, and some who have endeavoured to fight them have been thrown down and seriously mauled. but this has been in the blindness of their rush; no instance has ever been known of their purposely attacking man. these black wood-dogs will also chase and finally pull down cattle, if they can get within the enclosures, and even horses have fallen victims to their untiring thirst for blood. not even the wild cattle can always escape, despite their strength, and they have been known to run down stags, though not their usual quarry. the next kind of wild wood-dog is the yellow, a smaller animal, with smooth hair inclining to a yellow colour, which lives principally upon game, chasing all, from the hare to the stag. it is as swift, or nearly as swift, as the greyhound, and possesses greater endurance. in coursing the hare, it not uncommonly happens that these dogs start from the brake and take the hare, when nearly exhausted, from the hunter's hounds. they will in the same way follow a stag, which has been almost run down by the hunters, and bring him to bay, though in this case they lose their booty, dispersing through fear of man, when the hunters come up in a body. but such is their love of the chase, that they are known to assemble from their lairs at the distant sound of the horn, and, as the hunters ride through the woods, they often see the yellow dogs flitting along side by side with them through bush and fern. these animals sometimes hunt singly, sometimes in couples, and as the season advances, and winter approaches, in packs of eight or twelve. they never attack sheep or cattle, and avoid man, except when they perceive he is engaged in the chase. there is little doubt that they are the descendants of the dogs which the ancients called lurchers, crossed, perhaps, with the greyhound, and possibly other breeds. when the various species of dogs were thrown on their own resources, those only withstood the exposure and hardships which were naturally hardy, and possessed natural aptitude for the chase. the third species of wood-dog is the white. they are low on the legs, of a dingy white colour, and much smaller than the other two. they neither attack cattle nor game, though fond of hunting rabbits. this dog is, in fact, a scavenger, living upon the carcases of dead sheep and animals, which are found picked clean in the night. for this purpose it haunts the neighbourhood of habitations, and prowls in the evening over heaps of refuse, scampering away at the least alarm, for it is extremely timid. it is perfectly harmless, for even the poultry do not dread it, and it will not face a tame cat, if by chance the two meet. it is rarely met with far from habitations, though it will accompany an army on the march. it may be said to remain in one district. the black and yellow dogs, on the contrary, roam about the forest without apparent home. one day the hunter sees signs of their presence, and perhaps may, for a month afterwards, not so much as hear a bark. this uncertainty in the case of the black dog is the bane of the shepherds; for, not seeing or hearing anything of the enemy for months altogether, in spite of former experience their vigilance relaxes, and suddenly, while they sleep, their flocks are scattered. we still have, among tame dogs, the mastiff, terrier, spaniel, deerhound, and greyhound, all of which are as faithful to man as ever. chapter ii wild animals when the ancients departed, great numbers of their cattle perished. it was not so much the want of food as the inability to endure exposure that caused their death; a few winters are related to have so reduced them that they died by hundreds, many mangled by dogs. the hardiest that remained became perfectly wild, and the wood cattle are now more difficult to approach than deer. there are two kinds, the white and the black. the white (sometimes dun) are believed to be the survivors of the domestic roan-and-white, for the cattle in our enclosures at the present day are of that colour. the black are smaller, and are doubtless little changed from their state in the olden times, except that they are wild. these latter are timid, unless accompanied by a calf, and are rarely known to turn upon their pursuers. but the white are fierce at all times; they will not, indeed, attack man, but will scarcely run from him, and it is not always safe to cross their haunts. the bulls are savage beyond measure at certain seasons of the year. if they see men at a distance, they retire; if they come unexpectedly face to face, they attack. this characteristic enables those who travel through districts known to be haunted by white cattle to provide against an encounter, for, by occasionally blowing a horn, the herd that may be in the vicinity is dispersed. there are not often more than twenty in a herd. the hides of the dun are highly prized, both for their intrinsic value, and as proofs of skill and courage, so much so that you shall hardly buy a skin for all the money you may offer; and the horns are likewise trophies. the white or dun bull is the monarch of our forests. four kinds of wild pigs are found. the most numerous, or at least the most often seen, as it lies about our enclosures, is the common thorn-hog. it is the largest of the wild pigs, long-bodied and flat-sided, in colour much the hue of the mud in which it wallows. to the agriculturist it is the greatest pest, destroying or damaging all kinds of crops, and routing up the gardens. it is with difficulty kept out by palisading, for if there be a weak place in the wooden framework, the strong snout of the animal is sure to undermine and work a passage through. as there are always so many of these pigs round about inhabited places and cultivated fields, constant care is required, for they instantly discover an opening. from their habit of haunting the thickets and bush which come up to the verge of the enclosures, they have obtained the name of thorn-hogs. some reach an immense size, and they are very prolific, so that it is impossible to destroy them. the boars are fierce at a particular season, but never attack unless provoked to do so. but when driven to bay they are the most dangerous of the boars, on account of their vast size and weight. they are of a sluggish disposition, and will not rise from their lairs unless forced to do so. the next kind is the white hog, which has much the same habits as the former, except that it is usually found in moist places, near lakes and rivers, and is often called the marsh-pig. the third kind is perfectly black, much smaller in size, and very active, affording by far the best sport, and also the best food when killed. as they are found on the hills where the ground is somewhat more open, horses can follow freely, and the chase becomes exciting. by some it is called the hill-hog, from the locality it frequents. the small tusks of the black boar are used for many ornamental purposes. these three species are considered to be the descendants of the various domestic pigs of the ancients, but the fourth, or grey, is thought to be the true wild boar. it is seldom seen, but is most common in the south-western forests, where, from the quantity of fern, it is called the fern-pig. this kind is believed to represent the true wild boar, which was extinct, or merged in the domestic hog among the ancients, except in that neighbourhood where the strain remained. with wild times, the wild habits have returned, and the grey boar is at once the most difficult of access, and the most ready to encounter either dogs or men. although the first, or thorn-hog, does the most damage to the agriculturist because of its numbers, and its habit of haunting the neighbourhood of enclosures, the others are equally injurious if they chance to enter the cultivated fields. the three principal kinds of wild sheep are the horned, the thyme, and the meadow. the thyme sheep are the smallest, and haunt the highest hills in the south, where, feeding on the sweet herbage of the ridges, their flesh is said to acquire a flavour of wild thyme. they move in small flocks of not more than thirty, and are the most difficult to approach, being far more wary than deer, so continuously are they hunted by the wood-dogs. the horned are larger, and move in greater numbers; as many as two hundred are sometimes seen together. they are found on the lower slopes and plains, and in the woods. the meadow sheep have long shaggy wool, which is made into various articles of clothing, but they are not numerous. they haunt river sides, and the shores of lakes and ponds. none of these are easily got at, on account of the wood-dogs; but the rams of the horned kind are reputed to sometimes turn upon the pursuing pack, and butt them to death. in the extremity of their terror whole flocks of wild sheep have been driven over precipices and into quagmires and torrents. besides these, there are several other species whose haunt is local. on the islands, especially, different kinds are found. the wood-dogs will occasionally, in calm weather, swim out to an island and kill every sheep upon it. from the horses that were in use among the ancients the two wild species now found are known to have descended, a fact confirmed by their evident resemblance to the horses we still retain. the largest wild horse is almost black, or inclined to a dark colour, somewhat less in size than our present waggon horses, but of the same heavy make. it is, however, much swifter, on account of having enjoyed liberty for so long. it is called the bush-horse, being generally distributed among thickets and meadow-like lands adjoining water. the other species is called the hill-pony, from its habitat, the hills, and is rather less in size than our riding-horse. this latter is short and thick-set, so much so as not to be easily ridden by short persons without high stirrups. neither of these wild horses are numerous, but neither are they uncommon. they keep entirely separate from each other. as many as thirty mares are sometimes seen together, but there are districts where the traveller will not observe one for weeks. tradition says that in the olden times there were horses of a slender build whose speed outstripped the wind, but of the breed of these famous racers not one is left. whether they were too delicate to withstand exposure, or whether the wild dogs hunted them down is uncertain, but they are quite gone. did but one exist, how eagerly it would be sought out, for in these days it would be worth its weight in gold, unless, indeed, as some affirm, such speed only endured for a mile or two. it is not necessary, having written thus far of the animals, that anything be said of the birds of the woods, which every one knows were not always wild, and which can, indeed, be compared with such poultry as are kept in our enclosures. such are the bush-hens, the wood-turkeys, the galenæ, the peacocks, the white duck and the white goose, all of which, though now wild as the hawk, are well known to have been once tame. there were deer, red and fallow, in numerous parks and chases of very old time, and these, having got loose, and having such immense tracts to roam over unmolested, went on increasing till now they are beyond computation, and i have myself seen a thousand head together. within these forty years, as i learn, the roe-deer, too, have come down from the extreme north, so that there are now three sorts in the woods. before them the pine-marten came from the same direction, and, though they are not yet common, it is believed they are increasing. for the first few years after the change took place there seemed a danger lest the foreign wild beasts that had been confined as curiosities in menageries should multiply and remain in the woods. but this did not happen. some few lions, tigers, bears, and other animals did indeed escape, together with many less furious creatures, and it is related that they roamed about the fields for a long time. they were seldom met with, having such an extent of country to wander over, and after a while entirely disappeared. if any progeny were born, the winter frosts must have destroyed it, and the same fate awaited the monstrous serpents which had been collected for exhibition. only one such animal now exists which is known to owe its origin to those which escaped from the dens of the ancients. it is the beaver, whose dams are now occasionally found upon the streams by those who traverse the woods. some of the aquatic birds, too, which frequent the lakes, are thought to have been originally derived from those which were formerly kept as curiosities. in the castle yard at longtover may still be seen the bones of an elephant which was found dying in the woods near that spot. chapter iii men of the woods so far as this, all that i have stated has been clear, and there can be no doubt that what has been thus handed down from mouth to mouth is for the most part correct. when i pass from trees and animals to men, however, the thing is different, for nothing is certain and everything confused. none of the accounts agree, nor can they be altogether reconciled with present facts or with reasonable supposition; yet it is not so long since but a few memories, added one to the other, can bridge the time, and, though not many, there are some written notes still to be found. i must attribute the discrepancy to the wars and hatreds which sprang up and divided the people, so that one would not listen to what the others wished to say, and the truth was lost. besides which, in the conflagration which consumed the towns, most of the records were destroyed, and are no longer to be referred to. and it may be that even when they were proceeding, the causes of the change were not understood. therefore, what i am now about to describe is not to be regarded as the ultimate truth, but as the nearest to which i could attain after comparing the various traditions. some say, then, that the first beginning of the change was because the sea silted up the entrances to the ancient ports, and stopped the vast commerce which was once carried on. it is certainly true that many of the ports are silted up, and are now useless as such, but whether the silting up preceded the disappearance of the population, or whether the disappearance of the population, and the consequent neglect caused the silting, i cannot venture to positively assert. for there are signs that the level of the sea has sunk in some places, and signs that it has become higher in others, so that the judicious historian will simply state the facts, and refrain from colouring them with his own theory as silvester has done. others again maintain that the supply of food from over the ocean suddenly stopping caused great disorders, and that the people crowded on board all the ships to escape starvation, and sailed away, and were no more heard of. it has, too, been said that the earth, from some attractive power exercised by the passage of an enormous dark body through space, became tilted or inclined to its orbit more than before, and that this, while it lasted, altered the flow of the magnetic currents, which, in an imperceptible manner, influence the minds of men. hitherto the stream of human life had directed itself to the westward, but when this reversal of magnetism occurred, a general desire arose to return to the east. and those whose business is theology have pointed out that the wickedness of those times surpassed understanding, and that a change and sweeping away of the human evil that had accumulated was necessary, and was effected by supernatural means. the relation of this must be left to them, since it is not the province of the philosopher to meddle with such matters. all that seems certain is, that when the event took place, the immense crowds collected in cities were most affected, and that the richer and upper classes made use of their money to escape. those left behind were mainly the lower and most ignorant, so far as the arts were concerned; those that dwelt in distant and outlying places; and those who lived by agriculture. these last at that date had fallen to such distress that they could not hire vessels to transport themselves. the exact number of those left behind cannot, of course, be told, but it is on record that when the fields were first neglected (as i have already described), a man might ride a hundred miles and not meet another. they were not only few, but scattered, and had not drawn together and formed towns as at present. of what became of the vast multitudes that left the country, nothing has ever been heard, and no communication has been received from them. for this reason i cannot conceal my opinion that they must have sailed either to the westward or to the southward where the greatest extent of ocean is understood to exist, and not to the eastward as silvester would have it in his work upon the "unknown orb", the dark body travelling in space to which i have alluded. none of our vessels in the present day dare venture into those immense tracts of sea, nor, indeed, out of sight of land, unless they know they shall see it again so soon as they have reached and surmounted the ridge of the horizon. had they only crossed to the mainland or continent again, we should most likely have heard of their passage across the countries there. it is true that ships rarely come over, and only to two ports, and that the men on them say (so far as can be understood) that their country is equally deserted now, and has likewise lost its population. but still, as men talk unto men, and we pass intelligence across great breadths of land, it is almost certain that, had they travelled that way, some echo of their footsteps would yet sound back to us. regarding this theory, therefore, as untenable, i put forward as a suggestion that the ancients really sailed to the west or to the south. as, for the most part, those who were left behind were ignorant, rude, and unlettered, it consequently happened that many of the marvellous things which the ancients did, and the secrets of their science, are known to us by name only, and, indeed, hardly by name. it has happened to us in our turn as it happened to the ancients. for they were aware that in times before their own the art of making glass malleable had been discovered, so that it could be beaten into shape like copper. but the manner in which it was accomplished was entirely unknown to them; the fact was on record, but the cause lost. so now we know that those who to us are the ancients had a way of making diamonds and precious stones out of black and lustreless charcoal, a fact which approaches the incredible. still, we do not doubt it, though we cannot imagine by what means it was carried out. they also sent intelligence to the utmost parts of the earth along wires which were not tubular, but solid, and therefore could not transmit sound, and yet the person who received the message could hear and recognise the voice of the sender a thousand miles away. with certain machines worked by fire, they traversed the land swift as the swallow glides through the sky, but of these things not a relic remains to us. what metal-work or wheels or bars of iron were left, and might have given us a clue, were all broken up and melted down for use in other ways when metal became scarce. mounds of earth are said to still exist in the woods, which originally formed the roads for these machines, but they are now so low, and so covered with thickets, that nothing can be learnt from them; and, indeed, though i have heard of their existence, i have never seen one. great holes were made through the very hills for the passage of the iron chariot, but they are now blocked by the falling roofs, nor dare any one explore such parts as may yet be open. where are the wonderful structures with which the men of those days were lifted to the skies, rising above the clouds? these marvellous things are to us little more than fables of the giants and of the old gods that walked upon the earth, which were fables even to those whom we call the ancients. indeed, we have fuller knowledge of those extremely ancient times than of the people who immediately preceded us, and the romans and the greeks are more familiar to us than the men who rode in the iron chariots and mounted to the skies. the reason why so many arts and sciences were lost was because, as i have previously said, the most of those who were left in the country were ignorant, rude, and unlettered. they had seen the iron chariots, but did not understand the method of their construction, and could not hand down the knowledge they did not themselves possess. the magic wires of intelligence passed through their villages, but they did not know how to work them. the cunning artificers of the cities all departed, and everything fell quickly into barbarism; nor could it be wondered at, for the few and scattered people of those days had enough to do to preserve their lives. communication between one place and another was absolutely cut off, and if one perchance did recollect something that might have been of use, he could not confer with another who knew the other part, and thus between them reconstruct the machine. in the second generation even these disjointed memories died out. at first it is supposed that those who remained behind existed upon the grain in the warehouses, and what they could thresh by the flail from the crops left neglected in the fields. but as the provisions in the warehouses were consumed or spoiled, they hunted the animals, lately tame and as yet but half wild. as these grew less in number and difficult to overtake, they set to work again to till the ground, and cleared away small portions of the earth, encumbered already with brambles and thistles. some grew corn, and some took charge of sheep. thus, in time, places far apart from each other were settled, and towns were built; towns, indeed, we call them to distinguish them from the champaign, but they are not worthy of the name in comparison with the mighty cities of old time. there are many that have not more than fifty houses in the enclosure, and perhaps no other station within a day's journey, and the largest are but villages, reckoning by antiquity. for the most part they have their own government, or had till recently, and thus there grew up many provinces and kingdoms in the compass of what was originally but one. thus separated and divided, there came also to be many races where in the first place was one people. now, in briefly recounting the principal divisions of men, i will commence with those who are everywhere considered the lowest. these are the bushmen, who live wholly in the woods. even among the ancients, when every man, woman, and child could exercise those arts which are now the special mark of nobility, _i.e._ reading and writing, there was a degraded class of persons who refused to avail themselves of the benefits of civilization. they obtained their food by begging, wandering along the highways, crouching around fires which they lit in the open, clad in rags, and exhibiting countenances from which every trace of self-respect had disappeared. these were the ancestors of the present men of the bushes. they took naturally to the neglected fields, and forming "camps" as they call their tribes, or rather families, wandered to and fro, easily subsisting upon roots and trapped game. so they live to this day, having become extremely dexterous in snaring every species of bird and animal, and the fishes of the streams. these latter they sometimes poison with a drug or a plant (it is not known which), the knowledge of which has been preserved among them since the days of the ancients. the poison kills the fishes, and brings them to the surface, when they can be collected by hundreds, but does not injure them for eating. like the black wood-dogs, the bushmen often in fits of savage frenzy destroy thrice as much as they can devour, trapping deer in wickerwork hedges, or pitfalls, and cutting the miserable animals in pieces, for mere thirst of blood. the oxen and cattle in the enclosures are occasionally in the same manner fearfully mutilated by these wretches, sometimes for amusement, and sometimes in vengeance for injuries done to them. bushmen have no settled home, cultivate no kind of corn or vegetable, keep no animals, not even dogs, have no houses or huts, no boats or canoes, nothing that requires the least intelligence or energy to construct. roaming to and fro without any apparent aim or object, or any particular route, they fix their camp for a few days wherever it suits their fancy, and again move on, no man knows why or whither. it is this uncertainty of movement which makes them so dangerous. to-day there may not be the least sign of any within miles of an enclosure. in the night a "camp" may pass, slaughtering such cattle as may have remained without the palisade, or killing the unfortunate shepherd who has not got within the walls, and in the morning they may be nowhere to be seen, having disappeared like vermin. face to face the bushman is never to be feared; a whole "camp" or tribal family will scatter if a traveler stumbles into their midst. it is from behind a tree or under cover of night that he deals his murderous blow. a "camp" may consist of ten or twenty individuals, sometimes, perhaps, of forty, or even fifty, of various ages, and is ruled by the eldest, who is also the parent. he is absolute master of his "camp", but has no power or recognition beyond it, so that how many leaders there may be among them it is not possible even to guess. nor is the master known to them as king, or duke, nor has he any title, but is simply the oldest or founder of the family. the "camp" has no law, no established custom; events happen, and even the master cannot be said to reign. when he becomes feeble, they simply leave him to die. they are depraved, and without shame, clad in sheep-skins chiefly, if clad at all, or in such clothes as they have stolen. they have no ceremonies whatever. the number of these "camps" must be considerable, and yet the bushman is seldom seen, nor do we very often hear of their depredations, which is accounted for by the extent of country they wander over. it is in severe winters that the chief danger occurs; they then suffer from hunger and cold, and are driven to the neighbourhood of the enclosures to steal. so dexterous are they in slipping through the bushes, and slinking among the reeds and osiers, that they will pass within a few yards without discovering their presence, and the signs of their passage can be detected only by the experienced hunter, and not always by him. it is observed that whatever mischief the bushman commits, he never sets fire to any ricks or buildings; the reason is because his nature is to slink from the scene of his depredations, and flame at once attracts people to the spot. twice the occurrence of a remarkably severe winter has caused the bushmen to flock together and act in an approach to concert in attacking the enclosures. the bushmen of the north, who were even more savage and brutal, then came down, and were with difficulty repulsed from the walled cities. in ordinary times we see very little of them. they are the thieves, the human vermin of the woods. under the name of gipsies, those who are now often called romany and zingari were well known to the ancients. indeed, they boast that their ancestry goes back so much farther than the oldest we can claim, that the ancients themselves were but modern to them. even in that age of highest civilization, which immediately preceded the present, they say (and there is no doubt of it) that they preserved the blood of their race pure and untainted, that they never dwelt under permanent roofs, nor bowed their knees to the prevalent religion. they remained apart, and still continue after civilization has disappeared, exactly the same as they were before it commenced. since the change their numbers have greatly increased, and were they not always at war with each other, it is possible that they might go far to sweep the house people from the land. but there are so many tribes, each with its king, queen, or duke, that their power is divided, and their force melts away. the ruler of the bushman families is always a man, but among the gipsies a woman, and even a young girl, often exercises supreme authority, but must be of the sacred blood. these kings and dukes are absolute autocrats within their tribe, and can order by a nod the destruction of those who offend them. habits of simplest obedience being enjoined on the tribe from earliest childhood, such executions are rare, but the right to command them is not for a moment questioned. of the sorcerers, and particularly the sorceresses, among them, all have heard, and, indeed, the places where they dwell seem full of mystery and magic. they live in tents, and though they constantly remove from district to district, one tribe never clashes with or crosses another, because all have their especial routes, upon which no intrusion is ever made. some agriculture is practiced, and flocks and herds are kept, but the work is entirely done by the women. the men are always on horseback, or sleeping in their tents. each tribe has its central camping-place, to which they return at intervals after perhaps wandering for months, a certain number of persons being left at home to defend it. these camps are often situated in inaccessible positions, and well protected by stockades. the territory which is acknowledged to belong to such a camp is extremely limited; its mere environs only are considered the actual property of the tribe, and a second can pitch its tents with a few hundred yards. these stockades, in fact, are more like store-houses than residences; each is a mere rendezvous. the gipsies are everywhere, but their stockades are most numerous in the south, along the sides of the green hills and plains, and especially round stonehenge, where, on the great open plains, among the huge boulders, placed ages since in circles, they perform strange ceremonies and incantations. they attack every traveller, and every caravan or train of waggons which they feel strong enough to master, but they do not murder the solitary sleeping hunter or shepherd like the bushmen. they will, indeed, steal from him, but do not kill, except in fight. once, now and then, they have found their way into towns, when terrible massacres have followed, for, when excited, the savage knows not how to restrain himself. vengeance is their idol. if any community has injured or affronted them, they never cease endeavouring to retaliate, and will wipe it out in fire and blood generations afterwards. there are towns which have thus been suddenly harried when the citizens had forgotten that any cause of enmity existed. vengeance is their religion and their social law, which guides all their actions among themselves. it is for this reason that they are continually at war, duke with duke, and king with king. a deadly feud, too, has set bushman and gipsy at each other's throat, far beyond the memory of man. the romany looks on the bushman as a dog, and slaughters him as such. in turn, the despised human dog slinks in the darkness of the night into the romany's tent, and stabs his daughter or his wife, for such is the meanness and cowardice of the bushman that he would always rather kill a woman than a man. there is also a third class of men who are not true gipsies, but have something of their character, though the gipsies will not allow that they were originally half-breeds. their habits are much the same, except that they are foot men and rarely use horses, and are therefore called the foot gipsies. the gipsy horse is really a pony. once only have the romany combined to attack the house people, driven, like the bushmen, by an exceedingly severe winter, against which they had no provision. but, then, instead of massing their forces and throwing their irresistible numbers upon one city or territory, all they would agree to do was that, upon a certain day, each tribe should invade the land nearest to it. the result was that they were, though with trouble, repulsed. until lately, no leader ventured to follow the gipsies to their strongholds, for they were reputed invincible behind their stockades. by infesting the woods and lying in ambush they rendered communication between city and city difficult and dangerous, except to bodies of armed men, and every waggon had to be defended by troops. the gipsies, as they roam, make little secret of their presence (unless, of course, intent upon mischief), but light their fires by day and night fearlessly. the bushmen never light a fire by day, lest the ascending smoke, which cannot be concealed, should betray their whereabouts. their fires are lit at night in hollows or places well surrounded with thickets, and, that the flame may not be seen, they will build screens of fir boughs or fern. when they have obtained a good supply of hot wood coals, no more sticks are thrown on, but these are covered with turf, and thus kept in long enough for their purposes. much of their meat they devour raw, and thus do not need a fire so frequently as others. chapter iv the invaders those who live by agriculture or in towns, and are descended from the remnant of the ancients, are divided, as i have previously said, into numerous provinces, kingdoms, and republics. in the middle part of the country the cities are almost all upon the shores of the lake, or within a short distance of the water, and there is therefore more traffic and communication between them by means of vessels than is the case with inland towns, whose trade must be carried on by caravans and waggons. these not only move slowly, but are subject to be interrupted by the romany and by the banditti, or persons who, for moral or political crimes, have been banished from their homes. it is in the cities that cluster around the great central lake that all the life and civilization of our day are found; but there also begin those wars and social convulsions which cause so much suffering. when was the peninsula at peace? and when was there not some mischief and change brewing in the republics? when was there not a danger from the northern mainland? until recent years there was little knowledge of, and scarcely any direct commerce or intercourse between, the central part and the districts either of the extreme west or the north, and it is only now that the north and east are becoming open to us; for at the back of the narrow circle or cultivated land, the belt about the lake, there extend immense forests in every direction, through which, till very lately, no practicable way had been cut. even in the more civilized central part it is not to this day easy to travel, for at the barriers, as you approach the territories of every prince, they demand your business and your papers; nor even if you establish the fact that you are innocent of designs against the state, shall you hardly enter without satisfying the greed of the officials. a fine is thus exacted at the gate of every province and kingdom, and again at the gateways of the towns. the difference of the coinage, such as it is, causes also great loss and trouble, for the money of one kingdom (though passing current by command in that territory) is not received at its nominal value in the next on account of the alloy it contains. it is, indeed, in many kingdoms impossible to obtain sterling money. gold there is little or none anywhere, but silver is the standard of exchange, and copper, bronze, and brass, sometimes tin, are the metals with which the greater number of the people transact their business. justice is corrupt, for where there is a king or a prince it depends on the caprice of a tyrant, and where there is a republic upon the shout of the crowd, so that many, if they think they may be put on trial, rather than face the risk at once escape into the woods. the league, though based ostensibly on principles the most exalted and beneficial to humanity, is known to be perverted. the members sworn to honour and the highest virtue are swayed by vile motives, political hatreds, and private passions, and even by money. men for ever trample upon men, each pushing to the front; nor is there safety in remaining in retirement, since such are accused of biding their time and of occult designs. though the population of these cities all counted together is not equal to the population that once dwelt in a single second-rate city of the ancients, yet how much greater are the bitterness and the struggle! yet not content with the bloodshed they themselves cause, the tyrants have called in the aid of mercenary soldiers to assist them. and, to complete the disgrace, those republics which proclaim themselves the very home of patriotic virtues, have resorted to the same means. thus we see english cities kept in awe by troops of welshmen, irish, and even the western scots, who swarm in the council-chambers of the republics, and, opening the doors of the houses, help themselves to what they will. this, too, in the face of the notorious fact that these nations have sworn to be avenged upon us, that their vessels sail about the lake committing direful acts of piracy, and that twice already vast armies have swept along threatening to entirely overwhelm the whole commonwealth. what infatuation to admit bands of these same men into the very strongholds and the heart of the land! as if upon the approach of their countrymen they would remain true to the oaths they have sworn for pay, and not rather admit them with open arms. no blame can, upon a just consideration, be attributed to either of these nations that endeavour to oppress us. for, as they point out, the ancients from whom we are descended held them in subjection many hundred years, and took from them all their liberties. thus the welsh, or, as they call themselves, the cymry, say that the whole island was once theirs, and is theirs still by right of inheritance. they were the original people who possessed it ages before the arrival of those whom we call the ancients. though they were driven into the mountains of the far distant west, they never forgot their language, ceased their customs, or gave up their aspirations to recover their own. this is now their aim, and until recently it seemed as if they were about to accomplish it. for they held all that country anciently called cornwall, having crossed over the severn, and marched down the southern shore. the rich land of devon, part of dorset (all, indeed, that is inhabited), and the most part of somerset, acknowledged their rule. worcester and hereford and gloucester were theirs; i mean, of course, those parts that are not forest. their outposts were pushed forward to the centre of leicestershire, and came down towards oxford. but thereabouts they met with the forces of which i will shortly speak. then their vessels every summer sailing from the severn, came into the lake, and, landing wherever there was an opportunity, they destroyed all things and carried off the spoil. is it necessary to say more to demonstrate the madness which possesses those princes and republics which, in order to support their own tyranny, have invited bands of these men into their very palaces and forts? as they approached near what was once oxford and is now sypolis, the armies of the cymry came into collision with another of our invaders, and thus their forward course to the south was checked. the irish, who had hitherto abetted them, turned round to defend their own usurpations. they, too, say that in conquering and despoiling my countrymen they are fulfilling a divine vengeance. their land of ireland had been for centuries ground down with an iron tyranny by our ancestors, who closed their lips with a muzzle, and led them about with a bridle, as their poets say. but now the hateful saxons (for thus both they and the welsh designate us) are broken, and delivered over to them for their spoil. it is not possible to deny many of the statements that they make, but that should not prevent us from battling with might and main against the threatened subjection. what crime can be greater than the admission of such foreigners as the guards of our cities? now the irish have their principal rendezvous and capital near to the ancient city of chester, which is upon the ocean, and at the very top and angle of wales. this is their great settlement, their magazine and rallying-place, and thence their expeditions have proceeded. it is a convenient port, and well opposite their native land, from which reinforcements continually arrive, but the welsh have ever looked upon their possession of it with jealousy. at the period when the cymry had nearly penetrated to sypolis or oxford, the irish, on their part, had overrun all the cultivated and inhabited country in a south and south-easterly line from chester, through rutland to norfolk and suffolk, and even as far as luton. they would have spread to the north, but in that direction they were met by the scots, who had all northumbria. when the welsh came near sypolis, the irish awoke to the position of affairs. sypolis is the largest and most important city upon the northern shore of the lake, and it is situated at the entrance to the neck of land that stretches out to the straits. if the welsh were once well posted there, the irish could never hope to find their way to the rich and cultivated south, for it is just below sypolis that the lake contracts, and forms a strait in one place but a furlong wide. the two forces thus came into collision, and while they fought and destroyed each other, sypolis was saved. after which, finding they were evenly matched, the irish withdrew two days' march northwards, and the cymry as far westwards. but now the irish, sailing round the outside of wales, came likewise up through the red rocks, and so into the lake, and in their turn landing, harassed the cities. often welsh and irish vessels, intending to attack the same place, have discerned each other approaching, and, turning from their proposed action, have flown at each other's throats. the scots have not harassed us in the south much, being too far distant, and those that wander hither come for pay, taking service as guards. they are, indeed, the finest of men, and the hardiest to battle with. i had forgotten to mention that it is possible the irish might have pushed back the welsh, had not the kingdom of york suddenly reviving, by means which shall be related, valiantly thrust out its masters, and fell upon their rear. but still these nations are always upon the verge and margin of our world, and wait but an opportunity to rush in upon it. our countrymen groan under their yoke, and i say again that infamy should be the portion of those rulers among us who have filled their fortified places with mercenaries derived from such sources. the land, too, is weak, because of the multitude of bondsmen. in the provinces and kingdoms round about the lake there is hardly a town where the slaves do not outnumber the free as ten to one. the laws are framed for the object of reducing the greater part of the people to servitude. for every offence the punishment is slavery, and the offences are daily artificially increased, that the wealth of the few in human beings may grow with them. if a man in his hunger steal a loaf, he becomes a slave; that is, it is proclaimed he must make good to the state the injury he has done it, and must work out his trespass. this is not assessed as the value of the loaf, nor supposed to be confined to the individual from whom it was taken. the theft is said to damage the state at large, because it corrupts the morality of the commonwealth; it is as if the thief had stolen a loaf, not from one, but from every member of the state. restitution must, therefore, be made to all, and the value of the loaf returned in labour a thousandfold. the thief is the bondsman of the state. but as the state cannot employ him, he is leased out to those who will pay into the treasury of the prince the money equivalent to the labour he is capable of performing. thus, under cover of the highest morality, the greatest iniquity is perpetrated. for the theft of a loaf, the man is reduced to a slave; then his wife and children, unable to support themselves, become a charge to the state, that is, they beg in the public ways. this, too, forsooth, corrupts morality, and they likewise are seized and leased out to any who like to take them. nor can he or they ever become free again, for they must repay to their proprietor the sum he gave for them, and how can that be done, since they receive no wages? for striking another, a man may be in the same way, as they term it, forfeited to the state, and be sold to the highest bidder. a stout brass wire is then twisted around his left wrist loosely, and the ends soldered together. then a bar of iron being put through, a half turn is given to it, which forces the wire sharply against the arm, causing it to fit tightly, often painfully, and forms a smaller ring at the outside. by this smaller ring a score of bondsmen may be seen strung together with a rope. to speak disrespectfully of the prince or his council, or of the nobles, or of religion, to go out of the precincts without permission, to trade without license, to omit to salute the great, all these and a thousand others are crimes deserving of the brazen bracelet. were a man to study all day what he must do, and what he must not do, to escape servitude, it would not be possible for him to stir one step without becoming forfeit! and yet they hypocritically say that these things are done for the sake of public morality, and that there are not slaves (not permitting the word to be used), and no man was ever sold. it is, indeed, true that no man is sold in open market, he is leased instead; and, by a refined hypocrisy, the owner of slaves cannot sell them to another owner, but he can place them in the hands of the notary, presenting them with their freedom, so far as he is concerned. the notary, upon payment of a fine from the purchaser, transfers them to him, and the larger part of the fine goes to the prince. debt alone under their laws must crowd the land with slaves, for, as wages are scarcely known, a child from its birth is often declared to be in debt. for its nourishment is drawn from its mother, and the wretched mother is the wife of a retainer who is fed by his lord. to such a degree is this tyranny carried! if any owe a penny, his doom is sealed; he becomes a bondsman, and thus the estates of the nobles are full of men who work during their whole lives for the profit of others. thus, too, the woods are filled with banditti, for those who find an opportunity never fail to escape, notwithstanding the hunt that is invariably made for them, and the cruel punishment that awaits recapture. and numbers, foreseeing that they must become bondsmen, before they are proclaimed forfeit steal away by night, and live as they may in the forests. how, then, does any man remain free? only by the favour of the nobles, and only that he may amass wealth for them. the merchants, and those who have license to trade by land or water, are all protected by some noble house, to whom they pay heavily for permission to live in their own houses. the principal tyrant is supported by the nobles, that they in their turn may tyrannise over the merchants, and they again over all the workmen of their shops and bazaars. over their own servants (for thus they call the slaves, that the word itself may not be used), who work upon their estates, the nobles are absolute masters, and may even hang them upon the nearest tree. and here i cannot but remark how strange it is, first, that any man can remain a slave rather than die; and secondly, how much stranger it is that any other man, himself a slave, can be found to hunt down or to hang his fellow; yet the tyrants never lack executioners. their castles are crowded with retainers who wreak their wills upon the defenceless. these retainers do not wear the brazen bracelet; they are free. are there, then, no beggars? yes, they sit at every corner, and about the gates of the cities, asking for alms. though begging makes a man forfeit to the state, it is only when he has thews and sinews, and can work. the diseased and aged, the helpless and feeble, may break the law, and starve by the roadside, because it profits no one to make them his slaves. and all these things are done in the name of morality, and for the good of the human race, as they constantly announce in their councils and parliaments. there are two reasons why the mercenaries have been called in; first, because the princes found the great nobles so powerful, and can keep them in check only by the aid of these foreigners; and secondly, because the number of the outlaws in the woods has become so great that the nobles themselves are afraid lest their slaves should revolt, and, with the aid of the outlaws, overcome them. now the mark of a noble is that he can read and write. when the ancients were scattered, the remnant that was left behind was, for the most part, the ignorant and the poor. but among them there was here and there a man who possessed some little education and force of mind. at first there was no order; but after thirty years or so, after a generation, some order grew up, and these men, then become aged, were naturally chosen as leaders. they had, indeed, no actual power then, no guards or armies; but the common folk, who had no knowledge, came to them for decision of their disputes, for advice what to do, for the pronouncement of some form of marriage, for the keeping of some note of property, and to be united against a mutual danger. these men in turn taught their children to read and write, wishing that some part of the wisdom of the ancients might be preserved. they themselves wrote down what they knew, and these manuscripts, transmitted to their children, were saved with care. some of them remain to this day. these children, growing to manhood, took more upon them, and assumed higher authority as the past was forgotten, and the original equality of all men lost in antiquity. the small enclosed farms of their fathers became enlarged to estates, the estates became towns, and thus, by degrees, the order of the nobility was formed. as they intermarried only among themselves, they preserved a certain individuality. at this day a noble is at once known, no matter how coarsely he may be dressed, or how brutal his habits, by his delicacy of feature, his air of command, even by his softness of skin and fineness of hair. still the art of reading and writing is scrupulously imparted to all their legitimate offspring, and scrupulously confined to them alone. it is true that they do not use it except on rare occasions when necessity demands, being wholly given over to the chase, to war, and politics, but they retain the knowledge. indeed, were a noble to be known not to be able to read and write, the prince would at once degrade him, and the sentence would be upheld by the entire caste. no other but the nobles are permitted to acquire these arts; if any attempt to do so, they are enslaved and punished. but none do attempt; of what avail would it be to them? all knowledge is thus retained in the possession of the nobles; they do not use it, but the physicians, for instance, who are famous, are so because by favour of some baron, they have learned receipts in the ancient manuscripts which have been mentioned. one virtue, and one only, adorns this exclusive caste; they are courageous to the verge of madness. i had almost omitted to state that the merchants know how to read and write, having special license and permits to do so, without which they may not correspond. there are few books, and still fewer to read them; and these all in manuscript, for though the way to print is not lost, it is not employed since no one wants books. chapter v the lake there now only remains the geography of our country to be treated of before the history is commenced. now the most striking difference between the country as we know it and as it was known to the ancients is the existence of the great lake in the centre of the island. from the red rocks (by the severn) hither, the most direct route a galley can follow is considered to be about miles in length, and it is a journey which often takes a week even for a vessel well manned, because the course, as it turns round the islands, faces so many points of the compass, and therefore the oarsmen are sure to have to labour in the teeth of the wind, no matter which way it blows. many parts are still unexplored, and scarce anything known of their extent, even by repute. until felix aquila's time, the greater portion, indeed, had not even a name. each community was well acquainted with the bay before its own city, and with the route to the next, but beyond that they were ignorant, and had no desire to learn. yet the lake cannot really be so long and broad as it seems, for the country could not contain it. the length is increased, almost trebled, by the islands and shoals, which will not permit of navigation in a straight line. for the most part, too, they follow the southern shore of the mainland, which is protected by a fringe of islets and banks from the storms which sweep over the open waters. thus rowing along round the gulfs and promontories, their voyage is thrice prolonged, but rendered nearly safe from the waves, which rise with incredible celerity before the gales. the slow ships of commerce, indeed, are often days in traversing the distance between one port and another, for they wait for the wind to blow abaft, and being heavy, deeply laden, built broad and flat-bottomed for shallows, and bluff at the bows, they drift like logs of timber. in canoes the hunters, indeed, sometimes pass swiftly from one place to another, venturing farther out to sea than the ships. they could pass yet more quickly were it not for the inquisition of the authorities at every city and port, who not only levy dues and fees for the treasury of the prince, and for their own rapacious desires, but demand whence the vessel comes, to whom she belongs, and whither she is bound, so that no ship can travel rapidly unless so armed as to shake off these inquisitors. the canoes, therefore, travel at night and in calm weather many miles away from the shore, and thus escape, or slip by daylight among the reedy shallows, sheltered by the flags and willows from view. the ships of commerce haul up to the shore towards evening, and the crews, disembarking, light their fires and cook their food. there are, however, one or two gaps, as it were, in their usual course which they cannot pass in this leisurely manner; where the shore is exposed and rocky, or too shallow, and where they must reluctantly put forth, and sail from one horn of the land to the other. the lake is also divided into two unequal portions by the straits of white horse, where vessels are often weather-bound, and cannot make way against the wind, which sets a current through the narrow channel. there is no tide; the sweet waters do not ebb and flow; but while i thus discourse, i have forgotten to state how they came to fill the middle of the country. now, the philosopher silvester, and those who seek after marvels, say that the passage of the dark body through space caused an immense volume of fresh water to fall in the shape of rain, and also that the growth of the forests distilled rain from the clouds. let us leave these speculations to dreamers, and recount what is known to be. for there is no tradition among the common people, who are extremely tenacious of such things, of any great rainfall, nor is there any mention of floods in the ancient manuscripts, nor is there any larger fall of rain now than was formerly the case. but the lake itself tells us how it was formed, or as nearly as we shall ever know, and these facts were established by the expeditions lately sent out. at the eastern extremity the lake narrows, and finally is lost in the vast marshes which cover the site of the ancient london. through these, no doubt, in the days of the old world there flowed the river thames. by changes of the sea level and the sand that was brought up there must have grown great banks, which obstructed the stream. i have formerly mentioned the vast quantities of timber, the wreckage of towns and bridges which was carried down by the various rivers, and by none more so than by the thames. these added to the accumulation, which increased the faster because the foundations of the ancient bridges held it like piles driven in for the purpose. and before this the river had become partially choked from the cloacæ of the ancient city which poured into it through enormous subterranean aqueducts and drains. after a time all these shallows and banks became well matted together by the growth of weeds, of willows, and flags, while the tide, ebbing lower at each drawing back, left still more mud and sand. now it is believed that when this had gone on for a time, the waters of the river, unable to find a channel, began to overflow up into the deserted streets, and especially to fill the underground passages and drains, of which the number and extent was beyond all the power of words to describe. these, by the force of the water, were burst up, and the houses fell in. for this marvellous city, of which such legends are related, was after all only of brick, and when the ivy grew over and trees and shrubs sprang up, and, lastly, the waters underneath burst in, this huge metropolis was soon overthrown. at this day all those parts which were built upon low ground are marshes and swamps. those houses that were upon high ground were, of course, like the other towns, ransacked of all they contained by the remnant that was left; the iron, too, was extracted. trees growing up by them in time cracked the walls, and they fell in. trees and bushes covered them; ivy and nettles concealed the crumbling masses of brick. the same was the case with the lesser cities and towns whose sites are known in the woods. for though many of our present towns bear the ancient names, they do not stand upon the ancient sites, but are two or three, and sometimes ten miles distant. the founders carried with them the name of their original residence. thus the low-lying parts of the mighty city of london became swamps, and the higher grounds were clad with bushes. the very largest of the buildings fell in, and there was nothing visible but trees and hawthorns on the upper lands, and willows, flags, reeds, and rushes on the lower. these crumbling ruins still more choked the stream, and almost, if not quite, turned it back. if any water ooze past, it is not perceptible, and there is no channel through to the salt ocean. it is a vast stagnant swamp, which no man dare enter, since death would be his inevitable fate. there exhales from this oozy mass so fatal a vapour that no animal can endure it. the black water bears a greenish-brown floating scum, which for ever bubbles up from the putrid mud of the bottom. when the wind collects the miasma, and, as it were, presses it together, it becomes visible as a low cloud which hangs over the place. the cloud does not advance beyond the limit of the marsh, seeming to stay there by some constant attraction; and well it is for us that it does not, since at such times when the vapour is thickest, the very wildfowl leave the reeds, and fly from the poison. there are no fishes, neither can eels exist in the mud, nor even newts. it is dead. the flags and reeds are coated with slime and noisome to the touch; there is one place where even these do not grow, and where there is nothing but an oily liquid, green and rank. it is plain there are no fishes in the water, for herons do not go thither, nor the kingfishers, not one of which approaches the spot. they say the sun is sometimes hidden by the vapour when it is thickest, but i do not see how any can tell this, since they could not enter the cloud, as to breathe it when collected by the wind is immediately fatal. for all the rottenness of a thousand years and of many hundred millions of human beings is there festering under the stagnant water, which has sunk down into and penetrated the earth, and floated up to the surface the contents of the buried cloacæ. many scores of men have, i fear, perished in the attempt to enter this fearful place, carried on by their desire of gain. for it can scarcely be disputed that untold treasures lie hidden therein, but guarded by terrors greater than fiery serpents. these have usually made their endeavours to enter in severe and continued frost, or in the height of a drought. frost diminishes the power of the vapour, and the marshes can then, too, be partially traversed, for there is no channel for a boat. but the moment anything be moved, whether it be a bush, or a willow, even a flag, if the ice be broken, the pestilence rises yet stronger. besides which, there are portions which never freeze, and which may be approached unawares, or a turn of the wind may drift the gas towards the explorer. in the midst of summer, after long heat, the vapour rises, and is in a degree dissipated into the sky, and then by following devious ways an entrance may be effected, but always at the cost of illness. if the explorer be unable to quit the spot before night, whether in summer or winter, his death is certain. in the earlier times some bold and adventurous men did indeed succeed in getting a few jewels, but since then the marsh has become more dangerous, and its pestilent character, indeed, increases year by year, as the stagnant water penetrates deeper. so that now for very many years no such attempts have been made. the extent of these foul swamps is not known with certainty, but it is generally believed that they are, at the widest, twenty miles across, and that they reach in a winding line for nearly forty. but the outside parts are much less fatal; it is only the interior which is avoided. towards the lake the sand thrown up by the waves has long since formed a partial barrier between the sweet water and the stagnant, rising up to within a few feet of the surface. this barrier is overgrown with flags and reeds, where it is shallow. here it is possible to sail along the sweet water within an arrow-shot of the swamp. nor, indeed, would the stagnant mingle with the sweet, as is evident at other parts of the swamp, where streams flow side by side with the dark or reddish water; and there are pools, upon one side of which the deer drink, while the other is not frequented even by rats. the common people aver that demons reside in these swamps; and, indeed, at night fiery shapes are seen, which, to the ignorant, are sufficient confirmation of such tales. the vapour, where it is most dense, takes fire, like the blue flame of spirits, and these flaming clouds float to and fro, and yet do not burn the reeds. the superstitious trace in them the forms of demons and winged fiery serpents, and say that white spectres haunt the margin of the marsh after dusk. in a lesser degree, the same thing has taken place with other ancient cities. it is true that there are not always swamps, but the sites are uninhabitable because of the emanations from the ruins. therefore they are avoided. even the spot where a single house has been known to have existed, is avoided by the hunters in the woods. they say when they are stricken with ague or fever, that they must have unwittingly slept on the site of an ancient habitation. nor can the ground be cultivated near the ancient towns, because it causes fever; and thus it is that, as i have already stated, the present places of the same name are often miles distant from the former locality. no sooner does the plough or the spade turn up an ancient site than those who work there are attacked with illness. and thus the cities of the old world, and their houses and habitations, are deserted and lost in the forest. if the hunters, about to pitch their camp for the night, should stumble on so much as a crumbling brick or a fragment of hewn stone, they at once remove at least a bowshot away. the eastward flow of the thames being at first checked, and finally almost or quite stopped by the formation of these banks, the water turned backwards as it were, and began to cover hitherto dry land. and this, with the other lesser rivers and brooks that no longer had any ultimate outlet, accounts for the lake, so far as this side of the country is concerned. at the western extremity the waters also contract between the steep cliffs called the red rocks, near to which once existed the city of bristol. now the welsh say, and the tradition of those who dwell in that part of the country bears them out, that in the time of the old world the river severn flowed past the same spot, but not between these cliffs. the great river severn coming down from the north, with england on one bank and wales upon the other, entered the sea, widening out as it did so. just before it reached the sea, another lesser river, called the avon, the upper part of which is still there, joined it passing through this cleft in the rocks. but when the days of the old world ended in the twilight of the ancients, as the salt ocean fell back and its level became lower, vast sandbanks were disclosed, which presently extended across the most part of the severn river. others, indeed, think that the salt ocean did not sink, but that the land instead was lifted higher. then they say that the waves threw up an immense quantity of shingle and sand, and that thus these banks were formed. all that we know with certainty, however, is, that across the estuary of the severn there rose a broad barrier of beach, which grew wider with the years, and still increases westwards. it is as if the ocean churned up its floor and cast it forth upon the strand. now when the severn was thus stayed yet more effectually than the thames, in the first place it also flowed backwards as it were, till its overflow mingled with the reflux of the thames. thus the inland sea of fresh water was formed; though silvester hints (what is most improbable) that the level of the land sank and formed a basin. after a time, when the waters had risen high enough, since all water must have an outlet somewhere, the lake, passing over the green country behind the red rocks, came pouring through the channel of the avon. then, farther down, it rose over the banks which were lowest there, and thus found its way over a dam into the sea. now when the tide of the ocean is at its ebb, the waters of the lake rush over these banks with so furious a current that no vessel can either go down or come up. if they attempted to go down, they would be swamped by the meeting of the waves; if they attempted to come up, the strongest gale that blows could not force them against the stream. as the tide gradually returns, however, the level of the ocean rises to the level of the lake, the outward flow of water ceases, and there is even a partial inward flow of the tide which, at its highest, reaches to the red rocks. at this state of the tide, which happens twice in a day and night, vessels can enter or go forth. the irish ships, of which i have spoken, thus come into the lake, waiting outside the bar till the tide lifts them over. the irish ships, being built to traverse the ocean from their country, are large and stout and well manned, carrying from thirty to fifty men. the welsh ships, which come down from that inlet of the lake which follows the ancient course of the severn, are much smaller and lighter, as not being required to withstand the heavy seas. they carry but fifteen or twenty men each, but then they are more numerous. the irish ships, on account of their size and draught, in sailing about the sweet waters, cannot always haul on shore at night, nor follow the course of the ships of burden between the fringe of islands and the strand. they have often to stay in the outer and deeper waters; but the welsh boats come in easily at all parts of the coast, so that no place is safe against them. the welsh have ever been most jealous of the severn, and will on no account permit so much as a canoe to enter it. so that whether it be a narrow creek, or whether there be wide reaches, or what the shores may be like, we are ignorant. and this is all that is with certainty known concerning the origin of the inland sea of sweet water, excluding all that superstition and speculation have advanced, and setting down nothing but ascertained facts. a beautiful sea it is, clear as crystal, exquisite to drink, abounding with fishes of every kind, and adorned with green islands. there is nothing more lovely in the world than when, upon a calm evening, the sun goes down across the level and gleaming water, where it is so wide that the eye can but just distinguish a low and dark cloud, as it were, resting upon the horizon, or perhaps, looking lengthways, cannot distinguish any ending to the expanse. sometimes it is blue, reflecting the noonday sky; sometimes white from the clouds; again green and dark as the wind rises and the waves roll. storms, indeed, come up with extraordinary swiftness, for which reason the ships, whenever possible, follow the trade route, as it is called, behind the islands, which shelter them like a protecting reef. they drop equally quickly, and thus it is not uncommon for the morning to be calm, the midday raging in waves dashing resistlessly upon the beach, and the evening still again. the irish, who are accustomed to the salt ocean, say, in the suddenness of its storms and the shifting winds, it is more dangerous than the sea itself. but then there are almost always islands, behind which a vessel can be sheltered. beneath the surface of the lake there must be concealed very many ancient towns and cities, of which the names are lost. sometimes the anchors bring up even now fragments of rusty iron and old metal, or black beams of timber. it is said, and with probability, that when the remnant of the ancients found the water gradually encroaching (for it rose very slowly), as they were driven back year by year, they considered that in time they would be all swept away and drowned. but after extending to its present limits the lake rose no farther, not even in the wettest seasons, but always remains the same. from the position of certain quays we know that it has thus remained for the last hundred years at least. never, as i observed before, was there so beautiful an expanse of water. how much must we sorrow that it has so often proved only the easiest mode of bringing the miseries of war to the doors of the unoffending! yet men are never weary of sailing to and fro upon it, and most of the cities of the present time are upon its shore. and in the evening we walk by the beach, and from the rising grounds look over the waters, as if to gaze upon their loveliness were reward to us for the labour of the day. part ii wild england chapter i sir felix on a bright may morning, the sunlight, at five o'clock, was pouring into a room which face the east at the ancestral home of the aquilas. in this room felix, the eldest of the three sons of the baron, was sleeping. the beams passed over his head, and lit up a square space on the opposite whitewashed wall, where, in the midst of the brilliant light, hung an ivory cross. there were only two panes of glass in the window, each no more than two or three inches square, the rest of the window being closed by strong oaken shutters, thick enough to withstand the stroke of an arrow. in the daytime one of these at least would have been thrown open to admit air and light. they did not quite meet, and a streak of sunshine, in addition to that which came through the tiny panes, entered at the chink. only one window in the house contained more than two such panes (it was in the baroness's sitting-room), and most of them had none at all. the glass left by the ancients in their dwellings had long since been used up or broken, and the fragments that remained were too precious to be put in ordinary rooms. when larger pieces were discovered, they were taken for the palaces of the princes, and even these were but sparingly supplied, so that the saying "he has glass in his window" was equivalent to "he belongs to the upper ranks". on the recess of the window was an inkstand, which had been recently in use, for a quill lay beside it, and a sheet of parchment partly covered with writing. the ink was thick and very dark, made of powdered charcoal, leaving a slightly raised writing, which could be perceived by the finger on rubbing it lightly over. beneath the window on the bare floor was an open chest, in which were several similar parchments and books, and from which the sheet on the recess had evidently been taken. this chest, though small, was extremely heavy and strong, being dug out with the chisel and gouge from a solid block of oak. except a few parallel grooves, there was no attempt at ornamentation upon it. the lid, which had no hinges, but lifted completely off, was tilted against the wall. it was, too, of oak some inches thick, and fitted upon the chest by a kind of dovetailing at the edges. instead of a lock, the chest was fastened by a lengthy thong of oxhide, which now lay in a coil on the floor. bound round and round, twisted and intertangled, and finally tied with a special and secret knot (the ends being concealed), the thong of leather secured the contents of the chest from prying eyes or thievish hands. with axe or knife, of course, the knot might easily have been severed, but no one could obtain access to the room except the retainers of the house, and which of them, even if unfaithful, would dare to employ such means in view of the certain punishment that must follow? it would occupy hours to undo the knot, and then it could not be tied again in exactly the same fashion, so that the real use of the thong was to assure the owner that his treasures had not been interfered with in his absence. such locks as were made were of the clumsiest construction. they were not so difficult to pick as the thong to untie, and their expense, or rather the difficulty of getting a workman who could manufacture them, confined their use to the heads of great houses. the baron's chest was locked, and his alone, in the dwelling. besides the parchments which were nearest the top, as most in use, there were three books, much worn and decayed, which had been preserved, more by accident than by care, from the libraries of the ancients. one was an abridged history of rome, the other a similar account of english history, the third a primer of science or knowledge; all three, indeed, being books which, among the ancients, were used for teaching children, and which, by the men of those days, would have been cast aside with contempt. exposed for years in decaying houses, rain and mildew had spotted and stained their pages; the covers had rotted away these hundred years, and were now supplied by a broad sheet of limp leather with wide margins far overlapping the edges; many of the pages were quite gone, and others torn by careless handling. the abridgment of roman history had been scorched by a forest fire, and the charred edges of the leaves had dropped away in semicircular holes. yet, by pondering over these, felix had, as it were, reconstructed much of the knowledge which was the common (and therefore unvalued) possession of all when they were printed. the parchments contained his annotations, and the result of his thought; they were also full of extracts from decaying volumes lying totally neglected in the houses of other nobles. most of these were of extreme antiquity, for when the ancients departed, the modern books which they had composed being left in the decaying houses at the mercy of the weather, rotted, or were destroyed by the frequent grass fires. but those that had been preserved by the ancients in museums escaped for a while, and some of these yet remained in lumber-rooms and corners, whence they were occasionally dragged forth by the servants for greater convenience in lighting the fires. the young nobles, entirely devoted to the chase, to love intrigues, and war, overwhelmed felix aquila with ridicule when they found him poring over these relics, and being of a proud and susceptible spirit, they so far succeeded that he abandoned the open pursuit of such studies, and stole his knowledge by fitful glances when there was no one near. as among the ancients learning was esteemed above all things, so now, by a species of contrast, it was of all things the most despised. under the books, in one corner of the chest, was a leather bag containing four golden sovereigns, such as were used by the ancients, and eighteen pieces of modern silver money, the debased shillings of the day, not much more than half of which was silver and the rest alloy. the gold coins had been found while digging holes for the posts of a new stockade, and by the law should have been delivered to the prince's treasury. all the gold discovered, whether in the form of coin or jewellery, was the property of the prince, who was supposed to pay for its value in currency. as the actual value of the currency was only half of its nominal value (and sometimes less), the transaction was greatly in favour of the treasury. such was the scarcity of gold that the law was strictly enforced, and had there been the least suspicion of the fact, the house would have been ransacked from the cellars to the roof. imprisonment and fine would have been the inevitable fate of felix, and the family would very probably have suffered for the fault of one of its members. but independent and determined to the last degree, felix ran any risk rather than surrender that which he had found, and which he deemed his own. this unbending independence and pride of spirit, together with scarce concealed contempt for others, had resulted in almost isolating him from the youth of his own age, and had caused him to be regarded with dislike by the elders. he was rarely, if ever, asked to join the chase, and still more rarely invited to the festivities and amusements provided in adjacent houses, or to the grander entertainments of the higher nobles. too quick to take offence where none was really intended, he fancied that many bore him ill-will who had scarcely given him a passing thought. he could not forgive the coarse jokes uttered upon his personal appearance by men of heavier build, who despised so slender a stripling. he would rather be alone than join their company, and would not compete with them in any of their sports, so that, when his absence from the arena was noticed, it was attributed to weakness or cowardice. these imputations stung him deeply, driving him to brood within himself. he was never seen in the courtyards or ante-rooms at the palace, nor following in the train of the prince, as was the custom with the youthful nobles. the servility of the court angered and disgusted him; the eagerness of strong men to carry a cushion or fetch a dog annoyed him. there were those who observed this absence from the crowd in the ante-rooms. in the midst of so much intrigue and continual striving for power, designing men, on the one hand, were ever on the alert for what they imagined would prove willing instruments; and on the other, the prince's councillors kept a watchful eye on the dispositions of every one of the least consequence; so that, although but twenty-five, felix was already down in two lists, the one, at the palace, of persons whose views, if not treasonable, were doubtful, and the other, in the hands of a possible pretender, as a discontented and therefore useful man. felix was entirely ignorant that he had attracted so much observation. he supposed himself simply despised and ignored; he cherished no treason, had not the slightest sympathy with any pretender, held totally aloof from intrigue, and his reveries, if they were ambitious, concerned only himself. but the most precious of the treasures in the chest were eight or ten small sheets of parchment, each daintily rolled and fastened with a ribbon, letters from aurora thyma, who had also given him the ivory cross on the wall. it was of ancient workmanship, a relic of the old world. a compass, a few small tools (valuable because preserved for so many years, and not now to be obtained for any consideration), and a magnifying glass, a relic also of the ancients, completed the contents of the chest. upon a low table by the bedstead were a flint and steel and tinder, and an earthenware oil lamp, not intended to be carried about. there, too, lay his knife, with a buckhorn hilt, worn by everyone in the belt, and his forester's axe, a small tool, but extremely useful in the woods, without which, indeed, progress was often impossible. these were in the belt, which, as he undressed, he had cast upon the table, together with his purse, in which were about a dozen copper coins, not very regular in shape, and stamped on one side only. the table was formed of two short hewn planks, scarcely smoothed, raised on similar planks (on edge) at each end, in fact, a larger form. from a peg driven into the wall hung a disc of brass by a thin leathern lace; this disc, polished to the last degree, answered as a mirror. the only other piece of furniture, if so it could be called, was a block of wood at the side of the table, used as a chair. in the corner, between the table and the window, stood a long yew bow, and a quiver full of arrows ready for immediate use, besides which three or four sheaves lay on the floor. a crossbow hung on a wooden peg; the bow was of wood, and, therefore, not very powerful; bolts and square-headed quarrels were scattered carelessly on the floor under it. six or seven slender darts used for casting with the hand, as javelins, stood in another corner by the door, and two stouter boar spears. by the wall a heap of nets lay in apparent confusion, some used for partridges, some of coarse twine for bush-hens, another, lying a little apart, for fishes. near these the component parts of two turkey-traps were strewn about, together with a small round shield or targe, such as are used by swordsmen, snares of wire, and, in an open box, several chisels, gouges, and other tools. a blowtube was fastened to three pegs, so that it might not warp, a hunter's horn hung from another, and on the floor were a number of arrows in various stages of manufacture, some tied to the straightening rod, some with the feathers already attached, and some hardly shaped from the elder or aspen log. a heap of skins filled the third corner, and beside them were numerous stag's horns, and two of the white cow, but none yet of the much dreaded and much desired white bull. a few peacock's feathers were there also, rare and difficult to get, and intended for aurora. round one footpost of the bed was a long coil of thin hide, a lasso, and on another was suspended an iron cap, or visorless helmet. there was no sword or lance. indeed, of all these weapons and implements, none seemed in use, to judge by the dust that had gathered upon them, and the rusted edges, except the bow and crossbow and one of the boar spears. the bed itself was very low, framed of wood, thick and solid; the clothes were of the coarsest linen and wool; there were furs for warmth in winter, but these were not required in may. there was no carpet, nor any substitute for it; the walls were whitewashed, ceiling there was none, the worm-eaten rafters were visible, and the roof tree. but on the table was a large earthenware bowl, full of meadow orchids, blue-bells, and a bunch of may in flower. his hat, wide in the brim, lay on the floor; his doublet was on the wooden block or seat, with the long tight-fitting trousers, which showed every muscle of the limb, and by them high shoes of tanned but unblacked leather. his short cloak hung on a wooden peg against the door, which was fastened with a broad bolt of oak. the parchment in the recess of the window at which he had been working just before retiring was covered with rough sketches, evidently sections of a design for a ship or galley propelled by oars. the square spot of light upon the wall slowly moved as the sun rose higher, till the ivory cross was left in shadow, but still the slumberer slept on, heedless, too, of the twittering of the swallows under the eaves, and the call of the cuckoo not far distant. chapter ii the house of aquila presently there came the sound of a creaking axle, which grew louder and louder as the waggon drew nearer, till it approached a shriek. the sleeper moved uneasily, but recognising the noise even in his dreams, did not wake. the horrible sounds stopped; there was the sound of voices, as if two persons, one without and one within the wall, were hailing each other; a gate swung open, and the waggon came past under the very window of the bedroom. even habit could not enable felix to entirely withstand so piercing a noise when almost in his ears. he sat up a minute, and glanced at the square of light on the wall to guess the time by its position. in another minute or two the squeaking of the axle ceased, as the waggon reached the storehouses, and he immediately returned to the pillow. without, and just beneath the window, there ran a road or way, which in part divided the enclosure into two portions; the dwelling-house and its offices being on one side, the granaries and storehouses on the other. but a few yards to the left of his room, a strong gate in the enclosing wall gave entrance to this roadway. it was called the maple gate, because a small maple tree grew near outside. the wall, which surrounded the whole place at a distance of eight or ten yards from the buildings, was of brick, and about nine feet high, with a ditch without. it was partly embattled, and partly loopholed, and a banquette of earth rammed hard ran all round inside, so that the defenders might discharge darts or arrows through the embrasures, and step down out of sight to prepare a fresh supply. at each corner there was a large platform, where a considerable number of men could stand and command the approaches; there were, however, no bastions or flanking towers. on the roof of the dwelling-house a similar platform had been prepared, protected by a parapet; from which height the entire enclosure could be overlooked. another platform, though at a less height, was on the roof of the retainers' lodgings, so placed as especially to command the second gate. entering by the maple gate, the dwelling-house was on the right hand, and the granaries and general storehouses on the left, the latter built on three sides of a square. farther on, on the same side, were the stables, and near them the forge and workshops. beyond these, again, were the lodgings of the retainers and labourers, near which, in the corner, was the south gate, from which the south road led to the cattle-pens and farms, and out to the south. upon the right hand, after the dwelling-house, and connected with it, came the steward's stores, where the iron tools and similar valuable articles of metal were kept. then, after a covered passage-way, the kitchen and general hall, under one roof with the house. the house fronted in the opposite direction to the roadway; there was a narrow green lawn between it and the enceinte, or wall, and before the general hall and kitchens a gravelled court. this was parted from the lawn by palings, so that the house folk enjoyed privacy, and yet were close to their servitors. the place was called the old house, for it dated back to the time of the ancients, and the aquilas were proud of the simple designation of their fortified residence. felix's window was almost exactly opposite the entrance to the storehouse or granary yard, so that the waggon, after passing it, had to go but a little distance, and then, turning to the left, was drawn up before the doors of the warehouse. this waggon was low, built for the carriage of goods only, of hewn plank scarcely smooth, and the wheels were solid; cut, in fact, from the butt of an elm tree. unless continually greased the squeaking of such wheels is terrible, and the carters frequently forgot their grease-horns. much of the work of the farm, such as the carting of hay and corn in harvest-time, was done upon sleds; the waggons (there were but few of them) being reserved for longer journeys on the rough roads. this waggon, laden with wool, some of the season's clip, had come in four or five miles from an out-lying cot, or sheep-pen, at the foot of the hills. in the buildings round the granary yard there were stored not only the corn and flour required for the retainers (who might at any moment become a besieged garrison), but the most valuable products of the estate, the wool, hides, and tanned leather from the tan-pits, besides a great quantity of bacon and salt beef; indeed, every possible article that could be needed. these buildings were put together with wooden pins, on account of the scarcity of iron, and were all (dwelling-houses included) roofed with red tile. lesser houses, cottages, and sheds at a distance were thatched, but in an enclosure tiles were necessary, lest, in case of an attack, fire should be thrown. half an hour later, at six o'clock, the watchman blew his horn as loudly as possible for some two or three minutes, the hollow sound echoing through the place. he took the time by the sundial on the wall, it being a summer morning; in winter he was guided by the position of the stars, and often, when sun or stars were obscured, went by guess. the house horn was blown thrice a day; at six in the morning, as a signal that the day had begun, at noon as a signal for dinner, at six in the afternoon as a signal that the day (except in harvest-time) was over. the watchmen went their round about the enclosure all night long, relieved every three hours, armed with spears, and attended by mastiffs. by day one sufficed, and his station was then usually (though not always) on the highest part of the roof. the horn re-awoke felix; it was the note by which he had been accustomed to rise for years. he threw open the oaken shutters, and the sunlight and the fresh breeze of the may morning came freely into the room. there was now the buzz of voices without, men unloading the wool, men at the workshops and in the granaries, and others waiting at the door of the steward's store for the tools, which he handed out to them. iron being so scarce, tools were a temptation, and were carefully locked up each night, and given out again in the morning. felix went to the ivory cross and kissed it in affectionate recollection of aurora, and then looked towards the open window, in the pride and joy of youth turning to the east, the morning, and the light. before he had half dressed there came a knock and then an impatient kick at the door. he unbarred it, and his brother oliver entered. oliver had been for his swim in the river. he excelled in swimming, as, indeed, in every manly exercise, being as active and energetic as felix was outwardly languid. his room was only across the landing, his door just opposite. it also was strewn with implements and weapons. but there was a far greater number of tools; he was an expert and artistic workman, and his table and his seat, unlike the rude blocks in felix's room, were tastefully carved. his seat, too, had a back, and he had even a couch of his own construction. by his bedhead hung his sword, his most valued and most valuable possession. it was one which had escaped the dispersion of the ancients; it had been ancient even in their days, and of far better work than they themselves produced. broad, long, straight, and well-balanced, it appeared capable of cutting through helmet and mail, when wielded by oliver's sturdy arm. such a sword could not have been purchased for money; money, indeed, had often been offered for it in vain; persuasion, and even covert threats from those higher in authority who coveted it, were alike wasted. the sword had been in the family for generations, and when the baron grew too old, or rather when he turned away from active life, the second son claimed it as the fittest to use it. the claim was tacitly allowed; at all events, he had it, and meant to keep it. in a corner stood his lance, long and sharp, for use on horse-back, and by it his saddle and accoutrements. the helmet and the shirt of mail, the iron greaves and spurs, the short iron mace to bang at the saddle-bow, spoke of the knight, the man of horses and war. oliver's whole delight was in exercise and sport. the boldest rider, the best swimmer, the best at leaping, at hurling the dart or the heavy hammer, ever ready for tilt or tournament, his whole life was spent with horse, sword, and lance. a year younger than felix, he was at least ten years physically older. he measured several inches more round the chest; his massive shoulders and immense arms, brown and hairy, his powerful limbs, tower-like neck, and somewhat square jaw were the natural concomitants of enormous physical strength. all the blood and bone and thew and sinew of the house seemed to have fallen to his share; all the fiery, restless spirit and defiant temper; all the utter recklessness and warrior's instinct. he stood every inch a man, with dark, curling, short-cut hair, brown cheek and roman chin, trimmed moustache, brown eye, shaded by long eyelashes and well-marked brows; every inch a natural king of men. that very physical preponderance and animal beauty was perhaps his bane, for his comrades were so many, and his love adventures so innumerable, that they left him no time for serious ambition. between the brothers there was the strangest mixture of affection and repulsion. the elder smiled at the excitement and energy of the younger; the younger openly despised the studious habits and solitary life of the elder. in time of real trouble and difficulty they would have been drawn together; as it was, there was little communion; the one went his way, and the other his. there was perhaps rather an inclination to detract from each other's achievements that to praise them, a species of jealousy or envy without personal dislike, if that can be understood. they were good friends, and yet kept apart. oliver made friends of all, and thwacked and banged his enemies into respectful silence. felix made friends of none, and was equally despised by nominal friends and actual enemies. oliver was open and jovial; felix reserved and contemptuous, or sarcastic in manner. his slender frame, too tall for his width, was against him; he could neither lift the weights nor undergo the muscular strain readily borne by oliver. it was easy to see that felix, although nominally the eldest, had not yet reached his full development. a light complexion, fair hair and eyes, were also against him; where oliver made conquests, felix was unregarded. he laughed, but perhaps his secret pride was hurt. there was but one thing felix could do in the way of exercise and sport. he could shoot with the bow in a manner till then entirely unapproached. his arrows fell unerringly in the centre of the target, the swift deer and the hare were struck down with ease, and even the wood-pigeon in full flight. nothing was safe from those terrible arrows. for this, and this only, his fame had gone forth; and even this was made a source of bitterness to him. the nobles thought no arms worthy of men of descent but the sword and lance; missile weapons, as the dart and arrow, were the arms of retainers. his degradation was completed when, at a tournament, where he had mingled with the crowd, the prince sent for him to shoot at the butt, and display his skill among the soldiery, instead of with the knights in the tilting ring. felix shot, indeed, but shut his eyes that the arrow might go wide, and was jeered at as a failure even in that ignoble competition. only by an iron self-control did he refrain that day from planting one of the despised shafts in the prince's eye. but when oliver joked him about his failure, felix asked him to hang up his breastplate at two hundred yards. he did so, and in an instant a shaft was sent through it. after that oliver held his peace, and in his heart began to think that the bow was a dangerous weapon. "so you are late again this morning," said oliver, leaning against the recess of the window, and placing his arms on it. the sunshine fell on his curly dark hair, still wet from the river. "studying last night, i suppose?" turning over the parchment. "why didn't you ride into town with me?" "the water must have been cold this morning?" said felix, ignoring the question. "yes; there was a slight frost, or something like it, very early, and a mist on the surface; but it was splendid in the pool. why don't you get up and come? you used to." "i can swim," said felix laconically, implying that, having learnt the art, it no more tempted him. "you were late last night. i heard you put night in." "we came home in style; it was rather dusky, but night galloped the green miles." "mind she doesn't put her hoof in a rabbit's hole, some night." "not that. she can see like a cat. i believe we got over the twelve miles in less than an hour. sharp work, considering the hills. you don't inquire for the news." "what's the news to me?" "well, there was a quarrel at the palace yesterday afternoon. the prince told louis he was a double-faced traitor, and louis told the prince he was a suspicious fool. it nearly came to blows, and louis is banished." "for the fiftieth time." "this time it is more serious." "don't believe it. he will be sent for again this morning; cannot you see why?" "no." "if the prince is really suspicious, he will never send his brother into the country, where he might be resorted to by discontented people. he will keep him close at hand." "i wish the quarrelling would cease; it spoils half the fun; one's obliged to creep about the court and speak in whispers, and you can't tell whom you are talking to; they may turn on you if you say too much. there is no dancing either. i hate this moody state. i wish they would either dance or fight." "fight! who?" "anybody. there's some more news, but you don't care." "no. i do not." "why don't you go and live in the woods all by yourself?" said oliver, in some heat. felix laughed. "tell me your news. i am listening." "the irish landed at blacklands the day before yesterday, and burnt robert's place; they tried letburn, but the people there had been warned, and were ready. and there's an envoy from sypolis arrived; some think the assembly has broken up; they were all at daggers drawn. so much for the holy league." "so much for the holy league," repeated felix. "what are you going to do to-day?" asked oliver, after awhile. "i am going down to my canoe," said felix. "i will go with you; the trout are rising. have you got any hooks?" "there's some in the box there, i think; take the tools out." oliver searched among the tools in the open box, all rusty and covered with dust, while felix finished dressing, put away his parchment, and knotted the thong round his chest. he found some hooks at the bottom, and after breakfast they walked out together, oliver carrying his rod, and a boar-spear, and felix a boar-spear also, in addition to a small flag basket with some chisels and gouges. chapter iii the stockade when oliver and felix started, they left philip, the third and youngest of the three brothers, still at breakfast. they turned to the left, on getting out of doors, and again to the left, through the covered passage between the steward's store and the kitchen. then crossing the waggon yard, they paused a moment to glance in at the forge, where two men were repairing part of a plough. oliver must also look for a moment at his mare, after which they directed their steps to the south gate. the massive oaken door was open, the bolts having been drawn back at hornblow. there was a guard-room on one side of the gate under the platform in the corner, where there was always supposed to be a watch. but in times of peace, and when there were no apprehensions of attack, the men whose turn it was to watch there were often called away for a time to assist in some labour going forward, and at that moment were helping to move the woolpacks farther into the warehouse. still they were close at hand, and had the day watchman or warder, who was now on the roof, blown his horn, would have rushed direct to the gate. felix did not like this relaxation of discipline. his precise ideas were upset at the absence of the guard; method, organization, and precision, were the characteristics of his mind, and this kind of uncertainty irritated him. "i wish sir constans would insist on the guard being kept," he remarked. children, in speaking of their parents, invariably gave them their titles. now their father's title was properly "my lord," as he was a baron, and one of the most ancient. but he had so long abnegated the exercise of his rights and privileges, sinking the noble in the mechanician, that men had forgotten the proper style in which they should address him. "sir" was applied to all nobles, whether they possessed estates or not. the brothers were invariably addressed as sir felix or sir oliver. it marked, therefore, the low estimation in which the baron was held when even his own sons spoke of him by that title. oliver, though a military man by profession, laughed at felix's strict view of the guards' duties. familiarity with danger, and natural carelessness, had rendered him contemptuous of it. "there's no risk," said he, "that i can see. who could attack us? the bushmen would never dream of it; the romany would be seen coming days beforehand; we are too far from the lake for the pirates; and as we are not great people, as we might have been, we need dread no private enmity. besides which, any assailants must pass the stockades first." "quite true. still i don't like it; it is a loose way of doing things." outside the gate they followed the waggon track, or south road, for about half a mile. it crossed meadows parted by low hedges, and they remarked, as they went, on the shortness of the grass, which, for want of rain, was not nearly fit for mowing. last year there had been a bad wheat crop; this year there was at present scarcely any grass. these matters were of the highest importance; peace or war, famine or plenty, might depend upon the weather of the next few months. the meadows, besides being divided by the hedges, kept purposely cropped low, were surrounded, like all the cultivated lands, by high and strong stockades. half a mile down the south road they left the track, and following a footpath some few hundred yards, came to the pool where oliver had bathed that morning. the river, which ran through the enclosed grounds, was very shallow, for they were near its source in the hills, but just there it widened, and filled a depression fifty or sixty yards across, which was deep enough for swimming. beyond the pool the stream curved and left the enclosure; the stockade, or at least an open work of poles, was continued across it. this work permitted the stream to flow freely, but was sufficiently close to exclude any one who might attempt to enter by creeping up the bed of the river. they crossed the river just above the pool by some stepping-stones, large blocks rolled in for the purpose, and approached the stockade. it was formed of small but entire trees, young elms, firs, or very thick ash-poles, driven in a double row into the earth, the first or inner row side by side, the outer row filling the interstices, and the whole bound together at the bottom by split willow woven in and out. this interweaving extended only about three feet up, and was intended first to bind the structure together, and secondly to exclude small animals which might creep in between the stakes. the reason it was not carried all up was that it should not afford a footing to human thieves desirous of climbing over. the smooth poles by themselves afforded no notch or foothold for a bushman's naked foot. they rose nine or ten feet above the willow, so that the total height of the palisade was about twelve feet, and the tops of the stakes were sharpened. the construction of such palisades required great labour, and could be carried out only by those who could command the services of numbers of men, so that a small proprietor was impossible, unless within the walls of a town. this particular stockade was by no means an extensive one, in comparison with the estates of more prominent nobles. the enclosure immediately surrounding the old house was of an irregular oval shape, perhaps a mile long, and not quite three-quarters of a mile wide, the house being situated towards the northern and higher end of the oval. the river crossed it, entering on the west and leaving on the eastern side. the enclosure was for the greater part meadow and pasture, for here the cattle were kept, which supplied the house with milk, cheese, and butter, while others intended for slaughter were driven in here for the last months of fattening. the horses in actual use for riding, or for the waggons, were also turned out here temporarily. there were two pens and rickyards within it, one beside the river, one farther down. the south road ran almost down the centre, passing both rickyards, and leaving the stockade at the southern end by a gate, called the barrier. at the northern extremity of the oval the palisade passed within three hundred yards of the house, and there was another barrier, to which the road led from the maple gate, which has been mentioned. from thence it went across the hills to the town of ponze. thus, anyone approaching the old house had first to pass the barrier and get inside the palisade. at each barrier there was a cottage and a guard-room, though, as a matter of fact, the watch was kept in peaceful times even more carelessly than at the inner gates of the wall about the house itself. much the same plan, with local variations, was pursued on the other estates of the province, though the stockade at the old house was remarkable for the care and skill with which it had been constructed. part of the duty of the watchman on the roof was to keep an eye on the barriers, which he could see from his elevated position. in case of an incursion of gipsies, or any danger, the guard at the barrier was supposed to at once close the gate, blow a horn, and exhibit a flag. upon hearing the horn or observing the flag, the warder on the roof raised the alarm, and assistance was sent. such was the system, but as no attack had taken place for some years the discipline had grown lax. after crossing on the stepping-stones oliver and felix were soon under the stockade which ran high above them, and was apparently as difficult to get out of as to get into. by the strict law of the estate, any person who left the stockade except by the public barrier rendered himself liable to the lash or imprisonment. any person, even a retainer, endeavouring to enter from without by pole, ladder, or rope, might be killed with an arrow or dart, putting himself into the position of an outlaw. in practice, of course, this law was frequently evaded. it did not apply to the family of the owner. under some bushes by the palisade was a ladder of rope, the rungs, however, of wood. putting his fishing-tackle and boar spear down, oliver took the ladder and threw the end over the stockade. he then picked up a pole with a fork at the end from the bushes, left there, of course, for the purpose, and with the fork pushed the rungs over till the ladder was adjusted, half within and half without the palisade. it hung by the wooden rungs which caught the tops of the stakes. he then went up, and when at the top, leant over and drew up the outer part of the ladder one rung, which he put the inner side of the palisade, so that on transferring his weight to the outer side it might uphold him. otherwise the ladder, when he got over the points of the stakes, must have slipped the distance between one rung and a second. having adjusted this, he got over, and felix carrying up the spears and tackle handed them to him. felix followed, and thus in three minutes they were on the outer side of the stockade. originally the ground for twenty yards, all round outside the stockade, had been cleared of trees and bushes that they might not harbour vermin, or thorn-hogs, or facilitate the approach of human enemies. part of the weekly work of the bailiffs was to walk round the entire circumference of the stockade to see that it was in order, and to have any bushes removed that began to grow up. as with other matters, however, in the lapse of time the bailiffs became remiss, and under the easy, and perhaps too merciful rule of sir constans, were not recalled to their duties with sufficient sharpness. brambles and thorns and other underwood had begun to cover the space that should have been open, and young sapling oaks had risen from dropped acorns. felix pointed this out to oliver, who seldom accompanied him; he was indeed rather glad of the opportunity to do so, as oliver had more interest with sir constans than himself. oliver admitted it showed great negligence, but added that after all it really did not matter. "what i wish," said he, "is that sir constans would go to court, and take his proper position." upon this they were well agreed; it was, in fact, almost the only point upon which all three brothers did agree. they sometimes talked about it till they separated in a furious temper, not with each other but with him. there was a distinct track of footsteps through the narrow band of low brambles and underwood between the stockade and the forest. this had been made by felix in his daily visits to his canoe. the forest there consisted principally of hawthorn-trees and thorn thickets, with some scattered oaks and ashes; the timber was sparse, but the fern was now fast rising up so thick, that in the height of summer it would be difficult to walk through it. the tips of the fronds unrolling were now not up to the knee; then the brake would reach to the shoulder. the path wound round the thickets (the blackthorn being quite impenetrable except with the axe) and came again to the river some four or five hundred yards from the stockade. the stream, which ran from west to east through the enclosure, here turned and went due south. on the bank felix had found a fine black poplar, the largest and straightest and best grown of that sort for some distance round, and this he had selected for his canoe. stones broke the current here into eddies, below which there were deep holes and gullies where alders hung over, and an ever-rustling aspen spread the shadow of its boughs across the water. the light-coloured mud, formed of disintegrated chalk, on the farther and shallower side was only partly hidden by flags and sedges, which like a richer and more alluvial earth. nor did the bushes grow very densely on this soil over the chalk, so that there was more room for casting the fly than is usually the case where a stream runs through a forest. oliver, after getting his tackle in order, at once began to cast, while felix, hanging his doublet on an oft-used branch, and leaning his spear against a tree, took his chisels and gouge from the flag basket. he had chosen the black poplar for the canoe because it was the lightest wood, and would float best. to fell so large a tree had been a great labour, for the axes were of poor quality, cut badly, and often required sharpening. he could easily have ordered half-a-dozen men to throw the tree, and they would have obeyed immediately; but then the individuality and interest of the work would have been lost. unless he did it himself its importance and value to him would have been diminished. it had now been down some weeks, had been hewn into outward shape, and the larger part of the interior slowly dug away with chisel and gouge. he had commenced while the hawthorn was just putting forth its first spray, when the thickets and the trees were yet bare. now the may bloom scented the air, the forest was green, and his work approached completion. there remained, indeed, but some final shaping and rounding off, and the construction, or rather cutting out, of a secret locker in the stern. this locker was nothing more than a square aperture chiselled out like a mortice, entering not from above but parallel with the bottom, and was to be closed with a tight-fitting piece of wood driven in by force of mallet. a little paint would then conceal the slight chinks, and the boat might be examined in every possible way without any trace of this hiding-place being observed. the canoe was some eleven feet long, and nearly three feet in the beam; it tapered at either end, so that it might be propelled backwards or forwards without turning, and stem and stern (interchangeable definitions in this case) each rose a few inches higher than the general gunwale. the sides were about two inches thick, the bottom three, so that although dug out from light wood the canoe was rather heavy. at first felix constructed a light shed of fir poles roofed with spruce-fir branches over the log, so that he might work sheltered from the bitter winds of the early spring. as the warmth increased he had taken the shed down, and now as the sun rose higher was glad of the shade of an adjacent beech. chapter iv the canoe felix had scarcely worked half an hour before oliver returned and threw himself on the ground at full length. he had wearied of fishing, the delicate adjustment of the tackle and the care necessary to keep the hook and line from catching in the branches had quickly proved too much for his patience. he lay on the grass, his feet towards the stream which ran and bubbled beneath, and watched felix chipping out the block intended to fit into the secret opening or locker. "is it nearly finished, then?" he said presently. "what a time you have been at it!" "nearly three months." "why did you make it so big? it is too big." "is it really? perhaps i want to put some things in it." "oh, i see; cargo. but where are you going to launch it?" "below the stones there." "well, you won't be able to go far; there's an old fir across the river down yonder, and a hollow willow has fallen in. besides, the stream's too shallow; you'll take ground before you get half a mile." "shall i?" "of course you will. that boat will float six inches deep by herself, and i'm sure there's not six inches by the thorns." "very awkward." "why didn't you have a hide boat made, with a willow framework and leather cover? then you might perhaps get down the river by hauling it past the shallows and the fallen trees. in two days' time you would be in the hands of the gipsies." "and you would be sir constans' heir!" "now, come, i say; that's too bad. you know i didn't mean that. besides, i think i'm as much his heir as you now" (looking at his sinewy arm); "at least, he doesn't listen as much to you. i mean, the river runs into the gipsies' country as straight as it can go." "just so." "well, you seem very cool about it!" "i am not going down the river." "then, where _are_ you going?" "on the lake." "whew!" (whistling) "pooh! why, the lake's--let me see, to heron bay it's quite fifteen miles. you can't paddle across the land." "but i can put the canoe on a cart." "aha! why didn't you tell me before?" "because i did not wish anyone to know. don't say anything." "not i. but what on earth, or rather, on water, are you driving at? where are you going? what's the canoe for?" "i am going a voyage. but i will tell you all when it is ready. meantime, i rely on you to keep silence. the rest think the boat is for the river." "i will not say a word. but why did you not have a hide boat?" "they are not strong enough. they can't stand knocking about." "if you want to go a voyage (where to, i can't imagine), why not take a passage on board a ship?" "i want to go my own way. they will only go theirs. nor do i like the company." "well, certainly the sailors are the roughest lot i know. still, that would not have hurt you. you are rather dainty, sir felix!" "my daintiness does not hurt you." "can't i speak?" (sharply) "please yourself." a silence. a cuckoo sang in the forest, and was answered from a tree within the distant palisade. felix chopped away slowly and deliberately; he was not a good workman. oliver watched his progress with contempt; he could have put it into shape in half the time. felix could draw, and design; he could invent, but he was not a practical workman, to give speedy and accurate effect to his ideas. "my opinion is," said oliver, "that that canoe will not float upright. it's one-sided." felix, usually so self-controlled, could not refrain from casting his chisel down angrily. but he picked it up again, and said nothing. this silence had more influence upon oliver, whose nature was very generous, than the bitterest retort. he sat up on the sward. "i will help launch it," he said. "we could manage it between us, if you don't want a lot of the fellows down here." "thank you. i should like that best." "and i will help you with the cart when you start." oliver rolled over on his back, and looked up idly at the white flecks of cloud sailing at a great height. "old mouse is a wretch not to give me a command," he said presently. felix looked round involuntarily, lest any one should have heard; mouse was the nick-name for the prince. like all who rule with irresponsible power, the prince had spies everywhere. he was not a cruel man, nor a benevolent, neither clever nor foolish, neither strong nor weak; simply an ordinary, a very ordinary being, who chanced to sit upon a throne because his ancestors did, and not from any personal superiority. he was at times much influenced by those around him; at others he took his own course, right or wrong; at another he let matters drift. there was never any telling in the morning what he might do towards night, for there was no vein of will or bias running through his character. in fact, he lacked character; he was all uncertainty, except in jealousy of his supremacy. possibly some faint perception of his own incapacity, of the feeble grasp he had upon the state, that seemed outwardly so completely his, occasionally crossed his mind. hence the furious scenes with his brother; hence the sudden imprisonments and equally sudden pardons; the spies and eavesdroppers, the sequestration of estates for no apparent cause. and, following these erratic severities to the suspected nobles, proclamations giving privileges to the people, and removing taxes. but in a few days these were imposed again, and men who dared to murmur were beaten by the soldiers, or cast into the dungeons. yet prince louis (the family were all of the same name) was not an ill-meaning man; he often meant well, but had no stability or firmness of purpose. this was why felix dreaded lest some chance listener should hear oliver abuse him. oliver had been in the army for some time; his excellence in all arms, and especially with lance and sword, his acknowledged courage, and his noble birth, entitled him to a command, however lowly it might be. but he was still in the ranks, and not the slightest recognition had ever been taken of his feats, except, indeed, if whispers were true, by some sweet smiles from a certain lady of the palace, who admired knightly prowess. oliver chafed under this neglect. "i would not say that kind of thing," remarked felix. "certainly it is annoying." "annoying! that is a mild expression. of course, everyone knows the reason. if we had any money, or influence, it would be very different. but sir constans has neither gold nor power, and he might have had both." "there was a clerk from the notary's at the house yesterday evening," said felix. "about the debts, no doubt. some day the cunning old scoundrel, when he can squeeze no more interest out of us, will find a legal quibble and take the lot." "or put us in the blue chamber, the first time the prince goes to war and wants money. the blue chamber will say, 'where can we get it? who's weakest?' 'why, sir constans!' 'then away with him.'" "yes, that will be it. yet i wish a war would happen; there would be some chance for me. i would go with you in your canoe, but you are going you don't know where. what's your object? nothing. you don't know yourself." "indeed!" "no, you don't; you're a dreamer." "i am afraid it is true." "i hate dreams." after a pause, in a lower voice, "have you any money?" felix took out his purse and showed him the copper pieces. "the eldest son of constans aquila with ten copper pieces," growled oliver, rising, but taking them all the same. "lend them to me. i'll try them on the board to-night. fancy me putting down _copper!_ it's intolerable" (working himself into a rage). "i'll turn bandit, and rob on the roads. i'll go to king yeo and fight the welsh. confusion!" he rushed into the forest, leaving his spear on the sward. felix quietly chipped away at the block he was shaping, but his temper, too, was inwardly rising. the same talk, varied in detail, but the same in point, took place every time the brothers were together, and always with the same result of anger. in earlier days sir constans had been as forward in all warlike exercises as oliver was now, and being possessed of extraordinary physical strength, took a leading part among men. wielding his battle-axe with irresistible force, he distinguished himself in several battles and sieges. he had a singular talent for mechanical construction (the wheel by which water was drawn from the well at the palace was designed by him), but this very ingenuity was the beginning of his difficulties. during a long siege, he invented a machine for casting large stones against the walls, or rather put it together from the fragmentary descriptions he had seen in authors, whose works had almost perished before the dispersion of the ancients; for he, too, had been studious in youth. the old prince was highly pleased with this engine, which promised him speedy conquest over his enemies, and the destruction of their strongholds. but the nobles who had the hereditary command of the siege artillery, which consisted mainly of battering-rams, could not endure to see their prestige vanishing. they caballed, traduced the baron, and he fell into disgrace. this disgrace, as he was assured by secret messages from the prince, was but policy; he would be recalled so soon as the prince felt himself able to withstand the pressure of the nobles. but it happened that the old prince died at that juncture, and the present prince succeeded. the enemies of the baron, having access to him, obtained his confidence; the baron was arrested and amerced in a heavy fine, the payment of which laid the foundation of those debts which had since been constantly increasing. he was then released, but was not for some two years permitted to approach the court. meantime, men of not half his descent, but with an unblushing brow and unctuous tongue, had become the favourites at the palace of the prince, who, as said before, was not bad, but the mere puppet of circumstances. into competition with these vulgar flatterers aquila could not enter. it was indeed pride, and nothing but pride, that had kept him from the palace. by slow degrees he had sunk out of sight, occupying himself more and more with mechanical inventions, and with gardening, till at last he had come to be regarded as no more than an agriculturist. yet in this obscure condition he had not escaped danger. the common people were notoriously attached to him. whether this was due to his natural kindliness, his real strength of intellect, and charm of manner, or whether it was on account of the uprightness with which he judged between them, or whether it was owing to all these things combined, certain it is that there was not a man on the estate that would not have died for him. certain it is, too, that he was beloved by the people of the entire district, and more especially by the shepherds of the hills, who were freer and less under the control of the patrician caste. instead of carrying disputes to the town, to be adjudged by the prince's authority, many were privately brought to him. this, by degrees becoming known, excited the jealousy and anger of the prince, an anger cunningly inflamed by the notary francis, and by other nobles. but they hesitated to execute anything against him lest the people should rise, and it was doubtful, indeed, if the very retainers of the nobles would attack the old house, if ordered. thus the baron's weakness was his defence. the prince, to do him justice, soon forgot the matter, and laughed at his own folly, that he should be jealous of a man who was no more than an agriculturist. the rest were not so appeased; they desired the baron's destruction if only from hatred of his popularity, and they lost no opportunity of casting discredit upon him, or of endeavouring to alienate the affections of the people by representing him as a magician, a thing clearly proved by his machines and engines, which must have been designed by some supernatural assistance. but the chief, as the most immediate and pressing danger, was the debt to francis the notary, which might at any moment be brought before the court. thus it was that the three sons found themselves without money or position, with nothing but a bare patent of nobility. the third and youngest alone had made any progress, if such it could be called. by dint of his own persistent efforts, and by enduring insults and rebuffs with indifference, he had at last obtained an appointment in that section of the treasury which received the dues upon merchandise, and regulated the imposts. he was but a messenger at every man's call; his pay was not sufficient to obtain his food, still it was an advance, and he was in a government office. he could but just exist in the town, sleeping in a garret, where he stored the provisions he took in with him every monday morning from the old house. he came home on the saturday and returned to his work on the monday. even his patience was almost worn out. the whole place was thus falling to decay, while at the same time it seemed to be flowing with milk and honey, for under the baron's personal attention the estate, though so carelessly guarded, had become a very garden. the cattle had increased, and were of the best kind, the horses were celebrated and sought for, the sheep valued, the crops the wonder of the province. yet there was no money; the product went to the notary. this extraordinary fertility was the cause of the covetous longing of the court favourites to divide the spoil. chapter v baron aquila felix's own position was bitter in the extreme. he felt he had talent. he loved deeply, he knew that he was in turn as deeply beloved; but he was utterly powerless. on the confines of the estate, indeed, the men would run gladly to do his bidding. beyond, and on his own account, he was helpless. manual labour (to plough, to sow, to work on shipboard) could produce nothing in a time when almost all work was done by bondsmen or family retainers. the life of a hunter in the woods was free, but produced nothing. the furs he sold simply maintained him; it was barter for existence, not profit. the shepherds on the hills roamed in comparative freedom, but they had no wealth except of sheep. he could not start as a merchant without money; he could not enclose an estate and build a house or castle fit for the nuptials of a noble's daughter without money, or that personal influence which answers the same purpose; he could not even hope to succeed to the hereditary estate, so deeply was it encumbered; they might, indeed, at any time be turned forth. slowly the iron entered into his soul. this hopelessness, helplessness, embittered every moment. his love increasing with the passage of time rendered his position hateful in the extreme. the feeling within that he had talent which only required opportunity stung him like a scorpion. the days went by, and everything remained the same. continual brooding and bitterness of spirit went near to drive him mad. at last the resolution was taken, he would go forth into the world. that involved separation from aurora, long separation, and without communication, since letters could be sent only by special messenger, and how should he pay a messenger? it was this terrible thought of separation which had so long kept him inactive. in the end the bitterness of hopelessness forced him to face it. he began the canoe, but kept his purpose secret, especially from her, lest tears should melt his resolution. there were but two ways of travelling open to him: on foot, as the hunters did, or by the merchant vessels. the latter, of course, required payment, and their ways were notoriously coarse. if on foot he could not cross the lake, nor visit the countries on either shore, nor the islands; therefore he cut down the poplar and commenced the canoe. whither he should go, and what he should do, was entirely at the mercy of circumstances. he had no plan, no route. he had a dim idea of offering his services to some distant king or prince, of unfolding to him the inventions he had made. he tried to conceal from himself that he would probably be repulsed and laughed at. without money, without a retinue, how could he expect to be received or listened to? still, he must go; he could not help himself, go he must. as he chopped and chipped through the long weeks of early spring, while the easterly winds bent the trees above him, till the buds unfolded and the leaves expanded--while his hands were thus employed, the whole map, as it were, of the known countries seemed to pass without volition before his mind. he saw the cities along the shores of the great lake; he saw their internal condition, the weakness of the social fabric, the misery of the bondsmen. the uncertain action of the league, the only thread which bound the world together; the threatening aspect of the cymry and the irish; the dread north, the vast northern forests, from which at any time invading hosts might descend on the fertile south--it all went before his eyes. what was there behind the immense and untraversed belt of forest which extended to the south, to the east, and west? where did the great lake end? were the stories of the gold and silver mines of devon and cornwall true? and where were the iron mines, from which the ancients drew their stores of metal? led by these thoughts he twice or thrice left his labour, and walking some twenty miles through the forests, and over the hills, reached the summit of white horse. from thence, resting on the sward, he watched the vessels making slow progress by oars, and some drawn with ropes by gangs of men or horses on the shore, through the narrow straits. north and south there nearly met. there was but a furlong of water between them. if ever the north came down there the armies would cross. _there_ was the key of the world. excepting the few cottages where the owners of the horses lived, there was neither castle nor town within twenty miles. forced on by these thoughts, he broke the long silence which had existed between him and his father. he spoke of the value and importance of this spot; could not the baron send forth his retainers and enclose a new estate there? there was nothing to prevent him. the forest was free to all, provided that they rendered due service to the prince. might not a house or castle built there become the beginning of a city? the baron listened, and then said he must go and see that a new hatch was put in the brook to irrigate the water-meadow. that was all. felix next wrote an anonymous letter to the prince pointing out the value of the place. the prince should seize it, and add to his power. he knew that the letter was delivered, but there was no sign. it had indeed, been read and laughed at. why make further efforts when they already had what they desired? one only, the deep and designing valentine, gave it serious thought in secret. it seemed to him that something might come of it, another day, when he was himself in power--if that should happen. but he, too, forgot it in a week. some secret effort was made to discover the writer, for the council were very jealous of political opinion, but it soon ended. the idea, not being supported by money or influence, fell into oblivion. felix worked on, chipping out the canoe. the days passed, and the boat was nearly finished. in a day or two now it would be launched, and soon afterwards he should commence his voyage. he should see aurora once more only. he should see her, but he should not say farewell; she would not know that he was going till he had actually departed. as he thought thus a dimness came before his eyes; his hand trembled, and he could not work. he put down the chisel, and paused to steady himself. upon the other side of the stream, somewhat lower down, a yellow wood-dog had been lapping the water to quench its thirst, watching the man the while. so long as felix was intent upon his work, the wild animal had no fear; the moment he looked up, the creature sprang back into the underwood. a dove was cooing in the forest not far distant, but as he was about to resume work the cooing ceased. then a wood-pigeon rose from the ashes with a loud clapping of wings. felix listened. his hunter instinct told him that something was moving there. a rustling of the bushes followed, and he took his spear which had been leant against the adjacent tree. but, peering into the wood, in a moment he recognised oliver, who, having walked off his rage, was returning. "i though it might have been a bushman," said felix, replacing his spear; "only they are noiseless." "any of them might have cut me down," said oliver; "for i forgot my weapon. it is nearly noon; are you coming home to dinner?" "yes; i must bring my tools." he put them in the basket, and together they returned to the rope ladder. as they passed the pen by the river they caught sight of the baron in the adjacent gardens, which were irrigated by his contrivances from the stream, and went towards him. a retainer held two horses, one gaily caparisoned, outside the garden; his master was talking with sir constans. "it is lord john," said oliver. they approached slowly under the fruit-trees, not to intrude. sir constans was showing the courtier an early cherry-tree, whose fruit was already set. the dry hot weather had caused it to set even earlier than usual. a suit of black velvet, an extremely expensive and almost unprocurable material, brought the courtier's pale features into relief. it was only by the very oldest families that any velvet or satin or similar materials were still preserved; if these were in pecuniary difficulties they might sell some part of their store, but such things were not to be got for money in the ordinary way. two small silver bars across his left shoulder showed that he was a lord-in-waiting. he was a handsome man, with clear-cut features, somewhat rakish from late hours and dissipation, but not the less interesting on that account. but his natural advantages were so over-run with the affectation of the court that you did not see the man at all, being absorbed by the studied gesture to display the jewelled ring, and the peculiarly low tone of voice in which it was the fashion to speak. beside the old warrior he looked a mere stripling. the baron's arm was bare, his sleeve rolled up; and as he pointed to the tree above, the muscles, as the limb moved, displayed themselves in knots, at which the courtier himself could not refrain from glancing. those mighty arms, had they clasped him about the waist, could have crushed his bending ribs. the heaviest blow that he could have struck upon that broad chest would have produced no more effect than a hollow sound; it would not even have shaken that powerful frame. he felt the steel blue eye, bright as the sky of midsummer, glance into his very mind. the high forehead bare, for the baron had his hat in his hand, mocked at him in its humility. the baron bared his head in honour of the courtier's office and the prince who had sent him. the beard, though streaked with white, spoke little of age; it rather indicated an abundant, a luxuriant vitality. lord john was not at ease. he shifted from foot to foot, and occasionally puffed a large cigar of devon tobacco. his errand was simple enough. some of the ladies at the court had a fancy for fruit, especially strawberries, but there were none in the market, nor to be obtained from the gardens about the town. it was recollected that sir constans was famous for his gardens, and the prince despatched lord john to old house with a gracious message and request for a basket of strawberries. sir constans was much pleased; but he regretted that the hot, dry weather had not permitted the fruit to come to any size or perfection. still there were some. the courtier accompanied him to the gardens, and saw the water-wheel which, turned by a horse, forced water from the stream into a small pond or elevated reservoir, from which it irrigated the ground. this supply of water had brought on the fruit, and sir constans was able to gather a small basket. he then looked round to see what other early product he could send to the palace. there was no other fruit; the cherries, though set, were not ripe; but there was some asparagus, which had not yet been served, said lord john, at the prince's table. sir constans set men to hastily collect all that was ready, and while this was done took the courtier over the gardens. lord john felt no interest whatever in such matters, but he could not choose but admire the extraordinary fertility of the enclosure, and the variety of the products. there was everything; fruit of all kinds, herbs of every species, plots specially devoted to those possessing medicinal virtue. this was only one part of the gardens; the orchards proper were farther down, and the flowers nearer the house. sir constans had sent a man to the flower-garden, who now returned with two fine bouquets, which were presented to lord john: the one for the princess, the prince's sister; the other for any lady to whom he might choose to present it. the fruit had already been handed to the retainer who had charge of the horses. though interested, in spite of himself, lord john, acknowledging the flowers, turned to go with a sense of relief. this simplicity of manners seemed discordant to him. he felt out of place, and in some way lowered in his own esteem, and yet he despised the rural retirement and beauty about him. felix and oliver, a few yards distant, were waiting with rising tempers. the spectacle of the baron in his native might of physique, humbly standing, hat in hand, before this court messenger, discoursing on cherries, and offering flowers and fruit, filled them with anger and disgust. the affected gesture and subdued voice of the courtier, on the other hand, roused an equal contempt. as lord john turned, he saw them. he did not quite guess their relationship, but supposed they were cadets of the house, it being customary for those in any way connected to serve the head of the family. he noted the flag basket in felix's hand, and naturally imagined that he had been at work. "you have been to-to plough, eh?" he said, intending to be very gracious and condescending. "very healthy employment. the land requires some rain, does it not? still i trust it will not rain till i am home, for my plume's sake," tossing his head. "allow me," and as he passed he offered oliver a couple of cigars. "one each," he added; "the best devon." oliver took the cigars mechanically, holding them as if they had been vipers, at arm's length, till the courtier had left the garden, and the hedge interposed. then he threw them into the water-carrier. the best tobacco, indeed the only real tobacco, came from the warm devon land, but little of it reached so far, on account of the distance, the difficulties of intercourse, the rare occasions on which the merchant succeeded in escaping the vexatious interference, the downright robbery of the way. intercourse was often entirely closed by war. these cigars, therefore, were worth their weight in silver, and such tobacco could be obtained only by those about the court, as a matter of favour, too, rather than by purchase. lord john would, indeed, have stared aghast had he seen the rustic to whom he had given so valuable a present cast them into a ditch. he rode towards the maple gate, excusing his haste volubly to sir constans, who was on foot, and walked beside him a little way, pressing him to take some refreshment. his sons overtook the baron as he walked towards home, and walked by his side in silence. sir constans was full of his fruit. "the wall cherry," said he, "will soon have a few ripe." oliver swore a deep but soundless oath in his chest. sir constans continued talking about his fruit and flowers, entirely oblivious of the silent anger of the pair beside him. as they approached the house, the warder blew his horn thrice for noon. it was also the signal for dinner. chapter vi the forest track when the canoe was finished, oliver came to help felix launch it, and they rolled it on logs down to the place where the stream formed a pool. but when it was afloat, as oliver had foretold, it did not swim upright in the water. it had not been shaped accurately, and one side was higher out of the water than the other. felix was so disgusted at this failure that he would not listen to anything oliver could suggest. he walked back to the spot where he had worked so many weeks, and sat down with his face turned from the pool. it was not so much the actual circumstance which depressed him, as the long train of untoward incidents which had preceded it for years past. these seemed to have accumulated, till now this comparatively little annoyance was like the last straw. oliver followed him, and said that the defect could be remedied by placing ballast on the more buoyant side of the canoe to bring it down to the level of the other; or, perhaps, if some more wood were cut away on the heavier side, that it would cause it to rise. he offered to do the work himself, but felix, in his gloomy mood, would not answer him. oliver returned to the pool, and getting into the canoe, poled it up and down the stream. it answered perfectly, and could be easily managed; the defect was more apparent than real, for when a person sat in the canoe, his weight seemed to bring it nearly level. it was only when empty that it canted to one side. he came back again to felix, and pointed this out to him. the attempt was useless; the boat might answer the purpose perfectly well, but it was not the boat felix had intended it to be. it did not come up to his ideal. oliver was now somewhat annoyed at felix's sullen silence, so he drew the canoe partly on shore, to prevent it from floating away, and then left him to himself. nothing more was said about it for a day or two. felix did not go near the spot where he had worked so hard and so long, but on the saturday philip came home as usual, and, as there was now no secret about the canoe, went down to look at it with oliver. they pushed it off, and floated two or three miles down the stream, hauling it on the shore past the fallen fir tree, and then, with a cord, towed it back again. the canoe, with the exception of the trifling deficiency alluded to, was a good one, and thoroughly serviceable. they endeavoured again to restore felix's opinion of it, and an idea occurring to philip, he said a capital plan would be to add an outrigger, and so balance it perfectly. but though usually quick to adopt ideas when they were good, in this case felix was too much out of conceit with himself. he would listen to nothing. still, he could not banish it from his mind, though now ashamed to return to it after so obstinately refusing all suggestions. he wandered aimlessly about in the woods, till one day he found himself in the path that led to heron bay. strolling to the shore of the great lake, he sat down and watched a vessel sailing afar off slowly before the east wind. the thought presently occurred to him, that the addition of an outrigger in the manner philip had mentioned would enable him to carry a sail. the canoe could not otherwise support a sail (unless a very small one merely for going before the breeze), but with such a sail as the outrigger would bear, he could venture much farther away from land, his voyage might be much more extended, and his labour with the paddle lessened. this filled him with fresh energy; he returned, and at once recommenced work. oliver, finding that he was again busy at it, came and insisted upon assisting. with his help, the work progressed rapidly. he used the tools so deftly as to accomplish more in an hour than felix could in a day. the outrigger consisted of a beam of poplar, sharpened at both ends, and held at some six or seven feet from the canoe by two strong cross-pieces. a mast, about the same height as the canoe was long, was then set up; it was made from a young fir-tree. another smaller fir supplied the yard, which extended fore and aft, nearly the length of the boat. the sail, of coarse canvas, was not very high, but long, and rather broader at each end where the rope attached it to the prow and stern, or, rather, the two prows. thus arranged, it was not so well suited for running straight before the wind, as for working into it, a feat never attempted by the ships of the time. oliver was delighted with the appearance of the boat, so much so that now and then he announced his intention of accompanying felix on his voyage. but after a visit to the town, and a glance at the princess lucia, his resolution changed. yet he wavered, one time openly reproaching himself for enduring such a life of inaction and ignominy, and at another deriding felix and his visionary schemes. the canoe was now completed; it was tried on the pool and found to float exactly as it should. it had now to be conveyed to heron bay. the original intention was to put it on a cart, but the rude carts used on the estate could not very well carry it, and a sledge was substituted. several times, during the journey through the forest, the sledge had to be halted while the underwood was cut away to permit of its passing; and once a slough had to be filled up with branches hewn from fir trees, and bundles of fern. these delays made it evening before the shore of the creek was reached. it was but a little inlet, scarce a bowshot wide at the entrance and coming to a point inland. here the canoe was left in charge of three serfs, who were ordered to build a hut and stay beside it. some provisions were sent next day on the backs of other serfs, and in the afternoon (it was saturday) all three brothers arrived; the canoe was launched, and they started for a trial sail. with a south wind they ran to the eastward at a rapid pace, keeping close to the shore till within a mile of white horse. there they brought to by steering the canoe dead against the wind; then transferring the steering-paddle (a rather large one, made for the purpose) to the other end, and readjusting the sail, the outrigger being still to leeward, they ran back at an equal speed. the canoe answered perfectly, and felix was satisfied. he now despatched his tools and various weapons to the hut to be put on board. his own peculiar yew bow he kept to the last at home; it and his chest bound with hide would go with him on the last day. although, in his original purpose, felix had designed to go forth without anyone being aware of his intention, the circumstances which had arisen, and the necessary employment of so many men, had let out the secret to some degree. the removal of the tools and weapons, the crossbow, darts, and spear, still more attracted attention. but little or nothing was said about it, though the baron and baroness could not help but observe these preparations. the baron deliberately shut his eyes and went about his gardening; he was now, too, busy with the first mowing. in his heart, perhaps, he felt that he had not done altogether right in so entirely retiring from the world. by doing so he had condemned his children to loneliness, and to be regarded with contempt. too late now, he could only obstinately persist in his course. the baroness, inured for so many, many years to disappointment, had contracted her view of life till it scarcely extended beyond mere physical comfort. nor could she realize the idea of felix's approaching departure; when he was actually gone, it would, perhaps, come home to her. all was now ready, and felix was only waiting for the feast of st. james to pay a last visit to aurora at thyma castle. the morning before the day of the feast, felix and oliver set out together. they had not lived altogether in harmony, but now, at this approaching change, oliver felt that he must bear felix company. oliver rode his beautiful night, he wore his plumed hat and precious sword, and carried his horseman's lance. felix rode a smaller horse, useful, but far from handsome. he carried his yew bow and hunting knife. thyma castle was situated fifteen miles to the south; it was the last outpost of civilization; beyond it there was nothing but forest, and the wild open plains, the home of the gipsies. this circumstance of position had given baron thyma, in times past, a certain importance more than was due to the size of his estate or the number of his retainers. during an invasion of the gipsies, his castle bore the brunt of the war, and its gallant defence, indeed, broke their onward progress. so many fell in endeavouring to take it, that the rest were disheartened, and only scattered bands penetrated beyond. for this service the baron received the grant of various privileges; he was looked on as a pillar of the state, and was welcome at the court. but it proved an injury to him in the end. his honours, and the high society they led him into, were too great for the comparative smallness of his income. rich in flocks and herds, he had but little coin. high-spirited, and rather fond of display, he could not hold back; he launched forth, with the usual result of impoverishment, mortgage, and debt. he had hoped to obtain the command of an army in the wars that broke out from time to time; it was, indeed, universally admitted that he was in every respect qualified for such a post. the courtiers and others, however, jealous, as is ever the case, of ability and real talent, debarred him by their intrigues from attaining his object. pride prevented him from acquiescing in this defeat; he strove by display and extravagance to keep himself well to the front, flaunting himself before the eyes of all. this course could not last long; he was obliged to retire to his estate, which narrowly escaped forfeiture to his creditors. so ignominious an end after such worthy service was, however, prevented by the personal interference of the old prince, who, from his private resources, paid off the most pressing creditors. to the last, the old prince received him as a friend, and listened to his counsel. thyma was ever in hopes that some change in the balance of parties would give him his opportunity. when the young prince succeeded, he was clever enough to see that the presence of such men about his court gave it a stability, and he, too, invited thyma to tender his advice. the baron's hopes now rose higher than ever, but again he was disappointed. the new prince, himself incapable, disliked and distrusted talent. the years passed, and the baron obtained no appointment. still he strained his resources to the utmost to visit the court as often as possible; still he believed that sooner or later a turn of the wheel would elevate him. there had existed between the houses of thyma and aquila the bond of hearth-friendship; the gauntlets, hoofs, and rings were preserved by both, and the usual presents passed thrice a year, at midsummer, christmas, and lady-day. not much personal intercourse had taken place, however, for some years, until felix was attracted by the beauty of the lady aurora. proud, showy, and pushing, thyma could not understand the feelings which led his hearth-friend to retire from the arena and busy himself with cherries and water-wheels. on the other hand, constans rather looked with quiet derision on the ostentation of the other. thus there was a certain distance, as it were, between them. baron thyma could not, of course, be ignorant of the attachment between his daughter and felix; yet as much as possible he ignored it. he never referred to felix; if his name was incidentally mentioned, he remained silent. the truth was, he looked higher for lady aurora. he could not in courtesy discourage even in the faintest manner the visits of his friend's son; the knightly laws of honour would have forbidden so mean a course. nor would his conscience permit him to do so, remembering the old days when he and the baron were glad companions together, and how the baron aquila was the first to lead troops to his assistance in the gipsy war. still, he tacitly disapproved; he did not encourage. felix felt that he was not altogether welcome; he recognised the sense of restraint that prevailed when he was present. it deeply hurt his pride, and nothing but his love for aurora could have enabled him to bear up against it. the galling part of it was that he could not in his secret heart condemn the father for evidently desiring a better alliance for his child. this was the strongest of the motives that had determined him to seek the unknown. if anything, the baron would have preferred oliver as a suitor for his daughter; he sympathized with oliver's fiery spirit, and admired his feats of strength and dexterity with sword and spear. he had always welcomed oliver heartily, and paid him every attention. this, to do oliver justice, was one reason why he determined to accompany his brother, thinking that if he was there he could occupy attention, and thus enable felix to have more opportunity to speak with aurora. the two rode forth from the courtyard early in the morning, and passing through the whole length of the enclosure within the stockade, issued at the south barrier and almost immediately entered the forest. they rather checked their horses' haste, fresh as the animals were from the stable, but could not quite control their spirits, for the walk of a horse is even half as fast again while he is full of vigour. the turn of the track soon shut out the stockade; they were alone in the woods. long since, early as they were, the sun had dried the dew, for his beams warm the atmosphere quickly as the spring advances towards summer. but it was still fresh and sweet among the trees, and even felix, though bound on so gloomy an errand, could not choose but feel the joyous influence of the morning. oliver sang aloud in his rich deep voice, and the thud, thud of the horses' hoofs kept time to the ballad. the thrushes flew but a little way back from the path as they passed, and began to sing again directly they were by. the whistling of blackbirds came from afar where there were open glades or a running stream; the notes of the cuckoo became fainter and fainter as they advanced farther from the stockade, for the cuckoo likes the woodlands that immediately border on cultivation. for some miles the track was broad, passing through thickets of thorn and low hawthorn-trees with immense masses of tangled underwood between, brambles and woodbine twisted and matted together, impervious above but hollow beneath; under these they could hear the bush-hens running to and fro and scratching at the dead leaves which strewed the ground. sounds of clucking deeper in betrayed the situation of their nests. rushes, and the dead sedges of last year, up through which the green fresh leaves were thrusting themselves, in some places stood beside the way, fringing the thorns where the hollow ground often held the water from rainstorms. out from these bushes a rabbit occasionally started and bounded across to the other side. here, where there were so few trees, and the forest chiefly consisted of bush, they could see some distance on either hand, and also a wide breadth of the sky. after a time the thorn bushes were succeeded by ash wood, where the trees stood closer to the path, contracting the view; it was moister here, the hoofs cut into the grass, which was coarse and rank. the trees growing so close together destroyed themselves, their lower branches rubbed together and were killed, so that in many spots the riders could see a long way between the trunks. every time the wind blew they could hear a distant cracking of branches as the dead boughs, broken by the swaying of the trees, fell off and came down. had any one attempted to walk into the forest there they would have sunk above the ankle in soft decaying wood, hidden from sight by thick vegetation. wood-pigeons rose every minute from these ash-trees with a loud clatter of wings; their calls resounded continually, now deep in the forest, and now close at hand. it was evident that a large flock of them had their nesting-place here, and indeed their nests of twigs could be frequently seen from the path. there seemed no other birds. again the forest changed, and the track, passing on higher ground, entered among firs. these, too, had killed each other by growing so thickly; the lower branches of many were dead, and there was nothing but a little green at the tops, while in many places there was an open space where they had decayed away altogether. brambles covered the ground in these open places, brambles and furze now bright with golden blossom. the jays screeched loudly, startled as the riders passed under them, and fluttered away; rabbits, which they saw again here, dived into their burrows. between the first the track was very narrow, and they could not conveniently ride side by side; oliver took the lead, and felix followed. chapter vii the forest track continued once as they trotted by a pheasant rose screaming from the furze and flew before them down the track. just afterwards felix, who had been previously looking very carefully into the firs upon his right hand, suddenly stopped, and oliver, finding this, pulled up as quickly as he could, thinking that felix wished to tighten his girth. "what is it?" he asked, turning round in his saddle. "hush!" said felix, dismounting; his horse, trained to hunting, stood perfectly still, and would have remained within a few yards of the spot by the hour together. oliver reined back, seeing felix about to bend and string his bow. "bushmen," whispered felix, as he, having fitted the loop to the horn notch, drew forth an arrow from his girdle, where he carried two or three more ready to hand than in the quiver on his shoulder. "i thought i saw signs of them some time since, and now i am nearly sure. stay here a moment." he stepped aside from the track in among the firs, which just there were far apart, and went to a willow bush standing by some furze. he had noticed that one small branch on the outer part of the bush was snapped off, though green, and only hung by the bark. the wood cattle, had they browsed upon it, would have nibbled the tenderest leaves at the end of the bough; nor did they usually touch willow, for the shoots are bitter and astringent. nor would the deer touch it in the spring, when they had so wide a choice of food. nothing could have broken the branch in that manner unless it was the hand of a man, or a blow with a heavy stick wielded by a human hand. on coming to the bush he saw that the fracture was very recent, for the bough was perfectly green; it had not turned brown, and the bark was still soft with sap. it had not been cut with a knife or any sharp instrument; it had been broken by rude violence, and not divided. the next thing to catch his eye was the appearance of a larger branch farther inside the bush. this was not broken, but a part of the bark was abraded, and even torn up from the wood as if by the impact of some hard substance, as a stone thrown with great force. he examined the ground, but there was no stone visible, and on again looking at the bark he concluded that it had not been done with a stone at all, because the abraded portion was not cut. the blow had been delivered by something without edges or projections. he had now no longer any doubt that the lesser branch outside had been broken, and the large inside branch bruised, by the passage of a bushman's throw-club. these, their only missile weapons, are usually made of crab-tree, and consist of a very thin short handle, with a large, heavy, and smooth knob. with these they can bring down small game, as rabbits or hares, or a fawn (even breaking the legs of deer), or the large birds, as the wood-turkeys. stealing up noiselessly within ten yards, the bushman throws his club with great force, and rarely misses his aim. if not killed at once, the game is certain to be stunned, and is much more easily secured than if wounded with an arrow, for with an arrow in its wing a large bird will flutter along the ground, and perhaps creep into sedges or under impenetrable bushes. deprived of motion by the blow of the club, it can, on the other hand, be picked up without trouble and without the aid of a dog, and if not dead is despatched by a twist of the bushman's fingers or a thrust from his spud. the spud is at once his dagger, his knife and fork, his chisel, his grub-axe, and his gouge. it is a piece of iron (rarely or never of steel, for he does not know how to harden it) about ten inches long, an inch and a half wide at the top or broadest end, where it is shaped and sharpened like a chisel, only with the edge not straight but sloping, and from thence tapering to a point at the other, the pointed part being four-sided, like a nail. it has, indeed, been supposed that the original spud was formed from a large wrought-iron nail, such as the ancients used, sharpened on a stone at one end, and beaten out flat at the other. this instrument has a handle in the middle, half-way between the chisel end and the point. the handle is of horn or bone (the spud being put through the hollow of the bone), smoothed to fit the hand. with the chisel end he cuts up his game and his food; the edge, being sloping, is drawn across the meat and divides it. with this end, too, he fashions his club and his traps, and digs up the roots he uses. the other end he runs into his meat as a fork, or thrusts it into the neck of his game to kill it and let out the blood, or with it stabs a sleeping enemy. the stab delivered by the bushman can always be distinguished, because the wound is invariably square, and thus a clue only too certain has often been afforded to the assassin of many an unfortunate hunter. whatever the bushman in this case had hurled his club at, the club had gone into the willow bush, snapping the light branch and leaving its mark upon the bark of the larger. a moment's reflection convinced felix that the bushman had been in chase of a pheasant. only a few moments previously a pheasant had flown before them down the track, and where there was one pheasant there were generally several more in the immediate neighbourhood. the bushmen were known to be peculiarly fond of the pheasant, pursuing them all the year round without reference to the breeding season, and so continuously, that it was believed they caused these birds to be much less numerous, notwithstanding the vast extent of the forests, than they would otherwise have been. from the fresh appearance of the snapped bough, the bushman must have passed but a few hours previously, probably at the dawn, and was very likely concealed at that moment near at hand in the forest, perhaps within a hundred yards. felix looked carefully round, but could see nothing; there were the trees, not one of them large enough to hide a man behind it, the furze branches were small and scattered, and there was not sufficient fern to conceal anything. the keenest glance could discern nothing more. there were no footmarks on the ground, indeed, the dry, dead leaves and fir needles could hardly have received any impression, and up in the firs the branches were thin, and the sky could be seen through them. whether the bushman was lying in some slight depression of the ground, or whether he had covered himself with dead leaves and fir needles, or whether he had gone on and was miles away, there was nothing to show. but of the fact that he had been there felix was perfectly certain. he returned towards oliver, thoughtful and not without some anxiety, for he did not like the idea (though there was really little or no danger) of these human wild beasts being so near aurora, while he should so soon be far away. thus occupied he did not heed his steps, and suddenly felt something soft under his feet, which struggled. instantaneously he sprang as far as he could, shuddering, for he had crushed an adder, and but just escaped, by his involuntary and mechanical leap, from its venom. in the warm sunshine the viper, in its gravid state, had not cared to move as usual on hearing his approach; he had stepped full upon it. he hastened from the spot, and rejoined oliver in a somewhat shaken state of mind. common as such an incident was in the woods, where sandy soil warned the hunter to be careful, it seemed ominous that particular morning, and, joined with the discovery of bushman traces, quite destroyed his sense of the beauty of the day. on hearing the condition of the willow boughs oliver agreed as to the cause, and said that they must remember to warn the baron's shepherds that the bushmen, who had not been seen for some time, were about. soon afterwards they emerged from the sombre firs and crossed a wide and sloping ground, almost bare of trees, where a forest fire last year had swept away the underwood. a verdant growth of grass was now springing up. here they could canter side by side. the sunshine poured down, and birds were singing joyously. but they soon passed it, and checked their speed on entering the trees again. tall beeches, with round smooth trunks, stood thick and close upon the dry and rising ground; their boughs met overhead, forming a green continuous arch for miles. the space between was filled with brake fern, now fast growing up, and the track itself was green with moss. as they came into this beautiful place a red stag, startled from his browsing, bounded down the track, his swift leaps carried him away like the wind; in another moment he left the path and sprang among the fern, and was seen only in glimpses as he passed between the beeches. squirrels ran up the trunks as they approached; they could see many on the ground in among the trees, and passed under others on the branches high above them. woodpeckers flashed across the avenue. once oliver pointed out the long, lean flank of a grey pig, or fern-hog, as the animal rushed away among the brake. there were several glades, from one of which they startled a few deer, whose tails only were seen as they bounded into the underwood, but after the glades came the beeches again. beeches always form the most beautiful forest, beeches and oak; and though nearing the end of their journey, they regretted when they emerged from these trees and saw the castle before them. the ground suddenly sloped down into a valley, beyond which rose the downs; the castle stood on a green isolated low hill, about half-way across the vale. to the left a river wound past; to the right the beech forest extended as far as the eye could see. the slope at their feet had been cleared of all but a few hawthorn bushes. it was not enclosed, but a neatherd was there with his cattle half a mile away, sitting himself at the foot of a beech, while the cattle grazed below him. down in the valley the stockade began; it was not wide but long. the enclosure extended on the left to the bank of the river, and two fields on the other side of it. on the right it reached a mile and a half or nearly, the whole of which was overlooked from the spot where they had passed. within the enclosures the corn crops were green and flourishing; horses and cattle, ricks and various buildings, were scattered about it. the town or cottages of the serfs were on the bank of the river immediately beyond the castle. on the downs, which rose a mile or more on the other side of the castle, sheep were feeding; part of the ridge was wooded and part open. thus the cultivated and enclosed valley was everywhere shut in with woods and hills. the isolated round hill on which the castle stood was itself enclosed with a second stockade; the edge of the brow above that again was defended by a stout high wall of flints and mortar, crenellated at the top. there were no towers or bastions. an old and ivy-grown building stood inside the wall; it dated from the time of the ancients; it had several gables, and was roofed with tiles. this was the dwelling-house. the gardens were situated on the slope between the wall and the inner stockade. peaceful as the scene appeared, it had been the site of furious fighting not many years ago. the downs trended to the south, where the romany and the zingari resided, and a keen watch was kept both from the wall and from the hills beyond. they now rode slowly down the slope, and in a few minutes reached the barrier or gateway in the outer stockade. they had been observed, and the guard called by the warden, but as they approached were recognised, and the gate swang open before them. walking their horses they crossed to the hill, and were as easily admitted to the second enclosure. at the gate of the wall they dismounted, and waited while the warden carried the intelligence of their arrival to the family. a moment later, and the baron's son advanced from the porch, and from the open window the baroness and aurora beckoned to them. chapter viii thyma castle soon afterwards the hollow sound of the warden's horn, from the watch over the gate of the wall, proclaimed the hour of noon, and they all assembled for dinner in the banqueting chamber. the apartment was on the ground floor, and separated from the larger hall only by an internal wall. the house, erected in the time of the ancients, was not designed for our present style of life; it possessed, indeed, many comforts and conveniences which are scarcely now to be found in the finest palaces, but it lacked the breadth of construction which our architects have now in view. in the front there were originally only two rooms, extensive for those old days, but not sufficiently so for ours. one of these had therefore been enlarged, by throwing into it a back room and part of the entrance, and even then it was not long enough for the baron's retainers, and at feast-time a wooden shed was built opposite, and up to the window, to continue, as it were, the apartment out of doors. workmen were busy putting up this shed when they arrived. the second apartment retained its ancient form, and was used as the dining-room on ordinary days. it was lighted by a large window, now thrown wide open that the sweet spring air might enter, which window was the pride of the baroness, for it contained more true glass than any window in the palace of the prince. the glass made now is not transparent, but merely translucent; it indeed admits light after a fashion, but it is thick and cannot be seen through. these panes were almost all (the central casement wholly) of ancient glass, preserved with the greatest care through the long years past. three tables were arranged in an open square; the baron and baroness's chairs of oak faced the window, the guests sat at the other tables sideways to them, the servants moved on the outer side, and thus placed the food before them without pushing against or incommoding them. a fourth table was placed in a corner between the fireplace and the window. at it sat the old nurse, the housekeeper (frequently arising to order the servants), and the baron's henchman, who had taught him to ride, but now, grey and aged, could not mount himself without assistance, and had long ceased from active service. already eight or nine guests had arrived besides felix and oliver. some had ridden a great distance to be present at the house day. they were all nobles, richly dressed; one or two of the eldest were wealthy and powerful men, and the youngest was the son and heir of the earl of essiton, who was then the favourite at court. each had come with his personal attendants; the young lord durand brought with him twenty-five retainers, and six gentlemen friends, all of whom were lodged in the town, the gentlemen taking their meals at the castle at the same time as the baron, but, owing to lack of room, in another apartment by themselves. durand was placed, or rather, quietly helped himself to a seat, next to the lady aurora, and of all the men there present, certainly there was none more gallant and noble than he. his dark eyes, his curling hair short but brought in a thick curl over his forehead, his lips well shaped, his chin round and somewhat prominent, the slight moustache (no other hair on the face), formed the very ideal of what many women look for in a man. but it was his bright, lively conversation, the way in which his slightly swarthy complexion flushed with animation, the impudent assurance and yet generous warmth of his manner, and, indeed, of his feelings, which had given him the merited reputation of being the very flower of the nobles. with such a reputation, backed with the great wealth and power of his father, gentlemen competed with each other to swell his train; he could not, indeed, entertain all that came, and was often besieged with almost as large a crowd as the prince himself. he took as his right the chair next to aurora, to whom, indeed, he had been paying unremitting attention all the morning. she was laughing heartily as she sat down, at some sally of his upon a beauty at the court. the elder men were placed highest up the tables, and nearest the host, but to the astonishment of all, and not the least of himself, oliver was invited by the baron to sit by his side. oliver could not understand this special mark of favour; the others, though far too proud for a moment to resent what they might have deemed a slight upon them, at once began to search their minds for a reason. they knew the baron as an old intriguer; they attached a meaning, whether intended or not, to his smallest action. felix, crowded out, as it were, and unnoticed, was forced to take his seat at the end of the table nearest that set apart in the corner for the aged and honoured servitors of the family. only a few feet intervened between him and ancient henchmen; and he could not but overhear their talk among themselves, whispered as it was. he had merely shaken hands with aurora; the crowd in the drawing-room and the marked attentions of durand had prevented the exchange of a single word between them. as usual, the sense of neglect and injury over which he had so long brooded with little or no real cause (considering, of course, his position, and that the world can only see our coats and not our hearts), under these entirely accidental circumstances rose up again within him, and blinded him to the actual state of things. his seat, the lowest, and the nearest to the servitors, was in itself a mark of the low estimation in which he was held. the lord durand had been placed next to aurora, as a direct encouragement to him, and a direct hint to himself not to presume. doubtless, durand had been at the castle many times, not improbably already been accepted by the baron, and not altogether refused by aurora. as a fact, though delighted with her beauty and conversation, durand's presence was entirely due to the will of his father, the earl, who wished to maintain friendly relations with baron thyma, and even then he would not have come had not the lovely weather invited him to ride into the forest. it was, however, so far true, that though his presence was accidental, yet he was fast becoming fascinated by one who, girl though she was, was stronger in mind than he. now aurora, knowing that he father's eye was on her, dared not look towards felix, lest by an open and pronounced conduct she should be the cause of his being informed that his presence was not desirable. she knew that the baron only needed a pretext to interfere, and was anxious to avoid offering him a chance. felix, seeing her glance bent downwards or towards her companion, and never all the time turned to him, not unnaturally, but too hastily, concluded that she had been dazzled by durand and the possibility of an alliance with his powerful family. he was discarded, worthless, and of no account; he had nothing but his sword; nay, he had not a sword, he was only an archer, a footman. angry, jealous, and burning with inward annoyance, despising himself since all others despised him, scarce able to remain at the table, felix was almost beside himself, and did not answer nor heed the remarks of the gentlemen sitting by him, who put him down as an ill-bred churl. for the form's sake, indeed, he put his lips to the double-handled cup of fine ale, which continually circulated round the table, and was never allowed to be put down; one servant had nothing else to do but to see that its progress never stopped. but he drank nothing, and ate nothing; he could not swallow. how visionary, how weak and feeble now seemed the wild scheme of the canoe and his proposed voyage! even should it succeed, years must elapse before he could accomplish anything substantial; while here were men who really had what he could only think of or imagine. the silver chain or sword-belt of durand (the sword and the dagger were not worn at the banquet, nor in the house, they were received by the marshal, and deposited in his care, a precaution against quarrelling), solid silver links passing over his shoulder, were real actual things. all the magnificence that he could call up by the exercise of his imagination, was but imagination; a dream no more to be seen by others than the air itself. the dinner went on, and the talk became more noisy. the trout, the chicken, the thyme lamb (trapped on the hills by the shepherds), the plover eggs, the sirloin, the pastry (the baroness superintended the making of it herself), all the profusion of the table, rather set him against food than tempted him. nor could he drink the tiny drop, as it were, of ancient brandy, sent round to each guest at the conclusion, precious as liquid gold, for it had been handed down from the ancients, and when once the cask was empty it could not be re-filled. the dessert, the strawberries, the nuts and walnuts, carefully preserved with a little salt, and shaken in the basket from time to time that they might not become mouldy, the apples, the honey in the comb with slices of white bread, nothing pleased him. nor did he drink, otherwise than the sip demanded by courtesy, of the thin wine of gloucester, costly as it was, grown in the vineyard there, and shipped across the lake, and rendered still more expensive by risk of pirates. this was poured into flagons of maple wood, which, like the earthenware cup of ale, were never allowed to touch the board till the dinner was over. wearily the time went on; felix glanced more and more often at the sky seen through the casement, eagerly desiring to escape, and at least to be alone. at last (how long it seemed!) the baron rose, and immediately the rest did the same, and they drank the health of the prince. then a servitor brought in a pile of cigars upon a carved wooden tray, like a large platter, but with a rim. "these," said the baron, again rising (the signal to all to cease conversing and to listen), "are a present from my gracious and noble friend the earl of essiton" (he looked towards durand), "not less kindly carried by lord durand. i could have provided only our own coarse tobacco; but these are the best devon." the ladies now left the table, aurora escorted by durand, the baroness by oliver. oliver, indeed, was in the highest spirits; he had eaten heartily of all; especially the sweet thyme lamb, and drunk as freely. he was in his element, his laugh the loudest, his talk the liveliest. directly durand returned (he had gone even a part of the way upstairs towards the drawing-room with aurora, a thing a little against etiquette) he took his chair, formality being now at an end, and placed it by oliver. they seemed to become friends at once by sympathy of mind and taste. round them the rest gradually grouped themselves, so that presently felix, who did not move, found himself sitting alone at the extreme end of the table; quite apart, for the old retainers, who dined at the separate table, had quitted the apartment when the wine was brought in. freed from the restraint of the ladies, the talk now became extremely noisy, the blue smoke from the long cigars filled the great apartment; one only remained untouched, that placed before felix. suddenly it struck him that thus sitting alone and apart, he should attract attention; he, therefore, drew his chair to the verge of the group, but remained silent, and as far off as ever. presently the arrival of five more guests caused a stir and confusion, in the midst of which he escaped into the open air. he wandered towards the gate of the wall, passing the wooden shed where the clink of hammers resounded, glanced at the sundial, which showed the hour of three (three weary hours had they feasted), and went out into the gardens. still going on, he descended the slope, and not much heeding whither he was going, took the road that led into town. it consisted of some hundred or more houses, built of wood and thatched, placed without plan or arrangement on the bank of the stream. only one long street ran through it, the rest were mere by-ways. all these were inhabited by the baron's retainers, but the number and apparently small extent of the houses did not afford correct data for the actual amount of the population. in these days the people (as is well known) find much difficulty in marrying; it seems only possible for a certain proportion to marry, and hence there are always a great number of young or single men out of all ratio to the houses. at the sound of the bugle the baron could reckon on at least three hundred men flocking without a minute's delay to man the wall; in an hour more would arrive from the outer places, and by nightfall, if the summons went forth in the morning, his shepherds and swineherds would arrive, and these together would add some hundred and fifty to the garrison. next must be reckoned the armed servants of the house, the baron's personal attendants, the gentlemen who formed his train, his sons and the male relations of the family; these certainly were not less than fifty. altogether over five hundred men, well armed and accustomed to the use of their weapons, would range themselves beneath his banner. two of the buildings in he town were of brick (the material carried hither, for there was no clay or stone thereabouts); they were not far apart. the one was the toll house, where all merchants or traders paid the charges in corn or kind due to the baron; the other was the court house, where he sat to administer justice and decide causes, or to send the criminal to the gibbet. these alone of the buildings were of any age, for the wooden houses were extremely subject to destruction by fire, and twice in the baron's time half the town had been laid in ashes, only to rise again in a few weeks. timber was so abundant and so ready of access, it seemed a loss of labour to fetch stone or brick, or to use the flints of the hills. about the doors of the two inns there were gathered groups of people; among them the liveries of the nobles visiting the castle were conspicuous; the place was full of them, the stables were filled, and their horses were picketed under the trees and even in the street. every minute the numbers increased as others arrived; men, too (who had obtained permission of their lords), came in on foot, ten or twelve travelling together for mutual protection, for the feuds of their masters exposed them to frequent attack. all (except the nobles) were disarmed at the barrier by the warden and guard, that peace might be preserved in the enclosure. the folk at the moment he passed were watching the descent of three covered waggons from the forest track, in which were travelling the ladies of as many noble families. some, indeed, of the youngest and boldest ride on horseback, but the ladies chiefly move in these waggons, which are fitted up with considerable comfort, and are necessary to sleep in when the camp is formed by the wayside at night. none noticed him as he went by, except a group of three cottage girls, and a serving-woman, an attendant of a lady visitor at the castle. he heard them allude to him; he quickened his pace, but heard one say, "he's nobody; he hasn't even got a horse." "yes he is," replied the serving-woman; "he's oliver's brother; and i can tell you my lord oliver is somebody; the princess lucia--" and she made the motion of kissing with her lips. felix, ashamed and annoyed to the last degree, stepped rapidly from the spot. the serving-woman, however, was right in a measure; the real or supposed favour shown oliver by the prince's sister, the duchess of deverell, had begun to be bruited abroad, and this was the secret reason why the baron had shown oliver so much and so marked an attention, even more than he had paid to lord durand. full well he knew the extraordinary influence possessed by ladies of rank and position. from what we can learn out of the scanty records of the past, it was so even in the days of the ancients; it is a hundredfold more so in these times, when, although every noble must of necessity be taught to read and write, as a matter of fact the men do neither, but all the correspondence of kings and princes, and the diplomatic documents, and notices, and so forth, are one and all, almost without a single exception, drawn up by women. they know the secret and hidden motives of courts, and have this great advantage, that they can use their knowledge without personal fear, since women are never seriously interfered with, but are protected by all. the one terrible and utterly shameful instance to the contrary had not occurred at the time of which we are now speaking, and it was and is still repudiated by every man, from the knight to the boys who gather acorns for the swine. oliver himself had no idea whatever that he was regarded as a favourite lover of the duchess; he took the welcome that was held out to him as perfectly honest. plain, straightforward, and honest, oliver, had he been openly singled out by a queen, would have scorned to give himself an air for such a reason. but the baron, deep in intrigue this many a year, looked more profoundly into the possibilities of the future when he kept the young knight at his side. chapter ix superstitions felix was now outside the town and alone in the meadow which bordered the stream; he knelt, and drank from it with the hollow of his hand. he was going to ascend the hill beyond, and had already reached the barrier upon that side, when he recollected that etiquette demanded the presence of the guests at meal-times, and it was now the hour for tea. he hastened back, and found the courtyard of the castle crowded. within, the staircase leading to the baroness's chamber (where tea was served) could scarcely be ascended, what with the ladies and their courtiers, the long trains of the serving-women, the pages winding their way in and out, the servants endeavouring to pass, the slender pet greyhounds, the inseparable companions of their mistresses. by degrees, and exercising patience, he gained the upper floor and entered the drawing-room. the baroness alone sat at the table, the guests wheresoever they chose, or chance carried them; for the most part they stood, or leaned against the recess of the open window. of tea itself there was none; there had been no tea to be had for love or money these fifty years past, and, indeed, its use would have been forgotten, and the name only survived, had not some small quantities been yet preserved and brought out on rare occasions at the palaces. instead, there was chicory prepared from the root of the plant, grown for the purpose; fresh milk; fine ale and mead; and wine from gloucester. butter, honey, and cake were also on the table. the guests helped themselves, or waited till the servants came to them with wooden carved trays. the particular characteristic of tea is the freedom from restraint; it is not considered necessary to sit as at dinner or supper, nor to do as others do; each pleases himself, and there is no ceremony. yet, although so near aurora, felix did not succeed in speaking to her; durand still engaged her attention whenever other ladies were not talking with her. felix found himself, exactly as at dinner-time, quite outside the circle. there was a buzz of conversation around, but not a word of it was addressed to him. dresses brushed against him, but the fair owners were not concerned even to acknowledge his existence. pushed by the jostling crowd aside from the centre of the floor, felix presently sat down, glad to rest at last, behind the open door. forgotten, he forgot; and, looking as it were out of the present in a bitter reverie, scarcely knew where he was, except at moments when he heard the well-known and loved voice of aurora. a servant after a while came to him with a tray; he took some honey and bread. almost immediately afterwards another servant came and presented him with a plate, on which was a cup of wine, saying, "with my lady's loving wishes." as in duty bound, he rose and bowed to the baroness; she smiled and nodded; the circle which had looked to see who was thus honoured, turned aside again, not recognising him. to send a guest a plate with wine or food is the highest mark of esteem, and this plate in especial was of almost priceless value, as felix saw when his confusion had abated. it was of the ancient china, now not to be found in even the houses of the great. in all that kingdom but five perfect plates were known to exist, and two of these were at the palace. they are treasured as heirlooms, and, if ever broken, can never be replaced. the very fragments are rare; they are often set in panels, and highly prized. the baroness, glancing round her court, had noticed at last the young man sitting in the obscure corner behind the door; she remembered, not without some twinge of conscience, that his house was their ancient ally and sworn hearth-friend. she knew, far better than the baron, how deeply her daughter loved him; better, perhaps, even than aurora herself. she, too, naturally hoped a higher alliance for aurora; yet she was a true woman, and her heart was stronger than her ambition. the trifle of the wine was, of course, nothing; but it was open and marked recognition. she expected that felix (after his wont in former times, before love or marriage was thought of for aurora) would have come upon this distinct invitation, and taken his stand behind her, after the custom. but as he did not come, fresh guests and the duties of hospitality distracted her attention, and she again forgot him. he was, indeed, more hurt than pleased with the favour that had been shown him; it seemed to him (though really prompted by the kindest feeling) like a bone cast at a dog. he desired to be so regarded that no special mark of favour should be needed. it simply increased his discontent. the evening wore on, the supper began; how weary it seemed to him, that long and jovial supper, with the ale that ran in a continual stream, the wine that ceaselessly circled round, the jokes, and bustle, and laughter, the welcome to guests arriving; the cards, and chess, and games that succeeded it, the drinking, and drinking, and drinking, till the ladies again left; then drinking yet more freely. he slipped away at the first opportunity, and having first strolled to and fro on the bowling green, wet with dew, at the rear of the castle, asked for his bedroom. it was some time before he could get attended to; he stood alone at the foot of the staircase while others went first (their small coins bought them attention), till at last a lamp was brought to him, and his chamber named. this chamber, such as it was, was the only pleasure, and that a melancholy one, he had had that day. though overflowing with guests, so that the most honoured visitors could not be accommodated within the castle, and only the ladies could find sleeping room there, yet the sacred law of honour, the pledge of the hearth-friend passed three generations ago, secured him this privilege. the hearth-friend must sleep within, if a king were sent without. oliver, of course, would occupy the same room, but he was drinking and shouting a song below, so that for a while felix had the chamber to himself. it pleased him, because it was the room in which he had always slept when he visited the place from a boy, when, half afraid and yet determined to venture, he had first come through the lonely forest alone. how well he remembered that first time! the autumn sunshine on the stubble at old house, and the red and brown leaves of the forest as he entered; how he entered on foot, and twice turned back, and twice adventured again, till he got so deep into the forest that it seemed as far to return as to advance. how he started at the sudden bellow of two stags, and the clatter of their horns as they fought in the brake close by, and how beautiful the castle looked when presently he emerged from the bushes and looked down upon it! this was the very room he slept in; the baroness, mother-like, came to see that he was comfortable. here he had slept every time since; here he had listened in the early morning for aurora's footfall as she passed his door, for the ladies rose earlier than did the men. he now sat down by the open window; it was a brilliant moonlight night, warm and delicious, and the long-drawn note of the nightingale came across the gardens from the hawthorn bushes without the inner stockade. to the left he could see the line of the hills, to the right the forest; all was quiet there, but every now and then the sound of a ballad came round the castle, a sound without recognizable words, inarticulate merriment. if he started upon the hazardous voyage he contemplated, and for which he had been so long preparing, should he ever sleep there again, so near the one he loved? was it not better to be poor and despised, but near her, than to attempt such an expedition, especially as the chances (as his common sense told him) were all against him? yet he could not stay; he _must_ do it, and he tried to stifle the doubt which insisted upon arising in his mind. then he recurred to durand; he remembered that not once on that day had he exchanged one single word, beyond the first and ordinary salutation, with aurora. might she not, had she chosen, have arranged a moment's interview? might she not easily have given him an opportunity? was it not clear that she was ashamed of her girlish fancy for a portionless and despised youth? if so, was it worth while to go upon so strange an enterprise for her sake? but if so, also, was life worth living, and might he not as well go and seek destruction? while this conflict of feeling was proceeding, he chanced to look towards the table upon which he had carelessly placed his lamp, and observed, what in his agitated state of mind he had previously overlooked, a small roll of manuscript tied round with silk. curious in books, he undid the fastening, and opened the volume. there was not much writing, but many singular diagrams, and signs arranged in circles. it was, in fact, a book of magic, written at the dictation, as the preface stated, of one who had been for seven years a slave among the romany. he had been captured, and forced to work for the tent to which his owners belonged. he had witnessed their worship and their sorceries; he had seen the sacrifice to the full moon, their chief goddess, and the wild extravagances with which it was accompanied. he had learnt some few of their signs, and, upon escaping, had reproduced them from memory. some were engraved on the stones set in their rings; some were carved on wooden tablets, some drawn with ink on parchment; but, with all, their procedure seemed to be the repetition of certain verses, and then a steady gaze upon the picture. presently they became filled with rapture, uttered what sounded as the wildest ravings, and (their women especially) prophesied of the future. a few of the signs he understood the meaning of, but the others he owned were unknown to him. at the end of the book were several pages of commentary, describing the demons believed in and worshipped by the romany, demons which haunted the woods and hills, and against which it was best to be provided with amulets blessed by the holy fathers of st. augustine. such demons stole on the hunter at noonday, and, alarmed at the sudden appearance, upon turning his head (for demons invariably approach from behind, and their presence is indicated by a shudder in the back), he toppled into pits hidden by fern, and was killed. or, in the shape of a dog, they ran between the traveller's legs; or as woman, with tempting caresses, lured him from the way at nightfall into the leafy recesses, and then instantaneously changing into vast bat-like forms, fastened on his throat and sucked his blood. the terrible screams of such victims had often been heard by the warders at the outposts. some were invisible, and yet slew the unwary by descending unseen upon him, and choking him with a pressure as if the air had suddenly become heavy. but none of these were, perhaps, so much to be dreaded as the sweetly-formed and graceful ladies of the fern. these were creatures, not of flesh and blood, and yet not incorporeal like the demons, nor were they dangerous to the physical man, doing no bodily injury. the harm they did was by fascinating the soul so that it revolted from all religion and all the rites of the church. once resigned to the caress of the fern-woman, the unfortunate was lured farther and farther from the haunts of men, until at last he wandered into the unknown forest, and was never seen again. these creatures were usually found among the brake fern, nude, but the lower limbs and body hidden by the green fronds, their white arms and shoulders alone visible, and their golden hair aglow with the summer sunshine. demons there were, too, of the streams, and demons dwelling in the midst of the hills; demons that could travel only in the moonbeams, and others that floated before the stormy winds and hurled the wretched wanderer to destruction, or crushed him with the overthrown trees. in proof of this the monk asked the reader if he had not heard of huge boughs falling from trees without visible cause, suddenly and without warning, and even of trees themselves in full foliage, in calm weather, toppling with a crash, to the imminent danger or the death of those who happened to be passing. let all these purchase the amulets of st. augustine, concluded the writer, who it appeared was a monk in whose monastery the escaped prisoner had taken refuge, and who had written down his relation and copied his rude sketches. felix pored over the strange diagrams, striving to understand the hidden meaning; some of them he thought were alchemical signs, and related to the making of gold, especially as the prisoner stated the romany possessed much more of that metal in the tents than he had seen in the palaces of our kings. whether they had a gold mine from whence they drew it, or whether they had the art of transmutation, he knew not, but he had heard allusions to the wealth in the mountain of the apple trees, which he supposed to be a mystical phrase. when felix at last looked up, the lamp was low, the moonbeams had entered and fell upon the polished floor, and from the window he could see a long white ghostly line of mist where a streamlet ran at the base of the slope by the forest. the songs were silent; there was no sound save the distant neigh of a horse and the heavy tramp of a guest coming along the gallery. half bewildered by poring over the magic scroll, full of the signs and the demons, and still with a sense of injury and jealousy cankering his heart, felix retired to his couch, and, weary beyond measure, instantly fell asleep. in his unsettled state of mind it did not once occur to him to ask himself how the manuscript came to be upon his table. rare as they were, books were not usually put upon the tables of guests, and at an ordinary time he would certainly have thought it peculiar. the fact was, that aurora, whom all day he had inwardly accused of forgetting him, had placed it there for him with her own hands. she, too, was curious in books and fond of study. she had very recently bought the volume from a merchant who had come thus far, and who valued it the least of all his wares. she knew that felix had read and re-read every other scrap of writing there was in the castle, and thought that this strange book might interest him, giving, as it did, details of those powers of the air in which almost all fully believed. unconscious of this attention, felix fell asleep, angry and bitter against her. when, half an hour afterwards, oliver blundered into the room, a little unsteady on his legs, notwithstanding his mighty strength, he picked up the roll, glanced at it, flung it down with contempt, and without a minute's delay sought and obtained slumber. chapter x the feast at ten in the morning next day the feast began with a drama from sophocles, which was performed in the open air. the theatre was in the gardens between the wall and the inner stockade; the spectators sat on the slope, tier above tier; the actors appeared upon a green terrace below, issuing from an arbour and passing off behind a thick box-hedge on the other side of the terrace. there was no scenery whatever. aurora had selected the antigone. there were not many dramatists from whom to choose, for so many english writers, once famous, had dropped out of knowledge and disappeared. yet some of the far more ancient greek and roman classics remained because they contained depth and originality of ideas in small compass. they had been copied in manuscripts by thoughtful men from the old printed books before they mouldered away, and their manuscripts being copied again, these works were handed down. the books which came into existence with printing had never been copied by the pen, and had consequently nearly disappeared. extremely long and diffuse, it was found, too, that so many of them were but enlargements of ideas or sentiments which had been expressed in a few words by the classics. it is so much easier to copy an epigram of two lines than a printed book of hundreds of pages, and hence it was that sophocles had survived while much more recent writers had been lost. from a translation aurora had arranged several of his dramas. antigone was her favourite, and she wished felix to see it. in some indefinable manner the spirit of the ancient greeks seemed to her in accord with the times, for men had or appeared to have so little control over their own lives that they might well imagine themselves overruled by destiny. communication between one place and another was difficult, the division of society into castes, and the iron tyranny of arms, prevented the individual from making any progress in lifting himself out of the groove in which he was born, except by the rarest opportunity, unless specially favoured by fortune. as men were born so they lived; they could not advance, and when this is the case the idea of fate is always predominant. the workings of destiny, the irresistible overpowering both the good and the evil-disposed, such as were traced in the greek drama, were paralleled in the lives of many a miserable slave at that day. they were forced to endure, for there was no possibility of effort. aurora saw this and felt it deeply; ever anxious as she was for the good of all, she saw the sadness that reigned even in the midst of the fresh foliage of spring and among the flowers. it was fate; it was sophocles. she took the part of the heroine herself, clad in greek costume; felix listened and watched, absorbed in his love. never had that ancient drama appeared so beautiful as then, in the sunlight; the actors stepped upon the daisied sward, and the song of birds was all their music. while the play was still proceeding, those who were to form the usual procession had already been assembling in the court before the castle, and just after noon, to the sound of the trumpet, the baron, with his youngest son beside him (the eldest was at court), left the porch, wearing his fur-lined short mantle, his collar, and golden spurs, and the decoration won so many years before; all the insignia of his rank. he walked; his war-horse, fully caparisoned, with axe at the saddle-bow, was led at his right side, and upon the other came a knight carrying the banneret of the house. the gentlemen of the house followed closely, duly marshalled in ranks, and wearing the gayest dress; the leading retainers fully armed, brought up the rear. immediately upon issuing from the gate of the wall, the procession was met and surrounded by the crowd, carrying large branches of may in bloom, flowers, and green willow boughs. the flowers they flung before him on the ground; the branches they bore with them, chanting old verses in honour of the family. the route was through the town, where the baron stopped at the door of the court house, and proclaimed a free pardon to all serfs (who were released within a few minutes) not guilty of the heavier crimes. thence he went to the pasture just beyond, carefully mown close and swept for the purpose, where the may-pole stood, wreathed with flowers and green branches. beneath it he deposited a bag of money for distribution upon a carved butt placed there, the signal that the games were open. instantly the fiddles began to play, and the feast really commenced. at the inns ale was served out freely (at the baron's charge), carts, too, came down from the castle laden with ale and cooked provisions. wishing them joy, the baron returned by the same road to the castle, where dinner was already served in the hall and the sheds that had been erected to enlarge the accommodation. in the afternoon there were foot-races, horse-races, and leaping competitions, and the dances about the may-pole were prolonged far into the night. the second day, early in the morning, the barriers were opened, and trials of skill with the blunt sword, jousting with the blunt lance at the quintain, and wrestling began, and continued almost till sunset. tournament with sharpened lance or sword, when the combatants fight with risk of serious wounds, can take place only in the presence of the prince or his deputy. but in these conflicts sufficiently severe blows were given to disable the competitors. on the third day there was a set battle in the morning between fifteen men on each side, armed with the usual buckler or small shield, and stout single-sticks instead of swords. this combat excited more interest than all the duels that had preceded it; the crowd almost broke down the barriers, and the cheering and cries of encouragement could be heard upon the hills. thrice the combatants rested from the engagement, and thrice at the trumpet call started again to meet each other, at least those who had sustained the first onslaught. blood, indeed, was not shed (for the iron morions saved their skulls), but nearly half of the number required assistance to reach the tents pitched for their use. then came more feasting, the final dinner prolonged till six in the evening, when the company, constantly rising from their seats, cheered the baron, and drank to the prosperity of the house. after the horn blew at six, the guests who had come from a distance rapidly dispersed (their horses were already waiting), for they were anxious to pass the fifteen miles of forest before nightfall. those on foot, and those ladies who had come in covered waggons, stayed till next morning, as they could not travel so speedily. by seven or eight the castle courtyard was comparatively empty, and the baron, weary from the mere bodily efforts of saying farewell to so many, had flung himself at full length on a couch in the drawing-room. during the whole of this time felix had not obtained a single moment with aurora; her time, when not occupied in attending to the guests, was always claimed by lord durand. felix, after the short-lived but pure pleasure he had enjoyed in watching her upon the grass-grown stage, had endured three days of misery. he was among the crowd, he was in the castle itself, he sat at table with the most honoured visitors, yet he was distinct from all. there was no sympathy between them and him. the games, the dancing, the feasting and laughter, the ceaseless singing and shouting, and jovial jostling, jarred upon him. the boundless interest the people took in the combats, and especially that of the thirty, seemed to him a strange and inexplicable phenomenon. it did not excite him in the least; he could turn his back upon it without hesitation. he would, indeed, have left the crowd, and spent the day in the forest, or on the hills, but he could not leave aurora. he must be near her; he must see her, though he was miserable. now he feared that the last moment would come, and that he should not exchange a word with her. he could not, with any show of pretext, prolong his stay beyond the sunset; all were already gone, with the exceptions mentioned. it would be against etiquette to remain longer, unless specially invited, and he was not specially invited. yet he lingered, and lingered. his horse was ready below; the groom, weary of holding the bridle, had thrown it over an iron hook in the yard, and gone about other business. the sun perceptibly declined, and the shadow of the beeches of the forest began to descend the grassy slope. still he stayed, restlessly moving, now in the dining chamber, now in the hall, now at the foot of the staircase, with an unpleasant feeling that the servants looked at him curiously, and were watching him. oliver had gone long since, riding with his new friend lord durand; they must by now be half-way through the forest. forced by the inexorable flight of time, he put his foot upon the staircase to go up to the drawing-room and bid farewell to the baroness. he ascended it, step by step, as a condemned person goes to his doom. he stayed to look out of the open windows as he went by; anything to excuse delay to himself. he reached the landing at last, and had taken two steps towards the door, when aurora's maid, who had been waiting there an hour or more for the opportunity, brushed past him, and whispered, "the rose arbour." without a word he turned, hastened down the stairs, ran through the castle yard, out at the gate, and, entering the gardens between the wall and the inner stockade, made for the arbour on the terrace where the drama had been enacted. aurora was not there; but as he looked round, disappointed, she came from the filbert walk, and, taking his arm, led him to the arbour. they sat down without a word. in a moment she placed her head upon his shoulder; he did not respond. she put her arm (how warm it felt!) about his neck; he yielded stiffly and ungraciously to the pressure; she drew down his head, and kissed him. his lips touched but did not press hers; they met, but did not join. in his sullen and angry silence he would not look. she drew still nearer, and whispered his name. then he broke out: he pushed her away; his petty jealousy and injured self-esteem poured out upon her. "i am not the heir to an earldom," he said; "i do not ride with a score of gentlemen at my back. they have some wonderful diamonds, have they not--_countess?_" "felix!" "it is no use. yes, your voice is sweet, i know. but you, all of you, despise me. i am nothing, no one!" "you are all, _everything_, to me." "you were with--with durand the whole time." "i could not help myself." "not help yourself! do you think i believe that?" "felix, dear. i tell you i could not help myself; i could not, indeed. you do not know all--" "no, probably not. i do not know the terms of the marriage contract." "felix, there is no such thing. why, what has come to you? how pale you look! sit down!" for he had risen. "i cannot, aurora, dear; i cannot! oh, what shall i do? i love you so!" chapter xi aurora felix fell on the seat beside her, burying his face in the folds of her dress; he sobbed, not with tears, but choking passion. she held him to her heart as if he had been a child, stroking his hair and kissing it, whispering to him, assuring him that her love was his, that she was unchanged. she told him that it was not her fault. a little while before the feast the baron had suddenly broken out into a fit of temper, such as she had never seen him indulge in previously; the cause was pressure put upon him by his creditors. unpleasant truths had escaped him; amongst the rest, his dislike, his positive disapproval of the tacit engagement they had entered into. he declared that if the least outward sign of it appeared before the guests that were expected, he would order felix to leave the place, and cancel the hearth-friendship, no matter what the consequence. it was clear that he was set upon a wealthy and powerful alliance for her; that the earl was either coming, or would send his son, he knew; and he knew that nothing so repels a possible suitor as the rumour that the lady has a previous engagement. in short, he made it a condition of felix's presence being tolerated at all, that aurora should carefully abstain from showing the slightest attention to him; that she should ignore his existence. nor could she prevent durand following her without a marked refusal to listen to his conversation, a refusal which would most certainly at once have brought about the dreaded explosion. she thought it better, under the circumstances, to preserve peace, lest intercourse between her and felix should be entirely broken off for ever. this was the secret history of the apparent indifference and neglect which had so deeply hurt him. the explanation, accompanied as it was with so many tender expressions and caresses, soothed him; he returned her kisses and became calmer. he could not doubt her, for in his heart he had suspected something of the kind long since. yet it was not so much the explanation itself, nor even the love she poured upon him, as the mere fact of her presence so near that brought him to himself. the influence of her steadfast nature, of her clear, broad, straightforward view of things, the decision of her character, the high, unselfish motives which animated her, all together supplied that which was wanting in himself. his indecision, his too impressionable disposition, which checked and stayed the force of his talent, and counteracted the determination of a naturally iron will; these, as it were, were relieved; in a word, with her he became himself. how many times he had told her as much! how many times she had replied that it was not herself, but that in which she believed, that was the real cause of this feeling! it was that ancient and true religion; the religion of the primitive church, as she found it in the fragments of the scriptures that had come down from the ancients. aurora had learnt this faith from childhood; it was, indeed, a tradition of the house preserved unbroken these hundred years in the midst of the jarring creeds, whose disciples threatened and destroyed each other. on the one hand, the gorgeous rite of the vice-pope, with the priests and the monks, claimed dominion, and really held a large share, both over the body and the soul; on the other, the leaguers, with their bold, harsh, and flowerless creed, were equally over-bearing and equally bigoted. around them the bushmen wandered without a god; the romany called upon the full moon. within courts and cities the gay and the learned alike mocked at all faith, and believed in gold alone. cruelty reigned everywhere; mercy, except in the name of honour, there was none; humanity was unknown. a few, a very few only, had knowledge of or held to the leading tenets, which, in the time of the ancients, were assented to by everyone, such as the duty of humanity to all, the duty of saving and protecting life, of kindness and gentleness. these few, with their pastors, simple and unassuming, had no power or influence; yet they existed here and there, a living protest against the lawlessness and brutality of the time. among these the house of thyma had in former days been conspicuous, but of late years the barons of thyma had, more from policy than from aught else, rather ignored their ancestral faith, leaning towards the league, which was then powerful in that kingdom. to have acted otherwise would have been to exclude himself from all appointments. but aurora, learning the old faith at her mother's knee, had become too deeply imbued with its moral beauty to consent to this course. by degrees, as she grew up, it became in her a passion; more than a faith, a passion; the object of her life. a girl, indeed, can do but little in our iron days, but that little she did. the chapel beside the castle, long since fallen to decay, was, at her earnest request, repaired; a pastor came and remained as chaplain, and services, of the simplest kind, but serious and full of meaning, took place twice a week. to these she drew as many as possible of the inhabitants of the enclosure; some even came from afar once now and then to attend them. correspondence was carried on with the remnant of the faith. that no one might plead ignorance (for there was up to the date no written record) aurora set herself the task of reducing the traditions which had been handed down to writing. when the manuscript was at last completed it occupied her months to transcribe copies of it for circulation; and she still continued to make copies, which were sent by messengers and by the travelling merchants to the markets, and even across the sea. apart from its intrinsically elevating character, the mere mental labour expended on this work had undoubtedly strengthened a naturally fine intellect. as she said, it was the faith, the hope that that faith would one day be recognised, which gave her so much influence over others. upon this one thing only they differed; felix did not oppose, did not even argue, he was simply untouched. it was not that he believed in anything else, nor that he doubted; he was merely indifferent. he had too great a natural aptitude for the physical sciences, and too clear a mind, to accept that which was taught by the one or the other of the two chief opposing parties. nor could he join in the ridicule and derision of the gay courtiers, for the mystery of existence had impressed him deeply while wandering alone in the forest. but he stood aloof; he smiled and listened, unconvinced; like the wild creatures of the forest, he had no ears for these matters. he loved aurora, that was all. but he felt the influence just the same; with all his powers of mind and contempt of superstitions in others, he could not at times shake off the apprehensions aroused by untoward omens, as when he stepped upon the adder in the woods. aurora knew nothing of such things; her faith was clear and bright like a star; nothing could alarm her, or bring uneasiness of mind. this beautiful calm, not cold, but glowing with hope and love, soothed him. that evening, with her hope and love, with her message of trust, she almost persuaded him. he almost turned to what she had so long taught. he almost repented of that hardness of heart, that unutterable distance, as it were, between him and other men, which lay at the bottom of his proposed expedition. he opened his lips to confess to her his purpose, and had he done so assuredly she would have persuaded him from it. but in the very act of speaking, he hesitated. it was characteristic of him to do so. whether she instinctively felt that there was something concealed from her, or guessed that the discontent she knew he had so long endured was coming to a point, or feared lest what she had told him might drive him to some ill-considered act, she begged him with all the power of her love to do nothing hasty, or in despair, nothing that would separate them. he threw his arms around her, he pressed her closely to him, he trembled with the passion and the struggle within him. "my lady calls for you, mademoiselle," said a voice; it was aurora's maid who had kept watch. "she has asked for you some time since. someone is coming into the garden!" there was no help for it; aurora kissed him, and was gone before he could come to himself. how long the interview had lasted (time flies swiftly in such sweet intercourse), or how long he sat there after she left, he could not tell; but when he went out already the dusk was gathering, the sun had gone down, and in the east the as yet pale orb of the moon was rising over the hills. as if in a dream he walked with unsteady steps to the castle stable; his horse had been put back, and the grooms suggested to him that it was better not to attempt the forest at night. but he was determined; he gave them all the coin he had about him, it was not much, but more than they had expected. they ran beside him to the barrier; advising him as they ran, as he would go, to string his bow and loosen an arrow in the girdle, and above all, not to loiter, or let his horse walk, but to keep him at as sharp a trot as he could. the fact that so many wealthy persons had assembled at the castle for the feast would be sure to be known to the banditti (the outlaws of the cities and the escaped serfs). they were certain to be on the look out for travellers; let him beware. his ears tingled and his head felt hot, as if the blood had rushed into it (it was the violence of the emotion that he had felt), as he rode from the barrier, hearing, and yet without conscious knowledge of what they said. they watched him up the slope, and saw him disappear from sight under the dark beeches of the forest. chapter xii night in the forest at first felix rode quickly, but his horse stumbling, though accustomed to the woods, warned him to be more careful. the passage of so many horsemen in the last few days had cut up and destroyed the track, which was nothing but a green path, and the covered waggons had of course assisted in rendering it rough and broken. he therefore rode slowly, and giving his horse his head, he picked his way of his own accord at the side of the road, often brushing against the underwood. still, indeed, absorbed by the feelings which had almost mastered him in the arbour, and thinking of aurora, he forgot where he was, till the dismal howling of wood-dogs deep in the forest woke him. it was almost pitch dark under the tall beeches, the highest of the trees preventing the beams of the moon from illuminating the path till later in the night. like a curtain the thick foliage above shut out the sky, so that no star was visible. when the wood-dogs ceased there was no sound beyond the light fall of the horse's hoofs as he walked upon the grass. darkness and silence prevailed; he could see nothing. he spoke to his horse and patted his neck; he stepped a little faster and lifted his head, which he had held low as if making his way by scent. the gloom weighed upon him, unhappy as he was. often as he had voluntarily sought the loneliness of the woods, now in this state of mind, it oppressed him; he remembered that beyond the beeches the ground was open and cleared by a forest fire, and began to be anxious to reach it. it seemed an hour, but it really was only a few minutes, when the beeches became thinner and wider apart, the foliage above ceased, and the stars shone. before him was the open space he had desired, sloping to the right hand, the tall grass grey-green in the moonlight, and near at hand sparkling with dew. amongst it stood the crooked and charred stems of furze with which it had been covered before the fire passed. a white owl floated rather than flew by, following the edge of the forest; from far down the slope came the chattering notes of a brook-sparrow, showing that there was water in the hollow. some large animal moved into the white mist that hung there and immediately concealed it, like a cloud upon the ground. he was not certain in the dim light, and with so momentary and distant a view, but supposed from its size that it must have been a white or dun wood-cow. ahead, across the open, rose the dark top of the fir trees through which the route ran. instead of the relief which he had anticipated as he rode towards them, the space clear of trees around seemed to expose him to the full view of all that might be lurking in the forest. as he approached the firs and saw how dark it was beneath them, the shadowy depths suggested uncertain shapes hiding therein, and his memory immediately reverted to the book of magic he had read at the castle. there could not be such things, and yet no one in his heart doubted their existence; deny it as they might with their tongues as they sat at the supper-table and handed round the ale, out of doors in the night, the haste to pass the haunted spot, the bated breath, and the fearful glances cast around, told another tale. he endeavoured to call philosophy to his aid; he remembered, too, how many nights he had spent in the deepest forest without seeing anything, and without even thinking of such matters. he reproved himself for his folly, and asked himself if ever he could hope to be a successful leader of men who started at a shadow. in vain: the tone of his mind had been weakened by the strain it had undergone. instead of strengthening him, the teachings of philosophy now seemed cold and feeble, and it occurred to him that possibly the belief of the common people (fully shared by their religious instructors) was just as much entitled to credence as these mere suppositions and theories. the details of the volume recurred to his mind; the accurate description of the demons of the forest and the hill, and especially the horrible vampires enfolding the victim with outstretched wings. in spite of himself, incredulous, yet excited, he pressed his horse to greater speed, though the track was narrow and very much broken under the firs. he obeyed, and trotted, but reluctantly, and needed continual urging. the yellow spark of a glowworm shining by a bush made him set his teeth; trifling and well known as it was, the light suddenly seen thrilled him with the terror of the unexpected. strange rushings sounded among the fern, as if the wings of a demon brushed it as he travelled. felix knew that they were caused by rabbits hastening off, or a boar bounding away, yet they increased the feverish excitement with which he was burdened. though dark beneath the firs, it was not like the darkness of the beeches; these trees did not form a perfect canopy overhead everywhere. in places he could see where a streak of moonlight came aslant through an opening and reached the ground. one such streak fell upon the track ahead; the trees there had decayed and fallen, and a broad band of light lit up the way. as he approached it and had almost entered, suddenly something shot towards him in the air; a flash, as it were, as if some object had crossed the streak, and was rendered visible for the tenth of a second, like a mote in the sunbeams. at the same instant of time, the horse, which he had pressed to go faster, put his foot into a rut or hole, and stumbled, and felix was flung so far forward that he only saved himself from being thrown by clinging to his neck. a slight whizzing sound passed over his head, followed immediately by a sharp tap against a tree in his rear. the thing happened in the twinkling of an eye, but he recognised the sound; it was the whiz of a crossbow bolt, which had missed his head, and buried its point in a fir. the stumble saved him; the bolt would have struck his head or chest had not the horse gone nearly on his knee. the robber had so planned his ambush that his prey should be well seen, distinct in the moonlight, so that his aim might be sure. recovering himself, the horse, without needing the spur, as if he recognised the danger to his rider, started forward at full speed, and raced, regardless of ruts, along the track. felix, who had hardly got into his seat again, could for awhile but barely restrain it, so wildly he fled. he must have been carried within a few yards of the bandit, but saw nothing, neither did a second bolt follow him; the crossbow takes time to bend, and if the robber had companions they were differently armed. he was a furlong or more from the spot before he quite realized the danger he had escaped. his bow was unstrung in his hand, his arrows were all in the quiver; thus, had the bolt struck him, even if the wound had not been mortal (as it most likely would have been) he could have made no resistance. how foolish to disregard the warnings of the grooms at the castle! it was now too late; all he could do was to ride. dreading every moment to be thrown, he pushed on as fast as the horse would go. there was no pursuit, and after a mile or so, as he left the firs and entered the ash woods, he slackened somewhat. it was, indeed, necessary, for here the hoofs of preceding horsemen had poached the turf (always damp under ash) into mud. it was less dark, for the boughs of the ashes did not meet above. as he passed, wood-pigeons rose with loud clatterings from their roosting-places, and once or twice he saw in the gloom the fiery phosphoric eye-balls of the grey wood-cats. how gladly he recognised presently the change from trees to bushes, when he rode out from the thick ashes among the low hawthorns, and knew that he was within a mile or so of the south barrier at home! already he heard the song of the nightingale, the long note which at night penetrates so far; the nightingale, which loves the hawthorn and the neighbourhood of man. imperceptibly he increased the speed again; the horse, too, knew that he was nearing home, and responded willingly. the track was much broader and fairly good, but he knew that at one spot where it was marshy it must be cut up. there he went at the side, almost brushing a projecting maple bush. something struck the horse, he fancied the rebound of a bough; he jumped, literally jumped, like a buck, and tore along the road. with one foot out of the stirrup, it was with the utmost difficulty he stuck to his seat; he was not riding, but holding on for a moment or two. presently recovering from the jolt, he endeavoured to check him, but the bit was of no avail; the animal was beside himself with terror, and raced headlong till they reached the barrier. it was, of course, closed, and the warder was asleep; so that, until he dismounted, and kicked and shouted, no one challenged him. then the warder, spear in hand, appeared with his lantern, but recognising the voice, ran to the gate. within the gate a few yards there were the embers of a fire, and round it a bivouac of footmen who had been to the feast, and had returned thus far before nightfall. hearing the noise, some of them arose, and came round him, when one immediately exclaimed and asked if he was wounded. felix replied that he was not, but looking at his foot where the man pointed, saw that it was covered with blood. but, upon close examination, there was no cut or incision; he was not hurt. the warder now called to them, and showed a long deep scratch on the near flank of the horse, from which the blood was dripping. it was such a scratch as might have been made with an iron nail, and, without hesitation, they all put it down to a bushman's spud. without doubt, the bushman, hearing felix approach, had hidden in the maple bush, and, as he passed, struck with his nail-like dagger; but, miscalculating the speed at which the horse was going, instead of piercing the thigh of the rider, the blow fell on the horse, and the sharp point was dragged along the side. the horse trembled as they touched him. "sir," said one of the retainers, their headman, "if you will pardon me, you had best string your bow and send a shaft through his heart, for he will die in misery before morning." the bushman's spud, the one he uses for assassination or to despatch his prey, is poisoned. it is a lingering poison, and takes several hours to produce its effect; but no remedy is known, and many who have escaped from the cowardly blow have crawled to the path only to expire in torture. there was no denying that what the retainer proposed was the only thing that could be done. the warder had meantime brought a bucket of water, of which the poor creature drank eagerly. felix could not do it; he could not slay the creature which had carried him so long, and which twice that night had saved him, and was now to die, as it were, in his place. he could not consent to it; he led the horse towards home, but he was weak or weary, and could not be got beyond the pen. there the group assembled around him. felix ordered the scratch to be cleansed, while he ran over in his mind every possible remedy. he gave strict orders that he should not be despatched, and then hastened to the house. he undid with trembling hands the thongs that bound his chest, and took out his manuscripts, hoping against hope that among the many notes he had made there might be something. but there was nothing, or in his excitement he overlooked it. remembering that oliver was a great authority upon horses, he went into his room and tried to wake him. oliver, weary with his ride, and not as yet having slept off the effects of the feast, could not be roused. felix left him and hurried back to the pen. weary as he was, he watched by the horse till the larks began to sing and the dawn was at hand. as yet he had not shown any severe symptoms except twitching of the limbs, and a constant thirst, which water could not quench. but suddenly he fell, and the old retainer warned them all to stand away, for he would bite anything that was near. his words were instantly fulfilled; he rolled, and kicked, and bit at everything within reach. seeing this agony, felix could no longer delay. he strung his bow, but he could not fit the arrow to the string, he missed the notch, so much did his hands shake. he motioned to the retainers who had gathered around, and one of them thrust his spear into the horse behind his shoulder. when felix at last returned to his chamber he could not but reflect, as the sun rose and the beams entered, that every omen had been against him; the adder under foot, the bandit's bolt, the bushman's poisoned point. he slept till noon, and, upon going out, unrefreshed and still weary, he found that they had already buried the horse, and ordered a mound to be raised above his grave. the day passed slowly; he wandered about the castle and the enclosed grounds, seeking comfort and finding none. his mind vacillated; he recalled all that aurora had said, persuading him not to do anything in haste or despair. yet he could not continue in his present condition. another day went by, and still undecided and doubting, he remained at home. oliver began to jest at him; had he abandoned the expedition? oliver could not understand indecision; perhaps he did not see so many sides to the question, his mind was always quickly made up. action was his forte, not thought. the night came, and still felix lingered, hesitating. chapter xiii sailing away but the next morning felix arose straight from his sleep resolved to carry out his plan. without staying to think a moment, without further examination of the various sides of the problem, he started up the instant his eyes unclosed, fully determined upon his voyage. the breath of the bright june morn as he threw open the window-shutter filled him with hope; his heart responded to its joyous influence. the excitement which had disturbed his mind had had time to subside. in the still slumber of the night the strong undercurrent of his thought resumed its course, and he awoke with his will still firmly bent in one direction. when he had dressed, he took his bow and the chest bound with the leathern thongs, and went down. it was early, but the baron had already finished breakfast and gone out to his gardens; the baroness had not yet appeared. while he was making a hurried breakfast (for having now made up his mind he was eager to put his resolve into execution), oliver came in, and seeing the chest and the bow, understood that the hour had arrived. he immediately said he should accompany him to heron bay, and assist him to start, and went out to order their horses. there were always plenty of riding horses at old house (as at every fortified mansion), and there was not the least difficulty in getting another for felix in place of his old favourite. oliver insisted upon taking the wooden chest, which was rather heavy, before him on the saddle, so that felix had nothing to carry but his favourite bow. oliver was surprised that felix did not first go to the gardens and say good-bye to the baron, or at least knock at the baroness's door and bid her farewell. but he made no remark, knowing felix's proud and occasionally hard temper. without a word felix left the old place. he rode forth from the north barrier, and did not even so much as look behind him. neither he nor oliver thought of the events that might happen before they should again meet in the old familiar house! when the circle is once broken up it is often years before it is reformed. often, indeed, the members of it never meet again, at least, not in the same manner, which, perhaps, they detested then, and ever afterwards regretted. without one word of farewell, without a glance, felix rode out into the forest. there was not much conversation on the trail to heron bay. the serfs were still there in charge of the canoe, and were glad enough to see their approach, and thus to be relieved from their lonely watch. they launched the canoe with ease, the provisions were put on board, the chest lashed to the mast that it might not be lost, the favourite bow was also fastened upright to the mast for safety, and simply shaking hands with oliver, felix pushed out into the creek. he paddled the canoe to the entrance and out into the lake till he arrived where the south-west breeze, coming over the forest, touched and rippled the water, which by the shore was perfectly calm. then, hoisting the sail, he put out the larger paddle which answered as a rudder, took his seat, and, waving his hand to oliver, began his voyage. the wind was but light, and almost too favourable, for he had determined to sail to the eastward; not for any specific reason, but because there the sun rose, and that was the quarter of light and hope. his canoe, with a long fore-and-aft sail, and so well adapted for working into the wind, was not well rigged for drifting before a breeze, which was what he was now doing. he had merely to keep the canoe before the wind, steering so as to clear the bold headland of white horse which rose blue from the water's edge far in front of him. though the wind was light, the canoe being so taper and sharp at the prow, and the sail so large in comparison, slipped from the shore faster than he at first imagined. as he steered aslant from the little bay outwards into the great lake, the ripples rolling before the wind gradually enlarged into wavelets, these again increased, and in half an hour, as the wind now played upon them over a mile of surface, they seemed in his canoe, with its low freeboard, to be considerable waves. he had purposely refrained from looking back till now, lest they should think he regretted leaving, and in his heart desired to return. but now, feeling that he had really started, he glanced behind. he could see no one. he had forgotten that the spot where they had launched the canoe was at the end of an inlet, and as he sailed away the creek was shut off from view by the shore of the lake. unable to get to the mouth of the bay because of the underwood and the swampy soil, oliver had remained gazing in the direction the canoe had taken for a minute or two, absorbed in thought (almost the longest period he had ever wasted in such an occupation), and then with a whistle turned to go. the serfs, understanding that they were no longer required, gathered their things together, and were shortly on their way home. oliver, holding felix's horse by the bridle, had already ridden that way, but he presently halted, and waited till the three men overtook him. he then gave the horse into their charge, and turning to the right, along a forest path which branched off there, went to ponze. felix could therefore see no one when he looked back, and they were indeed already on their way from the place. he now felt that he was alone. he had parted from the shore, and from all the old associations; he was fast passing not only out upon the water, but out into the unknown future. but his spirit no longer vacillated; now that he was really in the beginning of his long contemplated enterprise his natural strength of mind returned. the weakness and irresolution, the hesitation, left him. he became full of his adventure, and thought of nothing else. the south-west breeze, blowing as a man breathes, with alternate rise and fall, now driving him along rapidly till the water bubbled under the prow, now sinking, came over his right shoulder and cooled his cheek, for it was now noon, and the june sun was unchecked by clouds. he could no longer distinguish the shape of the trees on shore; all the boughs were blended together in one great wood, stretching as far as he could see. on his left there was a chain of islands, some covered with firs, and others only with brushwood, while others again were so low and flat that the waves in stormy weather broke almost over them. as he drew near white horse, five white terns, or sea-swallows, flew over; he did not welcome their appearance, as they usually preceded rough gales. the headland, wooded to its ridge, now rose high against the sky; ash and nut-tree and hawthorn had concealed the ancient graven figure of the horse upon its side, but the tradition was not forgotten, and the site retained its name. he had been steering so as just to clear the promontory, but he now remembered that when he had visited the summit of the hill, he had observed that banks and shoals extended far out from the shore, and were nearly on a level with the surface of the lake. in a calm they were visible, but waves concealed them, and unless the helmsman recognised the swirl sufficiently early to change his course, they were extremely dangerous. felix bore more out from the land, and passing fully a mile to the north, left the shoals on his right. on his other hand there was a sandy and barren island barely a quarter of a mile distant, upon which he thought he saw the timbers of a wreck. it was quite probable, for the island lay in the track of vessels coasting along the shore. beyond white horse, the land fell away in a series of indentations, curving inwards to the south; an inhospitable coast, for the hills came down to the strand, ending abruptly in low, but steep, chalk cliffs. many islands of large size stood out on the left, but felix, not knowing the shape of the lake beyond white horse, thought it best to follow the trend of the land. he thus found, after about three hours, that he had gone far out of his course, for the gulf-like curve of the coast now began to return to the northward, and looking in that direction he saw a merchant vessel under her one square sail of great size, standing across the bay. she was about five miles distant, and was evidently steering so as to keep just inside the line of the islands. felix, with some difficulty, steered in a direction to interrupt her. the south-west wind being then immediately aft, his sail did not answer well; presently he lowered it, and paddled till he had turned the course so that the outrigger was now on the eastern side. then hoisting the sail again, he sat at what had before been the prow, and steered a point or so nearer the wind. this improved her sailing, but as the merchant ship had at least five miles start, it would take some hours to overtake her. nor on reflection was he at all anxious to come up with her, for mariners were dreaded for their lawless conduct, being, when on a voyage, beyond all jurisdiction. on the one hand, if they saw an opportunity, they did not hesitate to land and pillage a house, or even a hamlet. on the other, those who dwelt anywhere near the shore considered it good sport to light a fire and lure a vessel to her destruction, or if she was becalmed to sally out in boats, attack, and perhaps destroy both ship and crew. hence the many wrecks, and losses, and the risks of navigation, not so much from natural obstacles, since the innumerable islands, and the creeks and inlets of the mainland almost always offered shelter, no matter which way the storm blew, but from the animosity of the coast people. if there was an important harbour and a town where provisions could be obtained, or repairs effected, the right of entrance was jealously guarded, and no ship, however pressed by the gale, was permitted to leave, if she had anchored, without payment of a fine. so that vessels as much as possible avoided the harbours and towns, and the mainland altogether, sailing along beside the islands, which were, for the most part, uninhabited, and anchoring under their lee at night. felix, remembering the character of the mariners, resolved to keep well away from them, but to watch their course as a guide to himself. the mainland now ran abruptly to the north, and the canoe, as he brought her more into the wind, sprang forward at a rapid pace. the outrigger prevented her from making any leeway, or heeling over, and the large spread of sail forced her swiftly through the water. he had lost sight of the ship behind some islands, and as he approached these, began to ask himself if he had not better haul down his sail there, as he must now be getting near her, when to his surprise, on coming close, he saw her great square sail in the middle, as it seemed, of the land. the shore there was flat, the hills which had hitherto bounded it suddenly ceasing; it was overgrown with reeds and flags, and about two miles away the dark sail of the merchantman drifted over these, the hull being hidden. he at once knew that he had reached the western mouth of the straits which divide the southern and northern mainland. when he went to see the channel on foot through the forest, he must have struck it a mile or two more to the east, where it wound under the hills. in another half hour he arrived at the opening of the strait; it was about a mile wide, and either shore was quite flat, that on the right for a short distance, the range of downs approaching within two miles; that on the left, or north, was level as far as he could see. he had now again to lower his sail, to get the outrigger on his lee as he turned to the right and steered due east into the channel. so long as the shore was level, he had no difficulty, for the wind drew over it, but when the hills gradually came near and almost overhung the channel, they shut off much of the breeze, and his progress was slow. when it turned and ran narrowing every moment to the south, the wind failed him altogether. on the right shore, wooded hills rose from the water like a wall; on the left, it was a perfect plain. he could see nothing of the merchantman, although he knew that she could not sail here, but must be working through with her sweeps. her heavy hull and bluff bow must make the rowing a slow and laborious process; therefore she could not be far ahead, but was concealed by the winding of the strait. he lowered the sail, as it was now useless, and began to paddle; in a very short time he found the heat under the hills oppressive when thus working. he had now been afloat between six and seven hours, and must have come fully thirty miles, perhaps rather more than twenty in a straight line, and he felt somewhat weary and cramped from sitting so long in the canoe. though he paddled hard he did not seem to make much progress, and at length he recognised that there was a distinct current, which opposed his advance, flowing through the channel from east to west. if he ceased paddling, he found he drifted slowly back; the long aquatic weeds, too, which he passed, all extended their floating streamers westward. we did not know of this current till felix aquila observed and recorded it. tired and hungry (for, full of his voyage, he had taken no refreshments since he started), he resolved to land, rest a little while, and then ascend the hill, and see what he could of the channel. he soon reached the shore, the strait having narrowed to less than a mile in width, and ran the canoe on the ground by a bush, to which, on getting out, he attached the painter. the relief of stretching his limbs was so great that it seemed to endow him with fresh strength, and without waiting to eat, he at once climbed the hill. from the top, the remainder of the strait could be easily distinguished. but a short distance from where he stood, it bent again, and proceeded due east. chapter xiv the straits the passage contracted there to little over half a mile, but these narrows did not continue far; the shores, having approached thus near each other, quickly receded, till presently they were at least two miles apart. the merchant vessel had passed the narrows with the aid of her sweeps, but she moved slowly, and, as it seemed to him, with difficulty. she was about a mile and a half distant, and near the eastern mouth of the strait. as felix watched he saw her square sail again raised, showing that she had reached a spot where the hills ceased to shut off the wind. entering the open lake she altered her course and sailed away to the north-north-east, following the course of the northern mainland. looking now eastwards, across the lake, he saw a vast and beautiful expanse of water, without island or break of any kind, reaching to the horizon. northwards and southwards the land fell rapidly away, skirted as usual with islets and shoals, between which and the shore vessels usually voyaged. he had heard of this open water, and it was his intention to sail out into and explore it, but as the sun now began to decline towards the west, he considered that he had better wait till morning, and so have a whole day before him. meantime, he would paddle through the channel, beach the canoe on the islet that stood farthest out, and so start clear on the morrow. turning now to look back the other way, westward, he was surprised to see a second channel, which came almost to the foot of the hill on which he stood, but there ended and did not connect with the first. the entrance to it was concealed, as he now saw, by an island, past which he must have sailed that afternoon. this second or blind channel seemed more familiar to him than the flat and reedy shore at the mouth of the true strait, and he now recognised it as the one to which he had journeyed on foot through the forest. he had not then struck the true strait at all; he had sat down and pondered beside this deceptive inlet thinking that it divided the mainlands. from this discovery he saw how easy it was to be misled in such matters. but it even more fully convinced him of the importance of this uninhabited and neglected place. it seemed like a canal cut on purpose to supply a fort from the lake in the rear with provisions and material, supposing access in front prevented by hostile fleets and armies. a castle, if built near where he stood, would command the channel; arrows, indeed, could not be shot across, but vessels under the protection of the castle could dispute the passage, obstructed as it could be with floating booms. an invader coming from the north must cross here; for many years past there had been a general feeling that some day such an attempt would be made. fortifications would be of incalculable value in repelling the hostile hordes and preventing their landing. who held this strait would possess the key of the lake, and would be master of, or would at least hold the balance between, the kings and republics dotted along the coasts on either hand. no vessel could pass without his permission. it was the most patent illustration of the extremely local horizon, the contracted mental view of the petty kings and their statesmen, who were so concerned about the frontiers of their provinces, and frequently interfered and fought for a single palisaded estate or barony, yet were quite oblivious of the opportunity of empire open here to any who could seize it. if the governor of such a castle as he imagined built upon the strait, had also vessels of war, they could lie in this second channel sheltered from all winds, and ready to sally forth and take an attacking force upon the flank. while he pondered upon these advantages he could not conceal from himself that he had once sat down and dreamed beside this second inlet, thinking it to be the channel. the doubt arose whether, if he was so easily misled in such a large, tangible, and purely physical matter, he might not be deceived also in his ideas; whether, if tested, they might not fail; whether the world was not right and he wrong. the very clearness and many-sided character of his mind often hindered and even checked altogether the best founded of his impressions, the more especially when he, as it were, stood still and thought. in reverie, the subtlety of his mind entangled him; in action, he was almost always right. action prompted his decision. descending from the hill he now took some refreshment, and then pushed out again in the canoe. so powerful was the current in the narrowest part of the strait that it occupied him two hours in paddling as many miles. when he was free of the channel, he hoisted sail and directed his course straight out for an island which stood almost opposite the entrance. but as he approached, driven along at a good pace, suddenly the canoe seemed to be seized from beneath. he knew in a moment that he had grounded on soft mud, and sprang up to lower the sail, but before he could do so the canoe came to a standstill on the mud-bank, and the waves following behind, directly she stopped, broke over the stern. fortunately they were but small, having only a mile or so to roll from the shore, but they flung enough water on board in a few minutes to spoil part of his provisions, and to set everything afloat that was loose on the bottom of the vessel. he was apprehensive lest she should fill, for he now perceived that he had forgotten to provide anything with which to bale her out. something is always forgotten. having got the sail down (lest the wind should snap the mast), he tried hard to force the canoe back with his longer paddle, used as a movable rudder. his weight and the resistance of the adhesive mud, on which she had driven with much force was too great; he could not shove her off. when he pushed, the paddle sank into the soft bottom, and gave him nothing to press against. after struggling for some time, he paused, beginning to fear that his voyage had already reached an end. a minute's thought, more potent than the strength of ten men, showed him that the canoe required lightening. there was no cargo to throw overboard, nor ballast. he was the only weight. he immediately undressed, and let himself overboard at the prow, retaining hold of the stem. his feet sank deep into the ooze; he felt as if, had he let go, he should have gradually gone down into this quicksand of fine mud. by rapidly moving his feet he managed, however, to push the canoe; she rose considerably so soon as he was out of her, and, although he had hold of the prow, still his body was lighter in the water. pushing, struggling, and pressing forward, he, by sheer impact, as it were, for his feet found no hold in the mud, forced her back by slow degrees. the blows of the waves drove her forward almost as much as he pushed her back. still, in time, and when his strength was fast decreasing, she did move, and he had the satisfaction of feeling the water deeper beneath him. but when he endeavoured to pull himself into the canoe over the prow, directly his motive power ceased, the waves undid the advance he had achieved, and he had to resume his labour. this time, thinking again, before he attempted to get into the canoe he turned her sideways to the wind, with the outrigger to leeward. when her sharp prow and rounded keel struck the mud-bank end on she ran easily along it. but, turned sideways, her length found more resistance, and though the waves sent her some way upon it, she soon came to a standstill. he clambered in as quickly as he could (it is not easy to get into a boat out of the water, the body feels so heavy), and, taking the paddle, without waiting to dress, worked away from the spot. not till he had got some quarter of a mile back towards the mainland did he pause to dry himself and resume part of his clothing; the canoe being still partly full of water, it was no use to put on all. resting awhile after his severe exertions, he looked back, and now supposed, from the colour of the water and the general indications, that these shallows extended a long distance, surrounding the islands at the mouth of the channel, so that no vessel could enter or pass out in a direct line, but must steer to the north or south until the obstacle was rounded. afraid to attempt to land on another island, his only course, as the sun was now going down, was to return to the mainland, which he reached without much trouble, as the current favoured him. he drew the canoe upon the ground as far as he could. it was not a good place to land, as the bottom was chalk, washed into holes by the waves, and studded with angular flints. as the wind was off the shore it did not matter; if it had blown from the east, his canoe might very likely have been much damaged. the shore was overgrown with hazel to within twenty yards of the water, then the ground rose and was clothed with low ash-trees, whose boughs seemed much stunted by tempest, showing how exposed the spot was to the easterly gales of spring. the south-west wind was shut off by the hills beyond. felix was so weary that for some time he did nothing save rest upon the ground, which was but scantily covered with grass. an hour's rest, however, restored him to himself. he gathered some dry sticks (there were plenty under the ashes), struck his flint against the steel, ignited the tinder, and soon had a fire. it was not necessary for warmth, the june evening was soft and warm, but it was the hunter's instinct. upon camping for the night the hunter, unless bushmen are suspected to be in the neighbourhood, invariably lights a fire, first to cook his supper, and secondly, and often principally, to make the spot his home. the hearth is home, whether there be walls round it or not. directly there are glowing embers the place is no longer wild, it becomes human. felix had nothing that needed cooking. he took his cowhide from the canoe and spread it on the ground. a well-seasoned cowhide is the first possession of every hunter; it keeps him from the damp; and with a second, supported on three short poles stuck in the earth (two crossed at the top in front, forming a fork, and fastened with a thong, the third resting on these), he protects himself from the heaviest rain. this little tent is always built with the back to windward. felix did not erect a second hide, the evening was so warm and beautiful he did not need it, his cloak would be ample for covering. the fire crackled and blazed at intervals, just far enough from him that he might feel no inconvenience from its heat. thrushes sang in the ash wood all around him, the cuckoo called, and the chiff-chaff never ceased for a moment. before him stretched the expanse of waters; he could even here see over the low islands. in the sky a streak of cloud was tinted by the sunset, slowly becoming paler as the light departed. he reclined in that idle, thoughtless state which succeeds unusual effort, till the deepening shadow and the sinking fire, and the appearance of a star, warned him that the night was really here. then he arose, threw on more fuel, and fetched his cloak, his chest, and his boar spear from the canoe. the chest he covered with a corner of the hide, wrapped himself in the cloak, bringing it well over his face on account of the dew; then, drawing the lower corners of the hide over his feet and limbs, he stretched himself at full length and fell asleep, with the spear beside him. there was the possibility of bushmen, but not much probability. there would be far more danger near the forest path, where they might expect a traveller and watch to waylay him, but they could not tell beforehand where he would rest that night. if any had seen the movements of his canoe, if any lighted upon his bivouac by chance, his fate was certain. he knew this, but trusted to the extreme improbability of bushmen frequenting a place where there was nothing to plunder. besides, he had no choice, as he could not reach the islands. if there was risk, it was forgotten in the extremity of his weariness. chapter xv sailing onwards when felix awoke, he knew at once by the height of the sun that the morning was far advanced. throwing off his cloak, he stood up, but immediately crouched down again, for a vessel was passing but a short distance from the shore, and nearly opposite his encampment. she had two masts, and from the flags flying, the numerous bannerets, and the movements of so many men on board, he knew her to be a ship of war. he was anxious that he should not be seen, and regretted that his canoe was so much exposed, for the bush by which he had landed hid it only from one side. as the shore was so bare and open, if they looked that way the men on board would hardly fail to see it, and might even distinguish him. but whether they were too much engaged with their own affairs, or kept a careless look-out, no notice appeared to be taken, no boat was lowered. he watched the war-ship for nearly an hour before he ventured to move. her course was to the eastward, inside the fringe of islands. that she was neither irish nor welsh he was certain from her build and from her flags; they were too distant for the exact designs upon them to be seen, but near enough for him to know that they were not those displayed by the foreigners. she sailed fast, having the wind nearly aft, which suited her two square sails. the wind had risen high during the night, and now blew almost a gale, so that he saw he must abandon for the present his project of sailing out upon the open water. the waves there would be too high for his canoe, which floated low in the water, and had but about six inches freeboard. they would wash over and possibly swamp her. only two courses were open to him: either to sail inside the islands under shelter of the land, or to remain where he was till the breeze moderated. if he sailed inside the islands, following the northward course of the merchant vessel he had observed the previous evening, that would carry him past eaststock, the eastern port of sypolis, which city, itself inland, had two harbours, with the western of which (weststock) it had communication by water. should he continue to sail on, he would soon reach that part of the northern continent which was occupied by the irish outposts. on the other hand, to follow the war-ship, east by south, would, he knew, bring him by the great city of aisi, famous for its commerce, its riches, and the warlike disposition of its king, isembard. he was the acknowledged head of the forces of the league; but yet, with the inconsistency of the age, sometimes attacked other members of it. his furious energy was always disturbing the world, and felix had no doubt he was now at war with some one or other, and that the war-ship he had seen was on its way to assist him or his enemies. one of the possibilities which had impelled him to this voyage was that of taking service with some king or commander, and so perhaps gradually rising himself to command. such adventures were very common, knights often setting forth upon such expeditions when dissatisfied with their own rulers, and they were usually much welcomed as an addition to the strength of the camp they sought. but there was this difference: that such knights carried with them some substantial recommendation, either numerous retainers well armed and accustomed to battle, considerable treasure, or at least a reputation for prowess in the field. felix had nothing to offer, and for nothing nothing is given. the world does not recognise intrinsic worth, or potential genius. genius must accomplish some solid result before it is applauded and received. the unknown architect may say: "i have a design in my mind for an impregnable castle." but the world cannot see or appreciate the mere design. if by any personal sacrifice of time, dignity, or self-respect the architect, after long years, can persuade someone to permit him to build the castle, to put his design into solid stone which squadrons may knock their heads against in vain, then he is acknowledged. there is then a tangible result. felix was in the position of the architect. he believed he had ideas, but he had nothing substantial, no result, to point to. he had therefore but little hope of success, and his natural hauteur and pride revolted against making application for enrolment which must be accompanied with much personal humiliation, since at best he could but begin in the common ranks. the very idea of asking was repugnant to him. the thought of aurora, however, drew him on. the pride was false, he said to himself, and arose from too high an estimate of his abilities; or it was the consequence of living so long entirely secluded from the world. he acknowledged to himself that he had not been beaten down to his level. full of devotion to aurora, he resolved to humble himself, to seek the humblest service in king isembard's camp, to bow his spirit to the orders of men above him in rank but below him in birth and ability, to submit to the numberless indignities of a common soldier's life. he proceeded to launch the canoe, and had already placed the chest on board when it occurred to him that the difficulties he had encountered the previous evening, when his canoe was so nearly lost, arose from his ignorance of the channels. it would be advisable to ascend the hill, and carefully survey the coast as far as possible before setting forth. he did so. the war-ship was still visible from the summit, but while he looked she was hidden by the intervening islands. the white foam and angry appearance of the distant open water direct to the eastward, showed how wise he had been not to attempt its exploration. under the land the wind was steady; yonder, where the gale struck the surface with all its force, the waves were large and powerful. from this spot he could see nearly the whole length of the strait, and, gazing up it in the direction he had come, he saw some boats crossing in the distance. as they moved so slowly, and appeared so broad, he conjectured that they were flat-bottomed punts, and, straining his eyes, he fancied he detected horses on board. he watched four cross, and presently the first punt returned, as if for another freight. he now noticed that there was a land route by which travellers or waggons came down from the northward, and crossed the strait by a ferry. it appeared that the ferry was not in the narrowest part of the strait, but nearer its western mouth, where the shores were flat, and covered with reeds and flags. he wondered that he had not seen anything of the landing-places, or of the ferry-boats, or some sign of this traffic when he passed, but concluded that the track was hidden among the dense growth of reed and flag, and that the punts, not being in use that day, had been drawn up, and perhaps covered with green boughs to shelter them from the heat of the summer sun. the fact of this route existing, however, gave additional importance to the establishment of a fort on the shore of the strait, as he had so long contemplated. by now, the first punt had obtained another load, and was re-crossing the channel. it was evident that a caravan of travellers or merchants had arrived, such persons usually travelling in large bodies for safety, so that the routes were often deserted for weeks together, and then suddenly covered with people. routes, indeed, they were, and not roads; mere tracks worn through the forest and over the hills, often impassable from floods. still further satisfied that his original idea of a castle here was founded on a correct estimate of the value of the spot, felix resolved to keep the conception to himself, and not again to hazard it to others, who might despise him, but adopt his design. with one long last glance at the narrow streak of water which formed the central part, as it were, of his many plans, he descended the hill, and pushed off in the canoe. his course this time gave him much less trouble than the day before, when he had frequently to change his tack. the steady, strong breeze came off the land, to which he was too close for any waves to arise, and hour after hour passed without any necessity to shift the sail, further than to ease or tighten the sheets as the course of the land varied. by degrees the wind came more and more across his course, at right angles to it, and then began to fall aft as he described an arc, and the land projected northwards. he saw several small villages on the shore, and passed one narrow bay, which seemed, indeed, to penetrate into the land deeper than he could actually see. suddenly, after four or five hours, sailing, he saw the tower of a church over the wooded hills. this he knew must indicate the position of aisi. the question now came, whether he should sail into the harbour, when he would, of course, at once be seen, and have to undergo the examination of the officers; or should he land, and go on foot to the city? a minute's reflection assured him the latter was the better plan, for his canoe was of so unusual a construction, that it would be more than carefully examined, and not unlikely his little treasures would be discovered and appropriated. without hesitation, therefore, and congratulating himself that there were no vessels in sight, he ran the canoe on shore among the flags and reeds which bordered it. he drew her up as far as his strength permitted, and not only took down the sail, but unshipped the mast; then cutting a quantity of dead reeds, he scattered them over her, so that, unless a boat passed very close to the land, she would not be seen. while he had a meal he considered how he had better proceed. the only arms with which he excelled were the bow and arrow; clearly, therefore, if he wished an engagement, he should take these with him, and exhibit his skill. but well he knew the utter absence of law and justice except for the powerful. his bow, which he so greatly valued, and which was so well seasoned, and could be relied upon, might be taken from him. his arrows, so carefully prepared from chosen wood, and pointed with steel, might be seized. both bow and arrows were far superior to those used by the hunters and soldiery, and he dreaded losing them. there was his crossbow, but it was weak, and intended for killing only small game, as birds, and at short range. he could make no display with that. sword he had none for defence; there remained only his boar spear, and with this he resolved to be content, trusting to obtain the loan of a bow when the time came to display his skill, and that fortune would enable him to triumph with an inferior weapon. after resting awhile and stretching his limbs, cramped in the canoe, he set out (carrying his boar-spear only) along the shore, for the thick growth of the firs would not let him penetrate in the direction he had seen the tower. he had to force his way through the reeds and flags and brushwood, which flourished between the firs and the water's edge. it was hard work walking, or rather pushing through these obstacles, and he rejoiced when he emerged upon the slope of a down where there was an open sward, and but a few scattered groups of firs. the fact of it being open, and the shortness of the sward, showed at once that it was used for grazing purposes for cattle and sheep. here he could walk freely, and soon reached the top. thence the city was visible almost underneath him. it stood at the base of a low narrow promontory, which ran a long way into the lake. the narrow bank, near where it joined the mainland, was penetrated by a channel or creek, about a hundred yards wide, or less, which channel appeared to enter the land and was lost from sight of among the trees. beyond this channel a river ran into the lake, and in the y, between the creek and the river, the city had been built. it was surrounded with a brick wall, and there were two large round brick towers on the land side, which indicated the position of the castle and palace. the space enclosed by the walls was not more than half a mile square, and the houses did not occupy nearly all of it. there were open places, gardens, and even small paddocks among them. none of the houses were more than two storeys high, but what at once struck a stranger was the fact that they were all roofed with red tiles, most of the houses of that day being thatched or covered with shingles of wood. as felix afterwards learnt, this had been effected during the reign of the present king, whose object was to protect his city from being set on fire by burning arrows. the encircling wall had become a dull red hue from the long exposure to the weather, but the roofs were a brighter red. there was no ensign flying on either of the towers, from which he concluded that the king at that moment was absent. chapter xvi the city slowly descending towards the city, felix looked in vain for any means of crossing the channel or creek, which extended upon the side of it, and in which he counted twenty-two merchant vessels at anchor, or moored to the bank, besides a number of smaller craft and boats. the ship of war, which had arrived before him, was beached close up by a gate of the city, which opened on the creek or port, and her crew were busily engaged discharging her stores. as he walked beside the creek trying to call the attention of some boatman to take him across, he was impressed by the silence, for though the city wall was not much more than a stone's throw distant, there was none of the usual hum which arises from the movements of people. on looking closer he noticed, too, that there were few persons on the merchant vessels, and not one gang at work loading or unloading. except the warder stalking to and fro on the wall, and the crew of the war-ship, there was no one visible. as the warder paced to and fro the blade of his partisan gleamed in the sunshine. he must have seen felix, but with military indifference did not pay the slightest heed to the latter's efforts to attract his attention. he now passed the war-ship, and shouted to the men at work, who were, he could see, carrying sheaves of arrows and bundles of javelins from the vessel and placing them on carts; but they did not trouble to reply. his common dress and ordinary appearance did not inspire them with any hope of payment from him if they obliged him with a boat. the utter indifference with which his approach was seen showed him the contempt in which he was held. looking round to see if there were no bridge or ferry, he caught sight of the grey church tower which he had observed from afar while sailing. it was quite a mile from the city, and isolated outside the walls. it stood on the slope of the hill, over whose summit the tower was visible. he wandered up towards it, as there were usually people in or about the churches, which were always open day and night. if no one else, the porter in the lodge at the church door would be there, for he or his representative never left it, being always on the watch lest some thief should attempt to enter the treasury, or steal the sacred vessels. but as he ascended the hill he met a shepherd, whose dogs prepared to fly at him, recognising a stranger. for a moment the man seemed inclined to let them wreak their will, if they could, for he also felt inclined to challenge a stranger, but, seeing felix lower his spear, it probably occurred to him that some of his dogs would be killed. he therefore ordered them down, and stayed to listen. felix learnt that there was no bridge across the creek, and only one over the river; but there was a ferry for anybody who was known. no strangers were allowed to cross the ferry; they must enter by the main road over the bridge. "but how am i to get into the place then?" said felix. the shepherd shook his head, and said he could not tell him, and walked away about his business. discouraged at these trifling vexations, which seemed to cross his path at every step, felix found his way to the ferry, but, as the shepherd had said, the boatman refused to carry him, being a stranger. no persuasion could move him; nor the offer of a small silver coin, worth about ten times his fare. "i must then swim across," said felix, preparing to take off his clothes. "swim, if you like," said the boatman, with a grim smile; "but you will never land." "why not?" "because the warder will let drive at you with an arrow." felix looked, and saw that he was opposite the extreme angle of the city wall, a point usually guarded with care. there was a warder stalking to and fro; he carried a partisan, but, of course, might have his bow within reach, or could probably call to the soldiers of the guard. "this _is_ annoying," said felix, ready to give up his enterprise. "how ever can i get into the city?" the old boatman grinned, but said nothing, and returned to a net which he was mending. he made no answer to the further questions felix put to him. felix then shouted to the warder; the soldier looked once, but paid no more heed. felix walked a little way and sat down on the grass. he was deeply discouraged. these repulses, trifles in themselves, assumed an importance, because his mind had long been strung up to a high pitch of tension. a stolid man would have thought nothing of them. after a while he arose, again asking himself how should he become a leader, who had not the perseverance to enter a city in peaceful guise? not knowing what else to do, he followed the creek round the foot of the hill, and so onwards for a mile or more. this bank was steep, on account of the down; the other cultivated, the corn being already high. the cuckoo sang (she loves the near neighbourhood of man) and flew over the channel towards a little copse. almost suddenly the creek wound round under a low chalk cliff, and in a moment felix found himself confronted by another city. this had no wall; it was merely defended by a ditch and earthwork, without tower or bastion. the houses were placed thickly together; there were, he thought, six or seven times as many as he had previously seen, and they were thatched or shingled, like those in his own country. it stood in the midst of the fields, and the corn came up to the fosse; there were many people at work, but, as he noticed, most of them were old men, bowed and feeble. a little way farther he saw a second boathouse; he hastened thither, and the ferrywoman, for the boat was poled across by a stout dame, made not the least difficulty about ferrying him over. so delighted was felix at this unexpected fortune, that he gave her the small silver coin, at sight of which he instantly rose high in her estimation. she explained to him, in answer to his inquiries, that this was also called aisi; this was the city of the common folk. those who were rich or powerful had houses in the walled city, the precinct of the court. many of the houses there, too, were the inns of great families who dwelt in the country in their castles, but when they came to the court required a house. their shields, or coats of arms, were painted over the doors. the walled city was guarded with such care, because so many attempts had been made to surprise it, and to assassinate the king, whose fiery disposition and constant wars had raised him up so many enemies. as much care was taken to prevent a single stranger entering as if he were the vanguard of a hostile army, and if he now went back (as he could do) to the bridge over the river, he would be stopped and questioned, and possibly confined in prison till the king returned. "where is the king?" asked felix; "i came to try and take service with him." "then you will be welcome," said the woman. "he is in the field, and has just sat down before iwis." "that was why the walled city seemed so empty, then." said felix. "yes; all the people are with him; there will be a great battle this time." "how far is it to iwis?" said felix. "twenty-seven miles," replied the dame; "and if you take my advice, you had better walk twenty-seven miles there, than two miles back to the bridge over the river." someone now called from the opposite bank, and she started with the boat to fetch another passenger. "thank you, very much," said felix, as he wished her good day; "but why did not the man at the other ferry tell me i could cross here?" the woman laughed outright. "do you suppose he was going to put a penny in my way when he could not get it himself?" so mean and petty is the world! felix entered the second city and walked some distance through it, when he recollected that he had not eaten for some time. he looked in vain for an inn, but upon speaking to a man who was leaning on his crutch at a doorway, he was at once asked to enter, and all that the house afforded was put before him. the man with the crutch sat down opposite, and remarked that most of the folk were gone to the camp, but he could not because his foot had been injured. he then went on to tell how it had happened, with the usual garrulity of the wounded. he was assisting to place the beam of a battering-ram upon a truck (it took ten horses to draw it) when a lever snapped, and the beam fell. had the beam itself touched him he would have been killed on the spot; as it was, only a part of the broken lever or pole hit him. thrown with such force, the weight of the ram driving it, the fragment of the pole grazed his leg, and either broke one of the small bones that form the arch of the instep, or so bruised it that it was worse than broken. all the bone-setters and surgeons had gone to the camp, and he was left without attendance other than the women, who fomented the foot daily, but he had little hope of present recovery, knowing that such things were often months about. he thought it lucky that it was no worse, for very few, he had noticed, ever recovered from serious wounds of spear or arrow. the wounded generally died; only the fortunate escaped. thus he ran on, talking as much for his own amusement as that of his guest. he fretted because he could not join the camp and help work the artillery; he supposed the ram would be in position by now and shaking the wall with its blow. he wondered if baron ingulph would miss his face. "who's he?" asked felix. "he is captain of the artillery," replied his host. "are you his retainer?" "no; i am a servant." felix started slightly, and did but just check himself from rising from the table. a "servant" was a slave; it was the euphemism used instead of the hateful word, which not even the most degraded can endure to bear. the class of the nobles to which he belonged deemed it a disgrace to sit down with a slave, to eat with him, even to accidently touch him. with the retainers, or free men, they were on familiar terms, though despotic to the last degree; the slave was less than the dog. then, stealing a glance at the man's face, felix saw that he had no moustache; he had not noticed this before. no slaves were allowed to wear the moustache. this man having been at home ill some days had neglected to shave, and there was some mark upon his upper lip. as he caught his guest's glance, the slave hung his head, and asked his guest in a low and humble voice not to mention this fault. with his face slightly flushed, felix finished his meal; he was confused to the last degree. his long training and the tone of the society in which he had moved (though so despised a member of it) prejudiced him strongly against the man whose hospitality was so welcome. on the other hand, the ideas which had for so long worked in his mind in his solitary intercommunings in the forest were entirely opposed to servitude. in abstract principle he had long since condemned it, and desired to abolish it. but here was the fact. he had eaten at a slave's table, and sat with him face to face. theory and practice are often strangely at variance. he felt it an important moment; he felt that he was himself, as it were, on the balance; should he adhere to the ancient prejudice, the ancient exclusiveness of his class, or should he boldly follow the dictate of his mind? he chose the latter, and extended his hand to the servant as he rose to say good-bye. the act was significant; it recognised man as distinct from caste. the servant did not know the conflict that had taken place; but to be shaken hands with at all, even by a retainer as he supposed felix to be, was indeed a surprise. he could not understand it; it was the first time his hand had been taken by any one of superior position since he had been born. he was dumb with amazement, and could scarcely point out the road when asked; nor did he take the small coin felix offered, one of the few he possessed. felix therefore left it on the table and again started. passing through the town, felix followed the track which led in the direction indicated. in about half a mile it led him to a wider track, which he immediately recognised as the main way and road to the camp by the ruts and dust, for the sward had been trampled down for fifty yards wide, and even the corn was cut up by wheels and horses' hoofs. the army had passed, and he had but to follow its unmistakable trail. chapter xvii the camp felix walked steadily on for nearly three hours, when the rough track, the dust, and heat began to tell upon him, and he sat down beside the way. the sun was now declining, and the long june day tending to its end. a horseman passed, coming from the camp, and as he wore only a sword, and had a leathern bag slung from his shoulder, he appeared to be a courtier. the dust raised by the hoofs, as it rose and floated above the brushwood, rendered his course visible. some time afterwards, while he still rested, being very weary with walking through the heat of the afternoon, he heard the sound of wheels, and two carts drawn by horses came along the track from the city. the carts were laden with bundles of arrows, perhaps the same he had seen unloading that morning from the war-ship, and were accompanied only by carters. as they approached he rose, feeling that it was time to continue his journey. his tired feet were now stiff, and he limped as he stepped out into the road. the men spoke, and he walked as well as he could beside them, using his boar-spear as a staff. there were two carters with each cart; and presently, noting how he lagged, and could scarce keep pace with them, one of them took a wooden bottle from the load on his cart, and offered him a draught of ale. thus somewhat refreshed, felix began to talk, and learnt that the arrows were from the vessel in whose track he had sailed; that it had been sent loaded with stores for the king's use, by his friend the prince of quinton; that very great efforts had been made to get together a large army in this campaign; first, because the city besieged was so near home, and failure might be disastrous, and, secondly, because it was one of three which were all republics, and the other two would be certain to send it assistance. these cities stood in a plain, but a few miles apart, and in a straight line on the banks of the river. the king had just sat down before the first, vowing that he would knock them down, one after the other, like a row of ninepins. the carters asked him, in return, whose retainer he was, and he said that he was on his way to take service, and was under no banner yet. "then," said the man who had given him a drink, "if you are free like that, you had better join the king's levy, and be careful to avoid the barons' war. for if you join either of the barons' war, they will know you to be a stranger, and very likely, if they see that you are quick and active, they will not let you free again, and if you attempt to escape after the campaign, you will find yourself mightily mistaken. the baron's captain would only have to say you had always been his man; and, as for your word, it would be no more than a dog's bark. besides which, if you rebelled, it would be only to shave off that moustache of yours, and declare you a slave, and as you have no friends in camp, a slave you would be." "that would be very unjust," said felix. "surely the king would not allow it?" "how is he to know?" said another of the carters. "my brother's boy was served just like that. he was born free, the same as all our family, but he was fond of roving, and when he reached quinton, he was seen by baron robert, who was in want of men, and being a likely young fellow, they shaved his lip, and forced him to labour under the thong. when his spirit was cowed, and he seemed reconciled, they let him grow his moustache again, and there he is now, a retainer, and well treated. but still, it was against his will. jack is right; you had better join the king's levy." the king's levy is composed of his own retainers from his estates, of townsmen, who are not retainers of the barons, of any knights and volunteers who like to offer their services; and a king always desires as large a levy as possible, because it enables him to overawe his barons. these, when their "war", or forces, are collected together in camp, are often troublesome, and inclined to usurp authority. a volunteer is, therefore, always welcome in the king's levy. felix thanked them for the information they had given him, and said he should certainly follow their advice. he could now hardly keep up with the carts, having walked for so many hours, and undergone so much previous exertion. finding this to be the case, he wished them good-night, and looked round for some cover. it was now dusk, and he knew he could go no farther. when they understood his intention, they consulted among themselves, and finally made him get up into one of the carts, and sit down on the bundles of arrows, which filled it like faggots. thus he was jolted along, the rude wheels fitting but badly on the axle, and often sinking deep into a rut. they were now in thick forest, and the track was much narrower, so that it had become worn into a hollow, as if it were the dry bed of a torrent. the horses and the carters were weary, yet they were obliged to plod on, as the arms had to be delivered before the morrow. they spoke little, except to urge the animals. felix soon dropped into a reclining posture (uneasy as it was, it was a relief), and looking up, saw the white summer stars above. after a time he lost consciousness, and slept soundly, quite worn out, despite the jolting and creaking of the wheels. the sound of a trumpet woke him with a start. his heavy and dreamless sleep for a moment had taken away his memory, and he did not know where he was. as he sat up two sacks fell from him; the carters had thrown them over him as a protection against the night's dew. the summer morning was already as bright as noonday, and the camp about him was astir. in half a minute he came to himself, and getting out of the cart looked round. all his old interest had returned, the spirit of war entered into him, the trumpet sounded again, and the morning breeze extended the many-coloured banners. the spot where he stood was in the rear of the main camp, and but a short distance from the unbroken forest. upon either hand there was an intermingled mass of stores, carts, and waggons crowded together, sacks and huge heaps of forage, on and about which scores of slaves, drivers and others, were sleeping in every possible attitude, many of them evidently still under the influence of the ale they had drunk the night before. what struck him at once was the absence of any guard here in the rear. the enemy might steal out from the forest behind and help himself to what he chose, or murder the sleeping men, or, passing through the stores, fall on the camp itself. to felix this neglect appeared inexplicable; it indicated a mental state which he could not comprehend, a state only to be described by negatives. there was no completeness, no system, no organization; it was a kind of haphazardness, altogether opposite to his own clear and well-ordered ideas. the ground sloped gently downwards from the edge of the forest, and the place where he was had probably been ploughed, but was now trodden flat and hard. next in front of the stores he observed a long, low hut built of poles, and roofed with fir branches; the walls were formed of ferns, straw, bundles of hay, anything that had come to hand. on a standard beside it, a pale blue banner, with the device of a double hammer worked in gold upon it, fluttered in the wind. twenty or thirty, perhaps more, spears leant against one end of this rude shed, their bright points projecting yards above the roof. to the right of the booth as many horses were picketed, and not far from them some soldiers were cooking at an open fire of logs. as felix came slowly towards the booth, winding in and out among the carts and heaps of sacks, he saw that similar erections extended down the slope for a long distance. there were hundreds of them, some large, some small, not placed in any order, but pitched where chance or fancy led, the first-comers taking the sites that pleased them, and the rest crowding round. beside each hut stood the banner of the owner, and felix knew from this that they were occupied by the barons, knights, and captains of the army. the retainers of each baron bivouacked as they might in the open air; some of them had hunter's hides, and others used bundles of straw to sleep on. their fire was as close to their lord's hut as convenient, and thus there were always plenty within call. the servants, or slaves, also slept in the open air, but in the rear of their owner's booth, and apart from the free retainers. felix noticed, that although the huts were pitched anyhow and anywhere, those on the lowest ground seemed built along a line, and, looking closer, he found that a small stream ran there. he learnt afterwards that there was usually an emulation among the commanders to set up their standards as near the water as possible, on account of convenience, those in the rear having often to lead their horses a long distance to water. beyond the stream the ground rose again as gradually as it had declined. it was open and cultivated up to the walls of the besieged city, which was not three-quarters of a mile distant. felix could not for the moment distinguish the king's head-quarters. the confused manner in which the booths were built prevented him from seeing far, though from the higher ground it was easy to look over their low roofs. he now wandered into the centre of the camp, and saw with astonishment groups of retainers everywhere eating, drinking, talking, and even playing cards or dice, but not a single officer of any rank. at last, stopping by the embers of a fire, he asked timidly if he might have breakfast. the soldiers laughed and pointed to a cart behind them, telling him to help himself. the cart was turned with the tail towards the fire, and laden with bread and sides of bacon, slices of which the retainers had been toasting at the embers. he did as he was bid, and the next minute a soldier, not quite steady on his legs even at that hour, offered him the can, "for," said he, "you had best drink whilst you may, youngster. there is always plenty of drink and good living at the beginning of a war, and very often not a drop or a bite to be got in the middle of it." listening to their talk as he ate his breakfast, felix found the reason there were no officers about was because most of them had drunk too freely the night before. the king himself, they said, was put to bed as tight as a drum, and it took no small quantity to fill so huge a vessel, for he was a remarkably big man. after the fatigue of the recent march, they had, in fact, refreshed themselves, and washed down the dust of the track. they thought that this siege was likely to be a very tough business, and congratulated themselves that it was not thirty miles to aisi, so that so long as they stayed there they might, perhaps, get supplies of provisions with tolerable regularity. "but if you're over the water, my lad," said the old fellow with the can, picking his teeth with a twig, "and have got to get your victuals by ship; by george, you may have to eat grass, or gnaw boughs like a horse." none of these men wore any arms, except the inevitable knife; their arms were piled against the adjacent booth, bows and quivers, spears, swords, bills and darts, thrown together just as they had cast them aside, and more or less rusty from the dew. felix thought that had the enemy come suddenly down in force they might have made a clean sweep of the camp, for there were no defences, neither breastwork, nor fosse, nor any set guard. but he forgot that the enemy were quite as ill-organized as the besiegers; probably they were in still greater confusion, for king isembard was considered one of the greatest military commanders of his age, if not the very greatest. the only sign of discipline he saw was the careful grooming of some horses, which he rightly guessed to be those ridden by the knights, and the equally careful polishing of pieces of armour before the doors of the huts. he wished now to inquire his way to the king's levy, but as the question rose to his lips he checked himself, remembering the caution the friendly carters had given him. he therefore determined to walk about the camp till he found some evidence that he was in the immediate neighbourhood of the king. he rose, stood about a little while to allay any possible suspicion (quite needless precautions, for the soldiers were far too agreeably engaged to take the least notice of him), and then sauntered off with as careless an air as he could assume. looking about him, first at a forge where the blacksmith was shoeing a horse, then at a grindstone, where a knight's sword was being sharpened, he was nearly knocked down by a horse, urged at some speed through the crowds. by a rope from the collar, three dead bodies were drawn along the ground, dusty and disfigured by bumping against stone and clod. they were those of slaves, hanged the preceding day, perhaps for pilfering, perhaps for a mere whim, since every baron had power of the gallows. they were dragged through the camp, and out a few hundred yards beyond, and there left to the crows. this horrible sight, to which the rest were so accustomed and so indifferent that they did not even turn to look at it, deeply shocked him; the drawn and distorted features, the tongues protruding and literally licking the dust, haunted him for long after. though his father, as a baron, possessed the same power, it had never been exercised during his tenure of the estate, so that felix had not been hardened to the sight of executions, common enough elsewhere. upon the old house estate a species of negative humanity reigned; if the slaves were not emancipated, they were not hanged or cruelly beaten for trifles. hastening from the spot, felix came across the artillery, which consisted of battering rams and immense crossbows; the bows were made from entire trees, or, more properly, poles. he inspected these clumsy contrivances with interest, and entered into a conversation with some men who were fitting up the framework on which a battering ram was to swing. being extremely conceited with themselves and the knowledge they had acquired from experience only (as the repeated blows of the block drive home the pile), they scarcely answered him. but, presently, as he lent a hand to assist, and bore with their churlishness without reply, they softened, and, as usual, asked him to drink, for here, and throughout the camp, the ale was plentiful, too plentiful for much progress. felix took the opportunity and suggested a new form of trigger for the unwieldy crossbows. he saw that as at present discharged it must require some strength, perhaps the united effort of several men, to pull away the bolt or catch. such an effort must disconcert the aim; these crossbows were worked upon a carriage, and it was difficult to keep the carriage steady even when stakes were inserted by the low wheels. it occurred to him at once that the catch could be depressed by a lever, so that one man could discharge the bow by a mere pressure of the hand, and without interfering with the aim. the men soon understood him, and acknowledged that it would be a great improvement. one, who was the leader of the gang, thought it so valuable an idea that he went off at once to communicate with the lieutenant, who would in his turn carry the matter to baron ingulph, master of the artillery. the others congratulated him, and asked to share in the reward that would be given to him for this invention. to whose "war" did he belong? felix answered, after a little hesitation, to the king's levy. at this they whispered among themselves, and felix, again remembering the carters' caution, said that he must attend the muster (this was a pure guess), but that he would return directly afterwards. never for a moment suspecting that he would avoid the reward they looked upon as certain, they made no opposition, and he hurried away. pushing through the groups, and not in the least knowing where he was going, felix stumbled at last upon the king's quarters. chapter xviii the king's levy the king's booth stood apart from the rest; it was not much larger, but properly thatched with straw, and the wide doorway hung with purple curtains. two standards stood beside it; one much higher than the other. the tallest bore the ensign of the kingdom; the lesser, the king's own private banner as a knight. a breastwork encircled the booth, enclosing a space about seventy yards in diameter, with a fosse, and stakes so planted as to repel assailants. there was but one gateway, opposite the general camp, and this was guarded by soldiers fully armed. a knight on horseback in armour, except his helmet, rode slowly up and down before the gate; he was the officer of the guard. his retainers, some thirty or forty men, were drawn up close by. a distance of fifty yards intervened between this entrenchment and the camp, and was kept clear. within the entrenchment felix could see a number of gentlemen, and several horses caparisoned, but from the absence of noise and the fact that every one appeared to walk daintily and on tiptoe, he concluded that the king was still sleeping. the stream ran beside the entrenchment, and between it and the city; the king's quarters were at that corner of the camp highest up the brook, so that the water might not be fouled before it reached him. the king's levy, however, did not seem to be hereabouts, for the booths nearest the head-quarters were evidently occupied by great barons, as felix easily knew from their banners. there was here some little appearance of formality; the soldiery were not so noisy, and there were several officers moving among them. he afterwards discovered that the greater barons claimed the right to camp nearest the king, and that the king's levy was just behind their booths. but unable to discover the place, and afraid of losing his liberty if he delayed longer, felix, after hesitating some time, determined to apply direct to the guard at the gate of the circular entrenchment. as he crossed the open ground towards it, he noticed that the king's quarters were the closest to the enemy. across the little stream were some corn-fields, and beyond these the walls of the city, scarcely half a mile distant. there was no outpost, the stream was but a brook, and could be crossed with ease. he marvelled at the lack of precaution; but he had yet to learn that the enemy, and all the armies of the age, were equally ignorant and equally careless. with as humble a demeanour as he could assume, felix doffed his cap and began to speak to the guard at the gateway of the entrenchment. the nearest man-at-arms immediately raised his spear and struck him with the butt. the unexpected blow fell on his left shoulder, and with such force as to render it powerless. before he could utter a remonstrance, a second had seized his boar-spear, snapped the handle across his knee, and hurled the fragments from him. others then took him by the shoulders and thrust him back across the open space to the camp, where they kicked him and left him, bruised, and almost stupefied with indignation. his offence was approaching the king's ground with arms in his hands. later in the afternoon he found himself sitting on the bank of the stream far below the camp. he had wandered thither without knowing where he was going or what he was doing. his spirit for the time had been crushed, not so much by the physical brutality as by the repulse to his aspirations. full of high hopes, and conscious of great ideas, he had been beaten like a felon hound. from this spot beside the brook the distant camp appeared very beautiful. the fluttering banners, the green roofs of the booths (of ferns and reeds and boughs), the movement and life, for bodies of troops were now marching to and fro, and knights in gay attire riding on horseback, made a pleasant scene on the sloping ground with the forest at the back. over the stream the sunshine lit up the walls of the threatened city, where, too, many flags were waving. felix came somewhat to himself as he gazed, and presently acknowledged that he had only had himself to blame. he had evidently transgressed a rule, and his ignorance of the rule was no excuse, since those who had any right to be in the camp at all were supposed to understand it. he got up, and returning slowly towards the camp, passed on his way the drinking-place, where a groom was watering some horses. the man called to him to help hold a spirited charger, and felix mechanically did as he was asked. the fellow's mates had left him to do their work, and there were too many horses for him to manage. felix led the charger for him back to the camp, and in return was asked to drink. he preferred food, and a plentiful supply was put before him. the groom, gossiping as he attended to his duties, said that he always welcomed the beginning of a war, for they were often half starved, and had to gnaw the bones, like the dogs, in peace. but when war was declared, vast quantities of provisions were got together, and everybody gorged at their will. the very dogs battened; he pointed to half a dozen who were tearing a raw shoulder of mutton to pieces. before the campaign was over, those very dogs might starve. to what "war" did felix belong? he replied to the king's levy. the groom said that this was the king's levy where they were; but under whose command was he? this puzzled felix, who did not know what to say, and ended by telling the truth, and begging the fellow to advise him, as he feared to lose his liberty. the man said he had better stay where he was, and serve with him under master lacy, who was mean enough in the city, but liked to appear liberal when thus consorting with knights and gentlemen. master lacy was a merchant of aisi, an owner of vessels. like most of his fellows, when war came so close home, he was almost obliged to join the king's levy. had he not done so it would have been recorded against him as a lack of loyalty. his privileges would have been taken from him, possibly the wealth he had accumulated seized, and himself reduced to slavery. lacy, therefore, put on armour, and accompanied the king to the camp. thus felix, after all his aspirations, found himself serving as the knave of a mere citizen. he had to take the horses down to water, to scour arms, to fetch wood from the forest for the fire. he was at the beck and call of all the other men, who never scrupled to use his services, and, observing that he never refused, put upon him all the more. on the other hand, when there was nothing doing, they were very kind and even thoughtful. they shared the best with him, brought wine occasionally (wine was scarce, though ale plentiful) as a delicacy, and one, who had dexterously taken a purse, presented him with half a dozen copper coins as his share of the plunder. felix, grown wiser by experience, did not dare refuse the stolen money, it would have been considered as the greatest insult; he watched his opportunity and threw it away. the men, of course, quickly discovered his superior education, but that did not in the least surprise them, it being extremely common for unfortunate people to descend by degrees to menial offices, if once they left the estate and homestead to which they naturally belonged. there as cadets, however humble, they were certain of outward respect: once outside the influence of the head of the house, and they were worse off than the lowest retainer. his fellows would have resented any show of pride, and would speedily have made his life intolerable. as he showed none, they almost petted him, but at the same time expected him to do more than his share of the work. felix listened with amazement to the revelations (revelations to him) of the inner life of the camp and court. the king's weaknesses, his inordinate gluttony and continual intoxication, his fits of temper, his follies and foibles, seemed as familiar to these grooms as if they had dwelt with him. as for the courtiers and barons, there was not one whose vices and secret crimes were not perfectly well known to them. vice and crime must have their instruments; instruments are invariably indiscreet, and thus secrets escape. the palace intrigues, the intrigues with other states, the influence of certain women, there was nothing which they did not know. seen thus from below, the whole society appeared rotten and corrupted, coarse to the last degree, and animated only by the lowest motives. this very gossip seemed in itself criminal to felix, but he did not at the moment reflect that it was but the tale of servants. had such language been used by gentlemen, then it would have been treason. as himself of noble birth, felix had hitherto seen things only from the point of view of his own class. now he associated with grooms, he began to see society from _their_ point of view, and recognised how feebly it was held together by brute force, intrigue, cord and axe, and woman's flattery. but a push seemed needed to overthrow it. yet it was quite secure, nevertheless, as there was none to give that push, and if any such plot had been formed, those very slaves who suffered the most would have been the very men to give information, and to torture the plotters. felix had never dreamed that common and illiterate men, such as these grooms and retainers, could have any conception of reasons of state, or the crafty designs of courts. he now found that, though they could neither writer nor read, they had learned the art of reading man (the worst and lowest side of character) to such perfection that they at once detected the motive. they read the face; the very gait and gesture gave them a clue. they read man, in fact, as an animal. they understood men just as they understood the horses and hounds under their charge. every mood and vicious indication in those animals was known to them, and so, too, with their masters. felix thought that he was himself a hunter, and understood woodcraft; he now found how mistaken he had been. he had acquired woodcraft as a gentleman; he now learned the knave's woodcraft. they taught him a hundred tricks of which he had had no idea. they stripped man of his dignity, and nature of her refinement. everything had a blackguard side to them. he began to understand that high principles and abstract theories were only words with the mass of men. one day he saw a knight coolly trip up a citizen (one of the king's levy) in the midst of the camp and in broad daylight, and quietly cut away his purse, at least a score of persons looking on. but they were only retainers and slaves; there was no one whose word would for a moment have been received against the knight's, who had observed this, and plundered the citizen with impunity. he flung the lesser coins to the crowd, keeping the gold and silver for himself, and walked off amidst their plaudits. felix saw a slave nailed to a tree, his arms put round it so as to clasp it, and then nails driven through them. there he was left in his agony to perish. no one knew what his fault had been; his master had simply taken a dislike to him. a guard was set that no one should relieve the miserable being. felix's horror and indignation could not have been expressed, but he was totally helpless. his own condition of mind during this time was such as could not be well analysed. he did not himself understand whether his spirit had been broken, whether he was really degraded with the men with whom he lived, or why he remained with them, though there were moments when it dawned upon him that this education, rude as it was, was not without its value to him. he need not practise these evils, but it was well to know of their existence. thus he remained, as it were, quiescent, and the days passed on. he really had not much to do, although the rest put their burdens upon him, for discipline was so lax, that the loosest attendance answered equally well with the most conscientious. the one thing all the men about him seemed to think of was the satisfying of their appetites; the one thing they rejoiced at was the fine dry weather, for, as his mates told him, the misery of camp life in rain was almost unendurable. chapter xix fighting twice felix saw the king. once there was a review of the horse outside the camp, and felix, having to attend with his master's third charger (a mere show and affectation, for there was not the least chance of his needing it), was now and then very near the monarch. for that day at least he looked every whit what fame had reported him to be. a man of unusual size, his bulk rendered him conspicuous in the front of the throng. his massive head seemed to accord well with the possession of despotic power. the brow was a little bare, for he was no longer young, but the back of his head was covered with thick ringlets of brown hair, so thick as to partly conceal the coronet of gold which he wore. a short purple cloak, scarcely reaching to the waist, was thrown back off his shoulders, so that his steel corselet glistened in the sun. it was the only armour he had on; a long sword hung at his side. he rode a powerful black horse, full eighteen hands high, by far the finest animal on the ground; he required it, for his weight must have been great. felix passed near enough to note that his eyes were brown, and the expression of his face open, frank, and pleasing. the impression left upon the observer was that of a strong intellect, but a still stronger physique, which latter too often ran away with and controlled the former. no one could look upon him without admiration, and it was difficult to think that he could so demean himself as to wallow in the grossest indulgence. as for the review, though it was a brilliant scene, felix could not conceal from himself that these gallant knights were extremely irregular in their movements, and not one single evolution was performed correctly, because they were constantly quarrelling about precedence, and one would not consent to follow the other. he soon understood, however, that discipline was not the object, nor regularity considered; personal courage and personal dexterity were everything. this review was the prelude to active operations, and felix now hoped to have some practical lessons in warfare. he was mistaken. instead of a grand assault, or a regular approach, the fighting was merely a series of combats between small detachments and bodies of the enemy. two or three knights with their retainers and slaves would start forth, cross the stream, and riding right past the besieged city endeavour to sack some small hamlet, or the homestead of a noble. from the city a sortie would ensue; sometimes the two bodies only threatened each other at a distance, the first retiring as the second advanced. sometimes only a few arrows were discharged; occasionally they came to blows, but the casualties were rarely heavy. one such party, while returning, was followed by a squadron of horsemen from the town towards the stream to within three hundred yards of the king's quarters. incensed at this assurance, several knights mounted their horses and rode out to reinforce the returning detachment, which was loaded with booty. finding themselves about to be supported, they threw down their spoils, faced about, and felix saw for the first time a real and desperate _melée_. it was over in five minutes. the king's knights, far better horsed, and filled with desire to exhibit their valour to the camp, charged with such fury that they overthrew the enemy and rode over him. felix saw the troops meet; there was a crash and cracking as the lances broke, four or five rolled from the saddle on the trodden corn, and the next moment the entangled mass of men and horses unwound itself as the enemy hastened back to the walls. felix was eager to join in such an affray, but he had no horse nor weapon. upon another occasion early one bright morning four knights and their followers, about forty in all, deliberately set out from the camp, and advanced up the sloping ground towards the city. the camp was soon astir watching their proceedings; and the king, being made acquainted with what was going on, came out from his booth. felix, who now entered the circular entrenchment without any difficulty, got up on the mound with scores of others, where, holding to the stakes, they had a good view. the king stood on a bench and watched the troops advance, shading his eyes with his hand. as it was but half a mile to the walls they could see all that took place. when the knights had got within two hundred yards and arrows began to drop amongst them, they dismounted from their horses and left them in charge of the grooms, who walked them up and down, none remaining still a minute, so as to escape the aim of the enemy's archers. then drawing their swords, the knights, who were in full armour, put themselves at the head of the band, and advanced at a steady pace to the wall. in their mail with their shields before them they cared not for such feeble archery, nor even for the darts that poured upon them when they came within reach. there was no fosse to the wall, so that, pushing forward, they were soon at the foot. so easily had they reached it that felix almost thought the city already won. now he saw blocks of stone, darts, and beams of wood cast at them from the parapet, which was not more than twelve feet above the ground. quite undismayed, the knights set up their ladders, of which they had but four, one each. the men-at-arms held these by main force against the wall, the besiegers trying to throw them away, and chopping at the rungs with their axes. but the ladders were well shod with iron to resist such blows, and in a moment felix saw, with intense delight and admiration, the four knights slowly mount to the parapet and cut at the defenders with their swords. the gleam of steel was distinctly visible as the blades rose and fell. the enemy thrust at them with pikes, but seemed to shrink from closer combat, and a moment afterwards the gallant four stood on the top of the wall. their figures, clad in mail and shield in hand, were distinctly seen against the sky. up swarmed the men-at-arms behind them, and some seemed to descend on the other side. a shout rose from the camp and echoed over the woods. felix shouted with the rest, wild with excitement. the next minute, while yet the knights stood on the wall, and scarcely seemed to know what to do next, there appeared at least a dozen men in armour running along the wall towards them. felix afterwards understood that the ease with which the four won the wall at first was owing to there being no men of knightly rank among the defenders at that early hour. those who had collected to repulse the assault were citizens, retainers, slaves, any, in fact who had been near. but now the news had reached the enemy's leaders, and some of them hastened to the wall. as these were seen approaching, the camp was hushed, and every eye strained on the combatants. the noble four could not all meet their assailants, the wall was but wide enough for two to fight; but the other two had work enough the next minute, as eight or ten more men in mail advanced the other way. so they fought back to back, two facing one way, and two the other. the swords rose and fell. felix saw a flash of light fly up into the air, it was the point of a sword broken off short. at the foot of the wall the men who had not had time to mount endeavoured to assist their masters by stabbing upwards with their spears. all at once two of the knights were hurled from the wall; one seemed to be caught by his men, the other came heavily to the ground. while they were fighting their immediate antagonists, others within the wall had come with lances; and literally thrust them from the parapet. the other two still fought back to back for a moment; then, finding themselves overwhelmed, they sprang down among their friends. the minute the two first fell, the grooms with the horses ran towards the wall, and despite the rain of arrows, darts, and stones from the parapet, felix saw with relief three of the four knights placed on their chargers. one only could sit upright unassisted, two were supported in their saddles, and the fourth was carried by his retainers. thus they retreated, and apparently without further hurt, for the enemy on the wall crowded so much together as to interfere with the aim of their darts, which, too, soon fell short. but there was a dark heap beneath the wall, where ten or twelve retainers and slaves, who wore no armour, had been slain or disabled. upon these the loss invariably fell. none attempted to follow the retreating party, who slowly returned towards the camp, and were soon apparently in safety. but suddenly a fresh party of the enemy appeared upon the wall, and the instant afterwards three retainers dropped, as if struck by lightning. they had been hit by sling stones, whirled with great force by practised slingers. these rounded pebbles come with such impetus as to stun a man at two hundred yards. the aim, it is true, is uncertain, but where there is a body of troops they are sure to strike some one. hastening on, leaving the three fallen men where they lay, the rest in two minutes were out of range, and came safely into camp. everyone, as they crossed the stream, ran to meet them, the king included, and as he passed in the throng, felix heard him remark that they had had a capital main of cocks that morning. of the knights only one was much injured; he had fallen upon a stone, and two ribs were broken; the rest suffered from severe bruises, but had no wound. six men-at-arms were missing, probably prisoners, for, as courageous as their masters, they had leapt down from the wall into the town. eleven other retainers or slaves were slain, or had deserted, or were prisoners, and no trouble was taken about them. as for the three who were knocked over by the sling stones, there they lay until they recovered their senses, when they crawled into camp. this incident cooled felix's ardour for the fray, for he reflected that, if injured thus, he too, as a mere groom, would be left. the devotion of the retainers to save and succour their masters was almost heroic. the mailed knights thought no more of their men, unless it was some particular favourite, than of a hound slashed by a boar's tusk in the chase. when the first flush of his excitement had passed, felix, thinking over the scene of the morning as he took his horses down to water at the stream, became filled at first with contempt, and then with indignation. that the first commander of the age should thus look on while the wall was won before his eyes, and yet never send a strong detachment, or move himself with his whole army to follow up the advantage, seemed past understanding. if he did not intend to follow it up, why permit such desperate ventures, which must be overwhelmed by mere numbers, and could result only in the loss of brave men? and if he did permit it, why did he not, when he saw they were overthrown, send a squadron to cover their retreat? to call such an exhibition of courage "a main of cocks", to look on it as a mere display for his amusement, was barbarous and cruel in the extreme. he worked himself up into a state of anger which rendered him less cautious than usual in expressing his opinions. the king was not nearly so much at fault as felix, arguing on abstract principles, imagined. he had long experience of war, and he knew its extreme uncertainty. the issue of the greatest battle often hung on the conduct of a single leader, or even a single man-at-arms. he had seen walls won and lost before. to follow up such a venture with a strong detachment must result in one of two things, either the detachment in its turn must be supported by the entire army, or it must eventually retreat. if it retreated, the loss of prestige would be serious, and might encourage the enemy to attack the camp, for it was only his prestige which prevented them. if supported by the entire army, then the fate of the whole expedition depended upon that single day. the enemy had the advantage of the wall, of the narrow streets and enclosures within, of the houses, each of which would become a fortress, and thus in the winding streets a repulse might easily happen. to risk such an event would be folly in the last degree, before the town had been dispirited and discouraged by the continuance of the siege, the failure of their provisions, or the fall of their chief leaders in the daily combats that took place. the army had no discipline whatever, beyond that of the attachment of the retainer to his lord, and the dread of punishment on the part of the slave. there were no distinct ranks, no organized corps. the knights followed the greater barons, the retainers the knights; the greater barons followed the king. such an army could not be risked in an assault of this kind. the venture was not ordered, nor was it discouraged; to discourage, indeed, all attempts would have been bad policy; it was upon the courage and bravery of his knights that the king depended, and upon that alone rested his hopes of victory. the great baron whose standard they followed would have sent them assistance if he had deemed it necessary. the king, unless on the day of battle, would not trouble about such a detail. as for the remark, that they had had "a good main of cocks that morning," he simply expressed the feeling of the whole camp. the spectacle felix had seen was, in fact, merely an instance of the strength and of the weakness of the army and the monarch himself. felix afterwards acknowledged these things to himself, but at the moment, full of admiration for the bravery of the four knights and their followers, he was full of indignation, and uttered his views too freely. his fellow-grooms cautioned him; but his spirit was up, and he gave way to his feelings without restraint. now, to laugh at the king's weaknesses, his gluttony or follies, was one thing; to criticise his military conduct was another. the one was merely badinage, and the king himself might have laughed had he heard it; the other was treason, and, moreover, likely to touch the monarch on the delicate matter of military reputation. of this felix quickly became aware. his mates, indeed, tried to shield him; but possibly the citizen, his master, had enemies in the camp, barons, perhaps, to whom he had lent money, and who watched for a chance of securing his downfall. at all events, early the next day felix was rudely arrested by the provost in person, bound with cords, and placed in the provost's booth. at the same time, his master was ordered to remain within, and a guard was put over him. chapter xx in danger hope died within felix when he thus suddenly found himself so near the executioner. he had known so many butchered without cause, that he had, indeed, reason to despair. towards the sunset he felt sure he should be dragged forth and hanged on the oak used for the purpose, and which stood near where the track from aisi joined the camp. such would most probably have been his fate, had he been alone concerned in this affair, but by good fortune he was able to escape so miserable an end. still, he suffered as much as if the rope had finished him, for he had no means of knowing what would be the result. his heart swelled with bitterness; he was filled with inexpressible indignation, his whole being rebelled against the blundering, as it were, of events which had thus thrown him into the jaws of death. in an hour or two, however, he sufficiently recovered from the shock to reflect that most probably they would give him some chance to speak for himself. there would not be any trial; who would waste time in trying so insignificant a wretch? but there might be some opportunity of speaking, and he resolved to use it to the utmost possible extent. he would arraign the unskilful generalship of the king; he would not only point out his errors, but how the enemy could be defeated. he would prove that he had ideas and plans worthy of attention. he would, as it were, vindicate himself before he was executed, and he tried to collect his thoughts and to put them into form. every moment the face of aurora seemed to look upon him, lovingly and mournfully; but beside it he saw the dusty and distorted features of the copse he had seen drawn by the horse through the camp. thus, too, his tongue would protrude and lick the dust. he endured, in a word, those treble agonies which the highly-wrought and imaginative inflict upon themselves. the hours passed, and still no one came near him; he called, and the guard appeared at the door, but only to see what was the matter, and finding his prisoner safe, at once resumed his walk to and fro. the soldier did not, for his own sake, dare to enter into conversation with a prisoner under arrest for such an offence; he might be involved, or suspected. had it been merely theft or any ordinary crime, he would have talked freely enough, and sympathized with the prisoner. as time went on, felix grew thirsty, but his request for water was disregarded, and there he remained till four in the afternoon. they then marched him out; he begged to be allowed to speak, but the soldiery did not reply, simply hurrying him forward. he now feared that he should be executed without the chance being afforded him to say a word; but, to his surprise, he found in a few minutes that they were taking him in the direction of the king's quarters. new fears now seized him, for he had heard of men being turned loose, made to run for their lives, and hunted down with hounds for the amusement of the court. if the citizen's wealth had made him many enemies (men whom he had befriended, and who hoped, if they could be see him executed, to escape the payment of their debts), on the other hand, it had made him as many friends, that is, interested friends, who trusted by doing him service to obtain advances. these latter had lost no time, for greed is quite as eager as hate, and carried the matter at once to the king. what they desired was that the case should be decided by the monarch himself, and not by his chancellor, or a judge appointed for the purpose. the judge would be nearly certain to condemn the citizen, and to confiscate whatever he could lay hands on. the king might pardon, and would be content with a part only, where his ministers would grasp all. these friends succeeded in their object; the king, who hated all judicial affairs because they involved the trouble of investigation, shrugged his shoulders at the request, and would not have granted it had it not come out that the citizen's servant had declared him to be an incapable commander. at this the king started. "we are, indeed, fallen low," said he, "when a miserable trader's knave calls us incapable. we will see this impudent rascal." he accordingly ordered that the prisoner should be brought before him after dinner. felix was led inside the entrenchment, unbound, and commanded to stand upright. there was a considerable assembly of the greater barons anxious to see the trial of the money-lender, who, though present, was kept apart from felix lest the two should arrange their defence. the king was sleeping on a couch outside the booth in the shade; he was lying on his back breathing loudly with open mouth. how different his appearance to the time when he sat on his splendid charger and reviewed his knights! a heavy meal had been succeeded by as heavy a slumber. no one dared to disturb him; the assembly moved on tiptoe and conversed in whispers. the experienced divined that the prisoners were certain to be condemned, for the king would wake with indigestion, and vent his uneasy sensations upon them. full an hour elapsed before the king awoke with a snort and called for a draught of water. how felix envied that draught! he had neither eaten nor drunk since the night previous; it was a hot day, and his tongue was dry and parched. the citizen was first accused; he denied any treasonable designs or expressions whatever; as for the other prisoner, till the time he was arrested he did not even know he had been in his service. he was some stroller whom his grooms had incautiously engaged, the lazy scoundrels, to assist them. he had never even spoken to him; it the knave told the truth he must acknowledge this. "how now," said the king, turning to felix; "what do you say?" "it is true," replied felix, "he has never spoken to me nor i to him. he knew nothing of what i said. i said it on my own account, and i say it again!" "and pray, sir knave," said the king, sitting up on his couch, for he was surprised to hear one so meanly dressed speak so correctly, and so boldly face him. "what was it you did say?" "if your majesty will order me a single drop of water," said the prisoner, "i will repeat it word for word, but i have had nothing the whole day, and i can hardly move my tongue." without a word the king handed him the cup from which he had himself drunk. never, surely, was water so delicious. felix drained it to the bottom, handed it back (an officer took it), and with one brief thought of aurora, he said: "your majesty, you are an incapable commander." "go on," said the king sarcastically; "why am i incapable?" "you have attacked the wrong city; these three are all your enemies, and you have attacked the first. they stand in a row." "they stand in a row," repeated the king; "and we will knock them over like three nine-pins." "but you have begun with the end one," said felix, "and that is the mistake. for after you have taken the first you must take the second, and still after that the third. but you might have saved much trouble and time if----" "if what?" "if you had assaulted the middle one first. for then, while the siege went on, you would have been able to prevent either of the other two towns from sending assistance, and when you had taken the first and put your garrison in it, neither of the others could have stirred, or reaped their corn, nor could they even communicate with each other, since you would be between them; and in fact you would have cut your enemies in twain." "by st. john!" swore the king, "it is a good idea. i begin to think--but go on, you have more to say." "i think, too, your majesty, that by staying here as you have done this fortnight past without action, you have encouraged the other two cities to make more desperate resistance; and it seems to me that you are in a dangerous position, and may at any moment be overwhelmed with disaster, for there is nothing whatever to prevent either of the other two from sending troops to burn the open city of aisi in your absence. and that danger must increase every day as they take courage by your idleness." "idleness! there shall be idleness no longer. the man speaks the truth; we will consider further of this, we will move on adelinton," turning to his barons. "if it please your majesty," said baron ingulph, "this man invented a new trigger for our carriage crossbows, but he was lost in the crowd, and we have sought for him in vain; my serjeant here has this moment recognised him." "why did you not come to us before, fellow?" said the king. "let him be released; let him be entertained at our expense; give him clothes and a sword. we will see you further." overjoyed at this sudden turn of fortune, felix forgot to let well alone. he had his audience with him for a moment; he could not resist as it were following up his victory. he thanked the king, and added that he could make a machine which would knock the walls yonder to pieces without it being necessary to approach nearer than half a bow-shot. "what is this?" said the king. "ingulph, have you ever heard of such a machine?" "there is no such thing," said the baron, beginning to feel that his professional reputation as the master of the artillery was assailed. "there is nothing of the kind known." "it will shoot stones as big, as heavy as a man can lift," said felix eagerly, "and easily knock towers to fragments." the king looked from one to another; he was incredulous. the baron smiled scornfully. "ask him, your majesty, how these stones are to be thrown; no bow could do it." "how are the stones to be thrown?" said the king sharply. "beware how you play with us." "by the force of twisted ropes, your majesty." they all laughed. the baron said: "you see, your majesty, there is nothing of the kind. this is some jester." "the twisted rope should be a halter," said another courtier, one of those who hoped for the rich man's downfall. "it can be done, your majesty," cried felix, alarmed. "i assure you, a stone of two hundredweight might be thrown a quarter of a mile." the assembly did not repress its contempt. "the man is a fool," said the king, who now thought that felix was a jester who had put a trick upon him. "but your joke is out of joint; i will teach such fellows to try tricks on us! beat him out of camp." the provost's men seized him, and in a moment he was dragged off his feet, and bodily carried outside the entrenchment. thence they pushed him along, beating him with the butts of their spears to make him run the faster; the groups they passed laughed and jeered; the dogs barked and snapped at his ankles. they hurried him outside the camp, and thrusting him savagely with their spear butts sent him headlong. there they left him, with the caution which he did not hear, being insensible, that if he ventured inside the lines he would be at once hanged. like a dead dog they left him on the ground. some hours later, in the dusk of the evening, felix stole from the spot, skirting the forest like a wild animal afraid to venture from its cover, till he reached the track which led to aisi. his one idea was to reach his canoe. he would have gone through the woods, but that was not possible. without axe or wood-knife to hew a way, the tangled brushwood he knew to be impassable, having observed how thick it was when coming. aching and trembling in every limb, not so much with physical suffering as that kind of inward fever which follows unmerited injury, the revolt of the mind against it, he followed the track as fast as his weary frame would let him. he had tasted nothing that day but the draught from the king's cup, and a second draught when he recovered consciousness, from the stream that flowed past the camp. yet he walked steadily on without pause; his head hung forward, and his arms were listless, but his feet mechanically plodded on. he walked, indeed, by his will, and not with his sinews. thus, like a ghost, for there was no life in him, he traversed the shadowy forest. the dawn came, and still he kept onwards. as the sun rose higher, having now travelled fully twenty miles, he saw houses on the right of the trail. they were evidently those of retainers or workmen employed on the manor, for a castle stood at some distance. an hour later he approached the second or open city of aisi, where the ferry was across the channel. in his present condition he could not pass through the town. no one there knew of his disgrace, but it was the same to him as if they had. avoiding the town itself, he crossed the cultivated fields, and upon arriving at the channel he at once stepped in, and swam across to the opposite shore. it was not more than sixty yards, but, weary as he was, it was an exhausting effort. he sat down, but immediately got up and struggled on. the church tower on the slope of the hill was a landmark by which he easily discovered the direction of the spot where he had hidden the canoe. but he felt unable to push through the belt of brushwood, reeds, and flags beside the shore, and therefore struck through the firs, following a cattle track, which doubtless led to another grazing ground. this ran parallel with the shore, and when he judged himself about level with the canoe he left it, and entered the wood itself. for a little way he could walk, but the thick fir branches soon blocked his progress, and he could progress only on hands and knees, creeping beneath them. there was a hollow space under the lower branches free from brushwood. thus he painfully approached the lake, and descending the hill, after an hour's weary work emerged among the rushes and reeds. he was within two hundred yards of the canoe, for he recognised the island opposite it. in ten minutes he found it undisturbed and exactly as he had left it, except that the breeze had strewn the dry reeds with which it was covered with willow leaves, yellow and dead (they fall while all the rest are green), which had been whirled from the branches. throwing himself upon the reeds beside the canoe, he dropped asleep as if he had been dead. he awoke as the sun was sinking and sat up, hungry in the extreme, but much refreshed. there were still some stores in the canoe, of which he ate ravenously. but he felt better now; he felt at home beside his boat. he could hardly believe in the reality of the hideous dream through which he had passed. but when he tried to stand, his feet, cut and blistered, only too painfully assured him of its reality. he took out his hunter's hide and cloak and spread himself a comfortable bed. though he had slept so long he was still weary. he reclined in a semi-unconscious state, his frame slowly recovering from the strain it had endured, till by degrees he fell asleep again. sleep, nothing but sleep, restores the overtaxed mind and body. chapter xxi a voyage the sun was up when felix awoke, and as he raised himself the beauty of the lake before him filled him with pleasure. by the shore it was so calm that the trees were perfectly reflected, and the few willow leaves that had fallen floated without drifting one way or the other. farther out the islands were lit up with the sunlight, and the swallows skimmed the water, following the outline of their shores. in the lake beyond them, glimpses of which he could see through the channel or passage between, there was a ripple where the faint south-western breeze touched the surface. his mind went out to the beauty of it. he did not question or analyse his feelings; he launched his vessel, and left that hard and tyrannical land for the loveliness of the water. paddling out to the islands he passed through between them, and reached the open lake. there he hoisted the sail, the gentle breeze filled it, the sharp cutwater began to divide the ripples, a bubbling sound arose, and steering due north, straight out to the open and boundless expanse, he was carried swiftly away. the mallards, who saw the canoe coming, at first scarcely moved, never thinking that a boat would venture outside the islands, within whose line they were accustomed to see vessels, but when the canoe continued to bear down upon them, they flew up and descended far away to one side. when he had sailed past the spot where these birds had floated, the lake was his own. by the shores of the islands the crows came down for mussels. moorhens swam in and out among the rushes, water-rats nibbled at the flags, pikes basked at the edge of the weeds, summer-snipes ran along the sand, and doubtless an otter here and there was in concealment. without the line of the shoals and islets, now that the mallards had flown, there was a solitude of water. it was far too deep for the longest weeds, nothing seemed to exist here. the very water-snails seek the shore, or are drifted by the currents into shallow corners. neither great nor little care for the broad expanse. the canoe moved more rapidly as the wind came now with its full force over the distant woods and hills, and though it was but a light southerly breeze, the broad sail impelled the taper vessel swiftly. reclining in the stern, felix lost all consciousness of aught but that he was pleasantly borne along. his eyes were not closed, and he was aware of the canoe, the lake, the sunshine, and the sky, and yet he was asleep. physically awake, he mentally slumbered. it was rest. after the misery, exertion, and excitement of the last fortnight it was rest, intense rest for body and mind. the pressure of the water against the handle of the rudder-paddle, the slight vibration of the wood, as the bubbles rushed by beneath, alone perhaps kept him from really falling asleep. this was something which could not be left to itself; it must be firmly grasped, and that effort restrained his drowsiness. three hours passed. the shore was twelve or fifteen miles behind, and looked like a blue cloud, for the summer haze hid the hills, more than would have been the case in clearer weather. another hour, and at last felix, awakening from his slumberous condition, looked round and saw nothing but the waves. the shore he had left had entirely disappeared, gone down; if there were land more lofty on either hand, the haze concealed it. he looked again; he could scarcely comprehend it. he knew the lake was very wide, but it had never occurred to him that he might possibly sail out of sight of land. this, then was why the mariners would not quit the islands; they feared the open water. he stood up and swept the horizon carefully, shading his eyes with his hand; there was nothing but a mist at the horizon. he was alone with the sun, the sky, and the lake. he could not surely have sailed into the ocean without knowing it? he sat down, dipped his hand overboard and tasted the drops that adhered; the water was pure and sweet, warm from the summer sunshine. there was not so much as a swift in the upper sky; nothing but slender filaments of white cloud. no swallows glided over the surface of the water. if there were fishes he could not see them through the waves, which were here much larger; sufficiently large, though the wind was light, to make his canoe rise and fall with their regular rolling. to see fishes a calm surface is necessary, and, like other creatures, they haunt the shallows and the shore. never had he felt alone like this in the depths of the farthest forest he had penetrated. had he contemplated beforehand the possibility of passing out of sight of land, when he found that the canoe had arrived he would probably have been alarmed and anxious for his safety. but thus stumbling drowsily into the solitude of the vast lake, he was so astounded with his own discovery, so absorbed in thinking of the immense expanse, that the idea of danger did not occur to him. another hour passed, and he now began to gaze about him more eagerly for some sight of land, for he had very little provision with him, and he did not wish to spend the night upon the lake. presently, however, the mist on the horizon ahead appeared to thicken, and then became blue, and in a shorter time than he expected land came in sight. this arose from the fact of its being low, so that he had approached nearer than he knew before recognising it. at the time when he was really out of sight of the coast, he was much further from the hilly land left behind than from the low country in front, and not in the mathematical centre, as he had supposed, of the lake. as it rose and came more into sight, he already began to wonder what reception he should meet with from the inhabitants, and whether he should find them as hard of heart as the people he had just escaped from. should he, indeed, venture among them at all? or should he remain in the woods till he had observed more of their ways and manners? these questions were being debated in his mind, when he perceived that the wind was falling. as the sun went past the meridian the breeze fell, till, in the hottest part of the afternoon, and when he judged that he was not more than eight miles from shore, it sank to the merest zephyr, and the waves by degrees diminished. so faint became the breeze in half-an-hour's time, and so intermittent, that he found it patience wasted even to hold the rudder-paddle. the sail hung and was no longer bellied out; as the idle waves rolled under, it flapped against the mast. the heat was now so intolerable, the light reflected from the water increasing the sensation, that he was obliged to make himself some shelter by partly lowering the sail, and hauling the yard athwart the vessel, so that the canvas acted as an awning. gradually the waves declined in volume, and the gentle breathing of the wind ebbed away, till at last the surface was almost still, and he could feel no perceptible air stirring. weary of sitting in the narrow boat, he stood up, but he could not stretch himself sufficiently for the change to be of much use. the long summer day, previously so pleasant, now appeared scarcely endurable. upon the silent water the time lingered, for there was nothing to mark its advance, not so much as a shadow beyond that of his own boat. the waves having now no crest, went under the canoe without chafing against it, or rebounding, so that they were noiseless. no fishes rose to the surface. there was nothing living near, except a blue butterfly, which settled on the mast, having ventured thus far from land. the vastness of the sky, over-arching the broad water, the sun, and the motionless filaments of cloud, gave no repose for his gaze, for they were seemingly still. to the weary gaze motion is repose; the waving boughs, the foam-tipped waves, afford positive rest to look at. such intense stillness as this of the summer sky was oppressive; it was like living in space itself, in the ether above. he welcomed at last the gradual downward direction of the sun, for, as the heat decreased, he could work with the paddle. presently he furled the sail, took his paddle, and set his face for the land. he laboured steadily, but made no apparent progress. the canoe was heavy, and the outrigger or beam, which was of material use in sailing, was a drawback to paddling. he worked till his arms grew weary, and still the blue land seemed as far off as ever. but by the time the sun began to approach the horizon, his efforts had produced some effect, the shore was visible, and the woods beyond. they were still five miles distant, and he was tired; there was little chance of his reaching it before night. he put his paddle down for refreshment and rest, and while he was thus engaged, a change took place. a faint puff of air came; a second, and a third; a tiny ripple ran along the surface. now he recollected that he had heard that the mariners depended a great deal on the morning and the evening--the land and the lake--breeze as they worked along the shore. this was the first breath of the land breeze. it freshened after a while, and he re-set his sail. an hour or so afterwards he came near the shore; he heard the thrushes singing, and the cuckoo calling, long before he landed. he did not stay to search about for a creek, but ran the canoe on the strand, which was free of reeds or flags, a sign that the waves often beat furiously there, rolling as they must for so many miles. he hauled the canoe up as high as he could, but presently when he looked about him he found that he was on a small and narrow island, with a channel in the rear. tired as he was, yet anxious for the safety of his canoe, he pushed off again, and paddled round and again beached her with the island between her and the open lake. else he feared if a south wind should blow she might be broken to pieces on the strand before his eyes. it was prudent to take the precaution, but, as it happened, the next day the lake was still. he could see no traces of human occupation upon the island, which was of small extent and nearly bare, and therefore, in the morning, paddled across the channel to the mainland, as he thought. but upon exploring the opposite shore, it proved not to be the mainland, but merely another island. paddling round it, he tried again, but with the same result; he found nothing but island after island, all narrow, and bearing nothing except bushes. observing a channel which seemed to go straight in among these islets, he resolved to follow it, and did so (resting at noon-time) the whole morning. as he paddled slowly in, he found the water shallower, and weeds, bulrushes, and reeds became thick, except quite in the centre. after the heat of midday had gone over, he resumed his voyage, and still found the same; islets and banks, more or less covered with hawthorn bushes, willow, elder, and alder, succeeded to islets, fringed round their edges with reeds and reed canary-grass. when he grew weary of paddling, he landed and stayed the night; the next day he went on again, and still for hour after hour rowed in and out among these banks and islets, till he began to think he should never find his way out. the farther he penetrated the more numerous became the waterfowl. ducks swam among the flags, or rose with a rush and splashing. coots and moorhens dived and hid in the reeds. the lesser grebe sank at the sound of the paddle like a stone. a strong northern diver raised a wave as he hurried away under the water, his course marked by the undulation above him. sedge-birds chirped in the willows; black-headed buntings sat on the trees, and watched him without fear. bearded titmice were there, clinging to the stalks of the sedges, and long-necked herons rose from the reedy places where they love to wade. blue dragon-flies darted to and fro, or sat on water-plants as if they were flowers. snakes swam across the channels, vibrating their heads from side to side. swallows swept over his head. pike "struck" from the verge of the thick weeds as he came near. perch rose for insects as they fell helpless into the water. he noticed that the water, though so thick with reeds, was as clear as that in the open lake; there was no scum such as accumulates in stagnant places. from this he concluded that there must be a current, however slight, perhaps from rivers flowing into this part of the lake. he felt the strongest desire to explore farther till he reached the mainland, but he reflected that mere exploration was not his object; it would never obtain aurora for him. there were no signs whatever of human habitation, and from reeds and bulrushes, however interesting, nothing could be gained. reluctantly, therefore, on the third morning, having passed the night on one of the islets, he turned his canoe, and paddled southwards towards the lake. he did not for a moment attempt to retrace the channel by which he had entered; it would have been an impossibility; he took advantage of any clear space to push through. it took him as long to get out as it had to get in; it was the afternoon of the fourth day when he at last regained the coast. he rested the remainder of the afternoon, wishing to start fresh in the morning, having determined to follow the line of the shore eastwards, and so gradually to circumnavigate the lake. if he succeeded in nothing else, that at least would be something to relate to aurora. the morning rose fair and bright, with a south-westerly air rather than a breeze. he sailed before it; it was so light that his progress could not have exceeded more than three miles an hour. hour after hour passed away, and still he followed the line of the shore, now going a short way out to skirt an island, and now nearer it to pass between sandbanks. by noon he was so weary of sitting in the canoe that he ran her ashore, and rested awhile. it was the very height of the heat of the day when he set forth again, and the wind lighter than in the morning. it had, however, changed a little, and blew now from the west, almost too exactly abaft to suit his craft. he could not make a map while sailing, or observe his position accurately, but it appeared to him that the shore trended towards the south-east, so that he was gradually turning an arc. he supposed from this that he must be approaching the eastern end of the lake. the water seemed shallower, to judge from the quantity of weeds. now and then he caught glimpses between the numerous islands of the open lake, and there, too, the weeds covered the surface in many places. in an hour or two the breeze increased considerably, and travelling so much quicker, he found it required all his dexterity to steer past the islands and clear the banks upon which he was drifting. once or twice he grazed the willows that overhung the water, and heard the keel of the canoe drag on the bottom. as much as possible he bore away from the mainland, steering south-east, thinking to find deeper water, and to be free of the islets. he succeeded in the first, but the islets were now so numerous that he could not tell where the open lake was. the farther the afternoon advanced, the more the breeze freshened, till occasionally, as it blew between the islands, it struck his mast almost with the force of a gale. felix welcomed the wind, which would enable him to make great progress before evening. if such favouring breezes would continue, he could circumnavigate the waters in a comparatively short time, and might return to aurora, so far, at least, successful. hope filled his heart, and he sang to the wind. the waves could not rise among these islands, which intercepted them before they could roll far enough to gather force, so that he had all the advantage of the gale without its risks. except a light haze all round the horizon, the sky was perfectly clear, and it was pleasant now the strong current of air cooled the sun's heat. as he came round the islands he constantly met and disturbed parties of waterfowl, mallards, and coots. sometimes they merely hid in the weeds, sometimes they rose, and when they did so passed to his rear. chapter xxii discoveries this little circumstance of the mallards always flying over him and away behind, when flushed, presently made felix speculate on the cause, and he kept a closer watch. he now saw (what had, indeed, been going on for some time) that there was a ceaseless stream of waterfowl, mallards, ducks, coots, moorhens, and lesser grebes coming towards him, swimming to the westward. as they met him they parted and let him through, or rose and went over. next he noticed that the small birds on the islands were also travelling in the same direction, that is against the wind. they did not seem in any haste, but flitted from islet to islet, bush to tree, feeding and gossiping as they went; still the movement was distinct. finches, linnets, blackbirds, thrushes, wrens, and whitethroats, and many others, all passed him, and he could see the same thing going on to his right and left. felix became much interested in this migration, all the more singular as it was the nesting-time, and hundreds of these birds must have left their nests with eggs or young behind them. nothing that he could think of offered an adequate explanation. he imagined he saw shoals of fishes going the same way, but the surface of the water being ruffled, and the canoe sailing rapidly, he could not be certain. about an hour after he first observed the migration the stream of birds ceased suddenly. there were no waterfowls in the water, and no finches in the bushes. they had evidently all passed. those in the van of the migratory army were no doubt scattered and thinly distributed, so that he had been meeting the flocks a long while before he suspected it. the nearer he approached their centre the thicker they became, and on getting through that he found a solitude. the weeds were thicker than ever, so that he had constantly to edge away from where he supposed the mainland to lie. but there were no waterfowls and no birds on the islets. suddenly as he rounded a large island he saw what for the moment he imagined to be a line of white surf, but the next instant he recognised a solid mass, as it were, of swallows and martins flying just over the surface of the water straight towards him. he had no time to notice how far they extended before they had gone by him with a rushing sound. turning to look back, he saw them continue directly west in the teeth of the wind. like the water and the islands, the sky was now cleared of birds, and not a swallow remained. felix asked himself if he were running into some unknown danger, but he could not conceive any. the only thing that occurred to him was the possibility of the wind rising to a hurricane; that gave him no alarm, because the numerous islands would afford shelter. so complete was the shelter in some places, that as he passed along his sail drew above, while the surface of the water, almost surrounded with bushes and willows, was smooth. no matter to how many quarters of the compass the wind might veer, he should still be able to get under the lee of one or other of the banks. the sky remained without clouds; there was nothing but a slight haze, which he sometimes fancied looked thicker in front or to the eastward. there was nothing whatever to cause the least uneasiness; on the contrary, his curiosity was aroused, and he was desirous of discovering what it was that had startled the birds. after a while the water became rather more open, with sandbanks instead of islands, so that he could see around him for a considerable distance. by a large bank, behind which the ripple was stilled, he saw a low wave advancing towards him, and moving against the wind. it was followed by two others at short intervals, and though he could not see them, he had no doubt shoals of fishes were passing and had raised the undulations. the sedges on the sandbanks appeared brown and withered, as if it had been autumn instead of early summer. the flags were brown at the tip, and the aquatic grasses had dwindled. they looked as if they could not grow, and had reached but half their natural height. from the low willows the leaves were dropping, faded and yellow, and the thorn bushes were shrivelled and covered with the white cocoons of caterpillars. the farther he sailed the more desolate the banks seemed, and trees ceased altogether. even the willows were fewer and stunted, and the highest thorn bush was not above his chest. his vessel was now more exposed to the wind, so that he drove past the banks and scattered islands rapidly, and he noticed that there was not so much as a crow on them. upturned mussel-shells, glittering in the sunshine, showed where crows had been at work, but there was not one now visible. felix thought that the water had lost its clearness and had become thick, which he put down to the action of the wavelets disturbing the sand in the shallows. ahead the haze, or mist, was now much thicker, and was apparently not over a mile distant. it hid the islands and concealed everything. he expected to enter it immediately, but it receded as he approached. along the strand of an island he passed there was a dark line like a stain, and in still water under the lee the surface was covered with a floating scum. felix, on seeing this, at once concluded that he had unknowingly entered a gulf, and had left the main lake, for the only place he had ever seen scum before was at the extremity of a creek near home, where the water was partly stagnant on a marshy level. the water of the lake was proverbial for its purity and clearness. he kept, therefore, a sharp look-out, expecting every moment to sight the end of the gulf or creek in which he supposed himself sailing, so that he might be ready to lower his sail. by degrees the wind had risen till it now blew with fury, but the numerous sandflats so broke up the waves that he found no inconvenience from them. one solitary gull passed over at a great height, flying steadily westwards against the wind. the canoe now began to overtake fragments of scum drifting before the wind, and rising up and down on the ripples. once he saw a broad piece rise to the surface together with a quantity of bubbles. none of the sandbanks now rose more than a foot or so above the surface, and were entirely bare, mere sand and gravel. the mist ahead was sensibly nearer, and yet it eluded him; it was of a faint yellow, and though so thin, obscured everything where it hovered. from out of the mist there presently appeared a vast stretch of weeds. they floated on the surface and undulated to the wavelets, a pale yellowish green expanse. felix was hesitating whether to lower his sail or attempt to drive over them, when, as he advanced and the mist retreated, he saw open water beyond. the weeds extended on either hand as far as he could see, but they were only a narrow band, and he hesitated no longer. he felt the canoe graze the bottom once as he sailed over the weeds. the water was free of sandbanks beyond them, but he could see large islands looming in several directions. glancing behind him he perceived that the faint yellow mist had closed in and now encircled him. it came with two or three hundred yards, and was not affected by the wind, rough as it was. quite suddenly he noticed that the water on which the canoe floated was black. the wavelets which rolled alongside were black, and the slight spray that occasionally flew on board was black, and stained the side of the vessel. this greatly astonished and almost shocked him; it was so opposite and contrary to all his ideas about the lake, the very mirror of purity. he leant over, and dipped up a little in the palm of his hand; it did not appear black in such a small quantity, it seemed a rusty brown, but he became aware of an offensive odour. the odour clung to his hand, and he could not remove it, to his great disgust. it was like nothing he had ever smelt before, and not in the least like the vapour of marshes. by now being some distance from any island, the wavelets increased in size, and spray flew on board, wetting everything with this black liquid. instead of level marshes and the end of the gulf, it appeared as if the water were deep, and also as if it widened. exposed to the full press of the gale, felix began to fear that he should not be able to return very easily against it. he did not know what to do. the horrid blackness of the water disposed him to turn about and tack out; on the other hand, having set out on a voyage of discovery, and having now found something different to the other parts of the lake, he did not like to retreat. he sailed on, thinking to presently pass these loathsome waters. he was now hungry, and indeed thirsty, but was unable to drink because he had no water-barrel. no vessel sailing on the lake ever carried a water-barrel, since such pure water was always under their bows. he was cramped, too, with long sitting in the canoe, and the sun was perceptibly sloping in the west. he determined to land and rest, and with this purpose steered to the right under the lee of a large island, so large, indeed, that he was not certain it was not part of the mainland or one side of the gulf. the water was very deep close up to the shore, but, to his annoyance, the strand appeared black, as if soaked with the dark water. he skirted along somewhat farther, and found a ledge of low rocks stretching out into the lake, so that he was obliged to run ashore before coming to these. on landing, the black strand, to his relief, was fairly firm, for he had dreaded sinking to the knees in it; but its appearance was so unpleasant that he could not bring himself to sit down. he walked on towards the ledge of rocks, thinking to find a pleasanter place there. they were stratified, and he stepped on them to climb up, when his foot went deep into the apparently hard rock. he kicked it, and his shoe penetrated it as if it had been soft sand. it was impossible to climb up the reef. the ground rose inland, and curious to see around him as far as possible, he ascended the slope. from the summit, however, he could not see farther than on the shore, for the pale yellow mist rose up round him, and hid the canoe on the strand. the extreme desolation of the dark and barren ground repelled him; there was not a tree, bush, or living creature, not so much as a buzzing fly. he turned to go down, and then for the first time noticed that the disk of the sun was surrounded with a faint blue rim, apparently caused by the yellow vapour. so much were the rays shorn of their glare, that he could look at the sun without any distress, but its heat seemed to have increased, though it was now late in the afternoon. descending towards the canoe, he fancied the wind had veered considerably. he sat down in the boat, and took some food; it was without relish, as he had nothing to drink, and the great heat had tired him. wearily, and without thinking, he pushed off the canoe; she slowly floated out, when, as he was about to hoist up the sail, a tremendous gust of wind struck him down on the thwarts, and nearly carried him overboard. he caught the mast as he fell, or over he must have gone into the black waves. before he could recover himself, she drifted against the ledge of rocks, which broke down and sank before the bow, so that she passed over uninjured. felix got out a paddle, and directed the canoe as well as he could; the fury of the wind was irresistible, and he could only drive before it. in a few minutes, as he was swept along the shore, he was carried between it and another immense reef. here, the waves being broken and less powerful, he contrived to get the heavy canoe ashore again, and, jumping out, dragged her up as far as he could on the land. when he had done this, he found to his surprise that the gale had ceased. the tremendous burst of wind had been succeeded by a perfect calm, and the waves had already lost their violent impetus. this was a relief, for he had feared that the canoe would be utterly broken to pieces; but soon he began to doubt if it were an unmixed benefit, as without a wind he could not move from this dismal place that evening. he was too weary to paddle far. he sat on the canoe to rest himself, and, whether from fatigue or other causes, fell asleep. his head heavily dropping on his chest partly woke him several times, but his lassitude overcame the discomfort, and he slept on. when he got up he felt dazed and unrefreshed, as if sleeping had been hard work. he was extremely thirsty, and oppressed with the increasing heat. the sun had sunk, or rather was so low that the high ground hid it from sight. chapter xxiii strange things the thought struck felix that perhaps he might find a spring somewhere in the island, and he started at once up over the hill. at the top he paused. the sun had not sunk, but had disappeared as a disk. in its place was a billow of blood, for so it looked, a vast up-heaved billow of glowing blood surging on the horizon. over it flickered a tint of palest blue, like that seen in fire. the black waters reflected the glow, and the yellow vapour around was suffused with it. though momentarily startled, felix did not much heed these appearances; he was still dazed and heavy from his sleep. he went on, looking for a spring, sometimes walking on firm ground, sometimes sinking to the ankle in a friable soil like black sand. the ground looked, indeed, as if it had been burnt, but there were no charred stumps of timber such as he had seen on the sites of forest fires. the extreme dreariness seemed to oppress his spirits, and he went on and on in a heavy waking dream. descending into a plain, he lost sight of the flaming sunset and the black waters. in the level plain the desolation was yet more marked; there was not a grass-blade or plant; the surface was hard, black, and burned, resembling iron, and indeed in places it resounded to his feet, though he supposed that was the echo from hollow passages beneath. several times he shook himself, straightened himself up, and endeavoured to throw off the sense of drowsy weight which increased upon him. he could not do so; he walked with bent back, and crept, as it were, over the iron land which radiated heat. a shimmer like that of water appeared in front; he quickened his pace, but could not get to it, and realized presently that it was a mirage which receded as he advanced. there was no pleasant summer twilight; the sunset was succeeded by an indefinite gloom, and while this shadow hung overhead the yellow vapour around was faintly radiant. felix suddenly stopped, having stepped, as he thought, on a skeleton. another glance, however, showed that it was merely the impression of one, the actual bones had long since disappeared. the ribs, the skull, and limbs were drawn on the black ground in white lines as if it had been done with a broad piece of chalk. close by he found three or four more, intertangled and superimposed as if the unhappy beings had fallen partly across each other, and in that position had mouldered away leaving nothing but their outline. from among a variety of objects that were scattered about felix picked up something that shone; it was a diamond bracelet of one large stone, and a small square of blue china tile with a curious heraldic animal drawn on it. evidently these had belonged to one or other of the party who had perished. though startled at the first sight, it was curious that felix felt so little horror; the idea did not occur to him that he was in danger as these had been. inhaling the gaseous emanations from the soil and contained in the yellow vapour, he had become narcotized, and moved as if under the influence of opium, while wide awake, and capable of rational conduct. his senses were deadened, and did not carry the usual vivid impression to the mind; he saw things as if they were afar off. accidentally looking back, he found that his footmarks, as far as he could see, shone with a phosphoric light like that of "touchwood" in the dark. near at hand they did not shine; the appearance did not come till some few minutes had elapsed. his track was visible behind till the vapour hid it. as the evening drew on the vapour became more luminous, and somewhat resembled an aurora. still anxious for water, he proceeded as straight ahead as he could, and shortly became conscious of an indefinite cloud which kept pace with him on either side. when he turned to look at either of the clouds, the one looked at disappeared. it was not condensed enough to be visible to direct vision, yet he was aware of it from the corner of his eye. shapeless and threatening, the gloomy thickness of the air floated beside him like the vague monster of a dream. sometimes he fancied that he saw an arm or a limb among the folds of the cloud, or an approach to a face; the instant he looked it vanished. marching at each hand these vapours bore him horrible company. his brain became unsteady, and flickering things moved about him; yet, though alarmed, he was not afraid; his senses were not acute enough for fear. the heat increased; his hands were intolerably hot as if he had been in a fever, he panted; but did not perspire. a dry heat like an oven burned his blood in his veins. his head felt enlarged, and his eyes seemed alight; he could see these two globes of phosphoric light under his brows. they seemed to stand out so that he could see them. he thought his path straight, it was really curved; nor did he know that he staggered as he walked. presently a white object appeared ahead; and on coming to it, he found it was a wall, white as snow, with some kind of crystal. he touched it, when the wall fell immediately, with a crushing sound as if pulverised, and disappeared in a vast cavern at his feet. beyond this chasm he came to more walls like those of houses, such as would be left if the roofs fell in. he carefully avoided touching them, for they seemed as brittle as glass, and merely a white powder having no consistency at all. as he advanced these remnants of buildings increased in number, so that he had to wind in and out round them. in some places the crystallized wall had fallen of itself, and he could see down into the cavern; for the house had either been built partly underground, or, which was more probable, the ground had risen. whether the walls had been of bricks or stone or other material he could not tell; they were now like salt. soon wearying of winding round these walls, felix returned and retraced his steps till he was outside the place, and then went on towards the left. not long after, as he still walked in a dream and without feeling his feet, he descended a slight slope and found the ground change in colour from black to a dull red. in his dazed state he had taken several steps into this red before he noticed that it was liquid, unctuous and slimy, like a thick oil. it deepened rapidly and was already over his shoes; he returned to the black shore and stood looking out over the water, if such it could be called. the luminous yellow vapour had now risen a height of ten or fifteen feet, and formed a roof both over the land and over the red water, under which it was possible to see for a great distance. the surface of the red oil or viscid liquid was perfectly smooth, and, indeed, it did not seem as if any wind could rouse a wave on it, much less that a swell should be left after the gale had gone down. disappointed in his search for water to drink, felix mechanically turned to go back. he followed his luminous footmarks, which he could see a long way before him. his trail curved so much that he made many short cuts across the winding line he had left. his weariness was now so intense that all feeling had departed. his feet, his limbs, his arms, and hands were numbed. the subtle poison of the emanations from the earth had begun to deaden his nerves. it seemed a full hour or more to him till he reached the spot where the skeletons were drawn in white upon the ground. he passed a few yards to one side of them, and stumbled over a heap of something which he did not observe, as it was black like the level ground. it emitted a metallic sound, and looking he saw that he had kicked his foot against a great heap of money. the coins were black as ink; he picked up a handful and went on. hitherto felix had accepted all that he saw as something so strange as to be unaccountable. during his advance into this region in the canoe he had in fact become slowly stupefied by the poisonous vapour he had inhaled. his mind was partly in abeyance; it acted, but only after some time had elapsed. he now at last began to realize his position; the finding of the heap of blackened money touched a chord of memory. these skeletons were the miserable relics of men who had ventured, in search of ancient treasures, into the deadly marshes over the site of the mightiest city of former days. the deserted and utterly extinct city of london was under his feet. he had penetrated into the midst of that dreadful place, of which he had heard many a tradition: how the earth was poison, the water poison, the air poison, the very light of heaven, falling through such an atmosphere, poison. there were said to be places where the earth was on fire and belched forth sulphurous fumes, supposed to be from the combustion of the enormous stores of strange and unknown chemicals collected by the wonderful people of those times. upon the surface of the water there was a greenish-yellow oil, to touch which was death to any creature; it was the very essence of corruption. sometimes it floated before the wind, and fragments became attached to reeds or flags far from the place itself. if a moorhen or duck chanced to rub the reed, and but one drop stuck to its feathers, it forthwith died. of the red water he had not heard, nor of the black, into which he had unwittingly sailed. ghastly beings haunted the site of so many crimes, shapeless monsters, hovering by night, and weaving a fearful dance. frequently they caught fire, as it seemed, and burned as they flew or floated in the air. remembering these stories, which in part, at least, now seemed to be true, felix glanced aside, where the cloud still kept pace with him, and involuntarily put his hands to his ears lest the darkness of the air should whisper some horror of old times. the earth on which he walked, the black earth, leaving phosphoric footmarks behind him, was composed of the mouldered bodies of millions of men who had passed away in the centuries during which the city existed. he shuddered as he moved; he hastened, yet could not go fast, his numbed limbs would not permit him. he dreaded lest he should fall and sleep, and wake no more, like the searchers after treasure; treasure which they had found only to lose for ever. he looked around, supposing that he might see the gleaming head and shoulders of the half-buried giant, of which he recollected he had been told. the giant was punished for some crime by being buried to the chest in the earth; fire incessantly consumed his head and played about it, yet it was not destroyed. the learned thought, if such a thing really existed, that it must be the upper part of an ancient brazen statue, kept bright by the action of acid in the atmosphere, and shining with reflected light. felix did not see it, and shortly afterwards surmounted the hill, and looked down upon his canoe. it was on fire! chapter xxiv fiery vapours felix tried to run, but his feet would not rise from the ground; his limbs were numb as in a nightmare; he could not get there. his body would not obey his will. in reality he did move, but more slowly than when he walked. by degrees approaching the canoe his alarm subsided, for although it burned it was not injured; the canvas of the sail was not even scorched. when he got to it the flames had disappeared; like jack-o'-the-lantern, the phosphoric fire receded from him. with all his strength he strove to launch her, yet paused, for over the surface of the black water, now smooth and waveless, played immense curling flames, stretching out like endless serpents, weaving, winding, rolling over each other. suddenly they contracted into a ball, which shone with a steady light, and was as large as the full moon. the ball swept along, rose a little, and from it flew out long streamers till it was unwound in fiery threads. but remembering that the flames had not even scorched the canvas, he pushed the canoe afloat, determined at any risk to leave this dreadful place. to his joy he felt a faint air rising; it cooled his forehead, but was not enough to fill the sail. he paddled with all the strength he had left. the air seemed to come from exactly the opposite direction to what it had previously blown, some point of east he supposed. labour as hard as he would, the canoe moved slowly, being so heavy. it seemed as if the black water was thick and clung to her, retarding motion. still, he did move, and in time (it seemed, indeed, a time) he left the island, which disappeared in the luminous vapours. uncertain as to the direction, he got his compass, but it would not act; the needle had no life, it swung and came to rest, pointing any way as it chanced. it was demagnetized. felix resolved to trust to the wind, which he was certain blew from the opposite quarter, and would therefore carry him out. the stars he could not see for the vapour, which formed a roof above him. the wind was rising, but in uncertain gusts; however, he hoisted the sail, and floated slowly before it. nothing but excitement could have kept him awake. reclining in the canoe, he watched the serpent-like flames playing over the surface, and forced himself by sheer power of will not to sleep. the two dark clouds which had accompanied him to the shore now faded away, and the cooling wind enabled him to bear up better against his parching thirst. his hope was to reach the clear and beautiful lake; his dread that in the uncertain light he might strike a concealed sandbank and become firmly fixed. twice he passed islands, distinguishable as masses of visible darkness. while the twisted flames played up to the shore, and the luminous vapour overhung the ground, the island itself appeared as a black mass. the wind became by degrees steadier, and the canoe shot swiftly over the water. his hopes rose; he sat up and kept a keener look-out ahead. all at once the canoe shook as if she had struck a rock. she vibrated from one end to the other, and stopped for a moment in her course. felix sprang up alarmed. at the same instant a bellowing noise reached him, succeeded by a frightful belching and roaring, as if a volcano had burst forth under the surface of the water; he looked back but could see nothing. the canoe had not touched ground; she sailed as rapidly as before. again the shock, and again the hideous roaring, as if some force beneath the water were forcing itself up, vast bubbles rising and turning. fortunately it was at a great distance. hardly was it silent before it was reiterated for the third time. next felix felt the canoe heave up, and he was aware that a large roller had passed under him. a second and a third followed. they were without crests, and were not raised by the wind; they obviously started from the scene of the disturbance. soon afterwards the canoe moved quicker, and he detected a strong current setting in the direction he was sailing. the noise did not recur, nor did any more rollers pass under. felix felt better and less dazed, but his weariness and sleepiness increased every moment. he fancied that the serpent flames were less brilliant and farther apart, and that the luminous vapour was thinner. how long he sat at the rudder he could not tell; he noticed that it seemed to grow darker, the serpent flames faded away, and the luminous vapour was succeeded by something like the natural gloom of night. at last he saw a star overhead, and hailed it with joy. he thought of aurora; the next instant he fell back in the canoe firm asleep. his arm, however, still retained the rudder-paddle in position, so that the canoe sped on with equal swiftness. she would have struck more than one of the sandbanks and islets had it not been for the strong current that was running. instead of carrying her against the banks this warded her off, for it drew her between the islets in the channels where it ran fastest, and the undertow, where it struck the shore, bore her back from the land. driving before the wind, the canoe swept onward steadily to the west. in an hour it had passed the line of the black water, and entered the sweet lake. another hour and all trace of the marshes had utterly disappeared, the last faint glow of the vapour had vanished. the dawn of the coming summer's day appeared, and the sky became a lovely azure. the canoe sailed on, but felix remained immovable in slumber. long since the strong current had ceased, it scarcely extended into the sweet waters, and the wind only impelled the canoe. as the sun rose the breeze gradually fell away, and in an hour or so there was only a light air. the canoe had left most of the islets and was approaching the open lake when, as she passed almost the last, the yard caught the overhanging branch of a willow, the canoe swung round and grounded gently under the shadow of the tree. for some time the little wavelets beat against the side of the boat; gradually they ceased, and the clear and beautiful water became still. felix slept till nearly noon, when he awoke and sat up. at the sudden movement a pike struck, and two moorhens scuttled out of the water into the grass on the shore. a thrush was singing sweetly, whitethroats were busy in the bushes, and swallows swept by overhead. felix drew a long deep breath of intense relief; it was like awakening in paradise. he snatched up a cup, dipped, and satisfied his craving thirst, then washed his hands over the side, and threw the water over his face. but when he came to stand up and move, he found that his limbs were almost powerless. like a child he tottered, his joints had no strength, his legs tingled as if they had been benumbed. he was so weak he crawled on all fours along to the mast, furled the sail kneeling, and dragged himself rather than stepped ashore with the painter. the instant he had fastened the rope to a branch, he threw himself at full length on the grass, and grasped a handful of it. merely to touch the grass after such an experience was intense delight. the song of the thrush, the chatter of the whitethroats, the sight of a hedge-sparrow, gave him inexpressible pleasure. lying on the sward he watched the curves traced by the swallows in the sky. from the sedges came the curious cry of the moorhen; a bright kingfisher went by. he rested as he had never rested before. his whole body, his whole being was resigned to rest. it was fully two hours before he rose and crept on all fours into the canoe for food. there was only sufficient left for one meal, but that gave him no concern now he was out of the marshes; he could fish and use his crossbow. he now observed what had escaped him during the night, the canoe was black from end to end. stem, stern, gunwale, thwart, outrigger, mast and sail were black. the stain did not come off on being touched, it seemed burnt in. as he leaned over the side to dip water, and saw his reflection, he started; his face was black, his clothes were black, his hair black. in his eagerness to drink, the first time, he had noticed nothing. his hands were less dark; contact with the paddle and ropes had partly rubbed it off, he supposed. he washed, but the water did not materially diminish the discoloration. after eating, he returned to the grass and rested again; and it was not till the sun was sinking that he felt any return of vigour. still weak, but able now to walk, leaning on a stick, he began to make a camp for the coming night. but a few scraps, the remnant of his former meal, were left; on these he supped after a fashion, and long before the white owl began his rounds felix was fast asleep on his hunter's hide from the canoe. he found next morning that the island was small, only a few acres; it was well-wooded, dry, and sandy in places. he had little inclination or strength to resume his expedition; he erected a booth of branches, and resolved to stay a few days till his strength returned. by shooting wildfowl, and fishing, he fared very well, and soon recovered. in two days the discoloration of the skin had faded to an olive tint, which, too, grew fainter. the canoe lost its blackness, and became a rusty colour. by rubbing the coins he had carried away he found they were gold; part of the inscription remained, but he could not read it. the blue china-tile was less injured than the metal; after washing it, it was bright. but the diamond pleased him most; it would be a splendid present for aurora. never had he seen anything like it in the palaces; he believe it was twice the size of the largest possessed by any king or prince. it was as big as his finger-nail, and shone and gleamed in the sunlight, sparkling and reflecting the beams. its value must be very great. but well he knew how dangerous it would be to exhibit it; on some pretext or other he would be thrown into prison, and the gem seized. it must be hidden with the greatest care till he could produce it in thyma castle, when the baron would protect it. felix regretted now that he had not searched further; perhaps he might have found other treasures for aurora; the next instant he repudiated his greed, and was only thankful that he had escaped with his life. he wondered and marvelled that he had done so, it was so well known that almost all who had ventured in had perished. reflecting on the circumstances which had accompanied his entrance to the marshes, the migration of the birds seemed almost the most singular. they were evidently flying from some apprehended danger, and that most probably would be in the air. the gale at that time, however, was blowing in a direction which would appear to ensure safety to them; into, and not out of, the poisonous marshes. did they, then, foresee that it would change? did they expect it to veer like a cyclone and presently blow east with the same vigour as it then blew west? that would carry the vapour from the inky waters out over the sweet lake, and might even cause the foul water itself to temporarily encroach on the sweet. the more he thought of it, the more he felt convinced that this was the explanation; and, as a fact, the wind, after dropping, did arise again and blow from the east, though, as it happened, not with nearly the same strength. it fell, too, before long, fortunately for him. clearly the birds had anticipated a cyclone, and that the wind turning would carry the gases out upon them to their destruction. they had therefore hurried away, and the fishes had done the same. the velocity of the gale which had carried him into the black waters had proved his safety, by driving before it the thicker and most poisonous portion of the vapour, compressing it towards the east, so that he had entered the dreaded precincts under favourable conditions. when it dropped, while he was on the black island, he soon began to feel the effect of the gases rising imperceptibly from the soil, and had he not had the good fortune to escape so soon, no doubt he would have fallen a victim. he could not congratulate himself sufficiently upon his good fortune. the other circumstances appeared to be due to the decay of the ancient city, to the decomposition of accumulated matter, to phosphorescence and gaseous exhalations. the black rocks that crumbled at a touch were doubtless the remains of ancient buildings saturated with the dark water and vapours. inland similar remains were white, and resembled salt. but the great explosions which occurred as he was leaving, and which sent heavy rollers after him, were not easily understood, till he remembered that in sylvester's "book of natural things" it was related that "the ancient city had been undermined with vast conduits, sewers, and tunnels, and that these communicated with the sea". it had been much disputed whether the sea did or did not still send its tides up to the site of the old quays. felix now thought that the explosions were due to compressed air, or more probably to gases met with by the ascending tide. chapter xxv the shepherds for four days felix remained on the island recovering his strength. by degrees the memory of the scenes he had witnessed grew less vivid, and his nerves regained their tone. the fifth morning he sailed again, making due south with a gentle breeze from the west, which suited the canoe very well. he considered that he was now at the eastern extremity of the lake, and that by sailing south he should presently reach the place where the shore turned to the east again. the sharp prow of the canoe cut swiftly through the waves, a light spray flew occasionally in his face, and the wind blew pleasantly. in the cloudless sky swallows and swifts were wheeling, and on the water half a dozen mallards moved aside to let him pass. about two hours after he started he encountered a mist, which came softly over the surface of the water with the wind, and in an instant shut out all view. even the sun was scarcely visible. it was very warm, and left no moisture. in five minutes he passed through and emerged again in the bright sunlight. these dry, warm mists are frequently seen on the lake in summer, and are believed to portend a continuance of fine weather. felix kept a good distance from the mainland, which was hilly and wooded, and with few islands. presently he observed in the extreme distance, on his right hand, a line of mountainous hills, which he supposed to be the southern shore of the lake, and that he was sailing into a gulf or bay. he debated with himself whether he should alter his course and work across to the mountains, or to continue to trace the shore. unless he did trace the shore, he could scarcely say that he had circumnavigated the lake, as he would leave this great bay unexplored. he continued, therefore, to sail directly south. the wind freshened towards noon, and the canoe flew at a great pace. twice he passed through similar mists. there were now no islands at all, but a line of low chalk cliffs marked the shore. considering that it must be deep, and safe to do so, felix bore in closer to look at the land. woods ran along the hills right to the verge of the cliff, but he saw no signs of inhabitants, no smoke, boat, or house. the sound of the surf beating on the beach was audible, though the waves were not large. high over the cliff he noted a kite soaring, with forked tail, at a great height. immediately afterwards he ran into another mist or vapour, thicker, if anything, and which quite obscured his view. it seemed like a great cloud on the surface of the water, and broader than those he had previously entered. suddenly the canoe stopped with a tremendous jerk, which pitched him forward on his knees, the mast cracked, and there was a noise of splitting wood. as soon as he could get up, felix saw, to his bitter sorrow, that the canoe had split longitudinally; the water came up through the split, and the boat was held together only by the beams of the outrigger. he had run aground on a large sharp flint embedded in a chalk floor, which had split the poplar wood of the canoe like an axe. the voyage was over, for the least strain would cause the canoe to part in two, and if she were washed off the ground she would be water-logged. in half a minute the mist passed, leaving him in the bright day, shipwrecked. felix now saw that the waters were white with suspended chalk, and sounding with the paddle, found that the depth was but a few inches. he had driven at full speed on a reef. there was no danger, for the distance to the shore was hardly two hundred yards, and judging by the appearance of the water, it was shallow all the way. but his canoe, the product of so much labour, and in which he had voyaged so far, his canoe was destroyed. he could not repair her; he doubted whether it could have been done successfully even at home with oliver to help him. he could sail no farther; there was nothing for it but to get ashore and travel on foot. if the wind rose higher, the waves would soon break clean over her, and she would go to pieces. with a heavy heart, felix took his paddle and stepped overboard. feeling with the paddle, he plumbed the depth in front of him, and, as he expected, walked all the way to the shore, no deeper than his knees. this was fortunate, as it enabled him to convey his things to land without loss. he wrapped up the tools and manuscripts in one of his hunter's hides. when the whole cargo was landed, he sat down sorrowfully at the foot of the cliff, and looked out at the broken mast and sail, still flapping uselessly in the breeze. it was a long time before he recovered himself, and set to work mechanically to bury the crossbow, hunter's hides, tools, and manuscripts, under a heap of pebbles. as the cliff, though low, was perpendicular, he could not scale it, else he would have preferred to conceal them in the woods above. to pile pebbles over them was the best he could do for the present; he intended to return for them when he discovered a path up the cliff. he then started, taking only his bow and arrows. but no such path was to be found; he walked on and on till weary, and still the cliff ran like a wall on his left hand. after an hour's rest, he started again; and, as the sun was declining, came suddenly to a gap in the cliff, where a grassy sward came down to the shore. it was now too late, and he was too weary, to think of returning for his things that evening. he made a scanty meal, and endeavoured to rest. but the excitement of losing the canoe, the long march since, the lack of good food, all tended to render him restless. weary, he could not rest, nor move farther. the time passed slowly, the sun sank, the wind ceased; after an interminable time the stars appeared, and still he could not sleep. he had chosen a spot under an oak on the green slope. the night was warm, and even sultry, so that he did not miss his covering, but there was no rest in him. towards the dawn, which comes very early at that season, he at last slept, with his back to the tree. he awoke with a start in broad daylight, to see a man standing in front of him armed with a long spear. felix sprang to his feet, instinctively feeling for his hunting-knife; but he saw in an instant that no injury was meant, for the man was leaning on the shaft of his weapon, and, of course, could, if so he had wished, have run him through while sleeping. they looked at each other for a moment. the stranger was clad in a tunic, and wore a hat of plaited straw. he was very tall and strongly built; his single weapon, a spear of twice his own length. his beard came down on his chest. he spoke to felix in a dialect the latter did not understand. felix held out his hand as a token of amity, which the other took. he spoke again. felix, on his part, tried to explain his shipwreck, when a word the stranger uttered recalled to felix's memory the peculiar dialect used by the shepherd race on the hills in the neighbourhood of his home. he spoke in this dialect, which the stranger in part at least understood, and the sound of which at once rendered him more friendly. by degrees they comprehended each other's meaning the easier, as the shepherd had come the same way and had seen the wreck of the canoe. felix learned that the shepherd was a scout sent on ahead to see that the road was clear of enemies. his tribe were on the march with their flocks, and to avoid the steep woods and hills which there blocked their course, they had followed the level and open beach at the foot of the cliff, aware, of course, of the gap which felix had found. while they were talking, felix saw the cloud of dust raised by the sheep as the flocks wound round a jutting buttress of cliff. his friend explained that they marched in the night and early morning to avoid the heat of the day. their proposed halting-place was close at hand; he must go on and see that all was clear. felix accompanied him, and found within the wood at the summit a grassy coombe, where a spring rose. the shepherd threw down his spear, and began to dam up the channel of the spring with stones, flints, and sods of earth, in order to form a pool at which the sheep might drink. felix assisted him, and the water speedily began to rise. the flocks were not allowed to rush tumultuously to the water; they came in about fifty at a time, each division with its shepherds and their dogs, so that confusion was avoided and all had their share. there were about twenty of these divisions, besides eighty cows and a few goats. they had no horses; their baggage came on the backs of asses. after the whole of the flocks and herds had been watered several fires were lit by the women, who in stature and hardihood scarcely differed from the men. not till this work was over did the others gather about felix to hear his story. finding that he was hungry they ran to the baggage for food, and pressed on him a little dark bread, plentiful cheese and butter, dried tongue, and horns of mead. he could not devour a fiftieth part of what these hospitable people brought him. having nothing else to give them, he took from his pocket one of the gold coins he had brought from the site of the ancient city, and offered it. they laughed, and made him understand that it was of no value to them; but they passed it from hand to hand, and he noticed that they began to look at him curiously. from its blackened appearance they conjectured whence he had obtained it; one, too, pointed to his shoes, which were still blackened, and appeared to have been scorched. the whole camp now pressed on him, their wonder and interest rising to a great height. with some trouble felix described his journey over the site of the ancient city, interrupted with constant exclamations, questions, and excited conversation. he told them everything, except about the diamond. their manner towards him perceptibly altered. from the first they had been hospitable; they now became respectful, and even reverent. the elders and their chief, not to be distinguished by dress or ornament from the rest, treated him with ceremony and marked deference. the children were brought to see and even to touch him. so great was their amazement that any one should have escaped from these pestilential vapours, that they attributed it to divine interposition, and looked upon him with some of the awe of superstition. he was asked to stay with them altogether, and to take command of the tribe. the latter felix declined; to stay with them for awhile, at least, he was, of course, willing enough. he mentioned his hidden possessions, and got up to return for them, but they would not permit him. two men started at once. he gave them the bearings of the spot, and they had not the least doubt but that they should find it, especially as, the wind being still, the canoe would not yet have broken up, and would guide them. the tribe remained in the green coombe the whole day, resting from their long journey. they wearied felix with questions, still he answered them as copiously as he could; he felt too grateful for their kindness not to satisfy them. his bow was handled, his arrows carried about so that the quiver for the time was empty, and the arrows scattered in twenty hands. he astonished them by exhibiting his skill with the weapon, striking a tree with an arrow at nearly three hundred yards. though familiar, of course, with the bow, they had never seen shooting like that, nor, indeed, any archery except at short quarters. they had no other arms themselves but spears and knives. seeing one of the women cutting the boughs from a fallen tree, dead and dry, and, therefore, preferable for fuel, felix naturally went to help her, and, taking the axe, soon made a bundle, which he carried for her. it was his duty as a noble to see than no woman, not a slave, laboured; he had been bred in that idea, and would have felt disgraced had he permitted it. the women looked on with astonishment, for in these rude tribes the labour of the women was considered valuable and appraised like that of a horse. without any conscious design, felix thus in one day conciliated and won the regard of the two most powerful parties in the camp, the chief and the women. by his refusing the command the chief was flattered, and his possible hostility prevented. the act of cutting the wood and carrying the bundle gave him the hearts of the women. they did not, indeed, think their labour in any degree oppressive; still, to be relieved of it was pleasing. the two men who had gone for felix's buried treasure did not return till breakfast next morning. they stepped into the camp, each with his spear reddened and dripping with fresh blood. felix no sooner saw the blood than he fainted. he quickly recovered, but he could not endure the sight of the spears, which were removed and hidden from his view. he had seen blood enough spilt at the siege of iwis, but this came upon him in all its horror unrelieved by the excitement of war. the two shepherds had been dogged by gipsies, and had been obliged to make a round to escape. they took their revenge by climbing into trees, and as their pursuers passed under thrust them through with their long spears. the shepherds, like all their related tribes, had been at feud with the gipsies for many generations. the gipsies followed them to and from their pastures, cut off stragglers, destroyed or stole their sheep and cattle, and now and then overwhelmed a whole tribe. of late the contest had become more sanguinary and almost ceaseless. mounted on swift, though small, horses, the gipsies had the advantage of the shepherds. on the other hand, the shepherds, being men of great stature and strength, could not be carried away by a rush if they had time to form a circle, as was their custom of battle. they lost many men by the javelins thrown by the gipsies, who rode up to the edge of the circle, cast their darts, and retreated. if the shepherds left their circle they were easily ridden over; while they maintained formation they lost individuals, but saved the mass. battles were of rare occurrence; the gipsies watched for opportunities and executed raids, the shepherds retaliated, and thus the endless war continued. the shepherds invariably posted sentinels, and sent forward scouts to ascertain if the way were clear. accustomed to the horrid scenes of war from childhood, they could not understand felix's sensitiveness. they laughed, and then petted him like a spoilt child. this galled him exceedingly; he felt humiliated, and eager to reassert his manhood. he was willing to stay with them there for awhile, nothing would have induced him to leave them now till he had vindicated himself in their sight. the incident happened soon after sunrise, which is very early at the end of june. the camp had only waited for the return of these men, and on their appearance began to move. the march that morning was not a long one, as the sky was clear and the heat soon wearied the flocks. felix accompanied the scout in advance, armed with his bow, eager to encounter the gipsies. chapter xxvi bow and arrow three mornings the shepherds marched in the same manner, when they came in view of a range of hills so high that to felix they appeared mountains. the home of the tribe was in these hills, and once there they were comparatively safe from attack. in early spring when the herbage on the downs was scarce, the flocks moved to the meadowlike lands far in the valleys; in summer they returned to the hills; in autumn they went to the vales again. soon after noon on the third day the scouts reported that a large body of gipsies were moving in a direction which would cut off their course to the hills on the morrow. the chief held a council, and it was determined that a forced march should be made at once by another route, more to the left, and it was thought that in this way they might reach the base of the slopes by evening. the distance was not great, and could easily have been traversed by the men; the flocks and herds, however, could not be hurried much. a messenger was despatched to the hills for assistance, and the march began. it was a tedious movement. felix was wearied, and walked in a drowsy state. towards six o'clock, as he guessed, the trees began to thin, and the column reached the first slopes of the hills. here about thirty shepherds joined them, a contingent from the nearest camp. it was considered that the danger was now past, and that the gipsies would not attack them on the hill; but it was a mistake. a large body almost immediately appeared, coming along the slope on the right, not less than two hundred; and from their open movements and numbers it was evident that they intended battle. the flocks and herds were driven hastily into a coombe, or narrow valley, and there left to their fate. all the armed men formed in a circle; the women occupied the centre. felix took his stand outside the circle by a gnarled and decayed oak. there was just there a slight rise in the ground, which he knew would give him some advantage in discharging his arrows, and would also allow him a clear view. his friends earnestly entreated him to enter the circle, and even sought to bring him within it by force, till he explained to them that he could not shoot if so surrounded, and promised if the gipsies charged to rush inside. felix unslung his quiver, and placed it on the ground before him; a second quiver he put beside it; four or five arrows he stuck upright in the sward, so that he could catch hold of them quickly; two arrows he held in his left hand, another he fitted to the string. thus prepared, he watched the gipsies advance. they came walking their short wiry horses to within half a mile, when they began to trot down the slope; they could not surround the shepherds because of the steep-sided coombe and some brushwood, and could advance only on two fronts. felix rapidly became so excited that his sight was affected, and his head whirled. his heart beat with such speed that his breath seemed going. his limbs tottered, and he dreaded lest he should faint. his intensely nervous organization, strung up to its highest pitch, shook him in its grasp, and his will was powerless to control it. he felt that he should disgrace himself once more before these rugged but brave shepherds, who betrayed not the slightest symptom of agitation. for one hour of oliver's calm courage and utter absence of nervousness he would have given years of his life. his friends in the circle observed his agitation, and renewed their entreaties to him to come inside it. this only was needed to complete his discomfiture. he lost his head altogether; he saw nothing but a confused mass of yellow and red rushing towards him, for each of the gipsies wore a yellow or red scarf, some about the body, some over the shoulder, others round the head. they were now within three hundred yards. a murmur from the shepherd spearmen. felix had discharged an arrow. it stuck in the ground about twenty paces from him. he shot again; it flew wild and quivering, and dropped harmlessly. another murmur; they expressed to each other their contempt for the bow. this immediately restored felix; he forgot the enemy as an enemy, he forgot himself; he thought only of his skill as an archer, now in question. pride upheld him. the third arrow he fitted properly to the string, he planted his left foot slightly in advance, and looked steadfastly at the horsemen before he drew his bow. at a distance of one hundred and fifty yards they had paused, and were widening out so as to advance in loose open rank and allow each man to throw his javelin. they shouted; the spearmen in the circle replied, and levelled their spears. felix fixed his eye on one of the gipsies who was ordering and marshalling the rest, a chief. he drew the arrow swiftly but quietly, the string hummed, the pliant yew obeyed, and the long arrow shot forward in a steady swift flight like a line of gossamer drawn through the air. it missed the chief, but pierced the horse he rode just in front of the rider's thigh. the maddened horse reared and fell backwards on his rider. the spearmen shouted. before the sound could leave their lips another arrow had sped; a gipsy threw up his arms with a shriek; the arrow had gone through his body. a third, a fourth, a fifth--six gipsies rolled on the sward. shout upon shout rent the air from the spearmen. utterly unused to this mode of fighting, the gipsies fell back. still the fatal arrows pursued them, and ere they were out of range three others fell. now the rage of battle burned in felix; his eyes gleamed, his lips were open, his nostrils wide like a horse running a race. he shouted to the spearmen to follow him, and snatching up his quiver ran forward. gathered together in a group, the gipsy band consulted. felix ran at full speed; swift of foot, he left the heavy spearmen behind. alone he approached the horsemen; all the aquila courage was up within him. he kept the higher ground as he ran, and stopped suddenly on a little knoll or tumulus. his arrow flew, a gipsy fell. again, and a third. their anger gave them fresh courage; to be repulsed by one only! twenty of them started to charge and run him down. the keen arrows flew faster than their horses' feet. now the horse and now the man met those sharp points. six fell; the rest returned. the shepherds came running; felix ordered them to charge the gipsies. his success gave him authority; they obeyed; and as they charged, he shot nine more arrows; nine more deadly wounds. suddenly the gipsy band turned and fled into the brushwood on the lower slopes. breathless, felix sat down on the knoll, and the spearmen swarmed around him. hardly had they begun to speak to him than there was a shout, and they saw a body of shepherds descending the hill. there were three hundred of them; warned by the messenger, the whole country had risen to repel the gipsies. too late to join in the fight, they had seen the last of it. they examined the field. there were ten dead and six wounded, who were taken prisoners; the rest escaped, though hurt. in many cases the arrow had gone clean through the body. then, for the first time, they understood the immense power of the yew bow in strong and skilful hands. felix was overwhelmed; they almost crushed him with their attentions; the women fell at his feet and kissed them. but the archer could scarcely reply; his intense nervous excitement had left him weak and almost faint; his one idea was to rest. as he walked back to the camp between the chiefs of the shepherd spearmen, his eyes closed, his limbs tottered, and they had to support him. at the camp he threw himself on the sward, under the gnarled oak, and was instantly fast asleep. immediately the camp was stilled, not to disturb him. his adventures in the marshes of the buried city, his canoe, his archery, were talked of the livelong night. next morning the camp set out for their home in the mountains, and he was escorted by nearly four hundred spearmen. they had saved for him the ornaments of the gipsies who had fallen, golden earrings and nose-rings. he gave them to the women, except one, a finger-ring, set with turquoise, and evidently of ancient make, which he kept for aurora. two marches brought them to the home of the tribe, where the rest of the spearmen left them. the place was called wolfstead. felix saw at once how easily this spot might be fortified. there was a deep and narrow valley like a groove or green trench opening to the south. at the upper end of the valley rose a hill, not very high, but steep, narrow at the ridge, and steep again on the other side. over it was a broad, wooded, and beautiful vale; beyond that again the higher mountains. towards the foot of the narrow ridge here, there was a succession of chalk cliffs, so that to climb up on that side in the face of opposition would be extremely difficult. in the gorge of the enclosed narrow valley a spring rose. the shepherds had formed eight pools, one after the other, water being of great importance to them; and farther down, where the valley opened, there were forty or fifty acres of irrigated meadow. the spring then ran into a considerable brook, across which was the forest. felix's idea was to run a palisade along the margin of the brook, and up both sides of the valley to the ridge. there he would build a fort. the edges of the chalk cliffs he would connect with a palisade or a wall, and so form a complete enclosure. he mentioned his scheme to the shepherds; they did not greatly care for it, as they had always been secure without it, the rugged nature of the country not permitting horsemen to penetrate. but they were so completely under his influence that to please him they set about the work. he had to show them how to make a palisade; they had never seen one, and he made the first part of it himself. at building a wall with loose stones, without mortar, the shepherds were skilful; the wall along the verge of the cliffs was soon up, and so was the fort on the top of the ridge. the fort consisted merely of a circular wall, breast high, with embrasures or crenellations. when this was finished, felix had a sense of mastership, for in this fort he felt as if he could rule the whole country. from day to day shepherds came from the more distant parts to see the famous archer, and to admire the enclosure. though the idea of it had never occurred to them, now they saw it they fully understood its advantages, and two other chiefs began to erect similar forts and palisades. chapter xxvii surprised felix was now anxious to continue his journey, yet he did not like to leave the shepherds, with whom his life was so pleasant. as usual, when deliberating, he wandered about the hills, and then into the forest. the shepherds at first insisted on at least two of their number accompanying him; they were fearful lest the gipsies should seize him, or a bushman assassinate him. this company was irksome to felix. in time he convinced them that he was a much better hunter than any of the tribe, and they permitted him to roam alone. during one of these excursions into the forest he discovered a beautiful lake. he looked down on the water from the summit of one of the green mountains. it was, he thought, half a mile across, and the opposite shore was open woodland, grassy and meadow-like, and dotted with fine old oaks. by degrees these closed together, and the forest succeeded; beyond it again, at a distance of two miles, were green hills. a little clearing only was wanted to make the place fit for a castle and enclosure. through the grass-land opposite he traced the course of a large brook down to the lake; another entered it on the right, and the lake gradually narrowed to a river on his left. could he erect a tower there, and bring aurora to it, how happy he would be! a more beautiful spot he had never seen, nor one more suited for every purpose in life. he followed the course of the stream which left the lake, every now and then disturbing wild goats from the cliffs, and twice he saw deer under the oaks across it. on rounding a spur of down he saw that the river debouched into a much wider lake, which he conjectured must be the sweet waters. he went on till he reached the mouth of the river, and had then no doubt that he was standing once more on the shore of the sweet water sea. on this, the southern side, the banks were low; on the other, a steep chalky cliff almost overhung the river, and jutted out into the lake, curving somewhat towards him. a fort on that cliff would command the entrance to the river; the cliff was a natural breakwater, so that there was a haven at its base. the river appeared broad and deep enough for navigation, so that vessels could pass from the great lake to the inland water; about six or seven miles, he supposed. felix was much taken with this spot; the beauty of the inland lake, the evident richness of the soil, the river communicating with the great lake, the cliff commanding its entrance; never, in all his wanderings, had he seen a district so well suited for a settlement and the founding of a city. if he had but a thousand men! how soon he would bring aurora there, and build a tower, and erect a palisade! so occupied was he with the thought that he returned the whole distance to the spot where he had made the discovery. there he remained a long time, designing it all in his mind. the tower he would build yonder, three-quarters of a mile, perhaps a mile, inland from the opposite shore, on a green knoll, at the base of which the brook flowed. it would be even more pleasant there than on the shore of the lake. the forest he would clear back a little, and put up a stout palisade, enclosing at least three miles of grassy land. by the shore of the lake he would build his town, so that his vessels might be able to go forth into the great sweet water sea. so strongly did imagination hold him that he did not observe how near it was to sunset, nor did he remark the threatening aspect of the sky. thunder awoke him from his dream; he looked, and saw a storm rapidly coming from the north-east. he descended the hill, and sheltered himself as well as possible among some thick fir-trees. after the lightning, the rain poured so heavily that it penetrated the branches, and he unstrung his bow and placed the string in his pocket, that it might not become wet. instantly there was a whoop on either side, and two gipsies darted from the undergrowth towards him. while the terrible bow was bent they had followed him, tracking his footsteps; the moment he unstrung the bow, they rushed out. felix crushed through between the firs, by main force getting through, but only opening a passage for them to follow. they could easily have thrust their darts through him, but their object was to take him alive, and gratify the revenge of the tribes with torture. felix doubled from the firs, and made towards the far-distant camp; but he was faced by three more gipsies. he turned again and made for the steep hill he had descended. with all his strength he raced up it; his lightness of foot carried him in advance, and he reached the summit a hundred yards ahead; but he knew he must be overtaken presently, unless he could hit upon some stratagem. in the instant that he paused to breathe on the summit a thought struck him. like the wind he raced along the ridge, making for the great sweet water, the same path he had followed in the morning. once on the ridge the five pursuers shouted; they knew they should have him now there were no more hills to breast. it was not so easy as they imagined. felix was in splendid training; he kept his lead, and even drew a little on them. still he knew in time he must succumb, just as the stag, though swifter of foot, ultimately succumbs to the hounds. they would track him till they had him. if only he could gain enough to have time to string and bend his bow! but with all his efforts he could not get away more than the hundred yards, and that was not far enough. it could be traversed in ten seconds, they would have him before he could string it and fit an arrow. if only he had been fresh as in the morning! but he had had a long walk during the day and not much food. he knew that his burst of speed must soon slacken, but he had a stratagem yet. keeping along the ridge till he reached the place where the lake narrowed to the river, suddenly he rushed down the hill towards the water. the edge was encumbered with brushwood and fallen trees; he scrambled over and through anyhow; he tore a path through the bushes and plunged in. but his jacket caught in a branch; he had his knife out and cut off the shred of cloth. then with the bow and knife in one hand he struck out for the opposite shore. his hope was that the gipsies, being horsemen, and passing all their lives on their horses, might not know how to swim. his conjecture was right; they stopped on the brink, and yelled their loudest. when he had passed the middle of the slow stream their rage rose to a shriek, startling a heron far down the water. felix reached the opposite shore in safety, but the bow-string was now wet and useless. he struck off at once straight across the grass-lands, past the oaks he had admired, past the green knoll where in imagination he had built his castle and brought aurora, through the brook, which he found was larger than it appeared at a distance, and required two or three strokes to cross. a few more paces and the forest sheltered him. under the trees he rested, and considered what course to pursue. the gipsies would expect him to endeavour to regain his friends, and would watch to cut off his return. felix determined to make, instead, for another camp farther east, and to get even there by a detour. bitterly he reproached himself for his folly in leaving the camp, knowing that gipsies were about, with no other weapon than the bow. the knife at his belt was practically no weapon at all, useful only in the last extremity. had he a short sword, or javelin, he would have faced the two gipsies who first sprang towards him. worse than this was the folly of wandering without the least precaution into a territory at that time full of gipsies, who had every reason to desire his capture. if he had used the ordinary precautions of woodcraft, he would have noticed their traces, and he would not have exposed himself in full view on the ridges of the hills, where a man was visible for miles. if he perished through his carelessness, how bitter it would be! to lose aurora by the merest folly would, indeed, be humiliating. he braced himself to the journey before him, and set off at a good swinging hunter's pace, as it is called, that is, a pace rather more than a walk and less than a run, with the limbs somewhat bent, and long springy steps. the forest was in the worst possible condition for movement; the rain had damped the fern and undergrowth, and every branch showered raindrops upon him. it was now past sunset and the dusk was increasing; this he welcomed as hiding him. he travelled on till nearly dawn, and then, turning to the right, swept round, and regained the line of the mountainous hills after sunrise. there he rested, and reached a camp about nine in the morning, having walked altogether since the preceding morning fully fifty miles. this camp was about fifteen miles distant from that of his friends; the shepherds knew him, and one of them started with the news of his safety. in the afternoon ten of his friends came over to see him, and to reproach him. his weariness was so great that for three days he scarcely moved from the hut, during which time the weather was wet and stormy, as is often the case in summer after a thunderstorm. on the fourth morning it was fine, and felix, now quite restored to his usual strength, went out with the shepherds. he found some of them engaged in throwing up a heap of stones, flint, and chalk lumps near an oak-tree in a plain at the foot of the hill. they told him that during the thunderstorm two cows and ten sheep had been killed there by lightning, which had scarcely injured the oak. it was their custom to pile up a heap of stones wherever such an event occurred, to warn others from staying themselves, or allowing their sheep or cattle to stay, near the spot in thunder, as it was observed that where lightning struck once it was sure to strike again, sooner or later. "then," said felix, "you may be sure there is water there!" he knew from his study of the knowledge of the ancients that lightning frequently leaped from trees or buildings to concealed water, but he had no intention of indicating water in that particular spot. he meant the remark in a general sense. but the shepherds, ever desirous of water, and looking on felix as a being of a different order to themselves, took his casual observation in its literal sense. they brought their tools and dug, and, as it chanced, found a copious spring. the water gushed forth and formed a streamlet. upon this the whole tribe gathered, and they saluted felix as one almost divine. it was in vain that he endeavoured to repel this homage, and to explain the reason of his remark, and that it was only in a general way that he intended it. facts were too strong for him. they had heard his words, which they considered an inspiration, and _there_ was the water. it was no use; _there_ was the spring, the very thing they most wanted. perforce felix was invested with attributes beyond nature. the report spread; his own old friends came in a crowd to see the new spring, others journeyed from afar. in a week, felix having meanwhile returned to wolfstead, his fame had for the second time spread all over the district. some came a hundred miles to see him. nothing he could say was listened to; these simple, straightforward people understood nothing but facts, and the defeat of the gipsies and the discovery of the spring seemed to them little less than supernatural. besides which, in innumerable little ways felix's superior knowledge had told upon them. his very manners spoke of high training. his persuasive voice won them. his constructive skill and power of planning, as shown in the palisades and enclosure, showed a grasp of circumstances new to them. this was a man such as they had never before seen. they began to bring him disputes to settle; he shrank from this position of judge, but it was useless to struggle; they would wait as long as he liked, but his decision they would have, and no other. next came the sick begging to be cured. here felix was firm; he would not attempt to be a physician, and they went away. but, unfortunately, it happened that he let out his knowledge of plants, and back they came. felix did not know what course to pursue; if by chance he did any one good, crowds would beset him; if injury resulted, perhaps he would be assassinated. this fear was quite unfounded; he really had not the smallest idea of how high he stood in their estimation. after much consideration, felix hit upon a method which would save him from many inconveniences. he announced his intention of forming a herb-garden in which to grow the best kind of herbs, and at the same time said he would not administer any medicine himself, but would tell their own native physicians and nurses all he knew, so that they could use his knowledge. the herb-garden was at once begun in the valley; it could not contain much till next year, and meantime if any diseased persons came felix saw them, expressed his opinion to the old shepherd who was the doctor of the tribe, and the latter carried out his instructions. felix did succeed in relieving some small ailments, and thereby added to his reputation. chapter xxviii for aurora felix now began to find out for himself the ancient truth, that difficulties always confront man. success only changes them, and increases their number. difficulties faced him in every direction; at home it had seemed impossible for him to do anything. now that success seemed to smile on him and he had become a power, instead of everything being smooth and easy, new difficulties sprang up for solution at every point. he wished to continue his journey, but he feared that he would not be permitted to depart. he would have to start away in the night, in which case he could hardly return to them again, and yet he wished to return to these, the first friends he had had, and amongst whom he hoped to found a city. another week slipped away, and felix was meditating his escape, when one afternoon a deputation of ten spearmen arrived from a distant tribe, who had nominated him their king, and sent their principal men to convey the intelligence. fame is always greatest at a distance, and this tribe in the mountains of the east had actually chosen him as king, and declared that they would obey him whether he took up his residence with them or not. felix was naturally greatly pleased; how delighted aurora would be! but he was in perplexity what to do, for he could not tell whether the wolfstead people would be favourably inclined or would resent his selection. he had not long to consider. there was an assembly of the tribe, and they, too, chose him by common consent as their king. secretly they were annoyed that another tribe had been more forward than themselves, and were anxious that felix should not leave them. felix declined the honour; in spite of his refusal, he was treated as if he were the most despotic monarch. four days afterwards two other tribes joined the movement, and sent their acceptance of him as their monarch. others followed, and so quickly now that a day never passed without another tribe sending a deputation. felix thought deeply on the matter. he was, of course, flattered, and ready to accept the dignity, but he was alive to considerations of policy. he resolved that he would not use the title, nor exercise the functions of a king as usually understood. he explained his plan to the chiefs; it was that he should be called simply "leader", the leader of the war; that he should only assume royal authority in time of war; that the present chiefs should retain their authority, and each govern as before, in accordance with ancient custom. he proposed to be king only during war-time. he would, if they liked, write out their laws for them in a book, and so give their customs cohesion and shape. to this plan the tribes readily agreed; it retained all the former customs, it left the chiefs their simple patriarchal authority, and it gave all of them the advantage of combination in war. as the leader, felix was henceforth known. in the course of a fortnight, upwards of six thousand men had joined the confederacy, and felix wrote down the names of twenty tribes on a sheet of parchment which he took from his chest. a hut had long since been built for him; but he received all the deputations, and held the assemblies which were necessary, in the circular fort. he was so pressed to visit the tribes that he could not refuse to go to the nearest, and thus his journey was again postponed. during this progress from tribal camp to tribal camp, felix gained the adhesion of twelve more, making a total of thirty-two names of camps, representing about eight thousand spearmen. with pride felix reflected that he commanded a far larger army than the prince of ponze. but he was not happy. months had now elapsed since he had parted from aurora. there were no means of communicating with her. a letter could be conveyed only by a special messenger; he could not get a messenger, and even if one had been forthcoming, he could not instruct him how to reach thyma castle. he did not know himself; the country was entirely unexplored. except that the direction was west, he had no knowledge whatever. he had often inquired of the shepherds, but they were perfectly ignorant. anker's gate was the most westerly of all their settlements, which chiefly extended eastwards. beyond anker's gate was the trackless forest, of which none but the bushmen knew anything. they did not understand what he meant by a map; all they could tell him was that the range of mountainous hills continued westerly and southerly for an unascertained distance, and that the country was uninhabited except by wandering gipsy tribes. south was the sea, the salt water; but they never went down to it, or near it, because there was no sustenance for their flocks and herds. till now, felix did not know that he was near the sea; he resolved at once to visit it. as nearly as he could discover, the great fresh water lake did not reach any farther south; wolfstead was not far from its southern margin. he concluded, therefore, that the shore of the lake must run continually westward, and that if he followed it he should ultimately reach the very creek from which he had started in his canoe. how far it was he could not reckon. there were none of the shepherds who could be sent with a letter; they were not hunters, and were unused to woodcraft; there was not one capable of the journey. unless he went himself he could not communicate with aurora. two routes were open to him; one straight through the forest on foot, the other by water, which latter entailed the construction of another canoe. journey by water, too, he had found was subject to unforeseen risks. till he could train some of the younger men to row a galley, he decided not to attempt the voyage. there was but the forest route left, and that he resolved to attempt; but when? and how, without offending his friends? meantime, while he revolved the subject in his mind, he visited the river and the shore of the great lake, this time accompanied by ten spears. the second visit only increased his admiration of the place and his desire to take possession of it. he ascended a tall larch, from whose boughs he had a view out over the lake; the shore seemed to go almost directly west. there were no islands, and no land in sight; the water was open and clear. next day he started for the sea; he wished to see it for its own sake, and, secondly, because if he could trace the trend of the shore, he would perhaps be able to put together a mental map of the country, and so assure himself of the right route to pursue when he started for thyma castle. his guides took him directly south, and in three marches (three days) brought him to the strand. this journey was not in a straight line; they considered it was about five-and-thirty or forty miles to the sea, but the country was covered with almost impenetrable forests, which compelled a circuitous path. they had also to avoid a great ridge of hills, and to slip through a pass or river valley, because these hills were frequently traversed by the gipsies who were said, indeed, to travel along them for hundreds of miles. through the river valley, therefore, which wound between the hills, they approached the sea, so much on a level with it that felix did not catch a distant glimpse. in the afternoon of the third day they heard a low murmur, and soon afterwards came out from the forest itself upon a wide bed of shingle, thinly bordered with scattered bushes on the inland side. climbing over this, felix saw the green line of the sea rise and extend itself on either hand; in the glory of the scene he forgot his anxieties and his hopes, they fell from him together, leaving the mind alone with itself and love. for the memory of aurora rendered the beauty before him still more beautiful; love, like the sunshine, threw a glamour over the waves. his old and highest thoughts returned to him in all their strength. he must follow them, he could not help himself. standing where the foam came nearly to his feet, the resolution to pursue his aspirations took possession of him as strong as the sea. when he turned from it, he said to himself, "this is the first step homewards to her; this is the first step of my renewed labour." to fulfil his love and his ambition was one and the same thing. he must see her, and then again endeavour with all his abilities to make himself a position which she could share. towards the evening, leaving his escort, he partly ascended the nearest slope of the hills to ascertain more perfectly than was possible at a lower level the direction in which the shore trended. it was nearly east and west, and as the shore of the inland lake ran west, it appeared that between them there was a broad belt of forest. through this he must pass, and he thought if he continued due west he should cross an imaginary line drawn south from his own home through thyma castle; then by turning to the north he should presently reach that settlement. but when he should cross this line, how many days' travelling it would need to reach it, was a matter of conjecture, and he must be guided by circumstances, the appearance of the country, and his hunter's instinct. on the way back to wolfstead felix was occupied in considering how he could leave his friends, and yet be able to return to them and resume his position. his general idea was to build a fortified house or castle at the spot which had so pleased him, and to bring aurora to it. he could then devote himself to increasing and consolidating his rule over these people, and perhaps in time organize a kingdom. but without aurora the time it would require would be unendurable; by some means he must bring her. the whole day long as he walked he thought and thought, trying to discover some means by which he could accomplish these things; yet the more he considered the more difficult they appeared to him. there seemed no plan that promised success; all he could do would be to risk the attempt. but two days after returning from the sea it chanced towards the afternoon he fell asleep, and on awakening found his mind full of ideas which he felt sure would succeed if anything would. the question had solved itself during sleep; the mind, like a wearied limb, strained by too much effort, had recovered its elasticity and freshness, and he saw clearly what he ought to do. he convened an assembly of the chief men of the nearest tribes, and addressed them in the circular fort. he asked them if they could place sufficient confidence in him to assist him in carrying out certain plans, although he should not be able to altogether disclose the object he had in view. they replied as one man that they had perfect confidence in him, and would implicitly obey. he then said that the first thing he wished was the clearing of the land by the river in order that he might erect a fortified dwelling suitable to his position as their leader in war. next he desired their permission to leave them for two months, at the end of which he would return. he could not at that time explain the reasons, but until his journey had been made he could not finally settle among them. to this announcement they listened in profound silence. it was evident that they disliked him leaving them, yet did not wish to seem distrustful by expressing the feeling. thirdly, he continued, he wanted them to clear a path through the forest, commencing at anker's gate and proceeding exactly west. the track to be thirty yards wide in order that the undergrowth might not encroach upon it, and to be carried on straight to the westward until his return. the distance to which this path was cleared he should take as the measure of their loyalty to him. they immediately promised to fulfil this desire, but added that there was no necessity to wait till he left them, it should be commenced the very next morning. to his reiterated request for leave of absence they preserved an ominous silence, and as he had no more to say, the assembly then broke up. it was afternoon, and felix, as he watched the departing chiefs, reflected that these men would certainly set a watch upon him to prevent his escape. without another moment's delay he entered his hut, and took from their hiding-place the diamond bracelet, the turquoise ring, and other presents for aurora. he also secured some provisions, and put two spare bowstrings in his pocket. his bow of course he carried. telling the people about that he was going to the next settlement, bedeston, and was anxious to overtake the chief from that place who had attended the assembly, he started. so soon as he knew he could not be seen from the settlement he quitted the trail, and made a wide circuit till he faced westwards. anker's gate was a small outlying post, the most westerly from wolfstead; he went near it to get a true direction, but not sufficiently near to be observed. this was on the fourth of september. the sun was declining as he finally left the country of his friends, and entered the immense forest which lay between him and aurora. not only was there no track, but no one had ever traversed it, unless, indeed, it were bushmen, who to all intents might be confused with the wild animals which it contained. yet his heart rose as he walked rapidly among the oaks; already he saw her, he felt the welcoming touch of her hand; the danger of bushman or gipsy was nothing. the forest at the commencement consisted chiefly of oaks, trees which do not grow close together, and so permitted of quick walking. felix pushed on, absorbed in thought. the sun sank; still onward; and as the dusk fell he was still moving rapidly westwards. the end -------------------------------------------------------- none none [redactor's note: in this one of his last books donnelly presages later futurist works such as "brave new world" and " ". the original scans and ocr were provided by mr. j.b. hare; for further information about donnelly and this book see http://www.sacred-texts.com/utopia/cc/index.htm. there is only one footnote marked {fn .} ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cÆsar's column a story of the twentieth century. by ignatius donnelly. writing as edmund boisgilbert, m.d. chicago, f.j. shulte & co. [ ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- table of contents to the public i the great city ii. my adventure iii. the beggar's home iv. the under-world v. estella washington vi. the interview vii. the hiding-place viii. the brotherhood ix. the poisoned knife x. preparations for to-night xi. how the world came to be ruined xii. gabriel's utopia xiii. the council of the oligarchy xiv. the spy's story xv. the master of "the demons" xvi. gabriel's folly xvii. the flight and pursuit xviii. the execution xix. the mamelukes of the air xx. the workingmen's meeting xxi. a sermon of the twentieth century xxii. estella and i xxiii. max's story-the songstress xxiv. max's story continued--the journeyman printer xxv. max's story continued--the dark shadow xxvi. max's story continued--the widow and her son xxvii. max's story continued--the blacksmith shop xxviii. max's story concluded--the unexpected happens xxix. elysium xxx. upon the house-top xxxi. "sheol" xxxii. the rat-trap xxxiii. "the ocean overpeers its list" xxxiv. the prince gives his last bribe xxxv. the liberated prisoner xxxvi. cÆsar erects his monument xxxvii. the second day xxxviii. the flight xxxix. europe xl. the garden in the mountains ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _"the true poet is only a masked father-confessor, whose special function it is to exhibit what is dangerous in sentiment and pernicious in action, by a vivid picture of the consequences."--goethe._ to the public it is to you, o thoughtful and considerate public, that i dedicate this book. may it, under the providence of god, do good to this generation and posterity! i earnestly hope my meaning, in the writing thereof, may not be misapprehended. it must not be thought, because i am constrained to describe the overthrow of civilization, that i desire it. the prophet is not responsible for the event he foretells. he may contemplate it with profoundest sorrow. christ wept over the doom of jerusalem. neither am i an anarchist: for i paint a dreadful picture of the world-wreck which successful anarchism would produce. i seek to preach into the ears of the able and rich and powerful the great truth that neglect of the sufferings of their fellows, indifference to the great bond of brotherhood which lies at the base of christianity, and blind, brutal and degrading worship of mere wealth, must--given time and pressure enough--eventuate in the overthrow of society and the destruction of civilization. i come to the churches with my heart filled with the profoundest respect for the essentials of religion; i seek to show them why they have lost their hold upon the poor,--upon that vast multitude, the best-beloved of god's kingdom,--and i point out to them how they may regain it. i tell them that if religion is to reassume her ancient station, as crowned mistress of the souls of men, she must stand, in shining armor bright, with the serpent beneath her feet, the champion and defender of mankind against all its oppressors. the world, to-day, clamors for deeds, not creeds; for bread, not dogma; for charity, not ceremony; for love, not intellect. some will say the events herein described are absurdly impossible. who is it that is satisfied with the present unhappy condition of society? it is conceded that life is a dark and wretched failure for the great mass of mankind. the many are plundered to enrich the few. vast combinations depress the price of labor and increase the cost of the necessaries of existence. the rich, as a rule, despise the poor; and the poor are coming to hate the rich. the face of labor grows sullen; the old tender christian love is gone; standing armies are formed on one side, and great communistic organizations on the other; society divides itself into two hostile camps; no white flags pass from the one to the other. they wait only for the drum-beat and the trumpet to summon them to armed conflict. these conditions have come about in less than a century; most of them in a quarter of a century. multiply them by the years of another century, and who shall say that the events i depict are impossible? there is an acceleration of movement in human affairs even as there is in the operations of gravity. the dead missile out of space at last blazes, and the very air takes fire. the masses grow more intelligent as they grow more wretched; and more capable of cooperation as they become more desperate. the labor organizations of to-day would have been impossible fifty years ago. and what is to arrest the flow of effect from cause? what is to prevent the coming of the night if the earth continues to revolve on its axis? the fool may cry out: "there shall be no night!" but the feet of the hours march unrelentingly toward the darkness. some may think that, even if all this be true, "cæsar's column" should not have been published. will it arrest the moving evil to ignore its presence? what would be thought of the surgeon who, seeing upon his patient's lip the first nodule of the cancer, tells him there is no danger, and laughs him into security while the roots of the monster eat their way toward the great arteries? if my message be true it should be spoken; and the world should hear it. the cancer should be cut out while there is yet time. any other course "will but skin and film the ulcerous place, while rank corruption, mining all beneath, infects unseen." believing, as i do, that i read the future aright, it would be criminal in me to remain silent. i plead for higher and nobler thoughts in the souls of men; for wider love and ampler charity in their hearts; for a renewal of the bond of brotherhood between the classes; for a reign of justice on earth that shall obliterate the cruel hates and passions which now divide the world. if god notices anything so insignificant as this poor book, i pray that he may use it as an instrumentality of good for mankind; for he knows i love his human creatures, and would help them if i had the power. chapter i the great city [this book is a series of letters, from gabriel weltstein, in new york, to his brother, heinrich weltstein, in the state of uganda, africa.] new york, sept. , my dear brother: here i am, at last, in the great city. my eyes are weary with gazing, and my mouth speechless with admiration; but in my brain rings perpetually the thought: wonderful!--wonderful!--most wonderful! what an infinite thing is man, as revealed in the tremendous civilization he has built up! these swarming, laborious, all-capable ants seem great enough to attack heaven itself, if they could but find a resting-place for their ladders. who can fix a limit to the intelligence or the achievements of our species? but our admiration may be here, and our hearts elsewhere. and so from all this glory and splendor i turn back to the old homestead, amid the high mountain valleys of africa; to the primitive, simple shepherd-life; to my beloved mother, to you and to all our dear ones. this gorgeous, gilded room fades away, and i see the leaning hills, the trickling streams, the deep gorges where our woolly thousands graze; and i hear once more the echoing swiss horns of our herdsmen reverberating from the snow-tipped mountains. but my dream is gone. the roar of the mighty city rises around me like the bellow of many cataracts. new york contains now ten million inhabitants; it is the largest city that is, or ever has been, in the world. it is difficult to say where it begins or ends: for the villas extend, in almost unbroken succession, clear to philadelphia; while east, west and north noble habitations spread out mile after mile, far beyond the municipal limits. but the wonderful city! let me tell you of it. as we approached it in our air-ship, coming from the east, we could see, a hundred miles before we reached the continent, the radiance of its millions of magnetic lights, reflected on the sky, like the glare of a great conflagration. these lights are not fed, as in the old time, from electric dynamos, but the magnetism of the planet itself is harnessed for the use of man. that marvelous earth-force which the indians called "the dance of the spirits," and civilized man designated "the aurora borealis," is now used to illuminate this great metropolis, with a clear, soft, white light, like that of the full moon, but many times brighter. and the force is so cunningly conserved that it is returned to the earth, without any loss of magnetic power to the planet. man has simply made a temporary loan from nature for which he pays no interest. night and day are all one, for the magnetic light increases automatically as the day-light wanes; and the business parts of the city swarm as much at midnight as at high noon. in the old times, i am told, part of the streets was reserved for foot-paths for men and women, while the middle was given up to horses and wheeled vehicles; and one could not pass from side to side without danger of being trampled to death by the horses. but as the city grew it was found that the pavements would not hold the mighty, surging multitudes; they were crowded into the streets, and many accidents occurred. the authorities were at length compelled to exclude all horses from the streets, in the business parts of the city, and raise the central parts to a level with the sidewalks, and give them up to the exclusive use of the pedestrians, erecting stone pillars here and there to divide the multitude moving in one direction from those flowing in another. these streets are covered with roofs of glass, which exclude the rain and snow, but not the air. and then the wonder and glory of the shops! they surpass all description. below all the business streets are subterranean streets, where vast trains are drawn, by smokeless and noiseless electric motors, some carrying passengers, others freight. at every street corner there are electric elevators, by which passengers can ascend or descend to the trains. and high above the house-tops, built on steel pillars, there are other railroads, not like the unsightly elevated trains we saw pictures of in our school books, but crossing diagonally over the city, at a great height, so as to best economize time and distance. the whole territory between broadway and the bowery and broome street and houston street is occupied by the depot grounds of the great inter-continental air-lines; and it is an astonishing sight to see the ships ascending and descending, like monstrous birds, black with swarming masses of passengers, to or from england, europe, south america, the pacific coast, australia, china, india and japan. these air-lines are of two kinds: the anchored and the independent. the former are hung, by revolving wheels, upon great wires suspended in the air; the wires held in place by metallic balloons, fish-shaped, made of aluminium, and constructed to turn with the wind so as to present always the least surface to the air-currents. these balloons, where the lines cross the oceans, are secured to huge floating islands of timber, which are in turn anchored to the bottom of the sea by four immense metallic cables, extending north, south, east and west, and powerful enough to resist any storms. these artificial islands contain dwellings, in which men reside, who keep up the supply of gas necessary for the balloons. the independent air-lines are huge cigar-shaped balloons, unattached to the earth, moving by electric power, with such tremendous speed and force as to be as little affected by the winds as a cannon ball. in fact, unless the wind is directly ahead the sails of the craft are so set as to take advantage of it like the sails of a ship; and the balloon rises or falls, as the birds do, by the angle at which it is placed to the wind, the stream of air forcing it up, or pressing it down, as the case may be. and just as the old-fashioned steam-ships were provided with boats, in which the passengers were expected to take refuge, if the ship was about to sink, so the upper decks of these air-vessels are supplied with parachutes, from which are suspended boats; and in case of accident two sailors and ten passengers are assigned to each parachute; and long practice has taught the bold craftsmen to descend gently and alight in the sea, even in stormy weather, with as much adroitness as a sea-gull. in fact, a whole population of air-sailors has grown up to manage these ships, never dreamed of by our ancestors. the speed of these aerial vessels is, as you know, very great--thirty-six hours suffices to pass from new york to london, in ordinary weather. the loss of life has been less than on the old-fashioned steamships; for, as those which go east move at a greater elevation than those going west, there is no danger of collisions; and they usually fly above the fogs which add so much to the dangers of sea-travel. in case of hurricanes they rise at once to the higher levels, above the storm; and, with our increased scientific knowledge, the coming of a cyclone is known for many days in advance; and even the stratum of air in which it will move can be foretold. i could spend hours, my dear brother, telling you of the splendor of this hotel, called _the darwin_, in honor of the great english philosopher of the last century. it occupies an entire block from fifth avenue to madison avenue, and from forty-sixth street to forty-seventh. the whole structure consists of an infinite series of cunning adjustments, for the delight and gratification of the human creature. one object seems to be to relieve the guests from all necessity for muscular exertion. the ancient elevator, or "lift," as they called it in england, has expanded until now whole rooms, filled with ladies and gentlemen, are bodily carried up from the first story to the roof; a professional musician playing the while on the piano--not the old-fashioned thing our grandmothers used, but a huge instrument capable of giving forth all sounds of harmony from the trill of a nightingale to the thunders of an orchestra. and when you reach the roof of the hotel you find yourself in a glass-covered tropical forest, filled with the perfume of many flowers, and bright with the scintillating plumage of darting birds; all sounds of sweetness fill the air, and many glorious, star-eyed maidens, guests of the hotel, wander half seen amid the foliage, like the houris in the mohammedan's heaven. but as i found myself growing hungry i descended to the dining-room. it is three hundred feet long: a vast multitude were there eating in perfect silence. it is considered bad form to interrupt digestion with speech, as such a practice tends to draw the vital powers, it is said, away from the stomach to the head. our forefathers were expected to shine in conversation, and be wise and witty while gulping their food between brilliant passages. i sat down at a table to which i was marshaled by a grave and reverend seignior in an imposing uniform. as i took my seat my weight set some machinery in motion. a few feet in front of me suddenly rose out of the table a large upright mirror, or such i took it to be; but instantly there appeared on its surface a grand bill of fare, each article being numbered. the whole world had been ransacked to produce the viands named in it; neither the frozen recesses of the north nor the sweltering regions of the south had been spared: every form of food, animal and vegetable, bird, beast, reptile, fish; the foot of an elephant, the hump of a buffalo, the edible bird-nests of china; snails, spiders, shell-fish, the strange and luscious creatures lately found in the extreme depths of the ocean and fished for with dynamite; in fact, every form of food pleasant to the palate of man was there. for, as you know, there are men who make fortunes now by preserving and breeding the game animals, like the deer, the moose, the elk, the buffalo, the antelope, the mountain sheep and goat, and many others, which but for their care would long since have become extinct. they select barren regions in mild climates, not fit for agriculture, and enclosing large tracts with wire fences, they raise great quantities of these valuable game animals, which they sell to the wealthy gourmands of the great cities, at very high prices. i was perplexed, and, turning to the great man who stood near me, i began to name a few of the articles i wanted. he smiled complacently at my country ignorance, and called my attention to the fact that the table immediately before me contained hundreds of little knobs or buttons, each one numbered; and he told me that these were connected by electric wires with the kitchen of the hotel, and if i would observe the numbers attached to any articles in the bill of fare which i desired, and would touch the corresponding numbers of the knobs before me, my dinner would be ordered on a similar mirror in the kitchen, and speedily served. i did as he directed. in a little while an electric bell near me rang; the bill of fare disappeared from the mirror; there was a slight clicking sound; the table parted in front of me, the electric knobs moving aside; and up through the opening rose my dinner carefully arranged, as upon a table, which exactly filled the gap caused by the recession of that part of the original table which contained the electric buttons. i need not say i was astonished. i commenced to eat, and immediately the same bell, which had announced the disappearance of the bill of fare, rang again. i looked up, and the mirror now contained the name of every state in the republic, from hudson's bay to the isthmus of darien; and the names of all the nations of the world; each name being numbered. my attendant, perceiving my perplexity, called my attention to the fact that the sides of the table which had brought up my dinner contained another set of electric buttons, corresponding with the numbers on the mirror; and he explained to me that if i would select any state or country and touch the corresponding button the news of the day, from that state or country, would appear in the mirror. he called my attention to, the fact that every guest in the room had in front of him a similar mirror, and many of them were reading the news of the day as they ate. i touched the knob corresponding with the name of the new state of uganda, in africa, and immediately there appeared in the mirror all the doings of the people of that state--its crimes, its accidents, its business, the output of its mines, the markets, the sayings and doings of its prominent men; in fact, the whole life of the community was unrolled before me like a panorama. i then touched the button for another african state, nyanza; and at once i began to read of new lines of railroad; new steam-ship fleets upon the great lake; of large colonies of white men, settling new states, upon the higher lands of the interior; of their colleges, books, newspapers; and particularly of a dissertation upon the genius of chaucer, written by a zulu professor, which had created considerable interest among the learned societies of the transvaal. i touched the button for china and read the important news that the republican congress of that great and highly civilized nation had decreed that english, the universal language of the rest of the globe, should be hereafter used in the courts of justice and taught in all the schools. then came the news that a manchurian professor, an iconoclast, had written a learned work, in english, to prove that george washington's genius and moral greatness had been much over-rated by the partiality of his countrymen. he was answered by a learned doctor of japan who argued that the greatness of all great men consisted simply in opportunity, and that for every illustrious name that shone in the pages of history, associated with important events, a hundred abler men had lived and died unknown. the battle was raging hotly, and all china and japan were dividing into contending factions upon this great issue. our poor ignorant ancestors of a hundred years ago drank alcohol in various forms, in quantities which the system could not consume or assimilate, and it destroyed their organs and shortened their lives. great agitations arose until the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages was prohibited over nearly all the world. at length the scientists observed that the craving was based on a natural want of the system; that alcohol was found in small quantities in nearly every article of food; and that the true course was to so increase the amount of alcohol in the food, without gratifying the palate, as to meet the real necessities of the system, and prevent a decrease of the vital powers. it is laughable to read of those days when men were drugged with pills, boluses and powders. now our physic is in our food; and the doctor prescribes a series of articles to be eaten or avoided, as the case may be. one can see at once by consulting his "vital-watch," which shows every change in the magnetic and electric forces of the body, just how his physical strength wanes or increases; and he can modify his diet accordingly; he can select, for instance, a dish highly charged with quinine or iron, and yet perfectly palatable; hence, among the wealthier classes, a man of one hundred is as common now-a-days as a man of seventy was a century ago; and many go far beyond that point, in full possession of all their faculties. i glanced around the great dining-room and inspected my neighbors. they all carried the appearance of wealth; they were quiet, decorous and courteous. but i could not help noticing that the women, young and old, were much alike in some particulars, as if some general causes had molded them into the same form. their brows were all fine--broad, square, and deep from the ear forward; and their jaws also were firmly developed, square like a soldier's; while the profiles were classic in their regularity, and marked by great firmness. the most peculiar feature was their eyes. they had none of that soft, gentle, benevolent look which so adorns the expression of my dear mother and other good women whom we know. on the contrary, their looks were bold, penetrating, immodest, if i may so express it, almost to fierceness: they challenged you; they invited you; they held intercourse with your soul. the chief features in the expression of the men were incredulity, unbelief, cunning, observation, heartlessness. i did not see a good face in the whole room: powerful faces there were, i grant you; high noses, resolute mouths, fine brows; all the marks of shrewdness and energy; a forcible and capable race; but that was all. i did not see one, my dear brother of whom i could say, "that man would sacrifice himself for another; that man loves his fellow man." i could not but think how universal and irresistible must have been the influences of the age that could mold all these men and women into the same soulless likeness. i pitied them. i pitied mankind, caught in the grip of such wide-spreading tendencies. i said to myself: "where is it all to end? what are we to expect of a race without heart or honor? what may we look for when the powers of the highest civilization supplement the instincts of tigers and wolves? can the brain of man flourish when the heart is dead?" i rose and left the room. i had observed that the air of the hotel was sweeter, purer and cooler than that of the streets outside. i asked one of the attendants for an explanation. he took me out to where we could command a view of the whole building, and showed me that a great canvas pipe rose high above the hotel, and, tracing it upwards, far as the eye could reach, he pointed out a balloon, anchored by cables, so high up as to be dwarfed to a mere speck against the face of the blue sky. he told me that the great pipe was double; that through one division rose the hot, exhausted air of the hotel, and that the powerful draft so created operated machinery which pumped down the pure, sweet air from a higher region, several miles above the earth; and, the current once established, the weight of the colder atmosphere kept up the movement, and the air was then distributed by pipes to every part of the hotel. he told me also that the hospitals of the city were supplied in the same manner; and the result had been, be said, to diminish the mortality of the sick one-half; for the air so brought to them was perfectly free from bacteria and full of all life-giving properties. a company had been organized to supply the houses of the rich with his cold, pure air for so much a thousand feet, as long ago illuminating gas was furnished. i could not help but think that there was need that some man should open connection with the upper regions of god's charity, and bring down the pure beneficent spirit of brotherly love to this afflicted earth, that it might spread through all the tainted hospitals of corruption for the healing of the hearts and souls of the people. this attendant, a sort of upper-servant, i suppose, was quite courteous and polite, and, seeing that i was a stranger, he proceeded to tell me that the whole city was warmed with hot water, drawn from the profound depths of the earth, and distributed as drinking water was distributed a century ago, in pipes, to all the houses, for a fixed and very reasonable charge. this heat-supply is so uniform and so cheap that it has quite driven out all the old forms of fuel--wood, coal, natural gas, etc. and then he told me something which shocked me greatly. you know that according to our old-fashioned ideas it is unjustifiable for any person to take his own life, and thus rush into the presence of his maker before he is called. we are of the opinion of hamlet that god has "fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter." would you believe it, my dear brother, in this city they actually facilitate suicide! a race of philosophers has arisen in the last fifty years who argue that, as man was not consulted about his coming into the world, he has a perfect right to leave it whenever it becomes uncomfortable. these strange arguments were supplemented by the economists, always a powerful body in this utilitarian land, and they urged that, as men could not be prevented from destroying themselves, if they had made up their minds to do so, they might just as well shuffle off the mortal coil in the way that would give least trouble to their surviving fellow-citizens. that, as it was, they polluted the rivers, and even the reservoirs of drinking-water, with their dead bodies, and put the city to great expense and trouble to recover and identify them. then came the humanitarians, who said that many persons, intent on suicide, but knowing nothing of the best means of effecting their object, tore themselves to pieces with cruel pistol shots or knife wounds, or took corrosive poisons, which subjected them to agonizing tortures for hours before death came to their relief; and they argued that if a man had determined to leave the world it was a matter of humanity to help him out of it by the pleasantest means possible. these views at length prevailed, and now in all the public squares or parks they have erected hand some houses, beautifully furnished, with baths and bedrooms. if a man has decided to die, he goes there. he is first photographed; then his name, if he sees fit to give it, is recorded, with his residence; and his directions are taken as to the disposition of his body. there are tables at which he can write his farewell letters to his friends. a doctor explains to him the nature and effect of the different poisons, and he selects the kind he prefers. he is expected to bring with him the clothes in which he intends to be cremated. he swallows a little pill, lies down upon a bed, or, if he prefers it, in his coffin; pleasant music is played for him; he goes to sleep, and wakes up on the other side of the great line. every day hundreds of people, men and women, perish in this way; and they are borne off to the great furnaces for the dead, and consumed. the authorities assert that it is a marked improvement over the old-fashioned methods; but to my mind it is a shocking combination of impiety and mock-philanthropy. the truth is, that, in this vast, over-crowded city, man is a drug,--a superfluity,--and i think many men and women end their lives out of an overwhelming sense of their own insignificance;--in other words, from a mere weariness of feeling that they are nothing, they become nothing. i must bring this letter to an end, but before retiring i shall make a visit to the grand parlors of the hotel. you suppose i will walk there. not at all, my dear brother. i shall sit down in a chair; there is an electric magazine in the seat of it. i touch a spring, and away it goes. i guide it with my feet. i drive into one of the great elevators. i descend to the drawing-room floor. i touch the spring again, and in a few moments i am moving around the grand salon, steering myself clear of hundreds of similar chairs, occupied by fine-looking men or the beautiful, keen-eyed, unsympathetic women i have described. the race has grown in power and loveliness--i fear it has lost in lovableness. good-by. with love to all, i remain your affectionate brotherly gabriel weltstein. chapter ii. my adventure my dear heinrich: i little supposed when i wrote you yesterday that twenty four hours could so completely change my circumstances. then i was a dweller in the palatial darwin hotel, luxuriating in all its magnificence. now i am hiding in a strange house and trembling for my liberty;--but i will tell you all. yesterday morning, after i had disposed by sample of our wool, and had called upon the assayer of ores, but without finding him, to show him the specimens of our mineral discoveries, i returned to the hotel, and there, after obtaining directions from one of the clerks at the "bureau of information," i took the elevated train to the great central park. i shall not pause to describe at length the splendors of this wonderful place; the wild beasts roaming about among the trees, apparently at dangerous liberty, but really inclosed by fine steel wire fences, almost invisible to the eye; the great lakes full of the different water fowl of the world; the air thick with birds distinguished for the sweetness of their song or the brightness of their plumage; the century-old trees, of great size and artistically grouped; beautiful children playing upon the greensward, accompanied by nurses and male servants; the whole scene constituting a holiday picture. between the trees everywhere i saw the white and gleaming statues of the many hundreds of great men and women who have adorned the history of this country during the last two hundred years--poets, painters, musicians, soldiers, philanthropists, statesmen. after feasting my eyes for some time upon this charming picture of rural beauty, i left the park. soon after i had passed through the outer gate,-guarded by sentinels to exclude the ragged and wretched multitude, but who at the same time gave courteous admission to streams of splendid carriages,--i was startled by loud cries of "look out there!" i turned and saw a sight which made my blood run cold. a gray-haired, hump-backed beggar, clothed in rags, was crossing the street in front of a pair of handsome horses, attached to a magnificent open carriage. the burly, ill-looking flunkey who, clad in gorgeous livery, was holding the lines, had uttered the cry of warning, but at the same time had made no effort to check the rapid speed of his powerful horses. in an instant the beggar was down under the hoofs of the steeds. the flunkey laughed! i was but a few feet distant on the side-walk, and, quick as thought, i had the horses by their heads and pushed them back upon their haunches. at this moment the beggar, who had been under the feet of the horses, crawled out close to the front wheels of the carriage; and the driver, indignant that anything so contemptible should arrest the progress of his magnificent equipage, struck him a savage blow with his whip, as he was struggling to his feet. i saw the whip wind around his neck; and, letting go the horses' heads, who were now brought to a stand-still, i sprang forward, and as the whip descended for a second blow i caught it, dragged it from the hand of the miscreant, and with all my power laid it over him. each blow where it touched his flesh brought the blood, and two long red gashes appeared instantaneously upon his face. he dropped his lines and shrieked in terror, holding his hands up to protect his face. fortunately a crowd had assembled, and some poorly dressed men had seized the horses' heads, or there would have been a run-away. as i raised my hand to lash the brute again, a feminine shriek reached my ears, and i became aware that there were ladies in the open barouche. my sense of politeness overcame in an instant my rage, and i stepped back, and, taking off my hat, began to apologize and explain the cause of the difficulty. as i did so i observed that the occupants of the carriage were two young ladies, both strikingly handsome, but otherwise very unlike in appearance. the one nearest me, who had uttered the shrieks, was about twenty years of age, i should think, with aquiline features, and black eyes and hair; every detail of the face was perfect, but there was a bold, commonplace look out of the bright eyes. her companion instantly arrested all my attention. it seemed to me i had never beheld a more beautiful. and striking countenance. she was younger, by two or three years, than her companion; her complexion was fairer; her long golden hair fell nearly to her waist, enfolding her like a magnificent, shining garment; her eyes were blue and large and set far apart; and there was in them, and in the whole contour of the face, a look of honesty and dignity, and calm intelligence, rarely witnessed in the countenance of woman. she did not appear to be at all alarmed; and when i told my story of the driver lashing the aged beggar, her face lighted up, and she said, with a look that thrilled me, and in a soft and gentle voice: "we are much obliged to you, sir; you did perfectly right." i was about to reply, when i felt some one tugging fiercely at my coat, and turning around, i was surprised to find that the beggar was drawing me away from the carriage by main force. i was astonished also at the change in his appearance. the aspect of decrepitude had disappeared, a green patch that i had noticed covering one of his eyes had fallen off, and his black eyes shone with a look of command and power that was in marked contrast with his gray hair, his crooked back, and his rags. "come," he said, in a hoarse whisper, "come quickly, or you will be arrested and cast into prison." "what for?" i asked. "i will tell you hereafter--look!" i looked around me and saw that a great crowd had collected as if by magic, for this city of ten millions of people so swarms with inhabitants that the slightest excitement will assemble a multitude in a few minutes. i noticed, too, in the midst of the mob, a uniformed policeman. the driver saw him also, and, recovering his courage, cried out, "arrest him--arrest him." the policeman seized me by the collar. i observed that at that instant the beggar whispered something in his ear: the officer's hand released its hold upon my coat. the next moment the beggar cried out, "back! back! look out! dynamite!" the crowd crushed back on each other in great confusion; and i felt the beggar dragging me off, repeating his cry of warning--"dynamite! dynamite!"--at every step, until the mob scattered in wild confusion, and i found myself breathless in a small alley. "come, come," cried my companion, "there is no time to lose. hurry, hurry!" we rushed along, for the manner of the beggar inspired me with a terror i could not explain, until, after passing through several back streets and small alleys, with which the beggar seemed perfectly familiar, we emerged on a large street and soon took a corner elevator up to one of the railroads in the air which i have described. after traveling for two or three miles we exchanged to another train, and from that to still another, threading our way backward and forward over the top of the great city. at length, as if the beggar thought we had gone far enough to baffle pursuit, we descended upon a bustling business street, and paused at a corner; and the beggar appeared to be looking out for a hack. he permitted a dozen to pass us, however, carefully inspecting the driver of each. at last he hailed one, and we took our seats. he gave some whispered directions to the driver, and we dashed off. "throw that out of the window," he said. i followed the direction of his eyes and saw that i still held in my hand the gold-mounted whip which i had snatched from the hand of the driver. in my excitement i had altogether forgotten its existence, but had instinctively held on to it. "i will send it back to the owner," i said. "no, no; throw it away: that is enough to convict you of highway robbery." i started, and exclaimed: "nonsense; highway robbery to whip a blackguard?" "yes. you stop the carriage of an aristocrat; you drag a valuable whip out of the hand of his coachman; and you carry it off. if that is not highway robbery, what is it? throw it away." his manner was imperative. i dropped the whip out of the window and fell into a brown study. i occasionally stole a glance at my strange companion, who, with the dress of extreme poverty, and the gray hair of old age, had such a manner of authority and such an air of promptitude and decision. after about a half-hour's ride we stopped at the corner of two streets in front of a plain but respectable-looking house. it seemed to be in the older part of the town. my companion paid the driver and dismissed him, and, opening the door, we entered. i need not say that i began to think this man was something more than a beggar. but why this disguise? and who was he? chapter iii. the beggar's home the house we entered was furnished with a degree of splendor of which the external appearance gave no prophecy. we passed up the stairs and into a handsome room, hung around with pictures, and adorned with book-cases. the beggar left me. i sat for some time looking at my surroundings, and wondering over the strange course of events which had brought me there, and still more at the actions of my mysterious companion. i felt assured now that his rags were simply a disguise, for he entered the house with all the air of a master; his language was well chosen and correctly spoken, and possessed those subtle tones and intonations which mark an educated mind. i was thinking over these matters when the door opened and a handsome young gentleman, arrayed in the height of the fashion, entered the room. i rose to my feet and began to apologize for my intrusion and to explain that i had been brought there by a beggar to whom i had rendered some trifling service in the street. the young gentleman listened, with a smiling face, and then, extending his hand, said: "i am the beggar; and i do now what only the hurry and excitement prevented me from doing before--i thank you for the life you have saved. if you had not come to my rescue i should probably have been trampled to death under the feet of those vicious horses, or sadly beaten at least by that brutal driver." the expression of my face doubtless showed my extreme astonishment, for he proceeded: "i see you are surprised; but there are many strange things in this great city. i was disguised for a particular purpose, which i cannot explain to you. but may i not request the name of the gentleman to whom i am under so many obligations? of course, if you have any reasons for concealing it, consider the question as not asked." "no," i replied, smiling, "i have no concealments. my name is gabriel weltstein; i live in the new state of uganda, in the african confederation, in the mountains of africa, near the town of stanley; and i am engaged in sheep-raising, in the mountains. i belong to a colony of swiss, from the canton of uri, who, led by my grandfather, settled there. seventy years ago. i came to this city yesterday to see if i could not sell my wool directly to the manufacturers, and thus avoid the extortions of the great wool ring, which has not only our country but the whole world in its grasp; but i find the manufacturers are tied hand and foot, and afraid of that powerful combination; they do not dare to deal with me; and thus i shall have to dispose of my product at the old price. it is a shameful state of affairs in a country which calls itself free." "pardon me for a moment," said the young gentleman, and left the room. on his return i resumed: "but now that i have told you who i am, will you be good enough to tell me something about yourself?" "certainly," he replied, "and with pleasure. i am a native of this city; my name is maximilian petion; by profession i am an attorney; i live in this house with my mother, to whom i shall soon have the pleasure of introducing you." "thank you," i replied, still studying the face of my new acquaintance. his complexion was dark, the eyes and hair almost black; the former very bright and penetrating; his brow was high, broad and square; his nose was prominent, and there was about the mouth an expression of firmness, not unmixed with kindness. altogether it was a face to inspire respect and confidence. but i made up my mind not to trust too much to appearances. i could not forget the transformation which i had witnessed, from the rags of the ancient beggar to this well-dressed young gentleman. i knew that the criminal class were much given to such disguises. i thought it better therefore to ask some questions that might throw light upon the subject. "may i inquire," i said, "what were your reasons for hurrying me away so swiftly and mysteriously from the gate of the park?" "because," he replied, "you were in great danger, and you had rendered me a most important service. i could not leave you there to be arrested, and punished with a long period of imprisonment, because, following the impulse of your heart, you had saved my life and scourged the wretch who would have driven his horses over me." "but why should i be punished with a long term of imprisonment? in my own country the act i performed would have received the applause of every one. why did you not tell me to throw away that whip on the instant, so as to avoid the appearance of stealing it, and then remain to testify in my behalf if i had been arrested?" "then you do not know," he replied, "whose driver it was you horsewhipped?" "no," i said; "how should i? i arrived here but yesterday." "that was the carriage of prince cabano, the wealthiest and most vindictive man in the city. if you had been taken you would have been consigned to imprisonment for probably many years." "many years," i replied; "imprisoned for beating an insolent driver! impossible. no jury would convict me of such an offense." "jury!" he said, with a bitter smile; "it is plain to see you are a stranger and come from a newly settled part of the world, and know nothing of our modern civilization. the jury would do whatever prince cabano desired them to do. our courts, judges and juries are the merest tools of the rich. the image of justice has slipped the bandage from one eye, and now uses her scales to weigh the bribes she receives. an ordinary citizen has no more prospect of fair treatment in our courts, contending with a millionaire, than a new-born infant would have of life in the den of a wolf." "but," i replied, rather hotly, "i should appeal for justice to the public through the newspapers." "the newspapers!" he said, and his face darkened as he spoke; "the newspapers are simply the hired mouthpieces of power; the devil's advocates of modern civilization; their influence is always at the service of the highest bidder; it is their duty to suppress or pervert the truth, and they do it thoroughly. they are paid to mislead the people under the guise of defending them. a century ago this thing began, and it has gone on, growing worse and worse, until now the people laugh at the opinions of the press, and doubt the truth even of its reports of occurrences." "can this be possible?" i said. "let me demonstrate it to you," he replied, and, stepping to the wall, he spoke quietly into a telephone tube, of which there were a number ranged upon the wall, and said: "give me the particulars of the whipping of prince cabano's coachman, this afternoon, at the south gate of central park." almost immediately a bell rang, and on the opposite wall, in what i had supposed to be a mirror, appeared these words: _from the evening guardian:_ a horrible outrage! highway robbery!--one thousand dollars reward! this afternoon, about three o'clock, an event transpired at the south gate of central park which shows the turbulent and vicious spirit of the lower classes, and reinforces the demand we have so often made for repressive measures and a stronger government. as the carriage of our honored fellow-citizen prince cabano, containing two ladies, members of his family, was quietly entering the park, a tall, powerful ruffian, apparently a stranger, with long yellow hair, reaching to his shoulders, suddenly grasped a valuable gold-mounted whip out of the hands of the driver, and, because he resisted the robbery, beat him across the face, inflicting very severe wounds. the horses became very much terrified, and but for the fact that two worthy men, john henderson of delavan street, and william brooks of bismarck street, seized them by the head, a terrible accident would undoubtedly have occurred. policeman number b took the villain prisoner, but he knocked the guardian of the law down and escaped, accompanied by a ragged old fellow who seemed to have been his accomplice. it is believed that the purpose of the thieves was to rob the occupants of the carriage, as the taller one approached the ladies, but just then his companion saw the policeman coming and gave him warning, and they fled together. prince cabano is naturally very much incensed at this outrage, and has offered a reward of one thousand dollars for the apprehension of either of the ruffians. they have been tracked for a considerable distance by the detectives; but after leaving the elevated cars all trace of them was suddenly and mysteriously lost. the whip was subsequently found on bomba street and identified. neither of the criminals is known to the police. the taller one was quite young and fairly well dressed, and not ill-looking, while his companion had the appearance of a beggar, and seemed to be about seventy years of age. the chief of police will pay liberally for any information that may lead to the arrest of the robbers. "there," said my companion, "what do you think of that?" i need not say that i was paralyzed with this adroit mingling of fact and falsehood. i realized for the first time the perils of my situation. i was a stranger in the great city, without a friend or acquaintance, and hunted like a felon! while all these thoughts passed through my brain, there came also a pleasing flash of remembrance of that fair face, and that sweet and gentle smile, and that beaming look of gratitude and approval of my action in whipping the brutal driver. but if my new acquaintance was right; if neither courts nor juries nor newspapers nor public opinion could be appealed to for justice or protection, then indeed might i be sent to prison as a malefactor, for a term of years, for performing a most righteous act. if it was true, and i had heard something of the same sort in my far-away african home, that money ruled everything in this great country; and if his offended lordship desired to crush me, he could certainly do so. while i was buried in these reflections i had not failed to notice that an electric bell rang upon the side of the chamber and a small box opened, and the young gentleman advanced and took from the box a sheet of tissue paper, closely written. i recognized it as a telegram. he read it carefully, and i noticed him stealing glances at me, as if comparing the details of my appearance with something written on the paper. when he finished he advanced toward me, with a brighter look on his face, and, holding out his hand, said: "i have already hailed you as my benefactor, my preserver; permit me now to call you my friend." "why do you say so?" i asked. "because," he replied, "i now know that every statement you made to me about yourself is literally true; and that in your personal character you deserve the respect and friendship of all men. you look perplexed. let me explain. you told me some little time since your name and place of residence. i belong to a society which has its ramifications all over the world. when i stepped out of this room i sent an inquiry to the town near which you reside, and asked if such a person as you claimed to be lived there; what was his appearance, standing and character, and present residence. i shall not shock your modesty by reading the reply i have just received. you will pardon this distrust, but we here in the great city are suspicious, and properly so, of strangers, and even more so of each other. i did not know but that you were in the employment of the enemies of our society, and sought to get into my confidence by rendering me a service,--for the tricks to which the detectives resort are infinite. i now trust you implicitly, and you can command me in everything." i took his hand warmly and thanked him cordially. it was impossible to longer doubt that frank and beaming face. "but," i said, "are we not in great danger? will not that hackman, for the sake of the reward, inform the police of our whereabouts?" "no!" he said; "have no fears upon that score. did you not observe that i permitted about a dozen hacks to pass me before i hailed the one that brought us here? that man wore on his dress a mark that told me he belonged to our brotherhood. he knows that if he betrays us he will die within twenty-four hours, and that there is no power on earth could save him; if he fled to the uttermost ends of the earth his doom would overtake him with the certainty of fate. so have no uneasiness. we are as safe here as if a standing army of a hundred thousand of our defenders surrounded this house." "is that the explanation," i asked, "of the policeman releasing his grip upon my coat?" "yes," he replied, quietly. "now," said i, "who is this prince cabano, and how does he happen to be called prince? i thought your republic eschewed all titles of nobility." "so it does," he replied, "by law. but we have a great many titles which are used socially, by courtesy. the prince, for instance, when he comes to sign his name to a legal document, writes it jacob isaacs. but his father, when he grew exceedingly rich and ambitious, purchased a princedom in italy for a large sum, and the government, being hard up for money, conferred the title of prince with the estate. his son, the present isaacs, succeeded, of course, to his estates and his title." "'isaacs," i said, "is a jewish name?" "yes," he replied, "the aristocracy of the world is now almost altogether of hebrew origin." "indeed," i asked, "how does that happen?" "well," he replied, "it was the old question of the survival of the fittest. christianity fell upon the jews, originally a race of agriculturists and shepherds, and forced them, for many centuries, through the most terrible ordeal of persecution the history of mankind bears any record of. only the strong of body, the cunning of brain, the long-headed, the persistent, the men with capacity to live where a dog would starve, survived the awful trial. like breeds like; and now the christian world is paying, in tears and blood, for the sufferings inflicted by their bigoted and ignorant ancestors upon a noble race. when the time came for liberty and fair play the jew was master in the contest with the gentile, who hated and feared him. "they are the great money-getters of the world. they rose from dealers in old clothes and peddlers of hats to merchants, to bankers, to princes. they were as merciless to the christian as the christian had been to them. they said, with shylock: 'the villainy you teach me i will execute; and it shall go hard but i will better the instruction.' the 'wheel of fortune has come full circle;' and the descendants of the old peddlers now own and inhabit the palaces where their ancestors once begged at the back doors for secondhand clothes; while the posterity of the former lords have been, in many cases, forced down into the swarming misery of the lower classes. this is a sad world, and to contemplate it is enough to make a man a philosopher; but he will scarcely know whether to belong to the laughing or the weeping school--whether to follow the example of democritus or heraclitus." "and may i ask," i said, "what is the nature of your society?" "i cannot tell you more at this time," he replied, "than that it is a political secret society having a membership of millions, and extending all over the world. its purposes are the good of mankind. some day, i hope, you may learn more about it. come," he added, "let me show you my house, and introduce you to my mother." touching a secret spring in the wall, a hidden door flew open, and we entered a small room. i thought i had gotten into the dressing-room of a theater. around the walls hung a multitude of costumes, male and female, of different sizes, and suited for all conditions of life. on the table were a collection of bottles, holding what i learned were hair dyes of different colors; and there was also an assortment of wigs, beards and mustaches of all hues. i thought i recognized among the former the coarse white hair of the quondam beggar. i pointed it out to him. "yes," he said, with a laugh, "i will not be able to wear that for some time to come." upon another table there was a formidable array of daggers, pistols and guns; and some singular-looking iron and copper things, which he told me were cartridges of dynamite and other deadly explosives. i realized that my companion was a conspirator. but of what kind? i could not believe evil of him. there was a manliness and kindliness in his face which forbade such a thought; although the square chin and projecting jaws and firm-set mouth indicated a nature that could be most dangerous; and i noticed sometimes a restless, wild look in his eyes. i followed him into another room, where he introduced me to a sweet-faced old lady, with the same broad brow and determined, but gentle, mouth which so distinguished her son. it was evident that there was great love between them, although her face wore a troubled and anxious look, at times, as she regarded him. it seemed to me that she knew he was engaged in dangerous enterprises. she advanced to me with a smile and grasped both my hands with her own, as she said: "my son has already told me that you have this day rendered him and me an inestimable service. i need not say that i thank you with all my heart." i made light of the matter and assured her that i was under greater obligations to her son than he was to me. soon after we sat down to dinner, a sumptuous meal, to which it seemed to me all parts of the world had contributed. we had much pleasant conversation, for both the host and hostess were persons of ripe information. in the old days our ancestors wasted years of valuable time in the study of languages that were no longer spoken on the earth; and civilization was thus cramped by the shadow of the ancient roman empire, whose dead but sceptered sovereigns still ruled the spirits of mankind from their urns. now every hour is considered precious for the accumulation of actual knowledge of facts and things, and for the cultivation of the graces of the mind; so that mankind has become wise in breadth of knowledge, and sweet and gentle in manner. i expressed something of this thought to maximilian, and he replied: "yes; it is the greatest of pities that so noble and beautiful a civilization should have become so hollow and rotten at the core." "rotten at the core!" i exclaimed, in astonishment; "what do you mean?" "what i mean is that our civilization has grown to be a gorgeous shell; a mere mockery; a sham; outwardly fair and lovely, but inwardly full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. to think that mankind is so capable of good, and now so cultured and polished, and yet all above is cruelty, craft and destruction, and all below is suffering, wretchedness, sin and shame." "what do you mean?" i asked. "that civilization is a gross and dreadful failure for seven-tenths of the human family; that seven-tenths of the backs of the world are insufficiently clothed; seven-tenths of the stomachs of the world are insufficiently fed; seven-tenths of the minds of the world are darkened and despairing, and filled with bitterness against the author of the universe. it is pitiful to think what society is, and then to think what it might have been if our ancestors had not cast away their magnificent opportunities--had not thrown them into the pens of the swine of greed and gluttony." "but," i replied, "the world does not look to me after that fashion. i have been expressing to my family my delight at viewing the vast triumphs of man over nature, by which the most secret powers of the universe have been captured and harnessed for the good of our race. why, my friend, this city preaches at every pore, in every street and alley, in every shop and factory, the greatness of humanity, the splendor of civilization!" "true, my friend," replied maximilian; "but you see only the surface, the shell, the crust of life in this great metropolis. to-morrow we will go out together, and i shall show you the fruits of our modern civilization. i shall take you, not upon the upper deck of society, where the flags are flying, the breeze blowing, and the music playing, but down into the dark and stuffy depths of the hold of the great vessel, where the sweating gnomes, in the glare of the furnace-heat, furnish the power which drives the mighty ship resplendent through the seas of time. we will visit the _under-world_." but i must close for tonight, and subscribe myself affectionately your brother, gabriel chapter iv. the under-world my dear heinrich: since i wrote you last night i have been through dreadful scenes. i have traversed death in life. i have looked with my very eyes on hell. i am sick at heart. my soul sorrows for humanity. max (for so i have come to call my new-found friend) woke me very early, and we breakfasted by lamp-light. yesterday he had himself dyed my fair locks of a dark brown, almost black hue, and had cut off some of my hair's superfluous length. then he sent for a tailor, who soon arrayed me in garments of the latest fashion and most perfect fit. instead of the singular-looking mountaineer of the day before, for whom the police were diligently searching, and on whose head a reward of one thousand dollars had been placed (never before had my head been valued so highly), there was nothing in my appearance to distinguish me from the thousands of other gallant young gentlemen of this great city. a carriage waited for us at the door. we chatted together as we drove along through the quiet streets. i asked him: "are the degraded, and even the vicious, members of your brotherhood?" "no; not the criminal class," he replied, "for there is nothing in their wretched natures on which you can build confidence or trust. only those who have fiber enough to persist in labor, under conditions which so strongly tend to drive them into crime, can be members of our brotherhood." "may i ask the number of your membership?" "in the whole world they amount to more than one hundred millions." i started with astonishment. "but amid such numbers," i said, "there must certainly be some traitors?" "true, but the great multitude have nothing to tell. they are the limbs and members, as it were, of the organization; the directing intelligence dwells elsewhere. the multitude are like the soldiers of an army; they will obey when the time comes; but they are not taken into the councils of war." a half hour's ride brought us into the domain of the poor. an endless procession of men and women with pails and baskets--small-sized pails and smaller baskets--streamed along the streets on their way to work. it was not yet six o'clock. i observed that both men and women were undersized, and that they all very much resembled each other; as if similar circumstances had squeezed them into the same likeness. there was no spring to their steps and no laughter in their eyes; all were spare of frame and stolid or hungry-looking. the faces of the middle-aged men were haggard and wore a hopeless expression. many of them scowled at us, with a look of hatred, as we passed by them in our carriage. a more joyless, sullen crowd i never beheld. street after street they unrolled before us; there seemed to be millions of them. they were all poorly clad, and many of them in rags. the women, with the last surviving instinct of the female heart, had tried to decorate themselves; and here and there i could observe a bit of bright color on bonnet or apron; but the bonnets represented the fashions of ten years past, and the aprons were too often frayed and darned, and relics of some former, more opulent owners. there were multitudes of children, but they were without the gambols which characterize the young of all animals; and there was not even the chirp of a winter bird about them; their faces were prematurely aged and hardened, and their bold eyes revealed that sin had no surprises for them. and every one of these showed that intense look which marks the awful struggle for food and life upon which they had just entered. the multitude seemed, so far as i could judge, to be of all nations commingled--the french, german, irish, english--hungarians, italians, russians, jews, christians, and even chinese and japanese; for the slant eyes of many, and their imperfect, tartar-like features, reminded me that the laws made by the republic, in the elder and better days, against the invasion of the mongolian hordes, had long since become a dead letter. what struck me most was their incalculable multitude and their silence. it seemed to me that i was witnessing the resurrection of the dead; and that these vast, streaming, endless swarms were the condemned, marching noiselessly as shades to unavoidable and everlasting misery. they seemed to me merely automata, in the hands of some ruthless and unrelenting destiny. they lived and moved, but they were without heart or hope. the illusions of the imagination, which beckon all of us forward, even over the roughest paths and through the darkest valleys and shadows of life, had departed from the scope of their vision. they knew that to-morrow could bring them nothing better than today--the same shameful, pitiable, contemptible, sordid struggle for a mere existence. if they produced children it was reluctantly or unmeaningly; for they knew the wretches must tread in their footsteps, and enter, like them, that narrow, gloomy, high-walled pathway, out of which they could never climb; which began almost in infancy and ended in a pauper's grave--nay, i am wrong, not even in a pauper's grave; for they might have claimed, perhaps, some sort of ownership over the earth which enfolded them, which touched them and mingled with their dust. but public safety and the demands of science had long ago decreed that they should be whisked off, as soon as dead, a score or two at a time, and swept on iron tram-cars into furnaces heated to such intense white heat that they dissolved, crackling, even as they entered the chamber, and rose in nameless gases through the high chimney. that towering structure was the sole memorial monument of millions of them. their graveyard was the air. nature reclaimed her own with such velocity that she seemed to grudge them the very dust she had lent them during their wretched pilgrimage. the busy, toiling, rushing, roaring, groaning universe, big with young, appeared to cry out: "away with them! away with them! they have had their hour! they have performed their task. here are a billion spirits waiting for the substance we loaned them. the spirits are boundless in number; matter is scarce. away with them!" i need not tell you, my dear brother, of all the shops and factories we visited. it was the same story everywhere. here we saw exemplified, in its full perfection, that "iron law of wages" which the old economists spoke of; that is to say, the reduction, by competition, of the wages of the worker to the least sum that will maintain life and muscular strength enough to do the work required, with such little surplus of vitality as might be necessary to perpetuate the wretched race; so that the world's work should not end with the death of one starved generation. i do not know if there is a hell in the spiritual universe, but if there is not, one should certainly be created for the souls of the men who originated, or justified, or enforced that damnable creed. it is enough, if nothing else, to make one a christian, when he remembers how diametrically opposite to the teaching of the grand doctrine of brotherly love, enunciated by the gentle nazarene, is this devil's creed of cruelty and murder, with all its steadily increasing world-horrors, before which to-day the universe stands appalled. oh! the pitiable scenes, my brother, that i have witnessed! room after room; the endless succession of the stooped, silent toilers; old, young; men, women, children. and most pitiable of all, the leering, shameless looks of invitation cast upon us by the women, as they saw two well-dressed men pass by them. it was not love, nor license, nor even lust; it was degradation,--willing to exchange everything for a little more bread. and such rooms--garrets, sheds--dark, foul, gloomy; overcrowded; with such a stench in the thick air as made us gasp when entering it; an atmosphere full of life, hostile to the life of man. think, my brother, as you sit upon your mountain side; your gentle sheep feeding around you; breathing the exquisite air of those elevated regions; and looking off over the mysterious, ancient world, and the great river valleys leading down to the marvelous nile-land afar,--land of temples, ruins, pyramids,--cradle of civilization, grave of buried empires,--think, i say, of these millions condemned to live their brief, hopeless span of existence under such awful conditions! see them as they eat their mid-day meal. no delightful pause from pleasant labor; no brightly arrayed table; no laughing and loving faces around a plenteous board, with delicacies from all parts of the world; no agreeable interchange of wisdom and wit and courtesy and merriment. no; none of these. without stopping in their work, under the eyes of sullen task-masters, they snatch bites out of their hard, dark bread, like wild animals, and devour it ravenously.{fr. } toil, toil, toil, from early morn until late at night; then home they swarm; tumble into their wretched beds; snatch a few hours of disturbed sleep, battling with vermin, in a polluted atmosphere; and then up again and to work; and so on, and on, in endless, mirthless, hopeless round; until, in a few years, consumed with disease, mere rotten masses of painful wretchedness, they die, and are wheeled off to the great i asked one of the foremen what wages these men and women received. he told me. it seemed impossible that human life could be maintained upon such a pittance. i then asked whether they ever ate meat. "no," he said, "except when they had a rat or mouse" "a rat or mouse!" i exclaimed. "oh yes," he replied, "the rats and mice were important articles of diet,--just as they had been for centuries in china. the little children, not yet able to work, fished for them in the sewers, with hook and line, precisely as they had done a century ago in paris, during the great german siege. a dog," he added, "was a great treat. when the authorities killed the vagrant hounds there was a big scramble among the poor for the bodies." i was shocked at these statements; and then i remembered that some philosopher had argued that cannibalism had survived almost to our own times, in the islands of the pacific ocean, because they had contained no animals of large size with which the inhabitants could satisfy the dreadful craving of the system for flesh-food; and hence they devoured their captives. "do these people ever marry?" i inquired. "marry!" he exclaimed, with a laugh; "why, they could not afford to pay the fee required by law. and why should they marry? there is no virtue among them. no," he said, "they had almost gotten down to the condition of the australian savages, who, if not prevented by the police, would consummate their animal-like nuptials in the public streets." maximilian told me that this man was one of the brotherhood. i did not wonder at it. from the shops and mills of honest industry, maximilian led me--it was still broad daylight--into the criminal quarters. we saw the wild beasts in their lairs; in the iron cages of circumstance which civilization has built around them, from which they too readily break out to desolate their fellow-creatures. but here, too, were the fruits of misgovernment. if it were possible we might trace back from yonder robber and murderer--a human hyena--the long ancestral line of brutality, until we see it starting from some poor peasant of the middle ages, trampled into crime under the feet of feudalism. the little seed of weakness or wickedness has been carefully nursed by society, generation after generation, until it has blossomed at last in this destructive monster. civilization has formulated a new variety of the genus _homo_--and it must inevitably perpetuate its kind. the few prey on the many; and in turn a few of the many prey upon all. these are the brutal violators of justice, who go to prison, or to the scaffold, for breaking through a code of laws under which peaceful but universal injustice is wrought. if there were enough of these outlaws they might establish a system of jurisprudence for the world under which it would be lawful to rob and murder by the rule of the strong right hand, but criminal to reduce millions to wretchedness by subtle and cunning arts; and, hoity-toity, the prisons would change their tenants, and the brutal plunderers of the few would give place to the cultured spoilers of the many. and when you come to look at it, my brother, how shall we compare the conditions of the well-to-do-man, who has been merely robbed of his watch and purse, even at the cost of a broken head, which will heal in a few days, with the awful doom of the poor multitude, who from the cradle to the grave work without joy and live without hope? who is there that would take back his watch and purse at the cost of changing places with one of these wretches? and who is there that, if the choice were presented to him, would not prefer instant death, which is but a change of conditions, a flight from world to world, or at worst annihilation, rather than to be hurled into the living tomb which i have depicted, there to grovel and writhe, pressed down by the sordid mass around him, until death comes to his relief? and so it seems to me that, in the final analysis of reason, the great criminals of the world are not these wild beasts, who break through all laws, whose selfishness takes the form of the bloody knife, the firebrand, or the bludgeon; but those who, equally selfish, corrupt the foundations of government and create laws and conditions by which millions suffer, and out of which these murderers and robbers naturally and unavoidably arise. but i must bring this long letter to a conclusion, and subscribe myself, with love to all, your affectionate brother, gabriel chapter v. estella washington my dear heinrich: one morning after breakfast, max and i were seated in the library, enjoying our matutinal cigars, when, the conversation flagging, i asked maximilian whether he had noticed the two young ladies who were in the prince of cabano's carriage the morning i whipped the driver. he replied that he had not observed them particularly, as he was too much excited and alarmed for my safety to pay especial attention to anything else; but he had seen that there were two young women in the barouche, and his glance had shown him they were both handsome. "have you any idea who they were?" i asked after a pause, for i shrank from revealing the interest i took in one of them. "no," said he, indifferently; "probably a couple of the prince's mistresses." the word stung me like an adder; and i half rose from my chair, my face suffused and my eyes indignant. "why, what is the matter?" asked maximilian; "i hope i have said nothing to offend you." i fell back in my chair, ashamed of the exhibition of feeling into which i had been momentarily betrayed, and replied: "oh, no; but i am sure you are wrong. if you had looked, for but a moment, at the younger of the two, you would never have made such a remark." "i meant no harm," he answered, "but the prince is a widower; he has a perfect harem in his palace; he has his agents at work everywhere buying up handsome women; and when i saw two such in his carriage, i naturally came to the conclusion that they were of that character." "buying up women!" i exclaimed; "what are you talking about? this is free america, and the twentieth century. do you dream that it is a mohammedan land?" "it isn't anything half so good," he retorted; "it is enslaved america; and the older we grow the worse for us. there was a golden age once in america--an age of liberty; of comparatively equal distribution of wealth; of democratic institutions. now we have but the shell and semblance of all that. we are a republic only in name; free only in forms. mohammedanism--and we must do the arabian prophet the justice to say that he established a religion of temperance and cleanliness, without a single superstition--never knew, in its worst estate, a more complete and abominable despotism than that under which we live. and as it would be worse to starve to death in sight of the most delicious viands than in the midst of a foodless desert, so the very assertions, constantly dinned in our ears by the hireling newspapers, that we are the freest people on earth, serve only to make our slavery more bitter and unbearable. but as to the buying up of women for the harems of the wealthy, that is an old story, my dear friend. more than a century ago the editor of a leading journal in london was imprisoned for exposing it. the virtuous community punished the man who protested against the sin, and took the sinners to its loving bosom. and in this last century matters have grown every day worse and worse. starvation overrides all moralities; the convictions of the mind give way to the necessities of the body. the poet said long ago: "'women are not in their best fortunes strong, but want will perjure the ne'er-touched vestal.' "but he need not have confined this observation to women. the strongest resolves of men melt in the fire of want like figures of wax. it is simply a question of increasing the pressure to find the point where virtue inevitably breaks. morality, in man or woman, is a magnificent flower which blossoms only in the rich soil of prosperity: impoverish the land and the bloom withers. if there are cases that seem to you otherwise, it is simply because the pressure has not been great enough; sufficient nourishment has not yet been withdrawn from the soil. dignity, decency, honor, fade away when man or woman is reduced to shabby, shameful, degrading, cruel wretchedness. before the clamors of the stomach the soul is silent." "i cannot believe that," i replied; "look at the martyrs who have perished in the flames for an opinion." "yes," he said, "it is easy to die in an ecstasy of enthusiasm for a creed, with all the world looking on; to exchange life for eternal glory; but put the virgin, who would face without shrinking the flames or the wild beasts of the arena, into some wretched garret, in some miserable alley, surrounded by the low, the ignorant, the vile; close every avenue and prospect of hope; shut off every ennobling thought or sight or deed; and then subject the emaciated frame to endless toil and hopeless hunger, and the very fibers of the soul will rot under the debasing ordeal; and there is nothing left but the bare animal, that must be fed at whatever sacrifice. and remember, my dear fellow, that chastity is a flower of civilization. barbarism knows nothing of it. the woman with the least is, among many tribes, mostly highly esteemed, and sought after by the young men for wedlock." "my dear maximilian," i said, "these are debasing views to take of life. purity is natural to woman. you will see it oftentimes among savages. but, to recur to the subject we were speaking of. i feel very confident that the younger of those two women i saw in that carriage is pure. god never placed such a majestic and noble countenance over a corrupt soul. the face is transparent; the spirit looks out of the great eyes; and it is a spirit of dignity, nobleness, grace and goodness." "why," said he, laughing, "the barbed arrow of master cupid, my dear gabriel, has penetrated quite through all the plates of your philosophy." "i will not confess that," i replied; "but i will admit that i would like to know something more about that young lady, for i never saw a face that interested me half so much." "now," said he, "see what it is to have a friend. i can find out for you all that is known about her. we have members of our society in the household of every rich man in new york. i will first find out who she is. i will ask the master of the servants, who is a member of our brotherhood, who were the two ladies out riding at the time of our adventure. i can communicate with him in cipher." he went to the wall; touched a spring; a door flew open; a receptacle containing pen, ink and paper appeared; he wrote a message, placed it in an interior cavity, which connected with a pneumatic tube, rang a bell, and in a few minutes another bell rang, and he withdrew from a similar cavity a written message. he read out to me the following: "the elder lady, miss frederika bowers; the younger, miss estella washington; both members of the prince of cabano's household." "estella washington," i repeated; "a noble name. can you tell me anything about her?" "certainly," he replied; "we have a bureau of inquiry connected with our society, and we possess the most complete information, not only as to our own members, but as to almost every one else in the community of any note. wait a moment." he opened the same receptacle in the wall, wrote a few words on a sheet of paper, and dispatched it by the pneumatic tube to the central office of that district, whence it was forwarded at once to its address. it was probably fifteen minutes before the reply arrived. it read as follows: miss estella washington.--aged eighteen. _appearance_: person tall and graceful; complexion fair; eyes blue; hair long and golden; face handsome. _pedigree_: a lineal descendant of lawrence washington, brother of the first president of the republic. _parents_: william washington and sophia, his wife. father, a graduate of the university of virginia; professor of indo-european literature for ten years in harvard university. grandfather, lawrence washington, a judge of the supreme court of the united states for fifteen years. sophia, mother of estella, _née_ wainwright, an accomplished greek and sanscrit scholar, daughter of professor elias wainwright, who occupied the chair of psychological science in yale college for twenty years. families of both parents people of great learning and social position, but not wealthy in any of the branches. _history_: father died when estella was eight years old, leaving his family poor. her mother, after a hard struggle with poverty, died two years later. estella, then ten years old, was adopted by maria, widow of george washington, brother of estella's father, who had subsequently married one ezekiel plunkett, who is also dead. maria plunkett is a woman of low origin and sordid nature, with a large share of cunning; she lives at no. grand avenue. she had observed that estella gave promise of great beauty, and as none of the other relatives put in a claim for the child, she took possession of her, with intent to educate her highly, improve her appearance by all the arts known to such women, and eventually sell her for a large sun, to some wealthy aristocrat as a mistress; believing that her honorable descent would increase the price which her personal charms would bring. on the th day of last month she sold her, for $ , , to the master of the servants of the so-called prince of cabano; and she was taken to his house. estella who is quite ignorant of the wickedness of the world, or the true character of her aunt, for whom she entertains a warm feeling of gratitude and affection, believes that she is to serve as lady-companion for miss frederika bowers, the favorite mistress of the prince, but whom estella supposes to be his niece. you can imagine, my dear brother--for you have a kind and sensitive heart, and love your wife--the pangs that shot through me, and distorted my very soul, as i listened to this dreadful narrative. its calm, dispassionate, official character, while it confirmed its truth, added to the horrors of the awful story of crime! think of it! a pure, beautiful, cultured, confiding girl, scarcely yet a woman, consigned to a terrible fate, by one whom she loved and trusted. and the lurid light it threw on the state of society in which such a sacrifice could be possible! i forgot every pretense of indifference, which i had been trying to maintain before maximilian, and, springing up, every fiber quivering, i cried out: "she must be saved!" maximilian, too, although colder-blooded, and hardened by contact with this debased age, was also stirred to his depths; his face was flushed, and he seized me by the hand. he said: "i will help you, my friend." "but what can we do?" i asked. "we should see her at once," he replied, "and, if it is not yet too late, carry her away from that damnable place, that house of hell, and its devilish owner, who preys on innocence and youth. we have one thing in our favor: the master of the servants, who bought estella, is the same person who answered my first message. he belongs, as i told you, to our brotherhood. he is in my power. he will give us access to the poor girl, and will do whatever is necessary to be done. come, let us go!" those thin, firm lips were more firmly set than ever; the handsome eyes flashed with a fierce light; he hurried for an instant into his secret room. "take this magazine pistol," he said, "and this knife," handing me a long bowie-knife covered with a handsome, gold-embossed sheath; "we are going into a den of infamy where everything is possible. never unsheathe that knife until you are compelled to use it, for a scratch from it is certain and instant death; it is charged with the most deadly poison the art of the chemist has been able to produce; the secret is known only to our brotherhood; the discoverer is an italian professor, a member of our society." chapter vi. the interview mounting to one of the electrical railroads, we were soon at the house of the prince. passing around to the servants' entrance of the palace, maximilian sent in his card to the master of the servants, who soon appeared, bowing deferentially to my friend. we were ushered into his private room. maximilian first locked the door; he then examined the room carefully, to see if there was any one hidden behind the tapestry or furniture; for the room, like every part of the palace, was furnished in the most lavish and extravagant style. satisfied with his search, he turned to rudolph, as the master of the servants was called, and handed him the message he had received, which gave the history of estella. "read it," he said. rudolph read it with a troubled countenance. "yes," he said, "i am familiar with most of the facts here stated, and believe them all to be true. what would you have me do?" "first," said maximilian, "we desire to know if estella is still in ignorance of the purpose for which she was brought here." "yes," he replied; "frederika is jealous of her, as i can see, and has contrived to keep her out of the prince's sight. she has no desire to be supplanted by a younger and fairer woman." "god be praised for that jealousy," exclaimed maximilian. "we must see estella; can you manage it for us?" "yes," he said, "i will bring her here. i know she is in the palace. i saw her but a few moments since. wait for me." "stop," said maximilian, "have you the receipt for the $ , signed by mrs. plunkett?" "no; but i can get it." "do so, pray; and when you bring her here introduce me to her as mr. martin, and my friend here as mr. henry. she may refuse our assistance, and we must provide against the revenge of the prince." "i will do as you command," replied rudolph, who acted throughout as if he felt himself in the presence of a superior officer. as we sat waiting his return i was in a state of considerable excitement. delight, to know that she was still the pure angel i had worshiped in my dreams, contended with trepidation as i felt i must soon stand in her presence. the door opened and rudolph entered; behind him came the tall form of the beautiful girl i had seen in the carriage: she seemed to me fairer than ever. her eyes first fell upon me; she started and blushed. it was evident she recognized me; and i fancied the recognition was not unpleasant to her. she then turned to maximilian and then to rudolph, who introduced us as we had requested. i offered her a chair. she sat down, evidently astonished at such an interview, and yet entirely mistress of herself. after a moment's pause,--for maximilian, as he told me afterwards, was too bewildered with her splendid beauty to speak,--she said, in a sweet and gentle voice: "mr. rudolph tells me that you desire to speak to me on matters of importance." at a sign from maximilian rudolph closed and locked the door. she started, and it seemed to me that her eyes turned to me with more confidence than to either of the others. "miss washington," said maximilian, "it is true we desire to speak with you on matters of the greatest moment to yourself. but we shall say things so surprising to you, so harsh and cruel, so utterly in conflict with your present opinions, that i scarce know how to begin." she had grown paler during this speech, and i then said: "be assured that nothing but the profound respect we feel for you, and the greatest desire to serve you, and save you from ruin, could have induced us to intrude upon you." her face showed her increasing alarm; she placed her hand on her heart, as if to still its beatings, and then, with constrained dignity, replied: "i do not understand you, gentlemen. i do not know what the dangers are to which you allude. can you not speak plainly?" "my friend here, mr. henry," said maximilian, looking at me, "you have, i perceive, already recognized." "yes," she said, with another blush, "if i am not mistaken, he is the gentleman who saved the life of a poor beggar, some days since, and punished, as he deserved, our insolent driver. miss frederika, the prince's niece, has, at my request, refused since that time to permit him to drive us when we go out together, as we often do. i am glad to thank you again," she said, with a charmingly ingenuous air, "for your noble act in saving that poor man's life." "it was nothing," i said, "but if the service was of any value it has been a thousand times repaid by your kind words." "you can easily imagine," said maximilian, "that my friend here, after that interview, was naturally curious to find out something about you." she blushed and cast down her eyes; and the thought flashed across my mind that perhaps she had been likewise curious to find out something about me. "i am a member," said maximilian, "of a secret society. we have a 'bureau of inquiry' whose business it is to collect information, for the use of the society, concerning every person of any note. this information is carefully tabulated and preserved, and added to from day to day; so that at any moment it is subject to the call of our officers. when my friend desired to know something about you" (here the blue, wondering eyes were cast down again), "i sent a message to our bureau of inquiry, and received a reply which i have here. i fear to show it to you. the shock will be too great to learn in a moment the utter baseness of one in whom you have trusted. i fear you have not the courage to endure such a blow; and at the same time i know of no better way to communicate to your purity and innocence the shocking facts which it is my duty to disclose." estella smiled, and reached forth her hand for the paper with the dignity of conscious courage and high blood. "let me read it," she said; "i do not think it can tell me anything i cannot endure." maximilian delivered the paper into her hand. i watched her face as she read it. at first there was a look of wonder at the minuteness of the knowledge of her family which the paper revealed; then the interest became more intense; then the eyebrows began to rise and the blue eyes to dilate with horror; then an expression of scorn swept over her face; and as she read the last word she flung the paper from her as if it had been a serpent, and rising up, yes, towering, a splendid image of wrath, she turned upon us and cried out: "this is a base falsehood! a cowardly trick to wound me! a shameful attempt to injure my dear aunt." and, wheeling around on rudolph, her eyes blazing, she said: "unlock that door! i shall reveal at once to the prince this attack on his good name and miss frederika. how dare you bring these men here with such falsehoods?" rudolph, alarmed for himself, hung his head in silence. he was trembling violently. "rudolph," said maximilian, solemnly, "i call upon you, by the oath you have taken, to say to this lady whether or not the contents of that paper are true." "i believe them to be true," responded rudolph, in a low tone. it was wonderful to see the fine indignation, the keen penetration that shone in estella's eyes, as she looked first at rudolph and then at maximilian. "rudolph," said maximilian, "by the oath you have taken, tell miss washington whether or not you paid $ , to her aunt, maria plunkett, for the purchase of her body, as set forth in that paper." "it is true," replied rudolph, in the same low tone. "it is false!" cried estella,--and yet i thought there was that in her tone which indicated that the hideous doubt had begun to enter her soul. "rudolph," said maximilian, "tell this lady whether you took a receipt from her aunt for the money you paid for her." "i did," replied rudolph. "miss washington," said maximilian, like a lawyer who has reached his crucial question, for he was a trained attorney, "would you recognize your aunt's signature if you saw it?" "certainly." "you have often seen her write?" "yes; hundreds of times." "have you any reason to distrust this good man, rudolph? do you not know that in testifying to the truth he runs the risk of his own destruction?" "yes, yes," she said, and there was a wild and worried look in her eyes. "read the receipt, rudolph," said maximilian. rudolph read, in the same low and almost trembling tones, the following: new york, august th, .--received of matthew rudolph, for the prince of cabano, the sum of five thousand dollars, in consideration of which i have delivered to the said prince of cabano the body of my niece, estella washington; and i hereby agree, as the custodian of the said estella washington, never to demand any further payment, from the said prince of cabano, on account of my said niece, and never to reclaim her; and i also pledge myself never to reveal to any of the relatives of the said estella washington her place of residence. (signed) maria plunkett. as he finished reading estella seized the receipt quickly out of his hands, and fixed her eyes eagerly upon the signature. in a moment she became deadly pale, and would have fallen on the floor, but that i caught her in my arms--(oh, precious burden!)--and bore her to a sofa. rudolph brought some water and bathed her face. in a few minutes she recovered consciousness. she looked at us curiously at first, and then, as memory returned to her, an agonized and distraught look passed over her features, and i feared she would faint again. i held some water to her lips. she looked at me with an intense look as i knelt at her side. then hey eyes passed to maximilian and rudolph, who stood respectfully a little distance from her. the tears flowed down her face. then a new thought seemed to strike her, and she rose to a sitting posture. "it cannot be true. my aunt could not do it. you are strangers to me. it is a conspiracy. i will ask frederika." "no! no!" said rudolph; "not frederika; it would not be to her interest to tell you the truth. but is there any one of the servants in whom you have more confidence than all the others?" "yes," she said, "there is mary callaghan, an honest girl, if there is one anywhere. i think she loves me; and i do not believe she would deceive me." "then," said rudolph, "you shall send for her to come here. none of us shall speak to her lest you might think we did so to prompt her. we will hide behind the tapestry. dry your tears; ring for a servant, and request mary to come to you, and then ask her such questions as you choose." this was done, and in a few moments mary appeared--an honest, stout, rosy-cheeked irish girl, with the frank blue eyes and kindly smile of her people. "mary," said estella, "you have always been kind to me. do you love me sufficiently to tell me the truth if i ask you some questions?" "sure, and you may do so, my dear," said mary. "then, mary, tell me, is frederika the prince of cabano's niece?" "niver a drop's blood to him," replied mary. "what is she doing in his house, then?" asked estella. "sure, it would be as much as my place is worth, ma'am, to answer that question; and hard enough it is for an honest girl to get a place now-a-days. if it hadn't been for barney mcguiggan, who married my brother's sister-in-law, and who is own cousin to mr. flaherty, the butler's second assistant, i couldn't have got the place i have at all, at all. and if i said a word against miss frederika, out i would go, and where would i find another place?" "but, mary, if you speak the truth no harm shall follow to you. i shall never repeat what you say. i do not ask out of idle curiosity, but much depends on your answer." "indeed, ma'am," replied mary, "if you weren't as innocent as ye're purty, you would have found out the answer to your own question long ago. faith, an' don't everybody in the house know she's"--here she approached, and whispered solemnly in her ear--"she's the prince's favorite mistress?" estella recoiled. after a pause she said: "and, mary, who are the other young ladies we call the prince's cousins--miss lucy, miss julia and the rest?" "ivery one of them's the same. it's just as i told hannah, the cook's scullion; i didn't belave ye knew a word of what was going on in this house. and didn't i tell her that miss frederika was contriving to kape you out of the prince's sight.; and that was the rason she took you out riding for hours ivery day, and made you sleep in a remote part of the palace; for if the prince ever clapped his two ougly eyes upon you it would be all up wid madame frederika." i could see from where i was hidden that estella grasped the back of a chair for support, and she said in a low voice: "you may go, mary; i am much obliged to you for your friendship and honesty." we found her sitting in the chair, with her hands over her face, sobbing convulsively. at last she looked around upon us and cried out: "oh my god! what shall i do? i am sold--sold--a helpless slave. oh, it is horrible!" "you will never be without friends while we live," i said, advancing to her side. "but i must fly," she cried out, "and how--where?" "my dear miss washington," said maximilian, in his kindest tones, "i have a dear mother, who will be glad to welcome you as her own child; and in our quiet home you can remain, safe from the power of the prince, until you have time to think out your future course of life; and if you conclude to remain with us forever you will be only the more welcome. here is rudolph, who will vouch for me that i am an honorable man, and that you can trust yourself to me with safety." "yes," said rudolph; "maximilian petion is the soul of honor. his simple word is more than the oath of another." "then let us fly at once," said estella. "no," replied rudolph, "that would not do; this house is guarded and full of spies. you would be followed and reclaimed." "what, then, do you advise?" asked maximilian. "let me see," replied the old man, thinking; "this is thursday. on monday night next the members of 'the government' have their meeting here. there will be a number of visitors present, and more or less confusion; more guards will be necessary also, and i can contrive to have one of the brotherhood act as sentinel at the door which opens into a hall which connects with this room; for you see here is a special entrance which leads to a stairway and to the door i speak of. i will procure a gentleman's dress for miss estella; she is tall and will readily pass in the dark for a man. i will secure for you a permit for a carriage to enter the grounds. you will bring a close carriage and wait with the rest of the equipages, near at hand. but i must have some one who will accompany miss estella from this room to the carriage, for i must not show myself." i stepped forward and said, "i will be here." "but there is some danger in the task," said rudolph, looking at me critically. "if detected, your life would pay the forfeit." "i would the danger were ten times as great," i replied. estella blushed and gave me a glance of gratitude. "there is one difficulty i perceive," said maximilian. "what is that?" asked rudolph. "i hesitate about leaving miss washington exposed to the danger of remaining four days longer in this horrible house." "i will look after that," replied rudolph. "she had better pretend ill health, and keep her room during that time. it is on an upper floor, and if she remains there the danger will be very slight that the prince will see her." "miss washington," i said, handing her the dagger which max had given me, "take this weapon. it is poisoned with the most deadly virus known to the art of man. a scratch from it is certain death. use it to defend yourself if assailed." "i know how i shall use it in the last extremity," she said, meaningly. "better," i replied, "purity in death than degradation in life." she thanked me with her eyes, and took the dagger and hid it in her bosom. "there is one other matter," said rudolph to max; "the meeting next monday night is to be a very important one, i think, from certain indications. it is called to prepare for an expected outbreak of the people. it would be well that some reliable person should be present, as heretofore, who can report to you all that occurs. if you can send me a discreet man i can hide him where i have before hidden our brethren." "why could i not serve the purpose?" i said. "i will be here anyhow; and as i would have to remain until the gathering broke up, i might just as well witness the proceedings." "he is not one of us," said rudolph, doubtfully. "no," replied max; "but i will vouch for his fidelity with my life." "then be it so," said rudolph. "let miss washington withdraw by the farther door; and after a reasonable delay we will pass through into a communicating series of rooms, and i will then show your friend where he is to be concealed." chapter vii. the hiding-place i had seen something of the magnificence of this age, and of the splendor of its lordly habitations; but i was not prepared for the grandeur of the rooms through which rudolph led me. it would be impossible to adequately describe them. we moved noiselessly over carpets soft and deep as a rich sward, but tinted with colors and designs, from the great looms of the world, beside which the comparison of nature's carpets seemed insignificant. we passed up great winding stairs, over which, it seemed to me, three carriages might have been driven abreast; we were surrounded at every step by exquisite statuary and royal paintings; our course led through great libraries where the softened light fell on the endless arrays of richly-bound books. but they were as dead intelligence under the spell of a magician. no pale students sat at the tables here, availing themselves of the treasures which it had taken generations to assemble, and some of which could scarcely be found elsewhere. men and women passed and repassed us; for the house was so full of servants that it seemed like a town in itself. here and there were quiet-looking watchmen, who served the place of police in a great city, and whose duty it was to keep watch and ward over the innumerable articles which everywhere met the eye--costly books, works of art, bronzes, jeweled boxes, musical instruments, small groups of exquisite statuary, engravings, curios, etc., from all quarters of the earth. it represented, in short, the very profligacy and abandon of unbounded wealth. each room seemed to contain a king's ransom. i could not help but contrast this useless and extravagant luxury, which served no purpose but display and vanity, with the dreadful homes and working-places of the poor i had visited the day before. and it seemed to me as if a voice pierced my heart, crying out through all its recesses, in strident tones, "how long, o lord, how long?" and then i thought how thin a crust of earth separated all this splendor from that burning hell of misery beneath it. and if the molten mass of horror should break its limitations and overflow the earth! already it seemed to me the planet trembled; i could hear the volcanic explosions; i could see the sordid flood of wrath and hunger pouring through these halls; cataracts of misery bursting through every door and window, and sweeping away all this splendor into never-ending blackness and ruin. i stood still, lost in these engrossing reflections, when rudolph touched me on the arm, and led the way through a great hall, covered with ancestral portraits, into a magnificent chamber. in the center stood a large table, and around it about two score chairs, all made of dark tropical wood. it was like the council chamber of some great government, with the throne of the king at one end. "this," said rudolph, in a solemn whisper, "this is where they meet. this is the real center of government of the american continent; all the rest is sham and form. the men who meet here determine the condition of all the hundreds of millions who dwell on the great land revealed to the world by columbus. here political parties, courts, juries, governors, legislatures, congresses, presidents are made and unmade; and from this spot they are controlled and directed in the discharge of their multiform functions. the decrees formulated here are echoed by a hundred thousand newspapers, and many thousands of orators; and they are enforced by an uncountable army of soldiers, servants, tools, spies, and even assassins. he who stands in the way of the men who assemble here perishes. he who would oppose them takes his life in his hands. you are, young man, as if i had led you to the center of the earth, and i had placed your hand upon the very pivot, the well-oiled axle, upon which, noiselessly, the whole great globe revolves, and from which the awful forces extend which hold it all together." i felt myself overawed. it was as if mighty spirits even then inhabited that dusky and silent chamber; hostile and evil spirits of whom mankind were at once the subjects and the victims. i followed rudolph on tiptoe as he advanced to the end of the room. "here," he said, entering through a wide arch "is a conservatory which is constantly kept supplied and renewed, from the hot-houses of the palace, with the most magnificent flowers. the only humanizing trait the prince seems to possess is an affection for flowers. and he especially loves those strange mexican and south american plants, the _cactaceæ_, which unite the most exquisite flowers to the most grotesque and repulsive forms, covered with great spear-like spines, and which thrive only in barren lands, and on the poorest soil. i have taken advantage of the presence of these plants to construct the hiding-place about which i spoke to you. here are some which are fifteen feet high. they touch the ceiling of the room. around them i have arranged a perfect hedge or breast-work of smaller plants of the same family, growing in large boxes. nothing could penetrate through this prickly wall; and i have united the boxes by hooks and staples on the inside. there is, however, one which a strong man can move aside; and through the opening thus formed he can crawl to the center of the barricade, and, having replaced the hooks, it would be almost impossible to reach him; while he could not be seen unless one were immediately over him and looked down upon him. then between him and the council room i have arranged a screen of flowers, which will hide you when you stand up, while between the blossoms you can see everything with little risk of being seen. but in case you should be detected you will observe behind you a window, which, as the weather is warm, i shall leave open. on the outside is a great ivy vine that will bear your weight. you will have to dare the spines of the cacti behind you; make a great leap to the window and take your chances of escaping the fusillade of pistol shots, by flying in the darkness, into the garden. i will show you the grounds so that you will not be lost in them, if you get that far. if caught, you will have to pretend to be a burglar who entered at the window for purposes of plunder. it would do you no good to inculpate me, for it would doom us both to instant death as spies; while a supposed burglar would be simply turned over to the law and punished by a term of imprisonment. i give you these instructions although i hope there will be no necessity for them. this hiding-place has been several times used, and the deepest secrets of the aristocracy revealed to our brotherhood, without detection; and if you are prudent and careful there will be little to fear. the council will meet at eight o'clock; at half past seven it will be my duty to see that the rooms are in order, and to make sure that there are no spies or intruders on the premises, and to so report in person to the prince, and deliver him the key of the outer door. i shall cover your dress with the garments of one of the household servants, and take you with me to help make that last examination; and, watching an opportunity, you will slip into the hiding-place; having first taken off the disguise i have lent you, which we will hide among the plants. you must be armed and prepared for every emergency. i will meet you in the garden at half past six; before we part i will furnish you with a key to an outer gate, by which you can enter. as soon as the council has broken up, i will return to the room and again disguise you in the servant's dress. the prince always entertains his guests with a lunch and champagne before they separate. "in the meantime i will bring estella to my room; you can then pass out together and boldly advance to your carriage. you will first have to agree with maximilian where it will stand; and the guard at the door will show you to it. when once in it, drive like the wind. you must arrange with maximilian as to what is to be done in case you find you are followed, for in that event it will not do to drive directly to his house. you must enter the house of some one of the brotherhood and pass rapidly through it, with miss washington, to a carriage that will be in waiting in a rear street. and you must be prepared with one or more such subterfuges, for you are dealing with men of terrible power and cunning, whose arms reach everywhere; and on the night of their councils--and in fact upon all other nights--the place abounds with spies. come with me and i will show you the garden and how to enter it." i was struck with the intelligence, sagacity and executive capacity of the man; and i said to him: "how comes it that you, holding such a position of trust and power, where your compensation must be all you can ask, are, at the same time, a member of a society which, if i understand aright, threatens to overturn the existing order of things. you are not driven to rebellion by want or oppression." "no," he said; "i was educated at heidelberg; i come of a wealthy family; but in my youth, while an enthusiastic lover of liberty and humanity, i became a member of a german branch of this now universal brotherhood. i had my dreams, as many have, of reforming the world. but my membership, by a strange accident, became known, and i was forced to fly in disgrace, discarded by my relatives, to america. here i lived in great poverty for a time, until the brotherhood came to my assistance and secured me a servant's place in this house. i have gradually risen to my present position. while i am not so enthusiastic as i once was, nor so sanguine of the good results of the promised revolution of the _proletariat_, i have nevertheless seen enough within these walls to show me the justice of our cause and the necessity for some kind of reformation. i could not draw back now, if i desired to; and i do not know that i would if i could. we are all moving together on the face of the torrent, and whither it will eventually sweep us no one can tell. but come," he added, "to the garden, or our long conversation may be noticed, and arouse suspicion." chapter viii. the brotherhood i cannot give you, my dear brother, a detailed account of every day's occurrences, although i know that your love for me would make every incident of interest to you. i shall, however, jot down my reflections on sheets, and send them to you as occasion serves. the more i have seen, and the more i have conversed with maximilian, the more clearly i perceive that the civilized world is in a desperate extremity. this brotherhood of destruction, with its terrible purposes and its vast numbers, is a reality. if the ruling class had to deal only with a brutalized peasantry, they might, as they did in other ages, trample them into animal-like inability to organize and defend themselves. but the public school system, which, with the other forms of the republic, is still kept up, has made, if not all, at least a very large percentage of the unhappy laboring classes intelligent. in fact, they are wonderfully intelligent; their organizations have been to them clubs, debating societies and legislatures. and you know that all the greatest minds of the earth have come out of the masses, if not directly, at least after one or two removes. the higher aristocracy have contributed but very few to the honored catalogue of men of pre-eminent genius. and therefore you will not be surprised to hear that in these great organizations there have arisen, from among the very laborers, splendid orators, capable organizers, profound students of politics and political economy, statesmen and masterly politicians. nature, which knows no limit to her capacity for the creation of new varieties, and, dealing with hundreds of millions, has in numerable elements to mingle in her combinations, has turned out some marvelous leaders among these poor men. their hard fortunes have driven out of their minds all illusions, all imagination, all poetry; and in solemn fashion they have bent themselves to the grim and silent struggle with their environment. without imagination, i say, for this seems to me to be a world without a song. and it is to the credit of these great masses that they are keen enough to recognize the men of ability that rise up. among them, and even out of their poor, hard-earned resources to relieve them of the necessity for daily toil, that they may devote themselves to the improvement of their minds, and the execution of the great tasks assigned them. there is no doubt that if the ruling classes had been willing to recognize these natural leaders as men of the same race, blood, tongue and capacity as themselves, and had reached down to them a helping and kindly hand, there might have been long since a coming together of the two great divisions of society; and such a readjustment of the values of labor as would, while it insured happiness to those below, have not materially lessened the enjoyments of those above. but the events which preceded the great war against the aristocracy in , in england; the great revolution of , in france; and the greater civil war of , in america, all show how impossible it is, by any process of reasoning, to induce a privileged class to peacefully yield up a single tittle of its advantages. there is no bigotry so blind or intense as that of caste; and long established wrongs are only to be rooted out by fire and sword. and hence the future looks so black to me. the upper classes might reform the world, but they will not; the lower classes would, but they cannot; and for a generation or more these latter have settled down into a sullen and unanimous conviction that the only remedy is world-wide destruction. we can say, as one said at the opening of the cromwellian struggle, "god help the land where ruin must reform!" but the proletariat are desperate. they are ready, like the blind samson, to pull down the pillars of the temple, even though they themselves fall, crushed to death amid the ruins; for "the grave is brighter than their hearths and homes." i learn from maximilian that their organization is most perfect. every one of their hundred millions is now armed with one of the newest improved magazine rifles. the use of the white powder reduces very much the size of the cartridges; the bullets are also much smaller than they were formerly, but they are each charged with a most deadly and powerful explosive, which tears the body of the victim it strikes to pieces. these small cartridges are stored in the steel stock and barrel of the rifles, which will hold about one hundred of them; and every soldier therefore carries in his hand a weapon almost equal to the old-time gatling or armstrong gun. the mode in which these guns were procured shows the marvelous nature of the organization and its resources. finding that the cost of the guns was greatly increased by the profits of the manufacturer and the middleman, and that it was, in fact, very doubtful whether the government would permit them to purchase them in any large quantities, they resolved to make them for themselves. in the depths of abandoned coal mines, in the wildest and most mountainous part of tennessee, they established, years ago, their armories and foundries. here, under pretense of coal-mining and iron-working, they brought members of their brotherhood, workmen from the national gun-works; and these, teaching hundreds of others the craft, and working day and night, in double gangs, have toiled until every able-bodied man in the whole vast brotherhood, in america and europe, has been supplied with his weapon and a full accompaniment of ammunition. the cost of all this was reduced to a minimum, and has been paid by each member of the brotherhood setting aside each week a small percentage of his earnings. but, lest they should break out permaturely,{sic} before the leaders gave the word, these guns have not been delivered directly to their owners, but to the "commanders of tens," as they are called; for the brotherhood is divided into groups of ten each; and it is the duty of these commanders to bury the weapons and ammunition in the earth in rubber sacks, furnished for the purpose, and only to deliver them when the signal comes to strike. in the meantime the men are trained. with sticks in all the evolutions of soldiers. you can see how cunning is all this system. a traitor cannot betray more than nine of his fellows, and his own death is certain to follow. if the commander of a squad goes over to the enemy, he can but deliver up nine men and ten guns, and perhaps reveal the supposed name of the one man who, in a disguise, has communicated with him from the parent society. but when the signal is given a hundred million trained soldiers will stand side by side, armed with the most efficient weapons the cunning of man is able to produce, and directed by a central authority of extraordinary ability. above all this dreadful preparation the merry world goes on, singing and dancing, marrying and giving in marriage, as thoughtless of the impending catastrophe as were the people of pompeii in those pleasant august days in , just before the city was buried in ashes;--and yet the terrible volcano had stood there, in the immediate presence of themselves and their ancestors, for generations, and more than once the rocking earth had given signal tokens of its awful possibilities. if i believed that this wonderful brotherhood was capable of anything beyond destruction, i should not look with such terror as i do upon the prospect. but after destruction there must come construction--the erection of law and civilization upon the ruins of the present order of things. who can believe that these poor brutalized men will be capable, armed to the teeth with deadly weapons, and full of passions, hates and revenges, to recreate the slaughtered society? in civilized life the many must work; and who among these liberated slaves will be ready to lay down their weapons and take up their tasks? when the negroes of san domingo broke out, in that world-famous and bloody insurrection, they found themselves, when they had triumphed, in a tropical land, where the plentiful bounties of nature hung abundant supplies of food upon every tree and shrub. but in the temperate regions of america and europe these vast populations can only live by great toil, and if none will toil all must starve; but before they starve they will slay each other, and that means universal conflict, savagery, barbarism, chaos. i tremble, my brother, i tremble with horror when i think of what is crawling toward us, with noiseless steps; couchant, silent, treacherous, pardlike; scarce rustling the dry leaves as it moves, and yet with bloodshot, glaring eyes and tense-drawn limbs of steel, ready for the fatal spring. when comes it? to-night? to-morrow? a week hence? who can say? and the thought forever presses on me, can i do nothing to avert this catastrophe? is there no hope? for mankind is in itself so noble, so beautiful, so full of all graces and capacities; with aspirations fitted to sing among the angels; with comprehension fitted to embrace the universe! consider the exquisite, lithe-limbed figures of the first man and woman, as they stood forth against the red light of their first sunset--fresh from the hand of the mighty one--his graceful, perfected, magnificent thoughts! what love shines out of their great eyes; what goodness, like dawn-awakened flowers, is blooming in their singing hearts! and all to come to this. to this! a hell of injustice, ending in a holocaust of slaughter. god is not at fault. nature is not to blame. civilization, signifying increased human power, is not responsible. but human greed,--blind, insatiable human greed,--shallow cunning; the basest, stuff-grabbing, nut-gathering, selfish instincts, these have done this work! the rats know too much to gnaw through the sides of the ship that carries them; but these so-called wise men of the world have eaten away the walls of society in a thousand places, to the thinness of tissue-paper, and the great ocean is about to pour in at every aperture. and still they hoot and laugh their insolent laugh of safety and triumph above the roar of the greedy and boundless waters, just ready to overwhelm them forever. full of these thoughts, which will not permit me to sleep at night, and which haunt my waking hours, i have gone about, for some days, accompanied by maximilian, and have attended meetings of the workingmen in all parts of the city. the ruling class long since denied them the privilege of free speech, under the pretense that the safety of society required it. in doing so they have screwed down the safety-valve, while the steam continues to generate. hence the men meet to discuss their wrongs and their remedies in underground cellars, under old ruined breweries and warehouses; and there, in large, low-roofed apartments, lighted by tallow candles, flaring against the dark, damp, smoky walls, the swarming masses assemble, to inflame each other mutually against their oppressors, and to look forward, with many a secret hint and innuendo, to that great day of wrath and revenge which they know to be near at hand-- "and with pale lips men say, to-morrow, perchance to-day, enceladus may arise!" but as any member is permitted to bring in a friend--for these are not meetings of the brotherhood itself, but simply voluntary gatherings of workmen,--and as any man may prove a traitor, their utterances are guarded and enigmatical. more than once i have spoken to them in these dim halls; and while full of sympathy for their sufferings, and indignant as they themselves can be against their oppressors, i have pleaded with them to stay their hands, to seek not to destroy, but to reform. i preach to them of the glories of civilization; i trace its history backward through a dozen eras and many nations; i show them how slowly it grew, and by what small and gradual accretions; i tell them how radiantly it has burst forth in these latter centuries, with such magnificent effulgence, until today man has all nature at his feet, shackled and gyved, his patient logman. i tell them that a ruffian, with one blow of his club, can destroy the life of a man; and that all the doctors and scientists and philosophers of the world, working together for ages, could not restore that which he has so rudely extinguished. and so, i say to them, the civilization which it has taken ten thousand years to create may be swept away in an hour; and there shall be no power in the wit or wisdom of man to reestablish it. most of them have listened respectfully; a few have tried to answer me; some have mocked me. but it is as if one came where grouped convicts stood, long imprisoned, who heard--with knives in their hands--the thunderous blows of their friends as they battered down the doors of their prison-house, and he should beg them not to go forth, lest they should do harm to society! they will out, though the heavens and the earth came together! one might as well whisper to niagara to cease falling, or counsel the resistless cyclone, in its gyrating and terrible advance, to have a care of the rose-bushes. chapter ix. the poisoned knife when we returned home, on sunday evening, max found the receptacle in the wall which communicated with the pneumatic-tube system standing open. in it he found a long communication in cipher. he read a few lines with a startled look and then said: "here is important news, gabriel. it is written in one of the ciphers of the brotherhood, which i will translate to you. the number is that of rudolph--the number it is addressed to is my own. we know each other in the brotherhood, not by our names, but by the numbers given us when we became members. listen: "from number , m , to no. , p . dated this : , from the house of the condemned, no. b." "that," said maximilian, "means the prince cabano." he continued to read: "startling events have occurred since i saw you. the former favorite mistress of b, who was displaced by frederika, is a french girl, celestine d'aublay. she resented her downfall bitterly, and she hates frederika with the characteristic vehemence of her race. she learned from the talk of the servants that a new victim--estella--had been brought into the house, a girl of great beauty; and that frederika was trying to prevent b from seeing her. a sudden thought took possession of her mind; she would overthrow frederika just as she herself had been overthrown. yesterday, saturday afternoon, she watched for b in the hallways and chambers. the snuffling old wretch has a fashion of prying around in all parts of the house, under the fear that he is being robbed by the servants; and it was not long until celestine encountered him. she threw herself in his way. "'well, little one,' he said, chucking her under the chin, 'how have you been? i have not seen your pretty face for a long time.' "'indeed,' said she, 'you care very little now for my pretty face, or that of any one else, since you have your new toy, estella.' "'estella!' he repeated, 'who is estella?' "'come, come,' she said laughing; 'that will not do! master rudolph brings into the house a young girl of ravishing beauty, and weeks afterwards you ask me who she is! i am not to be deceived that way. i know you too well.' "'but really,' he replied, 'i have not seen her. this is the first i have ever heard of her. who is she?' "'her name is estella washington,' replied celestine; 'she is about eighteen years old.' "'estella washington,' he said respectfully; 'that is a great name. what is she like?' "'i have told you already,' was the reply, 'that she is of magnificent beauty, tall, fair, stately, graceful and innocent., "'indeed, i must see her.' "he hurried to his library and rang my bell. "'rudolph,' he said, when i appeared, 'who is this estella washington that you brought into the house some weeks since? celestine has been telling me about her. how comes it i have never seen her?' "my heart came into my mouth with a great leap; but i controlled my excitement and replied: "'my lord, i reported to you the fact of the purchase some time since, and the payment of $ , to an aunt of estella.' "'true,' he said, 'i remember it now; but i was much occupied at the time. how comes it, however, that she has been in the house and i have never seen her?' "i determined not to betray frederika, and so i replied: "'it must have been by accident, your lordship; and, moreover, estella is of a very quiet, retiring disposition, and has kept her room a great part of the time since she came here.' "'go to her and bring her here,' he said. "there was no help for it; so i proceeded to estella's room. "'miss washington,' i said, 'i have bad news for you. the prince desires to see you!' "she rose up, very pale. '''my god,' she said, 'what shall i do?' "and then she began to fumble in the folds of her dress for the knife your friend gave her. "'be calm and patient,' i said; 'do nothing desperate. on the night after next your friend will come for you. we must delay matters all we can. keep your room, and i will tell the prince that you are too sick to leave your bed, but hope to be well enough to pay your respects to him to-morrow afternoon. we will thus gain twenty-four hours' delay, and we may be able to use the same device again to-morrow.' "but she was very much excited, and paced the room with hurried steps, wringing her hands. to calm her i said: "'you are in no danger. you can lock your door. and see, come here,' i said, and, advancing to one of the window sills, i lifted it up and disclosed, neatly coiled within it, a ladder of cords, with stout bamboo rounds. 'as a last resort,' i continued, 'you can drop this out of the window and fly. all the rooms in this older part of the palace are furnished with similar fire-escapes. you see that yellow path below us; and there beyond the trees you may perceive a part of the wall of the gardens; that path terminates at a little gate, and here is a key that will unlock it. study the ground well from your windows. your escape would, however, have to be made by night; but as you would run some risk in crossing the grounds, and, when you passed the gate, would find yourself in the midst of a strange world, without a friend, you must only think of flight as your last resource in the most desperate extremity. we must resort to cunning, until your friends come for you, on monday night. but be patient and courageous. remember, i am your friend, and my life is pledged to your service.' "she turned upon me, and her penetrating eyes seemed to read my very soul. "'how,' she said, 'can i trust you? you are a stranger to me. worse than that, you are the hired instrument of that monster--that dealer in flesh and blood. you bought me and brought me here; and who are your friends? they too are strangers to me. why should i believe in strangers when the one whom i loved, and in whom i placed unquestioning trust, has betrayed me, and sold me to the most dreadful fate?' "i hung my head. "'it chances,' i replied, humbly, 'that the instruments of vice may sometimes loathe the work they do. the fearful executioner may, behind his mask, hide the traces of grief and pity. i do not blame you for your suspicions. i once had aspirations, perhaps as high, and purity of soul nearly as great as your own. but what are we? the creatures of fate; the victims of circumstances. we look upon the medusa-head of destiny, with its serpent curls, and our wills, if not our souls, are turned into stone. god alone, who knows all, can judge the heart of man. but i am pledged, by ties the most awful, to a society which, however terrible its methods may be, is, in its grand conceptions, charitable and just. my life would not be worth a day's purchase if i did not defend you. one of your friends stands high in that society.' "'which one is that?' she asked eagerly. "'the smaller and darker one,' i replied. "'can you tell me anything about the other?' she asked, and a slight blush seemed to mantle her face, as if she were ashamed of the question. "'very little,' i replied; 'he is not a member of our brotherhood; but he is a brave man, and the friend of mr. maximilian can not be a bad man.' "'no,' she said, thoughtfully; 'he is of a good and noble nature, and it is in him i trust.' "'but,' said i, 'i must leave you, or the prince will wonder at my long absence.' "as i took my departure i heard her locking the door behind me. i reported to the prince that miss washington was quite ill, and confined to her bed, but that she hoped to do herself the honor of calling upon him the next day. he looked glum, but assented. upon leaving him, i called upon frederika and requested her to come to my room. in a few moments she appeared. after seating her i said: "'miss frederika, will you pardon me if i ask you a few questions upon matters of importance to both of us?' "'certainly,' she replied. "'in the first place,' i said, 'you regard me as your friend, do you not? have i not always shown a disposition to serve you?' "she replied with some pleasant smiles and assurances of friendship. "'now let me ask you another question,' i continued. 'do you entertain friendly sentiments to miss estella?" "'indeed i do,' she replied; 'she is a sweet-tempered, innocent and gentle girl.' "'i am glad to hear it,' i said; 'did you know that the prince has discovered her, and has just sent me for her?' "her large black eyes fairly blazed. "'who has told him of her?' she asked, fiercely, and her voice rose high and shrill. "'your enemy, miss celestine,' i replied. 'i suspected as much,' she said. "''i need not tell you,' i said, 'that celestine's motive was to supplant and humble you.' "'i understand that,' she replied, and her hands twitched nervously, as if she would like to encounter her foe. "'now let me ask you another question,' i continued. 'would you not be glad to see estella safely out of this house?' "'indeed i would,' she replied, eagerly. "'if i place my life in your hands, will you be true to me?' i asked. "she took me earnestly by the hand, and replied: "'neither in life nor in death will i betray you., "'then,' said i, 'i will tell you that estella has friends who are as anxious to get her away from this place as you are. they have arranged to come for her on monday night next. you must help me to protect her from the prince in the meantime, and to facilitate her escape when the time comes.' "'i will do so,' she said; 'tell me what i can do now?' "'make yourself very entertaining to the prince,' i replied, 'and keep his thoughts away from the stranger. estella pleads sickness and keeps her room; and we may be able to protect her in that way until the fateful night arrives. and remember,' i said, touching her upon the breast and looking earnestly into her eyes, for i have little faith in such natures, 'that i am a member of a great secret society, and if any mishap were to happen to me, through your agency, your own life would pay the immediate forfeit.' "she shrank back affrighted, and assured me again of her good faith. and as she desires to be quit of estella, i think she will not betray us." "sunday evening, seven o'clock. "i resume my narrative. i have gone through dreadful scenes since i laid down my pen. "this afternoon about five o'clock the prince rang for me. "'bring estella,' he said. "i went at once to her room. i found her looking paler than usual. she had the appearance of one that had not slept. "'estella,' i said, 'the prince has again sent for you. i shall return and make the same excuse. do not worry--all will be well. we are one day nearer your deliverance.' "i returned and told the prince that estella was even worse than the day before; that she had a high fever; and that she apologized for not obeying his summons; but that she hoped by to-morrow to be well enough to pay her respects to him. "he was in one of his sullen fits. i think frederika had been overdoing her blandishments, and he had become suspicious; for he is one of the most cunning of men. "'frederika is behind this business,' he said. "'behind what business, my lord?' i asked. "'this sickness of estella. bring her to me, ill or well,' he replied; 'i want to see her.' "he was in no humor to be trifled with; and so i returned to my room to think it over. i saw that estella would have to barricade herself in her room. how could she support life in the meantime? the first requisite was, therefore, food. i went at once to michael, the cook's assistant, who is a trusty friend of mine, and secured from him, secretly and under a pledge of silence, food enough to last until the next night. i hurried to estella, told her of her danger, and gave her the basket of provisions. i instructed her to lock her door. "'if they break it in,' i said, 'use your knife on the first man that touches you. if they send you food or drink, do not use them. if they attempt to chloroform you, stop up the pipe with soap. if the worst comes to the worst, use the rope-ladder. if you manage to get outside the garden gate, call a hack and drive to that address.' here i gave her your direction on a small piece of tissue paper. 'if you are about to be seized, chew up the paper and swallow it. do not in any event destroy yourself,' i added, 'until the last desperate extremity is reached; for you have a powerful organization behind you, and even if recaptured you will be rescued. good-by.' "she thanked me warmly, and as i left the room i heard her again lock the door. "i returned to the prince, and told him that estella had said she was too ill to leave her room, and that she refused to obey his summons. unaccustomed to contradiction, especially in his own house, he grew furious. "'call the servants,' he shouted; 'we will see who is master here!' "a few of the men came running; frederika entered with them; some of the women followed. we proceeded up stairs to estella's door. the prince shook it violently. "'open the door,' he cried, 'or i will break it down.' "i began to hope that he would rush to the doom he has so long deserved. "the calm, steady voice of estella was now heard from within the room; speaking in a high and ringing tone: "'i appeal to my country. i demand the right to leave this house. i am an american citizen. the constitution of the united states forbids human slavery. my fathers helped to found this government. no one has the right to sell me into the most hideous bondage. i come of a great and noble race. i demand my release.' "'come, come, open the door,' cried the prince, flinging himself against it until it quivered. "the voice of estella was heard again, in solemn tones: "'the man who enters here dies!' "the cowardly brute recoiled at once, with terror on every feature of his face. "'who will break down that door,' he asked, 'and bring out that woman? "there was a dead silence for a moment; then joachim, a broad-shouldered, superserviceable knave, who had always tried to ingratiate himself with the prince by spying upon the rest of the servants and tattling, stepped forward, with an air of bravado, and said, 'i will bring her out.' "'go ahead,' said the prince, sullenly. "joachim made a rush at the door; it trembled and creaked, but did not yield; he moved farther back, drew his breath hard, and,--strong as a bull,--went at it with a furious rush; the lock gave way, the door flew open and joachim sprawled upon the floor. i could see estella standing back near the window, her right arm was raised, and i caught the glitter of something in her hand. in an instant joachim was on his feet and approached her; i saw him grasp her; there was a slight scuffle, and the next moment joachim rushed out of the room, pale as death, with his hand to his breast, crying out: "'oh! my god! she has stabbed me.' "he tore open his shirt bosom, and there upon his hairy breast was a bloody spot; but the knife had struck the breastbone and inflicted only a shallow flesh-wound. joachim laughed, replaced his shirt, and said: "'ah! i might have known a girl's hand could not strike a deadly blow. i will bring her out, my lord. get me a rope.' "he turned toward me, as he spoke; but on the instant i saw a sharp spasm contract his features; he clapped his hand to his heart; a look of surprise and then of terror came over his face. "'oh, my god!' he cried, 'i am poisoned.' "the most awful shrieks i ever heard broke from him; and the next moment his limbs seemed to lose their strength, and he fell in a heap on the floor; then he rolled over and over; mighty convulsions swept through him; he groaned, cried, shrieked, foamed at the mouth; there was a sudden snorting sound, and he stiffened out and was dead. "we fell back appalled. then in the doorway appeared the figure of estella, her blue eyes bright as stars, her long golden hair falling like a cloak to her waist, the red-tipped knife in her hand; she looked like a gothic priestess--a vala of odin--with the reeking human sacrifice already at her feet. the blood of a long line of heroic ancestors thrilled in her veins. stepping over the dead body, already beginning to swell and grow spotted with many colors, like a snake, she advanced toward the prince, who stood in his dressing-gown, trembling, and nearly as bloated, pale and hideous as the wretched joachim. "'is it you,' she said--'you, the dealer in human flesh and blood, that has bought me? come to me, and take possession of your bond-woman!' "with a cry of terror the prince turned his back and fled as fast as his legs would carry him, while all the rest of us followed pell-mell. at the end of the hall is a large iron door, used for protection in case of fire. "'quick,' shrieked the prince, 'lock the door! lock the door!' "this was done, and he stopped to pant and blow in safety. when he had recovered his breath, he cried out: "'send for the police! we will have her chloroformed.' "i touched frederika on the arm;--she followed me into an open room. "'tell him,' i whispered to her, quickly, 'tell him that if he calls in the police there will have to be an inquest over the dead body of joachim; there may be questions asked that will be hard to answer. the girl will have to be taken off to be tried for murder, and he will lose her. if he attempts to use chloroform she will stab herself with the poisoned knife. tell him you will drug her food with narcotics; that hunger will eventually compel her to eat; and that when she sleeps she may be made a prisoner, and the knife taken away from her.' "the quick-witted girl saw the force of these suggestions, and ran after her paramour. she succeeded in her mission. he fears the coming outbreak, whispers of which are now heard everywhere. he has recalled the order for the police. he stipulates, however--for he is suspicious of frederika, and fears treachery--that he is to drug the food himself and see it placed in the room; and he has stationed two trusty guards at the door of estella's chamber, who are to be changed every eight hours, and who are instructed that, whenever they think she is asleep, one of them is to notify him; and carpenters will then quietly cut the door from its hinges, and they will enter, disarm her and make her a prisoner. estella, i find, has barricaded her door with her bedstead and the rest of the furniture. if she sleeps she will wake with any attempt to enter the room; but she is not likely, in her present state of high-wrought excitement, to sleep at all; and she will not touch the drugged food sent in to her. i have arranged with frederika, who has great authority in the house, that on monday night the two watchmen shall be furnished with some refreshment containing morphine; and when they are sound asleep, and the prince busy with his guests, she or i will go to the room, carrying estella's masculine disguise, and then bring her to my room, where she will join your friend. "i do not think she is in any present danger. the poisoned knife is her safeguard. the whole household, after witnessing its terrible potency, fear it as they would the fangs of a rattlesnake. it was a lucky thought that left it with her. "if your friend does not fail us, all will be well. "farewell. , m ." i need not tell you, my dear heinrich, that we both followed this narrative with the most rapt attention and the most intense feeling. "brave girl!" i cried, when maximilian stopped reading, "she is worth dying for." "or living for," said he, "which is better still. how she rose to the occasion!" "yes," i said, "that was blood." "there is as good stuff in the ranks," he replied, "as ever came out of them. the law of heredity is almost as unreliable as the law of variation. everything rises out of the mud, and everything goes back into it." "do you think," i asked, after a pause, "that she will be safe until to-morrow night? should i not go to her at once? could i not see rudolph and have her descend the rope-ladder, and i meet her and bring her here?" "no," he replied, it is now too late for that; it is midnight. you can place full faith in rudolph; his penetration and foresight are extraordinary. he will not sleep until estella is out of that house; and his busy brain will be full of schemes in the meantime. the best thing we can do now is to go to bed and prepare, by a good long sleep, for the excitements and dangers of to-morrow night. do not fear for estella. she has ceased to be a child. in an hour she has risen to the full majesty of her womanhood." chapter x. preparations for to-night the next morning i found maximilian in conference with a stranger; a heavily-built, large-jawed, uncommunicative man. as i was about to withdraw my friend insisted that i should sit down. "we have been making the necessary arrangements for next monday night," he said. "the probabilities are great that we may be followed when we leave the house, and traced. it will not do to go, as rudolph suggested, to the residence of any friend, and pass through it to another carriage. the oligarchy would visit a terrible vengeance on the head of the man who so helped us to escape. i have instructed this gentleman to secure us, through an agent, three empty houses in different parts of the city, and he has done so; they stand in the center of blocks, and have rear exits, opening upon other streets or alleys, at right angles with the streets on which the houses stand. then in these back streets he is to have covered carriages with the fleetest horses he can obtain. our pursuers, thinking we are safely housed, may return to report our whereabouts to their masters. estella being missed the next day, the police will visit the house, but they will find no one there to punish; nothing but curtains over the windows." "but," said i, "will they not follow the carriage that brought us there, and thus identify its owner and driver, and force them to tell who employed them?" "of course; i have thought of that, and provided for it. there are members of the brotherhood who have been brought from other cities in disguise, and three of these will have another carriage, which, leaving the prince's grounds soon after we do, will pursue our pursuers. they will be well armed and equipped with hand-grenades of dynamite. if they perceive that the spies cannot be shaken off, or that they propose to follow any of our carriages to their stables, it will be their duty to swiftly overtake the pursuers, and, as they pass them, fling the explosives under the horses' feet, disabling or killing them. it will take the police some time to obtain other horses, and before they can do so, all traces of us will be lost. if necessary, our friends will not hesitate to blow up the spies as well as the horses." "but," i suggested, "will they not identify the man who rented the houses?" maximilian laughed. "why," said he, "my dear gabriel, you would make a conspirator yourself. we will have to get you into the brotherhood. we are too old to be caught that way. the man who rented the houses has been brought here from a city hundreds of miles distant; he was thoroughly disguised. as soon as he engaged the buildings, and paid one month's rent in advance for each, he left the city; and before to-morrow night he will be home again, and without his disguise; and he could never be suspected or identified as the same man. and," he added, "i do not propose that you shall go into that lion's den unsupported. we will have twenty of the brotherhood, under rudolph's management, scattered through the household, as servants; and three hundred more will be armed to the teeth and near at hand in the neighborhood; and if it becomes necessary they will storm the house and burn it over the villians' heads, rather than that you or estella shall come to harm." i pressed his hand warmly, and thanked him for his care of me, and of one so dear to me. he laughed. "that is all right," he said; "good and unselfish men are so scarce in this world that one cannot do too much for them. we must be careful lest, like the dodo and the great auk, the breed becomes extinct." "but," said i, "may not the oligarchy find you out, even here?" "no," he replied, "my identity is lost. here i live, in my real appearance, under a false name. but i have a house elsewhere, in which i dwell disguised, but under my real name, and with an unreal character. here i am a serious, plotting conspirator; there i am a dissipated, reckless, foolish spendthrift, of whom no man need be afraid. it chanced that after certain events had occurred, of which i may tell you some day, i did not return home for several years; and then i came for revenge, with ample preparations for my own safety. i resumed my old place in society with a new appearance and a new character. that personage is constantly watched by spies; but he spends his time in drunkenness and deeds of folly; and his enemies laugh and say, 'he will never trouble us; he will be dead soon.' and so, with the real name and the unreal appearance and character in one place, and a false name, but the real appearance and character, in another, i lead a dual life and thwart the cunning of my enemies, and prepare for the day of my vengeance." his eyes glowed with a baleful light as he spoke, and i could see that some great injustice, "like eager droppings into milk," had soured an otherwise loving and affectionate nature. i put my hand on his and said: "my dear max, your enemies are my enemies and your cause my cause, from henceforth forever." his face beamed with delight, as he replied: "i may some day, my dear gabriel, hold you to that pledge." "agreed," i responded; "at all times i am ready." he gave his agent a roll of money, and with mutual courtesies they separated. chapter xi. how the world came to be ruined we were uneasy, restless, longing for the night to come. to while away the time we conversed upon subjects that were near our hearts. i said to maximilian while he paced the room: "how did this dreadful state of affairs, in which the world now finds itself, arise? were there no warnings uttered by any intelligent men? did the world drift blindly and unconsciously into this condition?" "no," said maximilian, going to his library; "no; even a hundred years ago the air was full of prophecies. here," he said, laying his hand upon a book, is _the century magazine_, of february, ; and on page we read: for my own part, i must confess my fears that, unless some important change is made in the constitution of our voting population, _the breaking strain upon our political system will come within half a century_. is it not evident that our present tendencies are in the wrong direction? the rapidly increasing use of money in elections, for the undisguised purchase of votes, and the growing disposition to tamper with the ballot and the tally-sheet, are some of the symptoms. . . . do you think that you will convince the average election officer that it is a great crime to cheat in the return of votes, when he knows that a good share of those votes have been purchased with money? no; the machinery of the election will not be kept free from fraud while the atmosphere about the polls reeks with bribery. _the system will all go down together_. in a constituency which can be bribed all the forms of law tend swiftly to decay. "and here," he said, picking up another volume, "is a reprint of the choicest gems of _the north american review_. in the number for march, , gen. l. s. bryce, a member of congress, said: we live in a commercial age--not in a military age; and the shadow that is stealing over the american landscape partakes of a commercial character. in short, _the shadow is of an unbridled plutocracy_, caused, created and cemented in no slight degree by legislative, aldermanic and congressional action; _a plutocracy that is far more wealthy than any aristocracy that has ever crossed the horizon of the world's history, and one that has been produced in a shorter consecutive period_; the names of whose members are emblazoned, not on the pages of their nation's glory, but of its peculations; who represent no struggle for their country's liberties, but for its boodle; no contests for magna charta,{sic} but railroad charters; and whose octopus-grip is extending over every branch of industry; a plutocracy which controls the price of the bread that we eat, the price of the sugar that sweetens our cup, the price of the oil that lights us on our way, the price of the very coffins in which we are finally buried; a plutocracy which encourages no kindly relation between landlord and tenant, which has so little sense of its political duties as even to abstain from voting, and which, in short, by its effrontery, is already causing the unthinking masses to seek relief in communism, in single-taxism, and in every other ism, which, if ever enforced, would infallibly make their second state worse than the first. "and here are hundreds of warnings of the same kind. even the president of the united states, in that same year, , uttered this significant language: those who use unlawful methods, if moved by no higher motive than the selfishness that prompted them, may well stop and inquire, what is to be the end of this? "bishop potter, of new york, in the national ceremonies, held april , , which marked the centennial anniversary of the first inauguration of george washington, spoke of the plutocracy, which had already reached alarming proportions, and expressed his doubts whether the republic would ever celebrate another centennial. afterwards, in explaining his remarks, he said: when i speak of this as the era of the plutocrats, nobody can misunderstand me. everybody has recognized the rise of the money power. its growth not merely stifles the independence of the people, but the blind believers in this omnipotent power of money assert that its liberal use condones every offense. the pulpit does not speak out as it should. these plutocrats are the enemies of religion, as they are of the state. and, not to mince matters, i will say that, while i had the politicians in mind prominently, there "are others." i tell you i have heard the corrupt use of money in elections and the sale of the sacred right of the ballot openly defended by ministers of the gospel. i may find it necessary to put such men of the sacred office in the public pillory. "and bishop spalding, of peoria, illinois, about the same time, said: mark my words, the saloon in america has become a public nuisance. the liquor trade, by meddling with politics and corrupting politics, has become a menace and a danger. those who think and those who love america and those who love liberty are going to bring this moral question into politics more and more; also this question of bribery, this question of lobbying, this question of getting measures through state and national legislatures by corrupt means. they are going to be taken hold of. our press, which has done so much to enlighten our people, which represents so much that is good in our civilization, must also be reformed. it must cease to pander to such an extent to the low and sensual appetites of man. my god, man is animal enough! you don't want to pander to his pruriency! you don't want to pander to the beast that is in him. . . . our rich men--and they are numerous, and their wealth is great--their number and their wealth will increase--but our rich men _must do their duty or perish_. i tell you, in america, we will not tolerate vast wealth in the hands of men who do nothing for the people. "and here is a still more remarkable article, by dr. william barry, in _the forum_ for april, . he speaks of-- the concrete system of capitalism; which in its present shape is not much more than a century old, and goes back to arkwright's introduction of the spinning-jenny in --that notable year--as to its hegira or divine epoch of creation. "and again he says: this it is that justifies von hartmann's description of the nineteenth century as "the most irreligious that has ever been seen;" this and not the assault upon dogma or the decline of the churches. there is a depth below atheism, below anti-religion, and into that the age has fallen. it is the callous indifference to everything which does not make for wealth. . . . what is eloquently described as "the progress of civilization," as "material prosperity," and "unexampled wealth," or, more modestly, as "the rise of the industrial middle class," becomes, when we look into it with eyes purged from economic delusions, the creation of a "lower and lowest" class, without land of their own, without homes, tools or property beyond the strength of their hands; whose lot is more helplessly wretched than any poet of the inferno has yet imagined. sunk in the mire of ignorance, want and immorality, they seem to have for their only gospel the emphatic words attributed to mr. ruskin: "if there is a next world they _will_ be damned; and if there is none, they are damned already." .--- have all these things come to pass that the keeper of a whisky-shop in california may grow rich on the spoils of drunken miners, and great financiers dictate peace and war to venerable european monarchies? the most degraded superstition that ever called itself religion has not preached such a dogma as this. it falls below fetichism. the worship of the almighty dollar, incarnate in the self-made capitalist, is a deification at which vespasian himself, with his "_ut puto, deus fio_," would stare and gasp. "and this remarkable article concludes with these words of prophecy: the agrarian difficulties of russia, france, italy, ireland, and of wealthy england, show us that ere long the urban and the rural populations will be standing in the same camp. they will be demanding the abolition of that great and scandalous paradox whereby, though production has increased three or four times as much as the mouths it should fill, those mouths are empty. the backs it should clothe are naked; the heads it should shelter, homeless; the brains it should feed, dull or criminal, and the souls it should help to save, brutish. surely it is time that science, morality and religion should speak out. a great change is coming. it is even now at our doors. ought not men of good will to consider how they shall receive it, so that its coming may be peaceable? "and here," max added, "is the great work of prof. scheligan, in which he quotes from _the forum_, of december, , p. , a terrible story of the robberies practiced on the farmers by railroad companies and money-lenders. the railroads in took, he tells us, one-half of the entire wheat crop of kansas to carry the other half to market! in the thirty-eight years following the railroad interest of the united states increased per cent.; the banking interest per cent., and the farming interest only per cent. a man named thomas g. shearman showed, in , that , persons in the united states would, in thirty years, at the rate at which wealth was being concentrated in the hands of the few, own _three-fifths of all the property of the entire country_. the _american economist_ asserted, in , that in twenty-five years the number of people in the united states who owned their own homes had fallen from five-eighths to three-eighths. a paper called _the progress_, of boston, in , gave the following significant and prophetic figures: the eloquent patrick henry said: "we can only judge the future by the past." look at the past: when egypt went down per cent. of her population owned per cent. of her wealth. the people were starved to death. when babylon went down per cent. of her population owned all the wealth. the people were starved to death. when persia went down per cent. of her population owned the land. when rome went down , men owned all the known world. there are about , , people in england, ireland and wales, and , people own all the land in the united kingdom. for the past twenty years the united states has rapidly followed in the steps of these old nations. here are the figures: in capitalists owned ½ per cent. of the nation's wealth. in they owned percent. "in , out of , , people living in new york city, , , dwelt in tenement-houses. "at the same time farm-lands, east and west, had fallen, in twenty-five years, to one-third or one-half their cost. state assessor wood, of new york, declared, in , that, in his opinion, 'in a few decades _there will be none but tenant farmers in this state_.' "in the farm mortgages in the western states amounted to three billion four hundred and twenty-two million dollars." "did these wonderful utterances and most significant statistics," i asked, "produce no effect on that age?" "none at all," he replied. "'wisdom cries in the streets, and no man regards her.' the small voice of philosophy was unheard amid the blare of the trumpets that heralded successful knavery; the rabble ran headlong to the devil after gauds and tinsel." "have there been," i asked, "no later notes of warning of the coming catastrophe?" "oh, yes," he replied; "ten thousand. all through the past century the best and noblest of each generation, wherever and whenever they could find newspapers or magazines that dared to publish their utterances, poured forth, in the same earnest tones, similar prophecies and appeals. but in vain. each generation found the condition of things more desperate and hopeless: every year multiplied the calamities of the world. the fools could not see that a great cause must continue to operate until checked by some higher power. and here there was no higher power that desired to check it. as the domination and arrogance of the ruling class increased, the capacity of the lower classes to resist, within the limits of law and constitution, decreased. every avenue, in fact, was blocked by corruption. juries, courts, legislatures, congresses, they were as if they were not. the people were walled in by impassable barriers. nothing was left them but the primal, brute instincts of the animal man, and upon these they fell back, and the brotherhood of destruction arose. but no words can tell the sufferings that have been endured by the good men, here and there, who, during the past century, tried to save mankind. some were simply ostracised from social intercourse with their caste; others were deprived of their means of living and forced down into the ranks of the wretched; and still others"--and here, i observed, his face grew ashy pale, and the muscles about his mouth twitched nervously--"still others had their liberty sworn away by purchased perjury, and were consigned to prisons, where they still languish, dressed in the hideous garb of ignominy, and performing the vile tasks of felons." after a pause, for i saw he was strangely disturbed, i said to him: "how comes it that the people have so long submitted to these great wrongs? did they not resist?" "they did," he replied; "but the fruit of the tree of evil was not yet ripe. at the close of the nineteenth century, in all the great cities of america, there was a terrible outbreak of the workingmen; they destroyed much property and many lives, and held possession of the cities for several days. but the national government called for volunteers, and hundreds of thousands of warlike young men, sons of farmers, sprang to arms: and, after several terrible battles, they suppressed the revolution, with the slaughter of tens of thousands of those who took part in it; while afterwards the revengeful oligarchy sent thousands of others to the gallows. and since then, in europe and america, there have been other outbreaks, but all of them terminated in the same way. the condition of the world has, however, steadily grown worse and worse; the laboring classes have become more and more desperate. the farmers' sons could, for generations, be counted upon to fight the workmen; but the fruit has been steadily ripening. now the yeomanry have lost possession of their lands; their farms have been sold under their feet; cunning laws transferred the fruit of their industry into the pockets of great combinations, who loaned it back to them again, secured by mortgages; and, as the pressure of the same robbery still continued, they at last lost their homes by means of the very wealth they had themselves produced. now a single nabob owns a whole county; and a state is divided between a few great loan associations; and the men who once tilled the fields, as their owners, are driven to the cities to swell the cohorts of the miserable, or remain on the land a wretched peasantry, to contend for the means of life with vile hordes of mongolian coolies. and all this in sight of the ruins of the handsome homes their ancestors once occupied! hence the materials for armies have disappeared. human greed has eaten away the very foundations on which it stood. and of the farmers who still remain nearly all are now members of our brotherhood. when the great day comes, and the nation sends forth its call for volunteers, as in the past, that cry will echo in desolate places; or it will ring through the triumphant hearts of savage and desperate men who are hastening to the banquet of blood and destruction. and the wretched, yellow, under-fed coolies, with women's garments over their effeminate limbs, will not have the courage or the desire or the capacity to make soldiers and defend their oppressors." "but have not the oligarchy standing armies?" i asked. "yes. in europe, however, they have been constrained, by inability to wring more taxes from the impoverished people, to gradually diminish their numbers. there, you know, the real government is now a coterie of bankers, mostly israelites; and the kings and queens, and so-called presidents, are mere toys and puppets in their hands. all idea of national glory, all chivalry, all pride, all battles for territory or supremacy have long since ceased. europe is a banking association conducted exclusively for the benefit of the bankers. bonds take the place of national aspirations. to squeeze the wretched is the great end of government; to toil and submit, the destiny of the peoples. "the task which hannibal attempted, so disastrously, to subject the latin and mixed-gothic races of europe to the domination of the semitic blood, as represented in the merchant-city of carthage, has been successfully accomplished in these latter days by the cousins of the phœnicians, the israelites. the nomadic children of abraham have fought and schemed their way, through infinite depths of persecution, from their tents on the plains of palestine, to a power higher than the thrones of europe. the world is to-day semitized. the children of japhet lie prostrate slaves at the feet of the children of shem; and the sons of ham bow humbly before their august dominion. "the standing armies of europe are now simply armed police; for, as all the nations are owned by one power--the money power--there is no longer any danger of their assaulting each other. but in the greed of the sordid commercial spirit which dominates the continent they have reduced, not only the numbers, but the pay of the soldiers, until it is little better than the compensation earned by the wretched peasantry and the mechanics; while years of peace and plunder have made the rulers careless and secure. hence our powerful association has spread among these people like wild-fire: the very armies are honeycombed with our ideas, and many of the soldiers belong to the brotherhood. "here, in america, they have been wise enough to pay the soldiers of their standing army better salaries; and hence they do not so readily sympathize with our purposes. but we outnumber them ten to one, and do not fear them. there is, however, one great obstacle which we have not yet seen the way to overcome. more than a century ago, you know, dirigible air-ships were invented. the oligarchy have a large force of several thousands of these, sheathed with that light but strong metal, aluminium; in popular speech they are known as _the demons_. sailing over a hostile force, they drop into its midst great bombs, loaded with the most deadly explosives, mixed with bullets; and, where one of these strikes the ground, it looks like the crater of an extinct volcano; while leveled rows of dead are strewed in every direction around it. but this is not all. some years since a french chemist discovered a dreadful preparation, a subtle poison, which, falling upon the ground, being heavier than the air and yet expansive, rolls, 'like a slow blot that spreads,' steadily over the earth in all directions, bringing sudden death to those that breathe it. the frenchman sold the secret of its preparation to the oligarchy for a large sum; but he did not long enjoy his ill-gotten wealth. he was found dead in his bed the next day, poisoned by the air from a few drops of his own invention; killed, it is supposed, by the governments, so that they would possess forever the exclusive monopoly of this terrible instrument of slaughter. it is upon this that they principally rely for defense from the uprisings of the oppressed people. these air-ships, 'the demons,' are furnished with bombs, loaded with this powerful poison; and, when an outbreak occurs, they sail, like great, foul birds, dark-winged and terrible, over the insurgents; they let fall a single bomb, which inspires such terror in the multitude that those not instantaneously killed by the poison fly with the utmost speed; and the contest is at an end. we have long labored to bring the men who arm these air-ships, and who manufacture this poison, into our organization, but so far without success. the oligarchy knows their value, and pays them well. we have, however, bribed one or two of their men, not themselves in the secret, but who have inspired the others to make demand after demand upon the government for increased pay, knowing that they held everything in their power. the oligarchy has been constrained to yield to these demands, which have only led, under our inspiration, to still greater claims; and it is our hope that before long the rulers will refuse to go farther in that direction; and then, in the discontent that will inevitably follow, the men will yield to our approaches. it will be the old story over again--the army that was called in to defend effete rome at last took possession of the empire and elected the emperors. this is the fate that cruelty and injustice ultimately bring upon their own heads--they are devoured by their instruments. as manfred says: "'the spirits i have raised abandon me; the spells that i had recked of torture me.'" "you are right," i replied; "there is nothing that will insure permanent peace but universal justice: that is the only soil that grows no poisons. universal justice means equal opportunities for all men and a repression by law of those gigantic abnormal selfishnesses which ruin millions for the benefit of thousands. in the old days selfishness took the form of conquest, and the people were reduced to serfs. then, in a later age, it assumed the shape of individual robbery and murder. laws were made against these crimes. then it broke forth in the shape of subtle combinations, 'rings,' or 'trusts,' as they called them, corporations, and all the other cunning devices of the day, some of which scarcely manifested themselves on the surface, but which transferred the substance of one man into the pockets of another, and reduced the people to slavery as completely and inevitably as ever the robber barons of old did the original owners of the soil of europe." chapter xii. gabriel's utopia "but what would you do, my good gabriel," said maximilian, smiling, "if the reformation of the world were placed in your hands? every man has an utopia in his head. give me some idea of yours." "first," i said, "i should do away with all interest on money. interest on money is the root and ground of the world's troubles. it puts one man in a position of safety, while another is in a condition of insecurity, and thereby it at once creates a radical distinction in human society." "how do you make that out?" he asked. "the lender takes a mortgage on the borrower's land or house, or goods, for, we will say, one-half or one-third their value; the borrower then assumes all the chances of life in his efforts to repay the loan. if he is a farmer, he has to run the risk of the fickle elements. rains may drown, droughts may burn up his crops. if a merchant, he encounters all the hazards of trade; the bankruptcy of other tradesmen; the hostility of the elements sweeping away agriculture, and so affecting commerce; the tempests that smite his ships, etc. if a mechanic, he is still more dependent upon the success of all above him, and the mutations of commercial prosperity. he may lose employment; he may sicken; he may die. but behind all these risks stands the money-lender, in perfect security. the failure of his customer only enriches him; for he takes for his loan property worth twice or thrice the sum he has advanced upon it. given a million of men and a hundred years of time, and the slightest advantage possessed by any one class among the million must result, in the long run, in the most startling discrepancies of condition. a little evil grows like a ferment--it never ceases to operate; it is always at work. suppose i bring before you a handsome, rosy-cheeked young man, full of life and hope and health. i touch his lip with a single _bacillus of phthisis pulmonalis_--consumption. it is invisible to the eye; it is too small to be weighed. judged by all the tests of the senses, it is too insignificant to be thought of; but it has the capacity to multiply itself indefinitely. the youth goes off singing. months, perhaps years, pass before the deadly disorder begins to manifest itself; but in time the step loses its elasticity; the eyes become dull; the roses fade from the cheeks; the strength departs, and eventually the joyous youth is but a shell--a cadaverous, shrunken form, inclosing a shocking mass of putridity; and death ends the dreadful scene. give one set of men in a community a financial advantage over the rest, however slight--it may be almost invisible--and at the end of centuries that class so favored will own everything and wreck the country. a penny, they say, put out at interest the day columbus sailed from spain, and compounded ever since, would amount now to more than all the assessed value of all the property, real, personal and mixed, on the two continents of north and south america." "but," said maximilian, "how would the men get along who wanted to borrow?" "the necessity to borrow is one of the results of borrowing. the disease produces the symptoms. the men who are enriched by borrowing are infinitely less in number than those who are ruined by it; and every disaster to the middle class swells the number and decreases the opportunities of the helplessly poor. money in itself is valueless. it becomes valuable only by use--by exchange for things needful for life or comfort. if money could not be loaned, it would have to be put out by the owner of it in business enterprises, which would employ labor; and as the enterprise would not then have to support a double burden--to wit, the man engaged in it and the usurer who sits securely upon his back--but would have to maintain only the former usurer--that is, the present employer--its success would be more certain; the general prosperity of the community would be increased thereby, and there would be therefore more enterprises, more demand for labor, and consequently higher wages. usury kills off the enterprising members of a community by bankrupting them, and leaves only the very rich and the very poor; for every dollar the employers of labor pay to the lenders of money has to come eventually out of the pockets of the laborers. usury is therefore the cause of the first aristocracy, and out of this grow all the other aristocracies. inquire where the money came from that now oppresses mankind, in the shape of great corporations, combinations, etc., and in nine cases out of ten you will trace it back to the fountain of interest on money loaned. the coral island is built out of the bodies of dead coral insects; large fortunes are usually the accumulations of wreckage, and every dollar represents disaster." "well," said maximilian, "having abolished usury, in your utopia, what would you do next?" "i would set to work to make a list of all the laws, or parts of laws, or customs, or conditions which, either by commission or omission, gave any man an advantage over any other man; or which tended to concentrate the wealth of the community in the hands of a few. and having found out just what these wrongs or advantages were, i would abolish them _instanter_." "well, let us suppose," said maximilian, "that you were not immediately murdered by the men whose privileges you had destroyed--even as the gracchi were of old--what would you do next? men differ in every detail. some have more industry, or more strength, or more cunning, or more foresight, or more acquisitiveness than others. how are you to prevent these men from becoming richer than the rest?" "i should not try to," i said. "these differences in men are fundamental, and not to be abolished by legislation; neither are the instincts you speak of in themselves injurious. civilization, in fact, rests upon them. it is only in their excess that they become destructive. it is right and wise and proper for men to accumulate sufficient wealth to maintain their age in peace, dignity and plenty, and to be able to start their children into the arena of life sufficiently equipped. a thousand men in a community worth $ , or $ , , or even $ , each, may be a benefit, perhaps a blessing; but one man worth fifty or one hundred millions, or, as we have them now-a-days, one thousand millions, is a threat against the safety and happiness of every man in the world. i should establish a maximum beyond which no man could own property. i should not stop his accumulations when he had reached that point, for with many men accumulation is an instinct; but i should require him to invest the surplus, under the direction of a governmental board of management, in great works for the benefit of the laboring classes. he should establish schools, colleges, orphan asylums, hospitals, model residences, gardens, parks, libraries, baths, places of amusement, music-halls, sea-side excursions in hot weather, fuel societies in cold weather, etc., etc. i should permit him to secure immortality by affixing his name to his benevolent works; and i should honor him still further by placing his statue in a great national gallery set apart to perpetuate forever the memory of the benefactors of the race." "but," said maximilian, with a smile, "it would not take long for your rich men, with their surplus wealth, to establish all those works you speak of. what would you do with the accumulations of the rest?" "well," said i, "we should find plenty to do. we would put their money, for instance, into a great fund and build national railroads, that would bring the productions of the farmers to the workmen, and those of the workmen to the farmers, at the least cost of transportation, and free from the exactions of speculators and middlemen. thus both farmers and workmen would live better, at less expense and with less toil." "all very pretty," said he; "but your middlemen would starve. "not at all," i replied; "the cunning never starve. there would be such a splendid era of universal prosperity that they would simply turn their skill and shrewdness into some new channels, in which, however, they would have to give something of benefit, as an equivalent for the benefits they received. now they take the cream, and butter, and beef, while some one else has to raise, feed and milk the cow." "but," said he, "all this would not help our farmers in their present condition--they are blotted off the land." "true," i replied; "but just as i limited a man's possible wealth, so should i limit the amount of land he could own. i would fix a maximum of, say, or acres, or whatever amount might be deemed just and reasonable. i should abolish all corporations, or turn them back into individual partnerships. abraham lincoln, in the great civil war of the last century, gave the southern insurgents so many days in which to lay down their arms or lose their slaves. in the same way i should grant one or two years' time, in which the great owners of land should sell their estates, in small tracts, to actual occupants, to be paid for in installments, on long time, without interest. and if they did not do so, then, at the end of the period prescribed, i should confiscate the lands and sell them, as the government in the old time sold the public lands, for so much per acre, to actual settlers, and turn the proceeds over to the former owners." "but, as you had abolished interest on money, there could be no mortgages, and the poor men would starve to death before they could raise a crop." "then," i replied, "i should invoke the power of the nation, as was done in that great civil war of , and issue paper money, receivable for all taxes, and secured by the guarantee of the faith and power of five hundred million people; and make advances to carry these ruined peasants beyond the first years of distress--that money to be a loan to them, without interest, and to be repaid as a tax on their land. government is only a machine to insure justice and help the people, and we have not yet developed half its powers. and we are under no more necessity to limit ourselves to the governmental precedents of our ancestors than we are to confine ourselves to the narrow boundaries of their knowledge, or their inventive skill, or their theological beliefs. the trouble is that so many seem to regard government as a divine something which has fallen down upon us out of heaven, and therefore not to be improved upon or even criticised; while the truth is, it is simply a human device to secure human happiness, and in itself has no more sacredness than a wheelbarrow or a cooking-pot. the end of everything earthly is the good of man; and there is nothing sacred on earth but man, because he alone shares the divine conscience." "but," said he, "would not your paper money have to be redeemed in gold or silver?" "not necessarily," i replied. "the adoration of gold and silver is a superstition of which the bankers are the high priests and mankind the victims. those metals are of themselves of little value. what should make them so?" "are they not the rarest and most valuable productions of the world?" said maximilian. "by no means," i replied; "there are many metals that exceed them in rarity and value. while a kilogram of gold is worth about $ and one of silver about $ . , the same weight of iridium (the heaviest body known) costs $ , ; one of palladium, $ , ; one of calcium nearly $ , ; one of stibidium, $ , ; while vanadium, the true 'king of metals,' is worth $ , per kilogram, as against $ for gold or $ . for silver." "why, then, are they used as money?" he asked. "who can tell? the practice dates back to prehistoric ages. man always accepts as right anything that is in existence when he is born." "but are they not more beautiful than other metals? and are they not used as money because acids will not corrode them?" "no," i replied; "some of the other metals exceed them in beauty. the diamond far surpasses them in both beauty and value, and glass resists the action of acids better than either of them." "what do you propose?" he asked. "gold and silver," i said, "are the bases of the world's currency. if they are abundant, all forms of paper money are abundant. if they are scarce, the paper money must shrink in proportion to the shrinkage of its foundation; if not, there come panics and convulsions, in the effort to make one dollar of gold pay three, six or ten of paper. for one hundred and fifty years _the production of gold and silver has been steadily shrinking, while the population and business of the world have been rapidly increasing_. "take a child a few years old; let a blacksmith weld around his waist an iron band. at first it causes him little inconvenience. he plays. as he grows older it becomes tighter; it causes him pain; he scarcely knows what ails him. he still grows. all his internal organs are cramped and displaced. he grows still larger; he has the head, shoulders and limbs of a man and the waist of a child. he is a monstrosity. he dies. this is a picture of the world of to-day, bound in the silly superstition of some prehistoric nation. but this is not all. every decrease in the quantity, actual or relative, of gold and silver increases the purchasing power of the dollars made out of them; and the dollar becomes the equivalent for a larger amount of the labor of man and his productions. this makes the rich man richer and the poor man poorer. the iron band is displacing the organs of life. as the dollar rises in value, man sinks. hence the decrease in wages; the increase in the power of wealth; the luxury of the few; the misery of the many." "how would you help it?" he asked. "i would call the civilized nations together in council, and devise an international paper money, to be issued by the different nations, but to be receivable as legal tender for all debts in all countries. it should hold a fixed ratio to population, never to be exceeded; and it should be secured on all the property of the civilized world, and acceptable in payment of all taxes, national, state and municipal, everywhere. i should declare gold and silver legal tenders only for debts of five dollars or less. an international greenback that was good in new york, london, berlin, melbourne, paris and amsterdam, would be good anywhere. the world, released from its iron band, would leap forward to marvelous prosperity; there would be no financial panics, for there could be no contraction; there would be no more torpid 'middle ages,' dead for lack of currency, for the money of a nation would expand, _pari passu_, side by side with the growth of its population. there would be no limit to the development of mankind, save the capacities of the planet; and even these, through the skill of man, could be increased a thousand-fold beyond what our ancestors dreamed of. the very seas and lakes, judiciously farmed, would support more people than the earth now maintains. a million fish ova now go to waste where one grows to maturity. "the time may come when the slow processes of agriculture will be largely discarded, and the food of man be created out of the chemical elements of which it is composed, transfused by electricity and magnetism. we have already done something in that direction in the way of synthetic chemistry. our mountain ranges may, in after ages, be leveled down and turned into bread for the support of the most enlightened, cultured, and, in its highest sense, religious people that ever dwelt on the globe. all this is possible if civilization is preserved from the destructive power of the ignorant and brutal plutocracy, who now threaten the safety of mankind. they are like the slave-owners of ; they blindly and imperiously insist on their own destruction; they strike at the very hands that would save them." "but," said maximilian, "is it not right and necessary that the intellect of the world should rule the world?" "certainly," i replied; "but what is intellect? it is breadth of comprehension; and this implies gentleness and love. the man whose scope of thought takes in the created world, and apprehends man's place in nature, cannot be cruel to his fellows. intellect, if it is selfish, is wisely selfish. it perceives clearly that such a shocking abomination as our present condition cannot endure. it knows that a few men cannot safely batten down the hatches over the starving crew and passengers, and then riot in drunken debauchery on the deck. when the imprisoned wretches in the hold become desperate enough--and it is simply a question of time--they will fire the ship or scuttle it, and the fools and their victims will all perish together. true intellect is broad, fore-sighted, wide-ranging, merciful, just. some one said of old that 'the gods showed what they thought of riches by the kind of people they gave them to.' it is not the poets, the philosophers, the philanthropists, the historians, the sages, the scholars, the really intellectual of any generation who own the great fortunes. no; but there is a subsection of the brain called cunning; it has nothing to do with elevation of mind, or purity of soul, or knowledge, or breadth of view; it is the lowest, basest part of the intellect. it is the trait of foxes, monkeys, crows, rats and other vermin. it delights in holes and subterranean shelters; it will not disdain filth; it is capable of lying, stealing, trickery, knavery. let me give you an example: "it is recorded that when the great war broke out in this country against slavery, in , there was a rich merchant in this city, named a. t. stewart. hundreds of thousands of men saw in the war only the great questions of the union and the abolition of human bondage--the freeing of four millions of human beings, and the preservation of the honor of the flag; and they rushed forward eager for the fray. they were ready to die that the nation and liberty might live. but while their souls were thus inflamed with great and splendid emotions, and they forgot home, family, wealth, life, everything, stewart, the rich merchant, saw simply the fact that the war would cut off communication between the north and the cotton-producing states, and that this would result in a rise in the price of cotton goods; and so, amid the wild agitations of patriotism, the beating of drums and the blaring of trumpets, he sent out his agents and bought up all the cotton goods he could lay his hands on. he made a million dollars, it is said, by this little piece of cunning. but if all men had thought and acted as stewart did, we should have had no union, no country, and there would be left to-day neither honor nor manhood in all the world. the nation was saved by those poor fellows who did not consider the price of cotton goods in the hour of america's crucial agony. their dust now billows the earth of a hundred battlefields; but their memory will be kept sweet in the hearts of men forever! on the other hand, the fortune of the great merchant, as it did no good during his life, so, after his death, it descended upon an alien to his blood; while even his wretched carcass was denied, by the irony of fate, rest under his splendid mausoleum, and may have found its final sepulchre in the stomachs of dogs! "this little incident illustrates the whole matter. it is not intellect that rules the world of wealth, it is _cunning_. _muscle_ once dominated mankind--the muscle of the baron's right arm; and intellect had to fly to the priesthood, the monastery, the friar's gown, for safety. now _muscle_ is the world's slave, and _cunning_ is the baron--the world's master. "let me give you another illustration: ten thousand men are working at a trade. one of them conceives the scheme of an invention, whereby their productive power is increased tenfold. each of them, we will say, had been producing, by his toil, property worth four dollars and a half per day, and his wages were, we will say, one dollar and a half per day. now, he is able with the new invention to produce property worth forty-five dollars per day. are his wages increased in due proportion, to fifteen dollars per day, or even to five dollars per day? not at all. _cunning_ has stepped in and examined the poor workman's invention; it has bought it from him for a pittance; it secures a patent--a monopoly under the shelter of unwise laws. the workmen still get their $ . per day, and _cunning_ pockets the remainder. but this is not all: if one man can now do the work of ten, then there are nine men thrown out of employment. but the nine men must live; they want the one man's place; they are hungry; they will work for less; and down go wages, until they reach the lowest limit at which the workmen can possibly live. society has produced one millionaire and thousands of paupers. the millionaire cannot eat any more or wear any more than one prosperous yeoman, and therefore is of no more value to trade and commerce; but the thousands of paupers have to be supported by the tax-payers, and they have no money to spend, and they cannot buy the goods of the merchants, or the manufacturers, and all business languishes. in short, the most utterly useless, destructive and damnable crop a country can grow is--millionaires. if a community were to send. to india and import a lot of man-eating tigers, and turn them loose on the streets, to prey on men, women and children, they would not inflict a tithe of the misery that is caused by a like number of millionaires. and there would be this further disadvantage: the inhabitants of the city could turn out and kill the tigers, but the human destroyers are protected by the benevolent laws of the very people they are immolating on the altars of wretchedness and vice." "but what is your remedy?" asked max. "government," i replied; "government--national, state and municipal--is the key to the future of the human race. "there was a time when the town simply represented cowering peasants, clustered under the shadow of the baron's castle for protection. it advanced slowly and reluctantly along the road of civic development, scourged forward by the whip of necessity. we have but to expand the powers of government to solve the enigma of the world. man separated is man savage; man gregarious is man civilized. a higher development in society requires that this instrumentality of co-operation shall be heightened in its powers. there was a time when every man provided, at great cost, for the carriage of his own letters. now the government, for an infinitely small charge, takes the business off his hands. there was a time when each house had to provide itself with water. now the municipality furnishes water to all. the same is true of light. at one time each family had to educate its own children; now the state educates them. once every man went armed to protect himself. now the city protects him by its armed police. these hints must be followed out. the city of the future must furnish doctors for all; lawyers for all; entertainments for all; business guidance for all. it will see to it that no man is plundered, and no man starved, who is willing to work." "but," said max, "if you do away with interest on money and thus scatter coagulated capital into innumerable small enterprises, how are you going to get along without the keen-brained masters of business, who labor gigantically for gigantic personal profits; but who, by their toll and their capital, bring the great body of producers into relation with the great body of consumers? are these men not necessary to society? do they not create occasion and opportunity for labor? are not their active and powerful brains at the back of all progress? there may be a thousand men idling, and poorly fed and clothed, in a neighborhood: along comes one of these shrewd adventurers; he sees an opportunity to utilize the bark of the trees and the ox-hides of the farmers' cattle, and he starts a tannery. he may accumulate more money than the thousand men he sets to work; but has he not done more? is not his intellect immeasurably more valuable than all those unthinking muscles?" "there is much force in your argument," i replied, "and i do not think that society should discourage such adventurers. but the muscles of the many are as necessary to the man you describe as his intellect is to the muscles; and as they are all men together there should be some equity in the distribution of the profits. and remember, we have gotten into a way of thinking as if numbers and wealth were everything. it is better for a nation to contain thirty million people, prosperous, happy and patriotic, than one hundred millions, ignorant, wretched and longing for an opportunity to overthrow all government. the over-population of the globe will come soon enough. we have no interest in hurrying it. the silly ancestors of the americans called it 'national development' when they imported millions of foreigners to take up the public lands, and left nothing for their own children. "and here is another point: men work at first for a competence--for enough to lift them above the reach of want in those days which they know to be rapidly approaching, when they can no longer toil. but, having reached that point, they go on laboring for vanity--one of the shallowest of the human passions. the man who is worth $ , says to himself, 'there is jones; he is worth $ , ; he lives with a display and extravagance i cannot equal. i must increase my fortune to half a million.' jones, on the other hand, is measuring himself against brown, who has a million. he knows that men cringe lower to brown than they do to him. he must have a million--half a million is nothing. and brown feels that he is overshadowed by smith, with his ten millions; and so the childish emulation continues. men are valued, not for themselves, but for their bank account. in the meantime these vast concentrations of capital are made at the expense of mankind. if, in a community of a thousand persons, there are one hundred millions of wealth, and it is equally divided between them, all are comfortable and happy. if, now, ten men, by cunning devices, grasp three-fourths of all this wealth, and put it in their pockets, there is but one-fourth left to divide among the nine hundred and ninety, and they are therefore poor and miserable. within certain limits accumulation in one place represents denudation elsewhere. "and thus, under the stimulus of shallow vanity," i continued, "a rivalry of barouches and bonnets--an emulation of waste and extravagance--all the powers of the minds of men are turned--not to lift up the world, but to degrade it. a crowd of little creatures--men and women--are displayed upon a high platform, in the face of mankind, parading and strutting about, with their noses in the air, as tickled as a monkey with a string of beads, and covered with a glory which is not their own, but which they have been able to purchase; crying aloud: 'behold what i _have got!_' not, 'behold what i _am!_' "and then the inexpressible servility of those below them! the fools would not recognize socrates if they fell over him in the street; but they can perceive crœsus a mile off; they can smell him a block away; and they will dislocate their vertebræ abasing themselves before him. it reminds one of the time of louis xiv. in france, when millions of people were in the extremest misery--even unto starvation; while great grandees thought it the acme of earthly bliss and honor to help put the king to bed, or take off his dirty socks. and if a common man, by any chance, caught a glimpse of royalty changing its shirt, he felt as if he had looked into heaven and beheld divinity creating worlds. oh, it is enough to make a man loathe his species." "come, come," said maximilian, "you grow bitter. let us go to dinner before you abolish all the evils of the world, or i shall be disposed to quit new york and buy a corner lot in utopia." chapter xiii. the council of the oligarchy precisely as rudolph had forecast, things came to pass. i arrived at the palace of the prince at half past six; at half past seven, my ordinary suit was covered with a braided livery, and i accompanied rudolph to the council-chamber. we placed the table, chairs, pens, ink, paper, etc., in order. watching our opportunity, we drew aside a heavy box in which grew a noble specimen of the _cactus grandiflorus_ in full bloom, the gorgeous flowers just opening with the sunset, and filling the chamber with their delicious perfume. i crawled through the opening; took off my liveried suit; handed it back to rudolph; he pushed the box into its place again; i inserted the hooks in their staples, and the barricade was complete. with many whispered injunctions and directions he left me. i heard him go out and lock the door--not the door by which we had entered--and all was silence. there was room, by doubling up my limbs, turk-fashion, to sit down in the inclosure. i waited. i thought of estella. rudolph had assured me that she had not been disturbed. they were waiting for hunger to compel her to eat the drugged food. then i wondered whether we would escape in safety. then my thoughts dwelt on the words she had spoken of me, and i remembered the pleased look upon her face when we met in rudolph's room, and my visions became very pleasant. even the dead silence and oppressive solitude of the two great rooms could not still the rapid beatings of my heart. i forgot my mission and thought only of estella and the future. i was recalled to earth and its duties by the unlocking of the farther door. i heard rudolph say, as if in answer to a question: "yes, my lord, i have personally examined the rooms and made sure that there are no spies concealed anywhere." "let me see," said the prince; "lift up the tapestry." i could hear them moving about the council-chamber, apparently going around the walls. then i heard them advancing into the conservatory. i shrank down still lower; they moved here and there among the flowers, and even paused for a few moments before the mass of flowering cacti. "that _flagelliformis_," said the prince, "looks sickly. the soil is perhaps too rich. tell the gardener to change the earth about it." "i shall do so, my lord," said rudolph; and to my great relief they moved off. in a few minutes i heard them in the council-chamber. with great caution i rose slowly. a screen of flowers had been cunningly placed by rudolph between the cacti and that apartment. at last, half-stooping, i found an aperture in the rich mass of blossoms. the prince was talking to rudolph. i had a good view of his person. he was dressed in an evening suit. he was a large man, somewhat corpulent; or, as rudolph had said, bloated. he had a hebraic cast of countenance; his face seemed to be all angles. the brow was square and prominent, projecting at the corners; the nose was quite high and aquiline; the hair had the look of being dyed; a long, thick black mustache covered his upper lip, but it could not quite conceal the hard, cynical and sneering expression of his mouth; great bags of flesh hung beneath the small, furtive eyes. altogether the face reminded me of the portraits of napoleon the third, who was thought by many to have had little of napoleon in him except the name. there was about prince cabano that air of confidence and command which usually accompanies great wealth or success of any kind. extraordinary power produces always the same type of countenance. you see it in the high-nosed mummied kings of ancient egypt. there is about them an aristocratic _hauteur_ which even the shrinking of the dry skin for four thousand years has not been able to quite subdue. we feel like taking off our hats even to their parched hides. you see it in the cross-legged monuments of the old crusaders, in the venerable churches of europe; a splendid breed of ferocious barbarians they were, who struck ten blows for conquest and plunder where they struck one for christ. and you can see the same type of countenance in the present rulers of the world--the great bankers, the railroad presidents, the gigantic speculators, the uncrowned monarchs of commerce, whose golden chariots drive recklessly over the prostrate bodies of the people. and then there is another class who are everywhere the aides and ministers of these oppressors. you can tell them at a glance--large, coarse, corpulent men; red-faced, brutal; decorated with vulgar taste; loud-voiced, selfish, self-assertive; cringing sycophants to all above them, slave-drivers of all below them. they are determined to live on the best the world can afford, and they care nothing if the miserable perish in clusters around their feet. the howls of starvation will not lessen one iota their appetite or their self-satisfaction. these constitute the great man's world. he mistakes their cringings, posturings and compliments for the approval of mankind. he does not perceive how shallow and temporary and worse than useless is the life he leads; and he cannot see, beyond these well-fed, corpulent scamps, the great hungry, unhappy millions who are suffering from his misdeeds or his indifference. while i was indulging in these reflections the members of the government were arriving. they were accompanied by servants, black and white, who, with many bows and flexures, relieved them of their wraps and withdrew. the door was closed and locked. rudolph stood without on guard. i could now rise to my feet with safety, for the council-chamber was in a blaze of electric light, while the conservatory was but partially illuminated. the men were mostly middle-aged, or advanced in years. they were generally large men, with finely developed brows--natural selection had brought the great heads to the top of affairs. some were cleancut in feature, looking merely like successful business men; others, like the prince, showed signs of sensuality and dissipation, in the baggy, haggard features. they were unquestionably an able assembly. there were no orators among them; they possessed none of the arts of the rostrum or the platform. they spoke sitting, in an awkward, hesitating manner; but what they said was shrewd and always to the point. they had no secretaries or reporters. they could trust no one with their secrets. their conclusions were conveyed by the president--prince cabano--to one man, who at once communicated what was needful to their greater agents, and these in turn to the lesser agents; and so the streams of authority flowed, with lightninglike speed, to the remotest parts of the so-called republic; and many a man was struck down, ruined, crushed, destroyed, who had little suspicion that the soundless bolt which slew him came from that faraway chamber. the prince welcomed each newcomer pleasantly, and assigned him to his place. when all were seated he spoke: "i have called you together, gentlemen," he said "because we have very important business to transact. the evidences multiply that we are probably on the eve of another outbreak of the restless _canaille_; it may be upon a larger scale than any we have yet encountered. the filthy wretches seem to grow more desperate every year; otherwise they would not rush upon certain death, as they seem disposed to do. "i have two men in this house whom i thought it better that you should see and hear face to face. the first is general jacob quincy, commander of the forces which man our ten thousand air-ships, or _demons_, as they are popularly called. i think it is understood by all of us that, in these men, and the deadly bombs of poisonous gas with which their vessels are equipped, we must find our chief dependence for safety and continued power. we must not forget that we are outnumbered a thousand to one, and the world grows very restive under our domination. if it were not for the _demons_ and the poison-bombs, i should fear the results of the coming contest--with these, victory is certain. "quincy, on behalf of his men, demands another increase of pay. we have already several times yielded to similar applications. we are somewhat in the condition of ancient rome, when the prætorians murdered the emperor pertinax, and sold the imperial crown to didius julianus. these men hold the control of the continent in their hands. fortunately for us, they are not yet fully aware of their own power, and are content to merely demand an increase of pay. we cannot quarrel with them at this time, with a great insurrection pending. a refusal might drive them over to the enemy. i mention these facts so that, whatever demands general quincy may make, however extravagant they may be, you will express no dissatisfaction. when he is gone we can talk over our plans for the future, and decide what course we will take as to these troublesome men when the outbreak is over. i shall have something to propose after he leaves us." there was a general expression of approval around the table. "there is another party here to-night," continued the prince. "he is a very shrewd and cunning spy; a member of our secret police service. he goes by the name of stephen andrews in his intercourse with me. what his real name may be i know not. "you are aware we have had great trouble to ascertain anything definitely about this new organization, and have succeeded but indifferently. their plans seem to be so well taken, and their cunning so great, that all our attempts have come to naught. many of our spies have disappeared; the police cannot learn what becomes of them; they are certainly dead, but none of their bodies are ever found. it is supposed that they have been murdered, loaded with weights and sunk in the river. this man andrews has so far escaped. he works as a mechanic--in fact, he really is such--in one of the shops; and he is apparently the most violent and bitter of our enemies. he will hold intercourse with no one but me, for he suspects all the city police, and he comes here but seldom--not more than once in two or three months--when i pay him liberally and assign him to new work. the last task i gave him was to discover who are the leaders of the miserable creatures in this new conspiracy. he has found it very difficult to obtain any positive information upon this point. the organization is very cunningly contrived. the brotherhood is made up in groups of ten. no one of the rank and file knows more than nine other members associated with him. the leaders of these groups of ten are selected by a higher power. these leaders are again organized in groups of ten, under a leader again selected by a higher power; but in this second group of ten no man knows his fellow's name or face; they meet always masked. and so the scale rises. the highest body of all is a group of one hundred, selected out of the whole force by an executive committee. andrews has at length, after years of patient waiting and working, been selected as one of this upper hundred. he is to be initiated to-morrow night. he came to me for more money; for he feels he is placing himself in great danger in going into the den of the chief conspirators. i told him that i thought you would like to question him, and so he has returned again to-night, disguised in the dress of a woman, and he is now in the library awaiting your pleasure. i think we had better see him before we hear what quincy has to say. shall i send for him?" general assent being given, lie stepped to the door and told rudolph to bring up the woman he would find in the library. in a few moments the door opened and a tall personage, dressed like a woman, with a heavy veil over her face, entered. the prince said: "lock the door and come forward." the figure did so, advanced to the table and removed the bonnet and veil, disclosing the dark, bronzed face of a workman--a keen, shrewd, observant, watchful, strong face. chapter xiv. the spy's story "andrews," said the prince, "tell these gentlemen what you have found out about the extent of this organization and the personality of its leaders?" "my lord," replied the man, "i can speak only by hearsay--from whispers which i have heard in a thousand places, and by piecing together scraps of information which i have gathered in a great many ways. i do not yet speak positively. after to-morrow night i hope to be able to tell you everything." "i understand the difficulties you have to contend with," replied the prince; "and these gentlemen will not hold you to a strict accountability for the correctness of what you have gathered in that way." "you can have no idea," said andrews, "of the difficulty of obtaining information. it is a terrible organization. i do not think that anything like it has every existed before on the earth. one year ago there were fifteen of us engaged in this work; i am the only one left alive to-night." his face grew paler as he spoke, and there was a visible start and sensation about the council board. "this organization," he continued, "is called '_the brotherhood of destruction_.' it extends all over europe and america, and numbers, i am told, _one hundred million members_." "can that be possible?" asked one gentleman, in astonishment. "i believe it to be true," said andrews, solemnly. "nearly every workman of good character and sober habits in new york belongs to it; and so it is in all our great cities; while the blacks of the south are members of it to a man. their former masters have kept them in a state of savagery, instead of civilizing and elevating them; and the result is they are as barbarous and bloodthirsty as their ancestors were when brought from africa, and fit subjects for such a terrible organization." "what has caused such a vast movement?" asked another gentleman. "the universal misery and wretchedness of the working classes, in the cities, on the farms--everywhere," replied andrews. "are they armed?" asked another of the council. "it is claimed," said andrews, "that every one of the hundred millions possesses a magazine rifle of the most improved pattern, with abundance of fixed ammunition." "i fear, my good man," said another member of the council, with a sneer, "that you have been frightened by some old woman's tales. where could these men buy such weapons? what would they buy them with? where would they hide them? our armories and manufacturers are forbidden by law to sell firearms, unless under special permit, signed by one of our trusty officers. the value of those guns would in itself be a vast sum, far beyond the means of those miserable wretches. and our police are constantly scouring the cities and the country for weapons, and they report that the people possess none, except a few old-fashioned, worthless fowling-pieces, that have come down from father to son." "as i said before," replied andrews, "i tell you only what i have gleaned among the workmen in those secret whispers which pass from one man's mouth to another man's ear. i may be misinformed; but i am told that these rifles are manufactured by the men themselves (for, of course, all the skilled work of all kinds is done by workingmen) in some remote and desolate parts of europe or america; they are furnished at a very low price, at actual cost, and paid for in small installments, during many years. they are delivered to the captains of tens and by them buried in rubber bags in the earth." "then that accounts," said one man, who had not yet spoken, "for a curious incident which occurred the other day near the town of zhitomir, in the province of volhynia, russia, not very far from the borders of austria. a peasant made an offer to the police to deliver up, for rubles, and a promise of pardon for himself, nine of his fellow conspirators and their rifles. his terms were accepted and he was paid the money. he led the officers to a place in his barnyard, where, under a manure-heap, they dug up ten splendid rifles of american make, with fixed ammunition, of the most improved kind, the whole inclosed in a rubber bag to keep out the damp. nine other peasants were arrested; they were all subjected to the knout; but neither they nor their captain could tell anything more than he had at first revealed. the russian newspapers have been full of speculations as to how the rifles came there, but could arrive at no reasonable explanation." "what became of the men?" asked andrews, curiously. "nine of them were sent to siberia for life; the tenth man, who had revealed the hiding-place of the guns, was murdered that night with his wife and all his family, and his house burned up. even two of his brothers, who lived near him, but had taken no part in the matter, were also slain." "i expected as much," said andrews quietly. this unlooked-for corroboration of the spy's story produced a marked sensation, and there was profound silence for some minutes. at last the prince spoke up: "andrews," said he, "what did you learn about the leaders of this organization?" "there are three of them, i am told," replied the spy; they constitute what is known as 'the executive committee.' the commander-in-chief, it is whispered, is called, or was called--for no one can tell what his name is now--cæsar lomellini; a man of italian descent, but a native of south carolina. he is, it is said, of immense size, considerable ability, and the most undaunted courage. his history is singular. he is now about forty-five years of age. in his youth, so the story goes, he migrated to the then newly settled state of jefferson, on the upper waters of the saskatchewan. he had married early, like all his race, and had a family. he settled down on land and went to farming. he was a quiet, peaceable, industrious man. one year, just as he was about to harvest his crops, a discharge of lightning killed his horses; they were the only ones he had. he was without the means to purchase another team, and without horses he could not gather his harvest. he was therefore forced to mortgage his land for enough to buy another pair of horses. the money-lender demanded large interest on the loan and an exorbitant bonus besides; and as the 'bankers,' as they called themselves, had an organization, he could not get the money at a lower rate anywhere in that vicinity. it was the old story. the crops failed sometimes, and when they did not fail the combinations and trusts of one sort or another swept away cæsar's profits; then he had to renew the loan, again and again, at higher rates of interest, and with still greater bonuses; then the farm came to be regarded as not sufficient security for the debt; and the horses, cattle, machinery, everything he had was covered with mortgages. cæsar worked like a slave, and his family toiled along with him. at last the crash came; he was driven out of his home; the farm and all had been lost for the price of a pair of horses. right on the heels of this calamity, cæsar learned that his eldest daughter--a beautiful, dark-eyed girl--had been seduced by a lawyer--the agent of the money-lender--and would in a few months become a mother. then all the devil that lay hid in the depths of the man's nature broke forth. that night the lawyer was attacked in his bed and literally hewed to pieces: the same fate overtook the money-lender. before morning cæsar and his family had fled to the inhospitable mountain regions north of the settlement. there he gathered around him a band of men as desperate as himself, and waged bloody and incessant war on society. he seemed, however, to have a method in his crimes, for, while he spared the poor, no man who preyed upon his fellow-men was safe for an hour. at length the government massed a number of troops in the vicinity; the place got too hot for him; cæsar and his men fled to the pacific coast; and nothing more was heard of him for three or four years. then the terrible negro insurrection broke out in the lower mississippi valley, which you all remember, and a white man, of gigantic stature, appeared as their leader, a man of great daring and enterprise. when that rebellion had been suppressed, after many battles, the white man disappeared; and it is now claimed that he is in this city at the head of this terrible brotherhood of destruction; and that he is the same cæsar lomellini who was once a peaceful farmer in the state of jefferson." the spy paused. the prince said: "well, who are the others?" "it is reported that the second in command, but really 'the brains of the organization,' as he is called by the men, is a russian jew. his name i could not learn; very few have seen him or know anything about him. he is said to be a cripple, and to have a crooked neck. it is reported he was driven out of his synagogue in russia, years ago, for some crimes he had committed. he is believed to be the man who organized the brotherhood in europe, and he has come here to make the two great branches act together. if what is told of him be true, he must be a man of great ability, power and cunning." "who is the third?" asked the prince. "there seems to be more obscurity about him than either of the others," replied the spy. "i heard once that he was an american, a young man of great wealth and ability, and that he had furnished much of the money needed to carry on the brotherhood. but this again is denied by others. jenkins, who was one of our party, and who was killed some months since, told me, in our last interview, that he had penetrated far enough to find out who the third man was; and he told me this curious story, which may or may not be true. he said that several years ago there lived in this city a man of large fortune, a lawyer by education, but not engaged in the practice of his profession, by the name of arthur phillips. he was a benevolent man, of scholarly tastes, and something of a dreamer. he had made a study of the works of all the great socialist writers, and had become a convert to their theories, and very much interested in the cause of the working people. he established a monthly journal for the dissemination of his views. he spoke at the meetings of the workmen, and was very much beloved and respected by them. of course, so jenkins said, all this was very distasteful to the ruling class (i am only repeating the story as it was told to me, your lordships will please remember), and they began to persecute him. first he was ostracised from his caste. but this did not trouble him much. he had no family but his wife and one son who was away at the university. he redoubled his exertions to benefit the working classes. at this time he had a lawsuit about some property with a wealthy and influential man, a member of the government. in the course of the trial phillips produced a writing, which purported to be signed by two men, and witnessed by two others; and phillips swore he saw all of them sign it. whereupon not only the men themselves, but the two witnesses to the paper, came up and swore, point-blank, that their alleged signatures were forgeries. there were four oaths against one. phillips lost his case. but this was not the worst of it. the next day he was indicted for forgery and perjury; and, despite his wealth and the efforts of the ablest counsel he could employ, he was convicted and sentenced to twenty years' penal servitude in the state prison. his friends said he was innocent; that he had been sacrificed by the ruling class, who feared him and desired to destroy him; that all the witnesses had been suborned by large sums of money to swear as they did; that the jury was packed, the judge one of their tools, and even his own lawyers corrupted. after several years his son--who bore the same name as himself--arthur phillips--returned from the university; and jenkins told me that he had learned, in some mysterious way, that this was really the man who, out of revenge for the wrongs inflicted on his father, was now the third member of the executive committee of the brotherhood, and had furnished them with large sums of money." as this story progressed, listened to most attentively by all, i noticed that one large man, flashily dressed, flushed somewhat, and that the rest turned and looked at him. when andrews stopped, the prince said, quietly: "count, that is your man." "yes," replied the man spoken to, very coolly. "there is, however, no truth," he added, "in the latter part of the story; for i have had detectives shadow young phillips ever since he returned to the city, and they report to me that he is a shallow, dissipated, drunken, worthless fellow, who spends his time about saloons and running after actresses and singers; and that it will not be long until he will have neither health nor fortune left." i need not say that i was an intent listener to everything, and especially to the latter part of the spy's story. i pieced it out with what maximilian had told me, and felt certain that maximilian petion and arthur phillips were one and the same person. i could now understand why it was that a gentleman so intelligent, frank and kindly by nature could have engaged in so desperate and bloody a conspiracy. nor could i, with that awful narrative ringing in my cars, blame him much. what struck me most forcibly was that there was no attempt, on the part of the count, to deny the sinister part of jenkins' story; and the rest of the council evidently had no doubt of its truth; nor did it seem to lessen him a particle in their esteem. in fact, one man said, and the rest assented to the sentiment: "well, it is a lucky thing the villain is locked up, anyhow." there were some among these men whose faces were not bad. under favorable circumstances they might have been good and just men. but they were the victims of a pernicious system, as fully as were the poor, shambling, ragged wretches of the streets and slums, who had been ground down by their acts into drunkenness and crime. "when will the outbreak come?" asked one of the council. "that i cannot tell," said andrews. "they seem to be waiting for something, or there is a hitch in their plans. the men are eager to break forth, and are only held back by the leaders. by their talk they are confident of success when the insurrection does come." "what are their plans?" asked the prince. "they have none," replied andrews, "except to burn, rob, destroy and murder. they have long lists of the condemned, i am told, including all those here present, and hundreds of thousands besides. they will kill all the men, women and children of the aristocracy, except the young girls, and these will be reserved for a worse fate--at least that is what the men about the beer-houses mutter between their cups." the members of the government looked uneasy; some even were a trifle pale. "can you come here wednesday night next and tell us what you learn during your visit to their 'council of one hundred'?" asked the prince. "yes," replied andrews--"if i am alive. but it is dangerous for me to come here." "wait in the library," said the prince, "until i am at liberty, and i will give you an order for the thousand dollars i promised you; and also a key that will admit you to this house at any hour of the day or night. gentlemen," he said, turning to his associates, "have you any further questions to ask this man?" they had none, and andrews withdrew. "i think," said the prince, "we had better reassemble here on wednesday night. matters are growing critical." this was agreed to. the prince stepped to the door and whispered a few words to rudolph. chapter xv. the master of "the demons" the door, in a few minutes, opened, and closed behind a tall, handsome, military-looking man, in a bright uniform, with the insignia of a brigadier-general of the united states army on his shoulders. the prince greeted him respectfully and invited him to a seat. "general quincy," said the prince, "i need not introduce you to these gentlemen; you have met them all before. i have told them that you desired to speak to them about matters relating to your command; and they are ready to hear you." "gentlemen," said the general, rising to his feet, "i regret to have to approach you once more in reference to the pay of the officers and men of my command. i fear you will think them importunate, if not unreasonable. i am not here of my own volition, but as the mouthpiece of others. neither have i incited them to make these demands for increased pay. the officers and men seem to have a high sense of their great importance in the present condition of public affairs. they openly declare that those they maintain in power are enjoying royal affluence, which they could not possess for a single day without their aid; and therefore they claim that they should be well paid." the general paused, and the prince said, in his smoothest tones: "that is not an unreasonable view to take of the matter. what do they ask?" "i have here," replied the general, drawing a paper from his pocket, "a schedule of their demands, adopted at their last meeting." he handed it to the prince. "you will see," he continued, "that it ranges from $ , per year, for the common soldiers, up through the different grades, to $ , per year for the commanding officer." not a man at the council table winced at this extraordinary demand. the prince said: "the salaries asked for are high; but they will come out of the public taxes and not from our pockets; and if you can assure me that your command, in view of this increase of compensation, will work with increased zeal, faithfulness and courage on behalf of law, order and society, i, for one, should be disposed to accede to the demand you make. what say you, gentlemen?" there was a general expression of assent around the table. the commander of the demons thanked them, and assured them that the officers and men would be glad to hear that their request was granted, and that the council might depend upon their valor and devotion in any extremity of affairs. "have you an abundant supply of the death-bombs on hand?" asked the prince. "yes, many tons of them," was the reply. "are they well guarded?" "yes, with the utmost care. a thousand men of my command watch over them constantly." "your air-vessels are in perfect order?" "yes; we drill and exercise with them every day." "you anticipate an outbreak?" "yes; we look for it any hour." "have you any further questions to ask general quincy?" inquired the prince. "none." he was bowed out and the door locked behind him. the prince returned to his seat. "gentlemen," he said, "that matter is settled, and we are safe for the present. but you can see the ticklish ground we stand on. these men will not rest satisfied with the immense concessions we have made them; they will demand more and more as the consciousness of their power increases. they know we are afraid of them. in time they will assume the absolute control of the government, and our power will be at an end. if we resist them, they will have but to drop a few of their death-bombs through the roofs of our palaces, and it is all over with us." "what can we do?" asked two or three. "we must have recourse to history," he replied, "and profit by the experience of others similarly situated. in the thirteenth century the sultan of egypt, malek-ed-adell the second, organized a body of soldiery made up of slaves, bought from the mongols, who had taken them in battle. they were called the _bahri mamelukes_. they formed the sultan's bodyguard. they were mounted on the finest horses in the world, and clad in the most magnificent dresses. they were of our own white race--circassians. but malek had unwittingly created, out of the slaves, a dangerous power. they, not many years afterward, deposed and murdered his son, and placed their general on the throne. for several generations they ruled egypt. to circumscribe their power a new army of mamelukes was formed, called the _borgis_. but the cure was as bad as the disease. in the _borgi mamelukes_ rose up, overthrew their predecessors, and made their leader, barkok, supreme ruler. this dynasty held power until , when the ottoman turks conquered egypt. the turks perceived that they must either give up egypt or destroy the mamelukes. they massacred them in great numbers; and, at last, mehemet ah beguiled four hundred and seventy of their leaders into the citadel of cairo, and closed the gates, and ordered his mercenaries to fire upon them. but one man escaped. he leaped his horse from the ramparts and escaped unhurt, although the horse was killed by the prodigious fall. "now, let us apply this teaching of history. i propose that after this outbreak is over we shall order the construction of ten thousand more of these air-vessels, and this will furnish us an excuse for sending a large force of apprentices to the present command to learn the management of the ships. we will select from the circle of our relatives some young, able, reliable man to command these new troops. we will then seize upon the magazine of bombs and arrest the officers and men. we will charge them with treason. the officers we will execute, and the men we will send to prison for life; for it would not be safe, with their dangerous knowledge, to liberate them. after that we will keep the magazine of bombs and the secret of the poison in the custody of men of our own caste, so that the troops commanding the air-ships will never again feel that sense of power which now possesses them." these plans met with general approval. "but what are we to do with the coming outbreak?" asked one of the councilors. "i have thought of that, too," replied the prince. "it is our interest to make it the occasion of a tremendous massacre, such as the world has never before witnessed. there are too many people on the earth, anyhow. in this way we will strike such terror into the hearts of the _canaille_ that they will remain submissive to our will, and the domination of our children, for centuries to come." "but how will you accomplish that?" asked one. "easily enough," replied the prince. "you know that the first step such insurgents usually take is to tear up the streets of the city and erect barricades of stones and earth and everything else they can lay their hands on. heretofore we have tried to stop them. my advice is that we let them alone--let them build their barricades as high and as strong as they please, and if they leave any outlets unobstructed, let our soldiers close them up in the same way. we have then got them in a rat-trap, surrounded by barricades, and every street and alley outside occupied by our troops. if there are a million in the trap, so much the better. then let our flock of demons sail up over them and begin to drop their fatal bombs. the whole streets within the barricades will soon be a sea of invisible poison. if the insurgents try to fly they will find in their own barricades the walls of their prison-house; and if they attempt to scale them they will be met, face to face, with our massed troops, who will be instructed to take no prisoners. if they break into the adjacent houses to escape, our men will follow from the back streets and gardens and bayonet them at their leisure, or fling them back into the poison. if ten millions are slain all over the world, so much the better. there will be more room for what are left, and the world will sleep in peace for centuries. "these plans will be sent out, with your approval, to all cities, and to europe. when the rebellion is crushed in the cities, it will not take long to subdue it among the wretched peasants of the country, and our children will rule this world for ages to come." chapter xvi. gabriel's folly while the applause that followed this diabolical scheme rang loud and long around the council-chamber, i stood there paralyzed. my eyes dilated and my heartbeat furiously. i was overwhelmed with the dreadful, the awful prospect, so coolly presented by that impassive, terrible man. my imagination was always vivid, and i saw the whole horrid reality unrolled before me like a panorama. the swarming streets filled with the oppressed people; the dark shadows of the demons floating over them; the first bomb; the terror; the confusion; the gasping of the dying; the shrieks, the groans--another and another bomb falling here, there, everywhere; the surging masses rushing from death to death; the wild flight; the barricades a line of fire and bayonets; the awful and continuous rattle of the guns, sounding like the grinding of some dreadful machinery that crunches the bones of the living; the recoil from the bullets to the poison; the wounded stumbling over the dead, now covering the streets in strata several feet thick; and still the bombs crash and the poison spreads. death! death! nothing but death! _ten million dead!_ oh, my god! i clasped my head--it felt as if it would burst. i must save the world from such a calamity. these men are human. they cannot be insensible to an appeal for mercy--for justice! carried away by these thoughts, i stooped down and unclasped the hooks; i pushed aside the box; i crawled out; the next moment i stood before them in the full glare of the electric lamps. "for god's sake," i cried, "save the world from such an awful calamity! have pity on mankind; even as you hope that the mind and heart of the universe will have pity on you. i have heard all. do not plunge the earth into horrors that will shock the very stars in their courses. the world can be saved! it can be saved! you have power. be pitiful. let me speak for you. let me go to the leaders of this insurrection and bring you together." "he is mad," said one. "no, no," i replied, "i am not mad. it is you that are mad. it is the wretched people who are mad--mad with suffering and misery, as you with pride and hardness of heart. you are all _men_. hear their demands. yield a little of your superfluous blessings; and touch their hearts--with kindness, and love will spring up like flowers in the track of the harrow. for the sake of christ jesus, who died on the cross for all men, i appeal to you. be just, be generous, be merciful. are they not your brethren? have they not souls like yourselves? speak, speak, and i will toil as long as i can breathe. i will wear the flesh from off my bones, if i can reconcile the castes of this wretched society, and save civilization." the prince had recoiled with terror at my first entrance. he had now rallied his faculties. "how did you come here?" he asked. fortunately the repulsive coldness with which the council had met my earnest appeals, which i had fairly shrieked at them, had restored to some extent the balance of my reason. the thought flashed over me that i must not betray rudolph. "through yonder open window," i replied. "how did you reach it?" asked the prince. "i climbed up the ivy vine to it." "what did you come here for?" he asked. "to appeal to you, in the name of god, to prevent the coming of this dreadful outbreak." "the man is a religious fanatic," said one of the council to another; "probably one of the street preachers." the prince drew two or three of the leaders together, and they whispered for a few minutes. then he went to the door and spoke to rudolph. i caught a few words: "not leave--alive--send for macarius--midnight--garden." rudolph advanced and took me by the arm. the revulsion had come. i was dazed--overwhelmed. there swept over me, like the rush of a flood, the dreadful thought: "what will become of estella?" i went with him like a child. i was armed, but an infant might have slain me. when we were in the hall, rudolph said to me, in a hoarse whisper: "i heard everything. you meant nobly; but you were foolish--wild. you might have ruined us all. but there is a chance of escape yet. it will be an hour before the assassin will arrive. i can secure that much delay. in the meantime, be prudent and silent, and follow my directions implicitly." i promised, very humbly, to do so. chapter xvii. the flight and pursuit he opened the door of a room and pushed me into it. "wait," he whispered, "for my orders." i looked around me. it was rudolph's room--the one i had been in before. i was not alone. there was a young gentleman standing at a window, looking out into the garden. he turned around and advanced toward me, with his hand extended and a smile on his face. it was estella! looking more charming than ever in her masculine dress. i took her hand. then my heart smote me; and i fell upon my knees before her. "o estella," i cried, "pardon me. i would have sacrificed you for mankind--you that are dearer to me than the whole human race. like a fool i broke from my hiding-place, and appealed to those hearts of stone--those wild beasts--those incarnate fiends--to spare the world the most dreadful calamity it has ever known. they proposed to murder _ten million human beings_! i forgot my task--my duty--you--my own safety--everything, to save the world." her eyes dilated as i spoke, and then, without a trace of mock modesty, without a blush, she laid her hand upon my head and said simply: "if you had done less, i should have loved you less. what am i in the presence of such a catastrophe? but if you are to die we can at least perish together. in that we have the mastery of our enemies. our liberty is beyond their power." "but you shall not die," i said, wildly, springing to my feet. "the assassin comes! give me the poisoned knife. when he opens the door i shall slay him. i shall bear you with me. who will dare to arrest our departure with that dreadful weapon--that instantaneous death--shining in my hand. besides, i carry a hundred lives at my girdle. once in the streets, we can escape." she took from the pocket of her coat the sheathed dagger and handed it to me. "we must, however, be guided by the counsels of rudolph," she quietly said; "he is a faithful friend." "true," i replied. we sat near each other. i presumed nothing upon the great admission she had so gravely made. this was a woman to be worshiped rather than wooed. i told her all the story of my life. i described my home in that strange, wild, ancient, lofty land; my mother, my brothers; the wide, old, roomy house; the trees, the flowers, the clustering, bleating sheep. a half hour passed. the door opened. a burst of laughter and the clinking of glasses resounded through it. rudolph entered. "the prince and his friends," he said, "make merry over their assured victory. if you will tell maximilian all you have heard to-night, the result may be different from what they anticipate. come with me." he led the way through a suite of two or three rooms which communicated with his apartment. "we must throw the hounds off the scent of the fox," he said; and, to our astonishment, he proceeded to tear down the heavy curtains from two windows, having first locked the door and closed the outer shutters. he then tore the curtains into long strips, knotting them together; we pulled upon them to test their strength. he then opened one of the windows and dropped the end of the long rope thus formed out of it, fastening the other to a heavy piece of furniture, within the room. "that will account for your escape," he said. "i have already thrown the rope ladder from the window of the room estella occupied. these precautions are necessary for my own safety." then, locking the communicating doors, we returned to his room. "put this cloak over your shoulders," he said; "it will help disguise you. walk boldly down these stairs," opening another door--not the one we had entered by; "turn to the right--to the right, remember--and on your left hand you will soon find a door--the first you will come to. open it. say to the man on guard: 'show me to the carriage of lord southworth.' there is no such person; but that is the signal agreed upon. he will lead you to the carriage. maximilian is the footman. farewell, and may god bless you." we shook hands. i followed his directions; we met no one; i opened the door; the guard, as soon as i uttered the password, led me, through a mass of carriages, to where one stood back under some overhanging trees. the footman hurried to open the door. i gave my hand to estella; she sprang in; i followed her. but this little movement of instinctive courtesy on my part toward a woman had been noticed by one of the many spies hanging around. he thought it strange that one man should offer his hand to assist another into a carriage. he whispered his suspicions to a comrade. we had hardly gone two blocks from the palace when maximilian leaned down and said: "i fear we are followed." our carriage turned into another street, and then into another. i looked out and could see--for the streets were very bright with the magnetic light--that, some distance behind us, came two carriages close together, while at a greater distance, behind them, i caught sight of a third vehicle. maximilian leaned down again and said: "we are certainly pursued by two carriages. the third one i recognize as our own--the man with the bombs. we will drive to the first of the houses we have secured. be ready to spring out the moment we stop, and follow me quickly into the house, for all depends on the rapidity of our movements." in a little while the carriage suddenly stopped. i took estella's hand. she needed no help. maximilian was ascending the steps of a house, key in hand. we followed. i looked back. one of our pursuers was a block away; the other a little behind him. the carriage with the bombs i could not see--it might be obscured by the trees, or it might have lost us in the fierce speed with which we had traveled. "quick," said maximilian, pulling us in and locking the door. we followed him, running through a long, lighted hall, out into a garden; a gate flew open; we rushed across the street and sprang into another carriage; maximilian leaped to his place; crack went the whip, and away we flew; but on the instant the quick eyes of my friend saw, rapidly whirling around the next corner, one of the carriages that had been pursuing us. "they suspected our trick," said he. "where, in heaven's name, is the man with the bombs?" he added, anxiously. our horses were swift, but still that shadow clung to us; the streets were still and deserted, for it was after midnight; but they were as bright as if the full moon shone in an unclouded sky. "ah! there he comes, at last," said maximilian, with a sigh of relief. "i feared we might meet another carriage of the police, and this fellow behind us would call it to his help, and our case would be desperate, as they would know our trick. we should have to fight for it. now observe what takes place." estella, kneeling on the cushions, looked out through the glass window in the back of the carriage; i leaned far out at the side. "see, estella," i cried, "how that hindmost team flies! they move like race-horses on the course." nearer and nearer they come to our pursuers; they are close behind them; the driver of the front carriage seems to know that there is danger; he lashes his horses furiously; it is in vain. now they are side by side--side by side for a time; but now our friends forge slowly ahead. the driver of the beaten team suddenly pulls his horses back on their haunches. it is too late. a man stands up on the seat of the front carriage-it is an open barouche. i could see his arm describe an arc through the air; the next instant the whole street was ablaze with a flash of brilliant red light, and the report of a tremendous explosion rang in my ears. through the smoke and dust i could dimly see the horses of our pursuers piled in a heap upon the street, kicking, plunging, dying. "it is all right now," said maximilian quietly; and then he spoke to the driver: "turn the next corner to the left." after having made several changes of direction--with intent to throw any other possible pursuers off the track--and it being evident that we were not followed, except by the carriage of our friends, we drove slowly to maximilian's house and alighted. the sweet-faced old lady took the handsome, seeming boy, estella, in her arms, and with hearty cordiality welcomed her to her new home. we left them together, mingling tears of joy. max and i adjourned to the library, and there, at his request, i told him all that had happened in the council-chamber. he smoked his cigar and listened attentively. his face darkened as i repeated the spy's story, but he neither admitted nor denied the truth of the part which i thought related to himself. when i told him about the commander of the air-ships, his interest was so great that his cigar went out; and when i narrated the conversation which occurred after general quincy had left the room his face lighted up with a glow of joy. he listened intently to the account of the prince's plan of battle, and smiled grimly. but when i told how i came from my hiding-place and appealed to the oligarchy to spare mankind, he rose from his chair and walked the room, profoundly agitated; and when i had finished, by narrating how rudolph led me to his room, to the presence of estella, he threw his arms around my neck, and said, "you dear old fool! it was just like you;" but i could see that his eyes were wet with emotion. then he sat for some time in deep thought. at last he said: "gabriel, would you be willing to do something more to serve me?" "certainly," i replied; "anything." "would you go with me to-morrow night and tell this tale to the council of our brotherhood? my own life and the lives of my friends, and _the liberty of one dear to me_, may depend upon your doing so." "i shall go with you most willingly," i said. "to tell you the truth," i added, "while i cannot approve of your terrible brotherhood, nevertheless what i have seen and heard tonight satisfies me that the plutocrats should no longer cumber the earth with their presence. men who can coolly plot, amid laughter, the death of ten million human beings, for the purpose of preserving their ill-gotten wealth and their ill-used power, should be exterminated from the face of the planet as enemies of mankind--as poisonous snakes--vermin." he grasped my hand and thanked me. it was pleasant to think, that night, that estella loved me; that i had saved her; that we were under the same roof; and i wove visions in my brain brighter than the dreams of fairyland; and estella moved everywhere amid them, a radiant angel. chapter xviii. the execution "now, gabriel," said max, "i will have to blindfold you--not that i mistrust you, but that i have to satisfy the laws of our society and the scruples of others." this was said just before we opened the door. he folded a silk handkerchief over my face, and led me down the steps and seated me in a carriage. he gave some whispered directions to the driver, and away we rolled. it was a long drive. at last i observed that peculiar salty and limy smell in the air, which told me we were approaching the river. the place was very still and solitary. there were no sounds of vehicles or foot-passengers. the carriage slowed up, and we stopped. "this way," said max, opening the door of the carriage, and leading me by the hand. we walked a few steps; we paused; there were low whisperings. then we descended a long flight of steps; the air had a heavy and subterranean smell; we hurried forward through a large chamber. i imagined it to be the cellar of some abandoned warehouse; the light came faintly through the bandage over my face, and i inferred that a guide was carrying a lantern before us. again we stopped. there was more whispering and the rattle of paper, as if the guards were examining some document. the whispering was renewed; then we entered and descended again a flight of steps, and again went forward for a short distance. the air was very damp and the smell earthy. again i heard the whispering and the rattling of paper. there was delay. some one within was sent for and came out. then the door was flung open, and we entered a room in which the air appeared to be drier than in those we had passed through, and it seemed to be lighted up. there were little movements and stirrings of the atmosphere which indicated that there were a number of persons in the room. i stood still. then a stern, loud voice said: "gabriel weltstein, hold up your right hand." i did so. the voice continued: "you do solemnly swear, in the presence of almighty god, that the statements you are about to make are just and true; that you are incited to make them neither by corruption, nor hate, nor any other unworthy motive; and that you will tell the truth and all the truth; and to this you call all the terrors of the unknown world to witness; and you willingly accept death if you utter anything that is false." i bowed my head. "what brother vouches for this stranger?" asked the same stern voice. then i heard maximilian. he spoke as if he was standing near my side. he said: "i do. if i had not been willing to vouch for him with my life, i should not have asked to bring him--not a member of our brotherhood--into this presence. he saved my life; he is a noble, just and honorable man--one who loves his kind, and would bless and help them if he could. he has a story to tell which concerns us all." "enough," said the voice. "were you present in the council-chamber of the prince of cabano last night? if so, tell us what you saw and heard?" just then there was a slight noise, as if some one was moving quietly toward the door behind me, by which i had just entered. then came another voice, which i had not before heard--a thin, shrill, strident, imperious voice--a voice that it seemed to me i should recognize again among a million. it cried out: "back to your seat! richard, tell the guards to permit no one to leave this chamber until the end of our meeting." there was a shuffling of feet, and whispering, and then again profound silence. "proceed," said the stern voice that had first spoken. concealing all reference to estella, and omitting to name rudolph, whom i referred to simply as one of their brotherhood known to maximilian, i told, in the midst of a grave-like silence, how i had been hidden in the room next to the council-chamber; and then i went on to give a concise history of what i had witnessed and heard. "uncover his eyes!" exclaimed the stern voice. maximilian untied the handkerchief. for a moment or two i was blinded by the sudden glare of light. then, as my eyes recovered their function, i could see that i stood, as i had supposed, in the middle of a large vault or cellar. around the room, on rude benches, sat perhaps one hundred men. at the end, on a sort of dais, or raised platform, was a man of gigantic stature, masked and shrouded. below him, upon a smaller elevation, sat another, whose head, i noticed even then, was crooked to one side. still below him, on a level with the floor, at a table, were two men who seemed to be secretaries. every man present wore a black mask and a long cloak of dark material. near me stood one similarly shrouded, who, i thought, from the size and figure, must be maximilian. it was a solemn, silent, gloomy assemblage, and the sight of it thrilled through my very flesh and bones. i was not frightened, but appalled, as i saw all those eyes, out of those expressionless dark faces, fixed upon me. i felt as if they were phantoms, or dead men, in whom only the eyes lived. the large man stood up. he was indeed a giant. he seemed to uncoil himself from his throne as he rose. "unmask," he said. there was a rustle, and the next moment the masks were gone and the cloaks had fallen down. it was an extraordinary assemblage that greeted my eyes; a long array of stern faces, dark and toil-hardened, with great, broad brows and solemn or sinister eyes. last night i had beheld the council of the plutocracy. here was the council of the proletariat. the large heads at one end of the line were matched by the large heads at the other. a great injustice, or series of wrongs, working through many generations, had wrought out results that in some sense duplicated each other. brutality above had produced brutality below; cunning there was answered by cunning here; cruelty in the aristocrat was mirrored by cruelty in the workman. high and low were alike victims--unconscious victims--of a system. the crime was not theirs; it lay at the door of the shallow, indifferent, silly generations of the past. my eyes sought the officers. i noticed that maximilian was disguised--out of an excess of caution, as i supposed--with eye-glasses and a large dark mustache. his face, i knew, was really beardless. i turned to the president. such a man i had never seen before. he was, i should think, not less than six feet six inches high, and broad in proportion. his great arms hung down until the monstrous hands almost touched the knees. his skin was quite dark, almost negroid; and a thick, close mat of curly black hair covered his huge head like a thatch. his face was muscular, ligamentous; with great bars, ridges and whelks of flesh, especially about the jaws and on the forehead. but the eyes fascinated me. they were the eyes of a wild beast, deep-set, sullen and glaring; they seemed to shine like those of the cat-tribe, with a luminosity of their own. this, then--i said to myself--must be cæsar, the commander of the dreaded brotherhood. a movement attracted me to the man who sat below him; he had spoken to the president. he was in singular contrast with his superior. he was old and withered. one hand seemed to be shrunken, and his head was permanently crooked to one side. the face was mean and sinister; two fangs alone remained in his mouth; his nose was hooked; the eyes were small, sharp, penetrating and restless; but the expanse of brow above them was grand and noble. it was one of those heads that look as if they had been packed full, and not an inch of space wasted. his person was unclean, however, and the hands and the long finger-nails were black with dirt. i should have picked him out anywhere as a very able and a very dangerous man. he was evidently the vice-president of whom the spy had spoken--the nameless russian jew who was accounted "the brains of the brotherhood." "gabriel weltstein," said the giant, in the same stern, loud voice, "each person in this room will now pass before you,--the officers last; and,--under the solemn oath you have taken,--i call upon you to say whether the spy you saw last night in the council-chamber of the prince of cabano is among them. but first, let me ask, did you see him clearly, and do you think you will be able to identify him?" "yes," i replied; "he faced me for nearly thirty minutes, and i should certainly know him if i saw him again." "brothers," said the president, "you will now------" but here there was a rush behind me. i turned toward the door. two men were scuffling with a third, who seemed to be trying to break out. there were the sounds of a struggle; then muttered curses; then the quick, sharp report of a pistol. there was an exclamation of pain and more oaths; knives flashed in the air; others rushed pell-mell into the melee; and then the force of numbers seemed to triumph, and the crowd came, dragging a man forward to where i stood. his face was pale as death; the blood, streamed from a flesh wound on his forehead; an expression of dreadful terror glared out of his eyes; he gasped and looked from right to left. the giant had descended from his dais. he strode forward. the wretch was laid at my feet. "speak," said cæsar, "is that the man?" "it is," i replied. the giant took another step, and he towered over the prostrate wretch. "brothers," he asked, "what is your judgment upon the spy?" "death!" rang the cry from a hundred throats. the giant put his hand in his bosom; there was a light in his terrible face as if he had long waited for such an hour. "lift him up," he said. two strong men held the spy by his arms; they lifted him to his feet; he writhed and struggled and shrieked, but the hands that held him were of iron. "stop!" said the thin, strident voice i had heard before, and the cripple advanced into the circle. he addressed the prisoner: "were you followed to this place?" "yes, yes," eagerly cried the spy. "spare me, spare me, and i will tell you everything. three members of the police force were appointed to follow, in a carriage, the vehicle that brought me here. they were to wait about until the meeting broke up and then shadow the tallest man and a crook-necked man to their lodgings and identify them. they are now waiting in the dark shadows of the warehouse." "did you have any signal agreed upon with them?" asked the cripple. "yes," the wretch replied, conscious that he was giving up his associates to certain death, but willing to sacrifice the whole world if he might save his own life. "spare me, spare me, and i win tell you all." "proceed," said the cripple. "i would not trust myself to be known by them. i agreed with prince cabano upon a signal between us. i am to come to them, if i need their help, and say: 'good evening, what time is it?' the reply is, 'it is thieves' time.' then i am to say, 'the more the better;' and they are to follow me." "richard," said the cripple, "did you hear that?" "yes." "take six men with you; leave them in the brew-house cellar; lead the police thither; throw the bodies in the river." the man called richard withdrew, with his men, to his work of murder. the prisoner rolled his eyes appealingly around that dreadful circle. "spare me!" he cried. "i know the secrets of the banks. i can lead you into the prince of cabano's house. do not kill me. "is that all?" asked the giant. "yes," replied the cripple. in an instant the huge man, like some beast that had been long held back from its prey, gave a leap forward, his face revealing terrible ferocity; it was a tiger that glares, plunges and devours. i saw something shining, brilliant and instantaneous as an electric flash; then there was the sound of a heavy blow. the spy sprang clean out of the hands that were holding him, high up in the air; and fell, close to me, stone dead. he had been dead, indeed, when he made that fearful leap. his heart was split in twain. his spring was not the act of the man; it was the protest of the body against the rush of the departing spirit; it was the clay striving to hold on to the soul. the giant stooped and wiped his bloody knife upon the clothes of the dead man. the cripple laughed a crackling, hideous laugh. i hope god will never permit me to hear such a laugh again. others took it up--it echoed all around the room. i could think of nothing but the cachinnations of the fiends as the black gates burst open and new hordes of souls are flung, startled and shrieking, into hell. "thus die all the enemies of the brotherhood!" cried the thin voice of the cripple. and long and loud they shouted. "remove the body through the back door," said the giant, "and throw it into the river." "search his clothes first," said the cripple. they did so, and found the money which the prince had ordered to be given him--it was the price of his life--and also a bundle of papers. the former was handed over to the treasurer of the brotherhood; the latter were taken possession of by the vice-president. then, resuming his seat, the giant said: "gabriel weltstein, the brotherhood thank you for the great service you have rendered them. we regret that your scruples will not permit you to become one of us; but we regard you as a friend and we honor you as a man; and if at any time the brotherhood can serve you, be assured its full powers shall be put forth in your behalf." i was too much shocked by the awful scene i had just witnessed to do more than bow my head. "there is one thing more," he continued, "we shall ask of you; and that is that you will repeat your story once again to another man, who will soon be brought here. we knew from maximilian what you were about to tell, and we made our arrangements accordingly. do not start," he said, "or look alarmed--there will be no more executions." turning to the men, he said: "resume your masks." he covered his own face, and all the rest did likewise. chapter xix. the mamelukes of the air the vice-president of the brotherhood leaned forward and whispered to one of the secretaries, who, taking two men with him, left the room. a seat was given me. there was a pause of perhaps ten minutes. not a whisper broke the silence. then there came a rap at the door. the other secretary went to it. there was whispering and consultation; then the door opened and the secretary and his two companions entered, leading a large man, blindfolded. he wore a military uniform. they stopped in the middle of the room. "general jacob quincy," said the stern voice of the president, "before we remove the bandage from your eyes i ask you to repeat, in this presence, the pledge you made to the representative of the brotherhood, who called upon you today." the man said: "i was informed by your messenger that you had a communication to make to me which involved the welfare, and perhaps the lives, of the officers and men commanding and manning the air-vessels, or war-ships, called by the people 'the demons.' you invited me here under a pledge of safe conduct; you left your messenger with my men, as hostage for my return; and i promised never to reveal to mortal ear anything that i might see or hear, except so far as it might be necessary, with your consent, to do so to warn my command of those dangers which you assure me threaten them. this promise i here renew, and swear by the almighty god to keep it forever inviolate." "remove his bandage," said the president. they did so, and there stood before me the handsome and intelligent officer whom i had seen last night in the prince of cabano's council-chamber. the president nodded to the cripple, as if by some pre-arrangement, and said, "proceed." "general jacob quincy," said the thin, penetrating voice of the vice-president of the order, "you visited a certain house last night, on a matter of business, connected with your command. how many men knew of your visit?" "three," said the general, with a surprised look. "i am to communicate the results to a meeting of my command tomorrow night; but i thought it better to keep the matter pretty much to myself until that time." "may i ask who were the men to whom you spoke of the matter?" "i might object to your question," he said, "but that i suppose something important lies behind it. the men were my brother, col. quincy; my adjutant-general, captain underwood, and my friend major hartwright." "do you think any of these men would tell your story to any one else?" "certainly not. i would venture my life upon their prudence and secrecy, inasmuch as i asked them to keep the matter to themselves. but why do you ask such questions?" "because," said the wily cripple, "i have a witness here who is about to reveal to you everything you said and did in that council-chamber last night, even to the minutest detail. if you had told your story to many, or to untrustworthy persons, there might be a possibility that this witness had gleaned the facts from others; and that he had not been present, as he claims; and therefore that you could not depend upon what he says as to other matters of importance. do you recognize the justice of my reasoning?" "certainly," said the general. "if you produce here a man who can tell me just where i was last night, what i said, and what was said to me, i shall believe that he was certainly present; for i well know he did not get it from me or my friends; and i know, equally well, that none of those with whom i had communication would tell what took place to you or any friend of yours." "be kind enough to stand up," said the cripple to me. i did so. "did you ever see that man before?" he asked the general. the general looked at me intently. "never," he replied. "have you ever seen this man before?" he asked me. "yes," i replied. "when and where?" "last night; at the palace of prince cabano--in his council-chamber." "proceed, and tell the whole story." i did so. the general listened closely, never relaxing his scrutiny of my face. when i had finished my account of the interview, the cripple asked the general whether it was a faithful narration of what had taken place. he said it was--wonderfully accurate in every particular. "you believe him, then, to be a truthful witness," asked the cripple, "and that he was present at your interview, with the council of the plutocracy?" 'i do," said general quincy. "now proceed," he said to me, "to tell what took place after this gentleman left the room." i did so. the face of the general darkened into a scowl as i proceeded, and he flushed with rage when i had concluded my story. "do you desire to ask the witness any questions?" said the cripple. "none at all," he replied. he stood for several minutes lost in deep thought. i felt that the destiny of the world hung tremblingly in the balance. at last he spoke, in a low voice. "who represents your organization?" he asked. "the executive committee," replied the president. "who are they?" he inquired. "myself,--the vice-president"--pointing to the cripple--"and yonder gentleman"--designating the cowled and masked figure of maximilian, who stood near me. "could i have a private conference with you?" he asked. "yes," replied the president, somewhat eagerly; "come this way." all four moved to a side door, which seemed to lead into another subterranean chamber;--the cripple carried a torch. "wait here for me," said maximilian, as he passed me. i sat down. the cowled figures remained seated around the walls. not a sound broke the profound silence. i could see that all eyes were fixed upon the door by which the executive committee had left us, and my own were riveted there also. we all felt the gravity of the occasion. five minutes--ten minutes--fifteen minutes--twenty minutes passed. the door opened. we thought the conference was over. no; it was only the cripple; his face was uncovered and flushed with excitement. he walked quickly to the secretary's table; took up pen, ink and paper, and returned to the other cellar, closing the door after him. there was a movement among the cowled figures--whispers--excitement; they augured that things were going well--the agreement was to be reduced to writing! five minutes more passed--then ten--then fifteen. the door opened, and they came out:--the gigantic cæsar ahead. all the faces were uncovered, and i thought there was a look of suppressed triumph upon the countenances of the executive committee. the commander of the demons looked sedate and thoughtful, like a man who had taken a very grave and serious step. the president resumed the chair. he spoke to the secretary. "you will cover the eyes of general quincy," he said. "take two men with you; accompany him to his carriage, then go with him to his residence, and bring back our hostage.--general," he said, "good night," and then added meaningly, "_au revoir!_" "_au revoir_," said the general, as the handkerchief was adjusted over his face. the commander of the demons and his escort withdrew. the president sat consulting his watch, and when he was sure that they were beyond hearing, he sprang to his feet, his eyes glowing and his whole frame dilated with excitement. "brothers," he cried out, "we have got the world in our hands at last. the day is near we have so long toiled and waited for! the demons are with us!" the wildest demonstrations of joy followed--cheer after cheer broke forth; the men embraced each other. "the world's slavery is at an end," cried one. "death to the tyrants!" shouted another. "down with the oligarchy!" roared a third. "come," said maximilian, taking me by the arm, "it is time to go." he replaced the bandage over my eyes and led me out. for some time after i left the room, and while in the next cellar, i could hear the hoarse shouts of the triumphant conspirators. victory was now assured. my heart sank within me. the monstrous chorus was chanting the requiem of a world. in the carriage maximilian was trembling with excitement. one thought seemed to be uppermost in his mind. "he will be free! he will be free!" he continually cried. when at last he grew more calm, he embraced me, and called me the preserver of himself; and all his family; and all his friends; and all his work,--the savior of his father! then he became incoherent again. he cursed the baseness of mankind. "it was noble," he said, "to crush a rotten world for revenge, or for justice' sake; but to sell out a trust, for fifty millions of the first plunder, was execrable--it was damnable. it was a shame to have to use such instruments. but the whole world was corrupt to the very core; there was not enough consistency in it to make it hang together. yet there was one consolation--the end was coming! glory be to god! the end was coming!" and he clapped his hands and shouted, like a madman. when he grew quieter i asked him what day the blow was to be struck. not for some time, he said. in the morning the vice-president would take an air-ship to europe, with a cipher letter from general quincy to the commandant of the demons in england--to be delivered in case it was thought safe to do so. the cripple was subtle and cunning beyond all men. he was to arrange for the purchase of the officers commanding the demons all over europe; and he was to hold a council of the leaders of the brotherhood, and arrange for a simultaneous outbreak on both sides of the atlantic, so that one continent should not come to the help of the other. if, however, this could not be effected, he was to return home, and the brotherhood would precipitate the revolution all over america at the same hour, and take the chances of holding their own against the banker-government of europe. that night i lay awake a long time, cogitating; and the subject of my thoughts was--estella. it had been my intention to return to africa before the great outbreak took place. i could not remain and witness the ruin of mankind. but neither could i leave estella behind me. maximilian might be killed. i knew his bold and desperate nature; he seemed to me to have been driven almost, if not quite, to insanity, by the wrongs of his father. revenge had become a mania with him. if he perished in the battle what would become of estella, in a world torn to pieces? she had neither father, nor mother, nor home. but she loved me and i must protect her! on the other hand, she was powerless and dependent on the kindness of strangers. her speech in that moment of terror might have expressed more than she felt. should i presume upon it? should i take advantage of her distress to impose my love upon her? but, if the brotherhood failed, might not the prince recover her, and bear her back to his hateful palace and his loathsome embraces? dangers environed her in every direction. i loved her; and if she would not accompany me to my home as my wife, she must go as my sister. she could not stay where she was. i must again save her. i fell asleep and dreamed that estella and i were flying into space on the back of a dragon, that looked very much like prince cabano. chapter xx. the workingmen's meeting i have told you, my dear heinrich, that i have latterly attended, and even spoken at, a number of meetings of the workingmen of this city. i have just returned from one of the largest i have seen. it was held in a great underground chamber, or series of cellars, connected with each other, under an ancient warehouse. before i retire to my couch i will give you some description of the meeting, not only because it will enable you to form some idea of the state of feeling among the mechanics and workmen, but because this one, unfortunately, had a tragical ending. there were guards stationed at the door to give warning of the coming of the police. there were several thousand persons present. it was saturday night. when we arrived the hall was black with people--a gloomy, silent assemblage. there were no women present; no bright colors--all dark and sad-hued. the men were nearly all workingmen, many of them marked by the grime of their toil. maximilian whispered to me that the attendance was larger than usual, and he thought it indicated that, by a kind of instinct, the men knew the great day of deliverance was near at hand. the president of a labor organization had taken the chair before we came in. as i walked up the hall i was greeted with cheers, and invited to the platform. maximilian accompanied me. a man in a blouse was speaking. he was discussing the doctrines of karl marx and the german socialists of the last century. he was attentively listened to, but his remarks aroused no enthusiasm; they all seemed familiar with the subjects of his discourse. he was followed by another workman, who spoke upon the advantages of co-operation between the employers and the employed. his remarks were moderate and sensible. he was, however, answered by another workman, who read statistics to show that, after a hundred years of trial, the co-operative system had not extended beyond a narrow circle. "there were too many greedy employers and too many helpless workmen. competition narrowed the margin of profit and hardened the heart of the master, while it increased the number of the wretchedly poor, who must work at any price that would maintain life." [applause.] "the cure must be more radical than that." [great applause.] he was followed by a school teacher, who thought that the true remedy for the evils of society was universal education. "if all men were educated they could better defend their rights. education meant intelligence, and intelligence meant prosperity. it was the ignorant hordes from europe who were crowding out the american workingmen and reducing them to pauperism." [applause. i here a rough-looking man, who, i inferred, was an english miner, said he begged leave to differ from the gentleman who had last spoken. (i noticed that these workingmen, unless very angry, used in their discussions the courteous forms of speech common in all parliamentary bodies.) "a man who knew how to read and write," he continued, "did not command any better wages for the work of his hands than the man who could not." [applause.] "his increased knowledge tended to make him more miserable." [applause.] "education was so universal that the educated man, without a trade, had to take the most inadequate pittance of compensation, and was not so well off, many times, as the mechanic." [applause.] "the prisons and alms-houses were full of educated men; and three-fourths of the criminal class could read and write. neither was the gentleman right when he spoke of the european immigrants as 'ignorant hordes.' the truth was, the proportion of the illiterate was much less in some european despotisms than it was in the american republic." [applause from the foreigners present.] "neither did it follow that because a man was educated he was intelligent. there was a vast population of the middle class, who had received good educations, but who did not have any opinion upon any subject, except as they derived it from their daily newspapers." [applause.] "the rich men owned the newspapers and the newspapers owned their readers; so that, practically, the rich men cast all those hundreds of thousands of votes. if these men had not been able to read and write they would have talked with one another upon public affairs, and have formed some correct ideas; their education simply facilitated their mental subjugation; they were chained to the chariots of the oligarchy; and they would never know the truth until they woke up some bright morning and found it was the day of judgment." [sensation and great applause.] here i interposed: "universal education is right; it is necessary," i said; "but it is not all-sufficient. education will not stop corruption or misgovernment. no man is fit to be free unless he possesses a reasonable share of education; but every man who possesses that reasonable share of education is riot fit to be free. a man may be able to read and write and yet be a fool or a knave." [laughter and applause.] "what is needed is a society which shall bring to labor the aid of the same keenness, penetration, foresight, and even cunning, by which wealth has won its triumphs. intellect should have its rewards, but it should not have everything. but this defense of labor could only spring from the inspiration of god, for the natural instinct of man, in these latter days, seems to be to prey on his fellow. we are sharks that devour the wounded of our own kind." i paused, and in the midst of the hall a thin gentleman, dressed in black, with his coat buttoned to his throat, and all the appearance of a clergyman, arose and asked whether a stranger would be permitted to say a few words. he was received in sullen silence, for the clergy are not popular with the proletariat. his manner, however, was quiet and unassuming, and he appeared like an honest man. the chairman said he had no doubt the audience would be glad to hear his views, and invited him to the platform. he said, in a weak, thin voice: "i have listened, brethren, with a great deal of interest and pleasure to the remarks that have been made by the different speakers. there is no doubt the world has fallen into evil conditions; and it is very right that you should thus assemble and consider the causes and the remedy. and, with your kind permission, i will give you my views on the subject. "brethren, your calamities are due, in my opinion, to the loss of religion in the world and the lack of virtue among individuals. what is needed for the reformation of mankind is a new interest in the church--a revival of faith. if every man will purify his own heart, all hearts will then be pure; and when the hearts of all are pure, and filled with the divine sentiment of justice and brotherhood, no man will be disposed to treat his neighbor unjustly. but, while this is true, you must remember that, after all, this world is only a place of temporary trial, to prepare us for another and a better world. this existence consists of a few troubled and painful years, at best, but there you will enjoy eternal happiness in the company of the angels of god. we have the assurance of the holy scriptures that riches and prosperity here are impediments to happiness hereafter. the beggar lazarus is shown to us in the midst of everlasting bliss, while the rich man dives, who had supported him for years, by the crumbs from his table, and was clothed in purple and fine linen, is burning in an eternal hell. remember that it is 'less difficult for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven;' and so, my friends, you may justly rejoice in your poverty and your afflictions, for 'those whom the lord loveth he chasteneth;' and the more wretched your careers may be, here on earth, the more assured you are of the delights of an everlasting heaven. and do not listen, my brethren, to the men who tell you that you must hate government and law. 'the powers that be are ordained of god,' saith the scripture; and by patient resignation to the evils of this world you will lay up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where the moth and rust cannot consume, and where thieves do not break in and steal. they tell you that you should improve your condition. but suppose you possessed all the pleasures which this transitory world could give you, of what avail would it be if your earthly happiness made you lose the eternal joys of heaven? 'what will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?' nothing, my brethren, nothing. be patient, therefore----" as the reverend gentleman had proceeded the murmurs and objections of the audience kept increasing, until at last it broke forth in a storm of howls and execrations which completely drowned his voice. the whole audience--i could see their faces from where i sat on the platform--were infuriated. arms were waving in the air, and the scene was like bedlam. i requested the clergyman to sit down, and, as soon as he did so, the storm began to subside. a man rose in the midst of the audience and mounted a bench. loud cries and applause greeted him. i could distinguish the name on a hundred lips, "kelker! kelker!" as i ascertained afterwards, he was a professor, of german descent, a man of wide learning, who had lost his position in the university, and in society as well, by his defense of the rights of the people. he now earned a meager living at shoemaking. he was a tall, spare man, with gold eyeglasses (sole relic of his past station), poorly clad; and he had the wild look of a man who had been hunted all his life. he spoke with great vehemence, and in a penetrating voice, that could be heard all over that vast assemblage, which, as soon as he opened his mouth, became as still as death. "friends and brothers," he said; "friends by the ties of common wrongs, brothers in misery, i regret that you did not permit the reverend gentleman to proceed. ours is a liberality that hears all sides; and, for one, i should have been glad to hear what this advocate of the ancient creeds had to say for them. but since he has taken his seat i shall reply to him. "he tells us that his religion is the one only thing which will save us; and that it is better for us to be miserable here that we may be happy hereafter. if that is so, heaven must be crowded now-a-days, for the misery of the earth is unlimited and unspeakable; and it is rapidly increasing." [laughter and applause.] "but religion has had control of the world for nearly two thousand years, and this is what it has brought us to. it has been, in all ages, the moral police-force of tyrants." [great applause.] "it has chloroformed poverty with promises of heaven, while the robbers have plundered the world." (continued applause.] "it has kept the people in submission, and has sent uncountable millions through wretched lives to shameful graves. [great applause.] "with a lot of myths and superstitions, derived from a dark and barbarous past, it has prevented civilization from protecting mankind; and, nero-like, has fiddled away upon its ridiculous dogmas while the world was burning." [great cheers.] "when have your churches helped man to improve his condition? they are gorgeous palaces, where once a week the women assemble to display their millinery and the men to maintain their business prestige." [laughter and applause.] "what great reform have they not opposed? what new discoveries in science have they not resisted?" [applause.] "man has only become great when he has escaped out of their clutches." [cheers.] "they have preached heaven and helped turn earth into a hell." [great cheers.] "they stood by, without a murmur, and beheld mankind brought down to this awful condition; and now, in the midst of our unbearable calamities, they tell us it is well for us to starve; that starvation is the especial gate of heaven; and that dives deserved hell because he had plenty to eat while on earth." [great cheering.] "and why do they do this? because, if they can get possession of our consciences and persuade us to starve to death patiently, and not resist, they will make it so much the easier for the oppressors to govern us; and the rich, in return, will maintain the churches." [sensation.] "they are throttling us in the name of god!" [tremendous applause.] "our sons march in endless procession to the prison and the scaffold; our daughters take their places in the long line of the bedizened cortege of the brothel; and every fiber of our poor frames and brains shrieks out its protest against insufficient nourishment; and this man comes to us and talks about his old-world, worn-out creeds, which began in the brains of half-naked barbarians, and are a jumble of the myths of a hundred-----" here the speaker grew wild and hoarse with passion, and the audience, who had been growing more and more excited and turbulent as he proceeded, burst into a tremendous uproar that drowned every other sound. a crowd of the more desperate--dark-faced, savage-looking workingmen--made a rush for the platform to seize the clergyman; and they would soon have had possession of him. but in this extremity i sprang to the front of the platform, between him and the oncoming mob, and by my mere presence, and the respect they have for me as their friend, i stilled the tempest and restored order. "my dear friends!" i said, "be patient! are you the men who boast of your toleration? you meet to discuss your sufferings and their remedy; and when one tells you how he would cure you, you rise up to slay him. be just. this poor man may be mistaken--the body of which he is a member may be mistaken--as to the best way to serve and save mankind; but that his purpose is good, and that he loves you, who can doubt? look at him! observe his poor garments; his emaciated figure. what joys of life does he possess? he has given up everything to help you. into your darkest alleys--into your underground dens--where pestilence and starvation contend for their victims, he goes at high noon and in the depth of the blackest night, and he brings to the parting soul consolation and hope. and why not? who can doubt that there is another life? who that knows the immortality of matter, its absolute indestructibility, can believe that mind, intelligence, soul,--which must be, at the lowest estimate--if they are not something higher--a form of matter,--are to perish into nothingness? if it be true, as we know it is, that the substance of the poor flesh that robes your spirits--nay, of the very garments you wear--shall exist, undiminished by the friction of eternity, æons after our planet is blotted out of space and our sun forgotten, can you believe that this intelligence, whereby i command your souls into thought, and communicate with the unsounded depths of your natures, can be clipped off into annihilation? nay, out of the very bounty and largess of god i speak unto you; and that in me which speaks, and that in you which listens, are alike part and parcel of the eternal maker of all things, without whom is nothing made." [applause.] "and so, my friends, every good man who loves you, and would improve your condition, in time or in eternity, is your friend, and to be venerated by you." [applause.] "and while we may regret the errors of religion, in the past, or in the present, let us not forget its virtues. human in its mechanism, it has been human in its infirmities. in the doctrine of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of god, which are the essential principles of christianity, lies the redemption of mankind. but some of the churchmen have misconceived christ, or perverted him to their own base purposes. he who drove the money-changers out of the temple, and denounced the aristocrats of his country as whited sepulchres, and preached a communism of goods, would not view to-day with patience or equanimity the dreadful sufferings of mankind. we have inherited christianity without christ; we have the painted shell of a religion, and that which rattles around within it is not the burning soul of the great iconoclast, but a cold and shriveled and meaningless tradition. oh! for the quick-pulsing, warm-beating, mighty human heart of the man of galilee! oh! for his uplifted hand, armed with a whip of scorpions, to depopulate the temples of the world, and lash his recreant preachers into devotion to the cause of his poor afflicted children!" [great applause.] "there is no power in the world too great or too sacred to be used by goodness for the suppression of evil. religion--true religion--not forms or ceremonies, but _inspired purpose_--should take possession of the _governments_ of the world and enforce _justice!_ the purified individual soul we may not underestimate. these are the swept and garnished habitations in which the angels dwell, and look with unpolluted eyes upon the world. but this is not all. to make a few virtuous where the many are vicious is to place goodness at a disadvantage. to teach the people patience and innocence in the midst of craft and cruelty, is to furnish the red-mouthed wolves with woolly, bleating lambs. hence the grip of the churches on humanity has been steadily lessening during the past two hundred years. men permanently love only those things that are beneficial to them. the churches must come to the rescue of the people or retire from the field. a babe in the claws of a tiger is not more helpless than a small virtuous minority in the midst of a cruel and bloody world. virtue we want, but virtue growing out of the bosom of universal justice. while you labor to save one soul, poverty crushes a million into sin. you are plucking brands from a constantly increasing conflagration. the flames continue to advance and devour what you have saved. the religion of the world must be built on universal prosperity, and this is only possible on a foundation of universal justice. if the web of the cloth is knotted in one place it is because the threads have, in an unmeaning tangle, been withdrawn from another part. human misery is the correlative and equivalent of injustice somewhere else in society. "what the world needs is a new organization--a great world-wide brotherhood of justice. it should be composed of all men who desire to lift up the oppressed and save civilization and society. it should work through governmental instrumentalities. its altars should be the schools and the ballot-boxes. it should combine the good, who are not yet, i hope, in a minority, against the wicked. it should take one wrong after another, concentrate the battle of the world upon them, and wipe them out of existence. it should be sworn to a perpetual crusade against every evil. it is not enough to heal the wounds caused by the talons of the wild beasts of injustice; it should pursue them to their bone-huddled dens and slay them." [great applause.] "it should labor not alone to relieve starvation, but to make starvation impossible;--_to kill it in its causes_. "with the widest toleration toward those who address themselves to the future life, even to the neglect of this, the sole dogma of our society should be justice. if there is an elysium in the next world, and not a continuation of the troubled existence through which we are now passing, we will be all the better fitted to enjoy it if we have helped to make this world a heaven. and he who has labored to make earth a hell should enjoy his workmanship in another and more dreadful world, forever and forever. "and oh, ye churches! will ye not come up to the help of the people against the mighty? will ye not help us break the jaws of the spoiler and drag the prey from between his teeth? think what you could do if all your congregation were massed together to crush the horrid wrongs that abound in society! to save the world _you must fight corruption and take possession of government_. turn your thoughts away from moses and his ragged cohorts, and all the petty beliefs and blunders of the ancient world. here is a world greater than moses ever dreamed of. here is a population infinitely vaster in numbers, more enlightened, more capable of exquisite enjoyment, and exquisite suffering, than all the children of israel and all the subjects of imperial rome combined. come out of the past into the present. god is as much god to-day as he was in the time of the pharaohs. if god loved man then he loves him now. surely the cultured denizen of this enlightened century, in the midst of all the splendors of his transcendent civilization, is as worthy of the tender regard of his creator as the half-fed and ignorant savage of the arabian desert five thousand years ago. god lives yet, and he lives for us." here i paused. although the vast audience had listened patiently to my address, and had, occasionally, even applauded some of its utterances, yet it was evident that what i said did not touch their hearts. in fact, a stout man, with a dark, stubbly beard, dressed like a workingman, rose on one of the side benches and said: "fellow-toilers, we have listened with great respect to what our friend gabriel weltstein has said to us, for we know he would help us if he could--that his heart is with us. and much that he has said is true. but the time has gone by to start such a society as be speaks of. why, if we formed it, the distresses of the people are so great that our very members would sell us out on election day." [applause.] "the community is rotten to the core; and so rotten that it is not conscious that it is rotten." [applause.] "there is no sound place to build on. there is no remedy but the utter destruction of the existing order of things." [great applause.] "it cannot be worse for us than it is; it may be better." [cheers.] "but," i cried out, "do you want to destroy civilization??" "civilization," he replied solemnly; "what interest have we in the preservation of civilization? look around and behold its fruits! here are probably ten thousand industrious, sober, intelligent workingmen; i doubt if there is one in all this multitude that can honestly say he has had, during the past week, enough to eat." [cries of "that's so."] "i doubt if there is one here who believes that the present condition of things can give him, or his children, anything better for the future." [applause.] "our masters have educated us to understand that we have no interest in civilization or society. we are its victims, not its members. they depend on repression, on force alone; on cruelty, starvation, to hold us down until we work our lives away. our lives are all we have;--it may be all we will ever have! they are as dear to us as existence is to the millionaire. "what is civilization worth which means happiness for a few thousand men and inexpressible misery for hundreds of millions? no, down with it!" [immense cheering. men rising and waving their hats.] "if they have set love and justice adrift and depend only on force, why should we not have recourse to force also?" [cheers and applause, mingled with cries of "take care!" "look out!" "spies!" etc.] "yes," continued the speaker, "i mean, of course, the force of argument and reason." [great laughter and applause.] "of course none of us would advocate a violation of the law--that blessed law which it has cost our masters so much hard-earned money to purchase;" [renewed laughter and applause,] "and which restrains us and not them; for under it no injustice is forbidden to them, and no justice is permitted to us, our labor creates everything; we possess nothing. yes, we have the scant supply of food necessary to enable us to create more." [applause.] "we have ceased to be men--we are machines. did god die for a machine? certainly not. "we are crushed under the world which we maintain, and our groans are drowned in the sounds of music and laughter." [great applause.] "we have a hell that is more desperate and devilish than any dreamed of by the parsons--for we have to suffer to maintain the pleasures of heaven, while we have no share in what we ourselves create." [laughter and applause.] "do you suppose that if heaven were blown to pieces hell would be any worse off? at least, the work would stop." [great applause, long-continued, with cries of "that's so!"] here a great uproar broke out near the end of the hall. a man had been caught secretly taking notes of the speaker's remarks. he was evidently a detective. on the instant a hundred men sprang upon him, and he was beaten and trampled under foot, until not only life, but all semblance of humanity, had been crushed out of him; and the wretched remains were dragged out and thrown upon the pavement. it is impossible to describe the uproar and confusion which ensued. in the midst of it a large platoon of police, several hundred strong, with their belts strung with magazine pistols, and great clubs in their hands, broke into the room, and began to deal blows and make arrests right and left, while the crowd fled through all the doors. maximilian seized me and the poor clergyman, who had been sitting in a dazed and distraught state for some time, and dragged us both up a back stairway and through a rear exit into the street. there we took a carriage, and, after we had left the bewildered clergyman at his residence, maximilian said to me as we rode home: "you see, my dear gabriel, i was right and you were wrong. that workman told the truth. you have arrived on the scene too late. a hundred years ago you might have formed your brotherhood of justice and saved society. now there is but one cure--the brotherhood of _destruction_." "oh, my dear friend," i replied, "do not say so. _destruction!_ what is it? the wiping out of the slow accumulations made by man's intelligence during thousands of years. a world cataclysm. a day of judgment. a day of fire and ashes. a world burned and swept bare of life. all the flowers of art; the beautiful, gossamer-like works of glorious literature; the sweet and lovely creations of the souls of men long since perished, and now the inestimable heritage of humanity; all, all crushed, torn, leveled in the dust. and all that is savage, brutal, cruel, demoniac in man's nature let loose to ravage the face of the world. oh! horrible--most horrible! the mere thought works in me like a convulsion; what must the inexpressible reality be? to these poor, suffering, hopeless, degraded toilers; these children of oppression and the dust; these chained slaves, anything that would break open the gates of their prison-house would be welcome, even though it were an earthquake that destroyed the planet. but you and i, my dear friend, are educated to higher thoughts. we know the value of the precious boon of civilization. we know how bare and barren, and wretched and torpid, and utterly debased is soulless barbarism. i see enough to convince me that the ramifications of your society are like a net-work of wires, all over the earth, penetrating everywhere, and at every point touching the most deadly explosives of human passions and hates; and that it needs but the pressure of your finger upon the pedal to blow up the world. the folly of centuries has culminated in the most terrible organization that ever grew out of the wretchedness of mankind. but oh, my friend--you have a broad mind and a benevolent soul--tell me, is there no remedy? cannot the day of wrath be averted?" the tears flowed down my face as i spoke, and maximilian placed his hand gently upon my arm, and said in the kindliest manner: "my dear gabriel, i have thought such thoughts as these many times; not with the fervor and vehemence of your more imaginative nature, but because i shrank, at first, from what you call 'a world-cataclysm.' but facts are stronger than the opinions of man. there is in every conflagration a time when a few pails of water would extinguish it; then there comes a time when the whole fire-department, with tons of water, can alone save what is left of the property; but sometimes a point is reached where even the boldest firemen are forced to recoil and give up the building to the devouring element. two hundred years ago a little wise statesmanship might have averted the evils from which the world now suffers. one hundred years ago a gigantic effort, of all the good men of the world, might have saved society. now the fire pours through every door, and window and crevice; the roof crackles; the walls totter; the heat of hell rages within the edifice; it is doomed; there is no power on earth that can save it; it must go down into ashes. what can you or i do? what will it avail the world if we rush into the flames and perish? no; we witness the working-out of great causes which we did not create. when man permits the establishment of self-generating evil he must submit to the effect. our ancestors were blind, indifferent, heartless. we live in the culmination of their misdeeds. they have crawled into their graves and drawn the earth over them, and the flowers bloom on their last resting-places, and we are the inheritors of the hurricane which they invoked. moreover," he continued, "how can reformation come? you have seen that audience to-night. do you think they are capable of the delicate task of readjusting the disarranged conditions of the world? that workman was right. in the aggregate they are honest--most honest and honorable; but is there one of them whose cramped mind and starved stomach could resist the temptation of a ten-dollar bill? think what a ten-dollar bill is to them! it represents all they crave: food, clothes, comfort, joy. it opens the gate of heaven to them; it is paradise, for a few hours at least. why, they would mortgage their souls, they would trade their maker, for a hundred dollars! the crime is not theirs, but the shallow creatures who once ruled the world, and permitted them to be brought to this state. and where else can you turn? is it to the newspapers? they are a thousand times more dishonest than the workingmen. is it to the halls of legislation? there corruption riots and rots until the stench fills the earth. the only ones who could reform the world are the rich and powerful: but they see nothing to reform. life is all sunshine for them; civilization is a success for them; they need no better heaven than they enjoy. they have so long held mankind in subjection that they laugh at the idea of the great, dark, writhing masses, rising up to overthrow them. government is, to them, an exquisitely adjusted piece of mechanism whose object is to keep the few happy and the many miserable." "but," said i, "if an appeal were made to them; if they were assured of the dangers that really threatened them; if their better and kindlier natures were appealed to, do you not think they might undertake the task of remedying the evils endured by the multitude? they cannot all be as abandoned and utterly vicious as prince cabano and his council." "no," he replied; "have you not already made the test? the best of them would probably hang you for your pains. do you think they would be willing to relinquish one-tenth of their pleasures, or their possessions, to relieve the distresses of their fellows? if you do, you have but a slight conception of the callousness of their hearts. you were right in what you said was the vital principle of christianity--brotherly love, not alone of the rich for the rich, but of the poor and rich for each other. but that spirit has passed away from the breasts of the upper classes. science has increased their knowledge one hundred per cent. and their vanity one thousand per cent. the more they know of the material world the less they can perceive the spiritual world around and within it. the acquisition of a few facts about nature has closed their eyes to the existence of a god." "ah," said i, "that is a dreadful thought! it seems to me that the man who possesses his eyesight must behold a thousand evidences of a creator denied to a blind man; and in the same way the man who knows most of the material world should see the most conclusive evidences of design and a designer. the humblest blade of grass preaches an incontrovertible sermon. what force is it that brings it up, green and beautiful, out of the black, dead earth? who made it succulent and filled it full of the substances that will make flesh and blood and bone for millions of gentle, grazing animals? what a gap would it have been in nature if there had been no such growth, or if, being such, it had been poisonous or inedible? whose persistent purpose is it--whose everlasting will--that year after year, and age after age, stirs the tender roots to life and growth, for the sustenance of uncounted generations of creatures? every blade of grass, therefore, points with its tiny finger straight upward to heaven, and proclaims an eternal, a benevolent god. it is to me a dreadful thing that men can penetrate farther and farther into nature with their senses, and leave their reasoning faculties behind them. instead of mind recognizing mind, dust simply perceives dust. this is the suicide of the soul." "well, to this extremity," said maximilian, "the governing classes of the world have progressed. we will go to-morrow--it will be sunday--and visit one of their churches; and you shall see for yourself to what the blind adoration of wealth and the heartless contempt of humanity have brought the world." chapter xxi. a sermon of the twentieth century max and i entered the church together. it is a magnificent structure--palatial, cathedral-like, in its proportions--a gorgeous temple of fashion, built with exquisite taste, of different-colored marbles, and surrounded by graceful columns. ushers, who looked like guards in uniform, stood at the doors, to keep out the poorly-dressed people, if any such presented themselves; for it was evident that this so-called church was exclusively a club-house of the rich. as we entered we passed several marble statues. it is a curious illustration of the evolution of religion, in these latter days, that these statues are not representations of any persons who have ever lived, or were supposed to have lived on earth, or anywhere else; and there was not in or about them any hint whatever of myth or antique belief. in the pre-christian days the work of the poet and sculptor taught a kind of history in the statues of the pagan divinities. bacchus told of some ancient race that had introduced the vine into europe and africa. ceres, with her wheat-plant, recited a similar story as to agriculture. and zeus, hercules, saturn and all the rest were, in all probability--as socrates declared--deified men. and, of course, christian art was full of beautiful allusions to the life of the savior, or to his great and holy saints and martyrs. but here we had simply splendid representations of naked human figures, male and female, wondrously beautiful, but holding no associations whatever with what you and i, my dear heinrich, call religion. passing these works of art, we entered a magnificent hall. at the farther end was a raised platform, almost embowered in flowers of many hues, all in full bloom. the light entered through stained windows, on the sides of the hall, so colored as to cast a weird and luxurious effulgence over the great chamber. on the walls were a number of pictures; some of a very sensuous character; all of great beauty and perfect workmanship; but none of them of a religious nature, unless we might except one of the nude venus rising from the sea. the body of the hall was arranged like a great lecture-room; there were no facilities for or suggestions of devotion, but the seats were abundantly cushioned, and with every arrangement for the comfort of the occupants. the hall was not more than half full, the greater part of those present being women. most of these were fair and beautiful; and even those who had long passed middle age retained, by the virtue of many cunning arts, well known to these people, much of the appearance and freshness of youth. i might here note that the prolongation of life in the upper classes, and its abbreviation in the lower classes, are marked and divergent characteristics of this modern civilization. i observed in the women, as i had in those of the darwin hotel, associated with great facial perfection, a hard and soulless look out of the eyes; and here, even more than there, i could not but notice a sensuality in the full, red lips, and the quick-glancing eyes, which indicated that they were splendid animals, and nothing more. an usher led us up one of the thickly carpeted aisles to a front pew; there was a young lady already seated in it. i entered first, and max followed me. the young lady was possessed of imperial beauty. she looked at us both quite boldly, without shrinking, and smiled a little. we sat down. they were singing a song--i could not call it a hymn; it was all about the "beautiful and the good"--or something of that sort. the words and tune were fine, but there were no allusions to religion, or god, or heaven, or anything else of a sacred character. the young lady moved toward me and offered to share her song-book with me. she sang quite sweetly, but there was no more soul in her voice than there was in the song. after a little time the preacher appeared on the platform. max told me his name was professor odyard, and that he was one of the most eminent philosophers and orators of the day, but that his moral character was not of the best. he was a large, thick-set, florid, full-bearded man, with large lips, black hair and eyes, and swarthy skin. his voice was sweet and flute-like, and he had evidently perfected himself in the graces of elocution. he spoke with a great deal of animation and action; in fact, he was a very vivacious actor. he commenced by telling the congregation of some new scientific discoveries, recently made in germany, by professor von der slahe, to the effect that the whole body of man, and of all other animals and even inanimate things, was a mass of living microbes--not in the sense of disease or parasites, but that the intrinsic matter of all forms was life-forms; the infinite molecules were creatures; and that there was no substance that was not animated; and that life was therefore infinitely more abundant in the world than matter; that life was matter. and then he went on to speak of the recent great discoveries made by professor thomas o'connor, of the oregon university, which promise to end the reign of disease on earth, and give men patriarchal leases of life. more than a century ago it had been observed, where the bacteria of contagious disorders were bred in culture-infusions, for purposes of study, that after a time they became surrounded by masses of substance which destroyed them. it occurred to professor o'connor, that it was a rule of nature that life preyed on life, and that every form of being was accompanied by enemies which held its over-growth in check: the deer were eaten by the wolves; the doves by the hawks; the gnats by the dragon-flies. "big fleas had little fleas to bite 'em, and these had lesser still, ad infinitum." professor o'connor found that, in like manner, bacteria, of all kinds, were devoured by minuter forms of life. recovery from sickness meant that the microbes were destroyed by their natural enemies before they had time to take possession of the entire system; death resulted where the vital powers could not hold out until the balance of nature was thus re-established. he found, therefore, that the remedy for disease was to take some of the culture-infusion in which malignant bacteria had just perished, and inject it into the veins of the sick man. this was like stocking a rat-infested barn with weasels. the invisible, but greedy swarms of bacilli penetrated every part of the body in search of their prey, and the man recovered his health. where an epidemic threatened, the whole community was to be thus inoculated, and then, when a wandering microbe found lodgment in a human system, it would be pounced upon and devoured before it could reproduce its kind. he even argued that old age was largely due to bacteria; and that perpetual youth would be possible if a germicide could be found that would reach every fiber of the body, and destroy the swarming life-forms which especially attacked the vital forces of the aged. and then he referred to a new invention by a california scientist, named henry myers, whereby telephonic communication had been curiously instituted with intelligences all around us--not spirits or ghosts, but forms of life like our own, but which our senses had hitherto not been able to perceive. they were new forms of matter, but of an extreme tenuity of substance; and with intellects much like our own, though scarcely of so high or powerful an order. it was suggested by the preacher that these shadowy earth-beings had probably given rise to many of the old-world beliefs as to ghosts, spirits, fairies, goblins, angels and demons. the field in this direction, he said, had been just opened, and it was difficult to tell how far the diversity and multiplicity of creation extended. he said it was remarkable that our ancestors had not foreseen these revelations, for they knew that there were sound-waves both above and below the register of our hearing; and light-waves of which our eyes were able to take no cognizance; and therefore it followed, _a priori_, that nature might possess an infinite number of forms of life which our senses were not fitted to perceive. for instance, he added, there might be right here, in this very hall, the houses and work-shops and markets of a multitude of beings, who swarmed about us, but of such tenuity that they passed through our substance, and we through theirs, without the slightest disturbance of their continuity. all that we knew of nature taught us that she was tireless in the prodigality of her creative force, and boundless in the diversity of her workmanship; and we now knew that what the ancients called spirit was simply an attenuated condition of matter. the audience were evidently keenly intellectual and highly educated, and they listened with great attention to this discourse. in fact, i began to perceive that the office of preacher has only survived, in this material age, on condition that the priest shall gather up, during the week, from the literary and scientific publications of the whole world, the gems of current thought and information, digest them carefully, and pour them forth, in attractive form, for their delectation on sunday. as a sort of oratorical and poetical reviewer, essayist and rhapsodist, the parson and his church had survived the decadence of religion. "nature," he continued, "is as merciless as she is prolific. let us consider the humblest little creature that lives--we will say the field-mouse. think what an exquisite compendium it is of bones, muscles, nerves, veins, arteries--all sheathed in such a delicate, flexible and glossy covering of skin. observe the innumerable and beautiful adjustments in the little animal: the bright, pumping, bounding blood; the brilliant eyes, with their marvelous powers; the apprehending brain, with its sentiments and emotions, its loves, its fears, its hopes; and note, too, that wonderful net-work, that telegraphic apparatus of nerves which connects the brain with the eyes and ears and quick, vivacious little feet. one who took but a half view of things would say, 'how benevolent is nature, that has so kindly equipped the tiny field-mouse with the means of protection--its quick, listening ears; its keen, watchful eyes; its rapid, glancing feet!' but look a little farther, my brethren, and what do you behold? this same benevolent nature has formed another, larger creature, to watch for and spring upon this 'timorous little beastie,' even in its moments of unsuspecting happiness, and rend, tear, crush and mangle it to pieces. and to this especial work nature has given the larger animal a set of adjustments as exquisitely perfect as those it has conferred on the smaller one; to-wit: eyes to behold in the darkness; teeth to tear; claws to rend; muscles to spring; patience to wait; and a stomach that clamors for the blood of its innocent fellow-creature. "and what lesson does this learned and cultured age draw from these facts? simply this: that the plan of nature necessarily involves cruelty, suffering, injustice, destruction, death. "we are told by a school of philanthropists more numerous in the old time, fortunately, than they are at present, that men should not be happy while their fellow-men are miserable; that we must decrease our own pleasures to make others comfortable; and much more of the same sort. but, my brethren, does nature preach that gospel to the cat when it destroys the field-mouse? no; she equips it with special aptitudes for the work of slaughter. "if nature, with her interminable fecundity, pours forth millions of human beings for whom there is no place on earth, and no means of subsistence, what affair is that of ours, my brethren? we did not make them; we did not ask nature to make them. and it is nature's business to feed them, not yours or mine. are we better than nature? are we wiser? shall we rebuke the great mother by caring for those whom she has abandoned? if she intended that all men should be happy, why did she not make them so? she is omnipotent. she permits evil to exist, when with a breath of her mouth she could sweep it away forever. but it is part of her scheme of life. she is indifferent to the cries of distress which rise up to her, in one undying wail, from the face of the universe. with stony eyes the thousand-handed goddess sits, serene and merciless, in the midst of her worshipers, like a hindoo idol. her skirts are wet with blood; her creation is based on destruction; her lives live only by murder. the cruel images of the pagan are truer delineations of nature than the figures which typify the impotent charity of christendom--an exotic in the midst of an alien world. "let the abyss groan. why should we trouble ourselves. let us close our ears to the cries of distress we are not able to relieve. it was said of old time, 'many are called, but few chosen.' our ancestors placed a mythical interpretation on this text; but we know that it means:--many are called to the sorrows of life, but few are chosen to inherit the delights of wealth and happiness. buddha told us, 'poverty is the curse of brahma'; mahomet declared that 'god smote the wicked with misery'; and christ said, 'the poor ye have always with you.' why, then, should we concern ourselves about the poor? they are part of the everlasting economy of human society. let us leave them in the hands of nature. she who made them can care for them. "let us rejoice that out of the misery of the universe we are reserved for happiness. for us are music, painting, sculpture, the interweaving glories of the dance, the splendors of poetry and oratory, the perfume of flowers, all delicate and dainty viands and sparkling wines and nectars; and above all love! love! entrancing, enrapturing love! with its glowing cheeks--its burning eyes--its hot lips--its wreathing arms--its showering kisses--its palpitating bosoms--its intertwining symmetry of beauty and of loveliness." here the young lady with the song book drew up closer to me, and looked up into my eyes with a gaze which no son of adam could misunderstand. i thought of estella, like a true knight, and turned my face to the preacher. while his doctrines were, to me, utterly heartless and abominable, there was about him such an ecstasy of voluptuousness, associated with considerable intellectual force and passionate oratory, that i was quite interested in him as a psychological study. i could not help but think by what slow stages, through many generations, a people calling themselves christians could have been brought to this curious commingling of intellectuality and bestiality; and all upon the basis of indifference to the sorrows and sufferings of their fellow-creatures. "on with the dance!" shouted the preacher, "though we dance above graves. let the very calamities of the world accentuate our pleasures, even as the warm and sheltered fireside seems more delightful when we hear without the roar of the tempest. the ancient egyptians brought into their banquets the mummied bodies of the dead, to remind them of mortality. it was a foolish custom. men are made to feast and made to die; and the one is as natural as the other. let us, on the other hand, when we rejoice together, throw open our windows, that we may behold the swarming, starving multitudes who stream past our doors. their pinched and ashy faces and hungry eyes, properly considered, will add a flavor to our viands. we will rejoice to think that if, in this ill-governed universe, all cannot be blest, we at least rise above the universal wretchedness and are reserved for happiness. "rejoice, therefore, my children, in your wealth, in your health, in your strength, in your bodies, and in your loves. ye are the flower and perfection of mankind. let no plea shorten, by one instant, your pleasures. death is the end of all things--of consciousness; of sensation; of happiness. immortality is the dream of dotards. when ye can no longer enjoy, make ready for the grave; for the end of love is death. "and what is love? love is the drawing together of two beings, in that nature-enforced affinity and commingling, when out of the very impact and identity of two spirits, life, triumphant life, springs into the universe. "what a powerful impulse is this love? it is nature-wide. the rushing together of the chemical elements; the attraction of suns and planets--all are love. see how even the plant casts its pollen abroad on the winds, that it may somewhere reach and rest upon the loving bosom of a sister-flower; and there, amid perfume and sweetness and the breath of zephyrs, the great mystery of life is re-enacted. the plant is without intellect, but it is sensible to love. "and who shall doubt, when he contemplates the complicated mechanism by which, everywhere, this god-nature--blind as to pain and sin and death, but tender and solicitous as to birth and life--makes love possible, imperative, soulful, overwhelming, that the purposed end and aim of life is love. and how pitiful and barren seem to us the lives of the superstitious and ascetic hermits of the ancient world, who fled to desert places, to escape from love, and believed that they were overcoming the foul fiend by prayers and fastings and scourgings. but outraged nature, mighty amid the ruins of their blasted hearts, reasserted herself, and visited them even in dreams; and the white arms and loving lips of woman overwhelmed them with hot and passionate caresses, in visions against which they strove in vain. "oh, my brethren, every nerve, fiber, muscle, and 'petty artery of the body,' participates in love. love is the conqueror of death, because love alone perpetuates life. love is life! love is religion! love is the universe! love is god!" and with this climax he sat down amid great applause, as in a theater. i need scarcely say to you, my dear heinrich, that i was absolutely shocked by this sermon. knowing, as you do, the kind and pure and gentle doctrines taught in the little church in our mountain home, where love means charity for man and worship of god, you may imagine how my blood boiled at this cruel, carnal and heartless harangue. the glowing and picturesque words which he poured out were simply a carpet of flowers spread over crawling serpents. the audience of course were familiar with these doctrines. the preacher owed his success, indeed, to the fact that he had courageously avowed the sentiments which had dwelt in the breasts of the people and had been enacted in their lives for generations. the congregation had listened with rapt attention to this eloquent echo of their own hearts; this justification of their nature-worship; this re-birth of paganism. the women nestled closer to the men at the tender passages; and i noticed many a flashing interchange of glances, between bold, bright eyes, which told too well that the great preacher's adjurations were not thrown away upon unwilling listeners. another song was sung; and then there was a rustle of silks and satins. the audience were about to withdraw. the preacher sat upon his sofa, on the platform, mopping his broad forehead with his handkerchief, for he had spoken with great energy. i could restrain myself no longer. i rose and said in a loud voice, which at once arrested the movement of the congregation: "reverend sir, would you permit a stranger to make a few comments on your sermon?" "certainly," he replied, very courteously; "we welcome discussion. will you step to the platform?" "no," i replied; "with your permission i shall speak from where i stand. "i can only say to you that i am inexpressibly shocked and grieved by your discourse. "are you blind? can you not see that christianity was intended by god to be something better and nobler, superimposed, as an after-birth of time, on the brutality of the elder world? does not the great doctrine of evolution, in which you believe, preach this gospel? if man rose from a brute form, then advanced to human and savage life, yet a robber and a murderer; then reached civility and culture, and philanthropy; can you not see that the fingerboard of god points forward, unerringly, along the whole track of the race; and that it is still pointing forward to stages, in the future, when man shall approximate the angels? but this is not your doctrine. your creed does not lead forward; it leads backward, to the troglodyte in his cavern, splitting the leg-bones of his victim to extract the marrow for his cannibalistic feast. _he_ would have enjoyed your sermon!" [great excitement in the congregation.] "and your gospel of love. what is it but beastliness? like the old greeks and romans, and all undeveloped antiquity, you deify the basest traits of the fleshly organism; you exalt an animal incident of life into the end of life. you drive out of the lofty temples of the soul the noble and pure aspirations, the great charities, the divine thoughts, which should float there forever on the pinions of angels; and you cover the floor of the temple with crawling creatures, toads, lizards, vipers--groveling instincts, base appetites, leprous sensualities, that befoul the walls of the house with their snail-like markings, and climb, and climb, until they look out of the very windows of the soul, with such repellent and brutish eyes, that real love withers and shrinks at the sight, and dies like a blasted flower. "o shallow teacher of the blind, do you not see that christianity was a new force, heaven-sent, to overcome that very cruelty and heartlessness of nature which you so much commend? nature's offspring was indeed the savage, merciless as the creed you preach. then came god, who breathed a soul into the nostrils of the savage. then came one after him who said the essence of all religion was man's love for his fellow man, and for the god that is over all; that the highest worship of the father was to heal the sick, and feed the hungry, and comfort the despised and rejected, and lift up the fallen. and love!--that was true love, made up in equal parts of adoration and of pity! not the thing you call love, which makes these faces flush with passion and these eyes burn with lust!" i had gotten thus far, and was proceeding swimmingly, very much to my own satisfaction, when an old woman who stood near me, and who was dressed like a girl of twenty, with false rubber shoulders and neck and cheeks, to hide the ravages of time, hurled a huge hymn-book, the size of a bible, at me. age had not impaired the venerable woman's accuracy of aim, nor withered the strength of her good right arm; and the volume of diluted piety encountered me, with great force, just below my right ear, and sent me reeling over against max. as i rose, nothing disconcerted, to renew my discourse, i found the air full of hymn-books, cushions, umbrellas, overshoes, and every other missile they could lay their hands on; and then i perceived that the whole congregation, men, women, children, preacher, clerks and ushers, were all advancing upon me with evil intent. i would fain have staid to have argued the matter out with them, for i was full of a great many fine points, which i had not yet had time to present, but max, who never had any interest in theological discussions, and abhorred a battle with amazons, seized me by the arm and literally dragged me out of the church. i continued, however, to shout back my anathemas of the preacher, and that worthy answered me with floods of abuse; and the women screamed, and the men howled and swore; and altogether it was a very pretty assemblage that poured forth upon the sidewalk. "come along," said max; "you will be arrested, and that will spoil everything." he hurried me into a carriage and we drove off. although still full of the debate, i could not help but laugh when i looked back at the multitude in front of the church. every one was wildly ejaculating, except some of the sisters, who were kissing the hands and face of the preacher--dear, good man--to console him for the hateful insults i had heaped upon him! they reminded me of a swarm of hornets whose paper domicile had been rudely kicked by the foot of some wandering country boy. "well, well," said max, "you are a strange character! your impulses will some time cost you your life. if i did not think so much of you as i do, i should tell you you were a great fool. why couldn't you keep quiet? you surely didn't hope to convert that congregation, any more than you could have converted the council of the plutocracy." "but, my dear fellow," i replied, "it was a great comfort to me to be able to tell that old rascal just what i thought of him. and you can't tell--it may do some good." "no, no," said max; "the only preacher that will ever convert that congregation is cæsar lomellini. cæsar is a bigger brute than they are--which is saying a good deal. the difference is, they are brutes who are in possession of the good things of this world; and cæsar is a brute who wants to get into possession of them. and there is another difference: they are polished and cultured brutes, and cæsar is the brute natural,--'the unaccommodated man' that lear spoke of." chapter xxii. estella and i i need not say to you, my dear heinrich, how greatly i love estella. it is not alone for her beauty, although that is as perfect and as graceful as the dream of some greek artist hewn in immortal marble. that alone would have elicited merely my admiration. but there is that in her which wins my profoundest respect and love--i had almost said my veneration. her frame is but the crystal-clear covering of a bright and pure soul, without stain or shadow or blemish. it does not seem possible for her to be otherwise than good. and yet, within this goodness, there is an hereditary character intrenched, capable, under necessity, of all heroism--a fearless and a potent soul. and, besides all this, she is a woman, womanly; a being not harsh and angular in character, but soft and lovable-- "a countenance in which do meet sweet records, promises as sweet; a creature not too bright or good for human nature's daily food; for transient sorrows, simple wiles, praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles." you may judge, my dear brother, having gone through a similar experience, how profoundly i was drawn to her; how absolute a necessity she seemed to my life. neither was i a despairing lover; for had she not, at a time when death seemed imminent, avowed her love for me? yes, "_love_"--that was the word she used; and the look which accompanied it gave the word a double emphasis. but there was a giant difficulty in my path. if she had compromised her maiden reserve in that particular, how could i take advantage of it? and how could i still further take advantage of her lonely and friendless condition to press my suit? and yet i could not leave her alone to encounter all the dangers of the dreadful time which i know too well is approaching. if she had stood, happy and contented, in the midst of her family, under the shelter of father and mother, surrounded by brothers and sisters, with a bright and peaceful future before her, i could have found courage enough to press my suit, to throw myself at her feet, and woo her boldly, as man woos woman. but this poor, unhappy, friendless, lovely girl! what could i do? day and night i pondered the problem, and at last an expedient occurred to me. i called upon her. she had fled from the palace without a wardrobe. a woman may be a heroine, but she is still a woman. joan of arc must have given considerable thought to her cap and ribbons. estella was busy, with a dressmaker, contriving several dresses. i asked her if i could speak with her. she started, blushed a little, and led the way into another room. i closed the door. "my dear estella," i said, "i have been amusing my leisure by composing a fairy story." "indeed," she said, smiling, "a strange occupation for a philanthropist and philosopher, to say nothing of a poet." "it is, perhaps," i replied, in the same playful vein, "the poetical portion of my nature that has set me at this work. but i cannot satisfy myself as to the denouement of my story, and i desire your aid and counsel." "i am all attention," she replied; "proceed with your story;--but first, wait a moment. i will get some of my work; and then i can listen to you without feeling that i am wasting precious time." "otherwise you would feel," i said, "that your time was wasted listening to me?" "no," she said, laughing, "but in listening to a fairy tale." she returned in a few moments, and we took seats, i covering my real feeling by an assumed gayety, and estella listening attentively, with her eyes on her work. "you must know," i commenced, "that my tale is entitled: the story of princess charming and the knight weakhart. 'once upon a time'--you know all fairy stories are dated from that eventful period of the world's history--there was a beautiful princess, who lived in a grand palace, and her name was princess charming; and she was every way worthy of her name; for she was as good as she was handsome. but a dreadful dwarf, who had slain many people in that country, slew her father and mother, and robbed the poor princess of her fine house, and carried her off and delivered her to an old fairy, called cathel, a wicked and bad old sorceress and witch, who sat all day surrounded by black cats, weaving incantations and making charms, which she sold to all who would buy of her. now, among the customers of cathel was a monstrous and bloody giant, whose castle was not far away. he was called the ogre redgore. he was a cannibal, and bought charms from cathel, with which to entice young men, women and children into his dreadful den, which was surrounded with heaps of bones of those he had killed and devoured. now it chanced that when he came one day to buy his charms from cathel, the old witch asked him if he did not desire to purchase a beautiful young girl. he said he wanted one of that very kind for a banquet he was about to give to some of his fellow giants. and thereupon the wicked old woman showed him the fair and lovely princess charming, sitting weeping, among the ashes, on the kitchen hearth. he felt her flesh, to see if she was young and tender enough for the feast, and, being satisfied upon this important point, he and the old witch were not long in coming to terms as to the price to be paid for her. "and so he started home, soon after, with poor princess charming under his arm; she, the while, filling the air with her piteous lamentations and appeals for help. "and now it so chanced that a wandering knight, called weakhart, from a far country, came riding along the road that very day, clad in steel armor, and with his lance in rest. and when he heard the pitiful cries of princess charming, and beheld her beauty, he drove the spurs into his steed and dashed forward, and would have driven the lance clear through the giant's body; but that worthy saw him coming, and, dropping the princess and springing aside with great agility, he caught the lance and broke it in many pieces. then they drew their swords and a terrible battle ensued; and princess charming knelt down, the while, by the roadside, and prayed long and earnestly for the success of the good knight weakhart. but if he was weak of heart he was strong of arm, and at last, with a tremendous blow, he cut the ugly ogre's head off; and the latter fell dead on the road, as an ogre naturally will when his head is taken off. and then the knight weakhart was more afraid of being alone with the princess than he had been of the giant. but she rose up, and dried her tears, and thanked him. and then the princess and the knight were in a grave quandary; for, of course, she could not go back to the den of that wicked witch, cathel, and she had nowhere else to go. and so weakhart, with many tremblings, asked her to go with him to a cavern in the woods, where he had taken shelter." here i glanced at estella, and her face was pale and quiet, and the smile was all gone from it. i continued: "there was nothing else for it; and so the poor princess mounted in front of the knight on his horse, and they rode off together to the cavern. and there weakhart fitted up a little room for the princess, and made her a bed of the fragrant boughs of trees, and placed a door to the room and showed her how she could fasten it, and brought her flowers. and every day he hunted the deer and the bear, and made a fire and cooked for her; and he treated her with as much courtesy and respect as if she had been a queen sitting upon her throne. "and, oh! how that poor knight weakhart loved the princess! he loved the very ground she walked on; and he loved all nature because it surrounded her; and he loved the very sun, moon and stars because they shone down upon her. nay, not only did he love her; he worshiped her, as the devotee worships his god. she was all the constellations of the sky to him. universal nature had nothing that could displace her for a moment from his heart. night and day she filled his soul with her ineffable image; and the birds and the breeze and the whispering trees seemed to be all forever speaking her beloved name in his ears. "but what could he do? the princess was poor, helpless, dependent upon him. would it not be unmanly of him to take advantage of her misfortunes and frighten or coax her into becoming his wife? might she not mistake gratitude for love? could she make a free choice unless she was herself free? "and so the poor knight weakhart stilled the beating of the fluttering bird in his bosom, and hushed down his emotions, and continued to hunt and cook and wait upon his beloved princess. "at last, one day, the knight weakhart heard dreadful news. a people called vandals, rude and cruel barbarians, bloodthirsty and warlike, conquerors of nations, had arrived in immense numbers near the borders of that country, and in a few days they would pour over and ravage the land, killing the men and making slaves of the women. he must fly. one man could do nothing against such numbers. he could not leave the princess charming behind him: she would fall into the hands of the savages. he knew that she had trust enough in him to go to the ends of the earth with him. he had a sort of dim belief that she loved him. what should he do? should he overcome his scruples and ask the lady of his love to wed him; or should he invite her to accompany him as his friend and sister? would it not be mean and contemptible to take advantage of her distresses, her solitude and the very danger that threatened the land, and thus coerce her into a marriage which might be distasteful to her? "now, my dear estella," i said, with a beating heart, "thus far have i progressed with my fairy tale; but i know not how to conclude it. can you give me any advice?" she looked up at me, blushing, but an arch smile played about her lips. "let us play out the play," she said. "i will represent the princess charming--a very poor representative, i fear;--and you will take the part of the good knight weakhart--a part which i imagine you are especially well fitted to play. now," she said, "you know the old rhyme: "'he either fears his fate too much, or his desert is small, who fears to put it to the touch, and win or lose it all.' "therefore, i would advise that you--acting the knight weakhart, of course--take the bolder course and propose to princess charming to marry you." i began to see through her device, and fell on my knees, and grasped the princess's hand, and poured forth my love in rapturous words, that i shall not pretend to repeat, even to you, my dear brother. when i had paused, for want of breath, estella said: "now i must, i suppose, act the part of princess charming, and give the foolish knight his answer." and here she put her arms around my neck--i still kneeling--and kissed me on the forehead, and said, laughing, but her eyes glistening with emotion: "you silly knight weakhart, you are well named; and really i prefer the ogre whose head you were cruel enough to cut off, or even one of those hideous vandals you are trying to frighten me with. what kind of a weak heart or weak head have you, not to know that a woman never shrinks from dependence upon the man she loves, any more than the ivy regrets that it is clinging to the oak and cannot stand alone? a true woman must weave the tendrils of her being around some loved object; she cannot stand alone any more than the ivy. and so--speaking, of course, for the princess charming!--i accept the heart and hand of the poor, weak-headed knight weakhart." i folded her in my arms and began to give her all the kisses i had been hoarding up for her since the first day we met. but she put up her hand playfully, and pushed me back, and cried out: "stop! stop! the play is over!' "no! no!" i replied, "it is only beginning; and it will last as long as we two live." her face grew serious in an instant, and she whispered: "yes, until death doth us part." chapter xxiii. max's story-the songstress when max came home the next evening i observed that his face wore a very joyous expression--it was indeed radiant. he smiled without cause; he moved as if on air. at the supper table his mother noticed these significant appearances also, and remarked upon them, smiling. max laughed and said: "yes, i am very happy; i will tell you something surprising after supper." when the evening meal was finished we adjourned to the library. max closed the doors carefully, and we all sat. down in a group together, max holding the withered hand of the gentle old lady in his own, and estella and i being near together. "now," said max, "i am about to tell you a long story. it may not be as interesting to you as it is to me; but you are not to interrupt me. and, dear mother," he said, turning to her with a loving look, "you must not feel hurt that i did not make you my confidante, long ere this, of the events i am about to detail; i did not really know myself how they were going to end--i never knew until to-day. "you must understand," he continued, "that, while i have been living under my own name elsewhere, but in disguise, as i have told you; and conscious that my actions were the subject of daily espionage, it was my habit to frequent all the resorts where men congregate in great numbers, from the highest even to the lowest. i did this upon principle: not only to throw my enemies off the track as to my real character, but also because it was necessary to me, in the great work i had undertaken, that i should sound the whole register of humanity, down to its bass notes. "there is, in one of the poorer portions of the city, a great music hall, or 'variety theater,' as they call it, frequented by multitudes of the middle and lower orders. it is arranged, indeed, like a huge theater, but the audience are furnished with beer and pipes, and little tables, all for an insignificant charge; and there they sit, amid clouds of smoke, and enjoy the singing, dancing and acting upon the stage. there are many of these places in the city, and i am familiar with them all. they are the poor man's club and opera. of course, the performers are not of a high order of talent, and generally not of a high order of morals; but occasionally singers or actors of real merit and good character begin on these humble boards, and afterwards rise to great heights in their professions. "one night i wandered into the place i speak of, took a seat and called for my clay pipe and pot of beer. i was paying little attention to the performance on the stage, for it was worn threadbare with me; but was studying the faces of the crowd around me, when suddenly i was attracted by the sound of the sweetest voice i ever heard. i turned to the stage, and there stood a young girl, but little more than a child, holding her piece of music in her hand, and singing, to the thrumming accompaniment of a wheezy piano, a sweet old ballad. the girl was slight of frame and small, not more than about five feet high. she was timid, for that was her first appearance, as the play-bills stated; and the hand trembled that held the music. i did not infer that she had had much training as a musician; but the voice was the perfection of nature's workmanship; and the singing was like the airy warbling of children in the happy unconsciousness of the household, or the gushing music of birds welcoming the red light of the dawning day while yet the dew and the silence lie over all nature. a dead quiet had crept over the astonished house; but at the close of the first stanza a thunderous burst of applause broke forth that shook the whole building. it was pleasant to see how the singer brightened into confidence, as a child might, at the sound; the look of anxiety left the sweet face; the eyes danced; the yellow curls shook with half-suppressed merriment; and when the applause had subsided, and the thrumming of the old piano began again, there was an abandon in the rush of lovely melody which she poured forth, with delicate instinctive touches, fine cadences and joyous, bird-like warblings, never dreamed of by the composer of the old tune. the vast audience was completely carried away. the voice entered into their slumbering hearts like a revelation, and walked about in them like a singing spirit in halls of light. they rose to their feet; hats were flung in the air; a shower of silver pieces, and even some of gold--a veritable danaë shower--fell all around the singer, while the shouting and clapping of hands were deafening. the _debutante_ was a success. the singer had passed the ordeal. she had entered into the promised land of fame and wealth. i looked at the programme, as did hundreds of others; it read simply: _'a solo by miss christina carlson--first appearance.'_ the name was scandinavian, and the appearance of the girl confirmed that supposition. she evidently belonged to the great race of nilsson and lind. her hair, a mass of rebellious, short curls, was of the peculiar shade of light yellow common among that people; it looked as if the xanthous locks of the old gauls, as described by cæsar, had been faded out, in the long nights and the ice and snow of the northland, to this paler hue. but what struck me most, in the midst of those contaminated surroundings, was the air of innocence and purity and lightheartedness which shone over every part of her person, down to her little feet, and out to her very finger tips. there was not the slightest suggestion of art, or craft, or double-dealing, or thought within a thought, or even vanity. she was delighted to think she had passed the dreadful ambuscade of a first appearance successfully, and that employment--and _bread_--were assured for the future. that seemed to be the only triumph that danced in her bright eyes. "'who is she?' 'where did she come from?' were the questions i heard, in whispers, all around me; for many of the audience were germans, frenchmen and jews, all passionate lovers of music, and to them the ushering in of a new star in the artistic firmament is equal to a new world born before the eyes of an astronomer. "when she left the stage there was a rush of the privileged artists for the green-room. i followed them. there i found the little singer standing by the side of a middle-aged, careworn woman, evidently her mother, for she was carefully adjusting a poor, thin cloak over the girl's shoulders, while a swarm of devotees, including many debauched old gallants, crowded around, pouring forth streams of compliments, which christina heard with pleased face and downcast eyes. "i kept in the background, watching the scene. there was something about this child that moved me strangely. true, i tried to pooh-pooh away the sentiment, and said to myself: 'why bother your head about her? she is one of the "refuse;" she will go down into the dark ditch with the rest, baseness to baseness linked.' but when i looked at the modest, happy face, the whole poise of the body--for every fiber of the frame of man or woman partakes of the characteristics of the soul--i could not hold these thoughts steadily in my mind. and i said to myself: 'if she is as pure as she looks i will watch over her. she will need a friend in these scenes. here success is more dangerous than misery.' "and so, when christina and her mother left the theater, i followed them, but at a respectful distance. they called no carriage, and there were no cars going their way; but they trudged along, and i followed them; a weary distance it was--through narrow and dirty streets and back alleys--until at last they stopped at the door of a miserable tenement-house. they entered, and like a shadow i crept noiselessly behind them. up, up they went; floor after floor, until the topmost garret was reached. christina gave a glad shout; a door flew open; she entered a room that seemed to be bursting with children; and i could hear the broader voice of a man, mingled with ejaculations of childish delight, as christina threw down her gifts of gold and silver on the table, and told in tones of girlish ecstasy of her great triumph, calling ever and anon upon her mother to vouch for the truth of her wonderful story. and then i had but time to shrink back into a corner, when a stout, broad-shouldered man, dressed like a workingman, rushed headlong down the stairs, with a large basket in his hand, to the nearest eating-house; and he soon returned bearing cooked meats and bread and butter, and bottles of beer, and pastry, the whole heaped up and running over the sides of the basket. and oh, what a tumult of joy there was in that room! i stood close to the closed door and listened. there was the hurry-scurry of many feet, little and big, as they set the table; the quick commands; the clatter of plates and knives and forks; the constant chatter; the sounds of helping each other and of eating; and then christina, her mouth, it seemed to me, partly filled with bread and butter, began to give her father some specimens of the cadenzas that had brought down the house; and the little folks clapped their hands with delight, and the mother thanked god fervently that their poverty and their sufferings were at an end. "i felt like a guilty thing, standing there, sharing in the happiness to which i had not been invited; and at last i stole down the stairs, and into the street. i need not say that all this had vastly increased my interest in the pretty singer. this picture of poverty associated with genius, and abundant love shining over all, was very touching. "the next day i set a detective agency to work to find out all they could about the girl and her family. one of their men called upon me that evening, with a report. he had visited the place and made inquiries of the neighbors, of the shop-keepers, the police, etc., and this is what he had found out: "there was no person in the building of the name of 'carson,' but in the garret i had described a man resided named 'carl jansen,' a swede by birth, a blacksmith by trade, and a very honest, worthy man and good workman, but excessively poor. he had lived for some years in new york; he had a large family of children; his wife took in washing, and thus helped to fill the many greedy little mouths; the oldest girl was named christina; she was seventeen years of age; she had attended the public schools, and of late years had worked at embroidery, her earnings going into the common stock. she was a good, amiable girl, and highly spoken of by every one who knew her. she had attended sunday school, and there it had been discovered that she possessed a remarkably fine voice, and she had been placed in the choir; and, after a time, at the suggestion of some of the teachers, her mother had taken her to the manager of the variety hall, who was so pleased with her singing that he gave her a chance to appear on the boards of his theater. she had made her _début_ last night, and the whole tenement-house, and, in fact, the whole alley and neighboring streets, were talking that morning of her great success; and, strange to say, they all rejoiced in the brightening fortunes of the poor family. "'then,' i said to myself, 'carlson was merely a stage name, probably suggested by the manager of the variety show.' "i determined to find out more about the pretty christina." chapter xxiv. max's story continued--the journeyman printer "you may be sure that that night the public took the variety theater by storm; every seat was filled; the very aisles were crowded with men standing; the beer flowed in streams and the tobacco-smoke rose in clouds; the establishment was doing a splendid business. christina was down on the bills for three solos. each one was a triumph--encore followed encore--and when the performance closed the little singer was called before the curtain and another danaë shower of silver and gold, and some bouquets, fell around her. when i went behind the scenes i found the happy girl surrounded by even a larger circle of admirers than the night before, each one sounding her praises. i called the manager aside. he knew me well as a rich young spendthrift. i said to him: "'how much a week do you pay christina?' "'i promised her,' said he, 'five dollars a week; but,' and here he looked at me suspiciously, 'i have determined to double it. i shall pay her ten.' "'that is not enough,' i said; 'you will find in her a gold mine. you must pay her fifty.' "'my dear sir,' he said, 'i cannot afford it. i really cannot.' "'well,' said 'i will speak to jobson [a rival in business]; he will pay her a hundred. i saw him here to-night. he has already heard of her.' "'but,' said he, 'she has contracted with me to sing for three months, at five dollars per week; and i have permitted her to take home all the money that was thrown on the stage last night and to-night. now i shall pay her ten. is not that liberal?' "'liberal!' i said; 'it is hoggish. this girl has made you two hundred dollars extra profit to-night. she is under age. she cannot make a binding contract. and the money that was thrown to her belongs to her and not to you. come, what do you say--shall i speak to jobson?' "'what interest have you in this girl?' he asked, sullenly. "'that is no matter of yours,' i replied; 'if you will not pay her what i demand, to-morrow night she will sing for jobson, and your place will be empty.' "'well,' said he, 'i will pay it; but i don't see what right you have to interfere in my business.' "'that is not all,' i said; 'go to her now and tell her you have made a good deal of money to-night, by her help, and ask her to accept fifty dollars from you as a present; and tell her, in my hearing, that she is to receive fifty dollars a week hereafter. the family are very poor, and need immediate help. and besides, if she does not know that she is to receive a liberal salary, when the agents of the other houses come for her, she may leave you. fair play is the wisest thing.' "he thought a moment; he was very angry with me; but finally he swallowed his wrath, and pushed his way through the crowd to where christina stood, and said to her with many a bow and smile: "'miss christina, your charming voice has greatly increased my business to-night; and i think it only fair to give you a part of my profits--here are fifty dollars.' "christina was delighted--she took the money--she had never seen so large an amount before--she handed it to her mother; and both were profuse in their thanks, while the crowd vigorously applauded the good and generous manager. "'but this is not all,' he continued; 'instead of five dollars per week, the sum we had agreed upon, for your singing, i shall pay you hereafter fifty dollars a week!' "there was still greater applause; christina's eyes swam with happiness; her mother began to cry; christina seized the manager's hand, and the old scamp posed, as he received the thanks of those present, as if all this were the outcome of his own generosity, and as if he were indeed the best and noblest of men. i have no doubt that if i had not interfered he would have kept her on the five dollars a week, and the silly little soul would have been satisfied. "i followed them home. i again listened to their happiness. and then i heard the mother tell the father that they must both go out to-morrow and find a better place to lodge in, for they were rich now. a bright thought flashed across my mind, and i hastened away. "the next morning, at daybreak, i hurried to the same detective i had employed the day before; he was a shrewd, but not unkindly fellow. i explained to him my plans, and we went out together. we took a carriage and drove rapidly from place to place; he really seemed pleased to find himself engaged, for once in his life, in a good action. what i did will be revealed as i go on with this story. "at half past eight o'clock that morning the jansen family had finished their breakfast and talked over and over again, for the twentieth time, their wonderful turn of fortune, and all its incidents, including repeated counting of their marvelous hoard of money. then christina was left in charge of the children, and the father and mother sallied forth to look for a new residence. the neighbors crowded around to congratulate them; and they explained,--for, kindly-hearted souls, they did not wish their old companions in poverty to think that they had willingly fled from them, at the first approach of good fortune,--they explained that they must get a new home nearer to the theater, for christina's sake; and that they proposed that she should have teachers in music and singing and acting; for she was now the bread-winner of the family, and they hoped that some day she would shine in opera with the great artists. "did the neighbors know of any place, suitable for them, which they could rent? "no, they did not; they rarely passed out of their own poor neighborhood. "but here a plainly dressed man, who looked like a workman, and who had been listening to the conversation, spoke up and said that he had observed, only that morning, a bill of 'to rent' upon a very neat little house, only a few blocks from the theater; and, as he was going that way, he would be glad to show them the place. they thanked him; and, explaining to him that the business of renting houses was something new to them, for heretofore they had lived in one or two rooms--they might have added, very near the roof--they walked off with the stranger. he led them into a pleasant, quiet, respectable neighborhood, and at last stopped before a small, neat three-story house, with a little garden in front and another larger one in the rear. "'what a pretty place!' said the mother; 'but i fear the rent will be too high for us.' "'well, there is no harm in inquiring,' said the workman, and he rang the bell. "a young man, dressed like a mechanic, answered the summons. he invited them in; the house was comfortably, but not richly furnished. they went through it and into the garden; they were delighted with everything. and then came the question they feared to ask: what was the rent? "'well,' said the young man, pleasantly, i must explain my position. i am a printer by trade. my name is francis montgomery. i own this house. it was left to me by my parents. it is all i have. i am not married. i cannot live in it alone; it is too big for that; and, besides, i think i should get some income out of it, for there are the taxes to be paid. but i do not want to leave the house. i was born and raised here. i thought that if i could get some pleasant family to take it, who would let me retain one of the upper rooms, and would board me, i would rent the house for'--here he mentioned a ridiculously low price. 'i do not want,' he added, 'any expensive fare. i am content to take "pot-luck" with the family. i like your looks; and if you want the house, at the terms i have named, i think we can get along pleasantly together. i may not be here all the time.' "the offer was accepted; the workman was dismissed with thanks. that afternoon the whole family moved in. the delight of christina was unbounded. there was one room which i had forseen would be assigned to her, and that i had adorned with some flowers. she was introduced to me; we shook hands; and i was soon a member of the family. what a curious flock of little white-heads, of all ages, they were--sturdy, rosy, chubby, healthy, merry, and loving toward one another. they brought very little of their poor furniture with them; it was too shabby for the new surroundings; they gave it away to their former neighbors. but i noticed that the father carefully carried into the kitchen an old chair, time-worn and venerable; the back was gone, and it was nothing but a stool. the next day i observed a pudgy little boy, not quite three years old (the father's favorite, as i discovered), driving wrought nails into it with a little iron hammer. "'stop! stop! my man!' i exclaimed; 'you must not drive nails in the furniture.' "i looked at the chair: the seat of it was a mass of nailholes. and then christina, noticing my looks of perplexity, said: "'last christmas we were very, very poor. papa was out of work. we could scarcely get enough to eat. papa saw the preparations in the store windows for christmas--the great heaps of presents; and he saw the busy parents hurrying about buying gifts for their children, and he felt very sad that he could not give us any presents, not even to little ole, whom he loves so much. so he went into the blacksmith shop of a friend, and, taking up a piece of iron that had been thrown on the floor, he made that little hammer ole has in his hand, and a number of wrought nails; and he brought them home and showed ole how to use the hammer and drive the nails into the chair; and when he had driven them all into the wood, papa would pry them out for him, and the work would commence all over again, and ole was happy all day long.' "i found my eyes growing damp; for i was thinking of the riotous profusion of the rich, and of the costly toys they heap upon their children; and the contrast of this poor man, unable to buy a single cheap toy for his family, and giving his chubby boy a rude iron hammer and nails, to pound into that poor stool, as a substitute for doll or rocking-horse, was very touching. and then i looked with some wonder at the straightforward honesty of the little maid, who, in the midst of the new, fine house, was not ashamed to talk so frankly of the dismal wretchedness and want which a few days before had been the lot of the family. she saw nothing to be ashamed of in poverty; while by meaner and more sordid souls it is regarded as the very abasement of shame and crime. "ole was pounding away at his nails. "'does he not hurt himself sometimes?' i asked. "'oh yes, she said, laughing; 'at first he would hit his little fingers many a hard rap; and he would start to cry, but papa would tell him that "_men_ never cry;--and then it was funny to see how he would purse up his little red mouth, while the tears of pain ran down from his big round eyes, but not a sound more would escape him.' "and i said to myself: 'this is the stuff of which was formed the masterful race that overran the world under the names of a dozen different peoples. ice and snow made the tough fiber, mental and physical, which the hot sun of southern climes afterward melted into the viciousness of more luxurious nations. man is scourged into greatness by adversity, and leveled into mediocrity by prosperity. this little fellow, whose groans die between his set teeth, has in him the blood of the vikings.' "there was one thing i did out of policy, which yet went very much against my inclinations, in dealing with such good and honest people. i knew that in all probability i had been traced by the spies of the oligarchy to this house; they would regard it of course as a crazy adventure, and would naturally assign it to base purposes. but it would not do for me to appear altogether different, even in this family, from the character i had given myself out to be, of a reckless and dissipated man; for the agents of my enemies might talk to the servant, or to members of the household. and so the second night i came home to supper apparently drunk. it was curious to see the looks of wonder, sorrow and sympathy exchanged between the members of the family as i talked ramblingly and incoherently at the table. but this feint served one purpose; it broke down the barrier between landlord and tenants. indeed, paradoxical as it may seem, i think they thought more of me because of my supposed infirmity; for 'pity is akin to love;' and it is hard for the tenderer feelings of the heart to twine about one who is so strong and flawless that he demands no sympathy or forbearance at our hands. i ceased to be the rich owner of a house--i was simply one of themselves; a foolish journeyman printer; given to drink, but withal a kindly and pleasant man. two days afterwards, christina, who had looked at me several times with a troubled brow, took me aside and tried to persuade me to join a temperance society of which her father was a member. it was very pretty and touching to see the motherly way in which the little woman took my hand, and coaxed me to give up my vice, and told me, with eloquent earnestness, all the terrible consequences which would flow from it. i was riot foolish enough to think that any tender sentiment influenced her. it was simply her natural goodness, and her pity for a poor fellow, almost now one of their own family, who was going to destruction. and indeed, if i had been a veritable drunkard, she would have turned me from my evil courses. but i assured her that i would try to reform; that i would drink less than previously, and that, on the next new year's day, i might be able to summon up courage enough to go with her father to his society, and pledge myself to total abstinence. she received these promises with many expressions of pleasure; and, although i had to keep up my false character, i never afterwards wounded her feelings by appearing anything more than simply elevated in spirit by drink. "they were a very kind, gentle, good people; quite unchanged by prosperity and unaffected in their manners. even in their poverty the children had all looked clean and neat; now they were prettily, but not expensively, dressed. their religious devotion was great; and i endeared myself to them by sometimes joining in their household prayers. and i said to myself: if there is no god--as the miserable philosophers tell us--there surely ought to be one, if for nothing else than to listen to the supplications of these loving and grateful hearts. and i could not believe that such tender devotions could ascend and be lost forever in empty and unresponsive space. the impulse of prayer, it seems to me, presupposes a god." chapter xxv. max's story continued--the dark shadow "but a cloud was moving up to cover the fair face of this pleasant prospect; and yet the sun was shining and the birds singing. "christina was very busy during the day with her teachers. she loved music and was anxious to excel. she had her lessons on the piano; she improved her mind by a judicious course of reading, in which i helped her somewhat; she went twice a week to a grand italian maestro, who perfected her in her singing. and she took long walks to the poor neighborhood where she had formerly lived, to visit the sick and wretched among her old acquaintances, and she never left them empty-handed. "at the theater she grew more and more popular. even the rudest of the audience recognized instinctively in her the goodness which they themselves lacked. every song was an ovation. her praises began to resound in the newspapers; and she had already received advances from the manager of one of the grand opera-houses. a bright future opened before her--a vista of light and music and wealth and delight. "she did not escape, however, the unpleasant incidents natural to such a career. her mother accompanied her to every performance, and was, in so far, a shield to her; but she was beset with visitors at the house; she was annoyed by men who stopped and claimed acquaintance with her on the streets; she received many gifts, flowers, fruit, jewelry, and all the other tempting sweet nothings which it is thought bewitch the heart of frail woman. but they had no effect upon her. only goodness seemed to cling to her, and evil fell far off from her. you may set two plants side by side in the same soil--one will draw only bitterness and poison from the earth; while the other will gather, from the same nurture, nothing but sweetness and perfume. 'for virtue, as it never will be moved, though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven; so lust, though to a radiant angel linked, will sate itself in a celestial bed, and prey on garbage." "among the men who pestered christina with their attentions was a young fellow named nathan brederhagan, the son of a rich widow. he was one of those weak and shallow brains to whom wealth becomes only a vehicle in which to ride to destruction. he was in reality all that i pretended to be--a reckless, drunken, useless spendthrift, with no higher aim in life than wine and woman. he spent his days in vanity and his nights in debauchery. across the clouded portal of this fool's brain came, like a vision, the beautiful, gentle, gifted christina. she was a new toy, the most charming he had ever seen, and, like a child, he must possess it. and so he began a series of persecutions. he followed her everywhere; he fastened himself upon her at the theater; he showered all sorts of gifts on her; and, when he found she returned his presents, and that she refused or resisted all his advances, he grew so desperate that he at last offered to marry her, although with a consciousness that he was making a most heroic and extraordinary sacrifice of himself in doing so. but even this condescension--to his unbounded astonishment--she declined with thanks. and then the silly little fool grew more desperate than ever, and battered up his poor brains with strong drink, and wept in maudlin fashion to his acquaintances. at last one of these--a fellow of the same kidney, but with more enterprise than himself--said to him: 'why don't you carry her off?' nathan opened his eyes very wide, stopped his sniffling and blubbering, and made up his mind to follow this sage advice. to obtain the necessary nerve for such a prodigious undertaking he fired up with still more whisky; and when the night came he was crazy with drink. obtaining a carriage and another drunken fool to help him, he stationed himself beside the pavement, in the quiet street where christina lived, and but a few doors distant from her house; and then, as she came along with her mother, he seized upon her, while his companion grasped mrs. jansen. he began to drag christina toward the carriage; but the young girl was stronger than he was, and not only resisted him, but began to shriek, ably seconded by her mother, until the street rang. the door of their house flew open, and mr. jansen, who had recognized the voices of his wife and daughter, was hurrying to their rescue; whereupon the little villain cried in a tone of high tragedy, 'then die!' and stabbed her in the throat with a little dagger he carried. he turned and sprang into the carriage; while the poor girl, who had become suddenly silent, staggered and fell into the arms of her father. "it chanced that i was absent from the house that night, on some business of the brotherhood, and the next morning i breakfasted in another part of the city, at a restaurant. i had scarcely begun my meal when a phonograph, which, in a loud voice, was proclaiming the news of the day before for the entertainment of the guests, cried out: probable murder--a young girl stabbed. last night, at about half-past eleven, on seward street, near fifty-first avenue, a young girl was assaulted and brutally stabbed in the throat by one of two men. the girl is a singer employed in peter bingham's variety theater, a few blocks distant from the place of the attack. she was accompanied by her mother, and they were returning on foot from the theater, where she had been singing. the man had a carriage ready, and while one of them held her mother, the other tried to force the young girl into the carriage; it was plainly the purpose of the men to abduct her. she resisted, however; whereupon the ruffian who had hold of her, hearing the footsteps of persons approaching, and seeing that he could not carry her off, drew a knife and stabbed her in the throat, and escaped with his companion in the carriage. the girl was carried into her father's house, no. seward street, and the distinguished surgeon, dr. hemnip, was sent for. he pronounced the wound probably fatal. the young girl is named christina jansen; she sings under the stage-name of christina carlson, and is the daughter of carl jansen, living at the place named. inquiry at the theater showed her to be a girl of good character, very much esteemed by her acquaintances, and greatly admired as a very brilliant singer. later.--a young man named nathan brederhagan, belonging to a wealthy and respectable family, and residing with his mother at no. sherman street, was arrested this morning at one o'clock, in his bed, by police officer no. , , on information furnished by the family of the unfortunate girl. a bloody dagger was found in his pocket. as the girl is likely to die he was committed to jail and bail refused. he is represented to be a dissipated, reckless young fellow, and it seems was in love with the girl, and sought her hand in marriage; and she refused him; whereupon, in his rage, he attempted to take her life. his terrible deed has plunged a large circle of relatives and friends into great shame and sorrow. "i had started to my feet as soon as i heard the words, 'the girl is a singer in peter bingham's variety theater,' but, when her name was mentioned and her probable death, the pangs that shot through me no words of mine can describe. "it is customary with us all to think that our intellect is our self, and that we are only what we think; but there are in the depths of our nature feelings, emotions, qualities of the soul, with which the mere intelligence has nothing to do; and which, when they rise up, like an enraged elephant from the jungle, scatter all the conventionalities of our training, and all the smooth and automaton-like operations of our minds to the winds. as i stood there, listening to the dead-level, unimpassioned, mechanical voice of the phonograph, pouring forth those deadly sentences, i realized for the first time what the sunny-haired little songstress was to me. "'wounded! dead!' "i seized my hat, and, to the astonishment of the waiters, i rushed out. i called a hack. i had to alter my appearance. i grudged the time necessary for this very necessary precaution, but, paying the driver double fare, i went, as fast as his horses' legs could carry me, to the place, in a saloon kept by one of the brotherhood, where i was in the habit of changing my disguises. i dismissed the hack, hurried to my room, and in a few minutes i was again flying along, in another hack, to seward street. i rushed up the steps. her mother met me in the hall. she was crying. "'is she alive?' i asked. "'yes, yes,' she replied. "'what does the doctor say?' i inquired. "'he says she will not die--but her voice is gone forever,' she replied. "her tears burst forth afresh. i was shocked--inexpressibly shocked. true, it was joy to know she would live; but to think of that noble instrument of grace and joy and melody silenced forever! it was like the funeral of an angel! god, in the infinite diversity of his creation, makes so few such voices--so few such marvelous adjustments of those vibrating chords to the capabilities of the air and the human sense and the infinite human soul that dwells behind the sense--and all to be the spoil of a ruffian's knife. oh! if i could have laid my hands on the little villain! i should have butchered him with his own dagger--sanctified, as it was, with her precious blood. the infamous little scoundrel! to think that such a vicious, shallow, drunken brute could have power to 'break into the bloody house of life' and bring to naught such a precious and unparalleled gift of god. i had to clutch the railing of the stairs to keep from falling. fortunately for me, poor mrs. jansen was too much absorbed in her own sorrows to notice mine. she grieved deeply and sincerely for her daughter's sufferings and the loss of her voice; but, worse than all, there rose before her- the future! she looked with dilated eyes into that dreadful vista. she saw again the hard, grinding, sordid poverty from which they had but a little time before escaped-she saw again her husband bent down with care, and she heard her children crying once more for bread. i read the poor woman's thoughts. it was not selfishness--it was love for those dear to her; and i took her hand, and--scarcely knowing what i said--i told her she must not worry, that she and her family should never suffer want again. she looked at me in surprise, and thanked me, and said i was always good and kind. "in a little while she took me to christina's room. the poor girl was under the influence of morphine and sleeping a troubled sleep. her face was very pale from loss of blood; and her head and neck were all bound up in white bandages, here and there stained with the ghastly fluid that flowed from her wounds. it was a pitiable sight: her short, crisp yellow curls broke here and there, rebelliously, through the folds of the linen bandages; and i thought how she used to shake them, responsive to the quiverings of the cadenzas and trills that poured from her bird-like throat. 'alas!' i said to myself, 'poor throat! you will never sing again! poor little curls, you will never tremble again in sympathy with the dancing delight of that happy voice.' a dead voice! oh! it is one of the saddest things in the world! i went to the window to hide the unmanly tears which streamed down my face. "when she woke she seemed pleased to see me near her, and extended her hand to me with a little smile. the doctor had told her she must not attempt to speak. i held her hand for awhile, and told how grieved i was over her misfortune. and then i told her i would bring her a tablet and pencil, so that she might communicate her wants to us; and then i said to her that i was out of a job at my trade (i know that the angels in heaven do not record such lies), and that i had nothing to do, and could stay and wait upon her; for the other children were too small, and her mother too busy to be with her all the time, and her father and i could divide the time between us. she smiled again and thanked me with her eyes. "and i was very busy and almost happy--moving around that room on tiptoe in my slippers while she slept, or talking to her in a bright and chatty way, about everything that i thought would interest her, or bringing her flowers, or feeding her the liquid food which alone she could swallow. "the doctor came every day. i questioned him closely. he was an intelligent man, and had, i could see, taken quite a liking to his little patient. he told me that the knife had just missed, by a hair's breadth, the carotid artery, but unfortunately it had struck the cervical plexus, that important nerve-plexus, situated in the side of the neck; and had cut the recurrent laryngeal nerve, which arises from the cervical plexus and supplies the muscles of the larynx; and it had thereby caused instant paralysis of those muscles, and aphonia, or loss of voice. i asked him if she would ever be able to sing again. he said it was not certain. if the severed ends of the nerve reunited fully her voice might return with all its former power. he hoped for the best. "one morning, i was called down stairs by mrs. jansen; it was three or four days after the assault had been made on christina. there i found the chief of police of that department. he said it had become necessary, in the course of the legal proceedings, that brederhagan should be identified by christina as her assailant. the doctor had reported that there was now no danger of her death; and the family of the little rascal desired to get him out on bail. i told him i would confer with the physician, when he called, as to whether christina could stand the excitement of such an interview, and i would notify him. he thanked me and took his leave. that day i spoke upon the subject to dr. hemnip, and he thought that christina had so far recovered her strength that she might see the prisoner the day after the next. at the same time he cautioned her not to become nervous or excited, and not to attempt to speak. she was simply to write 'yes' on her tablet, in answer to the question asked her by the police. the interview was to be as brief as possible. i communicated with the chief of police, as i had promised, giving him these details, and fixed an hour for him to call." chapter xxvi. max's story continued--the widow and her son "the next day, about ten in the morning, i went out to procure some medicine for christina. i was gone but a few minutes, and on my return, as i mounted the stairs, i was surprised to hear a strange voice in the sick-room. i entered and was introduced by mrs. jansen to 'mrs. brederhagan,' the rich widow, the mother of the little wretch who had assaulted christina. she was a large, florid woman, extravagantly dressed, with one of those shallow, unsympathetic voices which betoken a small and flippant soul. her lawyers had told her that nathan would probably be sent to prison for a term of years; and so she had come to see if she could not beg his victim to spare him. she played her part well. she got down on her knees by the bedside in all her silks and furbelows, and seized christina's hand and wept; and told of her own desolate state as a widow--drawing, incidentally, a picture of the virtues of her deceased husband, which he himself--good man--would not have recognized in this world or any other. and then she descanted on the kind heart of her poor boy, and how he had been led off by bad company, etc., etc. christina listened with an intent look to all this story; but she flushed when the widow proceeded to say how deeply her son loved her, christina, and that it was his love for her that had caused him to commit his desperate act; and she actually said that, although christina was but a poor singer, with no blood worth speaking of, in comparison with her own illustrious long line of nobodies, yet she brought christina an offer from her son--sanctioned by her own approval--that he would--if she would spare him from imprisonment and his family from disgrace--marry her outright and off-hand; and that she would, as a magnanimous and generous, upper-crust woman, welcome her, despite all her disadvantages and drawbacks, to her bosom as a daughter! all this she told with a great many tears and ejaculations, all the time clinging to christina's hand. "when she had finished and risen, and readjusted her disarranged flounces, christina took her tablet and wrote: "i could not marry your son. as to the rest, i will think it over. please do not come again.' "the widow would have gotten down on her knees and gone at it again; but i took her aside and said to her: 'do you not see that this poor girl is very weak, and your appeals distress her? go home and i will communicate with you.' "and i took her by the arm, and firmly but respectfully led her out of the room, furbelows, gold chains and all. she did not feel at all satisfied with the success of her mission; but i saw her into her carriage and told the driver to take her home. i was indignant. i felt that the whole thing was an attempt to play upon the sympathies of my poor little patient, and that the woman was a hollow, heartless old fraud. "the next day, at the appointed hour, the chief of police came, accompanied by the prisoner. the latter had had no liquor for several days and was collapsed enough. all his courage and vanity had oozed out of him. he was a dilapidated wreck. he knew that the penitentiary yawned for him, and he felt his condition as deeply as such a shallow nature could feel anything. i scowled at the wretch in a way which alarmed him for his personal safety, and he trembled and hurried behind the policeman. "christina had been given a strengthening drink. the doctor was there with his finger on her pulse; she was raised up on some pillows. her father and mother were present. when we entered she looked for an instant at the miserable, dejected little creature, and i saw a shudder run through her frame, and then she closed her eyes. "'miss jansen,' said the chief of police, 'be kind enough to say whether or not this is the man who tried to kill you.' "i handed her the tablet and pencil. she wrote a few words. i handed it to the chief. "'what does this mean?' he said, in evident astonishment. "i took the tablet out of his hand, and was thunderstruck to find on it these unexpected words: "_'this is not the man.'_ "'then,' said the chief of police, 'there is nothing more to do than to discharge the prisoner.' "her father and mother stepped forward; but she waved them back with her hand; and the chief led the culprit out, too much stunned to yet realize that he was free. "'what does this mean, christina?' i asked, in a tone that expressed indignation, if not anger. "she took her tablet and wrote: "'what good would it do to send that poor, foolish boy to prison for many years? he was drunk or he would not have hurt me. it will do no good to bring disgrace on a respectable family. this great lesson may reform him and make him a good man.' "at that moment i made up my mind to make christina my wife, if she would have me. such a soul was worth a mountain of rubies. there are only a few of them in each generation, and fortunate beyond expression is the man who can call one of them his own! "but i was not going to see my poor love, or her family, imposed on by that scheming old widow. i hurried out of the house; i called a hack, and drove to mrs. brederhagan's house. i found her and her son in the first paroxysm of joy--locked in each other's arms. "'mrs. brederhagan,' i said, 'your vicious little devil of a son here has escaped punishment so far for his cruel and cowardly assault upon a poor girl. he has escaped through her unexampled magnanimity and generosity. but do you know what he has done to her? he has silenced her exquisite voice forever. he has ruthlessly destroyed that which a million like him could not create. that poor girl will never sing again. she was the sole support of her family. this imp here has taken the bread out of their mouths--they will starve. you owe it to her to make a deed of gift whereby you will endow her with the amount she was earning when your son's dagger pierced her poor throat and silenced her voice; that is--fifty dollars a week.' "the widow ruffled up her feathers, and said she did not see why she should give christina fifty dollars a week. she had declared that her son was not the one who had assaulted her, and he was a free man, and that was the end of their connection with the matter. "'ha! ha!' said i, 'and so, that is your position? now you will send at once for a notary and do as i tell you, or in one hour your son shall be arrested again. _christina's mother knows him perfectly well, and will identify him_; and christina herself will not swear in court to the generous falsehood she told to screen you and yours from disgrace. you are a worthy mother of such a son, when you cannot appreciate one of the noblest acts ever performed in this world.' "the widow grew pale at these threats; and after she and her hopeful son--who was in a great fright--had whispered together, she reluctantly agreed to my terms. a notary was sent for, and the deed drawn and executed, and a check given, at my demand, for the first month's payment. "'now,' said i, turning to master nathan, 'permit me to say one word to you, young man. if you ever again approach, or speak to, or molest in any way, miss christina carlson, i will,'-and here i drew close to him and put my finger on his breast,--'i will kill you like a dog.' "with this parting shot i left the happy pair." chapter xxvii. max's story continued--the blacksmith shop "i need not describe the joy there was in the jansen family when i brought home mrs. brederhagan's deed of gift and the money. christina did not yet know that her voice was destroyed, and hence was disposed to refuse what she called 'the good lady's great generosity.' but we reminded her that the widow was rich, and that her son had inflicted great and painful wounds upon her, which had caused her weeks of weary sickness, to say nothing of the doctor's bills and the other expenses they had been subjected to; and so, at last, she consented and agreed that, for the present at least, she would receive the widow's money, but only until she could resume her place on the boards of the theater. but the deed of gift drove the brooding shadows out of the heart and eyes of poor mrs. jansen. "i need not tell you all the details of christina's recovery. day by day she grew stronger. she began to speak in whispers, and gradually she recovered her power of speech, although the voice at first sounded husky. she was soon able to move about the house, for youth and youthful spirits are great medicines. one day she placed her hand on mine and thanked me for all my great kindness to her; and said, in her arch way, that i was a good, kindhearted friend, and it was a pity i had any weaknesses; and that i must not forget my promise to her about the next new year's day. but she feared that i had neglected my business to look after her. "at length she learned from the doctor that she could never sing again; that her throat was paralyzed. it was a bitter grief to her, and she wept quietly for some hours. and then she comforted herself with the reflection that the provision made for her by mrs. brederhagan had placed herself and her family beyond the reach of poverty. but for this i think she would have broken her heart. "i had been cogitating for some days upon a new idea. it seemed to me that these plain, good people would be much happier in the country than in the city; and, besides, their income would go farther. they had country blood in their veins, and it takes several generations to get the scent of the flowers out of the instincts of a family; they have subtle promptings in them to walk in the grass and behold the grazing kine. and a city, after all, is only fit for temporary purposes--to see the play and the shops and the mob--and wear one's life out in nothingnesses. as one of the poets says: "'thus is it in the world-hive; most where men lie deep in cities as in drifts--death drifts-- nosing each other like a flock of sheep; not knowing and not caring whence nor whither they come or go, so that they fool together." "and then i thought, too, that mr. jansen was unhappy in idleness. he was a great, strong man, and accustomed all his life to hard work, and his muscles cried out for exercise. "so i started out and made little excursions in all directions. at last i found the very place i had been looking for. it was about twelve miles beyond the built-up portions of the suburbs, in a high and airy neighborhood, and contained about ten acres of land. there was a little grove, a field, a garden, and an old-fashioned, roomy house. the house needed some repairs, it is true; but beyond the grove two roads crossed each other, and at the angle would be an admirable place for a blacksmith shop. i purchased the whole thing very cheaply. then i set carpenters to work to repair the house and build a blacksmith shop. the former i equipped with furniture, and the latter with anvil, bellows and other tools, and a supply of coal and iron. "when everything was ready i told christina another of my white lies. i said to her that mrs. brederhagan, learning that her voice was ruined forever by her son's dagger, had felt impelled, by her conscience and sense of right, to make her a present of a little place in the country, and had deputed me to look after the matter for her, and that i had bought the very place that i thought would suit them. "and so we all started out to view the premises. it would be hard to say who was most delighted, christina or her mother or her father; but i am inclined to think the latter took more pure happiness in his well-equipped little shop, with the big sign, 'carl jansen, blacksmith,' and the picture of a man shoeing a horse, than christina did in the flowerbed, or her mother in the comfortable household arrangements. "soon after the whole family moved out. i was right. a race that has lived for several generations in the country is an exotic in a city." chapter xxviii. max's story concluded--the unexpected happens "i used to run out every other day, and i was as welcome as if i had been really a member of the family. the day before yesterday i found the whole household in a state of joyous excitement. christina had been enjoined to put the baby to sleep; and while rocking it in its cradle she had, all unconsciously, begun to sing a little nursery song. suddenly she sprang to her feet, and, running to her mother, cried out: "'oh, mother! i can sing! listen.' "she found, however, that the voice was still quite weak, and that if she tried to touch any of the higher notes there was a pain in her throat. "i advised her to forbear singing for some time, and permit the organs of the voice to resume their natural condition. it might be that the doctor was wrong in his prognosis of her case; or it might be that the injured nerve, as he had said was possible, had resumed its function, through the curative power of nature. but it was a great delight to us all, and especially to the poor girl herself, to think that her grand voice might yet be restored to her. "to-day i went out again. "i thought that mr. jansen met me with a constrained manner; and when mrs. jansen saw me, instead of welcoming me with a cordial smile, as was usual with her, she retreated into the house. and when i went into the parlor, christina's manner was still more embarrassing. she blushed as she extended her hand to me, and seemed very much confused; and yet her manner was not unkind or unfriendly. i could not understand it. "'what is the matter, christina?' i asked. "the little woman was incapable of double-dealing, and so she said: "'you know it came into my head lately, very often, that mrs. brederhagan had been exceedingly, i might say extraordinarily, kind to me. it is true her son had done me a great injury, and might have killed me; and i refused to testify against him. but she had not only given me that deed of gift you brought me, but she had also presented papa with this charming home. and so i said to myself that she must think me very rude and ungrateful, since i had never called upon her to thank her in person. and so, knowing that nathan had been sent to europe, i made up my mind, yesterday, that i would go into town, and call upon mrs. brederhagan, and thank her for all her kindness. "'i took a hack to her house from the station, and sent up my card. she received me quite kindly. after a few inquiries and commonplaces i thanked her as i had intended doing. she smiled and made light of it; then i spoke of the house and the garden, and the blacksmith shop, and how grateful we all were to her. "'"why," said she, "what on earth are you talking about? i never gave you a house, or a garden, or a blacksmith shop." "'you may imagine my surprise. "'"why," said i, "did you not give mr. frank montgomery the money to purchase it, and tell him to have the deed made out to my father?" "'"my dear," said she, "you bewilder me; i never in all my life heard of such a person as mr. frank montgomery; and i certainly never gave him any money to buy a house for anybody." "'"why," said i, "do you pretend you do not know mr. frank montgomery, who brought me your deed of gift?" "that," she said, "was not mr. frank montgomery, but mr. arthur phillips." "'"no, no," i said, "you are mistaken; it was frank montgomery, a printer by trade, who owns the house we used to live in, at seward street. i am well acquainted with him." "'"well," said she, "this is certainly astonishing! mr. arthur phillips, whom i have known for years, a young gentleman of large fortune, a lawyer by profession, comes to me and tells me, the very day you said my son was not the man who assaulted you, that unless i settled fifty dollars a week on you for life, by a deed of gift, he would have nathan rearrested for an attempt to murder you, and would prove his guilt by your mother; and now you come and try to make me believe that arthur phillips, the lawyer, is frank montgomery, the printer; that he lives in a little house on seward street, and that i have been giving him money to buy you houses and gardens and blacksmith shops in the country! i hope, my dear, that the shock you received, on that dreadful night, has not affected your mind. but i would advise you to go home to your parents." "'and therewithal she politely bowed me out.' "'i was very much astonished and bewildered. i stood for some time on the doorstep, not knowing what to do next. then it occurred to me that i would go to your house and ask you what it all meant; for i had no doubt mrs. brederhagan was wrong, and that you were, indeed, frank montgomery, the printer. i found the house locked up and empty. a bill on the door showed that it was to rent, and referred inquiries to the corner grocery. they remembered me very well there. i asked them where you were. they did not know. then i asked whether they were not agents for you to rent the house. oh, no; you did not own the house. but had you not lived in it for years? no; you rented it the very morning of the same day we moved in. i was astounded, and more perplexed than ever. what did it all mean? if you did not own the house and had not been born in it, or lived there all your life, as you said, then the rest of your story was probably false also, and the name you bore was assumed. and for what purpose? and why did you move into that house the same day we rented it from you? it looked like a scheme to entrap us; and yet you had always been so kind and good that i could not think evil of you. then it occurred to me that i would go and see peter bingham, the proprietor of the theater. i desired, anyhow, to tell him that i thought i would recover my voice, and that i might want another engagement with him after awhile. when i met him i fancied there was a shade of insolence in his manner. when i spoke of singing again he laughed, and said he guessed i would never want to go on the boards again. why? i asked. then he laughed again, and said "mr. phillips would not let me;" and then he began to abuse you, and said you "had forced him to give me fifty dollars a week for my singing when it wasn't worth ten dollars; but he understood then what it all meant, and that now every one understood it;--that you had lived in the same house with me for months, and now you had purchased a cage for your bird in the country." at first i could not understand what he meant; and when at last i comprehended his meaning and burst into tears, he began to apologize; but i would not listen to him, and hurried home and told everything to papa and mamma. "'now,' she continued, looking me steadily in the face with her frank, clear eyes, 'we have talked it all over for hours, and we have come to several conclusions. first, you are not francis montgomery, but arthur phillips; second, you are not a poor printer, but a rich young gentleman; third, you have done me a great many kindnesses and attributed them to others. you secured me a large salary from bingham; you made mrs. brederhagan settle an income upon me; you nursed me through all my sickness, with the tenderness of a brother, and you have bought this beautiful place and presented it to papa. you have done us all nothing but good; and you claimed no credit for it; and we shall all be grateful to you and honor you and pray for you to the end of our lives. but,' and here she took my hand as a sister might, 'but we cannot keep this place. you will yourself see that we cannot. you a poor printer, we met on terms of equality. from a rich young gentleman this noble gift would be universally considered as the price of my honor and self-respect. it is so considered already. the deed of gift from mrs. brederhagan i shall avail myself of until i am able to resume my place on the stage; but here is a deed, signed by my father and mother, for this place, and tomorrow we must leave it. we may not meet again'- and here the large eyes began to swim in tears--'but--but--i shall never forget your goodness to me.' "'christina,' i said, 'suppose i had really been frank montgomery, the printer, would you have driven me away from you thus?' "'oh! no! no!' she cried; 'you are our dearest and best friend. and i do not drive you away. i must leave you. the world can have only one interpretation of the relation of two people so differently situated--a very wealthy young gentleman and a poor little singer, the daughter of a poor, foreign-born workman.' "'well, then,' said i, taking her in my arms, 'let the blabbing, babbling old world know that that poor little singer sits higher in my heart, yes, in my brain and judgment, than all the queens and princesses of the world. i have found in her the one inestimable jewel of the earth--a truly good and noble woman. if i deceived you it was because i loved you; loved you with my whole heart and soul and all the depths of my being. i wanted to dwell in the same house with you; to study you; to see you always near me. i was happier when i was nursing you through your sickness than i have ever been before or since. i was sorry, to tell the truth, when you got well, and were no longer dependent on me. and now, christina, if you will say yes, we will fix the day for the wedding.' "i knew as soon as i began to speak that i had won my case. there was no struggle to escape from my arms; and, as i went on, she relaxed even her rigidity, and reposed on my breast with trusting confidence. "'frank,' she said, not looking up, and speaking in a low tone--'i shall always call you frank--i loved the poor printer from the very first; and if the rich man can be content with the affection i gave the poor one, my heart and life are yours. but stop,' she added, looking up with an arch smile, 'you must not forget the promise you made me about new year's day!' "'ah, my dear,' i replied, 'that was part of poor frank's character, and i suppose that is what you loved him for; but if you will marry a rich man you must be content to forego all those attractions of the poor, foolish printer. i shall not stand up next new year's day and make a vow to drink no more; but i make a vow now to kiss the sweetest woman in the world every day in the year.' "and, lest i should forget so sacred an obligation, i began to put my vow into execution right then and there. "afterward the old folks were called in, and i told them my whole story. and i said to them, moreover, that there was storm and danger ahead; that the great convulsion might come any day; and so it is agreed that we are to be married, at christina's home, the day after to-morrow. and to-morrow i want my dear mother, and you, my dear friends, to go with me to visit the truest and noblest little woman that ever promised to make a man happy." when max had finished his long story, his mother kissed and cried over him; and estella and i shook hands with him; and we were a very happy party; and no one would have thought, from our jests and laughter, that the bloodhounds of the aristocracy were hunting for three of us, and that we were sitting under the dark presaging shadow of a storm that was ready to vomit fire and blood at any moment. before we retired that night estella and i had a private conference, and i fear that at the end of it i made the same astonishing vow which max had made to christina. and i came to another surprising conclusion--that is, that no woman is worth worshiping unless she is worth wooing. but what i said to estella, and what she said to me, will never be revealed to any one in this world;--the results, however, will appear hereafter, in this veracious chronicle. chapter xxix. elysium it was a bright and sunny autumn day. we were a very happy party. estella was disguised with gold spectacles, a black wig and a veil, and she looked like some middle-aged school-teacher out for a holiday. we took the electric motor to a station one mile and a half from mr. jansen's, and walked the rest of the way. the air was pure and sweet and light; it seemed to be breathed right out of heaven. the breezes touched us and dallied with us and delighted us, like ministering angels. the whole panoply of nature was magnificent; the soft-hued, grassy fields; the embowered trees; the feeding cattle; the children playing around the houses;-- > "clowns cracking jokes, and lasses with sly eyes, and the smile settling on their sun-flecked cheeks like noon upon the mellow apricot." my soul rose upon wings and swam in the ether like a swallow; and i thanked god that he had given us this majestic, this beautiful, this surpassing world, and had placed within us the delicate sensibility and capability to enjoy it. in the presence of such things death--annihilation--seemed to me impossible, and i exclaimed aloud: > "hast thou not heard that thine existence, here on earth, is but the dark and narrow section of a life which was with god, long ere the sun was lit, and shall be yet, when all the bold, bright stars are dark as death-dust?" and oh, what a contrast was all this to the clouded world we had left behind us, in yonder close-packed city, with its poverty, its misery, its sin, its injustice, its scramble for gold, its dark hates and terrible plots. but, i said to myself, while god permits man to wreck himself, he denies him the power to destroy the world. the grass covers the graves; the flowers grow in the furrows of the cannon balls; the graceful foliage festoons with blossoms the ruins of the prison and the torture-chamber; and the corn springs alike under the foot of the helot or the yeoman. and i said to myself that, even though civilization should commit suicide, the earth would still remain--and with it some remnant of mankind; and out of the uniformity of universal misery a race might again arise worthy of the splendid heritage god has bestowed upon us. mr. jansen had closed up his forge in honor of our visit, and had donned a new broadcloth suit, in which he seemed as comfortable as a whale in an overcoat. christina ran out to meet us, bright and handsome, all in white, with roses in her curly hair. the sweet-faced old lady took her to her arms, and called her "my daughter," and kissed her, and expressed her pleasure that her son was about to marry so good and noble a girl. mrs. jansen held back modestly at first, a little afraid of "the great folks," but she was brought forward by christina, and introduced to us all. and then we had to make the acquaintance of the whole flock of blue-eyed, curly-haired, rosy-cheeked little ones, gay in white dresses and bright ribbons. even master ole forgot, for a time, his enrapturing hammer and nails, and stood, with eyes like saucers, contemplating the irruption of outside barbarians. we went into the house, and there, with many a laugh and jest, the spectacled school-teacher was transformed into my own bright and happy estella. the two girls flowed into one another, by natural affinity, like a couple of drops of quicksilver; each recognized the transparent soul in the other, and in a moment they were friends for life. we were a jolly party. care flew far away from us, and many a laugh and jest resounded. "there is one thing, christina," said max, "that i cannot comprehend, and of which i demand an explanation. your name is 'christina jansen,' and yet you appeared in public by the name of 'christina carlson.' now i refuse to marry you until this thing is explained; for i may be arrested and charged with bigamy for marrying two women at once! i am willing to wed 'christina jansen'--but what am i to do with 'christina carlson'? i could be "happy with either were t'other dear charmer away.'" christina laughed and blushed and said: "if you do not behave yourself you shall not have either of the christinas. but i will tell you, my dear friend, how that happened. you must know that in our sweden, especially in the northern part of it, where father and mother came from, we are a very primitive people--far 'behind the age,' you will say. and there we have no family names, like brown or jones or smith; but each man is simply the son of his father, and he takes his father's first name. thus if 'peter' has a son and he is christened 'ole,' then he is 'ole peterson,' or ole the son of peter; and if his son is called 'john,' then he is 'john oleson.' i think, from what i have read in the books you gave me, frank, that the same practice prevailed, centuries ago, in england, and that is how all those english names, such as johnson, jackson, williamson, etc., came about. but the females of the family, in sweden, are called 'daughters' or 'dotters;' and hence, by the custom of my race, i am 'christina carl's dotter.' and when mr. bingham asked me my name to print on his play bills, that is what i answered him; but he said 'christina carl's dotter' was no name at all. it would never do; and so he called me 'christina carlson.' there you have the explanation of the whole matter." "i declare," said frank, "this thing grows worse and worse! why, there are three of you. i shall have to wed not only 'christina jansen,' and 'christina carlson,' but 'christina carl's dotter.' why, that would be not only bigamy, but _trigamy!_" and then estella came to the rescue, and said that she felt sure that max would be glad to have her even if there were a dozen of her. and frank, who had become riotous, said to me: "you see, old fellow, you are about to marry a girl with a pedigree, and i another without one." "no," said christina, "i deny that charge; with us the very name we bear declares the pedigree. i am 'christina carl's dotter,' and 'carl' was the son of 'john,' who was the son of 'frederick,' who was the son of 'christian;' and so on for a hundred generations. i have a long pedigree; and i am very proud of it; and, what is more, they were all good, honest, virtuous people." and she heightened up a bit. and then frank kissed her before us all, and she boxed his ears, and then dinner was announced. and what a pleasant dinner it was: the vegetables, crisp and fresh, were from their own garden; and the butter and milk and cream and schmearkase from their own dairy; and the fruit from their own trees; and the mother told us that the pudding was of christina's own making; and thereupon frank ate more of it than was good for him; and everything was so neat and bright, and everybody so happy; and frank vowed that there never was before such luscious, golden butter; and mrs. jansen told us that that was the way they made it in sweden, and she proceeded to explain the whole process. the only unhappy person at the table, it seemed to me, was poor carl, and he had a wretched premonition that he was certainly going to drop some of the food on that brand-new broadcloth suit of his. i feel confident that when we took our departure he hurried to take off that overwhelming grandeur, with very much the feeling with which the dying saint shuffles off the mortal coil, and soars to heaven. but then, in the midst of it all, there came across me the dreadful thought of what was to burst upon the world in a few days; and i could have groaned aloud in anguish of spirit. i felt we were like silly sheep gamboling on the edge of the volcano. but why not? we had not brought the world to this pass. why should we not enjoy the sunshine, and that glorious light, brighter than all sunshine--the love of woman? for god alone, who made woman--the true woman--knows the infinite capacities for good which he has inclosed within her soul. and i don't believe one bit of that orthodox story. i think eve ate the apple to obtain knowledge, and adam devoured the core because he was hungry. and these thoughts, of course, were suggested by my looking at estella. she and christina were in a profound conference; the two shades of golden hair mingling curiously as they whispered to each other, and blushed and laughed. and then estella came over to me, and smiled and blushed again, and whispered: "christina is delighted with the plan." and then i said to max, in a dignified, solemn way: 'my dear max, or frank, or arthur, or whatever thy name may be--and 'if thou hast no other name to call thee by i will call thee devil'--i have observed, with great regret, that thou art very much afraid of standing up to-morrow and encountering in wedlock's ceremony the battery of bright eyes of the three christinas. now i realize that a friend should not only 'bear a friend's infirmities,' but that he should stand by him in the hour of danger; and so to-morrow, 'when fear comes down upon you like a house,' estella and i have concluded to stand with you, in the imminent deadly breach, and share your fate; and if, when you get through, there are any of the christinas left, i will--with estella's permission--even marry them myself 'for i am determined that such good material shall not go to waste.' there was a general rejoicing, and max embraced me; and then he hugged christina; and then i took advantage of the excuse--i was very happy in finding such excuses--to do likewise by my stately beauty; and then there was handshaking by the old folks all around, and kisses from the little folks. not long afterward there was much whispering and laughing between christina and estella; they were in the garden; they seemed to be reading some paper, which they held between them. and then that scamp, max, crept quietly behind them, and, reaching over, snatched the paper out of their hands. and then estella looked disturbed, and glanced at me and blushed; and max began to dance and laugh, and cried out, "ho! ho! we have a poet in the family!" and then i realized that some verses, which i had given estella the day before, had fallen into the hands of that mocker. i would not give much for a man who does not grow poetical when he is making love. it is to man what song is to the bird. but to have one's weaknesses exposed--that is another matter! and so i ran after max; but in vain. he climbed into a tree, and then began to recite my love poetry: "listen to this," he cried; "here are fourteen verses; each one begins and ends with the word _'thee.'_ here's a sample: "'all thought, all fear, all grief, all earth, all air, forgot shall be; knit unto each, to each kith, kind and kin,-- life, like these rhyming verses, shall begin and end in--_thee!_' "and here," he cried, "is another long poem. phœbus! what a name--_'artesian waters!'_ here christina, estella and i pelted the rogue with apples. "i know why they are called 'artesian waters,'" he cried; "it is because it took a great _bore_ to produce them. hal ha! but listen to it: "'there is a depth at which perpetual springs fresh water, in all lands: the which once reached, the buried torrent flings its treasures o'er the sands.' "ouch!" he cried, "that one hit me on the nose: i mean the apple, not the verse. "'one knows not how, beneath the dark, deep crust, the clear flood there has come: one knows not why, amid eternal dust, slumbers that sea of foam.' "plain enough," he cried, dodging the apples; "the attraction of gravitation did the business for it. "'dark-buried, sepulchred, entombed and deep, away from mortal ken, it lies, till, summoned from its silent sleep, it leaps to light again.' "very good," he said, "and now here comes the application, the moral of the poem. "'so shall we find no intellect so dull, no soul so cold to move, no heart of self or sinfulness so full, but still hath power to love.' "of course," he said; "he knows how it is himself; the poet fills the bill exactly. 'it lives immortal, universal all, the tenant of each breast; locked in the silence of unbroken thrall, and deep and pulseless rest; till, at a touch, with burst of power and pride, its swollen torrents roll, dash all the trappings of the mind aside, and ride above the soul.' "hurrah!" he cried, "that's splendid! but here's some more: _'to estella.'_" but i could stand no more, and so began to climb the tree. it was an apple-tree, and not a very big one at that, and max was forced to retreat out upon a limb, and then drop to the ground. but the young ladies were too quick for him; they pounced upon him as he fell; and very soon my precious verses were hidden in estella's bosom, whence, in a burst of confidence and pride, they had been taken to exhibit to christina. "yes," said estella, "it was nothing but mean jealousy, because he could not write such beautiful poetry to christina." "exactly," said christina, "and i think i will refuse to marry him until he produces some verses equally fine." "before i would write such poetry as that," said max, "i would go and hang myself." "no man ought to be allowed to marry," said estella, "until he has written a poem." "if you drive max to that," i said, "other people will hang themselves rather than hear his verses." and thus, with laugh and jest and badinage, the glorious hours passed away. it was growing late; but we could not go until we had seen the cows milked, for that was a great event in the household; and "bossy" especially was a wonderful cow. never before in the world had there been such a cow as "bossy." the children had tied some ribbons to her horns, and little ole was astride of her broad back, his chubby legs pointing directly to the horizon, and the rest of the juveniles danced around her; while the gentle and patient animal stood chewing her cud, with a profound look upon her peaceful face, much like that of a chief-justice considering "the rule in shelley's case," or some other equally solemn and momentous subject. and i could not help but think how kindly we should feel toward these good, serviceable ministers to man; for i remembered how many millions of our race had been nurtured through childhood and maturity upon their generous largess. i could see, in my imagination, the great bovine procession, lowing and moving, with their bleating calves trotting by their side, stretching away backward, farther and farther, through all the historic period; through all the conquests and bloody earth-staining battles, and all the sin and suffering of the race; and far beyond, even into the dim, pre-historic age, when the aryan ancestors of all the european nations dwelt together under the same tents, and the blond-haired maidens took their name of "daughters" (the very word we now use) from their function of milkmaidens. and it seemed to me that we should love a creature so intimately blended with the history of our race, and which had done so much, indirectly, to give us the foundation on which to build civilization. but we must away; and carl, glad to do something in scenes in which he was not much fitted to shine, drove us to the station in his open spring wagon; estella, once more the elderly, spectacled maiden, by my side; and the sunny little christina beside max's mother--going to the station to see us off; while that gentleman, on the front seat, talked learnedly with carl about the pedigree of the famous horse "lightning," which had just trotted its mile in less than two minutes. and i thought, as i looked at carl, how little it takes to make a happy household; and what a beautiful thing the human race is under favorable circumstances; and what a wicked and cruel and utterly abominable thing is the man who could oppress it, and drive it into the filth of sin and shame. i will not trouble you, my dear brother, by giving you a detailed account of the double marriage the next day. the same person married us both--a scandinavian preacher, a friend of the jansen family. i was not very particular who tied the knot and signed the bill of sale of estella, provided i was sure the title was good. but i do think that the union of man and wife should be something more than a mere civil contract. marriage is not a partnership to sell dry goods--(sometimes, it is true, it is principally an obligation to buy them)--or to practice medicine or law together; it is, or should be, an intimate blending of two souls, and natures, and lives; and where the marriage is happy and perfect there is, undoubtedly, a growing-together, not only of spirit and character, but even in the physical appearance of man and wife. now as these two souls came--we concede--out of heaven, it seems to me that the ceremony which thus destroys their individuality, and blends them into one, should have some touch and color of heaven in it also. it was a very happy day. as i look upon it now it seems to me like one of those bright, wide rays of glorious light which we have sometimes seen bursting through a rift in the clouds, from the setting sun, and illuminating, for a brief space of time, the black, perturbed and convulsed sky. one of our poets has compared it to-- "a dead soldier's sword athwart his pall." but it faded away, and the storm came down, at last, heavy and dark and deadly. chapter xxx. upon the house-top a few days after our joint wedding max came running in one day, and said: "it is to be to-morrow." he gave each of us a red cross to sew upon our clothes. he was very much excited, and hurried out again. i had said to him, the morning of our marriage, that i desired to return home before the outbreak came, for i was now responsible for estella's life and safety; and i feared that all communication of one part of the world with another would be cut off by the threatened revolution. he had begged me to remain. he said that at the interview with general quincy it had been made a condition of the contract that each of the executive committee--cæsar, the vice-president and himself--should have one of the flying air-ships placed at his disposal, after the outbreak, well manned and equipped with bombs and arms of all kinds. these "demons" were to be subject to their order at any time, and to be guarded by the troops at their magazine in one of the suburbs until called for. the committee had several reasons for making this arrangement: the outbreak might fail and they would have to fly; or the outbreak might succeed, but become ungovernable, and they would have to escape from the tempest they had themselves invoked. max had always had a dream that after the plutocracy was overthrown the insurgents would reconstruct a purer and better state of society; but of late my conversations with him, and his own observations, had begun to shake his faith in this particular. he said to me that if i remained he would guarantee the safety of myself and wife, and after i had seen the outbreak he would send me home in his air-ship; and moreover, if he became satisfied that the revolution had passed beyond the control of himself and friends, he would, after rescuing his father from the prison where he was confined, accompany me with his whole family, and we would settle down together in my distant mountain home. he had, accordingly, turned all his large estate into gold and silver, which he had brought to the house; and i had likewise filled one large room full of a great library of books, which i had purchased to take with me--literature, science, art, encyclopedias, histories, philosophies, in fact all the treasures of the world's genius--together with type, printing presses, telescopes, phonographs, photographic instruments, electrical apparatus, eclesions, phemasticons, and all the other great inventions which the last hundred years have given us. for, i said to myself, if civilization utterly perishes in the rest of the world, there, in the mountains of africa, shut out from attack by rocks and ice-topped mountains, and the cordon of tropical barbarians yet surrounding us, we will wait until exhausted and prostrate mankind is ready to listen to us and will help us reconstruct society upon a wise and just basis. in the afternoon max returned, bringing with him carl jansen and all his family. a dozen men also came, bearing great boxes. they were old and trusted servants of his father's family; and the boxes contained magazine rifles and pistols and fixed ammunition, together with hand-grenades. these were taken out, and we were all armed. even the women had pistols, and knives strapped to their girdles. the men went out and again returned, bearing quantities of food, sufficient to last us during a siege, and also during our flight to my home. water was also collected in kegs and barrels, for the supply might be cut of. then max came, and under his orders, as soon as night fell, the lower windows, the cellar openings and the front door were covered with sheathings of thick oak plank, of three thicknesses, strongly nailed; then the second story windows were similarly protected, loopholes being first bored, through which our rifles could be thrust, if necessary. then the upper windows were also covered in the same way. the back door was left free for ingress and egress through the yard and back street, but powerful bars were arranged across it, and the oak plank left ready to board it up when required. the hand-grenades--there were a pile of them--were carried up to the flat roof. then one of the men went out and painted red crosses on the doors and windows. we ate our supper in silence. a feeling of awe was upon all of us. every one was told to pack up his goods and valuables and be ready for instant flight when the word was given; and to each one were assigned the articles he or she was to carry. about ten o'clock max returned and told us all to come up to the roof. the house stood, as i have already said, upon a corner; it was in the older part of the city, and not far from where the first great battle would be fought. max whispered to me that the blow would be struck at six o'clock in europe and at twelve o'clock at night in america. the fighting therefore had already begun in the old world. he further explained to me something of the plan of battle. the brotherhood at twelve would barricade a group of streets in which were the sub-treasury of the united states, and all the principal banks, to wit: cedar, pine, wall, nassau, william, pearl and water streets. two hundred thousand men would be assembled to guard these barricades. they would then burst open the great moneyed institutions and blow up the safes with giant powder and hecla powder. at daybreak one of quincy's air-ships would come and receive fifty millions of the spoils in gold, as their share of the plunder, and the price of their support. as soon as this was delivered, and carried to their armory, the whole fleet of air-vessels would come up and attack the troops of the oligarchy. if, however, general quincy should violate his agreement, and betray them, they had provided a large number of great cannon, mounted on high wheels, so that they could be fired vertically, and these were to be loaded with bombs of the most powerful explosives known to science, and so constructed with fulminating caps that, if they struck the air-ship at any point, they would explode and either destroy it or so disarrange its machinery as to render it useless. thus they were provided, he thought, for every emergency. at eleven he came to me and whispered that if anything happened to him he depended on me to take his wife and mother and his father, if possible, with me to africa. i grasped his hand and assured him of my devotion. he then embraced christina and his mother and left them, weeping bitterly, in each other's arms. there was a parapet around the roof. i went to the corner of it, and, leaning over, looked down into the street. estella came and stood beside me. she was very calm and quiet. the magnetic lights yet burned, and the streets below me were almost as bright as day. there were comparatively few persons moving about. here and there a carriage, or a man on horseback, dashed furiously past, at full speed; and i thought to myself, "the oligarchy have heard of the tremendous outbreak in europe, and are making preparations for another here." it was a still, clear night; and the great solemn stars moved over the face of heaven unconscious or indifferent as to what was going forward on this clouded little orb. i thought it must be nearly twelve. i drew out my watch to look at the time. it lacked one minute of that hour. another instant, and the whole city was wrapped in profound darkness. some of the workmen about the magnetic works were members of the brotherhood, and, in pursuance of their orders, they had cut the connections of the works and blotted out the light. chapter xxxi. "sheol" i looked down into the dark street. i could see nothing; but immediately a confused buzz and murmur, of motion everywhere, arose from the depths below me. as it grew louder and clearer i could hear the march of thousands of feet, moving rapidly; and then a number of wagons, heavily loaded, creaked and groaned over the pavements. i surmised that these wagons were loaded with stones, and were to be used in the construction of the barricades. there was no music, no shouting, not even the sound of voices; but tramp, tramp, tramp, in endless multitude, the heavy feet went by; and now and then, where the light yet streamed out of the window of some house, i could see the glitter of the steel barrels of rifles; and here and there i caught a glimpse of men on horseback, officers apparently, but dressed in the rough garb of workmen. along the line of the houses near me, i could see, at opened, lighted windows, an array of pale faces, looking out with astonishment and terror at this dark and silent procession, which seemed to have arisen out of the earth, and was so vast that one might dream that the trumpet of the archangel had been blown, and all the dead of a thousand battle-fields had risen up for one last grand review. and not alone past our doors, but through all the streets near us, the same mighty, voiceless procession moved on; all converging to the quarter where the treasures of the great city lay, heaped up in safe and vault. and then, several blocks away, but within the clear range of my vision, a light appeared in the street--it blazed--it rose higher and higher. i could see shadowy figures moving around it, heaping boxes, barrels and other combustibles upon the flame. it was a bonfire, kindled to light the work of building a barricade at that point. across the street a line of wagons had been placed; the tail of each one touching the front of another, the horses having been withdrawn. and then hundreds of busy figures were to be seen at work, tearing up the pavements of the street and heaping the materials under the wagons; and then shovels flew, and the earth rose over it all; a deep ditch being excavated quite across the street, on the side near me. then men, lit by the red light, looked, at the distance, like hordes of busy black insects. behind them swarmed, as far as i could see, thousands upon thousands of dark forms, mere masses, touched here and there by the light of the bonfire, gleaming on glittering steel. they were the men within the barricades. there was a confused noise in other quarters, which i supposed was caused by the erection of a number of similar barricades elsewhere. then the tramp of the marching masses past our doors ceased; and for a time the silence was profound. so far not a soldier or policeman had been visible. the oligarchy were evidently carrying out the plan of the prince of cabano. they were permitting the insurgents to construct their "rat-trap" without interruption. only a few stragglers were upon the street, drawn there doubtless by curiosity; and still the pale faces were at the windows; and some even talked from window to window, and wondered what it all meant. suddenly there was a terrific explosion that shook the house. i could see a shower of stones and brick and timbers and dust, rising like a smoke, seamed with fire, high in the air, within the lines of the barricades. then came another, even louder; then another, and another, and another, until it sounded like a bombardment. then these ceased, and after a little time came the sounds of smaller explosions, muffled as if under ground or within walls. "they are blowing open the banks," i whispered to estella. then all was quiet for a space. in a little while the bombardment began again, as if in another part of the territory inclosed in the barricades. and still there was not a soldier to be seen in the deserted streets near me. and again came other explosions. at last i saw the red light beginning to touch the clouds along the eastern horizon with its crimson brush. the fateful day was dawning. and then, in a little while, far away to the north, soft and dull at first, but swelling gradually into greater volume, a mighty sound arose; and through it i could hear bursts of splendid melody, rising and falling and fluttering, like pennons, above the tumult; and i recognized the notes of that grand old scotch air, "the campbells are coming." it was the defenders of society advancing with the swinging step of assured triumph. oh, it was a splendid sight! in all the bravery of banners, and uniforms, and shining decorations, and amidst the majestic and inspiriting outpouring of music, they swept along, the thousands moving as one. how they did contrast with that gloomy, dark, ragged, sullen multitude who had preceded them. and with them came, rattling along, multitudes of those dreadful machine guns--those cataracts of fire and death--drawn by prancing, well-fed, shining horses. and the lips of the gunners were set for carnage; for they had received orders _to take no prisoners!_ the world was to be taught a lesson to-day--a bloody and an awful lesson. ah! little did they think how it would be taught! in the gray light of the breaking day they came--an endless multitude. and all the windows were white with waving handkerchiefs, and the air stormy with huzzas and cries of "god bless you." and at the head of every column, on exuberant steeds, that seemed as if they would leap out of their very skins with the mere delight of living, rode handsome officers, smiling and bowing to the ladies at the windows;--for was it not simply holiday work to slay the _canaille_--the insolent _canaille_--the unreasonable dogs--who demanded some share in the world's delights--who were not willing to toil and die that others might live and be happy? and the very music had a revengeful, triumphant ring and sting to it, as if every instrument cried out: "ah, we will give it to them!" but it was splendid! it was the very efflorescence of the art of war--the culmination of the evolution of destruction--the perfect flower of ten thousand years of battle and blood. but i heard one officer cry out to another, as they passed below me: "what's the matter with the demons? why are they not here?" "i can't say," replied the one spoken to; "but they will be here in good time." the grand and mighty stream of men poured on. they halted close to the high barricade. it was a formidable structure at least fifteen feet high and many feet in thickness. the gray of dawn had turned into red, and a pale, clear light spread over all nature. i heard some sparrows, just awakened, twittering and conversing in a tall tree near me. they, too, wondered, doubtless, what it all meant, and talked it over in their own language. the troops deployed right and left, and soon the insurgent mass was closely surrounded in every direction and every outlet closed. the "rat-trap" was set. where were the rat-killers? i could see many a neck craned, and many a face lifted up, looking toward the west, for their terrible allies of the air. but they came not. there was a dead pause. it was the stillness before the thunder. chapter xxxii. the rat-trap some of the troops advanced toward the barricade. instantly the long line of its top bristled with fire; the fire was returned; the rattle was continuous and terrible, mingled with the rapid, grinding noise of the machine guns. the sound spread in every direction. the barricades were all attacked. suddenly the noise began to decrease. it was as if some noble orator had begun to speak in the midst of a tumultuous assembly. those nearest him catch his utterances first, and become quiet; the wave of silence spreads like a great ripple in the water; until at last the whole audience is as hushed as death. so something--some extraordinary thing--had arrested the battle; down, down, dropped the tumult; and at last there were only a few scattering shots to be heard, here and there; and then these, too, ceased. i could see the soldiers looking to the west. i swept the sky with my glass. yes, something portentous had indeed happened! instead of the whole dark flight of thousands of airships for which the soldiers had been looking, there came, athwart the sky, like a great black bird, a single demon. as it approached it seemed to be signaling some one. little flags of different colors were run up and taken down. i turned and looked to the barricaded district. and there on the top of a very high building, in its midst, i could see a group of men. they, too, were raising and lowering little flags. nearer and nearer swept the great bird; every eye and many a field-glass in all that great throng were fastened upon it, with awe-struck interest--the insurgents rejoicing; the soldiers perplexed. nearer and nearer it comes. now it pauses right over the tall building; it begins to descend, like a sea-gull about to settle in the waves. now it is but a short distance above the roof. i could see against the bright sky the gossamer traces of a rope ladder, falling down from the ship to the roof. the men below take hold of it and steady it. a man descends. something about him glitters in the rising sun. he is probably an officer. he reaches the roof. they bow and shake hands. i can see him wave his hand to those above him. a line of men descend; they disappear in the building; they reappear; they mount the ladder; again and again they come and go. "they are removing the treasure," i explain to our party, gathering around me. then the officer shakes hands again with the men on the roof; they bow to each other; he reascends the ladder; the air-ship rises in the air, higher and higher, like an eagle regaining its element; and away it sails, back into the west. an age of bribery terminates in one colossal crime of corruption! i can see the officers gathering in groups and taking counsel together. they are alarmed. then they write. they must tell the oligarchy of this singular scene, and their suspicions, and put them on their guard. there is danger in the air. in a moment orderlies dash down the street in headlong race, bearing dispatches. in a little while they come back, hurrying, agitated. i took to the north. i can see a black line across the street. it is a high barricade. it has been quietly constructed while the fight raged. and beyond, far as my eyes can penetrate, there are dark masses of armed men. the orderlies report--there is movement--agitation. i can see the imperious motions of an officer. i can read the signs. he is saying, "back--back--for your lives! break out through the side streets!" they rush away; they divide; into every street they turn. alas! in a few minutes, like wounded birds, they come trailing back. there is no outlet. every street is blockaded, barricaded, and filled with huge masses of men. _the rat-trap has another rat-trap outside of it!_ the oligarchy will wait long for those dispatches. they will never read them this side of eternity. the pear has ripened. the inevitable has come. the world is about to shake off its masters. there is dead silence. why should the military renew the fight in the midst of the awful doubt that rests upon their souls? ah! we will soon know the best or worst; for, far away to the west, dark, portentous as a thundercloud--spread out like the wings of mighty armies--moving like a fate over the bright sky, comes on the vast array of the demons. "will they be faithful to their bargain?" i ask myself; "or will old loyalty and faith to their masters rise up in their hearts?" no, no, it is a rotten age. corruption sticks faster than love. on they come! thousands of them. they swoop, they circle; they pause above the insurgents. the soldiers rejoice! ah, no! no bombs fall, a meteor of death. they separate; they move north, south, east, west; they are above the streets packed full of the troops of the government! may god have mercy on them now! the sight will haunt me to my dying day. i can see, like a great black rain of gigantic drops, the lines of the falling bombs against the clear blue sky. and, oh, my god! what a scene below, in those close-packed streets, among those gaily dressed multitudes! the dreadful astonishment! the crash--the bang--the explosions; the uproar, the confusion; and, most horrible of all, the inevitable, invisible death by the poison. the line of the barricade is alive with fire. with my glass i can almost see the dynamite bullets exploding in the soldiers, tearing them to pieces, like internal volcanoes. an awful terror is upon them. they surge backward and forward; then they rush headlong down the streets. the farther barricades open upon them a hail of death; and the dark shadows above--so well named demons--slide slowly after them; and drop, drop, drop, the deadly missiles fall again among them. back they surge. the poison is growing thicker. they scream for mercy; they throw away their guns; they are panic-stricken. they break open the doors of houses and hide themselves. but even here the devilish plan of prince cabano is followed out to the very letter. the triumphant mob pour in through the back yards; and they bayonet the soldiers under beds, or in closets, or in cellars; or toss them, alive and shrieking, from windows or roofs, down into the deadly gulf below. and still the bombs drop and crash, and drop and crash; and the barricades are furnaces of living fire. the dead lie in heaps and layers in the invisible, pernicious poison. but, lo! the fire slackens; the bombs cease to fall; only now and then a victim flies out of the houses, cast into death. there is nothing left to shoot at. the grand army of the plutocracy is annihilated; it is not. "the demons" moved slowly off. they had earned their money. the mamelukes of the air had turned the tables upon the sultan. they retired to their armory, doubtless to divide the fifty millions equitably between them. the mob stood still for a few minutes. they could scarcely realize that they were at last masters of the city. but quickly a full sense of all that their tremendous victory signified dawned upon them. the city lay prostrate, chained, waiting to be seized upon. chapter xxxiii. "the ocean overpeers its list" and then all avenues were open. and like a huge flood, long damned up, turbulent, turbid, muddy, loaded with wrecks and debris, the gigantic mass broke loose, full of foam and terror, and flowed in every direction. a foul and brutal and ravenous multitude it was, dark with dust and sweat, armed with the weapons of civilization, but possessing only the instincts of wild beasts. at first they were under the control of some species of discipline and moved toward the houses of the condemned, of whom printed catalogues had been furnished the officers. the shouts, the yells, the delight were appalling. now and then some poor wretch, whose sole offense was that he was well-dressed, would take fright and start to run, and then, like hounds after a rabbit, they would follow in full cry; and when he was caught a hundred men would struggle to strike him, and he would disappear in a vortex of arms, clubs and bayonets, literally torn to pieces. a sullen roar filled the air as this human cyclone moved onward, leaving only wrecks behind it. now it pauses at a house. the captain consults his catalogue. "this is it," he cries; and doors and windows give way before the thunderous mob; and then the scenes are terrible. men are flung headlong, alive, out of the windows to the ravenous wretches below; now a dead body comes whirling down; then the terrified inhabitants fly to the roofs, and are pursued from house to house and butchered in sight of the delighted spectators. but when the condemned man--the head of the house--is at last found, hidden perhaps in some coal-hole or cellar, and is brought up, black with dust, and wild with terror, his clothes half torn from his back; and he is thrust forth, out of door or window, into the claws of the wild beasts, the very heavens ring with acclamations of delight; and happy is the man who can reach over his fellows and know that he has struck the victim. then up and away for another vengeance. before them is solitude; shops and stores and residences are closed and barricaded; in the distance teams are seen flying and men scurrying to shelter; and through crevices in shutters the horrified people peer at the mob, as at an invasion of barbarians. behind them are dust, confusion, dead bodies, hammered and beaten out of all semblance of humanity; and, worse than all, the criminal classes--that wretched and inexplicable residuum, who have no grievance against the world except their own existence--the base, the cowardly, the cruel, the sneaking, the inhuman, the horrible! these flock like jackals in the track of the lions. they rob the dead bodies; they break into houses; they kill if they are resisted; they fill their pockets. their joy is unbounded. elysium has descended upon earth for them this day. pickpockets, sneak-thieves, confidence-men, burglars, robbers, assassins, the refuse and outpouring of grog-shops and brothels, all are here. and women, too--or creatures that pass for such--having the bodies of women and the habits of ruffians;--harpies--all claws and teeth and greed--bold--desperate--shameless--incapable of good. they, too, are here. they dart hither and thither; they swarm--they dance--they howl--they chatter--they quarrel and battle, like carrion-vultures, over the spoils. civilization is gone, and all the devils are loose! no more courts, nor judges, nor constables, nor prisons! that which it took the world ten thousand years to create has gone in an hour. and still the thunderous cyclones move on through a hundred streets. occasionally a house is fired; but this is not part of the programme, for they have decided to keep all these fine residences for themselves! they will be rich. they will do no more work. the rich man's daughters shall be their handmaidens; they will wear his purple and fine linen. but now and then the flames rise up--perhaps a thief kindles the blaze--and it burns and burns; for who would leave the glorious work to put it out? it burns until the streets stop it and the block is consumed. fortunately, or unfortunately, there is no wind to breed a general conflagration. the storms to-day are all on earth; and the powers of the air are looking down with hushed breath, horrified at the exceeding wickedness of the little crawlers on the planet we call men. they do not, as a rule, steal. revenge--revenge--is all their thought. and why should they steal? is it not all their own? now and then a too audacious thief is caught and stuck full of bayonets; or he is flung out of a window, and dies at the hands of the mob the death of the honest man for whom he is mistaken; and thus, by a horrible travesty of fate, he perishes for that which he never was nor could be. think of the disgust of a thief who finds himself being murdered for an honest man, an aristocrat, and can get no one to believe his asseverations that he is simply and truly a thief--and nothing more! it is enough to make death grin! the rude and begrimed insurgents are raised by their terrible purposes to a certain dignity. they are the avengers of time--the god-sent--the righters of the world's wrongs--the punishers of the ineffably wicked. they do not mean to destroy the world; they will reform it--redeem it. they will make it a world where there shall be neither toil nor oppression. but, poor fellows! their arms are more potent for evil than their brains for good. they are omnipotent to destroy; they are powerless to create. but still the work of ruin and slaughter goes on. the mighty city, with its ten million inhabitants, lies prostrate, chained, helpless, at the mercy of the enraged _canaille_. the dogs have become lions. the people cannot comprehend it. they look around for their defenders--the police, the soldiery. "where are they? will not this dreadful nightmare pass away?" no; no; never--never. this is the culmination--this is the climax--"the century's aloe flowers to-day." these are "the grapes of wrath" which god has stored up for the day of his vengeance; and now he is trampling them out, and this is the red juice--look you!--that flows so thick and fast in the very gutters. you were blind, you were callous, you were indifferent to the sorrows of your kind. the cry of the poor did not touch you, and every pitiful appeal wrung from human souls, every groan and sob and shriek of men and women, and the little starving children--starving in body and starving in brain--rose up and gathered like a great cloud around the throne of god; and now, at last, in the fullness of time, it has burst and comes down upon your wretched heads, a storm of thunderbolts and blood. you had money, you had power, you had leisure, you had intelligence, you possessed the earth; all things were possible unto you. did you say to one another: "these poor souls are our brethren. for them christ died on calvary. what can we do to make their lives bright and happy?" no; no; you cried out, "'on with the dance!' let them go down into the bottomless pit!" and you smiled and said to one another, in the words of the first murderer, when he lied to god: "am i my brother's keeper?" nay, you said further to one another, "there is no god!" for you thought, if there was one, surely he would not permit the injustice manifest in the world. but, lo! he is here. did you think to escape him? did you think the great father of cause and effect--the all-knowing, the universe-building god,--would pass you by? as you sowed, so must you reap. evil has but one child--death! for hundreds of years you have nursed and nurtured evil. do you complain if her monstrous progeny is here now, with sword and torch? what else did you expect? did you think she would breed angels? your ancestors, more than two centuries ago, established and permitted slavery. what was the cry of the bondman to them? what the sobs of the mother torn from her child--the wife from her husband--on the auction block? who among them cared for the lacerated bodies, the shameful and hopeless lives? they were merry; they sang and they danced; and they said, "gods sleeps." but a day came when there was a corpse at every fireside. and not the corpse of the black stranger--the african--the slave;--but the corpses of fair, bright-faced men; their cultured, their manly, their noble, their best-loved. and, north and south, they sat, rocking themselves to and fro, in the midst of the shards and ashes of desolation, crying aloud for the lives that would come back to bless them never, nevermore. god wipes out injustice with suffering; wrong with blood; sin with death. you can no more get beyond the reach of his hand than you can escape from the planet. chapter xxxiv. the prince gives his last bribe but it was when the mob reached the wealthier parts of the city that the horrors of the devastation really began. here almost every grand house was the abode of one of the condemned. true, many of them had fled. but the cunning cripple--the vice-president--had provided for this too. at the railroad stations, at the bridges and ferries, even on the yachts of the princes, men were stationed who would recognize and seize them; and if they even escaped the dangers of the suburbs, and reached the country, there they found armed bands of desperate peasants, ranging about, slaying every one who did not bear on his face and person the traces of the same wretchedness which they themselves had so long endured. nearly every rich man had, in his own household and among his own servants, some bitter foe, who hated him, and who had waited for this terrible day and followed him to the death. the prince of cabano, through his innumerable spies, had early received word of the turn affairs had taken. he had hurriedly filled a large satchel with diamonds and other jewels of great value, and, slinging it over his shoulders, and arming himself with sword, knife and pistols, he had called frederika to him (he had really some little love for his handsome concubine), and loading her pockets and his own with gold pieces, and taking her by the hand, he had fled in great terror to the river side. his fine yacht lay off in the stream. he called and shouted until he was hoarse, but no one replied from the vessel. he looked around. the wharves were deserted; the few boats visible were chained and padlocked to their iron rings. the master of many servants was helpless. he shouted, screamed, tore his hair, stamped and swore viciously. the man who had coolly doomed ten million human beings to death was horribly afraid he would have to die himself. he ran back, still clinging to frederika, to hide in the thick shrubbery of his own garden; there, perhaps, he might find a faithful servant who would get him a boat and take him off to the yacht in safety. but then, like the advancing thunder of a hurricane, when it champs the earth and tears the trees to pieces with its teeth, came on the awful mob. now it is at his gates. he buries himself and companion in a thick grove of cedars, and they crouch to the very ground. oh, how humble is the lord of millions! how all the endowments of the world fall off from a man in his last extremity! he shivers, he trembles--yea, he prays! through his bloodshot eyes he catches some glimpses of a god--of a merciful god who loves _all_ his creatures. even frederika, though she has neither love nor respect for him, pities him, as the bloated mass lies shivering beside her. can this be the same lordly gentleman, every hair of whose mustache bespoke empire and dominion, who a few days since plotted the abasement of mankind? but, hark! the awful tumult. the crashing of glass, the breaking of furniture, the beating in of doors with axes; the _canaille_ have taken possession of the palace. they are looking for him everywhere. they find him not. out into the grounds and garden; here, there, everywhere, they turn and wind and quarter, like bloodhounds that have lost the scent. and then the prince hears, quite near him, the piping voice of a little ragged boy--a bare-footed urchin--saying: "they came back from the river; they went in here.---(he is one of the cripple's spies, set upon him to watch him.)---this way, this way!" and the next instant, like a charge of wild cattle, the mob bursts through the cedars, led by a gigantic and ferocious figure, black with dust and mantled with blood--the blood of others. the prince rose from his lair as the yell of the pursuers told he was discovered; he turned as if to run; his trembling legs failed him; his eyes glared wildly; he tried to draw a weapon, but his hand shook so it was in vain. the next instant there was a crack of a pistol in the hands of one of the mob. the ball struck the prince in the back of the neck, even in the same spot where, a century before, the avenging bullet smote the assassin of the good president lincoln. with a terrible shriek he fell down, and moaned in the most exquisite torture. his suffering was so great that, coward as he was, he cried out: "kill me! kill me!" a workman, stirred by a human sentiment, stepped forward and pointed his pistol, but the cripple struck the weapon up. "no, no," he said; "let him suffer for a few hours something of the misery he and his have inflicted on mankind during centuries. a thousand years of torture would not balance the account. the wound is mortal--his body is now paralyzed--only the sense of pain remains. the damned in hell do not suffer more. come away." but cæsar had seen a prize worth pursuing. frederika had risen, and when the prince was shot she fled. cæsar pursued her, crashing through the shrubbery like an enraged mammoth; and soon the cripple laughed one of his dreadful laughs--for he saw the giant returning, dragging the fair girl after him, by the hair of her head, as we have seen, in the pictures, ogres hauling off captured children to destruction. and still the prince lay upon his back; and still he shrieked and moaned and screamed in agony, and begged for death. an hour passed, and there was dead silence save for his cries; the mob had swept off to new scenes of slaughter. the prince heard the crackling of a stick, and then a stealthy step. a thief, hunting for plunder, was approaching. the prince, by great effort, hushed his outcries. "come here," said he, as the pale, mean face peered at him curiously through the shrubbery. "come nearer." the thief stood close to him. "would you kill a man for a hundred thousand dollars?" asked the prince. the thief grinned, and nodded his head; it signified that he would commit murder for the hundred thousandth part of that sum. "i am mortally wounded and in dreadful pain," growled the prince, the suppressed sobs interrupting his speech. "if i tell you where you can find a hundred thousand dollars, will you drive my knife through my heart?" "yes," said the thief. "then take the knife," he said. the thief did so, eying {sic} it rapaciously--for it was diamond-studded and gold-mounted. "but," said the prince--villain himself and anticipating all villainy in others,--"if i tell you where the money is you will run away to seek it, and leave me here to die a slow and agonizing death." "no," said the thief; "i promise you on my honor." a thief's honor! "i tell you what you must do," said the prince, after thinking a moment. "kneel down and lean over me; put your arms around me; i cannot hold you with my hands, for they are paralyzed; but put the lapel of your coat between my teeth. i will then tell you where the treasure is; but i will hold on to you by my teeth until you kill me. you will have to slay me to escape from me. the thief did as he was directed; his arms were around the prince; the lapel of his coat was between the prince's teeth; and then through his shut teeth, tight clenched on the coat, the prince muttered: "it is in the satchel beneath me." without a word the thief raised his right hand and drove the knife sidewise clear through the prince's heart. the last of the accumulations of generations of wrong and robbery and extortion and cruelty had sufficed to purchase their heritor a miserable death,--in the embrace of a thief! chapter xxxv. the liberated prisoner about two o'clock that day maximilian returned home. he was covered with dust and powder-smoke, but there was no blood upon him. i did not see him return; but when i entered the drawing-room i started back. there was a stranger present. i could not long doubt as to who he was. he was locked in the arms of max's mother. he was a pitiful sight. a tall, gaunt man; his short hair and stubby beard white as snow. he was prematurely aged--his back was stooped--his pallid complexion reminded one of plants grown in cellars; he had a dejected, timorous look, like one who had long been at the mercy of brutal masters; his hands were seamed and calloused with hard work; he was without a coat, and his nether garments had curious, tiger-like stripes upon them. he was sobbing like a child in the arms of his wife. he seemed very weak in body and mind. maximilian gave him a chair, and his mother sat down by him, weeping bitterly, and holding the poor calloused hands in her own, and patting them gently, while she murmured words of comfort and rejoicing. the poor man looked bewildered, as if he could not quite collect his faculties; and occasionally he would glance anxiously at the door, as if he expected that, at any moment, his brutal masters would enter and take him back to his tasks. "gabriel," said maximilian,--and his face was flushed and working,--"this is--or was--my father." i took the poor hand in my own and kissed it, and spoke encouragingly to him. and this, i thought, was once a wealthy, handsome, portly, learned gentleman; a scholar and a philanthropist; and his only crime was that he loved his fellow-men! and upon how many such men have the prison doors of the world closed--never to open again? they took him away to the bath; they fed him; they put upon him the clothes of a gentleman. he smiled in a childish way, and smoothed the fine cloth with his hands; and then he seemed to realize, for the first time, that he was, indeed, no longer a prisoner--that his jailers had gone out of his life forever. "i must go now," said maximilian, hurriedly; "i will be back this evening. i have a duty to perform." he returned at nightfall. there was a terrible light in his eyes. "i have avenged my father," he said to me, in a hoarse whisper. "come this way." he took me into the library, for he would not have the women hear the dreadful story. i shut the door. he said: "i had made all the necessary arrangements to prevent the escape of the count and his accomplices. i knew that he would fly, at the first alarm, to his yacht, which lies out in the harbor. he had ruined my father by bribery; so i brought his own instrument to bear upon him, and bribed, with a large sum, his confidential friend, who was in command of his vessel, to deliver him up to me. as i had anticipated, the cunning wretch fled to the yacht; they took him on board. then they made him prisoner. he was shackled and chained to the mast. he begged for his life and liberty. he had brought a fortune with him in gold and jewels. he offered the whole of it to his _friend_, as a bribe, for he surmised what was coming. the faithful officer replied, as i had instructed him, that the count could not offer that treasure, for he himself had already appropriated it to his own purposes. the miscreant had always had a lively sense of the power of money for evil; he saw it now in a new light--for he was penniless. after taking my father from the prison and bringing him home, i arranged as to the other prisoners and then went to the yacht. i introduced myself to the count. i told him that i had deceived his spies--that i had led a double life; that i had joined the brotherhood and had become one of its leading spirits, with but two objects:--to punish him and his villainous associates and to rescue my father. that, as they had destroyed my father for money, the same instruments should now destroy him, through fear. that they were all prisoners, and should die together a fearful death; but if they had a hundred lives they could not atone for the suffering they had caused one good and great-hearted man. they had compelled him, for years, to work in the society of the basest of his species--at work too hard for even a young and strong man; they had separated him from his family; they had starved his mind and heart and body; they had beaten and scourged him for the slightest offenses. he had suffered a thousand deaths. it would be no equivalent to simply kill them. they should die in prolonged agony. and as he--the count--had always gone upon the principle that it was right to work upon the weaknesses of others to accomplish his purposes, i should imitate him. i should not touch him myself. "i then ordered the captain and his men to put him in the boat and carry him ashore. "he begged and pleaded and abased himself; he entreated and shrieked; but he addressed hearts as hard as his own. "on the river-bank were a body of my men. in the midst of them they had the other prisoners--the corrupt judge, eight of the jurymen--four had died since the trial--and the four lying witnesses. they were all shackled together. a notary public was present, and they signed and acknowledged their confessions, that they had been bribed to swear against my father and convict him; and they even acknowledged, in their terror, the precise sums which they had received for their dreadful acts. "'spare me! spare me!' shrieked the count, groveling on the ground; 'only part of that money came from me. i was but the instrument of the government. i was commanded to do as i did.' "'the others have already gone to their account,' i replied, 'every man of them. you will overtake them in a little while.' "i ordered the prisoners to chain him to a stout post which stood in the middle of one of the wharves. they were unshackled and did so with alacrity; my men standing around ready to shoot them down if they attempted to fly. the count writhed and shrieked for help, but in a little while he was securely fastened to the post. there was a ship loaded with lumber lying beside the next wharf. i ordered them to bring the lumber; they quickly piled it up in great walls around him, within about ten feet of him; and then more and more was heaped around these walls. the count began to realize the death that awaited him, and his screams were appalling. but i said to him: "'o count, be calm. this is not as bad as a sentence of twenty years in the penitentiary for an honest and innocent man. and, remember, my dear count, how you have enjoyed yourself all these years, while my poor father has been toiling in prison in a striped suit. think of the roast beef you have eaten and the wine you have consumed! and, moreover, the death you are about to die, my dear count, was once fashionable and popular in the world; and many a good and holy man went up to heaven from just such a death-bed as you shall have-a death-bed of fire and ashes. and see, my good count, how willingly these honest men, whom you hired, with your damnable money, to destroy my father--see how willingly they work to prepare your funeral pile! what a supple and pliant thing, o count, is human baseness. it has but one defect--it may be turned upon ourselves! and then, o my dear count, it shocks us and hurts our feelings. but say your prayers, count, say your prayers. call upon god, for he is the only one likely to listen to you now.' "'here,' i said to the judge, 'put a match to the pile.' "the miserable wretch, trembling and hoping to save his own life by his superserviceable zeal, got down upon his knees, and lighted a match, and puffed and blew to make the fire catch. at last it started briskly, and in a few minutes the count was screaming in the center of a roaring furnace. "i gave a preconcerted signal to my men. in the twinkling of an eye each of the prisoners was manacled hand and foot, shrieking and roaring for mercy. "'it was a splendid joke, gentlemen,' i said to them, 'that you played on my father. to send that good man to prison, and to go home with the price of his honor and his liberty jingling in your pockets. it was a capital joke; and you will now feel the finest point of the witticism. in with them!' "and high above the walls of fire they were thrown, and the briber and the bribed--the villain and his instruments--all perished howling together." i listened, awestruck, to the terrible story. there was a light in max's eyes which showed that long brooding over the wrongs of his father and the sight of his emaciated and wretched form had "worked like madness in his brain," until he was, as i had feared, a monomaniac, with but one idea--revenge. "max, dear max." i said, "for heaven's sake never let christina or your mother hear that dreadful story. it was a madman's act! never think of it again. you have wiped out the crime in blood; there let it end. and leave these awful scenes, or you will become a maniac." he did not answer me for a time, but looked down thoughtfully; and then he glanced at me, furtively, and said: "is not revenge right? is it not simply justice?" "perhaps so, in some sense," i replied; "and if you had killed those base wretches with your own hand the world could not have much blamed you. remember, however, 'vengeance is mine, saith the lord, and i will repay.' but to send them out of life by such dreadful tortures! it is too terrible." "but death," he said, "is nothing; it is the mere end of life--perhaps of consciousness; and that is no atonement for years of suffering, every day of which was full of more agony than death itself can wring from the human heart." "i will not argue with you, max," i replied, "for you are wrong, and i love you; but do you not see, when a heart, the kindest in the world, could conceive and execute such a terrible revenge, that the condition of the mind is abnormal? but let us change the gloomy subject. the dreadful time has put 'tricks of desperation' in your brain. and it is not the least of the crimes of the oligarchy that it could thus pervert honest and gentle natures, and turn them into savages. and that is what it has done with millions. it has fought against goodness, and developed wickedness." chapter xxxvi. cÆsar erects his monument "what other news have you?" i asked. "the strangest you ever heard," replied max. "what is it?" "cæsar," said max, "has fallen upon a scheme of the most frenzied and extraordinary kind." "are the members of the executive committee all going crazy together?" i asked. "surely," replied max, "the terrible events we are passing through would be our excuse if we did. but you shall hear. after i had avenged my father i proceeded to find cæsar. i heard from members of the brotherhood, whom i met on the streets, that he was at prince cabano's palace. i hurried there, as it was necessary i should confer with him on some matters. a crowd had reassembled around the building, which had become in some sort a headquarters; and, in fact, cæsar has confiscated it to his own uses, and intends to keep it as his home hereafter. i found him in the council-chamber. you never saw such a sight. he was so black with dust and blood that he looked like a negro. he was hatless, and his mat of hair rose like a wild beast's mane. he had been drinking; his eyes were wild and rolling; the great sword he held in his right hand was caked with blood to the hilt. he was in a fearful state of excitement, and roared when he spoke. a king-devil, come fresh out of hell, could scarcely have looked more terrible. behind him in one corner, crouching and crying together, were a bevy of young and handsome women. the sultan had been collecting his harem. when he caught sight of me he rushed forward and seized my hand, and shouted out: "'hurrah, old fellow! this is better than raising potatoes on the saskatchewan, or hiding among the niggers in louis--hic--iana. down with the oligarchy. to hell with them. hurrah! this is my palace. i am a king! look-a-there,' he said, with a roll and a leer, pointing over his shoulder at the shrinking and terrified women; 'ain't they beauties,--hic--all mine--every one of 'em.' "here one of his principal officers came up, and the following dialogue occurred: "'i came, general, to ask you what we are to do with the dead.' "'kill 'em,' roared cæsar, 'kill 'em, d--n 'em.' "'but, general, they are dead already,' replied the officer who was a steady fellow and perfectly sober. "well, what's the matter with 'em, then?' replied cæsar. 'come, come, bill, if they're dead, that's the end of them. take a drink,' and he turned, unsteadily, toward the council-table, on which stood several bottles and demijohns. "'but some of us have talked it over,' said the officer. 'a number of the streets are impassable already with the dead. there must be a quarter of a million of soldiers and citizens lying about, and the number is being added to every minute. the weather is warm, and they will soon breed a pestilence that will revenge them on their slayers. those killed by the poison are beginning to smell already. we couldn't take any action without your authority, and so i came to ask you for your orders.' "'burn 'em up,' said cæsar. "'we can't,' said the man; 'we would have to burn up the city to destroy them in that way; there are too many of them; and it would be an immense task to bury them.' "'heap 'em all up in one big pile,' said cæsar. "'that wouldn't do--the smell they would make in decaying would be unbearable, to say nothing of the sickness they would create.' "cæsar was standing unsteadily, looking at us with lackluster eyes. suddenly an idea seemed to dawn in his monstrous head--an idea as monstrous and uncouth as the head itself. his eyes lighted up. "'i have it!' he shouted. 'by g-d, i have it! make a pyramid of them, and pour cement over them, and let it stand forever as a monument of this day's glorious work! hoorrah!" "'that's a pretty good idea,' said the officer, and the others present, courtier-like--for king cæsar already has his courtiers--applauded the idea vociferously. "'we'll have a monument that shall last while the earth stands,' cried cæsar. 'and, hold on, bill,' he continued, 'you shall build it;--and--i say--we won't make a pyramid of it--it shall be a column--_cæsar's column_--by g-d. it shall reach to the skies! and if there aren't enough dead to build it of, why, we'll kill some more; we've got plenty to kill. old thingumbob, who used to live here--in my palace--said he would kill ten million of us to-day. but he didn't. not much! max's friend--that d---d long-legged fellow, from africa--he dished him, for he told old quincy all about it. and now i've got old thingumbob's best girl in the corner yonder. oh, it's jolly. but build the column, bill--build it high and strong. i remember--hic--how they used to build houses on the saskatchewan, when i was grubbing for potatoes there. they had a board frame the length of a wall, and three or four feet high. they would throw in stones, bowlders, pebbles, dirt, anything, and, when it was full, they would pour cement over it all; and when it hardened--hic--which it did in a few minutes, they lifted up the frame and made another course. i say, bill, that's the way you must build cæsar's column. and get charley carpenter to help you; he's an engineer. and, hold on, bill, put a lot of dynamite--jim has just told me they had found tons of it--put a lot of dynamite--hic--in the middle of it, and if they try to tear down my monument, it will blow them to the d---l. and, i say, max, that long-legged, preaching son-of-thunder--that friend of yours--he must write an inscription for it. do you hear? he's the man to do it. something fine. by g-d, we will build a monument that will beat the pyramids of all the other caesars. cæsar's column! hoorrah!' "and the great brute fairly jumped and danced with delight over his extraordinary conception. "bill hurried out. they have sixty thousand prisoners--men who had not been among the condemned--but merchants, professional men, etc. they were debating, when i came up, whether they would kill them, but i suggested that they be set to work on the construction of cæsar's column, and if they worked well, that their lives be spared. this was agreed to. they are now building the monument on union square. thousands of wagons are at work bringing in the dead. other wagons are hauling cement, sand, etc. bill and his friend carpenter are at work. they have constructed great wooden boxes, about forty feet from front to rear, about four feet high and fifty feet long. the dead are to be laid in rows--the feet of the one row of men near the center of the monument, and the feet of the next row touching the heads of the first, and so on. in the middle of the column there is to be a cavity, about five feet square, running from the top to the bottom of the monument, in which the dynamite is to be placed; while wires will lead out from it among the bodies, so arranged, with fulminating charges, that any attempt to destroy the monument or remove the bodies will inevitably result in a dreadful explosion. but we will go up after dinner and look at the work," he said, "for they are to labor night and day until it is finished. the members of the brotherhood have entered with great spirit into the idea of such a monument, as a symbol and memorial of their own glory and triumph." "i remember," said i, "reading somewhere that, some centuries ago, an army of white men invaded one of the barbary states. they were defeated by the natives, and were every one slain. the moors took their bodies and piled them up in a great monument, and there the white bones and grinning skulls remain to this day, a pyramid of skeletons; a ghastly warning to others who might think to make a like attempt at invasion of the country. cæsar must have read of that terrible trophy of victory." "perhaps so," said maximilian; "but the idea may have been original with him; for there is no telling what such a monstrous brain as his, fired by whisky and battle, might or might not produce." at dinner poor mr. phillips was looking somewhat better. he had a great many questions to ask his son about the insurrection. "arthur," he said, "if the bad man and his accomplices, who so cruelly used me, should be made prisoners, i beg you, as a favor to me, not to punish them. leave them to god and their own consciences." "i shall," said max, quietly. mrs. phillips heartily approved of this sentiment. i looked down at my plate, but before my eyes there came a dreadful picture of that fortress of flame, with the chained man in the midst, and high above it i could see, swung through the air by powerful arms, manacled figures, who descended, shrieking, into the vortex of fire. after many injunctions to his guards, to look well after the house, max and i, well armed and wearing our red crosses, and accompanied by two of our most trusted men, sallied forth through the back gate. what a scene! chaos; had come. there were no cars or carriages. thieves and murderers were around us; scenes of rapine and death on every hand. we moved together in a body; our magazine rifles ready for instant use. our red crosses protected us from the members of the brotherhood; and the thieves gave our guns a wide berth. at a street crossing we encountered a wagon-load of dead bodies; they were being hauled to the monument. the driver, one of the brotherhood, recognized max, and invited us to seats beside him. familiarity makes death as natural as life. we accepted his offer--one of our men sitting on the tailboard of the wagon; and in this gory chariot we rode slowly through broadway, deserted now by everything but crime. the shops had all been broken open; dead bodies lay here and there; and occasionally a burned block lifted its black arms appealingly to heaven. as we drew near to union square a wonderful sight--such as the world had never before beheld--expanded before us. great blazing bonfires lighted the work; hundreds of thousands had gathered to behold the ghastly structure, the report of which had already spread everywhere. these men nearly all belonged to the brotherhood, or were members of the lower orders, who felt that they had nothing to fear from insurrection. there were many women among them, and not a few thieves, who, drawn by curiosity, for awhile forgot their opportunities and their instincts. within the great outer circle of dark and passionate and exultant faces, there was another assemblage of a very different appearance. these were the prisoners at work upon the monument. many of them were gray-haired; some were bloody from wounds upon their heads or bodies; they were all pale and terrified; not a few were in rags, or half naked, their clothes having been literally torn from their backs. they were dejected, and yet moved with alacrity, in fear of the whips or clubs in the hands of their masters, who passed among them, filling the air with oaths. max pointed out to me prominent merchants, lawyers and clergymen. they were all dazed-looking, like men after a terrific earthquake, who had lost confidence in the stability of everything. it was anarchy personified:--the men of intellect were doing the work; the men of muscle were giving the orders. the under-rail had come on top. it reminded me of swift's story of the country where the men were servants to the horses. the wagons rolled up, half a dozen at a time, and dumped their dreadful burdens on the stones, with no more respect or ceremony than if they had been cord-wood. then the poor trembling prisoners seized them by the head and feet, and carried them to other prisoners, who stood inside the boxes, and who arranged them like double lines from a central point:--it was the many-rayed sun of death that had set upon civilization. then, when the box was full and closely packed, they poured the liquid cement, which had been mixed close at hand, over them. it hardened at once, and the dead were entombed forever. then the box was lifted and the work of sepulture went on. while i stood watching the scene i heard a thrilling, ear-piercing shriek--a dreadful cry! a young man, who was helping to carry a corpse, let go his hold and fell down on the pavement. i went over to him. he was writhing and moaning. he had observed something familiar about the form he was bearing--it was the body of a woman. he had peered through the disheveled hair at the poor, agonized, blood-stained features, and recognized--_his wife!_ one of the guards raised his whip to strike him, and shouted: "here! get up! none of this humbugging." "i caught the ruffian's arm. the poor wretch was embracing the dead body, and moaning pitiful expressions of love and tenderness into the ears that would never hear him more. the ruffian threatened me. but the mob was moved to mercy, and took my part; and even permitted the poor creature to carry off his dead in his arms, out into the outer darkness. god only knows where he could have borne it. i grew sick at heart. the whole scene was awful. i advanced toward the column. it was already several feet high, and ladders were being made, up which the dead might be borne. coffee and bread and meat were served out to the workers. i noticed a sneaking, ruffianly fellow, going about among the prisoners, peering into every face. not far from me a ragged, hatless, gray-haired man, of over seventy, was helping another, equally old, to bear a heavy body to the ladders. the ruffian looked first into the face of the man at the feet of the corpse; then he came to the man at the head. he uttered an exclamation of delight. "ha! you old scoundrel," he cried, drawing his pistol. "so i've found you. you're the man that turned my sick wife out of your house, because she couldn't pay the rent. i've got you now." the old man fell on his knees, and held up his hands, and begged for mercy. i heard an explosion--a red spot suddenly appeared on his forehead, and he fell forward, over the corpse he had been carrying--dead. "come! move lively!" cried one of the guards, snapping his whip; "carry them both to the workmen." i grew dizzy. maximilian came up. "how pale you are," he said. "take me away!" i exclaimed, "or i shall faint." we rode back in another chariot of revolution--a death-cart. chapter xxxvii. the second day it was a dreadful night. crowds of farmers from the surrounding country kept pouring into the city. they were no longer the honest yeomanry who had filled, in the old time, the armies of washington, and jackson, and grant, and sherman, with brave patriotic soldiers; but their brutalized descendants--fierce serfs--cruel and bloodthirsty peasants. every man who owned anything was their enemy and their victim. they invaded the houses of friend and foe alike, and murdered men, women and children. plunder! plunder! they had no other thought. one of our men came to me at midnight, and said: "do you hear those shrieks?" "yes," i replied. "they are murdering the family next door." these were pleasant, kindly people, who had never harmed any one. but this maelström swallows good and bad alike. another came running to me, and cried: "they are attacking the house!" "where?" i asked. "at the front door." "throw over a hand-grenade," i said. there was a loud crash, and a scurrying of flying feet. the cowardly miscreants had fled. they were murderers, not warriors. all night long the awful bedlam raged. the dark streets swarmed. three times we had to have recourse to the hand-grenades. fires sprang up all over the city, licking the darkness with their hideous tongues of flame, and revealing by their crimson glare the awful sights of that unparalleled time. the dread came upon me: what if some wretch should fire a house in our block? how should we choose between the conflagration and those terrible streets? would it not be better to be ashes and cinders, than to fall into the hands of that demoniacal mob? no one slept. max sat apart and thought. was he considering--too late!--whether it was right to have helped produce this terrible catastrophe? early in the morning, accompanied by three of his men, he went out. we ate breakfast in silence. it seemed to me we had no right to eat in the midst of so much death and destruction. there was an alarm, and the firing of guns above us. some miscreants had tried to reach the roof of our house from the adjoining buildings. we rushed up. a lively fusillade followed. our magazine rifles and hand-grenades were too much for them; some fell dead and the rest beat a hasty retreat. they were peasants, searching for plunder. after awhile there came a loud rapping at the front door. i leaned over the parapet and asked who was there. a tough-looking man replied: "i have a letter for you." fearing some trick, to break into the house, i lowered a long cord and told him to tie the letter to it. he did so. i pulled up a large sheet of dirty wrapping-paper. there were some lines scrawled upon it, in lead-pencil, in the large hand of a schoolboy--almost undecipherable. with some study i made out these words: mister gabriel, max's friend: cæsar wants that thing to put on the front of the column. bill. it took me a few minutes to understand it. at last i realized that cæsar's officer--bill--had sent for the inscription for the monument, about which cæsar had spoken to max. i called down to the messenger to wait, and that i would give it to him. i sat down, and, after some thought, wrote, on the back of the wrapping-paper, these words: this great monument is erected by cÆsar lomellini, commanding general of the brotherhood of destruction, in commemoration of the death and burial of modern civilization. it is composed of the bodies of a quarter of a million of human beings, who were once the rulers, or the instruments of the rulers, of this mighty, but, alas! this ruined city. they were dominated by leaders who were altogether evil. they corrupted the courts, the juries, the newspapers, the legislatures, the congresses, the ballot-boxes and the hearts and souls of the people. they formed gigantic combinations to plunder the poor; to make the miserable more miserable; to take from those who had least and give it to those who had most. they used the machinery of free government to effect oppression; they made liberty a mockery, and its traditions a jest; they drove justice from the land and installed cruelty, ignorance, despair and vice in its place. their hearts were harder than the nether mill-stone; they degraded humanity and outraged god. at length indignation stirred in the vasty courts of heaven; and overburdened human nature rose in universal revolt on earth. by the very instruments which their own wickedness had created they perished; and here they lie, sepulchred in stone, and heaped around explosives as destructive as their own lives. we execrate their vices, while we weep for their misfortunes. they were the culmination of centuries of misgovernment; and they paid an awful penalty for the sins of generations of short-sighted and selfish ancestors, as well as for their own cruelty and wickedness. let this monument, o man! stand forever. should civilization ever revive on earth, let the human race come hither and look upon this towering shaft, and learn to restrain selfishness and live righteously. from this ghastly pile let it derive the great lesson, that no earthly government can endure which is not built on mercy, justice, truth and love. i tied the paper to the cord and lowered it down to the waiting messenger. at noon max returned. his clothes were torn, his face pale, his eyes wild-looking, and around his head he wore a white bandage, stained with his own blood. christina screamed and his mother fainted. "what is the matter, max?" i asked. "it is all in vain," he replied despairingly; "i thought i would be able to create order out of chaos and reconstruct society. but that dream is past." "what has happened?" i asked. "i went this morning to prince cabano's palace to get cæsar to help me. he had held high carnival all night and was beastly drunk, in bed. then i went out to counsel with the mob. but another calamity had happened. last night the vice-president--the jew--fled, in one of the demons, carrying away one hundred million dollars that had been left in his charge." "where did he go?" i asked. "no one knows. he took several of his trusted followers, of his own nation, with him. it is rumored that he has gone to judea; that he proposes to make himself king in jerusalem, and, with his vast wealth, re-establish the glories of solomon, and revive the ancient splendors of the jewish race, in the midst of the ruins of the world." "what effect has his flight had on the mob?" i asked. "a terrible effect. they are wild with suspicions and full of rumors. they gathered, in a vast concourse, around the cabano palace, to prevent cæsar leaving them, like the cripple. they believe that he, too, has another hundred millions hidden in the cellars of the palace. they clamored for him to appear. the tumult of the mob was frightful. "i rose to address them from the steps of the palace. i told them they need not fear that cæsar would leave them--he was dead drunk, asleep in bed. if they feared treachery, let them appoint a committee to search the palace for treasure. but--i went on--there was a great danger before them which they had not thought of. they must establish some kind of government that they would all obey. if they did not they would soon be starving. i explained to them that this vast city, of ten million inhabitants, had been fed by thousands of carloads of food which were brought in, every day, from the outside world. now the cars had ceased to run, the mob had eaten up all the food in the shops, and tomorrow they would begin to feel the pangs of starvation. and i tried to make them understand what it meant for ten million people to be starving together. "they became very quiet. one man cried out: "'what would you have us do?' "'you must establish a provisional government. you must select one man to whose orders you will all submit. then you must appoint a board of counselors to assist him. then the men among you who are engineers and conductors of trains of cars and of air-lines must reassume their old places; and they must go forth into the country and exchange the spoils you have gathered for cattle and flour and vegetables, and all other things necessary for life.' "'he wants to make himself a king,' growled one ruffian. "'yes,' said another, 'and set us all at work again.' "'he's a d----d aristocrat, anyhow,' cried a third. "but there were some who had sense enough to see that i was right, and the mob at once divided into two clamorous factions. words led to blows. a number were killed. three wretches rushed at me. i shot one dead, and wounded another; the third gave me a flesh wound on the head with a sword; my hat broke the force of the blow, or it would have made an end of me. as he raised his weapon for a second stroke, i shot him dead. my friends forced me through the door of the palace, in front of which i had been standing; we double-locked it to keep out the surging wild beasts; i fled through the back door, and reached here. "all hope is gone," he added sadly; "i can do nothing now but provide for our own safety." chapter xxxviii. the flight "yes," i replied, "we cannot remain here another night. think what would be the effect if a fire broke out anywhere in this block!" he looked at me in a startled way. "true," he said; "we must fly. i would cheerfully give my life if its sacrifice would arrest these horrors; but it would not." christina came and stood beside him. he wrote a letter to general quincy. he made three copies of it. selecting three of his best men, he gave each a copy, and told them to make their way together, well armed, to the armory of the airships. it was a perilous journey, but if either of them reached his destination, he was to deliver his copy of the letter to the general. in it max asked general quincy to send him one of the "demons," as promised, that night at eight o'clock; and he also requested, as a signal that the messengers had reached him and that the air-ship would come, that he would send up a single demon, high in the air, at once on receiving the letter. we went to the roof with our field-glasses. in two hours, we thought, the messengers, walking rapidly, would reach the armory. two hours passed. nothing was visible in the heavens in the direction of the armory, although we swept the whole region with our glasses. what if our messengers had all been slain? what if general quincy refused to do as he had agreed, for no promises were likely to bind a man in such a dreadful period of anarchy? two hours and a quarter--two hours and a half passed, and no signal. we began to despair. could we survive another night of horrors? at last estella, who had been quietly looking to the west with her glass, cried out: "see! there is something rising in the air." we looked. yes, thank heaven! it was the signal. the demon rose like a great hawk to a considerable height, floated around for awhile in space, and then slowly descended. it would come! all hands were set at work. a line was formed from the roof to the rooms below; and everything of value that we desired to carry with us was passed from hand to hand along the line and placed in heaps, ready for removal. even the women joined eagerly in the work. we did not look for our messengers; they were to return to us in the air-ship. the afternoon was comparatively quiet. the mobs on the street seemed to be looking for food rather than treasure. they were, however, generally resting, worn out; they were sleeping--preparing for the evening. with nightfall the saturnalia of death would begin again with redoubled force. we ate our dinner at six; and then mr. phillips suggested that we should all join in family prayers. we might never have another opportunity to do so, he said. he prayed long and earnestly to god to save the world and protect his dear ones; and we all joined fervently in his supplications to the throne of grace. at half past seven, equipped for the journey, we were all upon the roof, looking out in the direction of the west for the coming of the demon. a little before eight we saw it rise through the twilight above the armory. quincy, then, was true to his pledge. it came rapidly toward us, high in the air; it circled around, and at last began to descend just over our heads. it paused about ten feet above the roof, and two ladders were let down. the ladies and mr. phillips were first helped up to the deck of the vessel; and the men began to carry up the boxes, bales, trunks, money, books and instruments we had collected together. just at this moment a greater burst of tumult reached my ears. i went to the parapet and looked down. up the street, to the north, came a vast concourse of people. it stretched far back for many blocks. my first notion was that they were all drunk, their outcries were so vociferous. they shouted, yelled and screamed. some of them bore torches, and at their head marched a ragged fellow with a long pole, which he carried upright before him. at the top of it was a black mass, which i could not make out in the twilight. at this instant they caught sight of the demon, and the uproar redoubled; they danced like madmen, and i could hear max's name shouted from a hundred lips. "what does it mean?" i asked him. "it means that they are after me. hurry up, men," he continued, "hurry up." we all sprang to work; the women stood at the top and received the smaller articles as a line of men passed them up. then came a thunderous voice from below: "open the door, or we will break it down." max replied by casting a bomb over the parapet. it exploded, killing half a dozen men. but this mob was not to be intimidated like the thieves. the bullets began to fly; fortunately the gathering darkness protected us. the crowd grew blacker, and more dense and turbulent. then a number of stalwart fellows appeared, bearing a long beam, which they proposed to use as a battering-ram, to burst open the door, which had resisted all previous attacks. "bring down one of the death bombs," said max to the men in the demon. two stout fellows, belonging to the air-ship, carried down, carefully, between them, a great black sphere of iron. "over with it!" cried max. there was a crash, an explosion; the insurgents caught a whiff of the poisoned air; the men dropped the beam; there was a rush backward amid cries of terror, and the street was clear for a considerable space around the house. "hurry, men, hurry!" cried max. i peeped over the parapet. a number of the insurgents were rushing into a house three doors distant. in a few moments they poured out again, looking behind them as they ran. "i fear they have fired that house," i said to max. "i expected as much," he replied, quietly. "hurry, men, hurry," he again cried. the piles on the roof were diminishing rapidly. i turned to pass up bundles of my precious books. another sound broke on my ears; a roaring noise that rapidly increased--it was the fire. the mob cheered. then bursts of smoke poured out of the windows of the doomed house; then great arms and hands of flame reached out and snapped and clutched at the darkness, as if they would drag down ancient night itself, with all its crown of stars, upon the palpitating breast of the passionate conflagration. then the roof smoked; then it seemed to burst open, and vast volumes of flame and smoke and showers of sparks spouted forth. the blaze brought the mob into fearful relief, but fortunately it was between us and the great bulk of our enemies. "my god," said max, "it is cæsar's head!" i looked, and there, sure enough, upon the top of the long pole i had before noticed, was the head of the redoubtable giant. it stood out as if it had been painted in gory characters by the light of the burning house upon that background of darkness. i could see the glazed and dusty eyes; the protruding tongue; the great lower jaw hanging down in hideous fashion; and from the thick, bull-like neck were suspended huge gouts of dried and blackened blood. "it is the first instinct of such mobs," said max, quietly, to suspect their leaders and slay them. they killed cæsar, and then came after me. when they saw the air-ship they were confirmed in their suspicions; they believe that i am carrying away their treasure." i could not turn my eyes from that ferocious head. it fascinated me. it waved and reeled with the surging of the mob. it seemed to me to be executing a hideous dance in mid-air, in the midst of that terrible scene; it floated over it like a presiding demon. the protruding tongue leered at the blazing house and the unspeakable horrors of that assemblage, lit up, as it was, in all its awful features, by the towering conflagration. the crowd yelled and the fire roared. the next house was blazing now, and the roof of the one nearest us was smoking. the mob, perceiving that we did not move, concluded that the machinery of the air-ship was broken, and screamed with joy as the flames approached us. up, up, went bundle and package and box; faster, and faster, and faster. we were not to be intimidated by fire or mobs! the roof of the house next us was now blazing, and we could hear the fire, like a furnace, roaring within it. the work is finished; every parcel is safe. "up, up, men!" max and i were the last to leave the roof; it had become insufferably hot. we stood on the deck; the engineer touched the lever of the electric engine; the great bird swayed for an instant, and then began to rise, like a veritable phoenix from its nest of flame, surrounded by cataracts of sparks. as the mob saw us ascend, veiled dimly, at first, by that screen of conflagration, they groaned with dismay and disappointment. the bullets flew and hissed around us, but our metallic sides laughed them to scorn. up, up, straight and swift as an arrow we rose. the mighty city lay unrolled below us, like a great map, starred here and there with burning houses. above the trees of union square, my glass showed me a white line, lighted by the bon-fires, where cæsar's column was towering to the skies, bearing the epitaph of the world. i said to max: "what will those millions do to-morrow?" "starve," he said. "what will they do next week?" "devour each other," he replied. there was silence for a time. "will not civil government rise again out of this ruin?" i asked. "not for a long time," he replied. "ignorance, passion, suspicion, brutality, criminality, will be the lions in the path. men who have such dreadful memories of labor can scarcely be forced back into it. and who is to employ them? after about three-fourths of the human family have died of hunger, or been killed, the remainder, constituting, by the law of the survival of the fittest, the most powerful and brutal, will find it necessary, for self-defense against each other, to form squads or gangs. the greatest fighter in each of these will become chief, as among all savages. then the history of the world will be slowly repeated. a bold ruffian will conquer a number of the adjacent squads, and become a king. gradually, and in its rudest forms, labor will begin again; at first exercised principally by slaves. men will exchange liberty for protection. after a century or two a kind of commerce may arise. then will follow other centuries of wars, between provinces or nations. a new aristocracy will spring up. culture will lift its head. a great power, like rome in the old world, may arise. some vast superstition may take possession of the world; and alfred, victoria and washington may be worshiped, as saturn, juno and hercules were in the past; with perhaps dreadful and bloody rites like those of the carthaginians and ancient mexicans. and so, step by step, mankind will re-enact the great human drama, which begins always with a tragedy, runs through a comedy, and terminates in a catastrophe." the city was disappearing--we were over the ocean--the cool salt breeze was refreshing. we both looked back. "think," i said, "what is going on yonder." max shuddered. there was a sullen light in his eyes. he looked at his father, who was on his knees praying. "i would destroy the world," he said, "to save him from a living death." he was justifying himself unto himself. "gabriel," he said, after a pause, "if this outbreak had not occurred now, yet would it certainly have come to pass. it was but a question of time. the breaking-strain on humanity was too great. the world could not have gone on; neither could it have turned back. the crash was inevitable. it may be god's way of wiping off the blackboard. it may be that the ancient legends of the destruction of our race by flood and fire are but dim remembrances of events like that which is now happening." "it may be so, max," i replied; and we were silent. even the sea bore testimony to the ruin of man. the lighthouses no longer held up their fingers of flame to warn the mariner from the treacherous rocks. no air-ship, brilliant with many lights shining like innumerable eyes, and heavy with passengers, streamed past us with fierce swiftness, splitting the astonished and complaining air. here and there a sailing vessel, or a steamer, toiled laboriously along, little dreaming that, at their journey's end, starving creatures would swarm up their sides to kill and devour. how still and peaceful was the night--the great, solemn, patient night! how sweet and pure the air! how delightful the silence to ears that had rung so lately with the clamors of that infuriated mob! how pleasant the darkness to eyeballs seared so long by fire and flame and sights of murder! estella and christina came and sat down near us. their faces showed the torture they had endured,--not so much from fear as from the shock and agony with which goodness contemplates terrific and triumphant evil. i looked into the grand depths of the stars above us; at that endless procession of shining worlds; at that illimitable expanse of silence. and i thought of those vast gaps and lapses of manless time, when all these starry hosts unrolled and marshaled themselves before the attentive eyes of god, and it had not yet entered into his heart to create that swarming, writhing, crawling, contentious mass we call humanity. and i said to myself, "why should a god condescend to such a work as man?" and yet, again, i felt that one grateful heart, that darted out the living line of its love and adoration from this dark and perturbed earth, up to the shining throne of the great intelligence, must be of more moment and esteem in the universe than millions of tons of mountains--yea, than a wilderness of stars. for matter is but the substance with which god works; while thought, love, conscience and consciousness are parts of god himself. we think; therefore we are divine: we pray; therefore we are immortal. part of god! the awful, the inexpressible, the incomprehensible god. his terrible hand swirls, with unresting power, yonder innumerable congregation of suns in their mighty orbits, and yet stoops, with tender touch, to build up the petals of the anemone, and paint with rainbow hues the mealy wings of the butterfly. i could have wept over man; but i remembered that god lives beyond the stars. chapter xxxix. europe the next day we were flying over the ocean. the fluctuous and changeable waves were beneath us, with their multitudinous hues and colors, as light and foam and billows mingled. far as the eye could reach, they seemed to be climbing over each other forever, like the endless competitions of men in the arena of life. above us was the panorama of the clouds--so often the harbingers of terror; for even in their gentlest forms they foretell the tempest, which is ever gathering the mists around it like a garment, and, however slow-paced, is still advancing. a whale spouted. happy nature! how cunningly were the wet, sliding waves accommodated to that smooth skin and those nerves which rioted in the play of the tumbling waters. a school of dolphins leaped and gamboled, showing their curved backs to the sun in sudden glimpses; a vast family; merry, social, jocund, abandoned to happiness. the gulls flew about us as if our ship was indeed a larger bird; and i thought of the poet's lines wherein he describes-- "the gray gull, balanced on its bow-like wings, between two black waves, seeking where to dive." and here were more kindly adjustments. how the birds took advantage of the wind and made it lift them or sink them, or propel them forward; tacking, with infinite skill, right in the eye of the gale, like a sailing-vessel. it was not toil--it was delight, rapture--the very glory and ecstasy of living. everywhere the benevolence of god was manifest: light, sound, air, sea, clouds, beast, fish and bird; we were in the midst of all; we were a part of all; we rejoiced in all. and then my thoughts reverted to the great city; to that congregation of houses; to those streets swarming with murderers; to that hungry, moaning multitude. why did they not listen to me? why did rich and poor alike mock me? if they had not done so, this dreadful cup might have been averted from their lips. but it would seem as if faith and civilization were incompatible. christ was only possible in a barefooted world; and the few who wore shoes murdered him. what dark perversity was it in the blood of the race that made it wrap itself in misery, like a garment, while all nature was happy? max told me that we had had a narrow escape. of the three messengers we had sent forth to general quincy, but one reached him; the others had been slain on the streets. and when the solitary man fought his way through to the armory he found the mamelukes of the air full of preparations for a flight that night to the mountain regions of south america. had we delayed our departure for another day, or had all three of our messengers been killed by the marauders, we must all have perished in the midst of the flames of the burning building. we joined mr. phillips, therefore, with unwonted heartiness in the morning prayers. the next day we came in sight of the shores of europe. as we drew near, we passed over multitudes of open boats, river steamers and ships of all kinds, crowded with people. many of these vessels were unfitted for a sea voyage, but the horrors they fled from were greater than those the great deep could conjure up. their occupants shouted to us, through speaking-trumpets, to turn back; that all europe was in ruins. and we, in reply, warned them of the condition of things in america, and advised them to seek out uncivilized lands, where no men dwelt but barbarians. as we neared the shore we could see that the beaches, wharves and tongues of sand were everywhere black with people, who struggled like madmen to secure the few boats or ships that remained. with such weapons as they had hurriedly collected they fought back the better-armed masses of wild and desperate men who hung upon their skirts, plying the dreadful trade of murder. some of the agonized multitude shrieked to us for help. our hearts bled for them, but we could do nothing. their despairing hands were held up to us in supplication as the air-ship darted over them. but why dilate upon the dreadful picture that unrolled beneath us? hamlets, villages, towns, cities, blackened and smoking masses of ruin. the conflicts were yet raging on every country road and city street; we could hear the shrieks of the flying, the rattle of rifles and pistols in the hands of the pursuers. desolation was everywhere. some even rushed out and fired their guns viciously at us, as if furious to see anything they could not destroy. never before did i think mankind was so base. i realized how much of the evil in human nature had been for ages suppressed and kept in subjection by the iron force of law and its terrors. was man the joint product of an angel and a devil? certainly in this paroxysm of fate he seemed to be demoniacal. we turned southward over the trampled gardens and vineyards of france. a great volcanic lava field of flame and ashes--burning, smoking--many miles in extent--showed where paris had been. around it ragged creatures were prowling, looking for something to eat, digging up roots in the fields. at one place, in the open country, i observed, ahead of us, a tall and solitary tree in a field; near it were the smouldering ruins of a great house. i saw something white moving in the midst of the foliage, near the top of the tree. i turned my glass upon it. it was a woman, holding something in her arms. "can we not take her up?" i asked the captain of the airship. "we cannot stop the vessel in that distance--but we might return to it," he replied. "then do so, for god's sake," i said. we swooped downward. we passed near the tree. the woman screamed to us to stop, and held up an infant. christina and estella and all the other women wept. we passed the tree--the despairing cries of the woman were dreadful to listen to. but she takes courage; sees us sweep about; we come slowly back; we stop; a rope ladder falls; i descend; i grasp the child's clothes between my teeth; i help the woman up the ladder. she falls upon the deck of the ship, and cries out in french: "spare my child!" dreadful period! when every human being is looked upon as a murderer. the women comfort her. her clothes are in rags, but upon her fingers are costly jewels. her babe is restored to her arms; she faints with hunger and exhaustion. for three days, she tells us, she has been hidden in that tree, without food or drink; and has seen all dear to her perish--all but her little françois. and with what delight estella and christina and the rest cuddle and feed the pretty, chubby, hungry little stranger! thank god for the angel that dwells in human nature. and woe unto him who bids the devil rise to cast it out! max, during all this day, is buried in profound thought. he looks out at the desolated world and sighs. even christina fails to attract his attention. why should he be happy when there is so much misery? did he not help to cause it? but, after a time, we catch sight of the blue and laughing waters of the mediterranean, with its pleasant, bosky islands. this is gone, and in a little while the yellow sands of the great desert stretch beneath us, and extend ahead of us, far as the eye can reach. we pass a toiling caravan, with its awkward, shuffling, patient camels, and its dark attendants. they have heard nothing, in these solitudes, of the convulsions that rend the world. they pray to allah and mahomet and are happy. the hot, blue, cloudless sky rises in a great dome above their heads; their food is scant and rude, but in their veins there burn not those wild fevers of ambition which have driven mankind to such frenzies and horrors. they live and die as their ancestors did, ten thousand years ago--unchangeable as the stars above their heads; and these are even as they shone clear and bright when the chaldean shepherds first studied the outlines of the constellations, and marked the pathways of the wandering planets. before us, at last, rise great blue masses, towering high in air, like clouds, and extending from east to west; and these, in a little while, as we rush on, resolve themselves into a mighty mountain range, snow-capped, with the yellow desert at its feet, stretching out like a persian rug. i direct the pilot, and in another hour the great ship begins to abate its pace; it sweeps in great circles. i see the sheep flying terrified by our shadow; then the large, roomy, white-walled house, with its broad verandas, comes into view; and before it, looking up at us in surprise, are my dear mother and brothers, and our servants. the ship settles down from its long voyage. we are at home. we are at peace. chapter xl. the garden in the mountains [_these concluding lines are from the journal of gabriel weltstein_.] since my return home i have not been idle. in the first place, i collected and put together the letters i had written to my brother heinrich, from new york. i did this because i thought they were important, as a picture of the destruction of civilization, and of the events which led up to it. i furthermore had them printed on our printing-press, believing that every succeeding century would make them more valuable to posterity; and that in time they would be treasured as we now treasure the glimpses of the world before the deluge, contained in the book of genesis. and i have concluded to still further preserve, in the pages of this journal, a record of events as they transpire. as soon as i had explained to my family the causes of our return--for which they were in part prepared by my letters to heinrich--and had made them acquainted with my wife and friends, i summoned a meeting of the inhabitants of our colony--there are about five thousand of them, men, women and children. they all came, bringing baskets of provisions with them, as to a picnic. we met in an ancient grove upon a hillside. i spoke to them and told them the dreadful tale of the destruction of the world. i need not say that they were inexpressibly shocked by the awful narrative. many of them wept bitterly, and some even cried out aloud--for they had left behind them, in switzerland, many dear friends and relatives. i comforted them as best i could, by reminding them that the helvetian republic had survived a great many dynasties and revolutions; that they were not given to the luxuries and excesses that had wrecked the world, but were a primitive people, among whom labor had always remained honorable. moreover, they were a warlike race, and their mountains were their fortifications; and they would, therefore, probably, be able to defend themselves against the invasion of the hungry and starving hordes who would range and ravage the earth. the first question for us, i said, was to ascertain how to best protect ourselves from like dangers. we then proceeded to discuss the physical conformation of our country. it is a vast table-land, situated at a great height far above the tropical and miasmatic plains, and surrounded by mountains still higher, in which dwell the remnants of that curious white race first described by stanley. the only access to our region from the lower country is by means of the ordinary wagon road which winds upward through a vast defile or gorge in the mountains. at one point the precipitous walls of this gorge approach so closely together that there is room for only two wagons to pass abreast. we determined to assemble all our men the next day at this place, and build up a high wall that would completely cut off communication with the external world, making the wall so thick and strong that it would be impossible for any force that was likely to come against us to batter it down. this was successfully accomplished; and a smooth, straight wall, thirty feet high and about fifty broad at its widest point, now rises up between our colony and the external world. it was a melancholy reflection that we--human beings--were thus compelled to exclude our fellow-men. we also stationed a guard at a high point near the wall, and commanding a view of its approaches for many miles; and we agreed upon a system of bale-fires (_bael_ fires), or signal beacons, to warn the whole settlement, in case of the approach of an enemy. we next established a workshop, under the charge of carl jansen, in which he trained some of our young men in metal-working, and they proceeded to make a large supply of magazine rifles, so that every man in the settlement might be well armed. carl is one of those quiet, unpretending men whose performance is always better than their promise; and he is a skillful worker in the metals. the iron and coal we found in abundance in our mountains. we also cast a number of powerful cannon, placed on very high wheels, and which could be fired vertically in case we were attacked by air-ships;--although i thought it probable that the secret of their manufacture would be lost to the world in the destruction of civilization. we, however, carefully housed the demon under a shed, built for the purpose, intending, when we had time, to make other air-ships like it, with which to communicate with the external world, should we desire to do so. having taken all steps necessary to protect ourselves from others, we then began to devise means by which we might protect ourselves from ourselves; for the worst enemies of a people are always found in their own midst, in their passions and vanities. and the most dangerous foes of a nation do not advance with drums beating and colors flying, but creep upon it insidiously, with the noiseless feet of a fatal malady. in this work i received great help from max, and especially from his father. the latter had quite recovered the tone of his mind. he was familiar with all the philosophies of government, and he continued to be filled with an ardent desire to benefit mankind. max had seemed, for some days after our arrival, to be seriously depressed, brooding over his own thoughts; and he seized eagerly upon the work i gave him to do, as if he would make up by service to our people for any injuries he had done the world. we held many consultations. for good purposes and honest instincts we may trust to the multitude; but for long-sighted thoughts of philanthropy, of statesmanship and statecraft, we must look to a few superior intellects. it is, however, rarely that the capacity to do good and the desire to do good are found united in one man. when we had formulated our scheme of government we called the people together again; and after several days of debate it was substantially agreed upon. in our constitution, we first of all acknowledged our dependence on almighty god; believing that all good impulses on earth spring from his heart, and that no government can prosper which does not possess his blessing. we decreed, secondly, a republican form of government. every adult man and woman of sound mind is permitted to vote. we adopted a system of voting that we believed would insure perfect secrecy and prevent bribery--something like that which had already been in vogue, in some countries, before the revolution of the proletariat. the highest offense known to our laws is treason against the state, and this consists not only in levying war against the government, but in corrupting the voter or the office-holder; or in the voter or office-holder selling his vote or his services. for these crimes the penalty is death. but, as they are in their very nature secret offenses, we provide, in these cases only, for three forms of verdict: "guilty," "not guilty" and "suspected." this latter verdict applies to cases where the jury are morally satisfied, from the surrounding circumstances, that the man is guilty, although there is not enough direct and positive testimony to convict him. the jury then have the power--not as a punishment to the man, but for the safety of the community--to declare him incapable of voting or holding office for a period of not less than one nor more than five years. we rank bribery and corruption as high treason; because experience has demonstrated that they are more deadly in their consequences to a people than open war against the government, and many times more so than murder. we decreed, next, universal and compulsory education. no one can vote who cannot read and write. we believe that one man's ignorance should not countervail the just influence of another man's intelligence. ignorance is not only ruinous to the individual, but destructive to society. it is an epidemic which scatters death everywhere. we abolish all private schools, except the higher institutions and colleges. we believe it to be essential to the peace and safety of the commonwealth that the children of all the people, rich and poor, should, during the period of growth, associate together. in this way, race, sectarian and caste prejudices are obliterated, and the whole community grow up together as brethren. otherwise, in a generation or two, we shall have the people split up into hostile factions, fenced in by doctrinal bigotries, suspicious of one another, and antagonizing one another in politics, business and everything else. but, as we believe that it is not right to cultivate the heads of the young to the exclusion of their hearts, we mingle with abstract knowledge a cult of morality and religion, to be agreed upon by the different churches; for there are a hundred points wherein they agree to one wherein they differ. and, as to the points peculiar to each creed, we require the children to attend school but five days in the week, thus leaving one day for the parents or pastors to take charge of their religious training in addition to the care given them on sundays. we abolish all interest on money, and punish with imprisonment the man who receives it. the state owns all roads, streets, telegraph or telephone lines, railroads and mines, and takes exclusive control of the mails and express matter. as these departments will in time furnish employment for a great many officials, who might be massed together by the party in power, and wielded for political purposes, we decree that any man who accepts office relinquishes, for the time being, his right of suffrage. the servants of the people have no right to help rule them; and he who thinks more of his right to vote than of an office is at liberty to refuse an appointment. as we have not an hereditary nobility, as in england, or great geographical subdivisions, as in america, we are constrained, in forming our congress or parliament, to fall back upon a new device. our governing body, called _the people_, is divided into three branches. the first is elected exclusively by the producers, to-wit: the workmen in the towns and the farmers and mechanics in the country; and those they elect must belong to their own class. as these constitute the great bulk of the people, the body that represents them stands for the house of commons in england, or the house of representatives in america. the second branch is elected exclusively by and from the merchants and manufacturers, and all who are engaged in trade, or as employers of labor. the third branch, which is the smallest of the three, is selected by the authors, newspaper writers, artists, scientists, philosophers and literary people generally. this branch is expected to hold the balance of power, where the other two bodies cannot agree. it may be expected that they will be distinguished by broad and philanthropic views and new and generous conceptions. where a question arises as to which of these three groups or subdivisions a voter belongs to, the matter is to be decided by the president of the republic. no law can be passed, in the first instance, unless it receives a majority vote in each of the three branches, or a two-thirds vote in two of them. where a difference of opinion arises upon any point of legislation, the three branches are to assemble together and discuss the matter at issue, and try to reach an agreement. as, however, the experience of the world has shown that there is more danger of the upper classes combining to oppress the producers than there is of the producers conspiring to govern them,--except in the last desperate extremity, as shown recently,--it is therefore decreed that if the commons, by a three-fourths vote, pass any measure, it becomes a law, notwithstanding the veto of the other two branches. the executive is elected by the congress for a period of four years, and is not eligible for re-election. he has no veto and no control of any patronage. in the election of president a two-thirds vote of each branch is necessary. whenever it can be shown, in the future, that in any foreign country the wages of labor and the prosperity of the people are as high as in our own, then free trade with that people is decreed. but whenever the people of another country are in greater poverty, or working at a lower rate of wages than our own, then all commercial intercourse with them shall be totally interdicted. for impoverished labor on one side of a line, unless walled out, must inevitably drag down labor on the other side of the line to a like condition. neither is the device of a tariff sufficient; for, although it is better than free trade, yet, while it tends to keep up the price of goods, it lets in the products of foreign labor; this diminishes the wages of our own laborers by decreasing the demand for their productions to the extent of the goods imported; and thus, while the price of commodities is held up for the benefit of the manufacturers, the price of labor falls. there can be no equitable commerce between two peoples representing two different stages of civilization, and both engaged in producing the same commodities. thus the freest nations are constantly pulled down to ruin by the most oppressed. what would happen to heaven if you took down the fence between it and hell? we are resolved that our republic shall be of itself, by itself--"in a great pool, a swan's nest." as a corollary to these propositions, we decree that our congress shall have the right to fix the rate of compensation for all forms of labor, so that wages shall never fall below a rate that will afford the laborer a comfortable living, with a margin that will enable him to provide for his old age. it is simply a question of the adjustment of values. this experiment has been tried before by different countries, but it was always tried in the interest of the employers; the laborers had no voice in the matter; and it was the interest of the upper class to cheapen labor; and hence _muscle_ became a drug and _cunning_ invaluable and masterful; and the process was continued indefinitely until the catastrophe came. now labor has its own branch of our congress, and can defend its rights and explain its necessities. in the comparison of views between the three classes some reasonable ground of compromise will generally be found; and if error is committed we prefer that it should enure to the benefit of the many, instead of, as heretofore, to the benefit of the few. we declare in the preamble to our constitution that "this government is intended to be merely a plain and simple instrument, to insure to every industrious citizen not only liberty, but an educated mind, a comfortable home, an abundant supply of food and clothing, and a pleasant, happy life." are not these the highest objects for which governments can exist? and if government, on the old lines, did not yield these results, should it not have been so reformed as to do so? we shall not seek to produce uniformity of recompense for all kinds of work; for we know that skilled labor is intrinsically worth more than unskilled; and there are some forms of intellectual toil that are more valuable to the world than any muscular exertion. the object will be not to drag down, but to lift up; and, above all, to prevent the masses from falling into that awful slough of wretchedness which has just culminated in world-wide disaster. the government will also regulate the number of apprentices who shall enter any given trade or pursuit. for instance, there may be too many shoemakers and not enough farmers; if, now, more shoemakers crowd into that trade, they will simply help starve those already there; but if they are distributed to farming, and other employments, where there is a lack, then there is more work for the shoemakers, and in time a necessity for more shoemakers. there is no reason why the ingenuity of man should not be applied to these great questions. it has conquered the forces of steam and electricity, but it has neglected the great adjustments of society, on which the happiness of millions depends. if the same intelligence which has been bestowed on perfecting the steam-engine had been directed to a consideration of the correlations of man to man, and pursuit to pursuit, supply and demand would have precisely matched each other, and there need have been no pauperism in the world--save that of the sick and imbecile. and the very mendicants would begin to rise when the superincumbent pressure of those who live on the edge of pauperism had been withdrawn. we deny gold and silver any function as money except for small amounts--such as five dollars or less. we know of no supplies of those metals in our mountains, and if we tied our prosperity to their chariot, the little, comparatively, there is among us, would gradually gravitate into a few hands, and these men would become the masters of the country. we issue, therefore, a legal-tender paper money, receivable for all indebtedness, public and private, and not to be increased beyond a certain _per capita_ of population. we decree a limitation upon the amount of land or money any one man can possess. all above that must be used, either by the owner or the government, in works of public usefulness. there is but one town in our colony--it is indeed not much more than a village--called stanley. the republic has taken possession of all the land in and contiguous to it, not already built on--paying the owners the present price of the same; and hereafter no lots will be sold except to persons who buy to build homes for themselves; and these lots will be sold at the original cost price. thus the opportunity for the poor to secure homes will never be diminished. we further decree that when hereafter any towns or cities or villages are to be established, it shall only be by the nation itself. whenever one hundred persons or more petition the government, expressing their desire to build a town, the government shall then take possession of a sufficient tract of land, paying the intrinsic, not the artificial, price therefor. it shall then lay the land out in lots, and shall give the petitioners and others the right to take the lots at the original cost price, provided they make their homes upon them. we shut out all speculators. no towns started in any other way shall have railroad or mail facilities. when once a municipality is created in the way i have described, it shall provide, in the plat of the town, parks for recreation; no lot shall contain less than half an acre; the streets shall be very wide and planted with fruit trees in double and treble rows. in the center of the town shall be erected a town hall, with an assembly chamber, arranged like a theater, and large enough to seat all the inhabitants. the building shall also contain free public baths, a library, a reading-room, public offices, etc. the municipality shall divide the people into groups of five hundred families each, and for each group they shall furnish a physician, to be paid for out of the general taxes. they shall also provide in the same way concerts and dramatic representations and lectures, free of charge. the hours of labor are limited to eight each day; and there are to be two holidays in the week, wednesday and sundays. just as the state is able to carry the mails for less than each man could carry them for himself, so the cost of physicians and entertainments procured by the municipality will be much less than under the old system. we do not give any encouragement to labor-saving inventions, although we do not discard them. we think the end of government should be--not cheap goods or cheap men, but happy families. if any man makes a serviceable invention the state purchases it at a reasonable price for the benefit of the people. men are elected to whom all disputes are referred; each of the contestants selects a man, and the three act together as arbitrators. where a jury is demanded the defeated party pays all the expenses. we hold that it is not right that all the peaceable citizens should be taxed to enable two litigious fellows to quarrel. where a man is convicted of crime he is compelled to work out all the cost of his trial and conviction, and the cost of his support as a prisoner, before he can be discharged. if vice will exist, it must be made self-supporting. [_an extract from gabriel's journal-five years later._] i have just left a very happy group upon the veranda--estella and our two darling little children; christina and her three flaxen-haired beauties. max is away on his sheep farm. my mother and mrs. and mr. phillips are reading, or playing with the children. the sun is shining brightly, and the birds are singing. i enter my library to make this entry in my journal. god has greatly blessed us and all our people. there were a few conservatives who strenuously objected at first to our reforms; but we mildly suggested to them that if they were not happy--and desired it--we would transfer them to the outside world, where they could enjoy the fruits of the time-hallowed systems they praised so much. they are now the most vigorous supporters of the new order of things. and this is one of the merits of your true conservative: if you can once get him into the right course he will cling to it as tenaciously as he formerly clung to the wrong. they are not naturally bad men; their brains are simply incapable of suddenly adjusting themselves to new conceptions. the demon returned yesterday from a trip to the outside world. max's forebodings have been terribly realized. three-fourths of the human race, in the civilized lands, have been swept away. in france and italy and russia the slaughter has been most appalling. in many places the demon sailed for hundreds of miles without seeing a human being. the wild beasts--wolves and bears--are reassuming possession of the country. in scandinavia and in northern america, where the severity of the climate somewhat mitigated the ferocity of man, some sort of government is springing up again; and the peasants have formed themselves into troops to defend their cattle and their homes against the marauders. but civility, culture, seem to have disappeared. there are no newspapers, no books, no schools, no teachers. the next generation will be simply barbarians, possessing only a few dim legends of the refinement and wonderful powers of their ancestors. fortunate it is indeed, that here, in these mountains, we have preserved all the instrumentalities with which to restore, when the world is ready to receive it, the civilization of the former ages. our constitution has worked admirably. not far from here has arisen the beautiful village of lincoln. it is a joy to, visit it, as i do very often. the wide streets are planted with trees; not shade trees, but fruit trees, the abundance of which is free to all. around each modest house there is a garden, blooming with flowers and growing food for the household. there are no lordly palaces to cast a chill shadow over humble industry; and no resplendent vehicles to arouse envy and jealousy in the hearts of the beholders. instead of these shallow vanities a sentiment of brotherly love dwells in all hearts. the poor man is not worked to death, driven to an early grave by hopeless and incessant toil. no; he sings while he works, and his heart is merry. no dread shadow of hunger hangs over him. we are breeding men, not millionaires. and the good wife sings also while she prepares the evening meal, for she remembers that this is the night of the play; and yonder, on that chair, lies the unfinished dress which her handsome daughter is to wear, next saturday night, to the weekly ball. and her sons are greatly interested in the lectures on chemistry and history. let us look in upon them at supper. the merry, rosy faces of young and old; the cheerful converse; the plain and abundant food. here are vegetables from their own garden, and fruit from the trees that line the wide streets. listen to their talk! the father is telling how the municipality bought, some three years ago, a large number of female calves, at a small cost; and now they are milch cows; and the town authorities are about to give one of them to every poor family that is without one. and they praise this work; they love mankind, and the good, kindly government--their own government--which so cares for humanity and strives to lift it up. and then the father explains that each person who now receives a free gift of a milch cow is to bring to the municipal government the first female calf raised by that cow, and the city will care for that, too, for two or three years, and then bestow it upon some other poor family; and so, in endless rotation, the organized benevolence does its work, perennial as seed-time and harvest; and none are the poorer for it, and all are the happier. but come; they have finished their supper, amid much merriment, and are preparing to go to the play. let us follow them. how the streets swarm! not with the dark and terrible throngs that dwell so vividly in my memory; but a joyous crowd--laughing, talking, loving one another--each with a merry smile and a kindly word for his neighbor. and here we are at the door of the play-house. there is no fumbling to find the coins that can perhaps be but poorly spared; but free as the streets the great doors open. what hurry, what confusion, what chatter, what a rustle of dresses, as they seek their seats. but hush! the curtain rises. the actors are their own townspeople--young men and women who have shown an aptitude for the art; they have been trained at the cost of the town, and are paid a small stipend for their services once a week. how the lights shine! how sweet is the music! what a beautiful scene! and what lovely figures are these, clad in the picturesque garb of some far-away country or some past age. and listen! they are telling the old, old story; old as the wooing of eve in eden; the story of human love, always so dear, so precious to the human heart. but see! the scene has changed--here is a merry-making; a crowd of flower-wreathed lads and lasses enter, and the harmonious dance, instinct with life and motion,--the poetry of human limbs,--unrolls itself before our eyes. and so the pretty drama goes forward. an idyl of the golden age; of that glorious epoch when virtue was always triumphant, and vice was always exposed and crushed. but the play is over; and the audience stream back, laughing and chatting, under the stars, down the long, fruit-embowered streets, to their flower-bedecked, humble homes. and how little it costs to make mankind happy! and what do we miss in all this joyous scene? why, where are the wolves, that used to prowl through the towns and cities of the world that has passed away? the slinking, sullen, bloody-mouthed miscreants, who, under one crafty device or another, would spring upon, and tear, and destroy the poor, shrieking, innocent people--where are they? ah! this is the difference: the government which formerly fed and housed these monsters, under cunning kennels of perverted law, and broke open holes in the palisades of society, that they might crawl through and devastate the community, now shuts up every crevice through which they could enter; stops every hole of opportunity; crushes down every uprising instinct of cruelty and selfishness. and the wolves have disappeared; and our little world is a garden of peace and beauty, musical with laughter. and so mankind moves with linked hands through happy lives to deaths; and god smiles down upon them from his throne beyond the stars. end of caesar's column by ignatius donnelly the secret of the league the story of a social war by ernest bramah thomas nelson and sons [illustration: she began to unbuckle the frozen straps of his gear.] contents. i. irene ii. the period, and the coming of wings iii. the million to one chance iv. the compact v. the downtrodden vi. miss lisle tells a long pointless story vii. "schedule b" viii. tantroy earns his wage ix. secret history x. the order of st. martin of tours xi. man between two masters xii. by telescribe xiii. the effect of the bomb xiv. the last chance and the counsel of expedience xv. the great fiasco xvi. the dark winter xvii. the incident of the th of january xviii. the music and the dance xix. the "finis" message xx. stobalt of salaveira xxi. the bargain of famine xxii. "poor england" the secret of the league. chapter i irene "i suppose i am old-fashioned"--there was a murmur of polite dissent from all the ladies present, except the one addressed--"oh, i take it as a compliment nowadays, i assure you; but when i was a girl a young lady would have no more thought of flying than of"--she paused almost on a note of pained surprise at finding the familiar comparison of a lifetime cut off--"well, of standing on her head." "no," replied the young lady in point, with the unfeeling candour that marked the youthful spirit of the age, "because it wasn't invented. but you went bicycling, and your mothers were very shocked at first." "i hardly think that you can say that, miss lisle," remarked another of the matrons, "because i can remember that more than twenty years ago one used to see quite elderly ladies bicycling." "after the others had lived all the ridicule down," retorted miss lisle scornfully. "oh yes; i quite expect that in a few more years you will see quite elderly ladies flying." the little party of matrons seated on the hastings promenade regarded each other surreptitiously, and one or two smiled slightly, while one or two shuddered slightly. "flying is very different, dear," said mrs lisle reprovingly. "i often think of what your dear grandfather used to say. he said"--impressively--"that if the almighty had intended that we should fly, he would have sent us into the world with wings upon our backs." there was a murmur of approval from all--all except miss lisle, that is. "but do you ever think of what geoffrey replied to dear grandpapa when he heard him say that once, mother?" said the unimpressed daughter. "he said: 'and don't you think, sir, that if the almighty had intended us to use railways, he would have sent us into the world with wheels upon our feet?'" "i do not see any connection at all between the two things," replied her mother distantly. "and such a remark seems to me to be simply irreverent. birds are born with wings, and insects, and so on, but nothing, as far as i am aware, is born with wheels. your grandfather used to travel by the south eastern regularly every day, or how could he have reached his office? and he never saw anything wrong in using trains, i am sure. in fact, when you think of it you will see that what geoffrey said, instead of being any argument, was supremely silly." "perhaps he intended it to be," replied miss lisle with suspicious meekness. "you never know, mother." such a remark merited no serious attention. why should any one, least of all a really clever young man like geoffrey, deliberately _intend_ to be silly? there was too often, her mother had observed, an utter lack of relevance in irene's remarks. "i think that it is a great mistake to have white flying costumes as so many do," observed another lady. "they look--but perhaps they wish to." "certainly when they use lace as well it really seems as though they do. oh!" there was a passing shadow across the group and a slight rustle in the air. scarcely a dozen yards above the promenade a young lady was flying strongly down the wind with the languid motion of the "swan stroke." she wore white--and lace trimming. mrs lisle gazed fixedly out to sea. even irene felt that the vision was inopportune. "there are always some who overdo a thing," she remarked. "there always have been. that was only velma st saint of the new gaiety; she flies about the front every day for the advertisement of the thing: i wonder that she doesn't drop handbills as she goes. there's plenty of room up on the castle hill--in fact, you aren't supposed to fly west of the breakwater--but there will always be some----" a vague resentment closed the period. "are you staying at the palatial this time?" asked the lady who had mentioned lace, feeling it tactful to change the subject. "i think that you used to." "oh, haven't you seen?" was the reply. "the palatial has been closed for the last six months." "yes, it's a great pity," remarked another. "it looks so depressing too, right on the front. but they simply could not go on. i suppose that the rates here are something frightful now." "oh, enormous, my dear; but it was not that alone. the palatial has always aimed at being a 'popular' hotel, and so few of the upper middle class can afford hotels now. then the new tax on every servant above one--calculated as fifty per cent. of their wages, i think, but there are so many new taxes to remember--proved the last straw." "yes, it is fifty per cent. i remember because i had to give up my between-maid to pay the cook's tax. but i thought that hotels were to be exempt?" "not in the end. it was argued that hotels existed for the convenience of the monied classes, and that they ought to pay for it. so a large number of hotels are closed altogether; others work with a reduced staff, and a great many servants have been thrown out of employment." miss lisle laughed unpleasantly. "a good thing, too," she remarked. "i hate hotel servants. so does everybody. it is the only good thing i have heard of the labour government doing." "i am sure i don't hate them," said mrs lisle, looking round with pathetic resignation, "although they certainly had become rather grasping and over-bearing of late. but it was quite an unforeseen development of the scheme that so many should lose their places. indeed the special object of the tax was to create a fund--'earmarked' i think they call it--out of which to meet the growing pension claim, now that so few of the servant class think it worth while to save." miss lisle laughed again, this time with a note of genuine amusement. ("a most unpleasant girl, i fear," murmured the lady who had raised the white costume question, to her neighbour in a whisper: "so odd.") "it made a great difference at the registry offices. there are a dozen maids to be had any day where there were really none before. only one cannot afford to keep them now." there was a word, a sigh, and an "ah!" to mark this point of agreement among the four ladies. "i am afraid that the government confiscation of all dividends above five per cent. bears very heavily on some," remarked one after a pause. "i know a poor soul of over sixty-five, nearly blind too, whose husband had invested all his savings in the company he had worked for because he knew that it was safe, and, having a good reserve, intended to pay ten per cent. for a long time. when he died it brought her in fifty pounds a year. now----" there were little signs of sympathy and commiseration from the group. the sex was beginning to take an unwonted interest in terms financial--per centage, surrender value, trustee stock, unearned increment, and so on. they had reason to do so, for revolutionary finance was very much in the air, or, rather, had come tangibly down to earth at length: not the placid city echoes that were wont to ripple gently across the breakfast-table a few years earlier without leaving any one much better or much worse off, but the galvanic adjustment that by a stroke made the rich well-to-do, the well-to-do just so-so, the struggling poor, and left the poor where they were before. the frenzied effort that in a session strove to tear up the trees of the forest and leave the plants beneath untouched; to pull to pieces the intertwined fabric of a thousand years' growth and to create from it a bundle of straight and equal twigs; in a word, to administer justice on the principle of knocking out one eye in all the sound because a number of people were unfortunately born or fallen blind. "five and twenty," mused mrs lisle. "i suppose it is just possible." "it is really less than that," explained the other. "you may have noticed that as it is now no good making more than five per cent., most companies pay even less. there is no incentive to do well." "one hears of even worse cases on every hand," said another of the ladies. "i am trying to interest people in a poor deformed creature whose father left her an annuity derived from ground rents in the city.... as it has been worked out i think that she owes the incomes adjustment department lawyers something a year now. but private charity seems almost to have ceased altogether. have you heard that 'jim's' is closed?" it was true. st james's hospital, whose unvarnished record was, "three hundred of the very poor treated freely each day," was a thing of the past, and across its portal, where ten years before a couple of stalwart gentlemen wearing red ties had rested for a moment, while they lit their pipes, a banner with the strange device, "curse your charity!" now ran the legend, "closed for want of funds." "i wonder sometimes," mused the last speaker, "why some one doesn't do something." "but," objected another, "what is there to do? what is there?" they all agreed that there was nothing--absolutely nothing. every one else was tacitly making the same admission; that was the fatal symptom. miss lisle jumped up and began to move away unceremoniously. "where are you going, dear?" asked her mother in mild reproof. "oh, anywhere," replied irene restlessly. "but what for?" persisted mrs lisle. "oh, anything." "that is 'nothing,' miss lisle," smiled the tactful lady of the party, anxious to smooth over the awkwardness of the moment. "no, it is at least something," flung back the girl brusquely; and with swinging strides she set off at a furious pace towards the open country. "irene is a little impulsive at times," apologized her mother, sitting back with placidly folded hands. chapter ii the period, and the coming of wings an intelligent south sea islander, who had been imported into this country to stimulate missionary enterprise, on his return had said that the most marked characteristic of the english of the period was what they called "snap." the nearest equivalent in his own language signifying literally "quick hot words," he had some difficulty in conveying the impression he desired, and his circle had to rest content that "snap" permeated the journalism, commerce, politics, drama, and social life of the english, had assailed their literature, and was beginning to influence religion, art, and science. it may be admitted that the foreign gentleman's visit had coincided with a period of national stress, for the week in question had embraced the more entertaining half of a general election, seen the advent of two new farthing daily papers, and been marked by the rev. sebastian tauthaul's striking series of addresses from the pulpit of the city sanctum, entitled "if christ put up for battersea." it had also included the launching of a new cocoa, a new soap, and a new concentrated food. the new food was called "chip-chunks." "a name which i venture to think spells success of itself," complacently remarked its inventor. "a very good name indeed," admitted his advertising manager. "it has the great desideratum that it might be anything, and, on the other hand, it might equally well be nothing." "just so," said the inventor with weighty approval; "just so." a "snap-line" was required that would ineradicably fix chip-chunks in the public mind, and "bow-wow! feel chippy? then champ chip-chunks" was found in an inspired moment. it was, of course, fully cooked and already quite digested. it was described as the delight of the unweaned infant, the mainstay of the toothless nonagenarian, and so simple and wholesome that it could be safely taken and at once assimilated by the invalid who had undergone the operation of having his principal organ of digestion removed. so little, indeed, remained for nature and the human parts to do in the matter of chip-chunks as to raise the doubt whether it might not be simpler and scarcely less nutritive to open the tin and pour the contents down the drain forthwith. as chip-chunks was designed for those who were disinclined to exercise the functions of digestion, so isabella soap made an appeal to those who disliked work and had something of an antipathy to soap at all. one did not wash with isabella, it was assured: one sat down and watched it. it had its "snap-lines," too: "you write it 'wash,' but you call it 'wosh.' "what is the difference? "there is 'a' difference. "there is also 'a' difference between isabella soap and all other soaps: "all the difference. "that's our point. put it in your washtub and watch it." * * * * * cocoa was approached in a more sober spirit. soap may blow bubbles of light and airy fancy, pills _ricochet_ from one gay conceit to another, meat extracts gambol with the irresponsible exuberance of bulls in china cups, but cocoa relied upon sincerity and statistics. kingcup cocoa was the last word of the expert. it won its way into the great heart of the people by driving home the significant fact that it contained . per cent. more phosphorus, and . per cent. less of something fatty, than any other cocoa in existence. when the newspaper reader of the period had been confronted by this assertion, in various guises, seventeen thousand times, he had reached a state of mind in which . per cent. more phosphorus and . per cent. less fat represented the difference between vigorous manhood and drivelling imbecility. the rev. sebastian was all "snap." his topical midday addresses--described by himself as "seven minutes sandwich-sermonettes"--have already been referred to. young men who were pressed for time were bidden to bring their bath buns or buttered scones and eat openly and unashamed. workmen with bread and cheese and pots of beer were welcomed with effusion. this particular series extended over the working days of a week, and was subdivided thus: _monday._--the issues before the constituency. _tuesday._--his address to the electors. _wednesday._--the day of the contest. _thursday._--which way are you voting? _friday._--spoiled papers. _saturday._--at the top of the poll and the leader of our party. * * * * * of the new papers, of their sprightliness, their enterprise, their general all-roundness, their almost wicked experience of the ways of the world, from a quite up-to-date fund of junior office witticism to a knowledge of the existence of actresses who do not act, outwardly respectable circles of society who play cards for money on sunday, and (exclusively for the benefit of their readers) places where quite high-class provisions (only nominally damaged) could be bought cheap on saturday nights, it is unnecessary to say much. of their irresponsible cock-sureness, their bristling combativeness, their amazing powers of prophetic penetration, and, it must be confessed, their ineradicable air of somewhat second-rate infant phenomenonship, their crumbling yellow files still bear witness. as a halfpenny is half a penny, so a farthing is half a halfpenny, and the mind that is not too appalled by the possibilities of the development can people for itself this journalistic eden. _the whip_ described its programme as "vervy and nervy; brainy and champagny." _the broom_ relied more on solider attractions of the "news of the world in pin point pars" and "knowledge in nodules" order. both claimed to be written exclusively by "brainy" people, and both might have added, with equal truth, read exclusively by brainless. avowedly appealing "to the great intellect of the nation," neither fell into the easy mistake of aiming too high, and the humblest son of toil might take them up with the fullest confidence of finding nothing from beginning to end that was beyond his simple comprehension. but the most cursory review of national "snappishness" would be incomplete if it omitted the field of politics, especially when the period in question contained so concentrated an accumulation of "snap" as a general election. contests had long ceased to be decided on the merits of individuals or of parties, still less to be the occasions for deliberate consideration of policy. each group had its label and its "snap-cries." the outcome as a whole--the decision of each division with few exceptions--lay in the hands of a class which, while educated to the extent of a little reading and a little writing, was practically illiterate in thought, in experience, and in discrimination. to them a "snap-cry" was eminently suited, as representing a concrete idea and being in fact the next best argument to a decayed egg. that national disaster had never so far been evolved out of this rough-and-ready method could be traced to a variety of saving clauses. at such a time the strict veracity of the cries raised was not to be too closely examined; indeed, there was not the time for contradiction, and therein lay the essence of some of the most successful "snaps." misrepresentation, if on a sufficiently large scale, was permissible, but it was advisable to make it wholesale, lurid, and applied not to an individual but to a party--emphasising, of course, the fact that your opponent was irretrievably pledged to that party through thick and thin. in other words, it was quite legitimate for a to declare that the policy of the party to which his opponent b belonged was a policy of murder, rapine, piracy, black-mail, highway robbery, extermination, and indiscriminate bloodshed; that they had swum to office on a sea of tears racked from the broken hearts of an outraged peasantry, risen to power on the apex of a smoking hecatomb of women and children, and kept their position by methods of ruthless barbarism; that assassination, polygamy, thuggeeism, simony, bureaucracy, and perhaps even an additional penny on the poor man's tea, would very likely be found included in their official programme; that they were definitely pledged to introduce kalmucks and ostyaks into the government dock-yards, who would work in chained gangs, be content with three farthings for a fourteen hours' day, and live exclusively on engine waste and barley-water. this and much more was held to be fair political warfare which should not offend the keenest patriot. but if a so far descended to vulgar personalities as to accuse b himself of employing an urchin to scare crows at eightpence a day when the trade union rate for crow-scaring was ninepence, he stood a fair chance of having an action for libel or defamation of character on his hands in addition to an election. under such a system the least snappy went to the wall. happy was the man who was armed not necessarily with a just cause, but with a name that lent itself to topical alliteration. who could resist the appeal to vote for frank blarney. fresh brooms in parliament. fewer bungles during the next five years. financial betterment at home. free breakfast-tables for the people. flourishing businesses all round. --especially when it was coupled with the reminder that every vote given to a. j. wallflower is a slice of bread filched from your innocent children's hard-earned loaf. * * * * * of course the schools could not escape the atmosphere. the state-taught children were wonderfully snappy--for the time being. afterwards, it might be noticed, that when the props were pulled away they were generally either annoyingly dull or objectionably pert, or, perhaps, offensively dully-pert, according to whether their nature was backward or forward, or a mixture of both. the squad-drilled units could remember wonderfully well--for the time; they could apply the rules they learned in just the way they were taught to apply them--for the time. but they could not remember what they had not been drilled to remember; they could not apply the rules in any other way; they could not apply the principles at all; and they could not think. high and low, children were not allowed to think; with ninety-nine mothers out of a hundred its proper name was "idleness." "i do not like to see you sitting down doing nothing, dear," said every mother to every daughter plaintively. "is there no sewing you might do?" so the would-be thoughtful child was harried into working, or playing, or eating, or sleeping, as though a mind contentedly occupied with itself was an unworthy or a morbid thing. yet it was a too close adherence to the national character that proved to be the undoing of wynchley slocombe, who is now generally admitted to have been the father of the form of aerial propulsion so widely enjoyed to-day. like everybody else, he had read the offer of the traffic and locomotion department of a substantial reward for a satisfactory flying-machine, embracing "any contrivance ... that would by demonstration enable one or more persons, freed from all earth-support or connection (_a_) to remain stationary at will, at any height between and feet; (_b_) at that height to travel between two points one mile apart within a time limit of seven minutes and without deviating more than fifty yards from a straight line connecting the two points; (_c_) to travel in a circle of not less than three miles in circumference within a time limit of fifteen minutes." wynchley took an ordinary intelligent interest in the subject, but he had no thought of competing. it was not until the last day of the period allowed for submitting plans that wynchley's great idea occurred to him. there was then no time for elaborating the germ or for preparing the requisite specifications, even if he had any ability to do so, which he had not, being, in fact, quite ignorant of the subject. but he remembered hearing in his youth that when a former government of its day had offered a premium for a convenient method of dividing postage stamps (until that time sold in unperforated sheets and cut up as required by the users), the successful competitor had simply tendered the advice, "punch rows of little holes between them." in the same spirit wynchley slocombe took half a sheet of silurian notepaper (now become famous, and preserved in the south kensington museum) and wrote on it, "fasten on a pair of wings, and practise! practise!! practise!!!" it was to be the aerial counterpart of "gunnery! gunnery!! gunnery!!!" unfortunately, the departmental offices were the only places in england where "snap" was not recognised. wynchley was regarded as a suicidal lunatic--a familiar enough figure in flying-machine circles--and his suggestion was duly pigeon-holed without consideration. the subsequent career of the unhappy man may be briefly stated. disappointed in his hopes of an early recognition, and not having sufficient money at his disposal to demonstrate the practicability of his idea, he took to writing letters to the president of the board, and subsequently to waylaying high officials and demanding interviews with them. dismissed from his situation for systematic neglect of duty, he became a "poor litigant with a grievance" at the law courts, and periodically applied for summonses against the prime minister, the lord mayor of london, and the archbishop of canterbury. still later his name became a by-word as that of a confirmed window-breaker at the government offices. a few years afterwards, a brief paragraph in one or two papers announced that wynchley slocombe, "who, some time ago, gained an unenviable notoriety on account of his hallucinations," had committed suicide in a deptford model lodging-house. in the meanwhile two plans for flying-machines had been selected as displaying the most merit, and their inventors were encouraged to press on with the construction under a monetary grant. both were finished during the same week, and for the sake of comparison they were submitted to trial on the same day upon shorncliffe plain. _vimbonne vi._, which resembled a much-distended spider with outspread legs, made the first ascent. according to instructions, it was to demonstrate its ability to go in a straight line by descending in a field near the military canal, beyond seabrook, but from the moment of its release it continued to describe short circles with a velocity hitherto unattained in any air-ship, until its frantic constructor was too dizzy to struggle with its mechanism any longer. the _moloch_ was then unmoored, and took up its position stationary at a height of feet with absolute precision. it was built on the lines of a gigantic centipede, with two rows of clubby oars beneath, and ranked as the popular favourite. being instructed, for the sake of variety, to begin with the three mile circle, the _moloch_ started out to sea on the flash of the gun, the sinuous motion that rippled down its long vertebrate body producing an effect, accidental but so very life-like, that many of the vast concourse assembled on the ground turned pale and could not follow it unmoved.... there have been many plausible theories put forward by experts to account for the subsequent disaster, but for obvious reasons the real explanation can never progress beyond the realms of conjecture, for the _moloch_, instead of bending to the east, encircling folkestone and its suburbs, and descending again in the middle of shorncliffe camp, continued its unswerving line towards the coast of france, and never held communication with civilised man again. so exact was its course, however, that it was easy to trace its passage across europe. it reached boulogne about four o'clock in the afternoon, and was cheered vociferously under the pathetic impression that everything was going well. amiens saw it a little to the east in the fading light of evening, and a few early citizens of dijon marked it soon after dawn. its passage over the alps was accurately timed and noted at several points, and the italian frontier had a glimpse of it, very high up, it was recorded, at nightfall. a gentleman of ajaccio, travelling in the interior of the island, thought that he had seen it some time during the next day; and several tripoli greeks swore that it had passed a few yards above their heads a week later; but the testimony of the corsican was deemed the more reliable of the two. a relief expedition was subsequently sent out and traversed a great part of africa, but although the natives in the district around the albert nyanza repeatedly prostrated themselves and smacked their thighs vigorously--the tribal signs of fear and recognition--when shown a small working model of the _moloch_, no further trace was ever obtained of it. the accident had a curious sequel in the house of commons, which significantly illustrates how unexpected may be the ultimate developments of a chain of circumstance. it so happened that in addition to its complement of hands, the _moloch_ carried an assistant under-secretary to the board of agriculture. this gentleman, who had made entomology a lifelong study, was invaluable to his office, and the lamentable consequence of his absence was that when the president of the board rose the following night to answer a question respecting the importation of lady-birds to arrest an aphis plague then devastating the orchards of the country, he ingenuously displayed so striking an unfamiliarity with the subject that his resignation was demanded, the government discredited, and a dissolution forced. in particular, the hon. gentleman convulsed the house by referring throughout to lady-birds as "the female members of the various feathered tribes," and warmly defending their importation as the only satisfactory expedient in the circumstances. wynchley's suggestion remained on file for the next few years, and would doubtless have crumbled to dust unfruitfully had it not been for a trivial incident. a junior staff clerk, finding himself to be without matches one morning, and hesitating to mutilate the copy of--let us say, the official pink paper which he was reading at the moment, absent-mindedly tore a sheet haphazard from a bundle close at hand. as he lit his cigarette, the name of wynchley slocombe caught his eye and stirred a half-forgotten memory, for the unfortunate wynchley had been a stock jest in the past. herbert baedeker phipps now becomes a force in the history of aerial conquest. he smoothed out the paper from which he had only torn off a fragment, read the stirring "practise! practise!! practise!!!" (at least it has since been recognised to be stirring--stirring, inspired, and pulsating with the impassioned ardour of neglected genius), and pondered deeply to the accompaniment of three more cigarettes. was there anything in it? why could not people fly by means of artificial wings? there had been attempts; how did the enthusiasts begin? usually by precipitating themselves out of an upper window in the first flush of their self-confidence. they were killed, and wings fell into disfavour; but the same result would attend the unsophisticated novice who made his first essay in swimming by diving off a cliff into ten fathoms deep of water. here, even in a denser medium, was the admitted necessity for laborious practice before security was assured. phipps looked a step further. by nature man is ill-equipped for flying, whereas he possesses in himself all the requisites for successful propulsion through the water. yet he needs practice in water; more practice therefore in air. for thousands of years mankind has been swimming and thereby lightening the task for his descendants, to such an extent that in certain islands the children swim almost naturally, even before they walk; whereas, with the solitary exception of a certain fabled gentleman who made the attempt so successfully and attained such a height that the sun melted the wax with which he had affixed his wings (styckiton in convenient tubes not being then procurable), no man has ever flown. more, more practice. the very birds themselves, phipps remembered, first require parental coaching in the art, while aquatic creatures and even the amphibia take to that element with developed faculties from their birth. still more need of practice for ungainly man. here, he was convinced, lay the whole secret of failure and possible success. "practise! practise!! practise!!!" the last word was with wynchley slocombe. chapter iii the million to one chance so wings came--to stay, every one admitted, although most people complained that after all flying was not so wonderful when one could do it as they thought it would have been. for at the first glance the popular fancy had inclined towards pinning on a pair of gauzy appendages and soaring at once into empyrean heights with the spontaneity of a lark, or of lightly fluttering from point to point with the ease and grace of a butterfly. they found that a pair of wings cost rather more than a high-grade bicycle, and that the novice who could struggle from the stage into a net placed twenty yards away, after a month's course of daily practices, was held to be very promising. there was no more talk of england lying at the mercy of any and every invader; for one man, and one only, had so far succeeded in crossing even the channel, and that at its narrowest limit. for at least three years after the conversion of phipps the generality of people gleaned their knowledge of the progress of flying from the pages of the comic papers. to the comic papers wings had been sent as an undiluted blessing. but if alatics, in their infancy, did not come up to the wider expectation, there were many who found in it a novel and exhilarating sport. there were also those who, discovering something congenial in the new force, set quietly and resolutely to work to develop its possibilities and to raise it above the level of a mere fashionable novelty. there have always been some, a few, not infrequently englishmen, who have unostentatiously become pre-eminent in every development of science with a fixity of purpose. their names rarely appear in the pages of history, but they largely write it. hastings permitted mixed flying. it was a question that had embittered many a town council. to one section it seemed intolerable that a father, a husband, or a brother should be torn for twenty minutes from the side of his female relatives; to the opposing section it seemed horrible that coatless men should be allowed to spread their wings within a hundred and fifty yards of shoeless women. "i have no particular convictions," one prominent citizen remarked, "but in view of the existing railway facilities it is worth while considering whether we shall have any visitors at all this season if we stand in the way of families flying down together." the humour of the age was flowing mordaciously, even as the wit of france had done little more than a century before. the readiest jests carried a tang, whether turning upon personal poverty, municipal extravagance, or national incapacity. opinion being evenly divided, the local rate of seventeen shillings in the pound influenced the casting vote in favour of mixed flying. there were necessary preparations, including a captive balloon in which an ancient mariner, decked out with a pair of wings like a superannuated cupid, was posted to render assistance to the faltering. the rates at once rose to seventeen shillings and sixpence, but the principle of the enterprise was admitted to be sound. so on this pleasant summer afternoon--an ideal day for a fly, said every one--the heights above the old town were echoing to the ceaseless gaiety of the watching crowd, for alatics had not yet ceased to be a novelty, while the air above was cleft by a hundred pairs of beating wings. "a remarkable sight," said an old man who had opened conversation with the sociable craving of the aged; "ten years ago we little expected this." "why, no," replied his chance acquaintance on the seat; "if i remember rightly, the tendency was all towards a combination either of a balloon and a motor-car or of a submarine and a band-box." "you don't fly yourself?" the young man--and he was a stalwart enough youth--looked at himself critically as if mentally picturing the effect of a pair of wings upon his person. "well, no," he replied; "one doesn't get the time for practice. then consider the price of the things. and the annual licence--oh, they won't let you forget _that_, i assure you. well, is it worth it?" the old man shook his head in harmonious agreement; decidedly for him it was not worth it. "perhaps you are in somerset house?" he remarked tentatively. it is not the young who are curious; they have the fascinating study of themselves. "not exactly," replied the other, veiling by this diplomatic ambiguity an eminent firm of west end drapers; "but i happen to have rather exceptional chances of knowing what is going on behind the scenes in london. i can assure you, sir, that in spite of the last sixpence on the income-tax and the hen-roost tax, the chancellor of the exchequer has sent out stringent orders to whip up every penny in the hope of lessening a serious deficit." "there may possibly be a deficit," admitted the old man with bland assurance; "but what do a few millions, either one way or the other, matter to a country with our inexhaustible resources? we are certainly passing through a period of financial depression, but the unfailing lesson of the past has been that a cycle of bad years is inevitably followed by a cycle of good years, and in the competition with foreign countries our advantage of free trade ensures our pre-eminence." for it is a mistake now to ascribe optimism to youth. those youths have by this time grown up into old men. age is the optimist because it has seen so many things "come right," so many difficulties "muddled through." also because they who would have been pessimistic old men have worried themselves into early graves. your unquenchable optimist needs no pill to aid digestion. "then," he concluded, "why trouble yourself unnecessarily on a beautiful day like this!" "oh, it doesn't trouble me," laughed the other man; "at least the deficit doesn't; nor the income-tax, i regret to say. but i rather kick at ten per cent. on my season ticket and a few other trifles when i consider that there used to be better national value without them. and i rather think that most others have had about enough of it." "patience, patience; you are a young man yet. look round. i don't think i ever saw the grass greener for the time of the year, and in my front garden i noticed only to-day that the syringa is out a full week earlier than i can remember.... eh! what is it? which way? where?" the clerk was on his feet suddenly, and standing on the seat. every one was standing up, and all in a common impulse were pointing to the sky. some--women--screamed as they stood and watched, but after a gasp of horrified surprise, like a cry of warning cut short because too late, the mingling noises of the crowd seemed to shrink away in a breath. every one had read of the sickening tragedies of broken cross-rods or of sudden loss of wing-power--ærolanguisis it was called--and one was taking place before their eyes. high up, very high at first, and a little to the east, a female figure was cleaving headlong through the air, and beyond all human power to save. so one would have said; so every one indeed assumed; and when a second later another figure crossed their range it only heralded a double tragedy. it drew a gasp ... a gasp that lingered, spun out long and turned to one loud, tumultuous shout. the next minute men were shouting incoherently, dancing wildly, shaking hands with all and any, and expressing frantic relief in a hundred frantic ways. thus makes his timely entry into this chronicle gatacre stobalt, and reviewing the progress of flying as it then immaturely stood, it is not too much to say that no other man could have turned that tragedy. with an instinctive judgment of time, distance, angle, and his own powers, stobalt, from a hundred feet above, had leapt as a diver often leaps as he leaves the plank, and with rigid outstretched wings was dropping earthward on all but a plummet line. it was the famous "razor-edge" stroke at its narrowest angle, the delight of strong and daring fliers, the terror of those who watched beneath. it may be realised by ascending to the highest point of st paul's and contemplating a dive into the flooded churchyard. the moment was a classic one in the history of the wing. the air had claimed its victims as the waters have; and there was a legitimate pride, since the enterprise was no longer foolhardy, that they had never been withheld. but never before had a rescue been effected beyond the limits of the nets; it was not then deemed practicable and the axiom of the sport "a broken wing is a broken neck," so far held good. yet here was a man, no novice in the art, deliberately pointing sheer to earth on a line that must bring him, if unswervingly maintained, into contact with the falling girl beneath. up to that point the attempt would have been easy if daring, beyond it nothing but the readiest self-possession and the most consummate skill could avert an irretrievable disaster to himself. * * * * * "you have not even had the curiosity to ask if i am hurt yet." her voice certainly was. "x = - {c^ } {x^ }," murmured stobalt abstractedly. "i assure you," he explained, leaving the higher mathematics at her reproach, "that i had quite satisfied myself that you were not.... it all turns on the extra tension thrown on the crank by the additional three feathers. i am convinced that english makers have gone as far as they safely can in that direction." he glanced at her wings as he mused. they were of the familiar detached feather--or "venetian blind," as it was commonly called--pattern, and wonderfully graceful in their long sweep and elegant poise. made of the purest white celluloid, just tinted with a delicate and deepening pink at the base, they harmonised with her sea-green costume as faultlessly as the lily with the leaves it springs from. stobalt himself used the more difficult but much more powerful "bat" shape, built up of gold-beaters' skin; he had already folded them in rest, but in those early days the prudish conventions of the air debarred the girl from seeking a like repose. "i should certainly discard the three outside feathers," he summed up. "i shall certainly discard the whole thing," she replied. "i do not know which felt the worse--being killed or being saved." he made a gesture that would seem to say that the personal details of the adventure were better dismissed. he was plainly a man of few words, but the mechanical defect still held his interest. "one understands that a brave man always dislikes being thanked," she continued a little nervously; "and, indeed, what can i say to thank you? you have saved my life, and i know that it must have been at a tremendous risk to yourself." "i think," he said, "that the sooner you forget the incident.... that and the removal of those three feathers." his gestures were deliberate and the reverse of vivacious, but when he glanced up and moved a hand, it at once conveyed to the girl that in his opinion nothing else need stand in the way of her recovered powers and confidence. "and there is," she said timidly, "nothing?" precisely what there might be had not occurred to her satisfactorily. "nothing," he said, without the air of being heroic in his generosity. "unless," he added, "you care to promise that you will not let----" he stopped with easy self-possession and turned enquiringly to a man in some official dress who had suddenly appeared in the glade. "have you a licence?" demanded the official, ignoring stobalt and addressing himself in a style that at one time would have been deemed objectionably abrupt, to the lady. he was in point of fact a policeman, and from a thong on his wrist swung a truncheon, while the butt of a revolver showed at his belt. he wore no number or identifying mark, for it had long since been agreed that it must be objectionable to their finer feelings to treat policemen as though they were--one cannot say convicts, for a sympathetic home secretary had already discontinued the numbering of convicts on the ground that it created a state of things "undistinguishable from slavery," though not really slavery--but as though they were railway bridges or district council lamp-posts. "treat a man as a dog, and he becomes a dog," had been the invincible argument of the band of humanitarians who had introduced what was known as the "get-up-when-you-like-and-have-what-you-want" system of prison discipline, and "treat a man as a lamp-post, and he becomes a lamp-post," had been the logical standpoint of the amalgamated union of policemen and plain clothes detectives. "yes," replied the girl, and her voice had not quite that agreeable intonation that members of the force usually hear from the lips of fair young ladies nowadays. "do you wish to see it?" "what else should i ask you if you had one for?" he demanded with the innate boorishness of the heavy-witted man. "of course i want to see it." she opened the little bag that hung from her girdle and handed him a paper without a word. "muriel ursula percy sleigh hampden?" it would be idle to pretend that the names pleased him, or that he tried to veil his contempt. "yes," she replied. he indicated his private disbelief--or possibly merely took a ready means of exercising his authority in a way that he knew to be offensive--by producing a small tin box from one of his pockets and passing it to her without any explanation. the requirement was so universal in practice, however, that no explanation was necessary, for the signature, as the chief mark of identification, had long been superseded by the simpler and more effective thumb-sign. miss hampden made a slight grimace when she saw the condition of the soft wax which the box contained, but she obediently pressed it with her thumb and passed it back again. as her licence bore another thumb-sign, stamped in pigment, it was only necessary for the constable to compare the two (a process simplified by the superimposing glass, a contrivance not unlike a small opera-glass with converging tubes) in order to satisfy himself at once whether the marks were the impress of the same thumb. apparently they were, for with a careless "right-o," he proceeded on his way, swinging his truncheon with an easy grace, and occasionally striking off the end of an overhanging branch. "i wonder," said stobalt, when at length the zealous officer had quite disappeared in search of other fields for tactful activity, "i wonder if you are a daughter of sir john hampden?" "yes," she replied, looking at him with renewed interest. "his only daughter. do you know my father?" he shook his head. "i have been away, but we see the papers sometimes," he said. "the sir john i mean," he explained, as though the point were a matter of some moment, "was a few years ago regarded as the one man who might unite our parties and save the position." "there is only one sir john hampden," she replied. "but it was too late." "oh yes," he admitted vaguely, dismissing the subject. both were silent for a few minutes; it might be noticed that people often became thoughtful when they spoke of the past in those years. indeed, an optimist might almost have had some ground for believing that a thinking era had begun. when he spoke again it was with something of an air of constraint. "you asked me just now if there was--anything. well, i have since thought----" "yes?" she said encouragingly. "i have thought that i should like to meet your father. i hear everywhere that he is the most inaccessible man in london; but perhaps if you could favour me with a line of introduction----" "oh yes," she exclaimed gladly. "i am sure that he would wish to thank you. i will write to-morrow." "i have paper and a pencil here," he suggested. "i have been a sailor," he added, as though that simple statement explained an omnipercipient resourcefulness; as perhaps it did. "if you prefer it," she said, accepting the proffered stationery. it did not make the least difference, she told herself, but this business-like expedition chilled her generous instincts. "i leave for town to-night," was all he vouchsafed. for a few minutes she wrote in silence, while he looked fixedly out to sea. "what name am i to write, please?" she asked presently. "oh, salt--george salt," he replied in a matter-of-fact voice, and without turning his head. "is it 'mr salt,' or 'captain,' or----?" "just 'mr,' please. and"--his voice fell a little flat in spite of himself, but he did not meet her eyes--"and would it be too much if i asked you to mention the circumstances under which we met?" she bent a little lower over the paper in a shame she could not then define. "i will not fail to let my father know how heroic you have been, and to what an extent we are indebted to you," she replied dispassionately. "thank you." suddenly he turned with an arresting gesture, and impulsive speech trembled on his tongue. but the sophistries of explanation, apology, self-extenuation, were foreign to the nature of this strong keen-featured man, whose grey and not unkindly eyes had gained their tranquil depth from long intercourse with sea and sky--those two masters who teach the larger things of life. the words were never spoken, his arm fell down again, and the moment passed. "i have never," he was known to say with quiet emphasis in later years, "regretted silence. i have never given way to an impulse and spoken hastily without regretting speech." the london evening papers were being cried in the streets of the old cinque port as "george salt" walked to the station a few hours later. a general election was drawing to its desultory close, but the results seemed to excite curiously little interest among the well-dressed, leisured class that filled the promenades. it was a longer sweep of the pendulum than had ever been anticipated in the days when politics were more or less the pastime of the rich, and the working classes neither understood nor cared to understand them--only understood that whatever else happened nothing ever came their way. the man who had been a sailor bought two papers of very different views, the _pall mall gazette_ and the orthodox labour organ called _the masses_. neither rejoiced, but to despair _the masses_ added a note of ingenuous surprise as it summarised the contest as a whole. this was how the matter stood: position of parties at the dissolution labour members socialists liberals unionists party gains socialist gains moderate labour gains imperial party gains position of parties in the new parliament socialists moderate labour party (all groups) combined imperial party (liberals and unionists) (the above returns do not include the orkney and shetland islands.) socialist majority over all possible combinations there is no need to trace the development of political events leading up to this position. it lends itself to summary. the labour party had come into power by pointing out to voters of the working classes that its members were their brothers, and promising them a great deal of property belonging to other people and a good many privileges which they vehemently denounced in every other class. when in power they had thrown open the doors of election to one and all. the socialist party had come into power by pointing out to voters of the working classes that its members were even more their brothers, and promising them a still larger share of other people's property (some, indeed, belonging to the more prosperous of the labour representatives then in office) and still greater privileges. yet the editor of _the masses_ was both pained and surprised at the result. chapter iv the compact a strong man and a prominent politician, sir john hampden had occupied the unfamiliar position in parliament of belonging to no party. to no party, that is, as the term had then been current in english politics; for, more discerning than most of his contemporaries, he had foreseen the obliteration of the existing boundaries and the phenomenal growth of purely class politics even in the old century. it was, he recognised, to be that development of the franchise with which the world was later to become tolerably familiar: civil war on constitutional lines. his warnings fell on very stony ground. the powers that had never yet prepared for war abroad until the enemy had comfortably occupied all the strategic points, lest they should wound some wily protesting old gentleman's susceptibilities, were scarcely likely to take time by the forelock--or even by a hind fetlock, to enlarge the comparison--at home. while the labour party was bringing pressure upon the government of the day to grant an extension of suffrage that made labour the master of eight out of every ten constituencies, the two great classical parties were quarrelling vehemently whether £ should be spent upon a sanatorium at hai yang and £ , , upon a dockyard at pittiescottie, or £ , , upon a dockyard at hai yang and £ upon a sanatorium at pittiescottie. when it is added that the labour party was definitely pledged to the inauguration of universal peace by declining to go to war on any provocation, and looked towards wholesale disarmament as the first means of economy on attaining office, the cataclysmal humour of the situation becomes apparent. they attained office, as it has been seen, thanks largely to the great liberal party whom they succeeded. the great liberal party, like the editor of _the masses_ some years later, was pained and surprised at this ingratitude. the great liberal party had never contemplated such a development, and through thick and thin had insisted upon regarding the labour party as its ally, notwithstanding the fact that the "ally" had always laughed uproariously at the "alliance," and had pleasantly announced its intention of strewing westminster with the wreckage of all existing capitalistic parties when once it was strong enough to do so. little wonder that that great liberal administration was destined to pass down to future ages as the "house of pathetic fools." posterity adjudicated that no greater example of servile fatuousness could be produced. this was unjust, for on th june , louis xvi., certainly, let it be admitted, harder pressed, had accepted a red "cap of liberty," and putting it on in obedience to the command of the "extreme party" of his time, had bowed right and left with ingratiating friendliness, while a labour gentleman, bearing upon a pike a raw cow's heart labelled "the heart of an aristocrat," roared out, with his twenty thousand friends, an amused approval. it was out of the material of the two great traditional parties that sir john hampden tried to create his "class" coalition to meet the new conditions. the spectacle of working men suddenly dropping party differences and merging into a solid phalanx of labour was before their eyes, but the tories were disintegrated and inert, the whigs self-satisfied and cock-sure. the years of grace--just so many years as sir john was before his contemporaries--passed. then came a brief period, desperate indeed, but not hopeless, while something might yet be done; but the leaders of the historical parties were waiting for some happy chance by which they might retract and yet preserve their dignity. it was during this crisis that the party whose idea of dignity was symbolised by the escort of a brass band on a green-grocer's cart, abolished the house of lords, suspended the naval programme, and confiscated all ecclesiastical landed property. panic reigned, but there could be no appeal, for the party in power had never concealed their aims and aspirations, and now that they had been returned, they were only carrying out their promises. that is putting their position so mildly as to be almost unjust. they were, indeed, among political parties the only one immaculate and beyond reproach. all others had trimmed and whittled, promised and recalled, sworn and forsworn, till political assurances were emptier than libertines' vows. the socialists had nailed their manifesto to the mast, and no man could charge them with duplicity. on every platform from caithness to cornwall they had stood openly and declared: we are the enemies to capital; we are at war with society as it is at present constituted; we are for the forcible distribution of wealth, however come by, the abolition of class distinctions, and the levelling of humanity, with the unskilled labourer as the ideal standard. "good fellows all," had, in effect, declared their liberal "allies," "and they do not really mean that--not phraseologically accurately, that is. we go in for a little, say, serpent-charming ourselves at election times, and when these excellent men are in parliament the refining influence of the surroundings will tone them down wonderfully, and they will turn out thoroughly moderate and conciliatory members." "don't you make any error about that, comrades," the socialistic-labour candidates had replied; and with a candour unparalleled in the history of electioneering they had not merely hinted this or said it among themselves, but had freely and honourably proclaimed it to the four winds. "if you like to help us just now that's your affair, and we are quite willing to profit by it. but if you knew what you were doing, you would go home and all have the nightmare." "so naïve!" smiled the great liberal party. "suppose they have to talk like that at present to please the unemployed." then came the deluge. sir john hampden could have every section of the middle and upper class political parties to lead if he so deigned, but wherever else he might lead them there was no possible hope of it being to st. stephen's. it was, as his daughter had said, then too late. labour members of one complexion or another had captured three-quarters of the constituencies, and there was not the slightest chance of ousting them. so it came about that in less than a decade from the first alarm, the extremity of the patriot's hope was that in perhaps twenty years' time, when the country was reduced to bankruptcy and the position of a third class power, and when there was no more property to confiscate in the interest of the working class voter, a popular rising or a foreign invasion might again place a responsible administration in power. but in the meantime the organisations of the old parties fell to pieces, the parties themselves ceased to be powers, their leaders were half forgotten. sir john hampden might still be a rallying point if he raised a standard in a time of renewed hope, but there was no hope, and sir john was reported to have broken his staff, drowned his books, and cut himself off from politics in the bitterness of his indignation and impotent despair. it was in something very like this mood that george salt found him, and it was an issue of the mood that would have made him inaccessible to a less resourceful man. day after day he had denied himself to his old associates, and little disappointed hucksters who were anxious to betray their party for their conscience' sake--provided there was a definite offer of a more lucrative position in a new party--vainly shadowed his doorway with ready-made cabals in their pocket-books. but the man who had been a sailor and spoke few words had an air that carried where fluency and self-assurance failed. even then, almost at his first words, sir john would have closed the subject, definitely and without discussion. "politics do not concern me, mr salt," he said, rising, with an angry flash in the eyes whose fighting light gave the lie to the story of abandoned hope. "if that is your business you have reached me by a subterfuge." "having reached you," replied salt, unmoved, "will you allow me to put my suggestions before you?" "i have no doubt that they are interesting," replied the baronet, falling into smooth indifference, "but, as you may see, i am exclusively devoted to euplexoptera now." it might be true, for the table before him was covered with specimens, scientific instruments and entomological works, while not even a single newspaper betrayed an interest in the day; but a world of bitterness smouldered beneath his half-scornful admission. "if," he continued in the same vein, "you have an idea for an effective series of magic lantern slides, you will find the offices of the union of imperial agencies in whitehall." the first act to which the new government was pledged was the evacuation of egypt, and the mighty counterblast from the headquarters of the remnant of the great opposing organisation was, it should be explained, a travelling magic lantern van, designed to satisfy rural voters as to the present happy condition of the fellahin! "possibly you would hardly complain that i am not prepared to go far enough," replied the visitor. "but in order to discuss that, i must have your serious attention." "i have already expressed myself," replied sir john formally. "i am not interested." "if you will hear me out and then repeat that, i will go," urged salt with desperate calmness. "yet i have thrown up the profession of my life because i hold that there is a certain remedy. and i have come a hundred miles to-night to offer it to you: for you are the man. realise that i am vitally concerned." "i am very sorry," replied sir john courteously, but without the faintest encouragement, "but the matter is beyond me. leave me, and try some younger, less disillusionised man." "there is no other man who will serve my purpose." sir john stared hard, as well he might: others had not been in the habit of appealing to him to serve their purposes. "you are the natural leader of our classes. you alone can inspire them; you alone have the authority to call them to any effort." "i have been invited to lead a hundred forlorn hopes," replied sir john. "a dozen years--nine years--aye, perhaps even six years ago any one of them might have been sufficient. now--i have my earwigs. good night, mr salt." the dismissal was so unmistakably final that the most stubborn persistence could scarcely ignore it. mr salt rose, but only to approach the table by which sir john was standing. "i wished to have you with me on the bare merits of my plan," he said in a low voice, "but you would not. but you shall save england in spite of your dead heart. read this letter." for a moment it seemed doubtful how hampden would take so brusque a demand. another second and he might have imperiously ordered salt to leave the house, when his eyes fell with a start upon the writing thrust before him, and taking the letter in his hand he read it through, read it twice. "little fool!" he said, so low that it sounded tenderly; "poor little fool!" then aloud: "am i to understand that you have saved my daughter's life?" "yes," replied george salt, and even the tropical sunburn could not cover his hot shame. "at great personal risk to yourself?" again the reply was, "yes," without an added word. "why did you not let me know of this before?" "does that matter now?" it had been his master card, but a very humiliating one to play throughout: to trade upon that moment's instinctive heroism, to assert his bravery, to apprise it at its worth, and to claim a fit return. "no," admitted sir john with intuition, "i don't suppose it does. the position then is, that instead of exchanging the usual compliments applicable to the occasion, i express my gratitude by listening to your views on the political situation? and further," he continued, with the same gentle air of irony, accepting salt's silent acquiescence, "that i proceed to liquidate my obligation fully by identifying myself with a scheme which you have in your pocket for averting national disaster?" "no," replied salt sharply. "that is for you to accept or reject unconditionally on your own judgment." "very well. i am entirely at your service now." "in the first place, then, i ask you to admit that a state of civil war morally exists, and that the only possible hope for our existence lies in adopting the methods of covert civil war to secure our ends." "admit! good god! i have been shrieking it into deaf ears for half my life, it seems," cried sir john, suddenly stirred despite himself. "they called me the phantom storm-petrel--'wolf-cry' hampden, heaven knows what not--through an entire decade. admit! go on, mr salt. i accept your first clause more easily than lord stirling swallowed socialistic amendments to his own bills, and that is saying a great deal." "then," continued salt, taking a bundle of papers from an inner pocket and selecting a docket of half a dozen typewritten sheets from it, "i propose for your acceptance the following plan of campaign." he looked round the littered desk for a vacant space on which to lay the document. with an impetuous movement of his arm sir john swept books, trays, and insects into one chaotic heap, and spreading the summary before him plunged into it forthwith. chapter v the downtrodden "kumreds," announced mr tubes with winning familiarity, "i may say now and once and for all that you've thoroughly convinced _me_ of the justice of your claims. but that isn't saying that the thing's as good as done, so don't go slinging it broadcast in the next pub you come to. there's our good kumred the chancellor of the exchequer to be taken into account, and while i'm about it let me tell you straight that these cabinet jobs, whether at twenty, fifty, or a hundred quid a week, aren't the softest things going, as some of you chaps seem to imagine." "swap you, mate, then," called out a facetious l. & n. w. fireman. "yus, and throw the missis and kids into the bargain. call it a deal?" in his modest little house the right hon. james tubes, m.p., secretary of state for the home department, was receiving a deputation. success, said his friends, had not spoiled him; others admitted that success had not changed him. from the time of his first appearance in parliament he had been dubbed "honest jim" (perhaps a somewhat empty compliment in view of the fact that every labour constituency had barbed unconscious satire at its own expense by distinguishing its representative as "honest" tom, dick, or harry), and after his elevation to cabinet rank he still remained honest. more to the point, because more apparent, he remained unpretentious. it is true that he ceased to wear, as a personal concession to the prime minister, by whose side he sat, the grimy coal miner's suit in which he had first appeared in the house to the captivating of all hearts; but, more fortunate than caractacus, he escaped envy by continuing to occupy his humble villa in kilburn. the expenses of a cabinet minister, even in a socialist government, must inevitably be heavier than those of a private member, but this admirable man illustrated the uselessness of riches by continuing to live frugally but comfortably upon a tenth of his official income. according to intimate rumour he prudently invested the superfluous nine-tenths against a rainy day in the gilt-edged securities of countries where socialism was least rampant. mr tubes never refused to see a deputation, and when their views had been laid before him it was rare indeed that he was not able to declare a warm personal interest in their objects. true, he could not always undertake to carry their recommendations into effect; as a minister he could not always express official approval of them, but they were rarely sent away without the moral support of that wink which is proverbially as significant as a more compromising form of agreement. whether the particular expression of the great voice of the people was in the direction of the state adoption of zulu orphans, or the compulsory removal of park palings from around private estates, the deputation could always go away with the inward satisfaction that however his words might read to outsiders on the morrow, they knew that as a man and a comrade, he, jim tubes, was with them heart and soul. "it costs nothing," he was wont to remark broad-mindedly to his home circle--referring, of course, to his own sympathetic attitude; for some of the ingenuous proposals which he countenanced were found in practice to prove very costly indeed--"and who knows what may happen next?" but on this occasion, as far as compliance lay within his power, there had been no need for mental reservation. the railway-men had been patient under capitalistic oppression in the past; they were convincing now in argument; and they were moderate in their demands for the future. it was no "væ victis!" that these sturdy wearers of green corduroy trousers held out to their employers, but a cheery "come now, mates. fair does and we'll mess along somehow till the next strike." mr drugget, m.p., introduced the deputation. it consisted of railway workers of all the lower grades with the exception of clerks. after many ineffectual attempts to get clerks to enter the existing labour ring, it had been seriously proposed by the labour wirepullers (who loved them in spite of their waywardness, and would have saved them, and their votes and their weekly contribution, from themselves) that they should form a union of their own in conjunction with shop assistants and domestic servants. when the clerks (of whom the majority employed domestic servants directly or indirectly in their homes or in their lodgings) laughed slightly at the proposal; when the shop assistants smiled self-consciously, and when the domestic servants giggled openly, the promoters of this amusing triple alliance cruelly left them to their fate thenceforward, pettishly declaring that all three were a set of snobs--a designation which they impartially applied to every class of society except their own, and among themselves to every minute subdivision of labour except the one which they adorned. it devolved upon a rising young "greaser" in the service of the great northern to explain, as spokesman, the object of the visit. under the existing unfair conditions the directors of the various companies were elected at large salaries by that unnecessary and parasitic group, the shareholders, while the workmen--the true creators of every penny of income--had no direct hand in the management of affairs. when they wished to approach the chief authorities it was necessary for them to send delegates from their union, who were frequently kept waiting ten minutes in an ante-room; and although of late years their demands were practically always conceded without demur, the position was anomalous and humiliating. what seemed only reasonable to them, then, was that they should have the right to elect an equal number of directors from among themselves, who should sit on the board with the other directors, have equal powers, and receive similar salaries. "to be, in fact, your permanent deputation to the board," suggested the home secretary. "that's it--with powers," replied the g. n. man. "there'll be some soft jobs going--then," murmured a shunter, who was getting on in years, reflectively. "no need for the missis to take in young men lodgers if you get one, eh, bill?" said his neighbour jocosely. whether it was the extreme unlikelihood of his ever being made a director, or some other deeper cause, the secret history of the period does not say, but bill turned upon his innocent friend in a very aggressive mood. "what d'yer mean--young men lodgers?" he demanded warmly. "what call have you to bring that up? come now!" "why, mate," expostulated the offending one mildly, "no one said anything to give any offence. what's the 'arm? your missis does take in lodgers, same as plenty more, don't she? well, then!" "i can take a 'int along the lines as well as any other," replied bill darkly. "it's gone far enough between pals. see? i never said anything about your sister leaving that there laundry, did i? never, i didn't." "and what about it if you did?" demanded the neighbour, growing hot in his turn. "i should think you'd have enough----" "gentlemen, gentlemen," expostulated the glib young spokesman, as the voices rose above the conversational whisper, "let us have absolute unanimity, if _you_ please--expressed in the usual way, by all saying nothing together." "wha's matter with bill?" murmured the next delegate with polite curiosity. "seems to me the little man is troubled with his teef," replied the unfortunate cause of the ill-feeling, with smouldering passion. "strike me if he isn't. ah!" and seeing the impropriety of relieving his feelings in the usual way in a cabinet minister's private study, he relapsed into bitter silence. mr tubes having expressed his absolute approval of this detail of the programme, the second point was explained. why, it was demanded, should the provisions of the employers' liability act apply only to the hours during which a man was at work? furthermore, why should they apply only to accidents? supposing, said mr william mulch, the spokesman in question, that a bloke went out in a social way among his friends, as any bloke might, caught the small-pox, and got laid up for life with after-effects, or died? or suppose the bloke, after sweating through a day's work, went home dog-tired to his miserable hovel, and broke his leg falling over the carpet, or poisoned his hand opening a tin of sardines? they looked to the present government to extend the working of the act so as to cover the disablement or death of employés from every cause whatever, natural death included, and wherever they might be at the time. under the present unfair and artificial conditions of labour, the work-people were nothing but the slaves and chattels of capitalists, and it was manifestly unfair that the latter should escape their responsibilities after exploiting a man's labour for their own greedy ends, simply because he happened to die of hydrophobia or senile decay, or because the injury that disabled him was received outside the foetid, insanitary den where in exchange for a bare sordid pittance his flesh was ground from his bones for eight hours daily. the right hon. gentleman expressed his entire concurrence with this provision also, and roused considerable enthusiasm by mentioning that some time ago he had independently arrived at the conclusion that such a clause was urgently required. before the next point was considered, comrade tintwistle asked permission to say a few words. he explained that he had no intention of introducing a discordant note. on the contrary, he heartily supported the proposal as far as it went, but--and here he wished to say that though he only voiced the demands of a minority, it was a large, a growing, and a noisy minority--it did not go far enough. the contention of those he represented was that the responsibility of employers ought to extend to the wives and families of their work-people. many a poor comrade was sadly harassed by having to keep a crippled child who would never be a bread-winner, or an ailing wife who was incapable of looking after his home comfort properly. they were fighting over again the battle that they had won in the matter of free meals for school children. it had taken years to convince people that it was equally necessary that children who did not happen to be attending school should have meals provided for them, and even more necessary to see that their mothers should be well nourished; it had taken even longer to arrive at the logical conclusion that if free meals were requisite, free clothes were not a whit less necessary. no one nowadays doubted the soundness of that policy, yet here they were again timorously contemplating half-measures, while the insatiable birds of prey who sucked their blood laughed in their sleeve at the spectacle of the british working men hiding their heads ostrich-like in the shifting quicksand of a fool's paradise. the signs of approval that greeted this proposal showed clearly enough that other members of the deputation had sympathetic leanings towards the larger policy of the minority. mr tubes himself more than hinted at the possibility of a personal conversion in the near future. "in the meantime," he remarked, "everything is on your side. your position is logical, moderate, and just. all can admit that, although we may not all exactly agree as to whether the time is ripe for the measure. with every temptation to wipe off some of the arrears of injustice of the past, we must not go so far as to kill the goose that lays the golden egg." "how do you make that out?" demanded an unsophisticated young signalman. "it's the work of the people that produces every penny that circulates." "oh, just so," replied tubes readily. "that is the real point of the story. it was the grains of corn that made the eggs, and the goose did nothing but sit and lay them. we must always have our geese." he turned to the subject in hand again with a laugh, and approved a few more modest suggestions for abolishing "privileges." "the last point," continued the spokesman, "is one that closely concerns the principles that we all profess. i refer to the obsolete and humiliating anachronism that with a government pledged to the maintenance of social equality in office, at any hour of the day, at practically every railway station throughout the land you will still see trains subdivided as regards designation and accommodation into first, second, and third classes. it is a distinction which to us, as the representatives of the so-called third class, is nothing more or less than insulting. why should me and my missis when we travel be compelled to sit where the accidents generally happen and have to put up with eighteen in a compartment, when smug clerks and saucy ladies' maids, who are no better than us, enjoy the comparative luxury of only fifteen in a compartment away from the collisions, and snide financiers and questionable duchesses, who are certainly a good deal worse, sit in padded rooms, well protected front and rear, and never know what it is to be packed more than six a-side? if that isn't class distinction i should like to know what is. it isn't--gawd help us!--that we wish to mix with these people, or that we envy their position or covet their wealth. such motives have never entered into the calculations of those who have been foremost in socialistic propaganda. but as thoughtful and self-respecting units of an integral community we object to being segregated by the imposition of obsolete and arbitrary barriers, we do resent the artificial creation of social grades, and we regard with antagonism and distrust the unjust accumulation of labour-created wealth in the hands of the idle and incapable few. "but if this is the standpoint of the great mass of the democracy, to us of the amalgamated unions of railway workers and permanent way staffs the invidious distinction has a closer significance. as ordinary citizens our sense of equality is outraged by the demarcations i have referred to; but as our work often places us in a temporary subordination to the occupants of these so-called first and second classes, whom we despise intellectually and resent economically, we incur the additional stigma of having to render them an external deference which we recognise to be obsolete and servile. the arden and avon valley case, which earned the martyrdom of dismissal for william jukson and ultimately involved forty thousand of us in a now historic strike, simply because that heroic man categorically refused to the doddering duke of pentarlington any other title than the honourable appellation of 'comrade,' is doubtless still fresh within your minds. we lost on that occasion through insufficiency of funds, but the ducal portmanteau over which william jukson took his memorable stand, will yet serve as a rallying point to a more successful issue." mr mulch paused for approbation, which was not stinted, but before he could resume, a passionate little man who had been rising to a more exalted state of fervour with every demand, suddenly hurled himself like a human wedge into the forefront of the proceedings. "kumrids!" he exclaimed, breathless from the first, "with your kind permission i would say a few words embodying a suggestion which, though not actually included in the agenda, is quite in 'armony with the subject before us." "won't it keep?" suggested a tired delegate hopefully. "the suggestion is briefly this," continued the little man, far too enthusiastic to notice any interruption, "that as a tribute to william jukson's sterling determination and as a perpetual reminder of the issues raised, we forthwith add to the banners of the amalgamated unions one bearing an allegorical design consisting of two emblematic figures struggling for the possession of a leather portmanteau with the words 'no surrender!' beneath. the whole might be made obvious to a person of the meanest intelligence by the inscription 'a. and a. v. ry. test case. w. j. upholds the principles of social democracy and vindicates the people's rights,' running round." "why should he be running round?" asked a slow-witted member of the deputation. "who running round?" demanded the last speaker, amenable to outside influence now that he had said his say. "william jukson. didn't you say he was to be on this banner vindicating the people's rights running round? he stood there on the platform, man to man, so i've always heard." the redoubtable jukson's champion cast a look of ineffable contempt upon his simple brother and made a gesture expressive of despair. "that's all," he said, and sat down. mr mulch resumed his interrupted innings. "the suggestion will doubtless receive attention if submitted through the proper channels," he remarked a little coldly. it was one thing to take the indomitable jukson under his own ægis; quite another to countenance his canonisation at a period when strenuous candidates were more numerous than remunerative niches. "but to revert to the subject in hand from which we have strayed somewhat. it only remains for me to say that all artificial distinctions between class and class are distasteful to the people at large, detestable to the powerful unions on whose behalf we are here to-day, and antagonistic to the interests of the community. we confidently look, therefore, to the present government to put an end to a state of things that is inconsistent with the maintenance of practical socialism." towards this proposal, also, mr tubes turned a friendly ear, but he admitted that in practice his sympathies must be purely platonic, for the time at least. in truth, the revenue yielded by the taxation of first and second class tickets was so considerable that it could not be ignored. many people adopted the third class rather than suffer the exaction, and the receipts of all the railway companies in the kingdom fell considerably--to the great delight of that large section of the socialistic party that had not yet begun to think. but the majority of the wealthy still paid the price, and not a few among the weak, aged, and timorous, among children, old men, and ladies, were driven to the superior classes which they could ill afford by the increased difficulty of finding a seat elsewhere, and by the growing truculence of the workmen who were thrust upon them in the thirds. for more than a decade it had been observed that when a seat in tram or train was at stake the age of courtesy was past, but a new burke, listening to the conversation of those around, might too frequently have cause to think that the age of decency had faded also. another development, contributing to the maintenance of the higher classes, was the fact that one was as heavily mulcted if he turned to any of the other forms of more exclusive travelling. private carriages of all kinds were the butt of each succeeding budget, even bicycles (unless owned by workmen) were not exempt; and so heavily was the chancellor's hand laid upon motor cars (except such as were the property of members of parliament) that even the marquis of kingsbery was satisfied, and withdrew his threat to haunt the portsmouth road with an elephant gun. and yet, despite the persistence of a stuart in imposing taxation and the instincts of a vespasian in making it peculiarly offensive, the treasury was always in desperate straits. the reason was not far to seek. in the old days liberal governments had at times proved extravagant; tory governments had perhaps oftener proved even more extravagant; but in each case it was the tempered profusion of those who through position and education were too careless to count their pence and too unconcerned to be dazzled by their pounds. the labour and the socialist administrations proved superlatively extravagant: and there is nothing more irredeemable than the spendthrift recklessness of your navvy who has unexpectedly "come into money." the beggar was truly on horseback, or, to travel with the times, he had set off in his motor car, and he was now bowling along the great high-road towards the cliff-bound sea of national perdition, a very absent-minded beggar indeed, with a merry hand upon the high speed gear. "i am with you heart and soul," therefore declared mr tubes as a man, and as a member of the cabinet added--"in principle. but the contemplated act for providing state maintenance of strikers, in strikes approved of by the board of trade, makes it extremely undesirable to abolish any of the existing sources of revenue, at least until we see what the measure will involve." "save on the navy, then," growled a malcontent in the rear rank. "we have already reduced the navy to the fullest extent that we consider it desirable to go at present; that is to say, to the common-sense limit--equality with any one of the other leading powers." "the army, then." "we have already reduced the army very considerably, but with a navy on the lines which i have indicated and an army traditionally weaker at the best than those of the great military powers, which are also naval powers, is it prudent?" the gesture that closed the sentence clearly expressed mr tubes's own misgivings on the subject. he had always been regarded as a moderate though a vacillating man among his party, and the "reduce everything and chance it" policy of a powerful section of the cabinet disturbed his rest at times. "why halt ye between two opinions?" exclaimed a clear and singularly sweet voice from the doorway. "temporise not with the powers of darkness when the day of opportunity is now at hand. sweep away arms and armies, engines of war and navies, in one vast and irresistible wave of universal brotherhood. beat the swords into ploughshares, cast your guns into instruments of music, let all strife cease. extend the hand of friendship and equality not only man to man and class to class, but nation to nation and race to race. make a great feast, and in love and fellowship compel them to come in: so shall you inaugurate the reign of christ anew on earth." every one looked at the speaker and then glanced at his neighbour with amusement, contempt, enquiry, here and there something of approval, in his eye. "the mad parson," "brother ambrose," "the ragged priest," "st ambrose of shadwell," ran from lip to lip as a few recognised the tonsured barefoot figure standing in his shabby cassock by the door. mr tubes alone, seated out of the range of whispers and a victim to the defective sight that is the coal-pit heritage throughout the world, received no inkling of his identity, and, assuming that he was a late arrival of the deputation, sought to extend a gentle conciliation. "the goal of complete disarmament is one that we never fail to strive for," he accordingly replied, "but our impulsive comrade must admit that the present is hardly the moment for us to make the experiment entirely on our own. prudence----" "prudence!" exclaimed the ragged priest with flashing vehemence. "there is no more cowardly word in the history of that black art which you call statecraft. all your wars, all your laws, all tyranny, injustice, inhumanity, all have their origin in a fancied prudence. it marks the downward path in whitened milestones more surely than good intentions pave that same decline. dare! dare! dare! man. dare to love your brother. herod was prudent when he sought to destroy all the children of bethlehem; it was prudence that led pilate to deliver up our master to the jews. the deadly _ignis fatuus_ of prudence marched and counter-marched destroying armies from the east and from the west through every age, formed vast coalitions and dissolved them treacherously, made dynasties and flung them from the throne. it led pagan rome, it illumined the birth of a faith now choked in official bonds, it danced before stricken europe, lit the martyrs' fires, lured the cold greed of commerce, and now hangs a sickly beacon over westminster. but prudence never raised the fallen magdalene nor forgave the dying thief. christ was not _prudent_." "christ, who's 'e?" said a man who had a reputation for facetiousness to maintain. "oh! i remember. _he's_ been dead a long time." ambrose turned on him the face that led men and the eye that quelled. "my brother," he almost whispered across the room, "if you die with that in your heart it were better for you that he had never lived." there was something in the voice, the look, the presence, that checked the ready methods by which a hostile intruder was wont to be expelled. all recognised a blind inspired devotion beside which their own party enthusiasm was at the best pale and thin. even to men who were wholly indifferent to the forms of religion, ambrose's self-denying life, his ascetic discipline, his fanatical whole-heartedness, his noble--almost royal--family, and the magnetic influence which he exercised over masses of the most wretched of the poor and degraded gave pause for thought, and often extorted a grudging regard. not a few among those who had dispassionately watched the rise and fall of parties held the opinion that the man might yet play a wildly prominent part in the nation's destinies and involve a tragedy that could only yet be dimly guessed: for most men deemed him mad. "whatever you may wish to say this is neither the time nor the place," said mr drugget mildly. "we are not taking part in a public meeting which invites discussion, but are here in a semi-private capacity to confer with the home secretary." "there is no time or place unseasonable to me, who come with supreme authority," replied ambrose. "nor, if the man is worthy of his office, can the home secretary close his ears to the representative of the people." "the people!" exclaimed a startled member of the amalgamated unions. "what d'yer mean by the 'representative of the people'? _we_ are the representatives of the people. we _are_ the people!" "you?" replied ambrose scornfully, sweeping the assembly with his eye and returning finally with a disconcerting gaze to the man who spoke, "you smug, easy, well-fed, well-clad, well-to-do in your little way, self-satisfied band of pharisees, _you_ the people of the earth! are you the poor, are you the meek, the hungry, the persecuted? you are the comfortable, complacent _bourgeoisie_ of labourdom. you can never inherit the kingdom of christ on earth. outside your gates, despised of all, stand his chosen people." there was a low, rolling murmur of approval, growing in volume before it died away, but it rose not within the chamber but from the road outside. "mr tubes," whispered the introducer of the deputation uneasily, "give the word, sir. shall we have this man put out?" "no, no," muttered tubes, with his eyes fixed on the window and turning slightly pale; "wait a minute. who are those outside?" the member of parliament looked out; others were looking too, and for a moment not only their own business was forgotten, but the indomitable priest's outspoken challenge passed unheeded in a curious contemplation of his following. at that period the sight was a new one in the streets of london, though afterwards it became familiar enough, not only in the capital, but to the inhabitants of every large town and city throughout the land. ambrose had been called "the ragged priest," and it was a very ragged regiment that formed his bodyguard; he was "the mad parson," and an ethereal mania shone in the faces of many of his followers, though as many sufficiently betrayed the slum-bred cunning, the inborn brutishness of the unchanged criminal and the hooligan, thinly cloaked beneath a shifty mask of assumed humility. as became "st ambrose," the banners which here and there stood out above the ranks--mere sackcloth standards lashed to the roughest poles--nearly all bore religious references in their crude emblems and sprawling inscriptions. the gibes at charity, the demands for work of an earlier decade had given place to another phase. "christ is mocked," was one; "having all things in common," ran another; while "as it was in the beginning," "equality, in christ," "thy kingdom come," might frequently be seen. but a more significant note was struck by an occasional threat veiled beneath a text, as "the sun shall be turned into darkness, the moon into blood," though their leader himself never hinted violence in his most impassioned flights. among the upturned faces a leisurely observer might have detected a few that were still conspicuous in refinement despite their sordid settings--women chiefly, and for the most part fanatical converts who had been swept off their feet by ambrose's eloquence in the more orthodox days when he had thrilled fashionable congregations from the pulpit of a mayfair church. other women there were in plenty; men, old and young; even a few children; dirty, diseased, criminal, brutalised, vicious, crippled, the unemployed, the unemployable. beggars from the streets, begging on a better lay; thieves hopeful of a larger booty; malcontents of every phase; enemies of society reckoning on a day of reckoning; the unfortunate and the unfortunates swayed by vague yearnings after righteousness; schemers striving for their private ends; with a salting of the simple-hearted; all held together so far by the vehement personality of one fanatic, and glancing down the ranks one could prophesy what manner of monster out of the depths this might prove when it had reached rampant maturity. poverty, abject poverty, was the dominant note; for all who marched beneath the ragged banner must go in rags. mr drugget was the first to recover himself. "look here," he said, turning to ambrose aggressively, "i don't quite catch on to your game, but that's neither here nor there. if you want to know what i call it, i call it a bit of blasted impertinence to bring a mob like that to a man's private house, no matter who he may be. what's more, this is an unlawful gathering according to act of parliament." "that which breaks no divine commandment cannot be unlawful," replied ambrose, unmoved. "i recognise no other law. and you, who call yourselves socialists and claim equality, what are your laws but the old privileges which you denounced in others extended to include yourselves, what your equality but the spoliation of those above you?" "we are practical socialists," exclaimed one or two members with dignity. "as reasonable men we recognise that there must be a limit somewhere." "practical is the last thing you can claim to be. you are impractical visionaries; for it would be as easy for a diver to pause in mid-air as for mankind to remain at a half-way house to equality. all! all! every man-made distinction must be swept away. neither proprietor nor property, paid leader nor gain, task-work nor pride of place; nothing between god and man's heart. that is the only practical socialism, and it is at hand." "not while we're in office," said the home secretary shortly. "mene, mene, tekel, upharsin," cast back ambrose. "where is now the great unionist party? in a single season the sturdy liberal stronghold crumbled into dust. you deposed a labour government that was deemed invulnerable in its time. beware, the hand is already on the wall. those forces which you so blindly ignore will yet combine and crush you." it was not unlikely. in former times it would have required barricades and some personal bravery. but with universal suffrage the power of the pauper criminal was no less than that of the ducal millionaire, and the alcohol lunatic, presenting himself at the poll between the spasms of _delirium tremens_, was as potent a force as the philosopher. a party composed of paupers, aliens, chronic unemployed, criminals, lunatics, unfortunates, the hysterical and degenerate of every kind, together with so many of the working classes as might be attracted by the glamour of a final and universal spoliation, led by a sincere and impassioned firebrand, might yet have to be reckoned with. "and you, comrade?" said a railway-man with pardonable curiosity. "when you've had your little fling, who's going to turn _you_ out and come in?" "we!" exclaimed ambrose with a touch of genuine surprise; "how can you be so blind! we represent the ultimate destiny of mankind." in another age and another place a form of government called the states general, and largely composed of amiable clerics, had been called up to redress existing grievances. being found too slow, it gave place to the national assembly, and, to go yet a little faster, became the legislative assembly. this in turn was left behind by the more expeditious girondins, but as even they lagged according to the bustling times, the jacobins came into favour. the ultimate development of quick-change equality was reached in the hébertists. from one to another had been but a step, and they were all "the people"; but while the states general had looked for the millennium by the abolition of a grievance here and there, and the lightening of a chafing collar in the mass, the followers of hébert found so little left for them to abolish that they abolished god. the experiment convinced the sagest of the leaders that human equality is only to be found in death, and, true to their principles, they "equalised" a million of their fellow-countrymen through the instrumentality of the guillotine, and other forms of moral suasion. grown more tender-hearted, "the people" no longer thirsted for another section of "the people's" blood--only for their money; and in place of fouquier-tinville and the gentleman with the wooden frame, their instruments of justice were represented by a chancellor of the exchequer, and an individual delivering blue papers. "we represent the ultimate destiny of mankind: absolute equality," announced ambrose. "any other condition is inconsistent with the professions to which your party has repeatedly pledged itself. will you, my brother," he continued, addressing himself to the home secretary, "receive a deputation?" the deputation was already waiting at the outer door, three men and three women. it included a countess, a converted house-breaker, and an anarchist who had become embittered with life since the premature explosion of one of his bombs had blown off both his arms and driven him to subsist on the charitable. the other three were uninteresting nonentities, but all were equal in their passion for equality. "we are all pledged to the principle of social equality, and every step in that direction that comes within the range of practical politics must have our sympathy," replied mr tubes. "further than that i am not prepared to commit myself at present. that being the case, there would be no object in receiving a deputation." to this had mr tubes come at last. "the unending formula," said brother ambrose with weary bitterness. "... bread, and you give them stones ... man," he cried with sudden energy, "almost within your grasp lies the foundation of new jerusalem, tranquil, smiling, sinless. what stands in your way? nothing, nothing! truly nothing but the heavy shadow of the old and cruel past. throw it off; is it not worth doing? no more spiritual death, no more sorrow of the things of this world, nor crying, 'neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.'" "i have nothing more to say," responded the home secretary coldly, bending over his desk to write. "then i have much more to do," retorted ambrose impetuously, "and that shall be with the sword of my mouth." he strode from the room with an air that no amount of legislative equality could ever confer upon any of those he left behind, and a moment later his ragged escort was in motion homeward--slumward. "kumreds," said mr tubes, looking up, "the harmony of the occasion has been somewhat impaired by an untoward incident, but on the whole i think that you may rest well satisfied with the result of your representations. having another appointment i must now leave you, but i have given instructions for some beer and sandwidges to be brought in, and i trust that in my enforced absence you will all make yourselves quite at home." he shook hands with each man present and withdrew. "beer and sandwidges!" muttered comrade tintwistle, with no affectation of delight, to a chosen spirit. "and this is the man we pay fifty quid a week to!" "ah!" assented the friend, following mr tubes's hospitable directions by strolling round the room and fingering the ornaments. "well, when it comes to a general share-out i don't know but what i should mind having this here little round barometer for my parlour." "neat little thing," assented tintwistle with friendly interest. "what does it say?" "seems to be dropping from 'change' to 'stormy,'" read the friend. chapter vi miss lisle tells a long pointless story sir john hampden lived within a stone-throw of the marble arch; george salt had established himself in westminster; and about midway between the two, in the neighbourhood of pall mall, a convenient but quite unostentatious suite of offices had been taken and registered as the headquarters of the unity league. the unity league was a modern organisation that had come into existence suddenly, and with no great parade, within a week of that day when george salt had forced hampden to hear what he wished to say, a day now nearly two years ago. the name was simple and commonplace, and therefore it aroused neither curiosity nor suspicion; it was explained by the fact that it had only one object: "by constitutional means to obtain an adequate representation of the middle and upper classes in parliament," a phrase rendered by the lighter-hearted members colloquially as "to kick out the socialists." the government, quite content to govern constitutionally (in the wider sense) and to be attacked constitutionally (in the narrower sense), treated the existence of the unity league as a playful ebullition on the part of the milch sections of society, and raised the minimum income-tax to four and threepence as a sedative. at first the existence of the league met with very little response and no enthusiasm among those for whom it was intended. it had become an article of faith with the oppressed classes that no propagandism could ever restore an equitable balance of taxation. every change must inevitably tend to be worse than the state before. to ask the working classes (the phrase lingered; by the demarcation of taxation it meant just what it conventionally means to-day, and, similarly, it excluded clerical workers of all grades)--to ask this privileged class which dominated practically every constituency to throw out their own people and put in a party whose avowed policy would be to repeal the employers' liability act (extended), the strikes act, the unemployed act, the amended companies act, the ecclesiastical property act, the infamous necessity act, and a score of other preposterous acts of injustice before they even gave their attention to anything else, had long been recognised to be grotesque. a league, therefore, which spoke of working towards freedom on constitutional lines fell flat. the newspapers noticed it in their various individual fashions, and all but the government organs extended to it a welcome of cold despair. the general reader gathered the impression that he might look for its early demise. the first revulsion of opinion came when it was understood that sir john hampden had returned to public life as the president of the league. what his name meant to his contemporaries, how much the league gained from his association, may be scarcely realised in an age existing under different and more conflicting conditions. briefly, his personality lifted the effort into the plane--not of a national movement, for with the nation so sharply riven by two irreconcilable interests that was impossible, but certainly beyond all cavil as to motives and methods. when it was further known that he was not lending his name half-heartedly as to a forlorn hope, or returning reluctantly as from a tardy sense of duty, men began to wonder what might lie behind. the first public meeting of the newly formed league deepened the impression. men and women of the middle and upper classes were invited to become members. the annual subscription being a guinea, none but adults were expected. those of the working class were not invited. if the subscription seemed large, the audience was asked to remember what lay at stake, and to compare with it the case of the artisan cheerfully contributing his sixpence a week to the strike fund of his class. "as a result there is a strikes act now in force," the president reminded them, "and the artisan no longer pays the cost----" "no, we do," interjected a listener. "i ask you to pay it for three years longer; no more, perhaps less," replied hampden with a reassuring smile, and his audience stared. if the subscription seemed large for an organisation of the kind the audience was assured that it was by no means all, or even the most, that would be expected of them. they must be prepared to make some sacrifice when called upon; the nature he could not indicate at that early stage. no balance sheet would be published; no detailed reports would be issued. there would be no dances, no garden-parties, no club houses, no pretty badges. the president warned them that membership offered no facilities for gaining a precarious footing in desirable society, through the medium of tea on the vicarage lawn, or croquet in the home park. "we are not playing at tin politics nowadays," he caustically remarked. that closed the exordium. in a different vein hampden turned to review the past, and with the chartered freedom of the man who had prophesied it all, he traced in broad lines and with masterly force the course of conservative ineptitude, radical pusillanimity, labour selfishness, and socialistic tyranny. what would be the crowning phase of grab government? history foreshadowed it; common-sense certified it. before the dark curtain of that last stupendous act the wealth and wisdom, the dignity and responsibility of the nation, stood in paralysed expectancy. there was a telling pause; a dramatic poignant silence hung over the massed crowd that listened to the one man who could still inspire a kindling spark of hope. then, just at the opportune moment, a friendly challenge gave the effective lead: "and what does sir john hampden offer now?" "absolute victory," replied the speaker, with the thrilling energy of quiet but assured conviction, "and with it the ending of this nightmare dream of life in which we are living now, when every man in his half-guilty helplessness shuns his own thoughts, and all are filled with a new unnatural pain: the shame of being englishmen. blink the fact or not, it is civil war upon which we are now engaged. votes are the weapons, and england and her destiny, nothing more or less, are the stakes. it has frequently been one of the curious features even of the most desperate civil struggles of the past, that while battles were raging all around, towns besieged, and thrones falling, commerce was at the same time being carried on as usual, wordy controversies on trivial alien subjects were being hotly discussed by opposing sections, as though their pedantic differences were the most serious matters in the world, and the ordinary details of everyday life were proceeding as before. so it is to-day, but civil, social, war is in our midst, and--again blink it or not--we are losing, and wage it as it is being waged we shall continue to lose. i am not here to-day to urge the justice of our cause, to palliate unwise things done, to indulge in regrets for wise things left undone. one does not discuss diplomacy in the middle of a battle. i am here to hold out a new hope for the triumph of our cause, for the revival of an era of justice, for the recovered respect of nations. i have never been accused of undue optimism, yet fully weighing my words, i stand on this platform to-night to share with you my conviction that it is within our power, in three years' time, to send an overwhelming majority of our reconstructed party into power, to reduce the income-tax to a sane and normal level, and to recommence the building up of a treasonably neglected navy." another man--perhaps any other man--would have been met by ridicule, but hampden's reputation was unique. the one point of emphasis that could not fail to impress itself upon every listener was that there _was_ something behind all this. it was a point that did not convey itself half so forcefully in the newspaper reports, so that, as socialists and their friends did not attend the meetings (even as members of the wealthier classes had ignored socialistic "vapourings" in days gone by), any menace to the government that the league might contain was lost on them for the present. it was the moral of an old fable: the dog in luxury grown slothful and unready. the subscription deterred few. it was an epoch when everything was, apparently, being given away for nothing; though never had the grandfatherly maxim that in business nothing ever is offered without its price, been so keenly observed. but superficially, to ride in a penny 'bus entitled one to a probable pension for life; to buy a pound of tea was only the preliminary to being presented with a motor-car or a grand piano. fortunes lurked in cigarette boxes, whole libraries sprang gratuitously from the columns of the daily papers; not only oxen, but silver spoons inexhaustible were compressed within the covers of each jar of meat extract, and buried treasure, "mysterious millionaires," and "have-you-that-ten-pound-note?" men littered the countryside. to be asked to subscribe a guinea for nothing definite in return, was therefore a pleasing novelty which took amazingly. so, too, the idea of participating in some sort of legal revolution which would entail sacrifices and result in unexpected developments, was found to be delightfully invigorating. how the movement spread is a matter of history. incomes had been reduced wholesale, yet, so great was the confidence in hampden's name, that many members sent their subscription ten times told. when he asked, as he frequently did at the close of a meeting, for recruits who were willing to devote their whole time unpaid to the work in various departments, more than could be accepted were invariably forthcoming. all members proselytised on their own initiative, but within these there were thousands of quiet and devoted workers who were in close touch with the office of the league. they acted on detailed instructions in their methods, and submitted regular reports of progress and of the state of public feeling in every part of the kingdom and among every class of the community. to what length the roll of membership had now extended only two men knew, even approximately. all that could be used as a guide was the fact that it was the exception rather than the rule anywhere to find a family among the classes aimed at, that did not contain at least one member; while london, within the same indicated limits, had practically gone solid for membership. and george salt? the public knew nothing of him; his name did not appear in connection with the league, nor did he ever take a place among the notables upon the platform at its meetings. but the thousands of the inner ring knew him very well, and few whose business led them to the offices missed encountering him. he was officially supposed to be a league secretary to sir john hampden, endowed with large discretionary powers. at the moment when this chapter opens he was receiving in his office a representative of the leading government organ: a daily paper which purveyed a mixture of fervent demagogism and child-like inconsistency, for the modest sum of one halfpenny. _the tocsin_, as it was called, was widely read by a public who believed every word it contained, with that simple credulity in what is printed which is one of the most pathetic features of the semi-illiterate. mr hammet, the representative of _the tocsin_, had come to find out what was really behind the remarkable spread of the unity league. possibly members of the government were beginning to fidget. salt had seen him for the purpose of telling him everything else that he cared to know. to enquirers, the officials of the league were always candid and open, and laughingly disclaimed any idea of a mysterious secret society. so salt admitted that they really hoped for a change of public opinion shortly; that they based their calculation on the inevitable swing of the pendulum, and so forth. he allowed it to be drawn easily from him that they had great faith in party organisation, and that perhaps--between themselves and not for publication--the government would be surprised by a substantial lowering of their majority at the next election, as a result of quiet, unostentatious "spade work." "as a party we are not satisfied with the state of things," he said. "we cannot be expected to be satisfied with it, and we are certainly relying on a stronger representation in opposition to make our views felt." "quite right," said mr hammet sympathetically. he closed the note-book in which he had made a few entries and put it away, to indicate that his visit was officially at an end, and whatever passed between them now was simply one private gentleman talking to another, and might be regarded as sacredly confidential. salt also relaxed the secretarial manner which he had taken the pains to acquire, and seemed as though he would be glad of a little human conversation with a man who knew life and fleet street: which meant, of course, that both were prepared to be particularly alert. "i was at one of your meetings the other night--the albert hall one," remarked the newspaper man casually. "your chief fairly took the crowd with him. no being satisfied with a strong opposition for him! why, he went bald-headed for sweeping the country and going in with a couple of hundred majority or so." salt laughed appreciatively. "no good being down-hearted," he replied. "that was the end of all the old organisations. 'we see no hope for the future, so you all may as well mark time,' was their attitude, and they dropped out. 'when anything turns up we intend being ready for it, so come in now,' we say." "seems to take all right too," admitted mr hammet. "i was offered a level dollar by a friend of mine the other day that you had over half a million members. i took it in a sporting spirit, because i know that half a million needs a lot of raking in, and i put it at rather less myself--but, of course, as you are close about it we can never settle up." half a million, it may be observed, was everybody's property, as an estimate on "excellent authority." "we don't publish figures, as a matter of fact," admitted salt half-reluctantly, "but i don't know why there should be any very particular secret about it----" "oh, every office has its cupboards and its skeletons," said mr hammet generously. "but if one could see inside," he added with a knowing look, "i think that i should win." "no," exclaimed salt suddenly. "i don't mind telling you in confidence. we have passed the half million: passed it last--well, some time ago." "lucky for me that it is in confidence," remarked the pressman with a grimace, "or i should have to pay up. what is the exact figure, then?" he ventured carelessly. "no one could quite tell you that," replied salt, equally off-hand. "six hundred thousand?" suggested mr hammet. "oh, that is a considerable advance,--a hundred thousand," admitted salt with transparent disappointment. it is not pleasant when you have impressed your man to have him expecting too much the next minute. "i was thinking of the old buttercup league," said mr hammet. "you took the remains over, lock, stock, and barrel, i believe?" "yes, all that would come. half belonged to your party really, and half of the remainder were children. what an organisation that was in its time! a million and a half!" the smart young newspaper man noted mr salt's open admiration for these figures. it convinced him that the newer league was not yet within measurable distance of half that total. "and in the end it did--what?" he remarked. salt was bound to apologise. "what is there to do, after all?" he admitted. "what can you do but keep your people together, show them where their interest lies, and wait?" "and rake in the shekels?" suggested mr hammet airily. "oh, that!" agreed salt a little uneasily. "of course one has to look after the finances." "ra-ther," agreed mr hammet. "wish i had the job. do you smoke here as a general thing?" "oh yes," replied salt, who never did. "try one of these." "fairish cigars. better than you'd find in the old man's private box up at our show," was the verdict. "but then we haven't a revenue of half a million." "of course i rely on you not to say anything about our numbers," said the secretary anxiously. the visitor made a reassuring gesture, expressive of inviolable secrecy. "though i suppose you have to make a return for income-tax purposes," he mused. "my aunt! what an item you must have!" "no," replied salt. "we do not pay anything." mr hammet stared in incredulous surprise. "how do you manage to work it?" he demanded familiarly. "you don't mean that they have forgotten you?" "no; it's quite simple," explained salt. "your friends made the funds and incomes of trades unions sacred against claims and taxes of every kind a few years ago, and we rank as a trade union." "don't call them my friends, please god," exclaimed mr hammet with ingratiating disloyalty. "i work as in a house of bondage. you don't publish any balance-sheet, by the way, do you?" "no, we don't see why we should let every one know how the money is being spent. no matter how economically things are carried on there are always some who want to interfere." "especially if they sampled your weeds," suggested the visitor pleasantly. "pretty snug cribs you must have, but that's not my business. between ourselves, what does sir john draw a year?" "nothing," protested salt eagerly, too eagerly. "as president of the league he does not receive a penny." sharp mr hammet, who prided himself upon being a terror for exposures and on having a record of seven flagrant cases of contempt of court, read the secretary's eagerness like an open book. "but then there are committees, sub-committees, executives, emergency funds, and what not," he pointed out, "and our unpaid league president may be chairman of one, and secretary of another, and grand master of a third with a royal salary from each, eh? can you assure me----" "oh, well; of course," admitted salt, cornered beyond prevarication, "that is a private matter that has to do with the officials of the league alone. but you may take it from me that every one in these offices earns his salary whatever it may be." mr hammet smiled his polite acquiescence broadly. "same here, changing the scene of action to stonecutter street," he commented. "do you happen to know how sir john came to start this affair? well, tagg m.p. met miss hampden once and wanted to marry her. he called on sir john, who received him about as warmly as a shoulder of canterbury lamb even before he knew what his business was. when he did know, he gave such an exhibition of sheet lightning that tagg, who is really a very level-headed young fellow in general, completely lost his nerve and tried to dazzle him into consenting, by offering him a safe seat in the huddersfield division and a small place in the government if he'd consent to put up as a bracketted imperialist hyphened socialist. then the old man kicked tagg out of the house, and swore to do the same with his government within three years. at least that's what i heard about the time, but very likely there isn't a word of truth in it;" a tolerably safe inference on mr hammet's part, as, in point of fact, he had concocted mr tagg's romance on the spur of the moment. "no," volunteered salt. "i don't think that that is the true story, or i should have heard something about it. it's rather curious that you should have mentioned it. i believe----but it's scarcely worth taking up your time with." "not at all: i mean that i am quite interested," protested mr hammet. "well--of course it sounds rather absurd in the broad light of day, but i believe, as a matter of fact, that he was led into founding the league simply as the result of a dream." "a dream!" exclaimed mr hammet, deeply surprised. "what sort of a dream?" "well, it naturally must have been a rather extraordinary dream to affect him so strongly. in fact you might perhaps call it a vision." "a vision!" repeated mr hammet, thoroughly absorbed in the mysterious element thus brought in. "do i understand that this is sir john's own explanation?" hampden's sudden return to activity had, indeed, from time to time been a riddle of wide interest. "oh no," salt hastened to correct. "i expect that he would be the last man to admit it, or to offer any explanation at all. of course the history of the world has been changed in every age through dreams and visions, but that explanation nowadays, in a weighty matter, would run the risk of being thought trivial and open to ridicule." "but what do you base your deductions upon, then?" demanded mr hammet, rather fogged by the serious introduction of this new light. "is sir john a believer in clairvoyance?" "i am afraid that i must not state the real grounds for several reasons, if you won't think me discourteous," replied salt firmly. "but this i may say: that i had occasion to see sir john late one night, and then he had not the faintest intention of coming forward. early the following morning i saw him again, and by that time the whole affair was cut and dried. of course you are at liberty to confirm or contradict the story just as you like, if you should happen to come across it again." in a state of conscious bewilderment through which he was powerless to assert himself, mr hammet submitted to polite dismissal. the visible result of his interview was half a column of peptonised personalities in _the tocsin_, rendered still easier of assimilation to the dyspeptic mind by being well cut up into light paragraphs and garnished with sub-headings throughout. the unseen result, except to the privileged eyes of half a dozen people, was a confidential report which found its way ultimately into the desk of the home secretary. the following points summarised mr hammet's deductions. * * * * * "the unity league probably has a membership of half a million. it may be safely assumed that it does not exceed that figure by a hundred thousand at the most. "while largely recruiting by the device of holding out a suggestion of some indefinite and effective political scheme, the policy of the league will be that of _laisser faire_, and its influence may be safely ignored. very little of its vast income is spent in propagandism or organisation. on the contrary, there is the certainty that considerable sums are lying at short notice at the banks, and strong evidence that equally large sums have been sent out of the country through the agency of foreign houses. "many men of so-called 'good position' enjoy obvious sinecure posts under the league, and all connected with the organisation appear to draw salaries disproportionate to their positions, and in some cases wildly disproportionate. "the plain inference from the bulk of evidence is that the league is, and was formed to be, the preserve for a number of extravagant and incapable unemployed of the so-called upper and upper-middle classes, who have organised this means of increasing their incomes to balance the diminution which they have of late years experienced through the equalising legislation of socialism. the money sent abroad is doubtless a reserve for a few of the higher officials to fall back on if future contingencies drive them out of this country. "this information has been carefully derived from a variety of sources, including john hampden's secretary, a man called salt. salt appears to be a simple, unsuspicious sort of fellow, and with careful handling might be used as a continual means of securing information in the future should there be any necessity." * * * * * the simple, unsuspicious secretary had dismissed mr hammet with scarcely another thought as soon as that gentleman had departed. in order to fit himself for the requirements of his new sphere of action, salt had, during the past two years, compelled himself to acquire that art of ready speech which we are told is the most efficient safeguard of our thoughts. but he hated it. most of all he despised the necessity of engaging in such verbal chicane as mr hammet's mission demanded. of that mission he had the amplest particulars long before the representative of _the tocsin_ had passed his threshold. he knew when he was coming, why he was coming, and the particular points upon which information was desired. he could have disconcerted hammet beyond measure by placing before him a list of all those persons who had been so delicately sounded, together with an abstract of the results; and finally, he received as a matter of ordinary routine a copy of the confidential report three hours before it reached mr james tubes. armies engaged in active warfare have their intelligence departments, and the secret service of the unity league was remarkably complete and keen. "my name is irene lisle," said the next caller, and there being nothing particular to say in reply salt expressed himself by his favourite medium--silence; but in such a way that miss lisle felt encouraged to continue. "i have come to you because i am sick of seeing things go on as they have been going for years, and no one doing anything. i believe that you _are_ going to do something." "why?" demanded salt with quiet interest. it mattered--it might matter a great deal--why this unknown miss lisle should have been led to form that conclusion. "i have a great many friends--some in london, others all over the country. i have been making enquiries lately, through them and also by other means. it is generally understood that your membership is about half a million, and you tacitly assent to that." she took up a scrap of waste paper that lay before her, and writing on it, passed it across the desk. "that, however, is my estimate. if i am right, or anything like it, you are concealing your strength." salt took the paper, glanced at it, smiled and shook his head without committing himself to any expression. but he carefully burned the fragment with its single row of figures after miss lisle had left. "i have attended your meetings," continued miss lisle composedly, "for, of course, i am a member in the ordinary way. i came once as a matter of curiosity, or because one's friends were speaking of it, and i came again because, even then, i was humbled and dispirited at the shameful part that our country was being made to play before the world. i caught something, but i did not grasp all--because i am not a man, i suppose. i saw meeting after meeting of impassive unemotional, black-coated gentlemen lifted into the undemonstrative white-heat of purposeful enthusiasm by the suggestion of that new hope which i failed to understand. at one of the earliest queen's hall meetings i particularly noticed a young man who sat next to me. he was just an ordinary keen-faced, gentlemanly, well-dressed, athletic-looking youth, who might have been anything from an upper clerk to a millionaire. he sat through the meeting without a word or a sign of applause, but when at the finish twenty volunteers were asked for, to give their whole time to serving the object of the league, he was the first to reach the platform, with a happier look on his face, in the stolid english style, than i should have ever expected to see there. it was beyond me. then among the audiences one frequently heard remarks such as 'i believe there's something behind it all'; 'i really think hampden has more than an idea'; 'it strikes me that we are going to have something livelier than tea and tennis,' and suggestions of that kind. some time ago, after a meeting at kensington, i was walking home alone when you overtook me. immediately in front were two gentlemen who had evidently been to the meeting also, and they were discussing it. at that moment one said emphatically to the other: 'i don't know what it is, but that it _is_ something i'll swear; and if it is i'd give them my last penny sooner than have things as they are.' sir john hampden, who was with you, looked at you enquiringly, and you shook your head and said, 'not one of our men.' 'then i believe it's beginning to take already,' he replied." two things occurred to salt: that miss lisle might be a rather sharp young lady, and that he and hampden had been unusually careless. "anything else?" was all he said. "it's rather a long wild tale, and it has no particular point," explained the lady. "if you can spare the time," he urged. the long pointless tale might be a pointer to others beside miss lisle. "i was cycling a little way out in the country recently," narrated miss lisle, "when i found that i required a spanner, or i could not go on. it was rather a lonely part for so near london, within ten or twelve miles, i suppose, and there was not a house to be seen. i wheeled my bicycle along and soon came to a narrow side lane. it had a notice 'private road' up, and i could not see far down it as it wound about very much, but it seemed to be well used, so i turned into it hoping to find a house. there was no house, for after a few turns the lane ended suddenly. it ended, so to speak, in a pair of large double doors--like those of a coach-house--for before me was a stream crossed by an iron bridge; immediately beyond that a high wall and the doors. but do you care for me to go on?" "if you please," said salt, and paid the narrative the compliment of a close and tranquil attention. "it was rather a peculiar place to come on unexpectedly," continued miss lisle. "it had originally been a powder works, and the old notices warning intruders had been left standing; as a matter of fact a stranger would probably still take it to be a powder mill, but one learned locally that it was the depot and distributing centre of an artificial manure company with a valuable secret process. which, of course, made it less interesting than explosives." "and less dangerous," suggested salt, smiling. "i don't know," shot back miss lisle with a glance. "mark the precautions. there was the stream almost enclosing this place--the size, i suppose, of a considerable farm--and in the powder mill days it had been completely turned into an island by digging a canal or moat at the narrowest point of the bend. immediately on the other side of the water rose the high brick wall topped with iron spikes. the one bridge was the only way across the stream, the one set of double doors, as high as the wall, the only way through beyond. inside was thickly wooded. i don't suggest wild animals, you know, but savage dogs would not surprise me. "as i stood there, concluding that i should have to turn back, i heard a heavy motor coming down the lane. it came on very quickly as though the driver knew the twisting road perfectly, shot across the bridge, the big gates fell open apparently of their own accord, and it passed inside. i had only time to note that it was a large trade vehicle with a square van-like body, before the gates had closed again." miss lisle paused for a moment, but she had by no means reached the end of her pointless adventure. "i had seen no one but the motor driver, but i was mistaken in thinking that there was no one else to see, for as i stood there undecided a small door in the large gate was opened and a man came out. he was obviously the gate-keeper, and in view of the notices i at once concluded that he was coming to warn me off, so i anticipated him by asking him if he could lend me a spanner. he muttered rather surlily that if i waited there he would see, and went back, closing the little door behind him. i thought that i heard the click of a self-acting lock. presently he came back just as unamiable as before and insisted on screwing up the bolt himself--to get me away the sooner, i suppose. he absolutely started when i naturally enough offered him sixpence--i imagine the poor man doesn't get very good wages--and went quite red as he took it." "and all ended happily?" remarked salt tentatively, as though he had expected that a possible relevance might have been forthcoming after all. "happily but perplexingly," replied miss lisle, looking him full in the face as she unmasked the point of her long pointless story. "for the surly workman who was embarrassed by sixpence was my gentlemanly neighbour of the queen's hall meeting, and i was curious to know how he should be serving the object of the league by acting as a gate-keeper to the lacon equalised superphosphate company." salt laughed quietly and looked back with unmoved composure. "no doubt many possible explanations will occur to you," he said with very plausible candour. "the simplest is the true one. several undertakings either belong to the league or are closely connected with it, for increasing its revenue or for other purposes. the lacon is one of these." "and i don't doubt that even the position of doorkeeper is a responsible one, requiring the intelligence of an educated gentleman to fill it," retorted miss lisle. "it must certainly be an exacting one. you know better than i do how many great motor vans pass down that quiet little lane every hour. they bear the names of different companies, they are ingeniously different in appearance, and they pass through london by various roads and by-roads. but they have one unique resemblance: they are all driven by mechanics who are astonishingly disconcerted by the offer of stray sixpences and shillings! it is the same at the little private wharf on the canal a mile away. it was quite a relief to find that the bargemen were common human bargees!" salt still smiled kindly. the slow, silent habit gives the best mask after all. "and why have you come to me?" he asked. "because i _know_ that you are going to do something, and i want to help. i loathe the way things are being done down there." the nod meant the stately palace of westminster, though it happened to be really in the direction of charing cross, but it was equally appropriate, for the monuments of the government, like those of wren, lay all around. "who can go on playing tennis as usual when an ambassador who learned his diplomacy in a slaughter-housemen's union represents us by acting alternately as a fool and a cad before an astounded paris? or have an interest in bridge when the sultan of turkey is contemptuously ordering us to keep our fleet out of sight of mitylene and we apologise and obey? i will be content to address envelopes all day long if it will be of any use. surely there are other secret processes down other little lanes? i will even be the doorkeeper at another artificial manure works if there is nothing else!" salt sat thinking, but from the first he knew that for good or ill some degree of their confidence must be extended to a woman. it is the common experience of every movement when it swells beyond two members: or conspiracies would be much more dangerous to their foes. "it may be monotonous, perhaps even purposeless as far as you can see," he warned. "i do not know yet, and it will not be for you to say." miss lisle flushed with the pleasurable thrill of blind sacrifice. "i will not question," she replied. "only if there should be any need you might find that an ordinary uninteresting middle-class girl with a slangy style and a muddy complexion could be as devoted as a flora macdonald or a charlotte corday." salt made a quiet deprecating gesture. "a girl with a fearless truthful face can be capable of any heroism," he remarked as he began to write. "especially when she combines exceptional intelligence with exceptional discretion. only," he added as an afterthought, "it may be uncalled-for, and might be inconvenient in a law-abiding constitutional age." "i quite understand that now; the conscientious addressing of circulars shall bound my horizon. only, please let me be somewhere in it, when it _does_ come." "i say, salt," drawled an immaculately garbed young man, lounging into the room, "do you happen----" miss lisle, who had been cut off from the door by a screen, rose to leave. "oh, i say, i beg your pardon," exclaimed the young man. "they told me that you were alone." "i shall be disengaged in a moment," replied salt formally. "at ten o'clock to-morrow morning then, miss lisle, please." she bowed and withdrew, the honourable freddy tantroy, who had lingered rather helplessly, holding the door as she went out and favouring her with a criticising glance. "always making rotten ass of myself," murmured that gentleman plaintively. "general office fault. engaging lady clerk? not bad idea, but you might have gone in for really superior article while you were about it. cheaper in the end. oh, i don't know, though." "miss lisle came with the best of recommendations," said salt almost distantly. one might have judged that he had no desire for mr tantroy's society, but that reasons existed why he should not tell him so. "yes, i know," nodded freddy sagely; "they do. hockey girl, i should imagine. face of the pomegranate type, carved by amateur whose hand slipped when he was doing the mouth. prefer the pink and pneumatic style myself. matter taste." salt made no reply. the only possible reply was the one he denied himself. he occupied the time by burning a scrap of paper with a single row of figures. "i say, salt. i was really coming about something, but i've forgotten what," announced the honourable youth after a vacuous pause. "oh, i remember. that elusive old cheesecake of a hunk of mine. do you happen to know where the volatile sir john is to be unearthed?" "i imagine that your uncle is in paris at this moment," replied salt. "he is expected back to-morrow." "paris!" exclaimed freddy with some interest. "good luck at the pink windmill, old boy! anything in the air, salt? projected french landing at brighton pier next week? seriously, don't you think league bit of gilded fizzle? expected something with coloured lights long ago." "i think that we have every reason to be satisfied with the progress," replied salt. "the weight of a great organisation must exercise some influence in the end." "oh yes," retorted mr tantroy with a cunning look. "that's the other face of double-headed johnny they have stuffed in museums. well, all in good time, little freddy, if you sit quiet." he carried out this condition literally for a couple of minutes, gazing pensively at a slender ring he wore. then: "i'll tell you what, salt," he continued. "i wish you'd use benign influence with sir john. tired of apeing the golden ass, and i am thinking of settling down. want an office here and absolutely grinding hard work ten to four, and couple of thousand a year or so until i'm worth more. fact is, met girl i could absolutely exist for ever with in gilded bird-cage. been vivarium lately?" "no," replied salt. "oh, well, no good trying my rotten powers description. must go with me some night and see. she hangs by her toes to a slack wire eighty-five feet above the stage and sings: 'things are strangely upside down, dear boys. nowadays.' no getting away from it, she is positively the most crystallised damson that ever stepped out of lace-edged box. no fear monotony in home with girl like that. the very thought of it----! well, come out and have drink, salt?" "thanks, no," replied salt. "i've quite got out of the habit." "great scott!" exclaimed freddy, aghast. "you better try some of those newspaper things that johnnies with funny addresses and members of the greek royal family write up to say have done them no end. i say, salt, i suppose there is spare office in this palatial suite that i could have if i grappled with the gilded effort?" "i really don't know that there is." he had not the most shadowy faith in the honourable freddy's perseverance, even in intention, for a week. to expect any real work from him was out of the question. "we are rather overcrowded here as it is." "if i were you, salt, i should insist upon the old man removing better premises somewhere. place seems absolutely congealed with underlings. just listen to that in next room: it's like hive of gilded bees. what is it?" "simply routine work going on," said salt half-impatiently. "sorry i can't spare the time to come out with you." "oh, that's all right-angled," said freddy, taking the hint and rising. "sorry. pramp, pramp. you think i shall find sir john here friday if i look in?" "yes, here; but desperately busy." "er, thanks," drawled freddy, with just a suggestion of vice. "perhaps my uncle will be able to spare me five minutes when he has done with you." he drifted languidly through the door and sauntered down the passage. at the door of the room where the monotonous voice rose and fell in the ceaseless repetition of short sentences, he paused to light a cigarette. for perhaps a full minute he remained quite motionless, the cigarette between his lips, the match pressed ready against the corrugations of the jewelled box he held. "listretton, fergus, upper holloway road, n. "listwell-phelps, j. walter, f.r.s., department of ethopian antiquities, british museum, w.c. "litchit, miss, dressmaker, the grove, westpoint-on-sea. "little, rev. h. k., the vicarage, lower skerrington, dorset. "little, lieutenant-general sir alfred vernon, c.b., v.c., a eaton square, s.w. "littlejohn, john george, byryxia, cole park, twickenham." freddy tantroy lit his cigarette and passed on. the prosaic list of new members dictated to an entering clerk did not interest him. five names a minute, three hundred an hour, three thousand a day; an ordinary day, weeks after any special meeting, and in the flat season of the year. but it did not interest mr tantroy. immersed in a scheme for taxing baths, soda-water syphons, and asparagus beds, and further occupied with the unexpectedly delicate details of withdrawing from india, it did not interest the government. it was only the ordinary routine work of the unity league. chapter vii "schedule b" on the following day sir john hampden returned from paris. a week later and he had again left london. at the office of the league it was impossible to learn where he had gone; perhaps fishing, it was suggested. in any case he was taking a well-earned holiday and did not want to be troubled with business, so that nothing was being forwarded. a little later any one might know for the asking that he was in berlin--and returning the next day. there was never any secret made of sir john's movements if the office knew them, only he occasionally liked to cut himself completely off from communication in order to ensure a perfect rest. as soon as the office knew where he was, every one else could know too; only it invariably happened that he was on his way back by that time. the incident was repeated. callers at trafalgar chambers found all the heads communicative and very leisured. it came out that nothing much was being done just then; it was not the time of the year for politics. for all the good they were doing three-quarters of the offices might be closed for the next few months and three-quarters of the staff take a holiday. in fact, that was what they were doing to a large extent. it was mr salt's turn as soon as sir john got back. that time it was st. petersburg. for a man who had been a sailor george salt displayed a curious taste when he came to take his holiday. the sea had no call for him, nor the coast-line any charm. the inland resorts, the golf centres, moors, lakes, mountains and rivers, all were passed by. it was not even to an "undiscovered" village or some secluded country house that he turned his footsteps in hope of perfect change. on the contrary, where the ceaseless din of industry made rest impossible; where the puny but irresistible hands of generations of mankind had scarred the face of earth like a corroding growth, where the sky was shut out by smoke, vegetation stifled beneath a cloak of grime, day and night turned into one lurid vulcanian twilight, in which by bands and companies, by trains and outposts, dwarfish men toiled in the unlovely rhythm of hopeless, endless labour: the lupus-spots of nature; there salt spent his holiday. coal was the loadstone that drew him on, and in a vast contour his journey through that month defined the limits of the coal-fields of the land. in the subsequent histories of this period no mention of salt's significant appearance in the provinces finds a place. yet in presenting a dispassionate review of the succeeding events it is impossible to ignore its influence; although, to adopt a just proportion, it is not necessary to deal with it at length. it was not a vital detail of the scheme on which the league had staked its cause; it was less momentous than any of hampden's three continental missions; but by disarming opposition in certain influential quarters when the crisis came, it removed a possible cause of dissension from the first. that is its place. it was an indication of the extreme care with which the operations had been developed, that even at this point there were still only two men who had any real knowledge of what the plan of campaign would be. there were those who did not hesitate to declare that a hostile demonstration was being arranged by a foreign power with whom hampden had come to an understanding. at a favourable moment a pretext for a quarrel would be found, relations would be broken off immediately, ambassadors recalled, and within three days england would be threatened with war. if necessary, an actual invasion would take place, and in view of the sweeping reductions in the army and navy no one thought it worth while to express a doubt that an actual invasion could take place. after arranging for a suitable indemnity the invaders would withdraw, leaving a provisional government in power, with hampden at its head. this was the extremists' view, and the majority, feeling at heart that however england might be internally riven and their liberties assailed, nothing could ever justify so unpatriotic a course, held that hampden was incapable of the step. others suggested civil war; passive resistance to the payment of rates and taxes on so organised a scale as to embarrass the government for supplies; an alliance, on a basis not readily discernible, with the rank and file of the socialist party; the secret importation of a sufficient number of aliens to turn an election; and a variety of other ingenious devices, easy to suggest but difficult to maintain. those who, like miss lisle, observed the most, talked the least. among the working men of the country--the class that the league had come into being to control--it had passed into the category of a second buttercup league and was ignored. a few, better informed, accepted the conclusions that mr hammet and his associates had arrived at, and laughed quietly in their sleeves at the thought of the coming humiliation of the confiding members. last of all there remained a scattered few here and there, who, through natural suspicion or a shrewder wisdom than their fellows, had of late begun to detect in the existence of the league a real menace to themselves, and to urge the powers, and mr tubes in particular, to counteract its aims. it might have been a race, a desperate race, but for one simple thing. hampden had asked for three years in which to complete his plans, and both friends and foes, deducing from every experience of the past, ranging from the opening of an exhibition to the closing of a war, had conceded that this meant four at least. but hampden and the man who had been a sailor had no intention of being embarrassed by a race. not three years meaning four, but three years meaning two, had underlain the boast, and at the end of two years, although there was still much to be gained by time and an unfettered choice of the moment of attack, there was no probability of being forestalled on any important point. such was the position when salt set out on his provincial holiday. he had nothing to learn; elementary detail of that kind belonged to another journey, when, more than two years ago, he had made the self-same tour. he did not go to offer peace or war; that die had been cast blindly--who shall say how many years before?--in northampton boot factories, lancashire mills, durham coal-pits, in radical clubs and labour cabinets. but in war, and in civil war most of all, every blow aimed at the foe must spend its expiring force upon a friend--and therefore salt went to the coal-fields. at each centre he was met by a high official of the league who had local knowledge. the man made his report; it concerned a list he brought, a list of names. sometimes it contained only three or four names, sometimes as many dozens. if to each name there stood the word "content," salt passed on to his next centre. if some were reported to be holding out or dissatisfied, salt remained. when he resumed his methodical way the word "content" had been added to every name. only once did failure threaten to mar his record. a lancashire colliery proprietor, a man who had risen from the lowest grade of labour, as men more often did in the hard, healthy days of emulous rivalry than in the later piping times of union-imposed collective indolence, did not wish to listen. positive, narrow, over-bearing, he was permeated with the dogmatic egotism of his successful life. he had never asked another man's advice; he had never made a mistake. as hard as the ground out of which he had carved his fortune, he hated and despised his men; they knew it, and hated and respected him in return. his own brother worked as a miner in his " deep" and received a miner's wage. he hated his master with the rest. lomas was the "closest" employer in the north central coal-field, and the richest. but there were fewer widows and orphans in halghcroft than in any other pit village of its size, and lomas spent nothing in insurance. under his immediate eye cage cables did not snap, tram shackles part, nor did unexpected falls of shoring occur. his men did not smoke at their work, and no mysterious explosion had ever engaged the attention of a board of trade enquiry. salt found him sitting in his shirt sleeves in a noble room, furnished in the taste and profusion of a crowded pantechnicon with the most costly specimens of seventeen periods of decorative art. he received him with his usual manner, and that was the manner of a bellicose curmudgeon towards an unwelcome deputation of suppliants. for emphasis, between the frank didactic aphorisms which formed his arguments and his rules of life, he banged with his fist a _lapis lazuli_ table, and lowered his voice in a confidential aside to inform his visitor that three thousand pounds was the figure that the little piece of furniture had cost him, and that in matters of taste he stuck at nothing--an unnecessary piece of information after one had cast an astonished glance around that bizarre room. in lomas's future there loomed a knighthood--the consummation in his mind of all earthly ambition and the possible fruit of a lavish charity of the kind that is scarcely the greatest of the three, and his policy was wholly dictated by a fear of endangering his chances. he would have resented the suggestion, in the face of several munificent donations that he had recently made to certain funds, and a gracious acknowledgment which he had received, that the king was not following his career with a personal interest. what, then, was the king's attitude towards the unity league and its plan of campaign? had salt anything to show? it was useless to protest the inviolability of royal neutrality; lomas only banged the _lapis lazuli_. that was good enough for outsiders, he retorted: now, between themselves? the strong man who was restrained by diplomatic conventions could make no headway with the strong man who was frankly primitive in his selfishness, and salt withdrew, baffled, but unperturbed. but the sequel was that before he left his hotel the following day lomas had waited upon him with full acquiescence to the terms, and the central coal-field was "content." the inference might be that at last the intentions of the league must have been disclosed. the reality was nothing of the kind. what had been revealed to these men, then--the largest employers of labour of any class throughout the country--to which they had signified their consent? it may be asked. and the truth was that nothing had been revealed; that even the officers of the league who sounded them were in the dark. in the past, industrial struggles had always been between capital and labour. that vaster encounter, upon which the league was now concentrating its energies, was not to be on such clearly defined lines, and in the strife capital might suffer side by side with labour. against that contingency the coal influence had now been indemnified in the name of the unity league and the future government, and the guarantee had been accepted. it was a far-reaching precaution in the end; it narrowed the issue, and it secured more than neutrality in a quarter where open hostility might have otherwise been proclaimed. it just tended to realise that perfection of detail and completeness of preparation that mark the successful campaign. but if there was nothing more to learn in the sense that the data upon which the league had based its plans had long since been complete, it was impossible for a thoughtful observer to pass through the land without learning much. even two years of increasing privilege had left a deeper mark. a lavish policy of "bread and circuses" was again depleting the countryside, choking the towns, and destroying the instinct of citizenship, just as it had speeded the decline of another world-power two thousand years before. while wages had remained practically stationary, the leisure of the working man had been appreciably increased, and it was now being discovered that the working man had no way of passing his leisure except in spending money. betting and drunkenness had increased in direct ratio to the lengthened hours of enforced idleness, and other disquieting indications of how the time was being spent, were brought home to those who moved among the poor. where the money came from, the books of the great thrift societies at once revealed. there was no longer any necessity for the working man to save; his wages were guaranteed, his risks of sickness and every other adversity were insured against, his old age was pensioned, his children were, if necessary, state-adopted. even the trades unions had abolished their subscriptions and dissipated their reserves. there was no need of thrift now, for the government was the working man's savings bank, and had cut out the debit pages of his pass-book. it was almost the millennium. the only drawback was that, with all this affluence around, the working man found himself very much in the condition of a financial ancient mariner. there was a great deal of money being spent on him, and for him, and by him, but he never had any in his pocket. and the working man's wife was even worse off. other classes there were which found themselves in the same position, but not by the same process. the rich were taxed up to the eyes, but the rich had obvious means of retrenchment. but the great mass of the middle class had no elastic extravagances upon which they could economise. even under favourable conditions they were for the most part fulfilling disraeli's pessimistic dictum: to the generality, manhood had been a struggle. it had passed into a failure. it stood face to face with the certainty of becoming a disaster. inevitably there were tragedies.... so it happened that the one vivid haunting picture that george salt carried down into later years from this period was not a lurid impression of some blackened earth-gnarled scene of dantesque desolation, not even a memory of any of the incidents of his own personal triumph, but the sharp details of an episode that lay quite off the high-road of his work. he was walking along a pretty country lane one evening (for it is a characteristic of many of these unhappy regions that almost to the edge of man's squalid usurpation nature spreads her most gracious charms) when a sudden thunderstorm drove him to seek the hospitality of a labourer's cottage. the man who opened the door was not a labourer, although he was shabbily dressed. he looked sombrely at his visitor. "what is it?" he asked, standing in the doorway with no sign of invitation. "it is raining very heavily," replied salt. "i should like to shelter, if you will permit me." the man seemed to notice the downpour, which had now become a continuous stream, for the first time. "i'm very busy," he said churlishly. "if i might stand just inside your doorway?" suggested salt. "no, come in," said the host with an air of sudden resolution. "after all----" he led the way out of the tiny entrance-hall into a room. salt could not refrain from noticing that although the furniture was meagre, the walls were covered with paintings. "i am an artist," said the brusque tenant of the cottage, noticing the involuntary glance around. "come--in return for shelter you shall tell me what you think of these things." "i am not a critic," replied salt, stepping from picture to picture, "and it would be presumptuous, therefore, for me to give an opinion on works that i do not understand, although i can recognise them as striking and unconventional." "ah," commented the artist. "and that?" he indicated a portrait with a nod. it was in an earlier, a smoother, and less characteristic style. to the man who was no artist it was a very beautiful painting of a very beautiful girl. "my dead wife," said the artist, as salt stood in silent admiration. "i have buried her this afternoon." the man who had never known or even seen her felt a stab as he looked up at the lovely, smiling face. "well," said the painter roughly, "why don't you say how sorry you are, or some platitude of that sort?" salt turned away, to leave the other alone meeting the sweet eyes. "because i cannot say how sorry i am," he replied with gentle pity. "oh, my beloved!" he heard the whisper. "not long, not long." "you are packing," salt continued a minute later. "let me help you--with some." a heap of straw and shavings littered the floor; boxes and cases stood ready at hand. "no," replied the man, looking moodily at his preparations. "i have changed my mind. i have to go on a journey to-night, but i shall leave this place as it is and secure the doors and windows instead." he brought tools, and together they nailed across the cottage windows the stout old-fashioned shutters that secured them. neither spoke much. "come," said the artist, when the melancholy work was complete; "the storm is over. our roads lie together for a little way." he locked the outer door, and stood lingering reluctantly with his hand upon the key. "a moment," he said, unlocking the door again, and entering. "only a moment. wait for me at the gate." salt waited as he was directed beside a dripping linden. the storm had indeed passed over, but the sky was low and grey. little rivulets meandered in changing currents down the garden path; from beneath the narrow lane came the continuous sobbing rush of some unseen swollen water-course. the hand of despair lay heavy across the scene; it seemed as though nature had wept herself out, but was uncomforted. salt pictured the lonely man standing before the soulless, smiling creation of his own hand. the door opened, the lock again creaked mournfully as its rusty bolt was driven home, and without a backward glance the artist came slowly down the walk, twisting the clumsy key aimlessly upon his finger. he stopped at a tangled patch where the anemone struggled vainly among the choking bindweed, and the hyacinths and lupines had been beaten down to earth. "her garden!" he said aloud, and a spasm crossed his face. "but now how overgrown." on a thought he dropped the key gently among the luxuriant growth and turned away. "i will tell you why my wife died," said the artist suddenly, after they had passed round a bend of the road that hid the cottage from their sight. "it should point a moral, and it will not take long." "it may plead a cause," replied salt. "ah!" exclaimed his companion, looking at him sharply. "who are you, then?" "you do not know me, but you may know my business. i am salt of the unity league." "strange," murmured the other. "well, then, mr salt, my name is leslie garnet, and, as i have told you, i am an artist. ten years ago, at the age of thirty, i came into a small legacy--three hundred pounds a year, to be precise. up to that time i had been making a somewhat precarious living by illustration; on the strength of my fortune--which, of course, to a successful man in any walk of life would be the merest pittance--i rearranged my plans. "black and white work was drudgery to me, and it would never be anything else, because it was not my medium, but it was the only form of pictorial art that earned a livelihood. pictures had ceased to sell. at the same time i had encouragement for thinking that i could do something worthy of existence in the higher branch of art. "i don't want to trouble you with views. i made my choice. i determined to live frugally on my income, give up hack work, to the incidental advantage of some other poor struggler, and devote myself wholly to pictures which might possibly bring me some recognition at the end of a lifetime--more probably not--but pictures which would certainly never enrich me. i do not think that the choice was an ignoble one--but, of course, it was purely a personal matter. "it was very soon afterwards that i got married. had i thought of that step earlier i might have acted differently. as it was, hilda would not hear of it. there seemed no need; we were very comfortable on our small income in a tiny way. "nine years ago that. you know the course of events. my income was derived from a prudently invested capital, so disposed as to give the highest safe return. not many years had passed before the government then in power fixed seven per cent. as the highest rate of interest compatible with commercial morality, and confiscated all above. my fixed system of living was embarrassed by a deduction of fifty pounds a year. the next year an open-minded chancellor, in need of a few millions to spend on free amusements for the working class, was converted to the principle that two per cent. of immorality still remained, so five was made the maximum, and my small income was thus permanently reduced to two hundred pounds. "we received this second blow rather blankly, but hilda would not hear of surrender. as a matter of fact, i soon found out that there was practically no chance of it, and that in throwing up all connections when i did, i had burned my boats. artists of every kind were turning to illustration work, but half of the magazines were dead. we gave up the flat that had been made pretty and home-like with inexpensive taste, and moved into three dreary rooms. "you know what the next development would be, perhaps? yes, the unearned incomes act. and you will understand how it affected me. "i was assessed in the same class as the duke of belgravia and mr dives-keeps, the millionaire, as a gentleman of private income, capable of earning a living, but electing to live in idleness on invested capital not of my own creating. i was married, could not plead 'encumbrances' in any form, well-educated, strong and healthy, and in the prime of life. so i came under 'schedule b,' and must pay a tax of ten shillings and sixpence in the pound. it was nothing that i might actually work twelve hours every day. officially i must be living in voluptuous idleness, because the work of my hands did not bring me in an income bearing any appreciable proportion to my private means. the government that denounced riches in every form and had come in on the mandate of the poor and needy, recognised no other standard of attainment but money. therefore 'schedule b.' "of course the effect of that was overwhelming. i could not afford a studio, i could not afford a model. i could scarcely afford materials. my wife, who had long been delicate, was now really ill, between anxiety and the unaccustomed daily work to which she bound herself. one of the companies from which i derived a portion of my income failed at this time: ruined by foreign competition and home restrictions. in a panic i endeavoured to get work of any kind. i had not the experience necessary for the lowest rungs of commerce; i was unknown in art. who would employ a broken-down man beginning life at thirty-eight? i was too old. "i was warned that appeal was useless, but i did appeal before the commission. it was useless. i learned that mine was a thoroughly bad case from every official point of view, with no redeeming feature: that i was, in fact, a parasite upon the social system; and i narrowly escaped having the assessment raised. "it was then that we left london and came to this cottage. my wife's health was permanently undermined, and change of air was necessary even to prolong her life. her native county was recommended; that is why we chose this spot. when i reviewed affairs i found that i had a clear fifty pounds a year. and there, a few miles to the west, where you see that tracery of wheels and scaffolding against the sun, and there, a few miles to the north, where you see that pall of smoke upon the air, there lie hundreds and hundreds of cottages where gross luxury is rampant, where beneath one roof family incomes of ten times mine are free from any tax at all. "that is enough for you to fill in the detail," continued garnet bitterly, as he revived the memory of the closing scenes. "doctors, things that had to be bought, bare existence. what remained of the investments sold for what a forced sale would bring--you know what that means to-day. the end you have seen. and there, mr salt, is the story to your hand. here is the churchyard.... killed, to make a labour holiday!" he opened the rustic gate of the hillside churchyard and led the way to a newly-turned mound, where the perfume hung stagnantly from the rain-lashed petals of a great sheaf of bermuda lilies. "i remain here," he said quietly, after a few minutes' silence by the grave-side. "your road lies straight on, along the field path. you can even see the smoke of thornley from here, lying to your right." salt did not reply. looking intently in the opposite direction, he was locating with a seaman's eye another cloud of smoke that rose above the tree-tops in the valley they had left. "your house!" he exclaimed, pointing. "man!" he cried suddenly, with a flash of intuition, "what are you doing? you fired the straw before we left!" a sharp report was the only answer. salt turned too late to arrest his arm, only in time to catch him as he fell. he lowered him--there was nothing else to do--lowered him on to the wet sods that flanked the mound, and knelt by his side so that he might support him somewhat. to one who had been on battle-fields there was no need to wonder what to do. it was a matter not of minutes but of seconds. the mute eyes met his dimly; he heard the single whisper, "hilda," and then, without a tremor, garnet, self-murdered, pressed a little more heavily against his arm and lay across the yet unfinished grave of his state-murdered wife. chapter viii tantroy earns his wage "i think," observed salt reflectively, soon after his return, "that you had better take a short holiday now, miss lisle." miss lisle looked up from her work--she was not addressing circulars, it may be stated--with an expression not quite devoid of suspicion. "i will, if you wish me to do so, sir," she replied meekly. "but, personally, i do not require one." "you have been of great use to us while i was away," he explained kindly, but with official precision, "and now that i am back again you have the opportunity." miss lisle coloured rather rapturously at the formal praise, but the astute young woman did not allow her exaltation to beguile her senses. "a week's holiday?" she asked. "i would suggest a fortnight," he replied. "that would be until the end of june?" salt agreed. "then nothing is likely to happen before the end of june?" he laughed frankly. there was no trace of the mystery and restraint, of the electric tension in the air, that forerun portentous events, as we are told, to be noticed about the office of the league. "a great deal may happen before that time, but nothing, i think i can assure you, that comes within your meaning." "is there any particular place that you would like me to go to?" "oh, not at all. forget trafalgar chambers and business entirely for the time." possibly miss lisle had looked for some hidden meaning behind the simple suggestion of a holiday: had anticipated "another secret process down another little lane." at any rate, she did not rejoice at the prospect; on the contrary, she declined it. "thank you, sir," she replied, "but unless it is for your convenience, i should prefer to go on addressing circulars." salt frowned slightly and smiled slightly, and inwardly admitted to himself that he had probably expected worse things when he had first accepted miss lisle's services. "i am a very plain, straightforward person in all my dealings," he remarked, "and you, outside the strict line of work here, have an oblique vein that taxes the imagination. further, it carries the sting that with all you generally arrive at the same conclusion as i do, only a little earlier." "i have a loathsome, repulsive nature, i know," admitted irene cheerfully. "trivial, ill-mannered, suspicious. i require strict discipline. that is why i am better here." "so far i have not been inconvenienced by the two first characteristics. it is a mistake, perhaps, to be over-suspicious." "yes," agreed the lady with a level glance. "it only ends in you finding people out, when otherwise you might have gone on believing in them to the last." salt had only known miss lisle for a few months, and for a third of the period he had not seen her. but he knew that when she showed a disposition to take up his time something more than the amenities of conversation lay behind her words. he remembered that level glance. it foreshadowed another "long pointless tale." "for instance?" he suggested encouragingly. "if i left this office locked when i went out to lunch, for instance, and found it still locked but the papers slightly disarranged on my return," she replied. "anything more?" "it is very unpleasant to set traps, of course, but if i put a little dab of typewriter ink on the inner handle of the door when i next went out, and subsequently found a slight stain of a similar colour on my white glove after shaking hands with some one, the suspicion would be deepened." "i think that the matter is of sufficient importance for you to tell me all you know," he said gravely. "if you hesitate to be definite for fear of making a mistake, i will take pains to verify your suspicions and i will accept all responsibility." "then i accuse mr tantroy of being a paid spy in the service of the government." "tantroy!" exclaimed salt with a momentary feeling of incredulity. "tantroy! it seems impossible, but, after all, it is possible enough. you know, of course, that he has a room here now, and might even think in his inexperience that he was at liberty to come into this office at any time." "but not to take impressions of my keys and have duplicates made; nor to copy extracts in my absence; nor to open and examine the cipher typewriter." "has that been left unlocked?" he demanded sharply. "no," she replied. "you have the only key that i know of. but it _has_ been unlocked, and i infer that the code has been copied." for quite three minutes there was silence. salt was thinking, not idly, but estimating exactly the effect of what had happened. miss lisle was waiting, with somewhat rare perception, until he was ready to continue. "sooner or later something of the sort was bound to come," he summed up quietly, without a trace of discomfiture. "it is only the personality that is surprising. his interests are identical with ours; he has everything to gain by our success. why; why on earth?" "i think that i can explain that in three words," suggested miss lisle. "velma st saint." salt looked enquiringly. he had forgotten the hon. freddy's deity for the moment. "of the vivarium," added irene. "oh, the lady who hangs by her toes," he remarked with enlightenment. "'the world's greatest inverted cantatrice'!" quoted miss lisle. "that is her celebrated 'upside down' song that the organ is playing in the street below. a few years ago she got a week's engagement at the elysium at a salary of eighty pounds. she calculated from that that she could afford to spend four thousand a year, and although all theatrical incomes have steadily declined ever since until she only gets ten pounds a week now, she has never been able to make any difference in her style of living.... of course there is a deficit to be made up." "it is just as well. if it had not been tantroy it would have been some one abler. now what has he done, what has he learned?" "duplicate keys of this door and of my desk have been made. the lock of the cipher typewriter case is not of an elaborate pattern, and any one bringing a quantity of keys of the right size would probably find one to answer. i don't think that either your desk or the safe has been opened; certainly not since i began to notice. the papers to which he would have access are consequently not highly important." "letters?" suggested salt. "for instance, my letters lying here until you forwarded them. there is a post in at eight o'clock in the morning; others after you have left up to ten at night. there would be every opportunity for abstracting some, opening them at leisure, and then dropping them into the letter-box again a little later." "no," said miss lisle. "i took precautions against that." "how?" he demanded, and waited very keenly for her answer. "simply by arriving here before eight and remaining until ten." "thank you." it was all he said, but it did not leave miss lisle with the empty feeling that virtue had merely been its own reward. "perhaps i ought to add that mr tantroy tried to get information from me," she remarked distantly. "he--he came here frequently and wished me to accept presents; boxes of chocolate at first, i think, and jewellery afterwards. it was a mistake he made." "yes," assented salt thoughtfully, "i think it was. there is one other thing, miss lisle. you could scarcely know with whom he was negotiating on the other side?" "no," she admitted regretfully; "i had not sufficient time. that was why i did not wish to go away just now." "i do not think that you need hesitate to leave it now. i am not taking it out of your hands, only carrying on another phase that you have made possible. it will simplify matters if i have the office to myself. could you find an opportunity for telling tantroy casually that you are taking a fortnight's holiday?" her answer hung just a moment. had he known tantroy better he might have guessed. "yes, certainly," she replied hastily, with a little stumble in her speech. perhaps he guessed. "no," he corrected himself. "on second thoughts, it does not matter." "i do not mind," she protested loyally. "if it were necessary i should not hesitate to ask you," he replied half brusquely. "it is not." "very well. i will go to-morrow." that evening, when he was alone. salt unlocked the typewriter case to which miss lisle had alluded, took out the machine, and seating himself before it proceeded to compose a letter upon which he seemed to spend much consideration. as his fingers struck the keys, upon the sheet of paper in the carrier there appeared the following mystifying composition: kbeljsl wopmjvsjxkivslilscalkwespljkjscwecsspssp fxfejsloxmjcneoeqjdncs---- it was, in fact, as miss lisle had said, a code typewriter. the letters which appeared on the paper did not correspond with the letters on the keys. according to the keyboard the writing should have been: mydrstr nwhvsltscmpltrprtbfrmndthrsmstbndbtthtth prpslhvfrmltdsfsblndth---- and signified, to resolve it into its ultimate form: my dear estair,--i now have salt's complete report before me, and there seems to be no doubt that the proposal i have formulated is feasible, and the---- written without vowels, stops, capitals, or spaces, this gave a very serviceable cryptograph, but there was an added safeguard. after completing the first line the writer moved a shift-key and brought another set of symbols into play--or, rather, the same symbols under a different arrangement. the process was repeated for the third line, and then the fourth line returned to the system of the first. thus three codes were really in operation, and the danger of the key being found by the frequent recurrence of certain symbols (the most fruitful cause of detection) was almost overcome. six identical machines were in existence. one has been accounted for; sir john hampden had another; and a third was in the possession of robert estair, the venerable titular head of the combined imperial party. a sociable young publican, who had a very snug house in the neighbourhood of westminster abbey, could have put his hand upon the fourth; the fifth was in the office of a super-phosphate company carrying on an unostentatious business down a quiet little lane about ten or a dozen miles out of london; and the sixth had fallen to the lot of a busy journalist, who seemed to have the happy knack of getting political articles and paragraphs accepted without demur by all the leading newspapers by the simple expedient of scribbling "urgent" and some one else's initials across the envelopes he sent them in. communications of the highest importance never reached the stage of ink and paper, but the six machines were in frequent use. in _bonâ fide_ communications the customary phraseology with which letters begin and end was not used, it is perhaps unnecessary to say. so obvious a clue as the short line "kbeljsl" at the head of a letter addressed to estair would be as fatal to the secrecy of any code as the cartouched "cleopatra" and "ptolemy" were to the mystery of egyptian hieroglyphics. that salt wrote it may be taken as an indication that he had another end in view; and it is sometimes a mistake to overrate the intelligence of your opponents. when the letter was finished he put it away in his pocket-book, arranged the fastenings of both safe and desk so that he could tell if they had been disturbed, and then went home. the next morning his preparations advanced another step. he brought with him a new letter copying-book, a silver cigarette-case with a plain polished surface, and a small jar of some oily preparation. with a little of the substance from the jar he smeared the cigarette-case all over, wiped away the greater part again until nothing but an almost imperceptible trace remained, and then placed it carefully within his desk. the next detail was to write a dozen letters with dates extending over the last few days. all were short; all were quite unimportant; they were chiefly concerned with appointments, references to future league meetings, and the like. some few were written in cipher, but the majority were plain reading, and salt signed them all in sir john's name, appending his own initials. to sign the long letter which he had already written he cut off from a note in the baronet's own handwriting the signature "john hampden," fastened it lightly at the foot of the typewritten sheet, and then proceeded to copy all the letters into the new book. the effect was patent: one letter and one alone stood out among the rest as of pre-eminent importance. the completion was reached by gumming upon the back of the book a label inscribed "hampden. private," treating the leather binding with a coating of the preparation from the jar, and finally substituting it in the safe in place of the genuine volume. then he burned his originals of all the fictitious letters and turned to other matters. it was not until two days later that mr tantroy paid salt a passing visit. he dropped in in a friendly way with the plea that the burden of his own society in his own room, where he apparently spent two hours daily in thinking deeply, had grown intolerable. "you are always such a jolly busy, energetic chap, salt, that it quite bucks me up to watch you," he explained. salt, however, was not busy that afternoon. he only excused himself to ring for a note, which was lying before him already addressed, to be taken out, and then gave his visitor an undivided attention. he was positively entertaining over his recent journeyings. freddy tantroy had never thought that the chap had so much in him before. "jolly quaint set of beggars you must have had to do with," he remarked. "thought that you were having gilded flutter monte carlo, or margate, or some of those places where crowds people go." salt looked across at him with a smile. "i think that there was an impression of that sort given out," he replied. "but, between ourselves, it was strictly on a matter of business." "we league johnnies do get most frightfully rushed," said freddy sympathetically. "bring it off?" "better than i had expected. i don't think it will be long before we begin to move now. you would be surprised if i could tell you of the unexpected form it will take." "don't see why you shouldn't," dropped tantroy negligently. salt allowed the moment to pass on a note of indecision. "perhaps i am speaking prematurely," he qualified. "things are only evolving at the moment, and i don't suppose that there will be anything at all doing during the next few weeks. i have even sent miss lisle off on a holiday." "noticed the fair irene's empty chair," said freddy. "for long?" "i told her to take a fortnight. she can have longer if she wants." "wish sir john could spare me; but simply won't hear of it. don't fancy you find girl much good, though." "oh, she is painstaking," put in her employer tolerantly. "no initiative," declared tantroy solemnly. "no idea of rising to the occasion or of making use of her opportunities." "you noticed that?" to freddy's imagination it seemed as though salt was regarding him with open admiration. he wagged his head judicially. "i knew you'd like me to keep eye on things while you were away," he said, "so i looked in here occasionally as i passed. don't believe she had any idea what to do. invariably found her sitting here in gilded idleness at every hour of the day. if i were you, should sack her while she is away." salt thought it as well to change the subject. "by the way," he remarked, "i came across what seemed to me a rather good thing in cigarettes at cardiff, and i wanted to ask your opinion about them. it's a new leaf--bolivian with a virginian blend, not on the market yet. i wish you'd try one now." there was nothing freddy tantroy liked better than being asked to give his opinion on tobacco from the standpoint of an expert. he took the case held out to him, selected a cigarette with grave deliberation, and leaned back in his chair with a critical air, preparing to deliver judgment. salt returned the case to its compartment in the desk. "it has a very distinctive aroma," announced freddy sagely, after he had drawn a few whiffs, held the cigarette under his nose, waved it slowly in the air before him, and resorted to several other devices of connoisseurship. "i thought so too," agreed salt. he had bought a suitable packet of some obscure brand in a side street, as he walked to the office two days before. "cardiff," mused tantroy. "variety grotesque holes you seem to have explored, salt." "oh, i had to see a lot of men all over the place. i got a few packets of these from a docker who had them from a south american merchant in a roundabout way. smuggled, of course." all along, his conversation had touched upon labourers, mill-hands, miners, and other sons of toil. apparently, as tantroy noted, he had scarcely associated with any other class. he was lying deliberately, and in a manner calculated to alienate the sympathy of many excellent people; for there is a worthy and not inconsiderable class with an ineradicable conviction that although in a just cause the sixth commandment may be suspended, as it were by act of parliament, and the killing of your enemy become an active virtue, yet in no case is it permissible to tell him a falsehood. if it is necessary to deceive him the end must be gained by leading him to it by inference. but salt belonged to a hard-grained school which believed in doing things thoroughly, and when on active service he swept the sophistries away. he had to mislead a man whose very existence he believed to be steeped in treachery and falsehood, and, as the most effectual way, he lied deliberately to him. "frantic adventure," drawled tantroy. "didn't know league dealt in people that kind." "of course, i saw all sorts," corrected salt hastily, as though he feared that he had indicated too closely the trend of his business; "only it happened that those were the most amusing," and to emphasise the fact he launched into another anecdote. at an out-of-the-way village there was neither hotel nor inn. his business was unfinished, and it was desirable that he should stay the night there. at last he heard of a small farm-house where apartments were occasionally let, and, making his way there, he asked if he could have a room. the woman seemed doubtful. "of course, as i am a stranger, i should wish to pay you in advance," said salt. "it isn't that, sir," replied the hostess, "but i like to be sure of making people comfortable." "i don't think that we shall disagree about that," he urged. "perhaps not," she admitted, "but the last gentleman was very hard to please. everything i got him he'd had better somewhere else till he was sick of it. but," she added in a burst of confidence, "look what a swell _he_ was! i knew that nothing would satisfy him when i saw him come in a motor-car puffed out with rheumatic tyres, and wearing a pair of them _blasé_ kid boots." tantroy contributed an appreciative cackle, and salt, leaning back in his chair, pressed against a pile of books standing on his desk so that they fell to the ground with a crash. by the time he had picked them up again a telegram was waiting at his elbow. he took it, opened it with a word of apology, and with a sharp exclamation pulled out his watch. before tantroy could realise what was happening, salt had caught up his hat and gloves, slammed down his self-locking desk, and, after a single hasty glance round the room, was standing at the door. "excuse me, won't you?" he called back. "most important. can just catch a train. pull my door to after you, please," and the next minute he was gone. left to himself, tantroy's first action was not an unnatural one in the circumstance. he picked up the telegram which salt had left in his wild hurry and read it. "_come at once, if you wish to see vernon alive_," was the imperative message, and it appeared to have been handed in at croydon half an hour before. he stepped to the window, and from behind the curtains he saw salt run down the steps into the road, call a hansom from the rank near at hand, and disappear in the direction of victoria at a gallop. mr tantroy sat down again, and his eyes ran over the various objects in the room in quick succession. the code typewriter. he had all he wanted from that. salt's desk. locked, of course. the girl's desk. locked, and, as he knew, not worth the trouble of unlocking with his duplicate key. the safe----his heart gave a bound, his eyes stood wide in incredulous surprise, and he sprang to his feet and stealthily crossed the room to make sure of his astounding luck. the safe was unlocked! the door stood just an inch or so ajar, and salt, having failed to notice it in his hurried glance, was on his way to croydon! living in a pretentious, breathless age, drawn into a social circle beside whose feverish artificiality the _natural_ artificiality inseparable from any phase of civilisation stood comparable to a sturdy, healthy tree, badly brought up, neglected, petted, the honourable frederick tantroy had grown to the form of the vacuous pose which he had adopted. beneath it lay his real character. a moderately honest man would not have played his part, but an utterly weak one could not have played it. it demanded certain qualities not contemptible. there were risks to be taken, and he was prepared to take them, and in their presence his face took on a stronger, even better, look. he bolted the door on the inside, picked up a few sheets of paper from the desk-top, and without any sign of nervousness or haste began to do his work. it was fully three hours later when salt returned; for with that extreme passion for covering every possible contingency that marked his career, he had been to croydon. many a better scheme has failed through the neglect of a smaller detail. the room, when he entered it and secured the door, looked exactly as when he left, three hours before. for all the disarrangement he had caused, tantroy might have melted out of it. on the top of his desk, at the side nearest to the safe, lay a packet of octavo scribbling paper. he took out the sheets and twice counted them. thirty-one, and he had left thirty-four. his face betrayed no emotion. satisfaction at having outwitted a spy was merged in regret that there must need be one, and pain on hampden's account that his nephew should be the traitor. he unlocked his desk and carefully lifted out the cigarette-case, pulled open the safe door, and took up the fictitious letter-book. to the naked eye the finger-prints on each were scarcely discernible, but under the magnifying lenses of the superimposing glass all doubt was finally dispelled. they were there, they corresponded, they were identical. thumb to thumb, finger to finger, and line to line they fitted over one another without a blur or fault. it was, as it often proved to be in those days, hanging evidence. salt relocked the safe, tore out the used pages of the letter-book, and reduced them to ashes on the spot. the less important remains of the book he took with him to his chambers, and there burned them from cover to cover before he went to bed. it had served its purpose, and not a legitimate trace remained. around the stolen copy the policy of the coming strife might crystallise, and towards any issue it might raise salt could look with confidence. finally, if the unforeseen arose, the way was clear for sir john to denounce a shameless forgery, and who could contradict his indignant word? chapter ix secret history under succeeding administrations, each pledged to a larger policy to themselves and a smaller one towards every one else, most of the traditional outward forms of government had continued to be observed. thus there was a minister for the colonies, though the colonies themselves had shamefacedly one by one dropped off into the troubled waters of weak independence, or else clung on with pathetic loyalty in spite of rebuff after rebuff, and the disintegration of all mutual interests, until nothing but the most shadowy bond remained. there was a secretary of state for war in spite of the fact that the flag which the government nailed to the mast when it entered into negotiations with an aggrieved and aggressive power, bore the legend, "peace at any price. none but a coward strikes the weak." there had been more than one first lord of the admiralty whose maritime experience had begun and ended on the familiar deck of the _koh-i-noor_. there were practically all the usual officers of ministerial rank--and the recipients of ministerial salaries. apart from the enjoyment of the title and the salary, however, there were a few members of the cabinet who exercised no real authority. lord henry stokes had been the last of upper class politicians of standing to accept office under the new _régime_. largely in sympathy with the democratic tendency of the age, optimistic as to the growth of moderation and restraint in the ranks of the mushroom party, and actuated by the most sterling patriotism, lord henry had essayed the superhuman task of premiership. superhuman it was, because no mortal could have combined the qualities necessary for success in the face of the fierce distrust and jealousy which his rank and social position excited in the minds of the rawer recruits of his own party; superhuman, because no man possessing his convictions could have long reconciled with them the growing and not diminishing illiberality of those whom he was to lead. there were dissensions, suspicions, and recriminations from the first. the end came in a tragic scene, unparalleled among the many historic spectacles which the house has witnessed. a trivial point in the naval estimates was under discussion, and lord henry, totally out of sympathy with the bulk of his nominal following, had risen to patch up the situation on the best terms he could. at the end of a studiously moderate speech, which had provoked cheers from the opposition and murmurs of dissent from his own party throughout, he had wound up his plea for unity, toleration, and patriotism, with the following words: "it is true that here no government measure is at stake, no crisis is involved, and honourable members on this side of the house are free of party trammels and at liberty to vote as seems best to each. but if the motion should be persisted in, an inevitable conclusion must be faced, an irretrievable step will have been taken, and of the moral outcome of that act who dare trace the end?" there was just a perceptible pause of sullen silence, then from among the compact mass that sat behind their leader rose a coarse voice, charged with a squiggling laugh. "we give it up, 'enry. if it's a riddle about morals, suppose you ask little flo?" it was an aside--it was afterwards claimed that it was a drunken whisper--but it was heard, as it was meant to be heard, throughout the crowded chamber. from the opposition ranks there was torn a cry, almost of horror, at the enormity of the insult, at the direful profanation of the house. responsible members of the government turned angrily, imploringly, frantically upon their followers. at least half of these, sitting pained and scandalised, needed no restraint, but from the malcontents and extreme wings came shriek upon shriek of boisterous mirth, as they rocked with laughter about their seats. as for lord henry, sitting immobile as he scanned a paper in his hand, he did not appear to have heard at first, nor even to have noticed that anything unusual was taking place. but the next minute he turned deadly pale, began to tremble violently, and with a low and hurried, "your help, meadowsweet!" he stumbled from the hall. for twenty years he had been a member of the house, years of full-blooded politics when party strife ran strong, but never before had the vaguest innuendo from that deep-seared, unforgotten past dropped from an opponent's lips. it had been reserved for his own party to achieve that distinction and to exact the crowning phase of penance in nature's inexorable cycle. apologists afterwards claimed that too much had been made of the incident--that much worse things were often said, and passed, at the meetings of boards of guardians and borough councils. it was as true as it was biting: worse things were said at borough councils, and the mother of parliaments had sunk to the rhetorical level of a borough council. stokes never took his seat again, and with him there passed out of that arena the last of a hopeful patriotic group, whose only failure was that they tried to reconcile two irreconcilable forces of their times. it did not result, however, that no men of social position were to be found among the labour benches. there was a demand, and there followed the supply. rank, mediocrity, and moral obsequiousness were the essentials for their posts. there were no more stokeses to be had, so obliging creatures were obtained who were willing for a consideration to be paraded as the successors to his patriotic mantle. they were plainly made to understand their position, and if they ventured to show individuality they soon resigned. nominally occupying high offices, they had neither influence, power, nor respect; like marlborough in compliance they had "to do it for their bread." they were ruled by their junior lords, assistants, and underlings in various degrees. many of these men, too strong to be ignored, were frankly recognised to be impossible in the chief offices of state. as a consequence the cabinet soon became an empty form. its councils were still held, but the proceedings were cut and dried in advance. the real assembly that dictated the policy of the government was the expediency council, held informally as the necessity arose. the gathering which was taking place at the premier's house on this occasion had been convened for the purpose of clearing the air with regard to the policy to be pursued at home. the government had come into power with very liberal ideas on the question of what ought to be done for the working classes. they had made good their promises, and still that free and enlightened body, having found by experience that they only had to ask often enough and loudly enough to be met in their demands, were already clamouring for more. the most moderate section of the government was of opinion that the limit had been reached; others thought that the limit lay yet a little further on; the irresponsibles denied that any limit could be fixed at all. that had been the experience of every administration for a long time past, and each one in turn had been succeeded by its malcontents. mr strummery, the premier, did not occupy the official residence provided for him. mrs strummery, an excellent lady who had once been heard to remark that she could never understand why her husband was called _prime minister_ when he was not a _minister_ at all, flatly declared that the work of cleaning the windows alone of the house in downing street put it out of the question. even mr strummery, who, among his political associates, was reported to have rather exalted ideas of the dignity of his position, came to the conclusion, after fully considering the residence from every standpoint, that he might not feel really at home there. it was therefore let, furnished, to an american lady who engineered wealthy _débutantes_ from her native land into "the best" english society, and the strummerys found more congenial surroundings in brandenburg place. there, within a convenient distance of the hampstead road and other choice shopping centres, mrs strummery, like the wife of another eminent statesman whose statue stood almost within sight of her bedroom windows, was able to indulge in her amiable foible for cheap marketing. and if the two ladies had this in common, the points of resemblance between their respective lords (the moral side excluded) might be multiplied many-fold, for no phrase put into mr strummery's mouth could epigrammatise his point of view more concisely than fox's inopportune toast, "our sovereign: the people." history's dispassionate comment was that the sentiment which lost the abler man his privy councillorship in his day, gained for the other a premiership a century later. "one thing that gets me is why no one ever seems to take any notice of us when we have a council on," remarked the president of the board of education with an involuntary plaint in his voice. he was standing on the balcony outside the large front room on mr strummery's first floor--a room which boasted the noble proportions of a _salon_, and possibly served as one in georgian days. certainly brandenburg place did not present a spectacle of fluttering animation at the prospect of seeing the great ones of the land assembling within its bounds. at one end of the thoroughfare a milkman was going from area to area with a prolonged melancholy cry more suggestive of stoke poges churchyard than of any other spot on earth; at the opposite end a grocer's errand boy, with basket resourcefully inverted upon his head, had sunk down by the railings to sip the nectar from a few more pages of "iroquois ike's last hope; or, the phantom cow-puncher's bride." midway between the two a cat, in the act of crossing the road, had stopped to twitch a forepaw with that air of imperturbable deliberateness in its movements that no other created thing can ever succeed in attaining. in a house opposite some one was rattling off the exhilarating strains of "humming ephraim," but even when a hansom cab and two four-wheelers drove up in quick succession to the premier's door, no one betrayed curiosity to the extent of looking out of the window. the minister of education noted these things as he stood on the balcony, and possibly he felt another phase of the gratitude of men that often left mr wordsworth mourning. "i can remember the time when crowds used to wait hours in the rain along downing street--our people, too--to catch a sight of estair or nettlebury. i won't exactly say that it annoys me, because i've seen too much of the hollowness of things for that, but it certainly is rummy why it should be so." "a very good thing, too," commented the premier briskly from the room. "i don't know that we could have a greater compliment. the people know that we are plain, straightforward men like themselves, and they know that we are doing our work without having to come and see us at it. they don't regard us almost as little deities--interesting to see, but quite different and above themselves. that's why." every one in the room said "hear! hear!" as though that exactly defined his own sentiments; and every one in the room looked rather sad, as though at the back of their collective minds there lurked a doubt whether it might not be more pleasant to be regarded almost as little deities. "you needn't go as far back as estair and nettlebury," put in vossit of the treasury. "see how they fairly 'um round hampden whenever he's about." "not us," interposed another man emphatically. "let them go on their own messin' way; it'll do us no harm. you never saw a working man at any of their high and mighty meetings." "so much the worse, for they didn't want them. but there ought to have been working men there, from the very first meeting until now." the speaker was one of the most recent additions to the potent circle of the brandenburg place councils, and the freedom of criticism which he allowed himself had already been the subject of pained comment on the part of a section of his seniors. "well," suggested some one, with politely-pointed meaning, "i don't know what's to prevent one individual from attending a meeting if he so wants. he'd probably find one going on somewhere at this minute if he looked round hard. doesn't seem to me that any one's holding him back." "now, now," reproved mr guppling, the postmaster-general, "let the man speak if he has anything on his mind. come now, comrade, what do you mean?" "i don't know what i mean," replied the comrade, at which there was a general shout of laughter. "i don't know what i mean," he continued, having secured general attention by this simple device of oratory, "because i am told in those government quarters where i ought to be able to find information, that no information has been collected, no systematic enquiries made, nothing is known, in fact. therefore, i do not know what i mean because i do not know--none of us know--what the unity league means. but i know this: that a hostile organisation of over a million and a half strong----" dissent came forcibly from every quarter of the room. "not half!" was the milder form it took. "----of over a million and a half strong," continued the speaker grimly--"perhaps more, in fact, than all our trades unions put together--with an income very little less than what all the trades unions put together used to have, and funds in hand probably more, is a living menace in our midst, and ought to have been closely watched." "it keeps 'em quiet," urged the foreign under-secretary. "too quiet. i don't like my enemy to be quiet. i prefer him to be talking large and telling us exactly what he's going to do." "they're going to chuck us out, tirrel; that's what they're going to do," said a sarcastic comrade playfully. "so was the buttercup league, so was the liberal-conservative alliance. lo, history repeats itself!" "i see a long line of strong men fallen in the past--premiers, popes, kings, generals, ambassadors," replied tirrel. "they all took it for granted that when they had got their positions they could keep them without troubling about their enemies any more. that's generally the repeating point in history." mr strummery felt that the instances were perhaps getting too near home. "come, come, chaps, and comrade tirrel in particular," he said mildly, "don't imagine that nothing is being done in the proper quarter because you mayn't hear much talk about it. our executives work and don't talk. i think that you may trust our good comrade tubes to keep an eye on the unity league." "wish he'd keep an eye on the clock," murmured a captious member. "not once," he added conclusively, "but three times out of four." there was a vigorous knock at the front door, and the hurried footsteps of some one ascending the stairs with the consciousness that he was late. "talk of tubes and you'll have a puncture," confided a comrade of humorous bent to his neighbour, and on the words the home secretary, certainly with very little breath left in him, entered the room and made his apologies. the special business for which the council had been called together was to consider a series of reports from the constituencies, and to decide how to be influenced by their tenor. the government had no desire to wait for a general election in order to find out the views of the electors of the country; given a close summary of those sentiments, it might be possible to fall in with their wishes, and thereby to be spared the anxiety of an election until their septennial existence had run its course; or, if forced by the action of their own malcontents to take that unwelcome step, at least to cut the ground from beneath their opponents' feet in advance. if there was not complete unanimity among those present, there was no distinct line of variance. men of the extremest views had naturally not been included, and although the prevailing opinion was that the conditions of labour had been put upon a fair and equitable basis during their tenure of office--or as far in that direction as it was possible to go without utterly stampeding capitalists and ratepayers from the country--there were many who were prepared to go yet a little further if it seemed desirable. judging from the summarised reports, it did seem desirable. from the mills of lancashire and yorkshire, the coal-pits of the north and west, the iron fields of the midlands, the quarries of derbyshire, the boot factories of northampton and the lace factories of nottingham, from every swarming port around the coast, and from that vast cosmopolitan clearing house, the capital itself, came the same tale. the people did not find themselves so well off as they wished to be; they were, in fact, rather poorer than before. there was nothing local about it. the thurso flag-stone hewer shared the symptoms with his celtic brother, digging out tin and copper from beneath the atlantic waters beyond pendeen; the pembroke dock-hand and the ipswich mechanic were in just the same position. when industries collapsed, as industries had an unhappy character for doing about the period, no one had any reserves. it was possible to live by provision of the government, but the working man had been educated up to requiring a great deal more than bare living. when wages went down in spite of all artificial inflation, or short time was declared, a great many working-class houses, financed from week to week but up to the hilt in debt, went down too. the agricultural labourer was the least disturbed; he had had the least done for him, and he had never known a "boom." the paradox remained that with more money the majority of the poor were poorer than before, and they were worse than poor, for they were dissatisfied. the remedy, of course, was for some one to give them still more money, not for them to spend less. the shortest way to that remedy, as they had been well taught by their agitators in the past, was to clamour for the government to do something else for them, and therefore they were clamouring now. "that is the position," announced mr tubes, when he had finished reading the general summary. "the question it raises may not be exactly urgent, but it is at least pressing. on the one hand, there is the undoubted feeling of grievance existing among a large proportion of electors--our own people. on the other hand, there is the serious question of national finances not to be overlooked. as the matter is one that must ultimately concern me more closely than anybody else, i will reserve my own opinion to the last." the view taken by those present has already been indicated. their platform was that of moderate socialism; they wished it always to be understood that they were practical. they had the interest of their fellow working men (certainly of no other class of the community) at heart, but as practical socialists they had a suspicion (taking the condition of the exchequer into consideration) that for the moment they had reached the limit of practical socialism. there was an undoubted dilemma. if a mistake of policy on their part let in the impractical socialists, the result would be disastrous. most of them regarded the danger as infinitesimal; like every other political party during the last two centuries, they felt that they could rely on the "sound common-sense of the community." still, admitting a possibility, even if it was microscopic, might it not be more--say practically socialistic (the word "patriotic" had long been expunged from their vocabulary) in the end to make some slight concessions? if there existed a more material inducement it was not referred to, and any ingenuous comrade, using as an argument in favour of compliance a homely proverb anent the inadvisability of quarrelling with one's bread and butter, would have been promptly discouraged. yet, although the actors themselves in this great morality play apparently overlooked the consideration, it is impossible for the spectator to ignore the fact. some few members of the cabinet might have provided for a rainy day, but even to many of official class, and practically to all of the rank and file, a reversal at the polls must mean that they would have to give up a variety of highly-esteemed privileges and return to private life in less interesting capacities, some in very humble ones indeed. it ended, as it was bound to end, in compromise. they would not play into the hands of the extreme party and ignore the voice of the constituencies; they would not be false to their convictions and be dictated to by the electors. they would decline to bring in the suggested minimum wage bill, and they would not impose the personal property tax. they would meet matters by extending the national obligations act, and save money on the estimates. they would be sound, if commonplace. the formal proceedings having been concluded, it was open for any one to introduce any subject he pleased in terms of censure, enquiry or discussion. comrade tirrel was on his feet at once, and returned to the subject that lay heavy on his mind. "is the home secretary in possession of any confidential information regarding the unity league?" he demanded; "and can he assure us, in view of the admittedly hostile object of the organisation, that adequate means are being taken to neutralise any possible lines of action it may adopt?" "the answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative," replied mr tubes in his best parliamentary manner. "as regards the second part, i may state that after considering the reports we have received it is not anticipated that the league offers any serious menace to the government. should the necessity arise, the council may rely upon the home office taking the requisite precautions." "the answer is satisfactory as far as it goes. being in possession of special information, will the home secretary go a step further and allay the anxiety that certainly exists in some quarters, by indicating the real intentions and proposed _modus operandi_ of the league?" mr tubes conferred for a moment with his chief. "i may say that on broad lines the league has no definite plan for the future, and its intentions, as represented by the policy of its heads, will simply be to go on existing so long as the deluded followers will continue their subscriptions. i may point out that the league has now been in existence for two years, and during that time it has done nothing at all to justify its founders' expectations; it has not embarrassed us at any point nor turned a single by-election. for two years we heard practically nothing of it, and there has been no fresh development to justify the present uneasiness which it seems to be causing in the minds of a few nervous comrades. its membership is admittedly imposing, but the bare fact that a million and a half of people are foolish enough----" there was a significant exchange of astonished glances among the occupants of mr strummery's council chamber. murmurs grew, and mr guppling voiced the general feeling by calling the home secretary's attention to the figures he had mentioned "doubtless inadvertently." "no," admitted mr tubes carelessly, "that is our latest estimate. from recent information we have reason to think that the previous figure we adopted was too low--or the league may have received large additions lately through some accidental cause. we are now probably erring as widely on the other side, but it is the safe side, and i therefore retain that figure." mr tirrel had not yet finished, but he was listened to with respectful attention now. "is the home secretary in a position to tell us who this man salt is?" was his next enquiry. the home secretary looked frankly puzzled. "who _is_ salt?" he replied, innocently enough. "that is the essential point of my enquiry," replied the comrade. "salt," he continued, his voice stilling the laughter it had raised, "is the man behind the unity league. you think it is hampden, but i tell you that you are mistaken. hampden is undoubtedly a dangerous power; the classes will follow him blindly, and he is no mere figure-head, but it was salt who stirred hampden from his apathy, and it is salt who pulls the wires." "and who is salt?" demanded the premier, as mr tubes offered no comment. tirrel shook his head. "i know no more than i have stated," he replied; "but his secret influence must be tremendous, and all doubt as to the identity of the man and his past record should be set at rest." mr tubes looked up from the papers he had before him with a gleam of subdued anger in his eye. "i think that our cock-sure kumred has geete howd of another mare's neest," he remarked, relapsing unconsciously into his native dialect as he frequently did when stirred. "i remember hearin' o' this saut in one o' th' reports, and here it is. so far from being a principal, he occupies a very different position--that of hampden's private secretary, which would explain how he might have to come into contact with a great many people without having any real influence hissel. he is described in my confidential report as a simple, unsuspicious man, who might be safely made use of, and, in fact, most of my information is derived from that source." there was a sharp, smothered exclamation from one or two men, and then a sudden stillness fell upon the room. mr tubes was among the last to realise the trend of his admission. "are we to understand that the greater part--perhaps the whole--of the information upon which the home office has been relying, and of the assurances of inaction which have lulled our suspicions to rest, have been blindly accepted from this man salt, the head and fount of the league itself?" demanded tirrel with ominous precision. "if that indicates the methods of the department, i think that this council will share my view when i suggest that the terms 'simple' and 'unsuspicious' have been inaccurately allotted--to salt." mr tubes made no reply. lying at the bottom of the man's nature smouldered a volcanic passion that he watched as though it were a sleeping beast. twice in his public career it had escaped him, and each time the result had been a sharp reverse to his ambitions. repression--firm, instant, and unconditional--was the only safeguard, so that now recognising the danger-signal in his breast, he sat without a word in spite of the premier's anxious looks, in spite of the concern of those about him. "i will not press for a verbal reply," continued tirrel after a telling pause; "the inference of silence makes that superfluous. but i will ask whether the home secretary is aware that salt has been quietly engaged in canvassing the provinces for a month, and whether he has any information about his object and results. yes," he continued vehemently, turning to those immediately about him, "for a month past this simple, unsuspecting individual from whom we derive our confidential information has been passing quietly and unmarked from town to town; and if you were to hang a map of england on the wall before me, i would undertake to trace his route across the land by the points of most marked discontent in the report to which we have just listened." a knock at the locked door of the room saved the home secretary for the moment from the necessity of replying. it was an unusual incident, and when the nearest man went and asked what was wanted, some one was understood to reply that a stranger, who refused to give his name, wished to see mr tubes. perhaps mr tubes personally might have welcomed a respite, but the master of the house anticipated him. "tell him, whoever he may be, that mr tubes cannot be disturbed just now," he declared. "he says it's important, very important," urged the voice, with a suggestion of largess received and more to come, in its eagerness. "then let him write it down or wait," said mr strummery decisively, and the matter was supposed to have ended. the momentary interruption had broken the tension and perhaps saved tubes from a passionate outburst. he rose to make a reply without any sign of anger or any fear that he would not be able to smooth away the awkward impression. "as far as canvassing in the provinces is concerned," he remarked plausibly, "it is open for any man, whatever his politics may be, to do that from morning to night all his life if he likes, so long as it isn't for an illegal object. as regards salt having been engaged this way for the past month, it is quite true that i have had no intimation of the fact so far. i may explain that as my department has not yet come to regard the unity league as the one object in the world to which it must devote its whole attention, i am not in the habit of receiving reports on the subject every day, nor even every week. it may be, however----" there was another knock upon the door. mr tubes stopped, and the premier frowned. in the space between the door and the carpet there appeared for a second a scrap of paper; the next moment it came skimming a few yards into the room. there was no attempt to hold further communication, and the footsteps of the silent messenger were heard descending the stairs again. mr vossit, who sat nearest to the door, picked up the little oblong card. he saw, as he could scarcely fail to see, that it was an ordinary visiting-card, and on the upper side, as it lay, there appeared a roughly-pencilled sign--two lines at right angle drawn through a semicircle, it appeared superficially to be. as he handed it to mr tubes he reversed the position so that the name should be uppermost, and again he saw, as he could scarcely fail to see, that the other side was blank. the roughly-pencilled diagram was all the message it contained. "it may be, however----" the home secretary was repeating half-mechanically. he took the card and glanced at the symbol it bore. "it may be, however," he continued, as though there had been no interruption, "that i shall very soon be in possession of the full facts to lay before you." then with a few whispered words to the premier and a comprehensive murmur of apology to the rest of the company, he withdrew. fully a quarter of an hour passed before there was any sign of the absent minister, and then it did not take the form of his return. the conversation, in his absence, had worked round to the engaging alternative of whether it was more correct to educate one's son at eton or at margate college, when a message was sent up requesting the premier's attendance in another room. after another quarter of an hour some one was heard to leave the house, but it was ten minutes later before the two men returned. it was felt in the atmosphere that some new development was at hand, and they had to run the curious scrutiny of every eye. both had an air of constraint, and both were rather pale. the premier moved to his seat with brusque indifference, and one who knew tubes well passed a whispered warning that jim had got his storm-cone fairly hoisted. the door was locked again, chairs were drawn up to the table, and a hush of marked expectancy settled over the meeting. the prime minister spoke first. "in the past half-hour a letter has come into our possession that may cause us to alter our arrangements," he announced baldly. "how it came into our possession doesn't matter. all that does matter is, that it's genuine. tubes will read it to you." "it is signed 'john hampden,' addressed to robert estair, and dated three days ago," contributed the home secretary just as briefly. "the original was in cipher. this is the deciphered form: "'my dear estair,--i now have salt's complete report before me, and there seems to be no doubt that the proposal i have formulated is feasible, and the moment almost ripe. salt has covered all the most important industrial centres, and everywhere the reports of our agents are favourable to the plan. not having found universal happiness and a complete immunity from the cares incident to humanity in the privileges which they so ardently desired and have now obtained, the working classes are tending to believe that the panacea must lie, not in greater moderation, but in extended privilege. "'for the moment the present government is indisposed to go much further, not possessing the funds necessary for enlarged concessions and fearing that increased taxation might result in a serious stream of emigration among the monied classes. for the moment the working men hesitate to throw in their lot with the extreme socialists, distrusting the revolutionary and anarchical wing of that party, and instinctively feeling that any temporary advantage which they might enjoy would soon be swallowed up in the reign of open lawlessness that must inevitably arise. "'for the moment, therefore, there is a pause, and now occurs the opportunity--perhaps the last in history--for us to retrieve some of the losses of the past. there are scruples to be overcome, but i do not think that an alliance with the moderate section of the labour interest is inconsistent with the aims and traditions of the great parties which our league represents. it would, of course, be necessary to guarantee to our new allies the privileges which they now possess, and even to promise more; but i am convinced, not only by past experience but also by specific assurances from certain quarters, that they would prefer to remain as they are, and form an alliance with us rather than grasp at larger gains and suffer absorption into another party which they dare not trust. "'from the definite nature of this statement you will gather that the negotiations are more than in the air. the distribution of cabinet offices will have to be considered at once. b---- might be first gained over with the offer of the exchequer. he carries great weight with a considerable section of his party, and is dissatisfied with his recognition so far. heape is a representative man who would repay early attention, especially as he is, at the moment, envious of r----'s better treatment. but these are matters of detail. the great thing is to _get back on any terms_. once in power, by a modification of the franchise we might make good our position. i trust that this, a desperate remedy in a desperate time, will earn at least your tacit acquiescence. much is irretrievably lost; england remains--yet. "yours sincerely, "john hampden.'" six men were on their feet before the signature was reached. with an impatient gesture strummery waved them collectively aside. "we all know your opinion on the writer and the letter, and we can all put it into our own words without wasting time in listening," he said with suppressed fury. "in five minutes' time i shall entirely reopen the consideration of the reports which we met this afternoon to discuss." "has any effort been made to learn the nature of estair's reply?" enquired tirrel. if he was not the least moved man in the room he was the least perturbed, and he instinctively picked out the only point of importance that remained. "it probably does not exist in writing," replied mr tubes, avoiding tirrel's steady gaze. "i find that he arrived in town last night. there would certainly be a meeting." "was bannister summoned to this council?" demanded another. it was taken for granted that "b" stood for bannister. "yes," replied the premier, with one eye on his watch. "he was indisposed." "i protest against the reference to myself," said heape coldly. * * * * * mr strummery nodded. "time's up," he announced. that is the "secret history" of the government's sudden and inexplicable conversion to the necessity of the minimum wage bill and to the propriety of imposing the personal property tax. a fortnight later the prime minister outlined the programme in the course of a speech at newcastle. the announcement was received almost with stupefaction. for the first time in history, property--money, merchandise, personal belongings--was to be saddled with an annual tax apart from, and in addition to, the tax it paid on the incomes derived from it. it was an entire wedge of the extreme policy that must end in partition. it was more than the poorer classes had dared to hope; it was more than the tax-paying classes had dared to fear. it marked a new era of extended privilege for the one; it marked the final extinction of hope even among the hopeful for the other. "it could not have happened more opportunely for us even if we had arranged it in every detail," declared hampden, going into salt's room with the tidings in huge delight, a fortnight later. "no," agreed salt, looking up with his slow, pleasant smile. "not even if we had arranged it." chapter x the order of st martin of tours sir john hampden paused for a moment with arrested pen. he had been in the act of crossing off another day on the calendar that hung inside his desk, the last detail before he pulled the roll-top down for the night, when the date had caught his eye with a sudden meaning. "a week to-day, salt," he remarked, looking up. "a week to-day," repeated salt. "that gives us seven more days for details." hampden laughed quietly as he bent forward and continued the red line through the " ." "that is one way of looking at it," he said. "personally, i was rather wishing that it had been to-day. i confess that i cannot watch the climax of these two years approaching without feeling keyed up to concert pitch. i suppose that you never had any nerves?" "i suppose not. if i had, the atlantic water soon washed them out." "but you are superstitious?" he asked curiously. it suddenly occurred to him how little he really knew of the man with whom he was linked in such a momentous hazard. "oh yes. blue water inoculates us all with that. fortunately, mine does not go beyond trifles, such as touching posts and stepping over paving stones--a hobby and not a passion, or i should have to curb it." "do you really do things like that? well, i remember northland, the great nerve specialist, telling me that most people have something of the sort--a persistent feeling of impending calamity unless they conform to some trivial impulse. i am exempt." "yes," commented salt; "or you would hardly be likely to cross off the date before the day is over." "good heavens!" exclaimed hampden. "what an age we live in! is it tannin or the dregs of paganism? and you think it would be tempting providence to do it while there are five more hours to run?" "i never do it, as a matter of fact," admitted salt with perfect seriousness. "of course, i _know_ that nothing would happen in the five hours if i did, but, all the same, i rather think that something would." "i hope that something will," said hampden cheerfully. "dinner, for example. did i ever strike you as a gourmet, salt? well, nevertheless, i am a terrific believer in regular meals, although i don't care a straw how simple they are. you may read of some marvellous trojan working under heavy pressure for twenty-four hours, and then snatching a hurried glass of château d'yquem and a couple of abernethy biscuits, and going on again for another twenty-four. don't believe it, salt. if he is not used to it, his knees go; if he is used to it, they have gone already. if i were a general i solemnly declare that i would risk more to feed my men before an engagement, than i would risk to hold the best position all along the front. your hungry man may fight well enough for a time, but the moment he is beaten he knows it. and, strangely enough, we english have won a good many important battles after we had been beaten." he had been locking up the safe and desk as he ran on, and now they walked together down the corridor. at the door of his own office salt excused himself for a moment and went in. when he rejoined the baronet at the outer door, he held in his hand a little square of thin paper on which was printed in bold type july . "you will regret it," said hampden, not wholly jestingly. he saw at once that it was the tag for the day, torn from his calendar, that salt held. "no," he replied, crumpling up the scrap of paper and throwing it away, "i may remember, but i shall not regret. when you have to think twice about doing a thing like that, it is time to do it.... you have no particular message for deland?" "none at all, personally, i think. you will tell him as much as we decided upon. let him know that his post will certainly be one of the most important outside the central office. what time do you go?" "the train from marylebone. deland will be waiting up for me. there is an early restaurant train in the morning--the . , getting in at . . i shall breakfast _en route_, and come straight on here." "that's right. look out for young hampshire in the train; he will probably wait on you, but you won't recognise him unless you remember the manners-clinton nose in profile. he regards it as a vast joke, but he is very keen. and sleep all the time you aren't feeding. can't do better. good night." salt laughed as he turned into pall mall, speculating for a moment, by the light of his own knowledge, how little time this strenuous, simple-living man devoted to the things he advocated. if he had been able to follow sir john's electric brougham for the remainder of that night he would have had still more reason to be sceptical. when hampden reached his house and strode up to the door with the elastic step of a young man, despite his iron-grey hair and burden of responsibility, instead of the bronze medusa knocker that had dropped from the hands of pietro sarpi and donato in its time, his eyes encountered the smiling face of his daughter as she swung open the door before him. she had been sitting at an open window of the dull-fronted house until she saw the hampden livery in the distance. "there is some one waiting in the library to see you," she said, as he kissed her cheek. "he said that he would wait ten minutes; you had already been seven." "who is it?" he asked in quiet expectation. it was not unusual for muriel to watch for him from the upper room, and to come down into the hall to welcome him, but to-night he saw at once that there was a mild excitement in her manner. "who is it?" he asked. she told him in half a dozen whispered words, and then returned to the drawing-room and the society of a depressing companion, who chanced to be a poor and distant cousin, while sir john turned toward the library. "tell styles to remain with the brougham if he is still in front," he said to a passing footman. the visit might presage anything. a young man, an inconspicuous young man in a blue serge suit, rose from the chair of jacobean oak and spanish leather where he had been sitting with a bowler hat between his hands and a cheap umbrella across his knees, and made a cursory bow as he began to search an inner pocket. "sir john hampden?" he enquired. "yes," replied the master of the house, favouring his visitor with a more curious attention than he received in return. "you are from plantagenet house, i believe?" the young man detached his left hand from the search and turned down the lapel of his coat in a perfunctory display of his credentials. pinned beneath so that it should not obtrude was an insignificant little medal, so small and trivial that it would require the closest scrutiny to distinguish its design and lettering. but sir john hampden did not require any assurance upon the point. he knew by the evidence of just such another medallion which lay in his own possession that upon one side, around the engraved name of the holder, ran the inscription, "every man according as he purposeth in his heart;" upon the other side a representation of st martin dividing his cloak with the beggar. it was the badge of the order of st martin of tours. the order of st martin embodied the last phase of organised benevolence. in the history of the world there had never been a time when men so passionately desired to help their fellow men; there had never been a time when they found it more difficult to do so to their satisfaction. from the lips of every social reformer, from the reports of the charitable organisations, from the testimony of the poor themselves the broad indictment had gone forth that every casual beggar was a rogue and a vagabond. promiscuous alms-giving was tabulated among the seven curses of london. organised charity was the readiest alternative. again obliging counsellors raised their conscientious voices. organised charity was wasteful, inelastic, unsympathetic, often superfluous. the preacher added a warning note: let none think that the easy donation of a cheque here and there was charity. it was frequently vanity, it was often a cowardly compromise with conscience, it was never an absolution from the individual responsibility. so brotherly love continued, but often did not fructify, and the man who felt that he had the true samaritan instinct, as he passed by on the one side of the suburban road, looked at his ragged neighbour lying under the hedge on the other side in a fit which might be epilepsy but might equally well be soap-suds in the mouth, and assured himself that if only he could believe the case to be genuine there was nothing on earth he would not do for the man. it was a very difficult age, every one admitted: "society was so complex." there was evidence of the generous feeling--ill-balanced and spasmodic, it is true--on every hand. the poor were bravely, almost blindly, good to their neighbours in misfortune. the better-off were lavish--or had been until a few years previously--when they had certified proof that the cases were deserving. if a magistrate or a police court missionary gave publicity to a pathetic case, the pathetic case might be sure of being able to retire on a comfortable annuity. if only every pathetic case could have been induced to come pathetically into the clutches of a sympathetic police court cadi, instead of dying quite as pathetically in a rat-hole, one of the most pressing problems of benevolence might have been satisfactorily solved. the order of st martin of tours was one of the attempts to reconcile the generous yearnings of mankind with modern conditions. its field of action had no definable limit, and whatever a man wished to give it was prepared to utilise. it was not primarily concerned with money, although judged by the guaranteed resources upon which it could call if necessary, it would rank as a rich society. it imposed no subscription and made no outside appeal. upon its books, against the name of every member, there was entered what he bound himself to do when it was required of him. it was a vast and comprehensive list, so varied that few ever genuinely applied for the services of the order without their needs being satisfied. the city man willing to give a foolish and repentant youth another chance of honest work; the sussex farmer anxious to prove what a month of south down fare and channel breezes would do for a small city convalescent; the prim little suburban lady, much too timid to attempt any personal contact with the unknown depths of sin and suffering, but eager to send her choicest flowers and most perfect fruit to any slum sick-room; the good-hearted laundry girl who had been through the fires herself, offering to "pal up to any other girl what's having a bit of rough and wants to keep straight without a lot of jaw,"--all found a deeper use in life beneath the sign of st martin's divided cloak. children, even little children, were not shut out; they could play with other, lonely, little children, and renounce some toys. the inconspicuous young man standing in sir john hampden's library--he was in a cheap boot shop, but he gave his early closing day to serve the order as a messenger, and there were millionaires who gave less--found the thing he searched for, and handed to sir john an unsealed envelope. "i accept," said the baronet, after glancing at the slip it contained. this was what he accepted: order of st. martin of tours. _case_. . . john flak, paradise buildings, paradise street, drury lane, w.c. _cause_ . . street accident. _requirement_ service through the night. _recommender_ l. k. stone, m.d., great queen street, w.c. waltham, master. he could have declined; and his membership would have been at an end. but in a mission of personal service he could not accept and appoint a substitute. the order was modern, business-like, reasonable, unemotional, and quite prepared to take humanity as it was. it did not seek to impose the ideal christian standard, logically recognising that if a man gave _all_ he possessed, a system of christian laws (a cæsar whom he was likewise bidden to obey) would at once incarcerate him in a prison for having no visible means of subsistence, and, if he persisted in his unnatural christian conduct, in a lunatic asylum, where in its appointed season he would have the story of the rich ruler read for his edification. the order was practical and "very nice to do with;" but it had a standard, and as a protest against that widespread reliance in the omnipotence of gold that marred the age it allowed no delegation of an office of mercy. on all points it was open; its thin medallion symbolised no mysteries or secret vows; nor, and on this one point it was unbending, as far as lay in the power of the order should any second-hand virtue find place beneath its saintly ensign. a few years before, paradise street, with that marked inappropriateness that may be traced in the nomenclature of many london thoroughfares, had been the foulest, poorest, noisomest, most garbage-strewn and fly-infested region even in the purlieus of drury lane. it was not markedly criminal, it was merely filthy; and when smell-diseases broke out in central london it was generally found that they radiated from paradise street like ripples from a dead dog thrown into a pond. presently a type foundry in the next street, growing backwards because it was impossible to expand further in any other direction, pushed down the flimsy tenements that stood between and reared a high wall, pierced with windows of prismatic glass, in their place. soon public authorities, seeing that the heavens did not fall when a quarter of paradise street did, suddenly and unexpectedly tore down another quarter as though they had received a maddened impulse and paradise street had been a cardboard model. the phoenix that appeared on this site was a seven-storied block of workmen's dwellings. it could not be said to have given universal satisfaction. the municipal authorities who devised it bickered entertainingly over most of the details that lay between the foundations and the chimney-pots; the primitive dwellers in paradise street looked askance at it, as they did at most things not in liquid form; social reformers complained that it drove away the very poor and brought in a class of only medium poor; and ordinary people noticed that in place of the nearest approach to artistic dirt to be found in the metropolis, some one had substituted uninteresting squalor. hampden dismissed his carriage in lincoln's inn fields and walked the remainder of the way. he had changed into a dark lounge suit before he left, but, in spite of the principle he had so positively laid down, he had not stayed to dine. the inevitable, morbid little group marked the entrance to paradise buildings, but the incident was already three hours old, and the larger public interest was being reserved for the anticipated funeral. a slipshod, smug-faced woman opened the door of no. in response to his discreet knock. he stepped into a small hall where coal was stored in a packing-case, and, on her invitation, through into the front room. five more untidy women, who had been drinking from three cups, got up as he entered, and passed out, eyeing him with respectful curiosity as they went, and each dropping a word of friendly leavetaking to the slatternly hostess. "don't be down'arted, my dear." "see you later, emm." "let's know how things are going, won't you?" "you'll remember about that black alpaker body?" "well, so long, mrs flak. gord bless yer." sir john waited until the hall door closed behind the last frowsy woman. "i am here to be of any use i can," he said. "did dr stone mention that some one would come?" "yes, sir. thank you, sir," she replied. she stood in the middle of the room, a picture of domestic incapacity, with a foolish look upon her rather comely features. the room was not bare of furniture, was not devoid of working-class comforts, but the dirty dishes, the dirty clothing, the dirty floor, told the plain tale. "i do not know any particulars of the case yet." he saw at once that he would have to take the lead in every detail. "did the doctor speak of coming again, or leave any message?" "yes, sir," she replied readily. she lifted an ornament on the mantelpiece and gave him a folded sheet of paper, torn from a note-book, that had been placed there for safety. he had the clearest impression that it would never have occurred to the woman to give it to him unasked. "to rep of o. st m.," ran the pencilled scrawl. "shall endeavour to look in - . .--l.k.s." even as he took out his watch there came a business-like knock at the door, an active step in the hall, and beneath the conventional greeting, the two men were weighing one another. dr stone had asked the order to send a man of common-sense who could exercise authority if need be, and one who would not be squeamish in his surroundings. for reasons of his own he had added that if with these qualifications he combined that of being a justice of the peace, so much the better. dr stone judged that he had the man before him. hampden saw a brisk, not too well shaven, man in a light suit, with a straw hat and a serviceable stick in his hands, until he threw them on the table. there was kindness and decision behind his alert eyes, and his manner was that of a benevolent despot marshalling his poor patients--and he had few others--as a regiment before him, marching them right and left in companies, bringing them sharply to the front, and bidding them to stand there and do nothing until they were told. "you haven't been into the other room yet?" he asked. "no, well----" he stopped with his hand on the door knob, turned back like a pointer on the suspicion of a trail, and looked keenly at the woman, then around the bestrewn room. if her eyes had slid the least betraying glance, hampden did not observe it, but the doctor, without a word, strode to the littered couch, put his hand behind a threadbare cushion, and drew out a half-filled bottle. there was a gluggling ripple for a few seconds, and the contents had disappeared down the sink, while the terebinthine odour of cheap gin hung across the room. "not here, mrs flak," he said sharply; and without changing her expression of vacuous good-nature, the woman meekly replied, "no, sir." dr stone led the way into the inner room and closed the door behind them. a man, asleep, insensible, or dead, lay on the bed, his face half hidden in bandages. "this is the position," explained the doctor, speaking very rapidly, for his time was mapped out with as little waste as there is to be found between the squares on a chess board. "this man went out of here a few hours ago and walked straight into an empty motor 'bus that was going round this way. that's how they all put it: he walked right into the thing. why? he was a sober enough man, an attendant of some kind at one of the west end clubs. because, as i have good reason to suppose, he was thinking absorbingly of something else. "well, they carried him in here; it ought to have been the hospital, of course, but it was at his own doorstep it took place, you see, and it doesn't really matter, because to-morrow morning----!" "he will die then?" asked hampden in a whisper, interpreting the quick gesture. "oh, he will die as sure as his head is a cracked egg-shell. between midnight and dawn, i should say. but before the end i look confidently for an interval of consciousness, or rather sub-consciousness. if i am wrong i shall have kept you up all night for nothing; if i am right you will probably hear something that he wants to say very much." "whatever was in his mind when he met with the accident?" "that is my conviction. there has already been an indication of partial expression. curiously enough, i have had two exactly similar cases, and this is going just the same way. in one it was a sum of money a man had banked under another name to keep it from his wife and for his children; in the second it was a blow struck in a scuffle, and an innocent man was doing penal servitude for it." "that is what you wished to have some one here for chiefly, then?" asked hampden. "everything, practically. you see the kind of people around? the wife is a fool; the neighbours are the class of maddening dolts who leave a suicide hanging until a policeman comes to cut him down. they would hold an orgie in the next room. in excitement the women fly to gin as instinctively as a nun flies to prayer. order them out if they come, but i don't think that they will trouble you after i have spoken to the woman as i go. if there is anything to be caught it will have to be on the hop, so to speak. it may be a confession, a deposition of legal value, or only a request; one cannot guess. questioning, when the sub-conscious stage is reached, might lead to something. it's largely a matter of luck, but intelligence may have an innings." "is there nothing to be done--in the way of making it easier for him?" dr stone made a face expressive of their helplessness and shrugged his shoulders; then mentioned a few simple details. "he will never know," he explained. "even when he seems conscious he will feel no pain and remember nothing of the accident. the clock will be mercifully set back." he smiled whimsically. "forgive me if it never strikes." he turned to go. "the nearest call office is the kiosk in aldwych," he remarked. "i am covent garden." no paper being visible he wrote the number on the wall. "after . as a general thing," he added. so the baronet was left alone with the still figure that counterfeited death so well, the man who would be dead before the dawn. he stepped quietly to the bed and looked down on him. the lower half of the face was free from swathing, and the lean throat and grizzled beard struck sir john with a momentary surprise. it was the face of an elderly man; he had expected to find one not more than middle-aged as the companion of the young woman in the other room. there was a single chair against the wall, and he sat down. there was nothing else to do but to sit and wait, to listen to the sounds of voluminous life that rose from the street beneath, the careful creaking movements in the room beyond. from the shallow wainscotting near the bed came at intervals the steady ticking of a death-watch. it was nothing, as every one knew, but the note of an insect calling for its mate, but it thrilled and grew large in the stillness of the chamber ominously. a low tap on the door came as a relief. he found the woman standing there. "is there anything different?" she asked, hanging on to the door. "i kept on thinking i heard noises." "no, there is no change," he replied. "will you come in?" she shrank back at the suggestion. "gord 'elp us, no!" she cried. "it's bad enough out there." "what are you afraid of?" he asked kindly. she had no words for it. self-analysis did not enter into her daily life. but, sitting there alone among the noises, real and imagined, she had reached a state of terror. "there is nothing at all dreadful, nothing that would shock you," he said, referring to the appearance of the dying man. "you are his wife, are you not?" the foolish look, half stubborn, half vacuous, flickered about her face. "as good as," she replied. "it's like this----" "i see." he had no desire to hear the recital of the sordid details. "his wife's in a mad-house. won't never be anywhere else, and i've been with him these five years, an honest woman to him all the time," she said, bridling somewhat at the suggestion of reproach. "no one's got no better right to the things, i'm sure." her eloquence was stirred not so much to defend her reputation as by the fear that some one might step in to claim "the things." "there will be plenty of time to talk about that when--when it is necessary," he said. "has he no relations about here who ought to be told?" "nah," she said decisively; "no one but me. why, he didn't even have no friends--no pals of his own class, as you may say. very close about himself he was. all he thought of was them political corkses, as they call um." she came nearer to the door again, the gossiping passion of her class stronger than her fear, now that the earlier restraint of his presence was wearing off. "it's the only thing we ever had a 'arsh word about. it's all right and well for them that make a living at it, but many and many a time my 'usband's lost 'alf a day two and three times a week to sit in the distingwidged strangers' gallery. you mightn't 'ardly think it, sir, but he was hand and foot with some of the biggest men there are; he was indeed." hampden was looking at her curiously. he read into her "'arsh word" the ceaseless clatter of her nagging, shameless tongue when the old man brought home a few shillings less than he was wont; the aftermath of sullen silence, the unprepared meals and neglected home. he pictured him a patient, long-suffering old man, and pitied him. and now she took pride and boasted of the very things that she had upbraided him with. "vickers he knew," she continued complacently, "and drugget. he's shaken hands with mr strummery, the prime minister, more than onest. then tubes--you've heard speak of him?--he found mr tubes a very pleasant gentleman. oh, and a lot more i can't remember." hampden disengaged himself from further conversation with a single formal sentence, and returned to his vigil. there he was secure from her callous chatter. he saw the renewed look of terror start into her eyes when a board behind her creaked as the door was closing. he heard the startled shriek, but her squalid avarice cut off his sympathies. he sat down again and looked round at the already familiar objects in the room. the form lying on the bed had not changed a fraction of its rigid outline; but he missed something somewhere in the room, and for a minute he could not identify it. then he remembered the ticking of the death-watch. it had ceased. he looked at his watch; it was not yet nine o'clock. he had not been back more than ten minutes when the subdued tapping--it was rather a timid scrape, as though she feared that a louder summons might call another forth--was repeated. "i don't see that it's no good my staying here," she gasped. "i've been sitting there till the furniture fair began to move towards me, and every bloomin' rag about the place had a face in it. it's giving me the fair horrors." he could not ignore her half-frenzied state. "what do you want to do?" he asked. "i want to go out for a bit," she replied, licking her thin feline lips. "you don't know what it's like. i want to hear real people talk and not see things move. i'll come back soon; before gord, i will." "yes, _how_ will you came back?" "i won't. may it strike me dead if i touch a drop. i'll go straight into mrs rugg's across the street, and she's almost what you might call a teetotaler." "the man you call your husband is dying in there, and he may need your help at any minute," he said sternly. it needed no gift of divination to prophesy that if the woman once left the place she would be hopelessly drunk before an hour had passed. "don't sit down doing nothing but imagining things," he continued. "make yourself some tea, and then when one of your friends comes round to see you, you can let her stay. but only one, mind." he saw the more sullen of her looks settle darkly about her face as he closed the door. he waited to hear the sound of the kettle being moved, the tea-cup clinking, but they never came. an unnatural, uncreaking silence reigned instead. he opened the door quietly and looked out. that room was empty, and, as he stood there, a current of cooler air fell across his cheek. half a dozen steps brought him to the entrance to the little hall--the only other room there was. it also was empty, and the front door stood widely open. there was only one possible inference: "mrs flak" had fled. sir john had confessed to possessing nerves, and to few men the situation would have been an inviting one. still, there was only one possible thing to do, and he closed the door again, noticing, as he did so, that the action locked it. as he stood there a moment before returning to the bedroom and its tranquil occupant lying in his rigid, unbreathing sleep, a slight but continuous sound caught his ear. it was the most closely comparable (to attempt to define it) with the whirring of a clock as the flying pinion is released before it strikes. or it might be that the doctor's simile prompted the comparison. it was not loud, but the room beyond seemed very, very still. it was not a time to temporise with the emotions. hampden stepped into the next room and stood listening. he judged--nay, he was sure--that the sound came from the bedroom, but it was not repeated. instead, something very different happened, something that was either terrifying or natural, according to the conditions that provoked it. quite without warning there came a voice from the next room, a full, level, healthy voice, even strong, and speaking in the ordinary manner of conversation. "will you please tell mr tubes that i am waiting here to see him?" chapter xi man between two masters there was something in the situation that was more than gruesome, something that was peculiarly unnerving. in his anticipation of this moment as he had sat almost by the bedside, hampden had conjectured that the dying man would perhaps lift a hand or move his head uneasily with the first instinct of returning consciousness. a sigh, a groan, might escape him, incoherent words follow, then broken but rational expressions of his suffering, and entreaties that something might be done to ease the pain. or perhaps, after realising his position, he would nerve himself to betray no unmanly weakness, and, in the words of the significant old phrase, "turning his face to the wall," endure in stoical silence to the end. it would be painful, perhaps acutely distressing, but it would not be unnatural. there had been no groan, no sigh or broken words, no indication of weakness or suffering behind that half-closed door, nothing but the curious clock-like sound that had gone before the voice. and that voice! it was as full and strong, as vibrant and as ordinary as his own could ever be. standing in the middle of the living-room sir john could not deceive himself. it came from the other room where a minute before he had left the dying--yes, the almost dead--man lying with stark outline on the bed. there was no alternative: it was from those pallid lips that the words had come, it was by that still, inanimate man that they were spoken. the suddenness of the whole incident was shocking in itself, but that was not all; the mere contrast to what he had looked for was disconcerting, but there was something more; the curious unexpected nature of the request, if request it was, was not without its element of mystery, but above and beyond all else was the thought--the thought that for a dreadful moment held his heart and soul in icy bonds--what sight when he returned to the inner room, as return at once he must, what gruesome sight would meet his eyes? what phantoms his misgivings raised, every man may conjecture for himself. follow, then, another step in imagination, and having given a somewhat free and ghastly fancy rein, push the chamber door cautiously and inch by inch, or fling it boldly open as you will; then pause upon the threshold, as hampden did, in sharp surprise. nothing was altered, no single detail had undergone the slightest change! on the bed, rigid and very sharp beneath the single unclean sheet, lay the body of the mangled man. not a fold of his shroud-like wrapping differed from its former line, it did not seem possible that a breath had stirred him. had the voice been a trick of the imagination? hampden knew, as far as mortal man can be sure of any mortal sense, that the voice had been as real as his life itself. then----? it occurred to him in a flash: here was the stage of under-consciousness of which dr stone had spoken. of his pain, the accident, where he at that moment lay, and all his real surroundings, the sufferer knew nothing, and never would know. but out of the shock and shattering, some of the delicate machinery of the brain still kept its balance, and would continue to exercise its functions to the end. it was an ordeal, but it had to be done. it was the purpose for which he had been summoned. sir john moved to the bedside, nerved himself to watch the ashen face, and said slowly and distinctly: "mr tubes is not here. do you wish to see him?" there was just a perceptible pause, and then the bloodless lips replied. but not the faintest tremor of a movement stirred the body otherwise from head to foot, and in the chilling absence of expression the simile occurred to hampden of bubbles rising from some unseen working to the surface of an inky pool. "i have come on purpose. let him be told that it is most important." hampden had to feel his way. the woman had mentioned that flak was at least on terms of acquaintanceship with mr tubes. the doctor had surmised that the man had something he must say before he died. but was this the one true line, or a mere vagary of the sub-conscious state--a twist in the tortuous labyrinth that would lead to nothing? "he is not here at present," he said. "if you will tell me what you wish to say i will write it down, so that it cannot fail to reach him." "no. i cannot tell any one else. i must see him." "mr tubes is a very busy man. you know that he is the home secretary. is it of sufficient importance to telegraph for him?" this time the answer followed on his last word with startling rapidity. until the last phase that was the only variation in the delivery of the sentences--that sometimes there was a pause as though the working of the mind had to make a revolution before it reached the point of the mental clutch, at others it dropped into its gear at once. "it is important enough to send a coach and four for him," was the reply. hampden might not be convinced of this but he was satisfied of one thing: the coherence of idea was being regularly maintained. how long would it last? it occurred to him to put the question. "i shall have to go out either to send the telegram myself or to find some one who will take it," he explained. "until mr tubes comes or sends his reply will you _remain here_?" it was rather eerie to be holding conversation with the fragment of a man's brain with the man himself for all practical purposes eliminated. but he seemed to have arrived at a practical understanding with the centre of sub-consciousness. "i will remain," was the unhesitating reply, and hampden felt assured that the line would not be lost. he had not definitely settled in his mind what to do when he opened the door leading on to the common stairs. a small child who had been loitering outside in a crouching position staggered back in momentary alarm at his sudden appearance. it was a ragged girl, perhaps ten or twelve years old, with cruelly unwieldy boots upon her stockingless feet, matted hair, and a precocious face full of unchildish knowledge. the inference that she had been applying either an eye or an ear to the keyhole was overwhelming. her fear--it was only the slum child's instinct of flight--died out when she saw the gentleman. toffs (so ran her experience) do not hit you for nothing. "ee's in there yet, ain't ee?" she whispered, coming back boldly and looking up confidentially to his face. "i 'eard yer talking, but i couldn't tell what yer said. 'ow long d'yer think 'e'll last?" sir john looked down at the child, the child who had never been young, in shuddering pity. "it was me what picked 'is 'at up, but they wouldn't let me go in," she continued, as though the fact gave her a standing in the case. "did yer see it in there?" she looked proudly at her right hand with horrid significance. "come in here," he said, after considering. "can you run an errand?" her face reflected gloating eagerness as she entered, her attitude had just a tinge of pleasurable awe. he did not permit her to go further than the hall. "is it to do with 'im?" she asked keenly. "yehs!" "it is to go to the post office in fleet street," he explained. "you must go as fast as ever you can." "i can go anywhere as well as any boy, and as fast if i take my boots off. when that there italian knifed her man--him what took up with shiny sal--in the lane a year ago, it was me what fetched the police." he left her standing there--her face to the chink of the door before he had turned away--and went into the next room to write the message. he desired to make it neither too insistent nor too immaterial. "john flak, of paradise buildings, paradise street, drury lane, has met with fatal accident, and earnestly desires to see you on important business," was the form it took. he had sufficient stamps in his pocket for the payment, and to these he added another for a receipt. "you can read?" he asked, returning to her. "yehs!" she replied with her curious accent of lofty scorn at so ingenuous a question. "i read all the murders and sewercides to blind mike every sunday morning." "well, go as fast as you can to the post office in fleet street, and give them this paper where you see 'telegrams' written up. then wait for another piece of paper which they will give you, and bring it back to me. here is sixpence for you now, and you shall have another shilling when you come back." he was making it more profitable for her to be honest than to be dishonest, which is perhaps the safest way in an emergency. it was nearly ten o'clock when he looked at his watch on her departure; it was not ten minutes past when she returned. she was panting but exultant, and watched his face for commendation as she gave him the receipt, as a probationary imp might watch the face of the prince of darkness on bringing in his first human soul. one boot she had dropped in her wild career, but so far from stopping to look for it, she had thrown away the other then as useless. leaving the ghoul-child seated on the coal to thrill delightfully at every unknown sound, hampden returned to the bedside. much of the first, the absolutely cold horror of the situation, was gone. he judged it better not to allow too long an interval of silence in which that dim consciousness might slip back into the outer space of trackless darkness. now that he knew what to expect it was not very unlike speaking to one who slept and held converse in his sleep. "i have sent for mr tubes, but, making due allowance, he can scarcely get here in less than an hour," he said. "if in the meantime there is anything that you wish to tell me, to make doubly sure, it will be received as a most sacred confidence." there was a longer pause than any before, so long that the watcher by the bedside was preparing to speak again; then the lips slowly opened, and the same full, substantial voice made reply. "i will wait. but he must be quick--quick!" the words seemed to disclose a fear, but there was no outward sign of failing power. hampden ventured on another point. "are you in pain?" he asked. the reply came more quickly this time, and, perhaps because he was looking for some such indication, the listener fancied that he caught the faintest stumbling, a little blurring of the outline here and there. "no, i am in no pain. but i have a terrible anxiety that weighs me down." there was nothing to be gained by further questioning. sir john returned to the other room. the fire was low and the grate choked with ashes; he had begun to replenish it when a curious sound startled him. he only heard it between the raspings of the poker as he raked the ashes out, but it was not to be mistaken. it was the sharp, dry, clock-like whirring that had been the first indication of life and speech beyond the bedroom door more than an hour before. a board creaked behind him, and he turned with an exclamation to see the dreadful child standing in the middle of the room. barefooted, she had slipped noiselessly in from the hall at the first tremor of that unusual sound, and now, with her dilated eyes fixed fearfully on the door, her shrinking form bent forward, she slowly crept nearer step by step. her face quivered with terror, her whole body shook, but she went on as surely as though a magnet drew her. "what are you doing?" cried hampden sharply. "why did you not stay where i told you?" she turned her face, but not her eyes, towards him. "yer heard it, didn't yer?" she whispered. "ain't that what they call the death-rattle what comes?" he took her by the shoulder and swung her impatiently round. "go back, you imp," he commanded. "back and stay there, or you shall go out." she crept back, looking fearfully over her shoulder all the way. something else was happening to engage hampden's attention. in the next room the man was speaking, speaking spontaneously, as he had done once before, but beyond all doubt the voice was weaker now. the momentary interruption of the child's presence had drowned the first part of the sentence, but hampden caught a word that strung up every faculty he possessed--"league." "----league will then suddenly issue a notice to all its members, putting an embargo--a boycott, if you will--on----" the voice trailed off, and, although he sprang to the door, sir john could not distinguish another word. but that fragment alone was sufficiently startling. to the president of the unity league it could only have one meaning; for it was true! some--how much?--of their plan lay open. and to how many was it known? the terrible anxiety of this poor, battered wreck, unconsciously loyal to his class in death, to give the warning before he passed away, seemed to indicate that nothing but the frayed thread of one existence stood in the league's path yet. was there anything to be done? that was hampden's first thought. there was plainly one thing: to learn, if possible, before mr tubes's arrival, how much was known. nothing was changed; only the death-watch ticked again. he leaned over the bed in his eagerness, and, stilling the throbbing excitement of his blood, tried to speak in a tone of commonplace indifference. "yes, continue." there was no response. "repeat the sentence," he commanded, concentrating his voice in his desperation, and endeavouring by mere force of will to impose its authority on the indefinite consciousness. just as well might he have commanded the man to get up and walk. had that last elusive thread that held him to mortality been broken? hampden bent still lower. the pallid face was no more pallid than before, but before it could scarcely have been more death-like. the acutest test could not have found a trace of breath. he put together the gradual failing of the voice that little more than an hour ago had been as full and vigorous as his own, the unfinished sentence, the silence---- suddenly he straightened himself by the bedside with a sense of guilt that struck him like a blow. what was he thinking--hoping? who was he--sir john hampden, president of the unity league? not in that room! the man who watched by the bedside stood there even as the humblest servant of the order of st. martin, pledged while in that service to succour in "trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity." it did not occur to him to debate the point. his way seemed very straight and clear. his plain duty to the dying man was to try by every means in his power to carry out his one overwhelming desire. its successful accomplishment might aim a more formidable blow at his own ambition than almost anything else that could happen. it could not ward off the attack upon which the league was now concentrating--nothing could do that--but an intimate knowledge of the details of that scheme of retaliation might act in a hundred adverse ways. hampden did not stop to consider what might happen on the one side and on the other. a thousand years of argument and sophistries could not alter the one great fact of his present duty. he had a very simple conscience, and he followed it. if he could have speeded mr tubes's arrival he would have done so now. he went into the hall to listen. the street child was still there, sitting on the coal, as sharp-eyed and wakefully alert as ever. he had forgotten her. "come, little imp," he said kindly, "i ought to have packed you off long ago." it was, in point of fact, nearly eleven o'clock. "ain't doin' no aharm to the coal," she muttered. "that's not the question. you ought to have been at home and in bed by this time of night." she looked up at him sharply with a suspicion that such innocence in a grown-up man could not be unassumed. "ain't got no bed," she said contemptuously. "ain't got no 'ome." a sentence rang through his mind: "the birds of the air have nests." "where do you sleep?" he asked. "anywhere," she replied. "and how do you live?" "anyhow." the lowest depths of human poverty had not been abolished by act of parliament after all. a knock at the door interrupted the reflection. the child had already heard the step and sought to efface herself in the darkest corner. hampden had not noticed the significance of the knock. he opened the door, prepared to admit the home secretary. so thoroughly had he dissociated his own personality from the issue, that he felt the keenest interest that the man should arrive before it was too late. he opened the door to admit him, and experienced an actual pang of disappointment when he saw who stood outside. he had sent a telegram instead. whatever the telegram said did not matter very much. hampden instinctively guessed that he was not coming then--was not on his way. anything less than that would be too late. he took the orange envelope and opened it beneath the flaring gas that piped and whistled at the stairhead. "there is no reply," he said quietly, folding the paper slowly and putting it away in his pocket-book. were it not that the gain to hampden of the league was so immense one might have thought, to see him at that moment, that he felt ashamed of something in life. members of parliament had every department of the postal system freely at their service. the statement may not be out of place, for this was what the telegram contained: "deeply regret to hear of comrade flak's accident, and will have it fully enquired into. was it while he was engaged at work? cannot, however, recall any business upon which he could wish to see me. probably a mental hallucination caused by shock. have been terribly busy all day, and am engaged at this moment with important state papers which _must_ be finished before i go to bed. if it is thought desirable i will, on receiving another wire, come first thing in the morning, but before deciding to take this course i beg you to consider incessant calls made on my time. let everything possible be done for the poor fellow. "james tubes." the burden of failure pressed on hampden as he walked slowly to the bedroom. in that environment of death his own gain did not touch him at all, so completely had he succeeded in eliminating for the time every consideration except an almost fanatical sense of duty to the articles of the order. it would be better, he felt, if the shadowy consciousness that hovered around the bed could have sunk finally into its eternal sleep, without suffering the pang of being recalled only to hear _this_, but something in the atmosphere of the room, a brooding tension of expectancy that seemed to quicken in the silence, warned him that this was not to be. "a reply has been received from mr tubes in answer to our telegram." "he is here?" there was no delay this time; there was an intense eagerness that for a brief minute overcame the growing weakness. "no. he cannot come. he regrets, but he is engaged on matters of national importance." silence. painful silence. in it hampden seemed to share the cruel frustration of so great a hope deferred. "there is this," he continued, more for the sake of making any suggestion than from a belief in its practicability; "i might go and compel him to come. if he understood the urgency----" "it is too late.... a little time ago there was a thin white mist; now it is a solid wall of dense rolling fog. it is nearer--relentless, unevadable...." "i can still write down what you have to say. consider, it is the only hope." "i cannot judge.... i had a settled conviction that no other ear.... stay, quick; there are the notes! incomplete, but they will put him on the track.... swear, swear that you will place them in his hand unread." "i swear to do as you ask me. go on quickly." "to-night, now. do not ... do not let ... do not wait...." "yes, yes. but the notes? where are they? how am i to know them?" the voice was growing very thin and faltering, weaker with every word. the disappointment had sapped all its failing strength at a single blow. "the notes ... yes. you will explain.... the black wall ... how it towers!..." he was whispering inaudibly. hampden leaned over the dying man in a final effort. "flak!" he cried, "the notes on the unity league! where are they? speak!" "the envelope"--he caught a breath of sound--"... coat lining.... _i must go_!" twenty minutes later sir john picked up his motor brougham in new oxford street. he had telephoned immediately on leaving paradise buildings for it to start out at once and wait for him near mudie's corner. in paradise street he had seen a bacchanalian group surrounding "mrs flak," high priestess, who chanted a song in praise of home and the domestic virtues. it was at this point that he missed the ghoul-child from his side. a south-east wind was carrying the midnight boom of the great clock at westminster as far as kilburn when he turned out of the high road, and the little clocks around had taken up the chorus, like small dogs envious of the baying of a hound, as he stopped before the home secretary's house. there was a light still burning in a room on the ground floor, and it was mr tubes himself who came to the door. "i have to place in your hands an envelope of papers entrusted to me by a man called flak who died in paradise street an hour ago," said hampden, and with the act he brought his night of duty as a faithful servant of his order to an end. "oh, that's you," said mr tubes, peering out into the darkness. "i had a wire about it. so the poor man is dead?" "yes," replied hampden a shade drily. "the poor man is dead." mr tubes fancied that he saw the lamps of a cab beyond his garden gate, and he wondered whether he was being expected to offer to pay the fare. "well, it's very good of you to take the trouble, though, between ourselves, i hardly imagine that the papers are likely to be of any importance," he remarked. "now may i ask who i am indebted to?" hampden had already turned to go. he recognised that in the strife which he was about to precipitate, the man who stood there would be his natural antagonist, and he regretted that he could not find it in his nature to like him any better than he did. "what i have done, i have done as a servant of the order of st martin," he replied. "what i am about to do," he added, "i shall do as sir john hampden." and leaving mr tubes standing on the doorstep in vast surprise, the electric carriage turned its head-lights to the south again. chapter xii by telescribe what sir john hampden was "about to do" he had decided in the course of the outward journey. there was nothing in his actions, past or prospective, that struck him as illogical. he would have said, indeed, that they were the only possible outcome of the circumstance. for the last four hours, as the nameless emissary of the order to whose discipline he bound himself, he had merged every other feeling in his duty to the dying man and in the fulfilment of a death-bed charge. that was over; now, as the president of the unity league, he was on his way to try by every means in his power to minimise the effect of what he had done; to anticipate and counteract the value of the warning he had so scrupulously conveyed. it was a fantastic predicament. he had sat for perhaps half an hour with the unsealed envelope in his pocket, and no eye had been upon him. he had declared passionately, year after year, that class and class were now at war, that the time for courteous retaliation was long since past, that social martial law had been proclaimed. yet as he drove back to trafalgar chambers he would have given a considerable sum of money--the league being not ill provided, say fifty thousand pounds--to know the extent of those notes. when he reached the offices it was almost half-past twelve. salt would be flying northward as fast as steam could take him, and for the next two hours at least, cut off from the possibility of any communication. the burden of decision lay on hampden alone. he had already made it. within an hour he would have pledged the league to a line of policy from which there was no retreat. before another day had passed the government could recall the little band of secret service agents and consign their reports to the wastepaper basket. every one would know everything. everything? he smiled until the remembrance of that cheap frayed envelope in mr tubes's possession drove the smile away. next to his own office stood the instrument room. here, behind double doors that deadened every sound, were ranged the telephones, the tape machines, the fessenden-d'arco installation, and that most modern development of wireless telegraphy which had come just in time to save the over-burdened postal system from chronic congestion, the telescribe. hampden had not appeared to move hurriedly, but it was just seventeen seconds after he had sent his brougham roving eastward that he stood before the telephone. " st paul's, please." there was a sound as of rushing water and crackling underwood. then the wire seemed to clear itself like a swimmer rising from the sea, and a quiet, far-away voice was whispering in his ear: "yes, i'm lidiat." "i am at trafalgar chambers," said hampden, after giving his name. "i want you to drop _anything_ you are on and come here. if my motor is not waiting for you at the corner of chancery lane, you will meet it along the strand." at the other end of the wire, lidiat--the man who possessed the sixth code typewriter--looked rather blankly at his pipe, at the little silver carriage clock ticking on the mantelpiece, at the fluted white-ware coffee set, and at his crowded desk. then, concluding that if the president of the unity league sent a message of that kind after midnight and immediately rang off again he must have a good reason for it, he locked up his room as it stood, took up a few articles promiscuously from the rack in the hall, and walked out under the antique archway into fleet street. in the meantime the exchange was being urged to make another attempt to get on with " vincent," this time with success. "mr salt is not 'ere, i repeat, sir," an indignant voice was protesting. "he is out of town." "yes, yes, dobson, i know," replied "st james's." "i am sir john hampden. what train did your master go by?" "beg pardon, sir," apologised "vincent." "didn't recognise your voice at first, sir john. the wires here is 'issing 'orrible to-night. he went by the o'clock from the great central, and told me to meet the . midland to-morrow morning." "he did actually go by the train?" "i 'anded him the despatch case through the carriage window not five minutes before the whistle went. he was sitting with his----" "thank you, dobson. that's all i wanted to know. sorry if you had to get up. good night," and sir john cut off a volume of amiable verbosity as he heard the bell of his launceston ring in the street below. "fellow watching your place," said lidiat, jerking his head in the direction of a doorway nearly opposite, as hampden admitted him. had he himself been the object of the watcher's attention it would have been less remarkable, for had not the time and the place been london after midnight, lidiat's appearance must have been pronounced bizarre. reasonable enough on all other points he had a fixed conviction that it was impossible for him to work after twelve o'clock at night unless he wore a red silk skull cap, flannels, and yellow moorish slippers. into this æsthetic costume he had changed half an hour before hampden rang him up, and in it, with the addition of a very short overcoat and a silk hat that displayed an inch of red beneath the brim, he now stepped from the brougham, a large, bovine-looking man, perfectly bald, and still clinging to his pipe. hampden laughed contemptuously as he glanced across the street. "they have put on half a dozen private enquiry men lately," he explained. "they are used to divorce, and their sole idea of the case seems to be summed up in the one stock phrase, 'watching the house.' possibly they expect to see us through the windows, making bombs. why don't they watch paris instead? egyptian three per cents. have gone up francs in the last fortnight, all from there, and for no obvious reason." lidiat nodded weightily. "we stopped too much comment," he said. "lift off?" "there are only two short flights," apologised hampden. "yes; i saw that even the financial papers dismissed it as a 'pied piper rise.' here we are." they had not lingered as they talked, although the journalist ranked physical haste and bodily exertion--as typified by flights of stairs--among the forbidden things of life. hampden had brought him to the instrument room. in view of what he was asking of lidiat, some explanation was necessary, but he put it into the narrowest possible form. it was framed not on persuasiveness but necessity. "salt is away, something has happened, and we have to move a week before we had calculated." lidiat nodded. he accepted the necessity as proved; explanation would have taken time. his training and occupation made him chary of encouraging two words when one would do, between midnight and the hour when the newspapers are "closed up" and the rotaries begin to move. "i should like," continued hampden, "in to-day's issue of every morning paper a leader, two six-inch items of news, one home one foreign, and a single column six-inch advertisement set in the middle of a full white page." lidiat had taken off his hat and overcoat and placed them neatly on a chair. it occurred to him as a fair omen that providence had dealt kindly with him in not giving him any opportunity of changing his clothes. he now took out his watch and hung it on a projecting stud of the telephone box. "yes, and the minimum?" he did not think, as a lesser man with equal knowledge of fleet street might have done, that hampden had gone mad. he knew that conventionally such a programme was impossible, but he had known of impossible things being done, and in any case he understood by the emphasis that this was what hampden would have done under freer circumstances. "that is what i leave to you. the paragraphs and comment at some length i shall look for. the provinces are out of the question, i suppose? the eight leading london dailies _must_ be dealt with." "you give me _carte blanche_, of course--financially?" "absolutely, absolutely. guarantee everything to them. let them arrange for special trains at all the termini. let them take over all the garages, motor companies, and cab yards in london as going concerns for twelve hours. they will all be in it except _the tocsin_ and _the masses_. we can deal with the distributing houses later. you see the three points? it is the patriotic thing to do at any cost; they can have anything they like to make up time; and it is absolutely essential." "yes," said lidiat; "and the matter?" hampden had already taken a pencilled sheet of paper from his pocket. he had written it on his way up to kilburn. he now handed it to the journalist. "between four and five o'clock that will be telescribed over the entire system," he explained. "those who are not on the call will see it in the papers or hear from others. every one will know before to-night." he watched lidiat sharply as he read the statement. apart from the two principals, he was the first man in england to receive the confidence, and sir john had a curiosity, not wholly idle, to see how it would strike him. but lidiat was not, to use an obsolete phrase, "the man in the street." he absorbed the essence of the manifesto with a trained, practical grasp, and then held out his hand for the other paper, while his large, glabrous face remained merely vacant in its expression. the next paper was a foreign telegram in cipher, and as lidiat read the decoded version that was pinned to it, the baronet saw, or fancied that he saw, the flicker of a keener light come into his eyes and such a transient wave across his face, as might, in a man of impulse, indicate enthusiasm or appreciation. "are there to be any more of these--presently?" was all he said. "i think that i might authorise you to say that there will be others to publish, as the moment seems most propitious." "very good. i will use the instruments now." "there is one more point," said hampden, writing a few short lines on a slip of paper, "that it might be desirable to make public now." lidiat took the paper. this was what he read: "_you are at liberty to state definitely that the membership of the unity league now exceeds five million persons._" there was a plentiful crop of grey hairs sown between charing cross and ludgate hill in the early hours of that summer morning. with his mouth to the telephone, lidiat stirred up the purlieus of fleet street and the strand until office after office, composing room after composing room, and foundry after foundry, all along the line, began to drone and hum resentfully, like an outraged apiary in the dead of night. when he once took up the wire he never put it down again until he had swept the "london dailies: morning" section of sell and mitchell from beginning to end. those who wished to retort and temporise after he had done with them, had to fall back upon the telescribe--which involved the disadvantage to fleet street of having to write and coldly transmit the indignant messages that it would fain pour hot and blistering into its tormentor's ear. for two hours and a half by the watch beneath his eye he harrowed up all the most cherished journalistic traditions of the land, and from a small, box-like room a mile away, he controlled the reins of the fourth estate of an empire--a large, fat, perspiring man of persuasive authority, and conscious of unlimited capital at his back. by the end of that time chaos had given place to order. _the scythe_ had shown an amenable disposition with a readiness suggesting that it possibly knew more than it had told in the past. _the ensign_ was won over by persuasion and the condition of the navy, and _the mailed fist_ was clubbed and bullied and cajoled with big names until it was dazed. for seven minutes lidiat poured patriotism into the ear of _the beacon's_ editor, and gold into the coffers of _the beacon's_ manager, and then turned aside to win over _the daily news-letter_ by telling it what _the daily chronicler_ was doing, and the _chronicler_ by reporting the _news-letter's_ acquiescence. _the morning post card_ remained obdurate for half an hour, and only capitulated after driving down and having an interview with hampden. _the great daily_--well, for more than a year _the great daily_ had been the property and organ of the league, only no one had suspected it. the little _illustrated hour_, beset by the difficulty of half-tone blocks, and frantic at the thought of having to recast its plates and engage in the mysteries of "making ready" again after half its edition had been run off, was the last to submit. so long was it in making up its mind, that at last lidiat sarcastically proposed an inset, and, taking the suggestion in all good faith, the _illustrated hour_ startled its sober patrons by bearing on its outside page a gummed leaflet containing a leaderette and two news paragraphs. so the list spun out. lidiat did not touch the provinces, but sixteen london dailies, including some sporting and financial organs, marked the thoroughness of his work. at half-past three he finally hung up the receiver; and taking the brougham, rode like another wellington over the field of his still palpitating waterloo. his appearance, bovine and imperturbable despite the shameful incongruity of his garb when revealed in the tremulous and romantic dawn of a day and of an epoch, and further set off by the unimpeachable correctness of the equipage from which he alighted, was a thing that rankled in the minds of lingering compositors and commissionaires until their dying days. a few minutes after his departure hampden returned to the telephone and desired to make the curious connection " telescribe." "who is there?" he asked, when " telescribe" responded. the man at the other end explained that he was a clerk on the main platform of " telescribe"--name of firkin, if the fact was of metropolitan interest. "is mr woodbarrow there yet?" it appeared, with increased respect, that mr woodbarrow was in his own office and could be informed of the gentleman's name. "please tell him that sir john hampden wishes to speak with him." in two minutes another voice filtered through the wire, a voice which hampden recognised. "what are you running with now, mr woodbarrow?" he asked, when brief courtesies had been exchanged. mr woodbarrow made an enquiry, and was able to report that a h.p. tangye was supplying all the power they needed at that hour. nothing was coming through, he explained, except a few press messages from america, a little business from australia, and some early morning news from china. "i should be obliged if you would put on the two westinghouses as soon as you can, and then let me know when you can clear the trunk lines for a minute. within the next hour i want to send an 'open board' message." there was no response to this matter-of-fact request for an appreciable five seconds, but if ever silence through a telephone receiver conveyed an impression of blank amazement at the other end, it was achieved at that moment. "do i rightly understand, sir john," enquired mr woodbarrow at the end of those five seconds, "that you wish to repeat a message over the entire system?" "that is quite correct." "it will constitute a record." "an interesting occasion, then." "have you calculated the fees, sir john?" "no, i have not had the time. you will let me know when the power is up?" mr woodbarrow, only just beginning to realise fully the magnitude of the occasion and tingling with anticipation, promised to act with all possible speed, and going to his own room sir john took up an agate pen and proceeded to write with special ink on prepared paper this encyclical despatch. a library of books had been written on the subject of the telescribe within two years of its advent, but a general description may be outlined untechnically in a page or two. it was, for the moment, the last word of wireless telegraphy. it was efficient, it was speedy, it was cheap, and it transmitted in facsimile. it had passed the stage of being wondered at and had reached that of being used. it was universal. it was universal, that is, not in the sense that tongues are universally in heads, for instance, but, to search for a parallel, as universal as letter-boxes are now on doors, book-cases in houses, or cuffs around men's wrists. there were, in point of number, about three millions on the index book. it was speedy because there was no call required, no intervention of a connecting office to wait for. that was purely automatic. above the telescribe box in one's hall, study, or sitting-room, was a wooden panel studded with eight rows of small brass knobs, sixteen knobs in each row. these could be depressed or raised after the manner of an electric light stud, and a similar effect was produced: a connection was thereby made. all the country--england and wales--was mapped out into sixteen primary divisions, oblong districts of equal size. the top row of brass knobs corresponded with these divisions, and by pulling down any knob the operator was automatically put into communication with that part of the system, through the medium of the huge central station that reared its trellised form, like an eiffel tower, above the hill at harrow, and the subsidiary stations which stood each in the middle of its division. the second stage was reached by subdividing each primary division into sixteen oblong districts, and with these the second row of knobs corresponded. six more times the subdividing process was repeated, and each subdivision had its corresponding row. the final division represented plots of ground so small that no house or cottage could escape location. pulling down the corresponding studs on the eight rows instantly and automatically established the connection. the written communication could then be transmitted, and in the twinkling of an eye it was traced on a sheet of paper in the receiving box. there was no probability of the spaces all being occupied with telescribes for some years to come. a calculation will show that there was provision for a good many thousand million boxes, but only three million were fixed and attuned at this period. that, briefly, was the essential of the telescribe system. it was invaluable for most purposes, but not for all. though speedier than the letter, it lacked its privacy when it reached its destination, and it also, in the eyes of many, lacked the sentimental touch, as from hand to hand, which a letter may convey. it carried no enclosures, of course, and, owing to the difficulties of ink and paper, printed matter could not be telescribed at all. it cost twice as much as a letter, but as this was spread in the proportion of three-quarters to the sender and one quarter to the receiver the additional cost was scarcely felt by either. thus it came about that although the telescribe had diminished the volume of telegrams by ninety per cent., and had made it possible still to cope with a volume of ordinary postal correspondences which up to that time had threatened to swamp the department, it had actually superseded nothing. at four o'clock mr woodbarrow called up sir john and reported that the two great engines were running smoothly, and that for three minutes the entire system would be closed against any message except his. in other words, while the "in" circuit was open to three million boxes, the "out" circuit was closed against all except one. it was not an absolutely necessary precaution, for overlapping telescripts "stored latent" until the way was clear, but it was not an occasion on which to hesitate about taking every safeguard. the momentous order was already written. hampden opened the lid of a small flat box supported on the telescribe shelf by four vulcanite feet, put the paper carefully in, and closed the lid again. he had pulled down the eight rows of metal studs in anticipation of woodbarrow's message, and there was only one more thing to do. a practical, unemotional man, and not unused, in an earlier decade, to controlling matters of national importance with energy and decision, he now stood with his hand above the fatal switch, not in any real doubt about his action, but with a kind of fascinated time-languor. a minute had already passed. to pull down the tiny lever and release it would not occupy a second. at what period of those three minutes should he do it? how long _dare_ he leave it? he caught himself wondering whether on the last second--and with an angry exclamation at the folly he pressed the lever home. there was no convulsion of nature; a little bell a foot away gave a single stroke, and that was all the indication that the president of the unity league had passed the rubicon and unmasked his battery. this was what he had written and scattered broadcast over the land: "the unity league. "the time has now arrived when it is necessary for the league to take united action in order to safeguard the interests of its members. "in directing a course which may entail some inconvenience, but can hardly, with ordinary foresight, result in real hardship, your president reminds you of the oft-repeated warning that such a demand would inevitably be made upon your sincerity. the opportunity is now at hand for proving that as a class our resource and endurance are not less than those of our opponents. "on or before the nd july, members of the league will cease until further notice to purchase or to use coal in the form of (_a_) burning coal (except such as may be already on their premises), (_b_) coke (with the exception as before), (_c_) gas, (_d_) coal-produced electricity. "the rule applies to all private houses, offices, clubs, schools, and similar establishments; to all hotels, restaurants, boarding-houses and lodging-houses, with the exception (for the time) of necessary kitchen fires, which will be made the subject of a special communication, to all greenhouses and conservatories not used for the purposes of trade; and to all shops, workshops, and similar buildings where oil or other fuel or illuminant not produced or derived from coal can be safely substituted. "members of the league who have no coal in stock, and who do not possess facilities for introducing a substitute immediately, are at liberty to procure sufficient to last for a week. with this exception members are required to cancel all orders at present placed for coal. the league will take all responsibility and will defend all actions for breach of contract. "_members of the league are earnestly requested to co-operate in this line of action both as regards the letter and the spirit of the rule._ "members are emphatically assured that every possible development of the campaign has been fully considered during the past two years, and it is advanced with absolute confidence that nothing unforeseen can happen to mar its successful conclusion. "nothing but the loyal co-operation of members is required to ensure the triumph of those principles of government which the league has always advocated, and a complete attainment of the object for which the league came into existence. "john hampden, _president_. "trafalgar chambers, "london, ^{_th_} _july_ ." in the past the world had seen very many strikes on the part of workers, not selfishly conceived in their essence, but bringing a great deal of poverty and misery in their train, and declared solely for the purpose of benefiting the strikers through the necessity of others. in the more recent past the world had seen employers combine and declare a few strikes (the word will serve a triple purpose) for just the same end and accompanied by precisely similar results. it was now the turn of the consumers to learn the strike lesson, the most powerful class of all, but the most heterogeneous to weld together. the object was the same but pursued under greater stress; the weapons would be similar but more destructive; the track of desolation would be there but wider, and the end----on that morning of the th of july the end lay beyond a very dim and distant shock of dust and turmoil that the eye of none could pierce. chapter xiii the effect of the bomb mr strummery having finished his breakfast with the exception of a second glass of hot water, which constituted the amiable man's only beverage, took up his copy of _the scythe_. he had already glanced through _the tocsin_, in which he had a small proprietary interest, but he also subscribed to _the scythe_, partly because it brought to his door a library which he found useful when he had to assume an intimate knowledge of a subject at a day's notice, partly because the crudely blatant note of _the tocsin_ occasionally failed to strike a sympathetic cord. he had found that morning in his telescribe receiver the trafalgar chambers manifesto which had been flashed to friend and foe alike. he had read it with a frown; it savoured of impertinence that it should be sent to him. he finished it with a laugh, half-contemptuous, half-annoyed. he saw that it was a stupid move unless the league had abandoned all hope of forming the league-labour alliance; in any case, it was a blow that stung but could not wound. all the chances were that nothing would come of it; _but_, if a million people did give up burning coal for say a month, if a million people _did_ that--well, it would be very inconvenient to themselves, but there would certainly be a good many tens of thousand pounds less wages paid out in districts that seemed to be far from satisfactory even as it was. _the tocsin_ did not refer to the matter at all. mr strummery opened _the scythe_, and was rather surprised to see, beneath five lines of heavy heading on the leader page, a full account of sir john hampden's sudden move. instinctively his eye turned to the leader columns. as he had half expected there was a leader on the subject, not very long but wholly benedictory. in rather less measured phrases than the premier organ usually adopted and with other signs of haste, readers were urged to enter whole-heartedly into this development of bloodless civil war of which the impending personal property act had been the first unmasked blow. he glanced on, not troubling about the views advanced until a casual statement drew a smothered exclamation from his lips. "an argument which will be used in a practical form by the five million adult members now on the books of the league--" ran the carelessly-dropped information. "it is a lie--a deliberately misleading lie," muttered the premier angrily; but it was the truth. he read on. the article concluded: "in this connection the strong action taken by m. gavard, as indicated in the telegrams from paris which we print elsewhere, may be purely a coincidence, but it is curiously akin to those 'mathematical coincidences' that fall into their places in a well-planned campaign." mr strummery had no difficulty in finding the telegrams alluded to. rushed through in frantic haste, the type had stood a hair's breadth higher than it should, and in the resulting blackness the words of the headlines leapt to meet his eye. the industrial war in france prohibitive tax on coal _from our special correspondent_ paris _wednesday night._ "it is authoritatively stated that the industrial crisis which has been existing in the north, and to some extent in the lyonnais districts, for the past six months is on the eve of a settlement. yesterday m. gavard returned from s. etienne, and after seeing several of his colleagues and some leading members of the chamber of commerce, left at once for lens. early this morning he was met at the maison du peuple by deputations from the syndicate of miners, the 'broutchouteux,' the association of mine owners, the valenciennes iron masters, and representatives of some other industries. "the proceedings were conducted in private, but it is understood in well-informed circles here that in accordance with the plenary powers conferred on him by the chambers in view of the critical situation, m. gavard proposed to raise the small existing tax on imported coal to an _ad valorem_ tax of p.c. the mine owners on their side will guarantee a minimum wage of f. c., and commence working at once, reinstating all men within a week of the imposing of the tax. the amalgamated industries acquiesce to a general immediate advance of f. _c._ per ton (metric) in the price of coal, and will start running as soon as the first portion of their orders can be filled. "troops are still being massed in the affected districts, but after last thursday's pitched battle a tone of sullen apathy is generally preserved. there was, however, severe rioting at anzin this morning, and about casualties are reported." paris. _later._ "the terms of settlement contained in my earlier message are confirmed. they will remain in operation for a year. the tax will come into force almost immediately, three days' grace being allowed for vessels actually in french ports to unload. in view of your government's subsidy to english coal exportation and its disastrous effects on french mining, and, subsequently, on other industries, the imposition of the tax will be received with approval in most quarters." as the prime minister reached the end of the paragraph he heard a vehicle stop at his door, followed by an attack on bell and knocker that caused mrs strummery no little indignation. it was mr tubes arriving, after indulging in the unusual luxury of a cab, and the next minute he was shown into his chief's presence. both men unconsciously frowned somewhat as they met, but the ex-collier was infinitely the more disturbed of the two. "you got my 'script?" he asked, as they shook hands. "no; did you write?" replied mr strummery. "to tell the truth, this meddling piece of imbecility on hampden's part, and his gross impertinence in sending it to me, put everything else out of my head for the moment. you have seen it?" "you wouldn't need to ask that if you'd passed a newspaper shop," said mr tubes grimly. "the newsbills are full of nothing else. 'coal war proclaimed,' 'hampden's reply to the p.p. tax,' 'unity league manifesto,' and a dozen more. i had private word of it last night, but too late to do anything. that's why i asked half a dozen of them--vossit, guppling, chadwing, and one or two more--to meet me here at half-past nine. happen a few others will drop in now." "well, don't let them see that you think the world is coming to an end," said the premier caustically. "nothing may come of it yet." "that's all very well, strummery," said mr tubes, with rising anger. "all very well for you; you don't come from a durham division. i shall have it from both sides. twenty thousand howling constituents and six hundred raving members." "let them rave. they know better than press it too far. as for the miners, if they have to lose by it we can easily make grants to put them right." a sudden thought struck him; he burst out laughing. "well, tubes," he exclaimed boisterously, "i can excuse myself, but i should have thought that a man who came from a durham constituency would have seen _that_ before. hampden must either be mad, or else he knows that his precious league won't stand very much. don't you see? we are in the middle of summer now, and _for the next three months people will be burning hardly any coal at all_!" the home secretary jumped up and began to pace the room in seething impatience, before he could trust himself to speak. "don't talk like that before the house with fifty practical men in it, for god's sake, strummery," he exclaimed passionately. "hampden couldn't well have contrived a more diabolical moment. do you know what the conditions are? well, listen. no one _is_ burning any coal, and so it will be no hardship for them to do without. but every one is on the point of filling his cellar at summer prices to last all through the winter. and hampden's five million----" "i don't believe that," interposed the premier hastily. "well, i do--now," retorted his colleague bitterly. "his five million are the five million biggest users of domestic coal in the country. they use more than all the rest put together. and they all fill their cellars in the summer or autumn." "then?" suggested mr strummery. "then they won't now," replied mr tubes. "that's all. the next ten weeks are the busiest in the year, from the deepest working to the suburban coal-shoot. go and take a look round if you want to see. every waggon, every coal-yard, every railway siding, every pit-bank is chock-full, ready. only the cellars are empty. if the cellars are going to remain empty, what happens?" he threw out his left hand passionately, with a vigorous gesture. it suggested laden coal carts, crowded yards, over-burdened railways, all flung a stage back on to the already congested pit-heads, and banking up coal like the waters of the divided red sea into a scene of indescribable confusion. the prime minister sat thinking moodily, while his visitor paced the room and bit his lips with unpleasant vehemence. in the blades of morning sun, as he crossed and recrossed the room, one saw that mr tubes, neither tall nor stout but large, loosely boned, loosely dressed and loosely groomed, had light blue eyes, strong yellow teeth which came prominently into view as he talked, and a spotted sallow complexion, which conveyed the unfortunate, and unjust, impression of being dirty. "we shall have to do something to carry them on till the winter, that's all," declared mr strummery at length. "there's no doubt that the leaguers will have to use coal then." "it's no good thinking that we can settle it off-hand with a few thousand pounds of strike pay, strummery," said the home secretary impatiently, "because we can't. you have to know the conditions to see how that is. if there's a strike, the article has to be supplied from somewhere else at more money, and every one except those who _want_ to strike keep on very much as before. but here, by god, they have us all along the line! anything from fifty to a hundred thousand miners less required at one end, and anything from five to ten thousand coal carters at the other. and between? and dependent on each lot all through?" his ever-ready arm emphasised the situation by a comprehensive sweep. "you've heard say that coal is the life-blood of the country, happen?" he added. "well, we're the heart." "what do you suggest, then?" "it's all a matter of money. if it can be done we must make up the difference; buy it, pay for it, and store it. there are the dockyards, the barracks, and we could open depôts here and in all the big towns. in that way we could spread it over as long a period as we liked. then there's export. i think that has touched its limit for the time, but we might find it cheaper in the end to stimulate it more." "yes; but what about this french business? are you allowing for that in your estimate?" "what french business?" "the french tax," said the premier impatiently, pointing to the open _scythe_. "you've seen about it, haven't you?" he had not. he snatched up the paper, muttering as he read the first few lines that he had glanced through _the tocsin_ before he came out, and that had been all. his voice became inaudible as he read on. when he had finished he was very pale. he flung the paper down and walked to the window, and stood there looking out without a word. the declaration of the coal war had filled him with smouldering rage; the paris telegram had effectually chilled it. before, he had felt anger; now he felt something that, expressed in words, was undistinguishable from fear. the men whom he had asked to meet him there were beginning to arrive. they had already heard vossit and chadwing pass upstairs talking. there was a step in the hall outside that could only belong to tirrel. he had not been summoned, but, as mr tubes had anticipated, a few others were beginning to drop in. guppling and two men whom he had met on the doorstep came in as mr tubes was finishing the paris news. "it's not much good talking about it now," he said, turning from the window, "but if i had known of _this_, or even that the other would be out, i should have come here myself without bringing all these chaps down too. not but what they'd have come, though. but when i wrote to them i'd just got the information, you understand, and it was thought that hampden wouldn't be doing anything for a week at least." "he was too clever for you again?" said strummery vindictively, as he rose to go upstairs. "so it seems," admitted mr tubes indifferently. chapter xiv the last chance and the counsel of expedience in the salon, where a month before they had drafted the outline of the personal property bill, under the impression that government was a parlour game and society a heap of spelicans, eight or nine men were already assembled. one or two sat apart, with ugly looks upon their faces. mr vossit was dividing his time between gazing up to the ceiling and making notes in a memorandum book as the points occurred to him. sir causter kerr, baronet of the united kingdom, and chevalier of the order of the golden eagle, who in return for a thousand pounds a year permitted himself to be called first lord of the admiralty in a socialist government, was standing before a steel engraving with the title in german, "defeat of the british at majuba hill, th february ," but, judging from the slight sardonic grin on his thin features, he was thinking of something else. sir causter kerr had assuredly not been invited to the meeting. the rest of the company stood together in one group, where they talked and laughed and looked towards the door from time to time, in expectation of their host's arrival. the talk and laughter dropped to a whisper and a smile as mr strummery entered and mr tubes followed, and with short greetings passed to their places at the table. the prime minister was popular, or he would not have held that position, but mr tubes was not. he was home secretary by virtue of the voice of the coal interest, so much the largest labour organisation in the country that if its wishes were ignored it could, like another body of miners in the past, very effectively demand to "know the reason why." "well, jim, owd lad," said cecil brown hilariously, taking advantage of the fact that formal proceedings had not yet commenced, "hast geete howd o' onny more cipher pappers, schuzheou?" cecil brown, it may be explained, held that he had the privilege of saying offensive things to his friends without being considered offensive, and as no one ever thought of calling him anything else but "cecil brown," he was probably right. of the colonial office, he was in some elation at the moment that his usually despised department was quite out of this imbroglio. "ah, that was a very red, red herring, i'm more than thinking now," said mr guppling reflectively. "certainly a salt fish, eh, tirrel?" said cecil brown. mr strummery rapped sharply on the table with his knuckles, to indicate that the proceedings had better begin. a hard-working, conscientious man, he entirely missed the lighter side of life. he sometimes laughed, but in conversation his face never lit up with the ready, spontaneous smile; not because he was sad, but because he failed to see, not only the utility of a jest, but its point also. that conversational sauce which among friends who understand one another frequently takes the outer form of personal abuse, was to him merely flagrant insult. mr tubes leaned across and spoke to his chief; and looking down the table the premier allowed his gaze to rest enquiringly on sir causter kerr. a man who _had_ been invited jumped up. "i called on comrade kerr on my way here and took the liberty of asking him to come, because i thought that we might like to know something of the condition of the navy," he explained. "for what purpose?" enquired mr strummery smoothly. "because," he replied, flaring up suddenly with anger, "because i regard this damned french tax, without a word of notice to us or our representative, as nothing more or less than a _casus belli_." the proceedings had begun. "case of tinned rabbits!" contemptuously retorted a mr bilch, sitting opposite. "what d'yer think you're going to do if it is? why, my infant, the french fleet would knock you and your _belli_ into a packing _casus_ in about ten minutes if you tried it on. you'll have to stomach that _casus belli_, and as many more as they care to send you." mr bilch was a new man, and was spoken of as a great acquisition to his party, though confessedly uncertain in his views and frequently illogical in his ground. his strength lay in the "happy turns" with which his speech was redolent, and his splendid invulnerability to argument, reason, or fact. he had formerly been a rag-sorter, and would doubtless have remained inarticulate and unknown had he not one day smoothed out a sheet of _the tocsin_ from the bin before him as he ate his dinner. a fully reported speech was therein described as perhaps the greatest oratorical masterpiece ever delivered outside hyde park. mr bilch read the speech, and modestly fancied that he could do as well himself. from that moment he never looked back, and although he was still a plain member he had forced his way by sheer merit into the circle of the council chamber. "it is against our principles to consider that contingency," interposed the premier; "and in any case it is premature to talk of war when the courts of arbitration----" "that's right enough," interrupted the man who had first spoken of war, "and when it was a matter of fighting to grab someone else's land to fatten up a gang of stock exchange hebrews, i was with you through thick and thin, but this is different. the very livelihood of our people is aimed at. i've nothing to say against the hague in theory, but when you remember that we've never had a single decision given in our favour it's too important to risk to that. but why france should have done this, in this way and just at this moment, is beyond me." yet it was not difficult to imagine. when many english manufactories were closed down altogether, or removed abroad because the conditions at home were too exacting for them, less coal was required in england. less coal meant fewer colliers employed, and this touched the government most keenly. the same amount of coal _must_ be dug, especially as the operation of the eight hours act had largely increased the number of those dependent on the mines; therefore more must be exported. the coal tax had long since gone; a substantial bounty was now offered on every ton shipped out of the country. it made a brave show. never were such piping times known from kirkcaldy to cardiff. english coal could be shot down in rouen, nantes, or bordeaux, even in lille and limoges, at a price that defied home competition. prices fell; french colliery proprietors reduced wages; french miners came out on strike--a general strike--and for the time being french collieries ceased to have any practical existence. but france was requiring a million tons of coal a week, and having done the mischief, england could only, at the moment, let her have a quarter of a million a week, while german and belgian coal had been knocked out of the competition and diverted elsewhere. the great industries had to cease working; chaos, civil war and anarchy began to reign.... "why france should have done this is beyond me." there was another reason, deeper. it was a commonplace that england had been cordially hated in turn by every nation in and out of europe, but with all that there was no responsible nation in or out of europe that dare contemplate a weak, a dying, england. france looked at the map of europe, and the thought of the german eagle flying over dover castle and german navies patrolling the seas from land's end to the skawe haunted her dreams. russia wanted nothing in the world so much as another thirty years' peace. spain had more to lose than to gain; italy had much to lose and nothing at all to gain. all the little independent states and nations remembered the treaties of vienna and berlin, and trembled at the thought of what might happen now. germany alone might have had visions, but germany had a nightmare too, and when the man who ruled her councils with a strong if tortuous policy saw wave after wave of the infectious triumph of socialism reach his own shores, he recognised that england's weakness was more hostile to his ambitions than england's strength. no one wanted two turkeys in europe. "i don't see why we shouldn't make a naval demonstration, at all events," some one suggested hopefully. "that used to be enough, and the french government must have plenty to look after at home." "naval demonstration be boiled!" exclaimed mr bilch forcibly. "send your little willie to hamley's for a tin steamer, and let him push it off ramsgate sands if you want a naval demonstration, comrade. but don't show the union jack inside the three-mile limit on the other side of the channel, or you'll have something so hot drop on your hands that you won't be able to lick it off fast enough." "i fail to see that," said mr vossit. "heaven forbid that i should raise my voice in favour of bloodshed, but if it were necessary for self-preservation our navy is at least equal to that of any other power." "is it?" retorted mr bilch, with so heavily-laden an expression of contemptuous derision on his face that it seemed as though he might be able to take it off, like a mask, and hang it on some one else. "is it? oh, it is, is it? well, ask that man there. ask him, is all i say. simply ask _him_." his contorted face was thrust half-way across the table towards mr vossit, while his rigid arm with extended forefinger was understood to indicate sir causter kerr. "as the subject has been raised, perhaps the first lord of the admiralty will reassure us on that point," said the premier. "dear, dear, no," replied causter kerr blandly. "we couldn't carry it through, premier. you must not think of going to extremes." there was a moody silence in which men looked angrily at kerr and at one another. "are we to understand that the navy is _not_ equal to that of any other power?" demanded mr vossit. "on paper, yes, comrade," replied kerr, with a pitying little smile, "but on deep water, where battles are usually fought, no. it is a curious paradox that in order to be equal to any other single power england must be really very much stronger. i should also explain that from motives of economy no battleships have been launched or laid down during the last three years, and only four cruisers of questionable armament. then as regards gunnery. from motives of economy actual practice is never carried out now, but the championship, dating from last year, lies at present with the armoured cruiser _radium_:--stationary regulation target, - / miles distant, speed knots, quarter charges, hits out of shots. as regards effective range----" "tell them this," struck in mr bilch, "they'll understand it better. tell them that the _intrepidy_ could sail round and round the channel fleet and bloody well throw her shells over the moon and down on to their decks without ever once coming into range. tell them that." "the picture so graphically drawn by comrade bilch is substantially correct," corroborated sir causter kerr. "the _intrépide_, together with three other battleships of her class, has an effective range of between four and five thousand yards more than that of any english ship.... but you have been told all this so often, comrades, that i fear it cannot interest you." sir causter was having his revenge for two years of subservience at a thousand pounds a year. "then perhaps you will tell us, as first lord of the admiralty--the job you are paid for doing--what you imagine the navy is kept up for?" demanded a comrade with fierce resentment. "as far as i have been encouraged to believe, in that capacity," replied kerr with easy insolence, "i imagine that its duties consist nowadays in patrolling the lobster-pots, and in amusing the visitors on the various seaside promenades by turning the searchlights on." "we won't ask you to remain any longer," said the premier. sir causter kerr rose leisurely. "good morning, comrades," he remarked punctiliously, and going home wrote out his resignation, "from motives of patriotism," and sent a copy of the letter to all the papers. a man who had been standing by the door listening to the conversation now came forward with a copy of an early special edition of the _pall mall gazette_ in his hand. "you needn't sweat yourselves about being equal to a single power or not," he remarked with an unpleasant laugh. "look at the 'fudge' there." and he threw the paper on the table, as though he washed his hands of it and many other things. mr bilch secured it, and turning to the space which is left blank for the inclusion of news received up to the very moment of going to press, he read aloud the single item it contained. coal war berlin, _thursday morning_. "the action which france is reported to have taken had for some time been anticipated here. on all sides there is the opinion, amounting to conviction, that germany must at once call into operation the power lying dormant in the penalising tariff and impose a tax on imported coal. it is agreed that otherwise, in her frantic endeavours to restore the balance of her export trade, england would flood this country with cheap coal and precipitate a state of things similar to that from which france is just emerging. "emphasis is laid on the fact that such a measure will be self-protective and in no way aggressive. it is not anticipated that the tax will exceed mks. pf., or at the most mks. per ton." "export value, eight and elevenpence," murmured a late arrival, one of the fifty practical men in the house. "yes, i imagine that two marks fifty will just about knock the bottom out." "is there nothing we can offer them in exchange?" demanded some one. "nothing we can hit them back with?" cecil brown, who was suspected of heterodoxy on this one point, crystallised the tariff question into three words. "nothing but tears," he replied. "if there's one thing that fairly makes me hot it's the way we always have to wait for some one else to tell us what's going on," said the comrade who had brought in the _pall mall gazette_, looking across at the foreign office under-secretary resentfully. "a fellow in holborn here pokes the paper under my nose and asks me what we're going to do about it, and there i don't even know what is being done at us. what i want to know is, what our ambassadors and foreign office think they're there for. it's always the same, and then there'll be the questions in parliament, and we know nothing. makes us look like a set of kiddin' amateurs." the fact had been noticed. former governments had not infrequently earned the title in one or two departments. later governments had qualified for it in every department. the reason lay on the surface; the members of those parliaments and the men who sent them were themselves bunglers and amateurs in their daily work and life. except in the stereotyped product of machinery, accuracy was scarcely known. the man who had built a house in england at that period, the man who had had a rabbit-hutch built to order, the man who had stipulated for one article to be made _exactly_ like a copy, the man who had been so unfortunate as to require "the plumbers in," the man who had to do with labour in any shape or form, the man who had been "faithfully" promised delivery or completion by a certain stated time, the woman who shopped, the person who merely existed with open eyes, could all testify out of experiences, some heartrending, some annoying, some simply amusing, that precision and reliability scarcely existed among the lower grades of industry and commerce. it was a period of transition. the worker had cast off the love, the delicacy, the intelligence of the craftsman, and he had not yet attained to the unvarying skill of the automaton. in another century one man would only be able to fix throttle valve connections on to hot-water pipes, but his fixing of throttle valves would be a thing to dream about, while the initial letter a's of his brother, whose whole life would be devoted to engraving initial letter a's on brass dog-collar plates, would be as near unswerving perfection as mundane initials ever could be. "makes us look like a set of tinkerin' amateurs." "one inference is plain enough," said mr guppling, smoothing over the suggestion. "these three things weren't going to happen all together of their own accord. there's a deep game somewhere, and seeing what's at stake our powers ought to be wide enough for us to put our hands on them and stop it." there was a murmur of approval. having been taken by surprise, the idea of peremptorily "stopping it" was a peculiarly attractive one. but there were malcontents who were not to be appeased so easily, and a comrade pennefarthing, who had arrived in the meantime, raised an old cry in a new form. "i won't exactly say that we've been betrayed," he declared, glancing at the group of orthodox ministers who sat together, "but game or no game i will say that we've been damned badly served with information." comrade tirrel stood up. he had not yet spoken at all, and he was accorded instant silence, for men were beginning to look to him. "it is now nearly eleven o'clock," he said in his quick, incisive tone, "and some of us have been here for upwards of an hour. we met to consider a situation. that situation still remains. may i ask that the home secretary, who is doubly qualified for the task, should tell us the extent of the danger and its probable effect?" if mr tubes possessed a double qualification he also laboured under a corresponding disability. as the representative of a mining constituency, a practical expert, and a leading member of a government which existed by the goodwill of the workers--largely of the miners--it would be scarcely to his interest to minimise the gathering cloud. as the minister for the home department, the blacker he made the picture the greater the volume of obloquy he drew upon his head for not having foreseen the danger; the more relief he asked for, the fiercer the opposition he would encounter from hostile sections and from the perturbed heads of a depleted treasury. "we are still very much in the dark as to what has really happened, is happening, and will happen," he remarked tamely. "an appreciable drop in the demand for coal, whether for home or export, will certainly have a disturbing effect on the conditions of labour in many departments. but the difficulties of estimating the effects are so great----" there were murmurs. whatever might be the failings of socialistic oratory, flatness and excess of moderation did not lie among them. "figures," suggested tirrel pointedly. "perhaps comrade tirrel will take the job in hand instead of me," said tubes bitterly, but without any show of anger. "doubtless he'd get a better hearing." "no," replied tirrel gravely, "the moment is too critical for recrimination. if the home secretary lays the position frankly before us, he will have no cause to complain of an unsympathetic hearing, nor, as far as i can speak, of a whole-hearted support in taking means to safeguard it." it occurred to mr tubes then, for the first time in his life--and it was almost like a shock to feel it--that the man who had always seemed to throw himself into sharp antagonism to himself might be actuated by higher motives than personal jealousy after all. he continued his speech. "if we accept the figure of five millions as a correct return of the unity league membership, and if we assume that they will all obey the boycott, then we are face to face with the fact that on the basis of a four ton per person average, twenty million tons of coal must be written off the home consumption." "but the four tons per head average includes the entire industrial consumption of the country," objected mr vossit. "that is so," admitted mr tubes, "but it also includes a great many people whose use of coal is practically _nil_. an alternative basis is to assume that two millions of the members are house-holders. then taking ten tons a year as their average household consumption--and admitting that all the wealthiest men in the country are included the average is not too high--we arrive at just the same result. "the exports, on the other hand, do not depend on estimate: we have the actual returns. france takes fifteen million tons in round numbers. for the purpose of facing the worst, we may therefore assume that the work of digging and handling thirty-five million tons will be suddenly cut off." "germany," some one reminded him. "germany is wholly conjectural at present. i have no objection to taking it into account as well, if it is thought desirable, but i would point out that we are being influenced by the merest rumour." "no," objected tirrel, but without any enmity, "i think that we must regard germany as lost. we are just beginning to touch the outskirts of a vast organisation which has been quietly perfecting its plan of operation for years. i do not regard a german tax as settled because of this one rumour, but i do regard it as settled because at this precise moment the rumour has been allowed to appear." "germany ten millions," accepted mr tubes. "total decrease, forty-five million tons." "don't you be too sure of that, comrade," warned mr bilch. "why, it's not twelve o'clock yet by a long way. there'll be half a dozen editions out before the 'three o'clock winners.'" mr bilch evidently regarded his shaft that each fresh edition might contain a new country imposing a tax humorously, but several comrades looked towards the home secretary enquiringly. "the other large importers are italy, russia, sweden, egypt, spain and denmark," said mr tubes, who could have talked coal statistics for hours if necessary. "all these, with the possible exception of russia, _must_ import. it is unlikely that the estimate i have given will be exceeded from that cause." "and the result?" "above and below, about a million men are now employed in raising , , tons. it is simple arithmetic.... in less than a month about two hundred thousand more men will be out of work." mr chadwing, chancellor of the exchequer, moved uneasily in his chair. "that is the full extent?" enquired cecil brown. "no," admitted the home secretary. "that is the inevitable direct result. forty-five million tons less will be carried by rail, or cart, or ship, or all three. a fair sprinkling of railway-men, carters, dockers, stokers, sailors, and other fellows will be dropped off too. there will be fewer railway trucks built this next year, less doing in the fire-grate trade, several thousand horses not wanted, a slight falling off in road-mending work. there is not a trade in england, from steeple-building to hop-picking, that will not be a little worse off because of those , , tons. then the two hundred thousand out-of-work miners will burn less coal at home, the ships and the engines will burn less, and the workshops and the smithies will burn less, and the whole process will be repeated again and again, for coal is like a snowball in its cumulative effects, and it cannot stand still." if mr tubes had come to compromise, he had remained to publish broadcast. perhaps no one quite understood the danger yet, for the mind, used to everyday effects, does not readily grasp the extent of a calamity, and six hours before there had not been a cloud even the size of a man's hand on their horizon. the premier thought it was impolitic on his colleague's part; the treasury officials looked on it as a move to force their hands; the foreign under-secretary was suspicious that mr tubes was leading away by some mysterious by-path from the unpreparedness of his own department to foreign office remissness. they all continued to look silently at the home secretary as he continued to stand. "the indirect effects will involve about two million people to some extent," he summed up. "that, at least, is the worst?" said cecil brown with an encouraging smile, for mr tubes remained standing. the prime minister made an impatient movement; the treasury heads looked at one another and said with their eyes, "he is really overdoing it"; the foreign office man scowled unconsciously, and cecil brown continued to smile consciously. "the worst is this: that a great many pits are working to-day at a bare profit, partly in the hope of better things, partly because we stimulate the trade. the crisis we are approaching will hang over the coal fields like a blight, and one crippled industry will bring down another. _all_ the poorer mines will close down. you need only look back to ' to see that. neither i nor any one else can give you a forecast of what that will involve, but you may be sure of this: that although ' with its , , tons of a decrease half-ruined the english coal fields for a decade, ' was a shrimp to what this is going to be." "then let us stimulate the trade more, until the crisis is over," suggested cecil brown. mr tubes gave a short, dry laugh. "i commend that course to comrade chadwing," he said, as he sat down. the chancellor of the exchequer was busy with his papers. "let me dispel any idea of that kind at once," he remarked, without looking up. "the moment is not only an unfortunate one--it is an utterly impossible one for making any extra disbursement however desirable." "well," said mr bilch, looking round on the moody assembly paternally, "it seems that the situation is like this here, mates: the navy is no messin' good at all, same as i told you; the army's a bit worse; treasury empty, yes; the home office don't know what's going on at home, and the foreign office possesses just the same amount of valuable information as to what is happening abroad. lively, ain't it? well, it's lucky that bilch is still bilch." no one rose to his mordant humour. even cecil brown had forgotten how to smile. "if our comrade has any suggestion to make----" said the premier discouragingly. "yes, sir," replied mr bilch. "i have the wisdom of the serpent to rub into your necks if you'll only listen. we haven't any navy, so we can't fight if we wanted to; we haven't any money, so we can't pay out. tubes here doesn't know what's going to happen at home, and jevons doesn't rightly know what has happened abroad. what is to be done? i'll tell you. wait. wait and see. wait, and let them all simmer down again. why," he cried boisterously, looking round on them in good-humoured, friendly contempt, "to see your happy, smiling faces one would think that the canary had died or the lodger gone off without paying his rent. for why? because a bloke in a frock-coat and a top hat gets on to a wooden horse and blows a tin trumpet, and the export trade in a single article of commerce is temporarily disarranged--perhaps!" mr strummery nodded half absent-mindedly; the treasury men smiled together; mr chadwing murmured "very true"; and nearly every one looked relieved. comrade bilch was certainly a rough member, but the man had a shrewd common-sense, and they began to feel that they had been hasty in their dismal forebodings. "haven't we been threatened with this and that before?" demanded mr bilch dogmatically. "of course we have, and what came of it? nothing. haven't there been strikes and lock-outs, some big some little, every year? according to comrade tubes, this is going to be the champion. that remains to be seen. what i say is, don't play into their hands in a panic. wait and see what's required. that don't commit us to anything." "it may be too late then," said mr tubes, but he said "may" now and not "will." "there may be no need to do anything then," replied mr bilch. "and remember this: that the minute you begin to shout 'crisis!' you make one. all round us; all at us. my rag-bags! what a run on the old bank there would be! but if you go on just as usual, taking no notice of no one? why, before long there will come a wet day or a cold night, and johnny hampden's aunt will say to johnny hampden's grandmamma: 'my dear, i feel positively starved. don't you think that we might have a _little_ fire without johnny knowing?' and the old lady will say: 'well, do you know, my pet, i was just going to say the same thing myself. suppose you run out and buy a sack of coal?' and before you can say 'coughdrop' every blessed aunt and mother and first cousin of the unicorn league will be getting in her little stock of coal." it was what every one wished to believe, and therefore they were easily persuadable. it was a national characteristic. the country had never entered into a war during the past fifty years without being assured by every authority, from the commander-in-chief down to the suburban barber, that as soon as the enemy got a little tap on the head they would be making for home, howling for peace as they went. all these men had known strikes; many had been involved in them: some had controlled their organisation. they had seen the men of their own class loyally and patiently facing poverty and hardship for the sake of a principle, and enduring day after day and week after week, and, if necessary, month after month; they had seen the women of their own class preaching courage and practising heroism by the side of their men while their bodies were racked by cold and hunger and their hearts were crushed by the misery around; they had seen even the children of their class learning an unnatural fortitude. they accepted it as a commonplace of life, an asset on which they could rely. _but they did not believe that any other class could do it._ it did not occur to them to consider whether the officers of an army are usually behind the rank and file in valour, sacrifice, or endurance. doubtless there were among them some who were not deceived, but they wilfully subordinated their clearer judgment to the policy of the moment. tirrel was the one exception. "there can be no more fatal mistake of the dangerous position into which we have been manoeuvred than to assume that we shall be easily delivered from it by the weakness of our opponents before we have the least indication that weakness exists," he declared, as soon as mr bilch had finished, speaking vigorously, but without any of the assertiveness and personal feeling that had gained him many enemies in the past. "i agree with every word that comrade tubes has spoken. we all do; we all _must_ admit it or be blind. what on earth, then, have we to hope for in a policy of drift, of sitting tight and doing nothing in the hope of things coming round of their own accord? it is madness, my comrades, sheer madness, i tell you, and a month hence it will be suicide." he dropped his voice and swept the circle of faces with a significant glance. "it is through such madness on the part of others that we are here to-day." mr chadwing smiled the thin smile of expediency. "it is one thing for a comrade with no official responsibility to say that a certain course does not satisfy him," he said; "it may be quite another thing for those who have to consider ways and means to do anything different. perhaps comrade tirrel will kindly enlighten us as to what in our position he would do?" "i see two broad courses open," replied tirrel, without any hesitation in accepting the challenge. "both, as you will readily say, have their disadvantages, but neither is so fatal as inaction. the first is aggressive. the unity league has declared war on us. very well, let it have war. i would propose to suspend the _habeas corpus_, arrest hampden and salt, declare the object and existence of the unity league illegal, close its offices and confiscate its funds. there are between five and ten million pounds somewhere. do you reflect what that would do? it would at least keep two hundred thousand out-of-work miners from actual starvation for a year. prompt action would inevitably kill the boycott movement at home. the foreign taxes, my comrades, you would probably find to have a very marked, though perhaps undiscoverable, connection with the home movement, and when the latter was seen to be effectually dealt with, i venture to predict that the former could be compromised. if the confiscated funds were not sufficient to meet the distress, i should not hesitate to requisition for state purposes in a time of national emergency all incomes above a certain figure in a clean sweep." a medley of cries met this despotic programme throughout. even tirrel's friends felt that he was throwing away his reputation; and he had more enemies than friends. "you'd simply make the situation twice as involved," exclaimed mr vossit as the mouthpiece of the babel. "the liberty of the subject! it would mean civil war. they'd rise." "who would rise?" demanded tirrel. "the privileged classes." "but they _have_ risen," he declared vehemently. "this _is_ civil war. what more do you want?" it was a question on which they all had views, and for the next five minutes the room was full of suggestions, not of what they themselves wanted, but of what would be the probable action of the classes if driven to extremities. "very well," assented tirrel at last; "that is what they will do next as it is, for they consider that they are in extremities." "well, comrade," said mr bilch broadly, "you don't seem to have put your money on a winner this event. what's your other tip?" "failing that, the other reasonable course is conciliation. i would suggest approaching hampden and salt to find out whether they are open to consider a compromise. the details would naturally require careful handling, but if both sides were willing to come to an understanding, a basis could be found. as things are, i should consider it a gain to drop the personal property tax, the minimum wage bill, to guarantee the inviolability of capital against further taxation while we are in office, and to make generous concessions for the fuller representation of the monied classes in parliament, in return for the abandonment of a coal war, the dispersal in some agreed way of the league reserves, the reduction of the subscription to a nominal sum, and a frank undertaking that the league would not adopt a hostile policy while the agreement remained in force." this proposal was even less to the temper of the meeting than the former one had been, and the latter half of it was scarcely heard among the fusillade of hostile cries. no one laughed when a hot-headed comrade stood upon a chair and howled "traitor!" tirrel looked round on the assembly. practically every man who had a tacit right to join in the deliberative council had arrived, and the room was full; but there was not a single member among them willing to face the necessity for strong and immediate action, and they were hostile to the man who just touched the secret depths of their unconfessed and innermost misgivings. mr tubes felt that he had done his duty, and need not invite reference to his delicate position by further emphasising unpalatable truths; he had presented the spectacle of a weak man startled into boldness, now he was sufficiently himself again to go with the majority. the more responsible members of the government distrusted tirrel in every phase; the smaller fry relied on the wisdom of orthodoxy, and agreed that the man who could blow the hotness of extirpation and the coldness of conciliation with the same breath must prove an unworthy guide; and on every hand there was the tendency of settled authority to deprecate novel and unmatured proceedings. tirrel had become the hampden of an earlier decade among his party. "you call me 'traitor,'" he said, turning to the man who had done so. "write down the word, comrade, and then, if you will bring it to me without a blush six months hence, i will wear it round my neck in penance." he bowed to the premier and withdrew, not in anger or with a mean sense of injustice, but because he felt that it would be sheer mockery to share the deliberations of a council when their respective views, on a matter which he believed to be the very crux of their existence, were antagonistic in their essences. after his departure the progress was amazing. his ill-considered proposals had cleared the air. every one knew exactly what he did not want, and that was a material step towards arriving at the opposite goal. at the end of a few hours a very effective and comprehensive scheme for quietly and systematically doing nothing had been almost unanimously arrived at. several quires of paper had been covered with suggestions, some of them being accepted as they stood, some recommended for elaboration, some passed for future consideration, some thrown out. the ambassador in paris was to retire (on the ground of ill-health) if he could not satisfactorily explain the position. a special mission was to be sent to berlin to get really at the bottom of things, and, if possible, have the tax either not put on or taken off, according to the situation when they arrived there. a legal commission was to rout out every precedent to see if the unity league was not doing something outside the powers of a trade union (a very forlorn hope); and all over the country enquiries were to be made and assurances given, all very discreetly and without the least suggestion of panic. the only doubtful point was whether every one else would play the game with the same delicate regard for ministerial susceptibilities, or whether some might not have the deplorable taste to create scenes, send deputations, demand work with menace, claim the literal fulfilment of specific pledges, incite to riot and violence, stampede the whole community, and otherwise act inconsiderately towards the government, when they discovered the very awkward circumstances in which their leaders had involved them. the first indication of a jarring note fell to the lot of the president of the board of trade in the shape of a telegram which reached him early on the following morning. this was its form: "from the council of the amalgamated union of chimney sweepers and federated carpet beaters. (membership, , ).--seventeen million estimated chimneys stop smoking. no soot, precious little dust. where the hell do we come in? "blankintosh, _secretary_." a few years before, it had been officially discovered that there were four or five curiously adaptable words, without which the working man was quite unable to express himself in the shortest sentence. when on very ceremonious occasions he was debarred their use, he at once fell into a pitiable condition of aphasia. keenly alive to the class-imposed disadvantages under which these men existed, the government of that day declared that it was a glaring anomaly that the poor fellows should not be allowed to use a few words that were so essential to their expression of every emotion, while the rich, with more time on their hands, could learn a thousand synonyms. the law imposing a shilling fine for each offence (five shillings in the case of "a gentleman," for even then there was one law for the rich and another for the poor) was therefore repealed, and the working man was free to swear as much as he liked anywhere, which, to do him justice, he had done all along. it was for this reason that mr blankintosh's pointed little message was accepted for transmission; but there was evidently a limit, for, when the president of the board of trade, an irascible gentleman who had, in the colloquial phrase, "got out of bed on the wrong side" that morning, dashed off a short reply, it was brought back to him by a dispirited messenger two hours later with the initials of seventeen postmasters and the seventeen times repeated phrase, "refused. language inadmissible." chapter xv the great fiasco the government allowed the nd day of july to pass without a sign. they were, as their supporters convincingly explained to anxious enquirers, treating the unity league and all its works with silent contempt. they were "doing nothing" strategically, they wished it to be understood; a very different thing from "doing nothing" through apathy, indecision, or bewilderment, but very often undistinguishable the one from the other in the result. on the nd day of july seventeen million "estimated chimneys" ceased to pollute the air. the league was not concerned with the exact number, and they accepted the chimney sweepers' figures. it was more to the purpose that the order was being loyally and cheerfully obeyed. the idea of fighting the government with the government's own chosen people, appealed to the lighter side of a not unhumorous nation. ever since the institution of a socialistic press, and from even remoter times than the saplinghood of the "reformer's tree," fleet street party hacks and hyde park demagogues had been sharpening their wit upon the "black-coated" brigade, the contemptible _bourgeoisie_ of "linton villas," "claremonts," and "holly lodges," taunting them with self-complacency, political apathy, and social parasitism. the proportion of moral degradation conferred by a coat intentionally black, in comparison with one that is merely approaching that condition through the personal predilections of its owner, has never yet been defined, and the relative æsthetic values of the architectural pretensions of villadom, compared with the unswerving realism of the "gas works views," "railway approach cottages," and "cement terraces," of the back streets, may be left to the matured judgment of an unprejudiced posterity. the great middle class in all its branches had never hitherto made any reply at all. now that it had begun to retort in its own effective way, the government agreed that the best counterblast would be--to wait until it all blew over. there were naturally defections from the first. a friendly spy in mr tubes's secret service managed to secure the information without much trouble that within seven days of the publication of the order no less than notices of resignation had been received at headquarters. he was hastening away with this evidence of the early dissolution of the league when his grinning informant called him back to whisper in his ear that during the same period there had been , new members enrolled, and that while the resignations seemed to have practically ceased the enrolments were growing in volume. in addition to these there were battalions who joined in the policy of the league through sympathy with its object without formally binding themselves as members. in some of its aspects the success of the movement erred in excess. there were men, manufacturers, who in their faith and enthusiasm wished to close their works at once, and, regardless of their own loss, throw their workmen and their unburnt coal into the balance. it was not required; it was not even desirable then. the league's object was to disorganise commerce as little as possible beyond the immediate boundaries of the coal trade. they were not engaged in an internecine war, and every one of their own people deprived of employment was a loss. cases of hardship there would be; they are common to both sides in every phase of stubborn and prolonged civil strife, but from the "class" point of view coal had the pre-eminent advantage that its weight and bulk gave employment to a hundred of the "masses" to every one of themselves. there were also two circumstances that discounted any sense of injustice on this head. firstly, there was a spirit of sacrifice and heroism in the air, born of the time and the situation; and secondly, it soon became plain that the league was engaged in vast commercial undertakings and was absorbing all the men of its own party who were robbed of their occupation by the development of the war. a firm starting business with an unencumbered capital of ten million sterling, enjoying a "private income" of five millions a year, and not troubled with the necessity of earning any dividend at all, could afford to be a generous employer. from the first moment it was obvious that oil must take the place of coal. that was the essence of the strife. _the tocsin_ set to work in frantic haste to prove that it was impossible; to show that all the authorities of the past and present had agreed that no real substitute for coal existed. it was quite true, and it was quite false. it was not a world struggle. abroad, foreign coal was being substituted for english coal. at home only half a million tons a week were in issue at the first. afterwards, as coal stagnation fed coal stagnation, the tonnage rose steadily, but the calorific ratio of coal and oil, the basis of all comparison, simply did not exist, except on paper, for the two fuels in domestic use. _the tocsin's_ second article convinced its readers that all the lamp companies in the world could not keep up with the abnormal demand for lamps, stoves, and oil-cookers, that the ridiculous proposal of the league would involve, if it were not providentially ordained that it was foredoomed to grotesque failure by the dead weight of its own fatuous ineptitude. in practice the two single firms of ripplestone of birmingham, and schuyler of cleveland, u.s.a., at once put on the market a varied stock that filled every requirement. there was no waiting. as _the tocsin_ bitterly remarked, it soon became apparent that the demand had been foreseen and "treacherously provided against during the past two years." the third _tocsin_ article on the situation dealt statistically with the oil trade of the world. it necessarily fell rather flat, because _the tocsin_ special commissioner entered upon the task with the joyous conviction that the world's output would not be sufficient for the demand, the world's oil ships not numerous enough to transport it. as he dipped into the figures, however, he made the humiliating discovery that the increased demand would do little more than ruffle the surface of the oil market. the baku oil fields could supply it without inconvenience; the united states could do it by contract at a ten per cent. advance; the newly-discovered wells of nova scotia alone would be equal to the demand if they diverted all their produce across the atlantic. he threw down his pen in despair, and then picked it up again to substitute invective for statistics. before his eyes the motor-tanks of the anglo-pennsylvanian oil company, of london and philadelphia, and the anglo-caucasian oil company, of london and baku, were going on their daily rounds. it was still a matter for wonder how well equipped the sudden call had found those two great controlling oil companies. it was yet to be learned that for their elaborate designations there might be substituted the simple name "unity league." it was submitting _the tocsin_ young man to rather a cruel handicap to send him to the british museum reading room for a few hours with instructions to prove impossible what salt and hampden had been straining every nerve for two years to make inevitable. three articles exhausted his proof that a successful coal boycott under modern conditions was utterly impossible. he went out into the city and the suburbs, interviewing coal merchants and coal agents with the object of drawing a harrowing picture of the gloom and depression that had fallen upon these unfortunate creatures at the hands of their own class league. he found them all bearing up well under the prospect, but much too busy to give him more than a few minutes of their time. every one of them had been appointed an oil agent to the league firms, and league members were ordering their oil through them, just as heretofore they had ordered coal. it was very easy, profitable work for them; they had nothing to do but to transmit the orders to the league firms and the fast business-like motor-tanks distributed the oil. but half of the coal carters were now under notice to leave, and there were indications that work was very scarce. each motor-tank displaced twenty men and twenty horses. already, it was said, thousands of horses had been sent out to grass from london alone. externally, as far as the capital was concerned at all events, things were going on very much the same as before, when the struggle was a fortnight old. elsewhere signs were not lacking. the government had received disquieting reports from its agents here and there, but so far it was meeting the situation by refusing to acknowledge that it existed. a march of the staffordshire miners had been averted by the men's leaders being privately assured that it would embarrass the government's plans. the march had been deferred under protest; so far the organisation answered to the wheel. but the midlands were clamorously demanding exceptional relief for the exceptional conditions. monmouth had seen a little rioting, and in glamorgan the bands of incendiaries called "beaconmen," who set fire to the accumulations of coal stacked at the collieries, had already begun their work. cardiff was feeling the effect of having a third of its export trade in coal suddenly lopped off, and newport, swansea, kirkcaldy, blyth, hull, sunderland, glasgow, and the tyne ports were all in the same position. most of the railways had found it necessary to dispense with their entire supernumerary staff, and most of the railway workshops had been put on short time. in london alone, between four and five thousand out-of-work gas employés were drawing government pay. about the third week in august the premier, mr tubes, and the chancellor of the exchequer had a long private conference. as a result mr strummery called an emergency council. it was a thin, acrimonious gathering. some one brought the tidings that seven more companies in south london were substituting diesel oil engines for steam. he had all the dreary developments statistically worked out on paper. nobody wanted to hear them, but he poured them out into the unwilling ears, down to the climax that it represented two hundred and forty-seven fewer men required at the pits. it served as a text, however, for mr chadwing to hang his proposal on. after a month of inaction, the government was at length prepared to go to the length of admitting that abnormal conditions prevailed. oil had thrown a quarter of a million of their people out of employment. let oil keep them. he proposed to retaliate with a per cent. tax on imported oil, to come into operation under emergency procedure on the st of september. there were men present to whom the suggestion of taxing a raw article, necessary to a great proportion of the poor, was frankly odious. they were prepared to attack the proposal as a breach of faith. a few words from mr strummery, scarcely more than whispered, explained the necessity for the tax and the menace of the situation. those who had not been following events closely, paled to learn the truth. the treasury was living from hand to mouth, for the city had ceased to take up its bills. unless "something happened" before the new year dawned, it would have to admit its inability to continue the unemployed grant. already a quarter of a million men and their dependents, in addition to the normal average upon which the estimates were based, had been suddenly thrown upon the resources of the department. if mr tubes's forecast proved correct, double that number would be on their hands within another month. the development of half a million starving men who had been taught to look to the government for everything, looking and finding nothing, could be left to each individual imagination. the oil tax came into operation on the st of september. under the plea of becoming more "business-like," a great many of the parliamentary safeguards had been swept away, and such procedure was easy. all grades of petroleum had already advanced a few pence the gallon under the increased demand, and the poorer users had expressed their indignation. when they found, one day, that the price had suddenly leapt to half as much again, their wrath was unbounded. it was in vain for ministers to explain that the measure was directed against their enemies. they knew that it fell on _them_, and demanded in varying degrees of politeness to be told why some luxury of the pampered, leisured classes had not been chosen instead. the reason was plain to those who studied blue books. so highly taxed was every luxury now that the least fraction added to its burden resulted in an actually decreased revenue from that source. but if the mere tax and increase had impressed the poor unfavourably, a circumstance soon came to light that enraged them. in spite of the tax the members of the unity league were still being supplied with oil at the old prices, and they were assured that they would continue to be supplied without advance, even if the tax were doubled! the poor, ever suspicious of the doings of those of their own class when set high in authority, at once leapt to the conclusion that they were being made the victims of a double game. it was nothing to them that the anglo-pennsylvanian and the anglo-caucasian companies were now trading at a loss; it was common knowledge that their richer league neighbours had not had the price of their oil increased, and they knew all too well that they themselves had. with the lack of balanced reasoning that had formerly been one of the government's best weapons, they at once concluded that they alone were paying the tax, and the unparalleled injustice of it sowed a crop of bitterness in their hearts. if that was the net result at home, the foreign effect of the policy was not a whit more satisfactory. studland, the consul-general at odessa, one of the most capable men in the service, cabled a despatch full of temperate and solemn warning the moment he heard of the step. it was too late then, if, indeed, his words would have been regarded. russia replied by promptly trebling her existing tax on imported coal, and at the same time gave germany rebate terms that practically made it a tax on _english_ coal. it was said that russia had only been waiting for a favourable opportunity, and was more anxious to develop her own new coal fields in the donetz basin than to import at all. as far as the treasury was concerned, the oil tax yielded little more than was absorbed by the thirty thousand extra men thrown out of work by russia's action. the government had given a rook for a bishop. a little time ago the cabinet had been prepared to greet winter as a friend. without quite possessing the ingenuousness of their amiable comrade bilch, they had thought cynically of the pampered aristocrats shivering in mayfair drawing-rooms, of the comfort-loving middle classes sitting before their desolate suburban hearths, of blue-faced men setting out breakfastless for freezing offices, and of pallid women weeping as they tried to warm the hands of little children, as they put them in their icy beds. and now? all their cynical sympathy had apparently been in vain. there were not going to be any cold breakfasts, freezing offices, or shivering women and children. warming stoves and radiators raised the temperature of a room much quicker than a fire did, and kept it equable without any attention. oil cookers took the place of the too often erratic kitchen range. mrs strummery innocently threw the premier into a frenzy one morning by dilating on the advantages of a "britonette" stove which she had been shown by a tottenham court road ironmonger. the despised, helpless "classes" were going on very comfortably. they were going on even gaily; "oil scrambles" constituted a new and popular form of entertainment for long evenings; from wimbledon came the information that "candle cinderellas" would have a tremendous rage during the approaching season; and in cheapside and the strand the penny hawkers were minting money with the novel and diverting "coal sack puzzle." but the winter was approaching, though no longer as a friend. if england should say to-morrow what lancashire was saying that day, there were portents of stirring times in the air. already northumberland, durham, and yorkshire were muttering in their various uncouth dialects, and lanark was subscribing to disquieting sentiments in its own barbarous tongue. derbyshire was becoming uneasy, staffordshire was scarcely answering to the wheel, and nottingham was in revolt against what it considered to be the too compliant attitude of the representation committee. the rioting in monmouth was only restrained from becoming serious in its proportions by the repeated assurances from westminster that the end was in sight; and the "beaconmen" of glamorgan were openly boasting that before long they would "light such a candle" that the ashes would fall upon london like a vesuvian cloud. still nearer home was the disturbing spectacle of the railway-men thrown out of work, the coal carters, the stablemen, the gasworkers, the canal boatmen, the general labourers, the tool-makers, the wheel-wrights, the chimney sweepers, the brushmakers. the sequence of dependence could be traced, detail by detail, through every page of the trade directory. they had all been taught to clamour to the government in every emergency, and this administration they regarded as peculiarly their own. it was not a case of frankenstein's monster getting out of hand; this monster had created its frankenstein, and could dissolve him if he proved obstinate. all that frankenstein had ventured to do so far had been to reduce the unemployed grant to three quarters of its normal rate "in view of the unprecedented conditions of labour," and where two or more unemployed were members of one family, to make a further small deduction. the action had not been well received. "in view of the unprecedented conditions of labour" the unemployed had looked for more rather than for less. when the rate was fixed they had been given to understand that it represented the minimum on which an out-of-work man could be decently asked to live. why, then, had their own party reduced it? funds? tax some luxury! even the government assurance, an ingenious adaptation of truth by the light of mr chadwing's figures, that they "did not anticipate having to impose the reduced grant for many more weeks, but at the same time counselled economy in every working-class home," did not restore mutual good feeling. the general rejoinder was that the government had "better not," and the reference to economy was stigmatised as gratuitously inept. in the meantime the situation was reacting unfavourably upon mr strummery and the chief officers of state, not only in parliament but even in the cabinet itself. consultations between the premier and half a dozen of his most trusted ministers were of daily occurrence. one day, towards the end of september, mr strummery privately intimated to all the "safe" members of the council that it was necessary to meet to consider what further steps to take. the meeting was a "packed" one in that the tirrels, the browns, and the bilches of the party were not invited and knew nothing of it. there was no reason why mr strummery should not call together a section of his followers if he wished, and discuss policy with them, but at the moment it was dangerous, because the conclave was just strong enough to be able to impose its will upon parliament, and yet individually it was composed of weak men. it was dangerous because half a dozen weak men, rendered desperate by the situation into which they were being inevitably driven, had resolved to act upon heroic lines. as balzac had remarked, "there is nothing more horrible than the rebellion of a sheep," but the horrible consequences generally fall upon its own head in the end. mr chadwing's statement informed the despondent gathering that on the existing lines it would be necessary to suspend the wholesale operation of the relief fund about the middle of december. by reducing the grant in varying degrees it would be possible to carry on for perhaps three months beyond that date, but to reach the furthest limit the individual relief would have become so insignificant that it would only result in an actual crisis being precipitated earlier than would be the case if they went on as they were doing. that was all that the chancellor of the exchequer had to say. the uninitiated men looked at one another in mute enquiry. there was something in the air. what was coming? the premier rose to explain. he admitted that they had underrated the danger of the situation at first. measures that might have sufficed then were useless now. oil was the pivot of the whole question. the oil tax had not realised expectations. to raise the tax would only alienate the affections of their own people without reaching the heart of the matter. they had already taken one bite at a cherry. he paused and looked round, an indifferent swimmer forced by giant circumstance to face his niagara. he proposed as a measure of national emergency to prohibit the importation of oil altogether. there was a gasp of surprise; a moment of stupefaction. strange things were again being done in the name of liberty. mr tubes's voice, enumerating the results and advantages of the step, recalled their wandering thoughts. there was little need for the recital; the effect of so unexpected a _coup_ leapt to the mind at once. the leaguers must either burn coal or starve. the home oil deposits had long ceased to be worked. wood under modern conditions was impracticable; peat was equally debarred, and neither could meet a sudden emergency in sufficient quantity; electricity meant coal, and was far from universal. the league movement must collapse within a week. there were other points, all in favour of the course. although it might slightly inconvenience many working-class homes it would not take their money as a heavier tax would, and it must convince all that the end was well in sight. it would induce the poor to use more coal, more gas, in itself a step towards that desired end. it would teach russia a sharp lesson, and russia's sins were the freshest in their minds. all were convinced, and all against their will. there was something sinister in the proposal; the thought of it fell like a shadow across the room. "it is not a course i would recommend or even assent to as a general thing," said mr strummery. "but we are fighting for the existence of our party, for the lives of thousands of our people. it is no exaggeration. think of the awful misery that must sweep the country in the coming winter if the league holds out. if we do not break the wicked power of those two men, there is no picture of national calamity to be found in the past that can realise the worst." "it is their game," said mr tubes bitterly. "the cowards are striking at the women and children through the men." he ignored the fact that his party had struck the first blow, and had had the word "war!" figuratively nailed to the staff of their red banner for years. in war one usually strikes some one, and on the whole it is perhaps less reprehensible to strike women and children through men than _vice versa_. but it was an acceptable sentiment on the face of it, and it sounded all right at the moment. "moreover," added the premier, "there will be this danger in the situation: that blinded by passions and desperate through misery, the people may fail to realise who are the real causes of their plight." yes, there was that possibility to be faced by thoughtful socialistic ministers. the people are not very subtle in their reasoning. the most pressing fact of their existence would be that the government, which had promised to keep them from starvation in return for their votes, had had their votes and was allowing them to starve. "i think that we must all agree to the necessity of the step," said one of the minor men, "though our feelings are all against it." "quite so," admitted mr strummery. "let us hope that being a sharp remedy it will only need to be a short one." surprise was the essence of the _coup_, and the "business-like" procedure of parliament permitted this when the government was backed by a large automatic majority. the expeditious passing of the measure was a foregone conclusion, yet a few shrewd warning voices were raised against it even among the stalwarts. the regular opposition voted against it as a matter of course. the most moderate section of the labour party and the extreme socialists, who both elected to sit on the opposition side of the house, refrained from voting, and a few ministers, who were distracted between their private opinions and their party duty, were diplomatically engaged elsewhere. the bill first received the attention of the house on the th of september, the day after the premier had called his informal meeting. it became law on the th, and three days later, the st of october, great britain was absolutely "closed" against the introduction of mineral burning oils on any terms. the country received the measure with mixed feelings, but on the whole with the admission that it would be effective and with an expression of dislike. the coal mining districts hailed it with enthusiasm, and the same reception was accorded it among the affected industries, but outside these it was nowhere popular, and in certain working-class quarters it evoked the bitterest hostility. it was felt even by those who stood to gain much by the overthrow of the league that their instincts rebelled against the means; possibly the underlying feeling was distrust of the exercise of power so despotic. it was admitted that the league's action with respect to coal stood on a different plane. any member could at once resign; it was questionable if one could not use coal and still remain a member. certainly no coercion was used. but in the matter of oil a necessary commodity was absolutely ruled out, and, whether he wished or nor, every one must obey. by the th of october the retail price of petroleum of an average quality was s. d. the gallon, and the price was rising as the end of the stock came in sight. one curious circumstance excited remark. the unity league members were still being supplied at the original price. the league was keeping its word gallantly to the end. the government had calculated that the two interested companies might have a reserve that would last a week. the average stock which the consumer might be supposed to have in hand would carry them on for a further five days, and the economy which they would doubtless practise might hold off the climax for five more. the th of october came to be confidently mentioned in government circles as the date of the unity league's surrender. it might have been merely coincidence, but on the th of october mr strummery chose to entertain a few of his colleagues to dinner in the house. in spite of the host's inevitable jug of boiling water, an air of genial humour, almost of gaiety, pervaded the board. mr tubes was entertainingly reminiscent; chadwing succeeded in throwing off the weight of the treasury; comrade stubb, fresh from the soil, proved to have a dry humour of his own; and cecil brown, who was always socially welcome, made a joke which almost surprised the premier into a smile. mr tubes was in the middle of a sentence when cecil brown, with his face turned towards the door, laid his hand upon the speaker's arm. "a minute, tubes," he said. "there is something unusual going on out there." "perhaps it is----" began chadwing, and stopped. the same thought had occurred to at least three of them. perhaps they were coming to tell them that hampden had accepted his defeat. whatever it might be, a dozen members who had entered the room in a confused medley were making their way towards the premier's table. a man who seemed to concentrate their attention was in their midst; some were apparently trying to hold him back, while others urged him on. while yet some distance off he broke away from them all, and running forward, reached the table first. it was comrade bilch, so dishevelled, red, and heated, that it did not occur to any one to doubt that he was drunk. for a second he stood looking at them stupidly, and then he suddenly opened his mouth and poured out so appalling a string of vile and nauseating abuse that men who were near drew aside. "why, in heaven's name, don't you take him away?" exclaimed cecil brown, appealing to those who formed the group beyond the table. they would have done so, but comrade bilch raised his hand as though to enjoin attention for a moment. a change seemed to have come over him even in that brief passage of time. he walked up to the table and leaned heavily upon it with both fists, while his breath came in throbs, and the colour played about his face like the reflection of a raging fire. when he spoke it was without a single oath; all his uncleanness had dropped away from him as though he recognised its threadbare poverty in the face of the colossal news he brought. "gentlemen," he said, leaning forward and breathing very hard, "you would have it, and you have got your way. you've made oil contraband, and not a drop can be landed in great britain now. it can't be brought, but it can be used when it is here, and the unity league that you have done it all to starve has got two hundred million gallons safely stowed away at hanwood! yes, while our people will have to grope and freeze through the winter, _they_ are quite comfortably provided for, and you, whether you leave the bar on or whether you take it off, you have made us the laughing-stock of europe!" an awed silence fell on the group. not the most shadowy suspicion of such a miscarriage had ever stirred the most cautious. all their qualms had been in the direction of swallowing the unpalatable measure, not of doubting its efficacy. they seemed to be the puny antagonists of some almost superhuman power that not only brushed their most elaborate plans aside, but actually led them on to pave the way to their own undoing. mr tubes was the first to speak. "it can't be true," he whispered. "it is impossible." "oh, everything's impossible with you, especially when it's happened," retorted mr bilch contemptuously. "pity you didn't live when there were real miracles about." "but the time?" protested some one. "how could they do it in the time?" "time!" said mr bilch, "what more do you want? they've had two years, and they've used two years. if those----" he stopped suddenly, jerked his head twice with a curious motion, and fell to the ground in a fit. there were plenty of good friends to look after him without troubling the ministerial group. the dinner-party broke up in the face of so inauspicious a series of events, and before another hour had passed the story of the gigantic fiasco had reached every club in london, and was being cabled to every capital in christendom. chapter xvi the dark winter the autumn of had proved unusually mild. it was said that many of the migratory birds delayed their exodus for weeks beyond their normal times, and in sheltered gardens and hedgerows in the south of england flowers and fruit were making an untimely show; but about midday on the th of november it began to grow dark, and, without any indication of fog, it grew darker, until the greater part of england and wales was plunged into a nocturnal gloom. as there was a marked fall in the temperature, men looked up to the clouds and predicted snow, but they were wrong. had it snowed it might have been the white winter of , for that night the frost began, and the th of november had already become an ill-omened date to usher in a frost. it did not belie its character. the next day broke clear but bitter, and those who read newspapers learned with curious interest that during the night the seven-tailed comet of had been observed by several astronomers, to the great confusion of their science, for its appearance was premature by a round hundred thousand years. the phenomenon afterwards grew into a portent to the vulgar mind, for that was the beginning of the great frost that lasted seven weeks without an intermission. outside certain limits, life was proceeding very much as before. the condition of the upper classes was not materially different from what it had been before the policy of retaliation had been declared. the personal property tax had not been proceeded with, and the minimum wage bill had been dropped for the time. there were diplomatic explanations; the real reason was that the cabinet was too sharply divided over the expediency of anything in those days to make the passing of important measures practicable. while none had the courage to go to an extreme either in aggression or in conciliation, there was a multitude of counsel vehemently wrangling over the wisdom of little concessions and little aggressions. in london the great increase in the number of unemployed began to be observable in the early autumn. the obsolete "marches of unemployed" were revived, but, as might have been foreseen, except among the poor themselves, they met with no financial encouragement. even the poor were becoming careful of their pence. they saw what the winter must mean, for every one knew of a score of deserving cases around his own door, and it was commonly reported that the government contemplated reducing the unemployed grant to two-thirds its normal basis before the year was out. that was the cabinet's idea for "breaking it gently." so, meeting with no response in the suburbs, the city, or the west end, the processions groaned occasionally, broke a few windows, enhanced the bitter feeling existing against their class by frightening more than a few ladies, and were finally kept in check by the special constabulary raised in the suburbs, the city, and the west end. finding so little profit for their exertions, they abandoned their indiscriminate peregrinations, and took to demonstrating before st stephen's and to hooting outside the houses of cabinet ministers until the processions and meetings were disallowed. there was no public charity that winter, either organised or spontaneous, for the benefit of the working-class poor. the conditions of labour would have warranted a mansion house fund being opened in september, but no one suggested it, and no one would have contributed to it. abroad it was generally recognised that england was involved in civil war to which it behoved them to act as neutrals. the socialists in belgium collected and despatched the sum of £ , s. d. for the relief of their "persecuted confraternity in england," but as the pomp and circumstances attending the inauguration of the fund had led their persecuted confraternity in england to expect at least a quarter of a million sterling, some intemperate remarks greeted the consummation of the effort, and it was not repeated. to those who did not look very deeply into the situation it appeared that a long, hard winter must operate against the interests of the league. their opponents would burn more coal. the government, indeed, issued an appeal asking them to do so, and thus to relieve the tension in the provinces. the response was not promising. the government was, in effect, told to mind its own business, and particularly that detail of its business which consisted in the guarantee of a full and undocked living wage to every worker in or out of work. the contention so far had been that with the surfeit, coal would be so cheap that even the poorest could burn it unstintingly. but soon a new and rather terrible development grew out of the complex situation. coal became dear, not only dear in the ordinary sense of the word--winter prices--but very, very dear. the simple truth was that a disorganised industry always moves on abnormal lines, and coal was a routed, a shattered, industry. there was no oil to be had by any but members of the league; in some places there was no gas to be had, for many of the small gas companies, and some of the large ones, had found it impossible to continue amidst the dislocation of their trade, and the cheapest coal was being retailed in the streets of london at two shillings the hundred-weight. the government had left oil contraband after the discovery of the league's secret store down the quiet country lane, for they recognised that to remove the embargo immediately would kill them with ridicule. they promised themselves that the freedom of commerce should be restored at the first convenient opportunity. in the meanwhile they decided to do as they had done in other matters: they bravely ignored the fact that the league members were any better off than any one else, and declined to believe the evidence that any store existed. that was the state of affairs before the winter set in, and in london alone. the capital was feeling some of the remoter effects of the blow, but from the provinces, from the actual battle-fields, there came grim stories. northumberland, which had been loth to accept the eight hours bill, now traced the whole of the trouble to that head, and declared that the only hope was for the government to make a complete surrender to the unity league, on the one condition that it restored a normal demand for coal both at home and abroad. durham, on the contrary, held that it was necessary for the government to crush or wear out the league. in both counties there had been fierce conflict between the rival factions, and blood had been freely shed. after a single day's rioting at newcastle and gateshead seventeen dead bodies had been collected by the ambulances. the "beaconmen" in glamorgan were setting fire to the pits themselves in a spirit of fanaticism. in one instance a fire had spread beyond the intended limits, and an explosion, in which three score of their unfortunate fellow-workmen perished, had been the net result. the midlands were the least disturbed, and even there walsall had seen a mass meeting at which thirty thousand colliers and other affected workmen had called insistently with threats upon the government, in pathetic ignorance of the treasury's plight, to purchase the nation's coal pits at once, and resume full time at all of them, as the only means of averting a national calamity. and all this had been taking place in the mild autumn, while the government was still paying out sufficient relief funds to ensure that actual starvation should not touch any one, long before it had been driven to take the country into its confidence. the spectre of cold and hunger had not yet been raised to goad the men to madness; so far they regarded existence at least as assured, and the question that was stirring them to rebellion was not the fundamental one of the "right to live," but the almost academic issue of the right to live apart from the natural vicissitudes of life. the government had other troubles on hand. the two principal causes for anxiety among these, if not actually of their own hatching, had certainly sprung from a common stock. the parliament sitting at college green deemed the moment opportune for issuing a declaration of independence and proclaiming a republic. three years before, all irishmen had been withdrawn from the british army and navy on the receipt of dublin's firmly-worded note to the effect that since the granting of extended home rule, irishmen came within the sphere of the foreign enlistment act. these men formed the nucleus of a very useful army with which ireland thought it would be practicable to hold out in the interior until foreign intervention came to its aid. possibly england thought so too, for mr strummery's ministry contented itself with issuing what its members described as a firm and dignified protest. closely examined, it was discoverable that the dignified portion was a lengthy recapitulation of ancient history; the firm portion a record of dublin's demands since home rule had been conceded, while the essential part of the communication informed the new republic that its actions were not what his majesty's ministers had expected of it, and that they would certainly reserve the right of taking the matter in hand at some future time more suitable to themselves. the other harassment was that leicester lay at the mercy of an epidemic of small-pox which threatened to become historic in the annals of the scourge. in the second month the average daily number of deaths had risen to , and there was no sign of a decrease. in the autumn it was hoped that the winter would kill the disease; in the winter it was anticipated that it would die out naturally under the influence of the spring sunshine. the situation affected mr chadwing more closely than any of his colleagues, for leicester had the honour of returning the chancellor of the exchequer as one of its members. under normal conditions mr chadwing made a practice of visiting his constituency and addressing a meeting every few weeks, but during the six months that the epidemic raged he found himself unable to leave london. his attitude was perfectly consistent, in spite of the hard things that some of his supporters said of him in his absence: like the majority of his constituents, he had a conscientious objection to vaccination, but he also had an even stronger conscientious objection to encountering small-pox infection. the th of november ushered in a new phase of the strife. it marked the beginning of the dark winter. early in december the newspapers began to draw comparisons between the weather then prevailing and the hard winters on record. at that date it was noticeable how many rustic-looking vagrants were to be seen walking aimlessly about the streets of london. the unemployed from the country were beginning to flock in for the mere sense of warmth. the british museum, st. paul's cathedral, the free libraries, and other places where it was possible to escape from the dreadful rigour of the streets, were crowded by day. at night long _queues_ of miserable creatures haunted the grids of restaurants, the sheltered sides of theatres, the windows of printing houses, and any spot where a little warmth exhaled. on the nights of the th, the th, and the th of december the thermometer on primrose hill registered ° below zero. on the th pheasants were observed feeding among the pigeons in the main street of highgate, and from that time onwards wild birds of the rarer kinds were no unusual sight in the london parks and about the public buildings. in the country it was remarked that the small birds had begun to disappear, and the curious might read any morning of frozen goldfinches being picked up in camberwell, larks about victoria park, and starlings, robins, blackbirds, and such like fry everywhere. by this time dairymen had discovered that it was impossible to deliver milk unless they carried a brazier of live charcoal on their cart or hand-truck. local correspondents in the provinces had ceased to report ordinary cases of death from cold and exposure; there were cases in the streets of london every night. early in december sir john hampden was approached unofficially by a few members of parliament, including one or two of minor official rank, to learn his "terms." the suggestions were tentative on both sides, and nothing was stated definitely. but out of the circumlocution it might be inferred that he expressed his willingness to rescind the boycott, and to devote five million pounds to public relief at once, in return for certain modifications of the franchise and an immediate dissolution. nothing came of the movement, and during the first week of december the government sent round to the post-offices and to all the crown tax collectors notices that the licences ordinarily falling due on the st of january must be taken out on or before the th of the current month, and the king's taxes similarly collected in advance. the league did not make any open comment on this departure, but every member merely ignored it, and when the th of december was reached, it devolved upon the officers of the crown to enforce the payment by legal process. in the language of another age, the government was faced by five million "passive resisters." it soon became apparent that instead of getting in the taxes a fortnight before their time, the greater part of the revenue from that source would be delayed at least a month later than usual. on the th of december one million and three-quarters state-supported unemployed of various grades presented themselves at the appointed trades unions committee rooms, workhouse offices, employment bureaux, treasury depôts, from which the fund was administered, to receive their weekly "wage." as they passed in they were confronted by a formal notice to the effect that the disbursement was then reduced to half its usual amount. as they passed out they came upon another formal notice to the effect that after the following week the grant would be "temporarily suspended." possibly that also embodied an idea of "breaking it gently." the cry of surprise, rage, and terrified foreboding that rose from every town and village of the land when the direful news was at length understood, can never be described. its echoes were destined to roll through the pages of english history for many a generation. the immediate result was that rioting broke out in practically all parts of the country except the purely agricultural. the people who had been promised a perpetual life of milk and honey had "murmured" when they were offered bread and water. now there seemed every prospect of the water reaching them as ice, and the bread-board being empty, and their "murmuring" took a sharper edge. in some places there were absolute stampedes of reason. in justice it has to be remembered that by this time the most pitiless winter of modern times had been heaping misery on misery for a month, that the chance of finding work or relief was recognised to be the forlornest hope, and that very, very few had a reserve of any kind. the indiscriminate disturbances of the th of december were easily suppressed. a people that has been free for generations loses the gift for successful rioting in the face of armed discipline, even of the most inadequate strength. but for constitutional purposes the body of one dragooned rioter in england was worth more than a whole "vladimir's battue" east of the baltic. on the th of december the certified unemployed drew their diminished pittance for the last time. they left the buildings in many places with the significant threat that they would return that day week, and if there was nothing for them would "warm their hands" there at the least. there was renewed rioting that day also. the forces of law and order had been strengthened; the rioters appeared to have been better organised. in one or two towns the rioting began to approach the continental level. bolton was said to have proved itself far from amateurish, and nuneaton was spoken of as being distinctly promising. at the end of that day public buildings had to be requisitioned in several places to lay out the spoils of victory and defeat. two days later every newspaper contained an "open letter" from sir john hampden to the government, in which he unconditionally offered them, on behalf of the unity league and in the name of humanity, sufficient funds to pay the half grant for four weeks longer. it was a humane offer, but its proper name was strategy. it embarrassed the government to decide whether to accept or decline. it embarrassed them if they accepted, and if they declined it embarrassed them most of all. they declined; or, to be precise, they ignored the offer. by this time england might be said to be under famine. london, in its ice-bound straits, began curiously to assume the appearance of a mediæval city. by night one might meet grotesquely clad bands of revellers returning from some ice carnival (for the thames had long been frozen from the tower to gravesend) by the light of lanterns and torches which they carried. none but those who had nothing to lose ventured out into the streets at night except by companies. thieves and bludgeoners lurked in every archway, and arrests were seldom made; beggars importuned with every wile and in every tone, and new fantastic creeds and extravagant new parties sent out their perfervid disciples to proclaim utopias at every corner. to add to the terror of the night there suddenly sprang into prominence the bands of "running madmen" who swept through the streets like fallen leaves in an autumn gale. barefooted, gaunt, and wildly dressed in rags, they broke upon the astonished wayfarer's sight, and passed out again into the gloom before he could ask himself what strange manner of men they were. never alone, seldom exceeding a score in any band, they ran keenly as though with some purposeful end in view, for the most part silently, but now and then startling the quiet night with an inarticulate wail or a cry of woe or lamentation, but they turned from street to street in aimless intricacy, and sought no definite goal. they were never seen by day, and whence they came or where they had their homes none could say, but the steady increase in the number of their bands showed that they were undoubtedly the victims of a contagious mania such as those that have appeared in the past from time to time. almost as ragged and unkempt was the army that by day marched under the standard of brother ambrose towards the sinless new jerusalem. reading the abundant signs all round with an inspired and fatalistic eye, ambrose uncompromisingly announced that all the portents of the millennium were now fulfilled, and that the reign of temporal power on earth was at an end. each day his eloquence mounted to a wilder flight, each day he dreamed new dreams and saw fresh visions, and promised to his followers more definitely the spoil of victory, and parcelled out the smiling, fruitful land. drawn by every human passion, recruits poured into his ranks, and when he marched in tattered state to mark the boundaries of the impending golden city, the legions of the chosen rolled not in their thousands, but in their tens of thousands, singing hymns and interspersing ribaldry. a very different spectacle was afforded by the bands of the gilded youth which by day patrolled the approaches to houses of the better class, wherever smoke had been seen issuing from the chimneys, and by night with equal order and thoroughness turned out the public gas lamps in the streets, until many of the authorities at last gave up the lighting of the lamps as a useless formality. it was impossible for the occupants of a house that had incurred their enmity to have them removed by force, or to maintain an attitude of unconcern in the face of their demonstration, yet everything they did came under the term of "peaceful picketing" within the provisions of the act, and an attempt to fix responsibility upon the unity league for the high-handed action of its agents in a few cases where the gilded youth had gone beyond their powers, failed ignominiously through the precedent afforded by the final settlement of the celebrated tawe valley case. in the provinces the rioters were burning coal, burning coal-pits, smashing machinery and destroying property indiscriminately, blind to the fact that some of the immediate effects were falling on their fellow-workmen, and that most of the ultimate effects would fall upon themselves. in london and elsewhere the bands of the gilded youth were going quietly and systematically about their daily work, "peacefully" terrorising house-holders into submission, and carefully turning out the public lamps at night as soon as they were lit. to the reflective mind it was rather a dreadful power that the time had called into being: an educated mob that "rioted peacefully" and did nothing at all that was detrimental to its own interest. each morning people assured one another that so unparalleled a frost could last no longer, but each night the air seemed to be whetted to a keener edge, and each day there came fresh evidences of its power. early in january it was computed that all the small birds that had not taken refuge in towns were dead, partly through the cold itself, but equally by starvation, for the ground yielded them nothing, and the trees and shrubs upon which they had been able to rely for food in former winters had long since perished. there were none but insignificant hollies to be seen in english gardens for the next generation, and in exposed situations forest trees and even oaks were split down to the ground. all this time there was very little destructive rioting going on in london on any organised scale, but every night breadths of wood pavement were torn up by the homeless vagrants, who were now allowed to herd where they could, and great fires set burning at which the police warmed themselves and mingled supinely with the crowd. by day the police went in pairs, by night they patrolled in companies of five. for the emergency of serious rioting the military were always kept in readiness; against the more ordinary depredations on private property the owners were practically left to defend themselves. in those dark weeks watch duty became one of the regular occupations among the staff of every london business, and short shrift was given to intruders. inquests went like marriages in busy churches at easter-tide--in batches, and the morning cart that picked up the frozen dead had only one compartment. the time was past when the effects of the vast disorganisation could be localised. every trade and profession, every trivial and obscure calling, and every insignificant little offshoot of that great trunk called commerce was involved in depression; it was not too much to say that every individual in the land was feeling some ill effect. frantic legislation had begun it ten years before; the coal war had brought it to a climax, and the grip of the long, hard winter had pressed like a hostile hand upon the land. it had resolved itself into a war of endurance. coal was no longer the pivot; it was money, immediate money with which to buy bread at the bakers' shops, where they carried on their trade with the shutters up and loaded weapons laid out in the upper rooms. not the least curious feature of the struggle was the marked disinclination of the starving populace to pillage or bloodshed. doubtless they saw that whatever they might individually profit by a reign of terror, their cause and party had nothing to gain from it. such an outburst must inevitably react unfavourably upon the government of the day, and it was _their_ party then in power. but they had not the mob instinct in them; they were not composed of the ordinary mob element. in the bulk they were neither criminals nor hooligans, but matter-of-fact, disillusionised working men, and the instincts of their class have ever been steady and law-abiding. in cheapside a gang of professional thieves blew out the iron shutter of a jeweller's shop with dynamite, and securing a valuable haul of jewellery in the momentary confusion, sought to hide themselves among the mob. far from entering into their aspirations, the mob promptly conveyed them to the nearest police station, and returned to the owner the valuable articles that had been scattered about the street. the climax of the incident was reached by half a dozen of the most stalwart unemployed gladly accepting a few shillings each to guard the broken window until the shutter was repaired. at the collieries, the mills, the workshops, and the seats of labour there were outrages against property, but away from the immediate centres there was neither cupidity nor resentment. whenever disturbances of the kind took place they were invariably in pursuit of food or warmth. the men were dispirited, and by this time they regarded their cause as lost. their leaders, in and out of parliament, were classed either as incompetent generals in a war, or as traitors who had misled the people. the people only asked them now to make the terms of surrender so that they might live; and they did not hesitate to declare roundly that the old times when they had had to look after themselves more, and had not been body and soul at the disposal of semi-political unions, were preferable on the whole. the position of the cabinet was daily growing more critical. its chiefs were execrated and insulted whenever they were seen. all the approaches to the house were held by military guards, and the members reached its gates singly, and almost by stealth. every day placards, written and printed, were found displayed in public places, calling on the government that had no money to let in one that had. "you thought more of your position than of our needs when hampden offered us help," ran one that mr strummery found nailed to his front door. "you have always thought more of your positions than of our needs. you have used our needs to raise yourselves to those positions. now, since you no longer represent the wishes of the people, give way to others." the delay of the government in throwing up an utterly untenable position was inexplicable to most people. many said that the reason was that hampden refused to take office under the existing franchise, and no one but hampden could form an administration in that crisis that could hope to live for a day. whatever the reason might be, it was obvious that the government was drifting towards a national tragedy that would be stupendous, for in less than a month's time, it was agreed on all hands, the daily tale of starved and famished dead would have reached its thousands. still the government hung on, backed in sullen submission by its automatic majority. changes in the cabinet were of almost daily record, but the half dozen men of prominence remained. cecil brown was the last of the old minor men to be dropped. a dog trainer, who had taken up politics, succeeded him. "it is too late now," cecil brown was reported to have said when he learned who was to be his successor. "they want bread, not circuses!" chapter xvii the incident of the th of january "i do not altogether like it," said a. "do you prefer to leave things as they are, then?" demanded b. a. went over and stood by the window, looking moodily out. "it is merely a necessity," said c. "the necessity of a necessity," suggested d. happily. "perhaps you are not aware," said b., addressing himself to the man standing at the window, "that the suggestion of arresting salt did not come from us in the first case." "is that so?" replied a., coming back into the room. "i certainly assumed that it did." "on the contrary," explained b., "it was inspector moeletter who reported to his superiors that he had succeeded in identifying the mysterious man who was seen with leslie garnet, the artist, about the time of his death. he would have got his warrant in the ordinary way, only in view of the remarkable position that salt occupies just now, stafford very naturally communicated with us." "the only point that troubles us," remarked c. reflectively, "is that none of us can persuade himself in the remotest degree that salt killed garnet." "i certainty require to have the evidence before i can subscribe to that," said b. "the man who is daily killing hundreds----" "ah, that is the difference," commented d. "where are the monmouth colliers now?" asked c., after a pause. "newbury, this morning," replied d. "reading, to-night." "and the midland lot?" "towcester, i think." "if hampden formally asks for protection for the oil store at hanwood, after the miners' threat to burn it, what are you going to do?" asked a. "i should suggest telling him to go and boil himself in it, since he has got it there," replied c. "there will be no need to tell him anything but the bare fact, and that is that with twenty-five thousand turbulent colliers pouring into london and adding to the disaffected element already here, we cannot spare a single man," replied b. "i quite agree with that," remarked d., drawing attention to his freshly-scarred cheek. "i had a tribute of the mob's affection as i came in this morning." "that's your popularity," said c. "your photograph is so much about that no one has any difficulty in recognising you. how do you get on in that way, b.?" "i?" exclaimed b. with a startled look. "oh, i always drive with the blinds down now." "are any extra military coming in before friday?" asked a. "yes, the lancers from hounslow. they come into the empty albany street barracks to-night. then i think that there are to be some extra infantry in whitehall, from aldershot. cadman is seeing to all that." "but you know that the lancers are being drawn from hounslow?" asked c. with a meaning laugh. "yes, i know that," admitted b. "why do you laugh, c.?" c.'s only reply was to laugh again. "i will tell you why he laughs," volunteered d. "he laughs, b., because the lancers withdrawn from hounslow to regent's park, salt under arrest at stafford, and the monmouth colliers coming along the bath road and passing within a mile or two of hanwood, represent the three angles of a very acute triangle." "there is still hampden," muttered b. "yes; what is going to happen to hampden?" asked c., with a trace of his mordant amusement. a., who was walking about the room aimlessly, stopped and faced the others. "i'll tell you what," he exclaimed emphatically. "i said just now that i didn't like the idea of smuggling salt away like this, and, although it may be advisable, i don't. but i wish to god that we had openly arrested the pair of them as traitors, and burned their diabolical store before every one's eyes three months ago." "ah," said d. thoughtfully, "it was too early then. now it's too late." "it may be too late to have its full effect," flashed out b., "but it won't be too late to make them suffer a bit along with our own people." "provided that the oil is burned," said d. "provided that no protection can be sent," remarked c. "provided that salt is arrested," added a. there was a knock at the door. it explained the attitude of the four men in the room and their scattered conversation. they had been awaiting some one. he came into the room and saluted, a powerfully-built man with "uniform" branded on every limb, although he wore plain clothes then. "detective-inspector moeletter?" said b. "yes, sir," said the inspector, and stood at attention. "you have the warrant?" continued b. moeletter produced it, and passed it in for inspection. it was made out on the preceding day, signed by the stipendiary magistrate of stafford, and it connected george salt with leslie garnet by the link of murder. "when you applied for this warrant," said b., looking hard at the inspector, "you considered that you had sufficient evidence to support it?" moeletter looked puzzled for a moment, as though the question was one that he did not quite follow in that form. for a moment he seemed to be on the verge of making an explanation; then he thought better of it, and simply replied: "yes, sir." "at all events," continued b. hastily, "you have enough evidence to justify a remand? what are the points?" "we have abundant evidence that salt was in the neighbourhood about the time of the tragedy; that fact can scarcely be contested. coming nearer, an old man, who had been hedging until the storm drove him under a high bank, saw a gentleman enter garnet's cottage about half-past five. without any leading he described this man accurately as salt, and picked out his photograph from among a dozen others. about an hour later, two boys, who were bird-nesting near stourton hill church, heard a shot. they looked through the hedge into the graveyard and saw one man lying apparently dead on the ground, and another bending over him as though he might be going through his pockets. being frightened, they ran away and told no one of it for some time, as boys would. of course, sir, that's more than six months ago now, but the description they give tallies, and i think that we may claim a strong presumption of identity taking into consideration the established time of salt's arrival at thornley." "that is all?" said b. "as regards identity," replied the inspector. "on general grounds we shall show that for some time before his death garnet had been selling shares and securities which he held, and that although he lived frugally no money was found in the remains of his house or on his person, and no trace of a banking account or other investment can be discovered. then we allege that 'george salt' is not the man's right name, although we have not been able to follow that up yet. he is generally understood to have been a sailor recently, and the revolver found beside the body was of a naval pattern. i should add that the medical evidence at the inquest was to the effect that the wound might have been self-inflicted, but that the angle was unusual." b. returned the warrant to the inspector. "that will at least ensure a remand for a week for you to continue your investigations?" "i think so, sir." "without bail?" "if it is opposed." "we oppose it, then. did you bring any one down with you?" inspector moeletter had not done so. he had not been able to anticipate what amended instructions he might receive in london, so he had thought it as well to come alone. "for political reasons it is desirable that nothing should be known publicly of the arrest until you have your prisoner safely at stafford," said b. "at present he is motoring in the southern counties. i have information that he will leave farnham this afternoon between three and half-past and proceed direct to guildford. is there any reason why you should not arrest him between the two places?" inspector moeletter knew of none. "it will be preferable to doing so in either town from our point of view," continued b., "and it is not known whether he intends leaving guildford to-night." the inspector took out an innocent-looking pocket-book, whose elastic band was a veritable hangman's noose, and noted the facts. "is a description of the motor-car available?" he enquired. b. picked up a sheet of paper. "it is a large car, a h.p. daimler, with a covered body, and painted in two shades of green," he read from the paper. "the number is l.n. ." "i would suggest bringing him straight on in the car," said moeletter. "it would obviate the publicity of railway travelling." b. nodded. "there is another thing," he said. "it is absolutely necessary to avoid the london termini. they are all watched systematically by agents of the league--spies who call themselves patriots. you will take the . train with your prisoner, but you will join it at willesden. i will have it stopped for you." "i shall need a man who can drive the motor to go down with me," the detective reminded him. b. struck a bell. "send sergeant tolkeith in," he said to the attendant. sergeant tolkeith was apparently being kept ready in the next room, to be slipped at the fall of the flag, so to speak. he came in very smartly. "you will remain with inspector moeletter while he is in london, and make all the necessary arrangements for him," instructed b. "i suppose that there are men at scotland yard available now who can drive every kind of motor?" sergeant tolkeith hazarded the opinion that there were men at scotland yard at that moment who could drive--he looked round the room in search of some strange or titanic vehicle to which the prowess of scotland yard would be equal--"well, anything." "a man who knows the roads," continued b. "though, for that matter, it's a simple enough route--the portsmouth road all the way to kingston, and then across to willesden. you had better avoid guildford, by the way, coming back. now, what other assistance will you require?" "how many are there likely to be in the car, sir?" "no one but salt, i am informed. he has been touring alone for a week past, at all events." "in that case, sir, we had better take a couple of men from guildford and drive towards farnham. we can wait at a suitable place in the road and make the arrest. then when the irons are on i shall need no one beyond the driver i take with me. the two local men--you'll want mr salt's _chauffeur_ detained for a few hours, i suppose, sir?" "yes, certainly; until you are well on your way. and any one else who may happen to be in the car. i will give you authority covering that." "the two local men can take him, or them, back to guildford--it will be dark by the time they get there--for detention while enquiries are being made. then if a plain-clothes man meets me at willesden we can go on, and our driver can take the car on to scotland yard." "you see no difficulty throughout?" said b. anxiously. the inspector assured him that all seemed plain sailing. it was not his place to foresee difficulties in b.'s plans. "then i shall expect you to report to me from stafford about . to-night that everything is satisfactory. let me impress on you as a last word the need of care and _unconcern_ in this case. it must be successfully carried out, and to do that there must be no fuss or publicity." "sergeant," said detective-inspector moeletter, when they were outside, "between ourselves, can you tell me this: why they think it necessary to have three mute gentlemen looking on while we arrange a matter of this sort?" "between ourselves, sir," replied sergeant tolkeith, looking cautiously around, "it's my belief that it's come to this: that they are all half-afraid of themselves and can't trust one another." "d.," remarked c., as they left together a few minutes later, "does anything strike you about b.?" "it strikes me that he looks rather like an undertaker's man when he is dressed up," replied d. "does it not strike you that he is _afraid_?" "oh," admitted d., stroking his wounded cheek, "that's quite possible. so am i, for that matter." "so may we all be in a way," said c.; "but it is different with him. i believe that he is in a _blue funk_. he's fey, and he's got salt on the brain. just remember that i venture on this prophecy: if salt through any cause does not happen to get arrested, b. will throw up the sponge." * * * * * the office of the unity league in trafalgar chambers was little more than an empty hive now. the headquarters of the operations had been transferred to the colony at hanwood, and most of the staff had followed. with the declaration of the coal war, an entirely different set of conditions had come into force. the old offices had practically become a clearing house for everything connected with the league, and the high tide of active interest swept on elsewhere. miss lisle remained, a person of some consequence, but in her heart she sighed from time to time for a sphere of action "down another little lane." on the afternoon of the th of january she returned to the office about half-past three, and going to the instrument room unlocked the telescribe receiver-box and proceeded to sort the dozen communications which it contained--the accumulation of an hour--before passing them on to be dealt with. most fell into clearly-defined departments at a glance. it was not until she reached the last, the earliest sent, that she read it through, but as she read that her whole half-listless, mechanical manner changed. with the first line apathy fell from her like a cloak; before she had finished, every limb and feature conveyed a sense of tingling excitement. in frantic haste she dragged the special writing materials across the table towards her, dashed off a sprawling, "stop mr salt at any cost.--lisle," and flashed it off to the league agency at farnham. a couple of minutes must pass before she could get any reply. she picked up the cause of her excitement, and for the second time read the message it contained: "if you want to keep your mr salt from being arrested on a charge of murder, warn him that inspector moeletter from stafford will be waiting for him on the road between farnham and guildford at three o'clock this afternoon with a warrant. no one believes in it, but he will be taken on in his motor to willesden, and on to stafford by the . , and kept out of the way for a week while things have time to happen at hanwood. there will be just enough evidence to get a remand, as there was to get a warrant. this is from a friend, who may remind you of it later and prove who he is by this sign." the letter finished with a rough drawing of a gallows and a broken rope. it was written in a cramped, feigned hand and addressed to sir john hampden. it might have been lying in the box for an hour. the telescribe bell gave its single note. irene opened the box in feverish dread. an exclamation of despair broke from her lips as some words on the paper stood out in the intensity of their significance even before she took the letter from the box. this was what farnham replied: "hope nothing is the matter. mr salt left here quite half an hour ago, in his motor, for guildford. he will stay there the night, or proceed to hanwood according to the time he is occupied. please let me know if there is any trouble." half an hour! there was not the remotest chance of intercepting him. already, under ordinary circumstances, he would be in the outskirts of guildford. it only remained to verify the worst. she wrote a brief message asking mr salt if he would kindly communicate with her immediately on his arrival, and despatched it to the agency at guildford. if there was no reply to that request during the next half-hour she would accept the arrest as an established fact. and there being nothing apparently to do for the next half-hour, miss lisle, very much to the surprise of ninety-nine out of her hundred friends could they have seen her, went down on her knees in the midst of a roomful of the latest achievements of science and began to pray that a miracle might happen. * * * * * "i suppose that i may smoke?" said salt. he was sitting handcuffed in his own motor-car, charged with murder, and formally cautioned that anything he should say might be used as evidence against him. it was scarcely a necessary warning in his case; with the exception of an equally formal protest against the arrest, he had not opened his lips until now. he and moeletter had sat silently facing one another in the comfortably-appointed, roomy car, salt with his face to the driver and leaning back in his easy seat with outward unconcern, the detective braced to a more alert attitude and with his knees almost touching those of his prisoner. for a mile or more--for perhaps seven or eight minutes by time, for the new driver was cautious with the yet unknown car--they had proceeded thus. yet salt was very far from being unconcerned as he leaned back negligently among the cushions. he was thinking keenly, and with the settled, tranquil gaze that betrayed nothing, watching alertly the miles of dreary high-road that stretched along the hog's back before them. he had long foreseen the possibility of arrest, and he had taken certain precautions; but to safeguard himself effectually he would have had to abandon the more important part of his work, and the risk he ran was the smaller evil of the two. but he had not anticipated this charge. some legal jugglery with "conspiracy" had been in his mind. "i suppose that i may smoke?" half a mile ahead a solitary wayfarer was approaching. salt might have noted him, but there was nothing remarkable in his appearance except that pedestrians--or vehicles either, for that matter--were rare along the hog's back on that bitter winter afternoon. "why, certainly, sir; in your own car, surely," replied the inspector agreeably. he was there to do his duty, and he had done it, even down to the detail of satisfying himself by search that his prisoner carried no weapon. beyond that there was no reason to be churlish, especially as every one had to admit that there was no telling what might have happened in a week's or a month's time. "can i help you in any way?" "thank you, i will manage," replied salt, and in spite of his manacles he succeeded without much difficulty in taking out his cigarette-case and a match-box. he lit a cigarette, blew out the match, and then looked hesitatingly round the rather elegant car, at the rich velvety carpet on the floor, at the half-burned vesta in his hand. then with easy unconcern he lowered the window by his side and leaned forward towards it. it was a perfectly natural action, but inspector moeletter owed at least one step in his promotion to a habit of always being on his guard against natural-seeming actions of that kind. his left foot quickly and imperceptibly slid across the carpet, so that if salt made any ill-judged attempt to leave the car he must inevitably come to grief across that rigid barrier; with a ready eye moeletter noted afresh the handle of the door, the size of the window frame, and every kindred detail. his hands lay in unostentatious readiness by his side, and he felt no apprehension. but salt had not the faintest intention of attempting any sensational act. he dropped the match leisurely from between his fingers, cast a glance up to the sky, where the lowering clouds had long been threatening snow, and then drew in his head. but in some way, either from his position, a jolt of the car, or a touch against the sash, as he did so his cap was jerked off, and, despite a quick but clumsy attempt to catch it in his fettered hands, it was whirled away behind in their eddying wake. "please stop," he said, turning to moeletter. "i am afraid that i shall find it too cold without." the detective was not pleased, but there was nothing in the mishap that he could take objection to. further, he had no wish to make his prisoner in any way noticeable during the latter part of their journey. "pull up, murphy," he called through the tube by his shoulder, and with a grinding that set its owner's teeth on edge, the car came to a standstill in two lengths. moeletter had intended that the driver should recover the cap, but he was saved the trouble. the solitary pedestrian had happened to be on the spot at the moment of the incident, and he was standing by the open window almost as soon as the car stopped. forgetful of his indignity, salt stretched out a manacled hand and received his property. "thank you," he said with a pleasant smile. "i am much obliged." "go on," said moeletter, through the tube. "i think that i had better get used to these--'darbies' is the professional name, is it not, inspector?--to these 'darbies' before i look out again," remarked salt good-humouredly. * * * * * the telescribe bell announced another message. it found irene sitting at the table in the instrument room with ordnance maps around her and the index book of the league's most trusted agents lying open on the shelf. she just glanced at the clock as she jumped up. it was . , exactly the last minute of the half-hour that she had fixed as the limit of uncertainty. the message might even yet be from salt. but it was not; it was this instead: "fear mr salt has been arrested. he is in his motor-car, handcuffed, proceeding towards guildford, in charge of man who has appearance of belonging to police force. driver is not mr salt's man. mr s. made opp. for me to see sit., but said nothing. passed just w. of puttenham . . roads good, but snow beginning. car trav only - m. hour. shall remain here on chance being use. don't hesitate." a hall-formed plan was already floating in the space between miss lisle's adventurous brain and the maps. the puttenham message crystallised it. there was now something to go on. the route she knew already; the times and mileages also lay beneath her hand. the scheme had a hundred faults, and only one thing to recommend it--that it might succeed. for ten minutes she flung herself into the details of the maps, jotting down a time, a distance, here and there a detail of the road. "puttenham" might remain at his box till dawn, but all the work, all the chance, was forward--before the car. at the end of ten minutes irene picked up the accumulation of her labours and rang up the telephone exchange. * * * * * "what is it, murphy?" demanded the inspector through the tube, as the car came to a dead stop. "something else in the way?" "i can't quite make it out, sir," was the reply. "we're just outside the long railway arch, and there seems to be something on fire towards the other end. terrible lot of smoke coming through." "can't we run up to it?" "this is an unusually long bridge--fifty or sixty yards, i should say. i hardly like to take you on into that smoke, sir." "oh, very well. jump down and see what it is. only be as sharp as you can." it was now pitch dark, and a driving, biting storm of snow and hail was blowing across their path from the east. when the constable-_chauffeur_ had learned sufficient of the car to give him confidence, the storm had swept down, and their progress had been scarcely any faster. there had been delays, too. by ripley a heavy farm waggon had broken down almost before their eyes, and it had been ten minutes before a spare chain horse could be obtained to drag it to the roadside. further on some men felling a tree in a coppice had clumsily allowed it to fall across the road, and another ten minutes elapsed before it was cut in two and rolled aside. fortunately they were not pressed for time. fortunately, also, the driver knew the way, for few people were afoot to face that dreadful stream of snow and ice with the lashing wind and the numbing cold. two, two or three, or perhaps four men had chanced to be at hand when the car stopped, making their way towards the bridge, but the wreathing snow soon cut them off. occasionally, when the wind and drift hung for a moment, a figure or two showed dimly and gigantic in the murk of the tunnel. nothing of the fire could be seen, but the smoke continued to pour out, and the mingled odour of burned and unburned oil filled the car. in a few minutes the driver returned. when he had left his seat moeletter had leaned forward, and with a gruff word of half apology had laid a hand upon the rug across salt's knees, so that he held, or at least controlled, the connecting links of the handcuffs, while at the same time his other hand had dropped quietly down to his hip-pocket. he now lowered the window on the further side, still keeping his left hand on the rug. "oil cart ablaze, sir," gasped the driver, between paroxysms of coughing. "road simply running fire, and the fumes awful." his face was almost completely protected beneath cap, goggles, and a storm shade that fell from the cap over the shoulders and buttoned across the mouth, but no covering had seemed effectual against the suffocating reek of the burning oil. the fire had melted the snow off his clothes, and he stood by the door with a bar of darkness just falling across his face, and the electric light through the lowered window blazing upon his gleaming leathers, his gauntlets and puttee leggings, and the cumbrous numbered badge that the regulations then imposed. "it will be some time before the road is passable?" asked moeletter with a frown. "oh, hours perhaps," was the sputtering reply. "would suggest going by molesey bridge, sir. best way now." "is it much out?" "the turning is half a mile back. from there it is no further than this way." "and you know the way perfectly?" the driver nodded. "perfectly, sir." "very well; go on. we have plenty of time yet, but you might get a few more miles out of her, if you think you can." the driver jumped up to his seat, the horn gave its bull-like note of warning, and gliding round the car began to head back towards esher with the open common on either side and the pelting wind behind. it slackened for a moment at the fork in the high-road, turned to the right, and then began to draw away northward with an increased speed that showed the driver to be capable of rising to his instructions. "it is fortunate that the inspector is not a motoring man," thought salt to himself with an inward smile. "this is very much too good." but the inspector only noticed that with the increased speed the car seemed to run more smoothly, and even then he had no means of judging what the increase had become. the man whose car it was knew that a very different explanation than mere speed lay behind the sudden change that made the motion now sheer luxury. he knew with absolute conviction what had happened, and he would have known without any further evidence that the driver who now had his hand upon the wheel was a thousand miles ahead of constable-_chauffeur_ murphy in motor-craft. it was not the first suggestion of some friendly influence at work that had stirred his mind. the incident of the stranded waggon across the road by ripley was little in itself. even when they were a second time delayed by the fallen tree a few miles further on nothing but an unreasoning hope could have called it more than coincidence. but with the third episode a matured plan began to loom through the meaningless delays. oil was here, and where there was oil in england at that day the hand of the unity league might be traced not far away. in his mind's eye salt ran over half a dozen miles of the portsmouth road. as far as he could remember, if it was _intended_ to block the road there was scarcely a more suitable spot than the long railway bridge to be found between esher and kingston, and, followed the thought, if it was intended to force moeletter to accept the bridge at molesey, no point in all the high-road south of the fork would have served. the three accidents had taken place each at the exact point where it would best serve its purpose. salt did not even glance at the driver when he returned from the fire. he leaned back in his seat in simple enjoyment, and inspector moeletter thought from his appearance that he was going to sleep. there was little to be gained by looking out, apart from the policy of unconcern. the huge white motor-car that was waiting in the cross-road by esher station had its head-lights masked, and in the snow-storm and the night it could not have been seen ten yards away. the driver of the green car sounded his horn for the road as he swept by, and ten seconds later the white car glided out from its place of concealment like a ghostly mastodon, and, baring its dazzling lamps, began to thrash along the road in the other's wake. what would be their route when they had crossed the bridge? that was salt's constant thought now, not because he was troubled by the chances, but because it was the next point in the unknown plan that would serve to guide him. he had not long to wait under the dexterous pilotage of the unknown hand outside. the flat, straight road became a tortuous village street, the lights of the molesey shops and inns splashed in splintering blurs across the streaming windows, an iron bridge shook and rumbled beneath their wheels, and they were in middlesex. the horn brayed out a continuous warning note, the car swung off to the left, and salt, with his eyes closed, knew exactly what had been arranged. but there was yet inspector moeletter to be reckoned with. he was ignorant of the roads, but he had a well-developed gift of location, and the abrupt turn to the left when he had seen what appeared to be a broad high-road leading straight on from molesey bridge, gave him a moment's thought. he turned to the speaking-tube. "are you sure that this is right, murphy?" he asked sharply. "kingston must lie away on the right." "we go through hampton this way, sir, and into the kingston road at twickenham," came the chattering reply in a half-frozen voice. "it is just as near, and we don't meet the wind." it was quite true, although the inspector might not know it, but the ready explanation seemed to satisfy him. another circumstance would have set his mind at rest. at hampton the route took them equally to the right. salt did not know the road intimately, but he knew that if his surmise was correct, they must very soon draw away to the left again. what would happen then? for three or four miles they would run between hedges and encounter nothing more urban than a scattered hamlet. twickenham they would never see that night. inspector moeletter was far from being unsophisticated, and his suspicion had already once, apparently, been touched. how would the race end? the car slowed down for a moment, but so smoothly that it was almost imperceptible, and with a clanging bell an electric tram swung into their vision and out again. salt was taking note of every trifle in this enthralling game. why, he asked himself, had so expert a driver slackened speed with plenty of room to pass? he saw a possible explanation. they had been meeting and overtaking trams at intervals all the way from molesey bridge. in another minute they would have left the high-road and the tram route, and the driver wished to hide the fact from moeletter as long as possible. he had therefore _waited_ to meet this tram so that the inspector might unconsciously carry in his mind the evidence of their presence to the last possible point. they were no longer on the high-road; they had glided off somewhere without a warning note or any indication of speed or motion to betray the turn they had taken. the houses were becoming sparser, fields intervened, with here and there a strung-out colony of cottages. soon even the scattered buildings ceased, or appeared so rarely that they only dotted long stretches of country lanes, and at every yard they trembled on the verge of detection. nothing but the glare of light inside the vehicle and the storm and darkness beyond could have hid for a moment from even the least suspicious of men the fact that they were no longer travelling even the most secluded of suburban high-roads. and now, as if aware that the deception could not be maintained much longer, the driver began to increase the speed at every open stretch. again nothing but his inspired skill and the perfectly-balanced excellence of the car could disguise the fact that they flew along the level road; while among the narrow winding lanes they rushed at a headlong pace, shooting down declines and breasting little hills without a pause. the horn boomed its warning every second, and from behind came the answering note of the long white motor. it had crept nearer and nearer since they left the high-road, and its brilliant head-lights now lit up the way as far as the pilot car. little chance for moeletter to convoy his prisoner out of those deserted lanes whatever happened now! what means, what desperate means, he might have taken in a gallant attempt to retrieve the position if he had suspected treachery just a minute before he did, one may speculate but never know. as it was, the uneasy instinct that everything was not right awoke too late for him to make the stand. it was less than ten minutes after meeting the last tram that he peered out into the night doubtfully, but in those ten minutes the green car had all but won its journey's end. "murphy," he cried imperiously, with his mouth to the tube and a startled eye on salt, "tell me immediately where we are." "a minute, sir," came the hasty answer, as the driver bent forward to verify some landmark. "this brake---- "stop this instant!" roared the inspector, rising to his feet in rage and with a terrible foreboding. there was a muffled rattle as they shot over a snow-laden bridge, a curious sense of passing into a new atmosphere, and then with easy precision the car drew round and stopped dead before the open double doors of its own house. no one spoke for a moment. there was another muffled roar outside, the sound of heavy iron doors clashing together, and the great white car reproduced their curve and drew up by their side. from the driver's seat of the green car the hon. bruce wycombe, son and heir of old viscount chiltern and the most skilful motorist in europe, climbed painfully down, and, pulling off his head-gear, opened the door of the car with a bow that would have been more graceful if he had been less frozen. "welcome to hanwood after your long journey, inspector moeletter!" he exclaimed most affably. chapter xviii the music and the dance along the great west road, ten thousand monmouth colliers were streaming towards london, in every stage of famine and discomfort. what they intended to do when they reached the capital they had no clearer idea than had the fifteen thousand midlanders at barnet. all they knew was that they were starving at home, and they could be no worse off in london. also in london there was to be found the government, the government that had betrayed them. the conception of the march had been wild, the execution was lamentable. the leaders might have taken napoleon's descent on moscow as their model. ten hand-carts exhausted their commissariat. they were to live on the land they passed through; but the land was agricultural and poor, the populace regarded the monmouth colliers as foreigners, and the response was scanty. only one circumstance saved the march from becoming a tragedy of hundreds instead of merely, as it was, a tragedy of scores. the men were being fed from london. by whom, and why, not even their leaders knew, but each night a railway truck full of provisions was awaiting their arrival at a station on their route, and each day the men's leader-in-chief was informed where the next supply would be. it influenced them to continue their journey pacifically when they must otherwise, sooner or later, have abandoned all restraint and marched through anarchy. it enabled them to reach london. it added another element to the government's distraction in their day of reckoning. it was a detail. but at windsor there were no provisions waiting. no one knew why. the station authorities had nothing to suggest. after a week's regular supply the leaders had come to expect their daily truck-load, had come to rely implicitly upon it, and had made no other arrangements. they conferred together anxiously; it was all there was for them to do. windsor was not sympathetic towards them. they had not expected it to be, but they had expected to be independent of windsor's friendship. two thousand special constables escorted them in and shepherded them assiduously. otherwise there might have been disturbances, for a castle guard comprised the extent of windsor's military resources then. as it was, the miners reached the royal borough hungry, and left it famished. a rumour spread along the ranks as they set out that an unfortunate mistake had been made, but that supplies would be awaiting them in hyde park. if that was a detail, as it might well have been, it was not wholly successful. the men were hungry and dispirited, but london was not their immediate goal. for weeks they had been telling the vacillating cabinet what ought to be done with the oil at hanwood, and as they set out they had boasted to their brothers across the rhymney that before they returned they would show them how to fire a beacon that would singe the hair of five million leaguers. midway between windsor and london they proceeded to turn off from the highway under the direction of their leaders, and debouching from the narrow lanes on to the fields beyond, they began to advance across the country in a straggling, far-flung wave. on the previous day both the home office and the war office had received applications for protection from the company at hanwood, backed by evidence which left no possible doubt that the monmouth unemployed contemplated an organised attack on the oil store. the two departments replied distantly, that in view of the existing conditions within the metropolis and the forces at their disposal, it was impossible to despatch either troops or constabulary to protect private property in isolated districts. hanwood acknowledged these replies, and gave notice with equal punctilio that they would take the best means within their power for safeguarding their interests, and at the same time formally notified the government that they held them responsible, through their failure to carry out the obligations of their office, for all the developments that the situation might lead to--an exchange of civilities which in private life is sometimes attained much more simply by two disputants consigning each other to the society of the prince of darkness in four words. whatever there might be behind the intimation, there was little to indicate it at dusk that afternoon. the stranger or the native passing along miss lisle's secluded lane would have noticed only two circumstances to suggest anything unusual in the air. a few hundred feet above the trees within the wall, a box-kite was straining at its rope in the rising gale. from the basket car a man watched every movement of the countryside through his field-glasses, and conversed from time to time through a telephone with the kite section down below. a second wire ran from the field telephone to a room of the offices where salt was engaged with half a dozen of the chiefs of the council of the league. sir john hampden was not present. he was remaining in london to afford the government every facility for negotiating a settlement whenever they might desire it. in the lane, a group of men with tickets in their hats were loitering about the bridge. they comprised a peaceful picket within the meaning of the act. they had been there since daybreak, and so far no one had shown any wish to dispute their position. the war-kite and the picket in the lane were the "eyes" of the opposing belligerents. the league had nothing to gain by submitting the issue to the arbitrament of lead and fire. no one had anything to gain by it, but after a bout at fisticuffs a defeated child will sometimes pick up a dangerous stone and fling it. the league had accepted the challenge of those who marched beneath the red banner for war on constitutional lines. some of those who marched beneath the red banner were now disposed to try the effect of beating their ploughshares into swords, and however much the league might have preferred them to keep to their bargain, the most effective retort was to turn their own pacific sickles into bayonets. in the staff room salt was addressing his associates--half military, half political--who now represented the innermost council of the league. some of them had been members of former ministries, others soldiers who had worn the insignia of generals, but they rendered to this unknown man among them an unquestioning allegiance, because of what he had already done, because he inspired them with absolute reliance in what he would yet succeed in doing, and, not least, because he had the air that fitted the position. "more than two years ago," he was saying, "the first draft of the formation and operations of the league contained a section much to the following effect: "'it is an essential feature of the plan that the league should work on constitutional lines from beginning to end and in contemplation of bringing about the desired reforms without firing a solitary shot or violating a single law. "'nevertheless, it is inevitable that when the position becomes acute civil disorders will arise out of the involved situation, and demonstrations of the affected people will threaten the government of the day on the one hand and the proposed league on the other. "'in these circumstances it will be prudent to contemplate, as a last phase of the struggle, an organised military attack on the property of the league, masked under the form of a popular riot, but instigated or connived at by responsible authorities. i propose, therefore, to establish the league stores in a position naturally suited for defence, and to adopt such further precautions as will render them secure against ordinary attack.' "we have now reached that closing phase of the struggle," continued salt. "on the evidence of this report from sir john hampden we may assume that within twenty-four hours our aggressive work will be over. will our opponents, in the language of the street, 'go quietly'?" "it has fallen to my lot to read the riot act on three occasions," said one of the company, "and i have seen disturbances in ireland; but i have never before known an unorganised mob to surround a position completely and then to sit down to wait for night." "lieutenant vivash wishes to speak to mr salt personally," said a subordinate, appearing at the door. salt stepped into the ante-room, and spoke through the telephone. "yes, vivash," he said to the man in the kite a quarter of a mile away. "what is it?" "two general service wagons with bridge-making tackle have just been brought up, and are waiting in welland wood," reported vivash. "there is a movement among the colliers over barfold rise. with them are about two hundred men carrying rifles. they are not in uniform, but they _march_." salt turned to another instrument and jerked the switch rapidly from plate to plate as he distributed his orders. "captain norris, strengthen the territorials at the outer wire north." "send up two star rockets to recall the motor-cycle scouts." "tell disturnal to have the searchlights in immediate readiness." "fire brigade, full strength, turn out with chemical engine, and stand under earthwork cover at central tank." he turned again to the kite telephone to ask vivash a detail. there was no response. "get on with lieutenant vivash as soon as you can, and let me know at once," he said to the one who was in charge, as he returned to the staff room. in less than a minute the operator was at the door again. "i am afraid there is something the matter, sir," he explained. "i can get no reply either from lieutenant vivash or from the kite section." "ring up the despatch room. let some one go at once to mr moore and return here with report." "yes, sir." he turned to go. "here _is_ mr moore," he exclaimed, standing aside from the door. they all read some disaster in his face as he entered. "i am deeply sorry to say that lieutenant vivash has been shot." "is he seriously hurt?" asked some one. "he is dead. he was shot through the head by a marksman in welland wood." salt broke the shocked silence. "we have lost a brave comrade," he said simply. "come, general trench, let us visit the walls." it was dark when they returned. salt passed through the room, calling to his side the man with whom he had been most closely associated at hanwood, and traversing some passages led the way up a winding staircase into the lantern of the tower. here, under the direction of an ex-officer of royal engineers, two powerful searchlights were playing on every inch of doubtful ground that lay within their radius beyond the entanglement that marked the outer line of the defences. nothing had been seen; not a solitary invader had yet shown himself within the zone of light. the officer in charge was explaining a technical detail of the land when, without the faintest warning, a fulgent blaze of light suddenly ran along the edge of a coppice half a mile away, and a noise like the crackling of a hundred new-lit fires drifted on the wind. with the echo, a thick hedge to the east and a wood lying on the west joined in the vicious challenge. a few bullets splashed harmlessly against the steel shield that ingeniously protected the lantern. the searchlights oscillated uncertainly from sky to earth under the shock of the surprise, and then settled down to stream unwinkingly into the eyes of the enemy, while in the double darkness the defenders hugged the earth behind the wire and began to reply with cool deliberation to the opening volleys. there was a knock upon the door of the little lantern room, and a telescribe message was placed before salt. it bore a sign showing that it had come over the private system which the league maintained between hanwood and the head office. he read it through twice, and for almost the first time since he had left his youth behind, he stood in absolute indecision. "it is necessary for me to go at once to london," he said, turning to his companion, when he had made an irrevocable choice. "you will take command in my absence, evelyn, under the guidance of the council." "may i venture to remind you, sir, that we are completely surrounded?" said orr-evelyn through his blank surprise. "i have not overlooked it. you will----" there was a sullen roar away in the north, a mile behind the coppice that had first spoken. something whistled overhead, not unmelodiously, and away to the south a shell burst harmlessly among the ridges of a ploughed field. the nearer searchlight elevated its angle a fraction and centred upon a cloud of smoke that hung for a moment until the gale whirled it to disintegration. the army, like the navy, had reverted to black powder. it was economy; and as it was not intended ever to go to war again, it scarcely mattered. "marsham will engage that gun from both platforms d and e. make every effort to silence it with the least delay; it is the only real menace there is. hold the entanglement, but not at too heavy a cost. if it should be carried----come to my room." "you have considered the possible effect of your withdrawal at this moment, salt?" said orr-evelyn in a low voice, as they hastened together along the passages. "i can leave the outcome in your hands with absolute reliance," replied salt. "if hanwood is successfully held until to-morrow, it will devolve upon sir john hampden to dictate terms to the government. the end is safely in sight independent of my personality.... my reputation----!" he dismissed that phase with a shrug. he threw open the door of his private office. a shallow mahogany case, about a foot square, locked and sealed, was sunk into the opposite wall. salt knocked off the wax and opened the case with a key which he took off the ring and gave to orr-evelyn as he spoke. inside the case were a dozen rows of little ivory studs, each engraved with a red number. fastened to the inside of the lid was a scale map of the land lying between the outer wall and the wire fence. every stud had its corresponding number, surrounded by a crimson circle, indicated on the plan. "if the entanglement should be carried you will take no further risk," continued salt. "captain ford will give you the general indication of the attack from the lantern. there are two men detailed to each block of mines who will signal you the exact moment for firing each mine. those are the numbered indicators above the box. good-bye." he paused at the door; time was more than life to him, but he had an ordered thought for everything. "if you hear no more of me, and what might be imagined really troubles you, evelyn, you can make use of this," he remarked, and laid the telescript he had received upon a table. it was not the time for words, written or spoken, beyond those of the sheerest necessity. half an hour passed before orr-evelyn had an opportunity of glancing through the letter that had called salt from his post. when he had finished it he took it down, and read it aloud to the headquarter staff amidst the profoundest silence, in passionate vindication of his friend and leader. this was what they heard: "unity league, trafalgar chambers. "the building is surrounded by mob. seaton street, pantile passage, and pall mall and the haymarket, as far as i can see, densely packed with frantic men. all others in building had left earlier. _i shall remain._ wires cut, and fear that you may not receive this, as other telescribe messages for help unanswered. mob howling continuously for sir john hampden and mr salt; dare not look out again, stoned. shall delay advance, doors and stairs, as long as possible, and burn all important league books and papers last resource. "good-bye all, my dear friends. "irene lisle." chapter xix the "finis" message the storm had not decreased its violence when, three minutes later, salt stood unperceived on the broad coping outside an upper storey of the tower, and, sinking forward into the teeth of the gale, was borne upwards with rigid wings as a kite ascends. in accordance with his instructions the two searchlights had turned their beams steadily earthward for the time, and in the absolute blackness of the upper air he could pass over the firing lines of friends and foes in comparative safety. as he rose higher and higher before turning to scud before the wind, he saw, as on a plan, the whole field of operations, just distinguishable in its masses of grey and black, with the points of interest revealing themselves by an occasional flash. immediately beneath him, beneath him at first, but every second drawing away to the south-west as he drifted in the gale he breasted, lay hanwood, with its three outer lines of defence. from above it seemed as though a very bright needle was every now and then thrust out from the walls into the dark night and drawn back again. on each of the platforms d and e two . -inch quick-firing guns appeared to be rocking slightly in the wind. by all the indication there was of smoke or noise, or even flame, the gunners might have been standing idly behind their shields; but over the steep scarp of the little hill, a mile and a half away, shells were being planted every ten yards or so, with the methodical regularity of a farmer dropping potatoes along a furrow. salt might not have quite expected that there would be the necessity to fire those guns when, a year before, he had obtained for hanwood its complement of the finest artillery that the world produced, but when the necessity did arise, there was no need for the league gunners to use black powder. when he had reached the height he required, simply leaning against the wind, salt moved a pinion slightly and bore heavily towards the right. it was the supreme moment for the trial of skill, as the long flight that followed it was the trial of endurance. if his nerve had failed, if a limb had lost its tension for the fraction of a second, his brain reeled amidst that tearing fury of the element, or a single ring or swivel not answered to its work, he would have been crumpled up hopelessly, beyond the chance of recovery, and flung headlong to the earth. as it was, the wind swept him round in a great half circle, but it was the wind his servant, not his master, and he turned its lusty violence to serve his ends. he caught a passing glimpse of the coppice whence the attack had first been opened; he saw beneath him the line of guns ensconced behind the hill, one already overturned and centred in confusion; and then the sweeping arc reached its limit, and he came, as it seemed, to anchor in mid-air, with the earth slipping away beneath him as the banks glide past a smoothly-moving train, and a thousand weights and forces dragging at his aching arms. he had nothing to do but to maintain a perfect balance among the conflicting cross winds that shot in from above and below, and from north and south, and to point his course towards the glow in the sky that marked the capital. a dozen words could express it, but it required the skill of the practised wingman, the highest development of every virile quality, and the spur of a necessity not less than life and death, to dignify the attempt above the foolhardy. whether beyond all that the accomplishment lay within the bounds of human endurance was a further step. it would at that time have been impossible to pronounce either way with any authority, for not only had the attempt never been made, but nothing approaching the attempt had been made. a breeze that ran five miles an hour was considered enough for any purpose; to take to the air when the anemometer indicated fifteen miles an hour was not allowed at the practice grounds, and the record in this direction lay with an expert who had accomplished a straight flight in a wind that travelled a little less than thirty miles an hour. the storm on the night of the th of january tore across the face of the land with a general velocity of fifty or sixty miles an hour, rising at times even higher. under the racking agony of every straining tendon and the heady pressure of the wind, a sense of mundane unreality began to settle upon the flier. he saw the earth and its landmarks being drawn smoothly and swiftly from beneath him with the detachment of a half-conscious dream. he saw--for he remembered afterwards--the thames lying before him like a whip flicked carelessly across the plain. a town loomed up, black and inchoate, on his right, developed into streets and terraces, and slid away into the past. it was richmond. the river, never far away, now slipped beneath him at right angles, reappeared to hold a parallel course upon his left, and flung a horse-shoe coil two miles ahead. a colony of strange shining roofs and domes next challenged recognition. they were the conservatories at kew, looking little more than garden frames, and they were scarcely lost to view before he was over the winding line of brentford's quaint old high street, now, as it appeared, packed with a dense, moving crowd. the irresistible pounding of the gale was edging the glow of london further and further to his right. instinctively he threw more weight into the lighter scale, and slowly and certainly the point of his destination swung round before his face again. thenceforward it was all town. gunnersbury became chiswick, chiswick merged into hammersmith, kensington succeeded, in ceaseless waves of houses that ran north and south, and long vistas of roofs that stretched east and west. it was a kaleidoscope of contrasts. scenes of saturnalian gaiety, where ant-like beings danced in mad abandonment round fires that blocked the road, or seemed to gyrate by companies in meaningless confusion, bounded districts plunged into an unnatural gloom and solitude, where for street after street neither the footstep of a wayfarer nor the light of a public lamp broke the uncanny spell. immediately beyond, by the glare of the flambeaux which they carried, an orderly concourse might be marching eastward, and fringing on their route a garish gutter mart, where busy costermongers drove their roaring trade and frugal housewives did their marketing with less outward concern than if the crisis in the state had been a crisis in the price of butter. the multitudinous sounds beat on his ears through the plunging gale like a babel of revelry heard between the intermittent swinging of an unlatched door. the sights in their grotesque perspective began to melt together lazily. the upper air grew very cold. the weights hung heavier every mile, the contending forces pulled more resistlessly. strange fancies began to assail him as the brain shrank beneath the strain; doubts and despairs to gather round like dark birds of the night with hopeless foreboding in the dull measure of their funereal wings. in that moment mind and body almost failed to contend against the crushing odds; nothing but his unconquerable heart flogged on his dying limbs. it was scarcely more than half an hour after she had written her despairing message that from her post at the head of the broad stone staircase irene lisle heard a noise in the garret storey above that sent her flying back to her stronghold. it was the last point from which she had expected an attack. through the keyhole of the door behind which she had taken refuge, she saw a strangely outlined figure groping his way cumbrously down the stairs, and then, without a word or cry, but with a face whiter than the paper that had summoned him, she threw open the door to admit salt. he walked heavily along the corridor and turned into his own room, while she relocked the door and followed him. there was mute enquiry in her eyes, but she did not speak. a powerful oil-stove stood upon the hearth-stone, throwing its beams across the room. he stood over it while the beaded ice melted from his hair and fell hissing on the iron. he opened his mouth, and the sound of his voice was like the thin piping of a reed. she caught a word, and began to unbuckle the frozen straps of his gear. when he was free he tried to raise his hand to a pocket of his coat, but the effort was beyond the power of the cramped limb. irene interpreted the action, and, finding there a flask, filled the cup and held it to his lips. she got a blue, half-frozen smile of thanks over the edge of the cup. "ah," he said, beginning to find his voice again, and stamping about the room, "we owe wynchley slocombe a monument, you and i, miss lisle. now you must write a telescript for me, please; for i cannot." "if you will remain here, where it is warmer, i will bring the materials," she suggested. he thanked her and allowed her to go, watching her with thoughtful eyes that were coming back to life. she paused a moment at the top of the stairs to listen down the shaft, and then sped quickly through the smoke to the instrument room on the floor beneath. salt glanced round the office. on and about his desk all the books and papers that might be turned to a hostile purpose had been stacked in readiness, and by them stood the can of oil that was to ensure their complete destruction. he stepped up to the window and looked out cautiously. every pane of glass was broken--every pane of glass in trafalgar chambers was broken, for that matter--but it was not easy for an unprepared mob to force an entrance. when the unity league had taken over the whole block of building in its expansion many alterations had been carried out, and among these had been to fix railings that sprang from the street and formed an arch, not only over the basement, but over the ground floor windows also. if the shutters on the windows had been closed in time, the assailants would have been baffled at another point, but the shutters had been overlooked, and the mob, after lighting great fires in the street, was now flinging the blazing billets through the lower windows. in a very brief minute irene was back again with the telescribe accessories. she seated herself at a table, dipped her pen into the ink, and looked up without a word. "trafalgar chambers. " . p.m.," dictated salt. "most of the miners drawn off and passing through brentford. over barfold rise half battery of -pounders, one out of action. in spring coppice and welland wood about four companies regulars each. reconnoitre third position assuming same proportion. act." he stood considering whether there was anything more to add usefully. the sound of irene's agate pen tapping persistently against the table caught his ear. "you are not very much afraid?" he asked with kindly reassurance in his voice as he looked at her hand. "no, not now," she replied; but as she wrote she had to still the violent trembling of her right hand with the left. "all going well here. send messenger hampden with report immediately after engagement," he concluded. "i will try to sign it myself." he succeeded in sprawling a recognisable "george salt" across the paper, and after it wrote "finis," which happened to be the pass-word for the day. "your message came through; this may possibly do the same," he remarked. he turned off the radiator as orderly as though he had reached the close of a working day, and they went out together, locking the doors behind them. "they were attacking hanwood when you left?" she asked with the tensest interest. they had sent off the telescript, and it seemed to irene that they had reached the end of things. "yes," he replied. "but all the same," he added, as a fresh outburst of cries rose from the street, and the light through the shattered window attracted a renewed fusillade of missiles, "i think that we have kept our promise to let you be in the thick of it." she shook her head with the very faintest smile. "that seems a very long time ago. but you, how could _you_ come? when i sent i never thought ... i never dreamed----" "it was possible to leave," he said. "my work is done. yes," in reply to her startled glance, "it has all happened!" "you mean----?" she asked eagerly. he took a paper from his pocket-book. it was, as she saw immediately, a telescript from sir john hampden. it had reached him at hanwood an hour before he left. "i have this afternoon received a deputation of ministerialists who have the adherence of a majority in the house without taking the opposition into account," she read. "the parliamentary representation committees throughout the country are frantically insisting upon members accepting _any terms_, if we will give an undertaking that the normal balance of trade and labour shall be restored at once. the cabinet is going to pieces every hour, and the situation can no longer either be faced or ignored by the government. there will be a great scene in the house to-night. the deputation will see me again to-morrow morning with a formal decision. i have confidential assurances that a complete acceptance is a foregone conclusion. the arrival of the midland colliers to-night, if not of those from monmouth, will precipitate matters." tears she could not hold back stood in her eyes as she returned to him the paper. "then it has not been in vain," she said softly. "no," he replied. "nothing has been in vain." they stood silently for a minute, looking back over life. so might two shipwrecked passengers have stood on a frail raft waiting for the end, resigned but not unhopeful of a larger destiny beyond, while the elements boiled and roared around them. "it was very weak of me to send that message," said irene presently; "the message that brought you. i suppose," she added, "that it _was_ the message that brought you?" "yes, thank god!" he replied. "and if it had been impossible for you to come? if it had been an utterly critical moment in every way, what would you have done?" he laughed a little, quietly, as he looked at her. "the question did not arise, fortunately," he replied. "no," she admitted; "only i felt a little curious to know, now that everything is over. it _is_, isn't it? there is nothing to be done?" "oh yes," he replied with indomitable cheerfulness. "there is always something to be done." "a chance?" she whispered incredulously. "a chance of escape, you mean?" "it is possible," he said. "at least, i will go and hear what they have to say." "no! no!" she cried out, as a dreadful scene rose to her imagination. "you cannot understand. don't you hear that?... they would kill you." "i do not suppose that i shall find myself popular," he said with a smile, "but i will take care. you--i think you must stay here." "cannot i come with you?" she pleaded. "see, i am armed." he took the tiny weapon that she drew from her dress and looked at it with gentle amusement. it was a pretty thing of ivory and nickeled steel, an elaborate toy. he pressed the action and shook out the half-dozen tiny loaded caps--they were little more than that--upon his palm. "i would rather that you did not use this upon a mob," he said, reloading it. "it would only exasperate, without disabling. as for stopping a rush--why, i doubt if one of these would stop a determined rabbit. you have better weapons than this." "i suppose you are right. only it gave me a little confidence. then you shall keep it for a memento, if you will." "no; it might hold off a single assailant, i suppose. i should value this much more, if i might have it." he touched a silk tie that she had about her neck, as he spoke; it was one that she had often worn. she held up her head for him to disengage it. "some day," he said, lingering a little over the simple operation, "you will understand many things, irene." "i think that i understand everything now," she replied with a brave glance. "everything that is worth understanding." he placed the folded tie in an inner pocket, and went down the stone steps without another word. the well was thick with smoke, but the fire had not yet spread beyond the lower rooms. half-way down he encountered a barricade of light office furniture which the girl had flung across the stairs and drenched with oil. it was no obstacle in itself, but at the touch of a match it would have sprung into a conflagration that would have held the wildest mob at bay for a few precious moments. he picked his way through it, descended the remaining stairs, and unlocked the outer door. beyond this was an iron curtain that had been lowered. a little door in it opened directly on to the half-dozen steps that led down to seaton street. salt looked through a crevice of the iron curtain, and listened long enough to learn that there was no one on the upper steps; for the upper steps, indeed, commanded no view of the windows, and the windows were the centres of all interest. satisfied on this point, he quietly unlocked the door and stepped out. chapter xx stobalt of salaveira to the majority of those who thronged seaton street the effect of salt's sudden--instantaneous, as it seemed--and unexpected appearance was to endow it with a dramatic, almost an uncanny, value. the front rows, especially those standing about the steps, fell back, and the further rows pressed forward. and because an undisciplined mob stricken by acute surprise must express its emotion outwardly--by silence if it has hitherto been noisy, and by exclamation if it has been silent--the shouts and turmoil in the street instantly dwindled away to nothing, like a breath of vapour passing from a window pane. salt raised his hand, and he had the tribute of unstirring silence, the silence for the moment of blank astonishment. "my friends and enemies," he said, in a voice that had learned self-possession from the same school that demosthenes had practised in, "you have been calling me for some time. in a few minutes i must listen to whatever you have to say, but first there is another matter that we must arrange. i take it for granted that when you began your spirited demonstration here you had no idea that there was a lady in the building. not being accustomed to the sterner side of politics, so formidable a display rather disconcerted her, and not knowing the invariable chivalry of english working men, she hesitated to come out before. now, as it is dark, and the streets of london are not what they once were, i want half a dozen good stout fellows to see the lady safely to her home." "be damned!" growled a voice among the mass. "what do you take us for?" "men," retorted salt incisively; "or there would be no use in asking you." "yes, men, but famished, desperate, werewolf men," cried a poor, gaunt creature clad in grotesque rags, who stood near. "men who have seen _our_ women starve and sink before our eyes; men who have watched _our_ children dying by a slower, crooler death than fire. an eye for an eye, tyrant! your league has struck at _our_ women folk through us." "then strike at ours through us!" cried salt, stilling with the measured passion of his voice the rising murmurs of assent. "i am here to offer you a substitute. do you think that no woman will mourn for me?" he sent his voice ringing over their heads like a prophetic knell. "the cause that must stoop to take the life of a defenceless woman is lost for ever." as long as he could offer them surprises he could hold the mere mob in check, but there was among the crowd an element that was not of the crowd, a chosen sprinkling who were superior to the swaying passions of the moment. "not good enough," said a decently-dressed, comfortable-looking man, who had little that was famished, desperate, or wolfish in his appearance. "you're both there, and there you shall both stay, by god! eh, comrades?" he spoke decisively, and made a movement as though he would head a rush towards the steps. salt dropped one hand upon the iron door with a laugh that sounded more menacing than most men's threats. "not so fast, rorke," he said contemptuously; "you grasp too much. even in your unpleasant business you can practise moderation. i am here, but there is no reason on earth why i should stay. scarcely more than half an hour ago i was at hanwood--where, by the way, your friends are being rather badly crumpled up--and you are all quite helpless to prevent me going again." they guessed the means; they saw the unanswerable strength of his position, and recognised their own impotence. "who are you, any way?" came a dozen voices. "i am called george salt: possibly you have heard the name before. come, men," he cried impatiently, "what have you to think twice about? surely it is worth while to let a harmless girl escape to make certain of that terrible person salt." there was a strangled scream in the vestibule behind. unable to bear the suspense any longer, irene had crept down the stairs in time to hear the last few sentences. for a minute she had stood transfixed at the horror of the position she realised; then, half-frenzied, she flung herself against salt's arm and tried to beat her way past to face the mob. "you shall not!" she cried distractedly. "i will not be saved at that price. i shall throw myself out of the window, into the fire, anywhere. yes, i'm desperate, but i know what i am saying. come back, and let us wait together; die together, if it is to be, but i don't go alone." the crowd began to surge restlessly about in waves of excited motion. the interruption, in effect, had been the worst thing that could have happened. there were in the throng many who beneath their seething passion could appreciate the nobility of salt's self-sacrifice; many who in the midst of their sullen enmity were wrung with admiration for irene's heroic spirit, but the contagion to press forward dominated all. salt had irretrievably lost his hold upon their reason, and with that hold he saw the last straw of his most forlorn hope floating away. in another minute he must either retreat into the burning building where he might at any time find the stairs impassable with smoke, or remain to be overwhelmed by a savage rush and beaten to the ground. "men," cried irene desperately, "listen before you do something that will for ever make to-day shameful in the history of our country. do you know whom you wish to kill? he is the greatest englishman----" there were angry cries from firebrands scattered here and there among the crowd, and a movement from behind, where the new contingents hurrying down the side streets pressed most heavily, flung the nearest rows upon the lower steps. salt's revolver, which he had not shown before, drove them back again and gave him a moment's grace. "quick!" he cried. "my offer still holds good." one man shouldered his way through to the front, and, seeing him, salt allowed him to come on. he walked up the steps deliberately, with a face sad rather than revengeful, and they spoke together hurriedly under the shadow of the large-bore revolver. "if it can be done yet, i'll be one of the posse to see to the young lady," said the volunteer. "i have no mind to wait for the other job that's coming." "take care of her; get her back into the hall," replied salt. "gently, very gently, friend." two more volunteers had their feet upon the steps, one, a butcher, reeking of the stalls, the other sleek and smug-faced, with the appearance of a prosperous artisan. "i'll pick my men," cried salt sharply, and his steady weapon emphasised his choice, one man passing on through the iron doorway, the other turning sharp from the insistent barrel to push his way back into the crowd with a bitter imprecation. it was too much to hope that the position could be maintained. the impatient mob had only been held off momentarily from its purpose as a pack of wolves can be stayed by the fleeing traveller who throws from his sleigh article after article to entice their curiosity. salt had nothing more to offer them. his life was already a hostage to the honour of those whom he had allowed to pass. others were pressing on to him with vengeance-laden cries. the terrible irresistible forward surge of a soulless mob, when individuality is merged into the dull brutishness of a trampling herd, was launched. "capt'n stobalt!" cried a lusty voice at his shoulder. salt turned instinctively. a man in sailor's dress, with the guns and star of his grade upon his sleeve, had climbed along the arch of the railings with a sailor's resourcefulness, and had reached his ear. salt remembered him quite well, but he did not speak a word. "ah, sir, i thought that warn't no other voice in the world, although the smoke befogged my eyes a bit. keep back, you gutter rats!" he roared above every other sound, rising up in his commanding position and balancing himself by a stanchion of the gate; "d'ye think you know who you're standing up before, you toggle-chested galley-sharks! salt? aye, he's _salt_ enough! 'tis capt'n stobalt of the old _ulysses_. _stobalt of salaveira!_" three years before, the moment would have found salt cold, as cold as ice, and as unresponsive, but he had learned many things since then, and sacrificed his pride and reticence on many altars. he saw before him a phalanx of humanity startled into one common expression of awe and incredulity; he saw the hostile wave that was to overwhelm him spend itself in a sharp recoil. by a miracle the fierce lust of triumphant savagery had died out of the starved, pathetic faces now turned eagerly to him; by a miracle the gathering roar for vengeance had sunk into an expectant hush, broken by nothing but the whispered repetition of his name on ten thousand lips. he saw in a flash a hundred details of the magic of that name; he knew that if ever in his life he must throw restraint and moderation to the winds and paint his rôle in broad and lurid colours, that moment had arrived, and at the call he took his destiny between his hands. they saw him toss his weapon through the railings into the space beneath, marked him come to the edge of the step and stand with folded arms defenceless there before them, and the very whispers died away in breathless anticipation. "yes," he cried with a passionate vehemence that held their breath and stirred their hearts, "i am stobalt of salaveira, the man who brought you victory when you were trembling in despair. i saved england for you then, but that was when men loved their country, and did not think it a disgraceful thing to draw a sword and die for her. what is that to you to-day, you who have been taught to forget what glory means; and what is england to you to-day, you whose leaders have sold her splendour for a higher wage?" "no! no!" cried a thousand voices, frantic to appease the man for whose blood they had been howling scarcely a minute before. "you shall be our leader! we will follow you to death! stobalt of salaveira! stobalt for ever! stobalt of salaveira! stobalt and england!" the frenzied roar of welcome, the waving hands, the hats flung high, the mingled cries caught from lip to lip went rolling up the street, kindling by a name and an imperishable memory other streets and other crowds into a tumult of mad enthusiasm. along pall mall, through trafalgar square, into the strand and whitehall, north by regent street and the haymarket to piccadilly, running east and west, splitting north and south, twisting and leaping from group to group and mouth to mouth, ran the strange but stirring cry, carrying wonder and concern on its wing, but always passing with a cheer. seven years had passed since the day of salaveira, and the memory of it was still enough to stir a crowd to madness. for there had been no salaveiras since to dim its splendour. seven years ago the name of salaveira had brought pallor to the cheek, and the thought of what was happening there stole like an icy cramp round the heart of every englishman. the nation had grown accustomed to accept defeat on land with the comfortable assurance that nothing could avert a final victory. its pride was in its navy: invincible!... the war that came had been of no one's seeking, but it came, and the nation called upon its navy to sweep the presumptuous enemy from off the seas. then came a pause: a rumour, doubted, disbelieved, but growing stronger every hour. the english fleets, not so well placed as they might have been, "owing to political reasons that made mobilisation inadvisable while there was still a chance of peace being maintained," were unable to effect a junction immediately, and were falling back before the united power of the new alliance. hour after hour, day after day, night after night, crowds stood hopefully, doubtfully, incredulously, in front of the newspaper office windows, waiting for the news that never came. the fleets had not yet combined. the truth first leaked, then blazed: they were unable to combine! desperately placed on the outer line they were falling back, ever falling back into a more appalling isolation. a coaling station had been abandoned just where its presence proved to have been vital; a few battleships had been dropped from the programme, and the loss of their weight in the chain just proved fatal. men did not linger much at fleet street windows then; they slunk to and fro singly a hundred times a day, read behind the empty bulletins with poignant intuition, and turned silently away. in the mourning capital they led nightmare lives from which they could only awake to a more definite despair, and the first word of the hurrying newsboy's raucous shout sent a sickening wave of dread to every heart. there was everything to fear, and nothing at all to hope. could peace be made--not a glorious, but a decent, living peace? was--was even london safe? kind friends abroad threw back the answers in the fewest, crudest words. england would have to sue for peace on bended knees and bringing heavy tribute in her hands. london lay helpless at the mercy of the foe to seize at any moment when it suited him. all this time commander stobalt, in command of the _ulysses_ by the vicissitudes of unexpected war and separated from his squadron on detached service, was supposed to be in cura bay, a thousand miles away from salaveira, flung there with the destroyers _limpet_ and _dabfish_ by the mere backwash of the triumphant allied fleet. according to the rules of naval warfare he _ought_ to have been a thousand miles away; according to the report of the allies' scouts he _was_ a thousand miles away. but miraculously one foggy night the _ulysses_ loomed spectrally through the shifting mist that drifted uncertainly from off the land and rammed the first leviathan that crossed her path, while the two destroyers torpedoed her next neighbour. then, before leviathans and had begun to learn from each other what the matter was, the _ulysses_ was between them, sprinkling their decks and tops with small shell, and perforating their water-line and vital parts with large shell from a range closer than that at which any engagement had been fought out since the day when the treasury had begun to implore the admiralty to impress upon her admirals what a battleship really cost before they sent her into action. for the _ulysses_ had everything to gain and nothing but herself to lose, and when morning broke over salaveira's untidy bay, she had gained everything, and lost so little that even the new alliance took no pride in mentioning it in the cross account. it was, of course, as every naval expert could have demonstrated on the war-game board, an impossible thing to do. steam, searchlights, wireless telegraphy, quick-firing guns, and a hundred other innovations had effaced the man; and the spirit of the elizabethan age was at a discount. what drake would have done, or hawkins, what would have been a sweet and pleasing adventure to sir richard grenville, or another santa cruz to blake, would have been in their heirs unmitigated suicide by the verdict of any orthodox court martial. largely imbued with the elizabethan spirit--the genius of ensuring everything that was possible, and then throwing into the scale a splendid belief in much that seemed impossible--stobalt succeeded in doing what perhaps no one else would have succeeded in doing, merely because perhaps no one else would have tried. "stobalt of salaveira! come down and lead us!" the wild enthusiasm, the strange unusual cries, went echoing to the sky and reverberating down every street and byway. behind barred doors men listened to the shout, and wondered; crouching in alleys, tramping the road with no further hope in life, beggars and out-casts heard the name and dimly associated it with something pleasant in the past. it met the force of special constables hastening from the west; it fell on the ears of mr strummery, driving by unfrequented ways towards the house. "stobalt and england! stobalt for us! stobalt and the navy!" it was like another salaveira night with stobalt there among them--the man who was too modest to be fêted, the man whose very features were unknown at home, stobalt of salaveira! imagine it. measure by the fading but not yet quite forgotten memory of another time of direful humiliation and despair what salaveira must have been. they had passed a week of fervent exaltation, a week of calm assurance, a week of rather tremulous hope, and for the last quarter a long dumb misery that conveyed no other sense of time in later years than that of formless night. they were waiting for the stroke of doom. then at midnight came the sudden tumult from afar, sounding to those who listened in painful silence strangely unlike the note of defeat, the frantic, mingled shouts, the tearing feet in the road beneath, the wild bells pealing out, the guns and rockets to add to the delirium of the night, and the incredible burden of the intoxicating news: "great victory! salaveira relieved!! utter annihilation of the blockading fleet!!!" the philosopher might withdraw to solitude and moralise; the friend of humanity stand aside, pained that his countrymen should possess so much human nature, but to the great primitive emotional heart of the community the choice lay between going out and shouting and staying in and going mad. never before in history had there been a victory that so irresistibly carried the nation off its feet. to the populace it had seemed from beginning to end to contain just those qualities of daredevilry and fortuitous ease that appeal to the imagination. they were quite mistaken; the conception had been desperate, but beyond that the details of the relief of salaveira had been as methodical, as painstaking, and as far-seeing as those which had marked the civil campaign now drawing to a close. that was why a famished, starving mob remembered salaveira. they would have stoned a duke or burned a bishop with very little compunction, but stobalt ranked among their immortals. they did not even seem to question the mystery of salt's identity. as the flames began to lap out of the lower windows of trafalgar chambers, and it became evident that their work there was done, a stalwart bodyguard ranged themselves about his person and headed the procession. hurriedly committing irene to the loyal sailor's charge, stobalt resigned himself good-humouredly to his position until he could seize an opportunity discreetly to withdraw. not without some form of orderliness the great concourse marched into the broader streets. stobalt had no idea of their destination; possibly there was no preconcerted plan, but--as such things happen--a single voice raised in a pause gave the note. it did not fall on barren ground, and the next minute the countless trampling feet moved to a brisker step, and the new cry went rolling ominously ahead to add another terror to the shadowy phantasmagoria of the ill-lit streets. "to westminster! down with the government! to westminster!" chapter xxi the bargain of famine sir john hampden had not to wait until the morning to meet the deputation of ministerialists again. late the same evening a few men, arriving together, presented themselves at one of the barricades that closed the mayfair street, and were at once admitted. many of the residential west-end districts which were not thoroughfares for general traffic were stockaded in those days and maintained their street guard. the local officials protested, the inhabitants replied by instancing a few of the cases where an emergency had found the authorities powerless to extend protection, and there the matter ended. it was scarcely worth while stamping out a spark when they stood upon a volcano. sir john received the members in the library--a disspirited handful of men who had written their chapter of history and were now compelled to pass on the book to other scribes, as every party must. only this party had thought that it was to be the exception. "events are moving faster than the clock," apologised cecil brown, with a rather dreary smile. he was present as the representative of that body in the house which was not indisposed to be courteous and even conciliatory in attitude towards an opponent, while it yielded nothing of its principles: a standpoint unintelligible to most of the rank and file of the party. "doubtless we are not unexpected, sir john hampden?" "comrade," corrected a member who was made of sterner metal. they were there to deliver up their rifles, but this stalwart soldier of equality clung tenaciously to an empty cartridge case. "i am no less desirous than yourselves of coming to a settlement," replied sir john. "if there is still any matter of detail----?" the plenipotentiaries exchanged glances of some embarrassment. "have you not heard?" asked mr soans, whose voice was the voice of the dockyard labourers. "i can scarcely say until i know what you refer to," was the plausible reply. "i have found that all communication has been cut during the last few hours." he lightly indicated the instruments against the wall. they all looked towards cecil brown, the matter being rather an unpleasant one. "the fact is, the house has been invaded by a tumultuous rabble. they overcame all resistance by the mere force of numbers, and"--he could not think of a less ominous phrase at the moment--"well, simply turned us out.... quite cromwellian proceedings. we left them passing very large and comprehensive resolutions," he concluded. "your people!" said the uncompromising man accusingly. "scarcely," protested hampden with a smile. "the ends may be the ends of esau, but the means----" "not our people; they couldn't possibly be ours to come and turn on us like that." "suppose we say, without defining them further," said sir john, "that they were simply"--he paused for a second to burn the thrust gently home with a little caustic silence--"simply the people." mr vossit made a gesture of impatience towards his colleague. "whether queen anne, died of gout or apoplexy isn't very material now," he said with a touch of bitterness. "we are here to conduct the funeral." "i wish to meet you in every possible way i can," interposed hampden, "but i must point out to you that at so short a notice i am deprived of the counsel of any of my associates. i had hoped that by the time of the meeting to-morrow morning----" "is that necessary if the memorandum is accepted by the government?" "without discussion?" mr vossit shrugged his shoulders. "as far as i am concerned, sir john. the concession of a word or two, or a phrase here and there, can make no difference. it is our sedan, and the heavier you make the terms, the more there will be for us to remember it by." "i am content," subscribed mr guppling. "we have been surprised and routed, not by the legitimate tactics of party strife, but by methods undistinguishable from those of civil war." hampden's glance was raised mechanically to an inscribed panel that hung upon the wall in easy view, where it formed a curious decoration. the ground colour was dull black, and on it in white lettering was set forth a trenchant sentiment selected from the public utterances of every prominent member of the government and labelled with his name. it was a vindication and a spur that he had kept before his eyes through the years of ceaseless preparation, for in each extract one word was picked out in the startling contrast of an almost blinding crimson, and that one word was war. even sir john's enemies, those who called salt a machine of blood and iron, admitted him to be a kindly gentleman, and his glance had been involuntary, for he had no desire to emphasise defeat upon the vanquished. the thing was done, however, and following the look every man who sat there met his own flamboyant challenge from the past; for all, without exception, had thrown down the gauntlet once in no uncertain form. war--but that had meant them waging war against another when it was quite convenient for them to do so, not another waging war against themselves out of season. war--but certainly not war that turned them out of office, only war that turned their opponents out of office. the rather strained silence was broken by the sound of footsteps approaching from the hall. "we are still short of the home secretary and comrade tirrel," explained mr chadwing to the master of the house. "we divided forces. they were driving i understand. perhaps----" it was. they came in slowly, for the home secretary faltered in his gait and had a hunted look, while tirrel led him by the arm. both carried traces of disorder, even of conflict. "oh yes; they held us up," said tirrel with a savage laugh, as his colleagues gathered round. "he was recognised in piccadilly by a crowd of those ungrateful dogs from the pits. i shouted to the cabman to drive through them at a gallop, but the cur jumped off his seat howling that he was their friend. i was just able to get the reins; we bumped a bit, but didn't upset, fortunately. i left the cab at the corner of the street, here." he turned his back on the home secretary, who sat huddled in a chair, and, facing the others, made a quick gesture indicating that mr tubes was unwell and had better be left alone. "i brought him here, sir john," he said, crossing over to the baronet and speaking in a half-whisper, "because i really did not know where else to take him. for some reason he appears to be almost execrated just now. his house in kilburn will be marked and watched, i am afraid. and in that respect i daresay we are all in the same boat." "he appears to be ill," said hampden, rising. "i will----" "please don't," interrupted tirrel decisively. "any kind of attention distresses him, i find. it is a collapse. he has been shaken for some time past, and the attack to-night was the climax. his nerve is completely gone." "as far as his safety is concerned," suggested the host with an expression of compassion, "i think that we can ensure that here against any irregular force. and certainly it would be the last place in which they would think of looking for him. for the night, at least, you had better leave him in our charge." "thank you," said tirrel; "it is very good of you. i will. of course," he added, as he turned away, "we shall have to assume his acquiescence to any arrangement we may reach. unofficially i can guarantee it." they seated themselves round the large table, sir john and his private secretary occupying one end, the plenipotentiaries ranging around the other three sides. as they took their places mr drugget and another member were announced. they did not appear to have been expected, but they found seats among their colleagues. the home secretary sat apart, cowering in an easy-chair, and stretching out his hands timorously from time to time to meet the radiant heat of the great oil stove. the composition of the meeting was not quite the same as that of the deputation which had paved the way to it earlier in the day. it was more official, for the action of the deputation had forced the hand of the cabinet--to the relief of the majority of that body, it was whispered. but there was one notable minister absent. "i represent the premier," announced mr drugget, rising. "if his attendance in person can be dispensed with, he begged to be excused." "i offer no objection," replied hampden. "if in the exceptional circumstances the prime minister should desire to see me privately, i will meet him elsewhere." "the premier is indisposed, i regret to say." "in that case i would wait upon him at his own house, should he desire it," proffered sir john. "i will convey to him your offer," replied mr drugget. "in the meantime i am authorised to subscribe mr strummery's acquiescence to the terms, subject to one modification." "one word first, please," interposed sir john. "i must repeat what i had already said before you arrived. i am unable just now to consult my colleagues, in concert with whom the memorandum was drafted. if it is necessary to refer back on any important detail----" mr tubes half rose from his chair with a pitiable look of terror in his eyes and gave a low cry as a turbulent murmur from some distant street reached his ears. "it's all right, comrade," said cecil brown reassuringly. "you're safe enough here, jim." "aye, aye," whispered tubes fearfully; "but did you hear that shout?--'to the lamp-post!' they fling it at me from every crowd. it haunts me. that is what i--i--yes, that is what i fear." "no good arguing," muttered tirrel across the table. "leave him to himself; there's nothing else to be done just now." "i can at least express the premier's views" resumed mr drugget. "he would prefer the bill for amending the franchise to be brought forward as a private bill by a member of the opposition rather than make it a government measure. the government would grant special facilities, and not oppose it. the premier would advise a dissolution immediately the bill passed." there was a knock at the library door. the secretary attended to it with easy discretion, and for a minute was engaged in conversation with some one beyond. sir john looked at mr drugget in some amazement, and most of the members of his own party regarded their leader's proxy with blank surprise. "i was hardly prepared for so fundamental an objection being raised at this hour," said the baronet. "it amounts, of course, to bringing an alternative proposal forward." "the result would be the same; i submit that it is scarcely more than a matter of detail." "then why press it?" mr drugget's expression seemed to convey the suggestion that he had no personal wishes at all in the matter, but felt obliged to make the best case he could for his chief. "the premier not unnaturally desires that the real authors of so retrogressive and tyrannical an act should be saddled with the nominal as well as the actual responsibility," he replied. "possibly he fears that in some remote future the circumstances will be forgotten, and his name be handed down as that of a traitor." the private secretary took the opportunity of the sympathetic murmur which this attitude evoked to exchange a sentence with sir john. then he turned to the door and beckoned to the man who stood outside. "i must ask your indulgence towards a short interruption, gentlemen," said hampden, as a cyclist, in grey uniform, entered and handed him a despatch. "it is possible that some of my friends may even now be on their way to join me." they all regarded the messenger with a momentary curious interest; all except two among them. over mr drugget and the comrade who had arrived with him the incident seemed to exercise an absorbing fascination. after a single, it almost seemed a startled, glance at the soldier-cyclist, their eyes met in a mutual impulse, and then instantly turned again to fix on hampden's face half-stealthily, but as tensely as though they would tear the secret from behind his unemotional expression. "it's all very well, drugget--in justice," anxiously murmured mr vossit across the table, "but, as things are, we've got to be quick, and accept considerably less than justice. for heaven's sake, don't prolong the agony, after to-day's experience." "if you hang on to that," warned mr guppling, "you will only end in putting off till to-morrow not a whit better terms than you can make to-night." "wait, wait, wait, wait, wait," muttered mr drugget impatiently, not withdrawing his fascinated gaze. in the silence of the room they again heard the crescive ululation of the street, distant still, but sounding louder than before to their strained imagination, and terrible in its suggestion of overwhelming, unappeasable menace. mr tubes started uneasily in his chair. "will _that_ wait?" demanded mr guppling with some passion. "a very little time longer; your coming here to-night has thrown us out," pleaded mr drugget's companion, in a more conciliatory whisper. "to-morrow morning, a few hours, an hour--perhaps even----" the messenger had been dismissed without an answer. looking up with sudden directness, hampden caught one man's eyes fixed on him with a furtive intensity that betrayed his hopes and fears. "the attack on hanwood has completely failed," quietly announced sir john, holding the startled gaze relentlessly. "the guns have been captured and brought in. the troops have been surrounded, disarmed, and dispersed, with the exception of those of the higher rank who are detained. there have, unfortunately, been casualties on both sides." "i--i--i--why do you address yourself to me, sir john?" stammered the disconcerted man, turning very white, and exhibiting every painful sign of guilt and apprehension. "are we to understand that your property at hanwood has been attacked by an armed force of regulars?" asked one with sincere incredulity, as hampden remained silent. "it is unhappily true." "and defended by an evidently superior force of armed men, unlawfully assembled there," retorted a militant comrade defiantly. "in view of the strained position to which the circumstances must give rise, i will take the responsibility of withdrawing the premier's one objection to the memorandum as it stands," announced mr drugget with dry lips. "in that case i will ask mr lloyd to read the terms of the agreement formally before we append our signatures," said hampden, without offering any further comment. a printed copy of the articles was passed to each delegate; on the table before sir john lay the engrossed form in duplicate. from one of these the secretary proceeded to read the terms of the agreement, which was frankly recognised on both sides as the death-warrant of socialistic ascendency in england. from the government the league required only one thing: the immediate passing of "a bill to amend the qualifications of voters in parliamentary elections," to be followed by a dissolution and its inevitable consequence, a general election. but of the result of that election no one need cherish any illusions, for it would be decided according to the new qualification; and shorn of its parliamentary phraseology, the new act was to sweep away the existing adult suffrage, and, broadly, substitute for it a £ occupation qualification, with, still worse, a plurality of voting power in multiples of £ , according to the rateable value of the premises occupied. it was wholly immoral according to the democratic tendency of the preceding age, but it was wholly necessary according to the situation which had resulted from it. a genial autocrat, professor, and poet has set forth in one of his works, for the sake of the warning it conveys, the story of a little boy who, on coming into the possession of a nice silver watch, and examining it closely, discovered among the works "a confounded little _hair_ entangled round the balance-wheel." of course his first care was to remove this palpable obstruction, with the result that the watch accomplished the work of twenty-four hours in an insignificant fraction of a second, and then refused to have anything more to do with practical chronometry. on coming into possession of their new toy the socialists had discovered many "confounded little _hairs_" wrapped away among the works of that elaborate piece of machinery, the english constitution, all obviously impeding its free working. recklessly, even gaily, they had pulled them out one after another, cut them across the middle and left pieces hanging if they could not find the ends, dragged out lengths anyhow. for a time the effect had been dazzlingly pyro-technical when seen from below. the constitution had gone very, very, very fast; it had covered centuries in a few years; and as it went it got faster. but unfortunately it had stopped suddenly. and every one saw that while it remained in the hands of its nominal masters it would never go again. had the times been less critical some other means of effecting the same end might have been found. but although it was scarcely more than whispered yet, for four hours england had been involved in actual, deadly, civil war; and water once spilled is hard to gather up. under ordinary circumstances the expedient of disenfranchising a party would have proved unpopular even with the bitterest among that party's enemies. as it was, it was simply accepted as the necessary counterstroke to their own policy of aggression. "if the 'most business-like government of modern times' can instance a single business where eleven shareholders to the amount of a sovereign apiece can come in and outvote ten shareholders who have each a stake of a thousand pounds in the concern, and then proceed to wreck it," was a remark typical of the view people took, "then--why, then the record of the government will lose its distinction as an absolutely unique blend of fatuous imbecility and ramping injustice, that's all." so there was to be a general election very soon in which the issue would lie between the league party and the shattered, shipwrecked administration that had no leaders, no coherence, and scarcely a name to rally to. it was estimated that labour of one complexion or another might hold between thirty and forty seats, if the working classes cared to support representatives after the payment of members act had been repealed. it was computed that in more than four hundred constituencies league candidates would be returned unopposed. there could be no denying that our countrymen of (_circa_) lived through an interesting period of their country's history. the league party would go to the poll with no pledges, and their policy for the present was summed up in the single phrase, "as in ." it was to be the cleanest of slates. "how soon can the bill become law under the most expeditious handling?" hampden had asked of those who formed the earlier deputation, and the answer had been, "three days!" solely from the "business" point of view it was magnificent, and it was certainly convenient as matters stood. in three more days a general election could be in full swing, waged, in the emergency, on the existing register supplemented by the books of the local authorities and the voters' receipts for rates or taxes. in a single day it could be over. within a week england would have experienced a change in her affairs as far-reaching as the conquest or the restoration. mr lloyd, to return to sir john hampden's library, read the first article to the breathless assembly. it had been tacitly agreed that the time had come when the conditions must be accepted without discussion; but when the fateful clause was finished a deep groan, not in empty hostile demonstration, but irresistibly torn from the unfeigned depths of their emotion, escaped many of the ministers. boabdil el chico's sigh, when he reached the point where the towers and minarets of granada were lost to him for ever, was not more sincere or heart-racked. even sir john could not have claimed that he felt unmoved. the secretary read on. the league entered into certain undertakings. it guaranteed that the normal conditions of the home coal trade should be restored, and the men called back to the pits by an immediate order for ten million tons. temporary relief work of various kinds would be instituted at once to meet the distress. the unemployed grant would be reopened for nine weeks to carry over the winter; for three weeks fully, for three weeks at the rate of two-thirds, and for the last period reduced to one-third. the colliers in london would be carried back to their own districts as fast as the railways could get out the trains. there were many other points of detail, and they all had a common aim--the obliteration of the immediate past and the restoration of that public confidence which in a country possessing natural resources is the foundation stone of national prosperity. already there were facts for the present and portents for the future. men of influence and position, who had been driven out of england by the terrible atmosphere of political squalor cast over an empire by a government that had learned to think municipally, were even now beginning to return; and that most responsive seismograph which faithfully reflected every change in the world's condition for good or ill predicted better times. in other words, consols had risen in three months from - / to and the bulk of the buying was said to be for investment. "if it is not trenching on the forbidden ground, i should like to ask for an assurance on one point," said a member with a dash of acrimony. the secretary had finished his task, and then for perhaps ten seconds they had sat in silence, speculating half unconsciously upon the future, as each dimly saw it, that lay beyond the momentous step they were about to take. "i refer to the question of coal export. it is, of course, a more important outlet than the domestic home consumption. is the league in a position to guarantee that the taxation will be rescinded without delay?" "i think it would be a very unwarrantable presumption for us to assume that any one outside the governments of the countries interested possesses that influence, and that it would be a very undesirable, a very undiplomatic, proceeding to hint at the possibility of any such concession in the document i have before me," replied sir john suavely. "beyond that, i would add that it will be manifestly to the interest of the next government to restore the bulk of foreign trade to a normal level; and that should the league party find itself in office, it will certainly make representations through the usual channels." "quite like old times," said mr soans dryly. "i suppose that we shall have to be content with that. let us hope that it will prove a true saying that those who hide can find." he picked up a pen as he finished speaking, signed the paper that had been passed to him first by reason of his position at the table, and thrust it vehemently from him to his neighbour. mr chadwing held up his pen to the light to make sure that it contained no obstruction on so important an occasion, signed his name with clerkly precision, and then carefully wiped his pen on the lining of his coat. cecil brown looked down with the faint smile that covered his saddest moments as he added the slender strokes of his signature, and tirrel dashed off the ink-laden characters of his with tightened lips and a sombre frown. consciously or unconsciously every man betrayed some touch of character in that act. mr vossit made a wry grimace as he passed the paper on; and mr guppling, with an eye on a possible line in fame's calendar, snapped his traitorous pen in two and cast the pieces dramatically to the ground. when the last signature had been written, some of the members stood up to take their leave at once, but hampden and tirrel made a simultaneous motion to detain them. the master of the house gave way to his guest. "i am not up to cry over spilled milk," said tirrel with his customary bluntness. "what is done, is done. we shall carry out the terms, sir john hampden, and you and your party will be in office in a week. but you are not merely taking over the administration of a constitution: you are taking over a defeated country. i ask you, as the head of your party and the future premier, to do one thing, and i ask it entirely on my own initiative, and without the suggestion or even the knowledge of my friends or colleagues. let your first act be to publish a general amnesty. it does not touch me.... but there have been things on both sides. you may perhaps know my views; i would have crushed your league by strong means when it was possible if i had had my way. none the less, there is not the most shadowy charge that could hang over me to-day, and for that reason it is permissible for me to put in this petition. the nation is shattered, torn, helpless. do not look too closely into the past ... pacify." "the question has not arisen between my associates and myself, but i do not imagine that we should hold conflicting views, and i may say that for my part i enter cordially into the spirit of the suggestion," replied hampden frankly. "anything irregular that could come within the meaning of political action in its widest sense i should be favourable towards making the object of a general pardon.... while we are together, i will go a step further, and on this point i have the expressed agreement of my friends. you, sir, have assumed without any reserve that our party will be returned to office. i accept that assumption. you have also compared our work to the pacification of a conquered nation. that also may be largely admitted. we shall be less a political party returned to power by the even chances of a keenly-fought election, and checked by an alert opposition, than a social autocracy imposing our wishes--as we believe for the public good--on the country. for twenty years, as i forecast the future, there will be no effective opposition. yet a great deal of our work will have reference to the class whom the opposition would represent, the class upon whose wise and statesmanlike pacification the tranquillity, and largely the prosperity, of the country, will depend." some few began to catch the drift of hampden's meaning, and those who did all glanced instinctively towards cecil brown. "you have used, and i have accepted, the comparison of a conquered nation," continued sir john. "when a country has been forcibly occupied the work of pacification is one of the first taken in hand by a prudent conqueror. there is usually a board or committee of conciliation, and in that body are to be found some of the foremost of those who resisted invasion while resistance seemed availing.... it would be analogous to that, in my opinion, if a supporter of the present government was offered and accepted a position in the next. there would be no suggestion--there would be no possibility--of his being in accord with the cabinet in its general policy. he would be there as an expert to render service to both parties in the work of healing the scars of conflict. if the proposal appears to be exceptional and the position untenable at first sight, it is only because the prosaic parliamentary machinery of normal times has by a miracle been preserved into times that are abnormal." there was an infection of low laughter, amused, sardonic, some good-natured and a little ill-natured, and a few cries of "cecil brown!" in a subdued key. "the moment seemed a favourable one for laying the proposal before the members of the government," went on hampden, unmoved, "though, of course, i do not expect an answer now. on the assumption that we are returned to power, it is our intention to create a new department to exist as long as the conditions require it, and certainly as long as the next parliament. its work will be largely conciliation, and it will deal with the disorganisation of labour. in the same confidential spirit with which you have spoken of the future without reserve, i may say that should i be called upon to form a ministry, i shall--and i have the definite acquiescence of my colleagues--offer the presidentship of the board to mr cecil brown ... the office of parliamentary secretary to mr tirrel." if hampden had wished to surprise, he certainly succeeded. the open laugh that greeted the first name was cut off as suddenly and completely as the light is cut off when the gas-tap is turned, by the gasp that the second name evoked. to many among them the offer had been the merest party move; cecil brown's name a foregone conclusion. the addition of tirrel, whose rather brilliant qualities and quite fantastic sense of honour they were prone to lose sight of behind his vehement battle-front, was stupefying. it was tirrel who was the first to break the silence of astonishment on this occasion, not even waiting, with characteristic impetuousness, for his chief-designate to offer an opinion. "you say that you do not want an answer now, sir john, but you may have it, as far as i am concerned," he cried, with the defiant air that marked his controversial passages. "from any other man of your party the proposal would have been an insult; from you it is an amiable mistake. _you_ do not think that you can buy us with the bribe of office, but you think that there is no further party work for us to do: that socialism in england to-day is dead. i tell you, sir john hampden, with the absolute conviction of an inspired truth, that it will triumph yet. you will not see it; i may not see it, but it is more likely that the hand of time itself should fail than that the ideals to which we cling should cease to draw men on. we, who are the earliest pioneers of that untrodden path, have made many mistakes; we are paying for them now; but we have learned. some of our mistakes have brought want and suffering to thousands of your class, but for hundreds of years your mistakes have been bringing starvation and misery to millions of our class. from your presence we go down again into the weary years of bondage, to work silently and unmarked among those depths of human misery from which our charter springs. i warn you, sir john hampden--for i know that the warning will be dead and forgotten before the year is out--that our reign will come again; and when the star of a new and purified socialism arises once more on a prepared and receptive world the very forces of nature would not be strong enough to arrest its triumphant course." "hear! hear!" said mr vossit perfunctorily, as he looked round solicitously for his hat. "well, i suppose we may as well be going." cecil brown recalled his wistful smile from the contemplation of a future chequered with many scenes of light and shade. "i thank you, sir john," he replied with a look of friendly understanding, "but i also must go down with my own party." "i hope that the decision in neither case will be irrevocable," said hampden with regret, but as he spoke he knew that the hope was vain. they had already begun to file out of the room, with a touch here and there of that air of constraint that the party had never been quite able to shake off on ceremonial occasions. they left mr tubes cowering before the stove, and raising his head nervously from time to time to listen to the noises of the street. mr guppling, determined that his claims should not escape the eye of fame, paused at the door. "when we leave this room, john hampden," he proclaimed in a loud and impressive voice, and throwing out his hand with an appropriate gesture, "we leave liberty behind us, bound, gagged, and helpless, on the floor!" "very true, mr guppling," replied sir john good-humouredly. "we will devote our first efforts to releasing her." mr guppling smiled a bitter, cutting smile, and left the shaft to rankle. it was not until he was out in the street that a sense of the possible ambiguity of his unfortunate remark overwhelmed him with disgust. chapter xxii "poor england." with the account of the signing of the dissolution terms, and a brief reference to the sweeping victory of the league party--already foreshadowed, indeed, to the point of the inevitable--the unknown chronicler, whose version of the social war this narrative has followed, brings his annals to a close. that war being finished, and by the repudiation of their socialistic mentors on the part of a large section of the working classes, finished by more than a mere paper treaty, the worthy scribe announces with praiseworthy restraint that there is no more to be said. "these men," he declares, in the quaint and archaic language of the past,--and he might surely have added "these women" also--"came not reluctantly, but in no wise ambitiously, out of the business of their own private lives to serve their country as they deemed; and that being accomplished to a successful end, would have returned, nothing loth, to more obscure affairs, having sought no personal gain beyond that which grew from public security, an equitable burden of citizenship, and a recovered pride among the nations. albeit some must needs remain to carry on the work." even the not unimportant detail of who remained to carry on the work, and in what capacities, is not recorded, but the distribution of rewards and penalties, on the lines of strict poetic justice, may be safely left to the individual reader's sympathies, with the definite assurance that everything happened exactly as he would have it. at the length of three times as much space as would have sufficed to dispose of these points once and for all, this superexact historian goes on to set out his reasons for not doing so. he claims, in short, that his object was to portray the course of the social war, not to recount the adventures of mere individuals; and with the suggestion of a wink between his pen and paper that may raise a doubt whether he, on his side, might not be endowed with the power of casting a critical eye upon other periods than his own, he indulges in a little pleasantry at the expense of writers who, under the pretext of developing their hero's character, begin with his parent's childhood, and continue to the time of his grandchildren's youth. for himself, he asserts that nothing apart from the course of the social war, its rise and progress, has been allowed to intrude, and that ended, and their work accomplished, its champions are rather heroically treated, very much as the arabian magician's army was disposed of until it was required again, and to all intents and purposes turned into stone just where they stood. but from other sources it is possible to glean a little here and there of the course of subsequent events. to this patchwork record the _minneapolis journal_ contributes a cartoon laden with the american satirist's invariable wealth of detail. a very emaciated john bull, stretched on his bed, is just struggling back to consciousness and life. on a table by his side stands a bottle labelled "hampden's u. l. mixture," to which he owes recovery. on the walls one sees various maps which depict a remarkably little england indeed. some sagacious economist, in search of a strip of canvas with which to hold together a broken model of a black man, has torn off the greater part of south africa for the purpose. over india a spider has been left to spin a web so that scarcely any of the empire is now to be seen. upper egypt is lost behind a squab of ink which an irresponsible urchin has mischievously taken the opportunity to fling. every colony and possession shows signs of some ill-usage. "say, john," "uncle sam," who has looked in, is represented as saying, "you've had a bad touch of the 'sleeping sickness.' you'd better take things easy for a spell to recuperate. i'll keep an eye on your house while you go to the seashore." that was to be england's proud destiny for the next few years--to take things easy and recuperate! there is nothing else for the pale and shaken convalescent to do; but the man who has delighted in his strength feels his heart and soul rebel against the necessity. fortunate for england that she had good friends in that direful hour. the united states, sinking those small rivalries over which cousins may strive even noisily at times in amiable contention, stretched a hand across the waters and astonished europe by the message, "who strikes england wantonly, strikes me": a sentiment driven home by the diplomatic hint that for the time being the monroe doctrine was suspended west of suez. france--france who had been so chivalrously true to her own ally in that stricken giant's day of incredible humiliation--looked across the sleeve with troubled, anxious eyes, and whispered words of sympathy and hope. gently, very tactfully, she offered friendship with both hands, without a tinge of the patronage or protection that she could extend; and by the living example of her own tempestuous past and gallant recovery from every blow, pointed the way to power and self-respect. japan, whose treaty had been thrown unceremoniously back to her many years before, now drew near again with the cheerful smile that is so mild in peace, so terrible in war. prefacing that her own enviable position was entirely due to the enlightened virtues of her emperor, she now proposed another compact on broad and generous lines, by which england--a "high contracting power," as she was still magnanimously described--was spared the most fruitful cause for anxiety in the east. "you didn't mind allying with us when you were at the head of the nations," said japan. "we come to you--now. besides, all very good business for us in the end. you build up again all right, no time." japan's authority to speak on the subject of "building up" was not to be disputed. the nations had forgotten the time, scarcely a quarter of a century before, when they had been amused by "little japan's" progressive ambitions. and when japan had taken over the "awakening" arrangements of a sister-nation on terms that gave her fifty million potential warriors to draw upon and train (warriors whom one of england's most revered generals had characterised as "easily led; easily fed; fearless of death"), non-amusement in some quarters gave way to positive trepidation. the sympathetic nations spoke together, and agreed that something must be done to give "poor england" another chance; as, in the world of commerce, friendly rivals will often gather round the man who has fallen on evil days to set him on his feet again. so england was to have a fair field and liberty to work out her own salvation. but she was not to wake up and find that it had all been a hideous dream. egypt had been put back to the time of the khalifa. india had lost sixty years of pacification and progress. ireland was a republic, at least in name, and depending largely on commemoration issues of postage stamps for a revenue. south africa was for the south africans. there were many other interesting items, but these were, as it might be expressed to a nation of shopkeepers, the leading lines. if the worst abroad was bad enough, there was one encouraging feature at home. with the election of the new government industries began to revive, trade to improve, the money market to throw off its depression, and the natural demand for labour to increase: not gradually, but instantly, phenomenally. it was as though a dam across some great river had been removed, and with the impetus every sluggish little tributary was quickened and drawn on in new and sparkling animation. it was not necessary to argue upon it from a party point of view; it was a concrete fact that every one admitted. there was only one explanation, and it met the eye at every turn. capital reappeared, and money began to circulate freely again. why? there was security. it was not the millennium; it was the year --, and a "capitalistic" government was in office; but the "masses" discovered that they were certainly not worse off than before. working men now wore, it is true, a little less of the air of being so many presidents of south american republics when they walked about the streets; but that style had never really suited them, and they soon got out of it. the men who had come into power were not of the class who oppress. the strife of the past was being forgotten; its lessons were remembered. what was good and practical of socialistic legislation was retained. so it came about that the vanquished gained more by defeat than they would have done by victory. it was undeniable that, in common with mankind at large, they still from time to time experienced pain, sickness, disappointment, hardship, and general adversity. those who were employed by gentlemen were treated as gentlemen treat their work-people; those who were so unfortunate as to be in the service of employers who had no claim to that title continued to be treated as cads and despots treat their employés. those among them who were gentlemen themselves extended a courteous spirit towards their masters, and those among them who were the reverse continued to act towards employers and the world around as churls and blusterers act, and so the compensating balance of nature was more or less harmoniously preserved. and what of the future? will the nation that was so sharply taught dread the fire like the burned child, or return to the flame as the scorched moth does? alas, the memory of a people is short, even as the wisdom of a proverb is conflictingly two-edged. or, if the warning fades and the necessity grows large again, will there be found another stobalt to respond to the call? "for those whom heaven afflicts there is a chance," contributes the sage of another land; "but they who persistently work out their own undoing are indeed hopeless." or may it be that the faith of tirrel will be justified, and that in the process of time there will emerge from man's ceaseless groping after perfection a new wisdom, under whose yet undreamt-of scheme and dispensation all men will be content and reconciled? the philosopher shakes his head weightily and remains silent--thereby adding to his reputation. the prophets prophesy; the old men dream dreams and the young men see visions, and the dispassionate speculate. on all sides there is a multitude of the counsel in which, as we must believe, lies wisdom. it is an interesting situation, and as it can only be definitely settled beyond the dim vista of future centuries, the pity is that we shall never know. the end. nelson library _uniform with this volume._ . the marriage of william ashe. . the intrusions of peggy. . the fortune of christina m'nab. . the battle of the strong. . robert elsmere. . no. john street. . quisanté. . incomparable bellairs. . history of david grieve. . the king's mirror. . john charity. . clementina. . if youth but knew. . the american prisoner. . his grace. . the hosts of the lord. . the god in the car. . the lady of the barge. . the odd women. . matthew austin. . the translation of a savage. . the octopus. . white fang. . the princess passes. . sir john constantine. . the man from america. . a lame dog's diary. . the recipe for diamonds. . woodside farm. . monsieur beaucaire, and the beautiful lady. . the pit. . an adventurer of the north. . the wages of sin. . lady audley's secret. . eight days. . owd bob. . the duenna of a genius. . his honor and a lady. . marcella. . selah harrison. . the house with the green shutters. . mrs galer's business. . old gorgon graham. . major vigoureux. . the gateless barrier. . kipps. . moonfleet. . springtime. . french nan. . the food of the gods. . raffles. . cynthia's way. . clarissa furiosa. . love and mr lewisham. . the lonely lady of grosvenor square. . thompson's progress. . the primrose path. . lady rose's daughter. . romance. . the war of the carolinas. . katharine frensham. . the professor on the case. . love and the soul-hunters. proofreading team. the sleeper awakes a revised edition of "when the sleeper wakes" h.g. wells preface to the new edition _when the sleeper wakes_, whose title i have now altered to _the sleeper awakes_, was first published as a book in after a serial appearance in the _graphic_ and one or two american and colonial periodicals. it is one of the most ambitious and least satisfactory of my books, and i have taken the opportunity afforded by this reprinting to make a number of excisions and alterations. like most of my earlier work, it was written under considerable pressure; there are marks of haste not only in the writing of the latter part, but in the very construction of the story. except for certain streaks of a slovenliness which seems to be an almost unavoidable defect in me, there is little to be ashamed of in the writing of the opening portion; but it will be fairly manifest to the critic that instead of being put aside and thought over through a leisurely interlude, the ill-conceived latter part was pushed to its end. i was at that time overworked, and badly in need of a holiday. in addition to various necessary journalistic tasks, i had in hand another book, _love and mr. lewisham_, which had taken a very much stronger hold upon my affections than this present story. my circumstances demanded that one or other should be finished before i took any rest, and so i wound up the sleeper sufficiently to make it a marketable work, hoping to be able to revise it before the book printers at any rate got hold of it. but fortune was against me. i came back to england from italy only to fall dangerously ill, and i still remember the impotent rage and strain of my attempt to put some sort of finish to my story of mr. lewisham, with my temperature at a hundred and two. i couldn't endure the thought of leaving that book a fragment. i did afterwards contrive to save it from the consequences of that febrile spurt--_love and mr. lewisham_ is indeed one of my most carefully balanced books--but the sleeper escaped me. it is twelve years now since the sleeper was written, and that young man of thirty-one is already too remote for me to attempt any very drastic reconstruction of his work. i have played now merely the part of an editorial elder brother: cut out relentlessly a number of long tiresome passages that showed all too plainly the fagged, toiling brain, the heavy sluggish _driven_ pen, and straightened out certain indecisions at the end. except for that, i have done no more than hack here and there at clumsy phrases and repetitions. the worst thing in the earlier version, and the thing that rankled most in my mind, was the treatment of the relations of helen wotton and graham. haste in art is almost always vulgarisation, and i slipped into the obvious vulgarity of making what the newspaper syndicates call a "love interest" out of helen. there was even a clumsy intimation that instead of going up in the flying-machine to fight, graham might have given in to ostrog, and married helen. i have now removed the suggestion of these uncanny connubialities. not the slightest intimation of any sexual interest could in truth have arisen between these two. they loved and kissed one another, but as a girl and her heroic grandfather might love, and in a crisis kiss. i have found it possible, without any very serious disarrangement, to clear all that objectionable stuff out of the story, and so a little ease my conscience on the score of this ungainly lapse. i have also, with a few strokes of the pen, eliminated certain dishonest and regrettable suggestions that the people beat ostrog. my graham dies, as all his kind must die, with no certainty of either victory or defeat. who will win--ostrog or the people? a thousand years hence that will still be just the open question we leave to-day. h.g. wells. contents i. insomnia ii. the trance iii. the awakening iv. the sound of a tumult v. the moving ways vi. the hall of the atlas vii. in the silent rooms viii. the roof spaces ix. the people march x. the battle of the darkness xi. the old man who knew everything xii. ostrog xiii. the end of the old order xiv. from the crow's nest xv. prominent people xvi. the monoplane xvii. three days xviii. graham remembers xix. ostrog's point of view xx. in the city ways xxi. the under-side xxii. the struggle in the council house xxiii. graham speaks his word xxiv. while the aeroplanes were coming xxv. the coming of the aeroplanes the sleeper awakes chapter i insomnia one afternoon, at low water, mr. isbister, a young artist lodging at boscastle, walked from that place to the picturesque cove of pentargen, desiring to examine the caves there. halfway down the precipitous path to the pentargen beach he came suddenly upon a man sitting in an attitude of profound distress beneath a projecting mass of rock. the hands of this man hung limply over his knees, his eyes were red and staring before him, and his face was wet with tears. he glanced round at isbister's footfall. both men were disconcerted, isbister the more so, and, to override the awkwardness of his involuntary pause, he remarked, with an air of mature conviction, that the weather was hot for the time of year. "very," answered the stranger shortly, hesitated a second, and added in a colourless tone, "i can't sleep." isbister stopped abruptly. "no?" was all he said, but his bearing conveyed his helpful impulse. "it may sound incredible," said the stranger, turning weary eyes to isbister's face and emphasizing his words with a languid hand, "but i have had no sleep--no sleep at all for six nights." "had advice?" "yes. bad advice for the most part. drugs. my nervous system.... they are all very well for the run of people. it's hard to explain. i dare not take ... sufficiently powerful drugs." "that makes it difficult," said isbister. he stood helplessly in the narrow path, perplexed what to do. clearly the man wanted to talk. an idea natural enough under the circumstances, prompted him to keep the conversation going. "i've never suffered from sleeplessness myself," he said in a tone of commonplace gossip, "but in those cases i have known, people have usually found something--" "i dare make no experiments." he spoke wearily. he gave a gesture of rejection, and for a space both men were silent. "exercise?" suggested isbister diffidently, with a glance from his interlocutor's face of wretchedness to the touring costume he wore. "that is what i have tried. unwisely perhaps. i have followed the coast, day after day--from new quay. it has only added muscular fatigue to the mental. the cause of this unrest was overwork--trouble. there was something--" he stopped as if from sheer fatigue. he rubbed his forehead with a lean hand. he resumed speech like one who talks to himself. "i am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in which i have no part. i am wifeless--childless--who is it speaks of the childless as the dead twigs on the tree of life? i am wifeless, childless--i could find no duty to do. no desire even in my heart. one thing at last i set myself to do. "i said, i _will_ do this, and to do it, to overcome the inertia of this dull body, i resorted to drugs. great god, i've had enough of drugs! i don't know if _you_ feel the heavy inconvenience of the body, its exasperating demand of time from the mind--time--life! live! we only live in patches. we have to eat, and then comes the dull digestive complacencies--or irritations. we have to take the air or else our thoughts grow sluggish, stupid, run into gulfs and blind alleys. a thousand distractions arise from within and without, and then comes drowsiness and sleep. men seem to live for sleep. how little of a man's day is his own--even at the best! and then come those false friends, those thug helpers, the alkaloids that stifle natural fatigue and kill rest--black coffee, cocaine--" "i see," said isbister. "i did my work," said the sleepless man with a querulous intonation. "and this is the price?" "yes." for a little while the two remained without speaking. "you cannot imagine the craving for rest that i feel--a hunger and thirst. for six long days, since my work was done, my mind has been a whirlpool, swift, unprogressive and incessant, a torrent of thoughts leading nowhere, spinning round swift and steady--" he paused. "towards the gulf." "you must sleep," said isbister decisively, and with an air of a remedy discovered. "certainly you must sleep." "my mind is perfectly lucid. it was never clearer. but i know i am drawing towards the vortex. presently--" "yes?" "you have seen things go down an eddy? out of the light of the day, out of this sweet world of sanity--down--" "but," expostulated isbister. the man threw out a hand towards him, and his eyes were wild, and his voice suddenly high. "i shall kill myself. if in no other way--at the foot of yonder dark precipice there, where the waves are green, and the white surge lifts and falls, and that little thread of water trembles down. there at any rate is ... sleep." "that's unreasonable," said isbister, startled at the man's hysterical gust of emotion. "drugs are better than that." "there at any rate is sleep," repeated the stranger, not heeding him. isbister looked at him. "it's not a cert, you know," he remarked. "there's a cliff like that at lulworth cove--as high, anyhow--and a little girl fell from top to bottom. and lives to-day--sound and well." "but those rocks there?" "one might lie on them rather dismally through a cold night, broken bones grating as one shivered, chill water splashing over you. eh?" their eyes met. "sorry to upset your ideals," said isbister with a sense of devil-may-careish brilliance. "but a suicide over that cliff (or any cliff for the matter of that), really, as an artist--" he laughed. "it's so damned amateurish." "but the other thing," said the sleepless man irritably, "the other thing. no man can keep sane if night after night--" "have you been walking along this coast alone?" "yes." "silly sort of thing to do. if you'll excuse my saying so. alone! as you say; body fag is no cure for brain fag. who told you to? no wonder; walking! and the sun on your head, heat, fag, solitude, all the day long, and then, i suppose, you go to bed and try very hard--eh?" isbister stopped short and looked at the sufferer doubtfully. "look at these rocks!" cried the seated man with a sudden force of gesture. "look at that sea that has shone and quivered there for ever! see the white spume rush into darkness under that great cliff. and this blue vault, with the blinding sun pouring from the dome of it. it is your world. you accept it, you rejoice in it. it warms and supports and delights you. and for me--" he turned his head and showed a ghastly face, bloodshot pallid eyes and bloodless lips. he spoke almost in a whisper. "it is the garment of my misery. the whole world ... is the garment of my misery." isbister looked at all the wild beauty of the sunlit cliffs about them and back to that face of despair. for a moment he was silent. he started, and made a gesture of impatient rejection. "you get a night's sleep," he said, "and you won't see much misery out here. take my word for it." he was quite sure now that this was a providential encounter. only half an hour ago he had been feeling horribly bored. here was employment the bare thought of which, was righteous self-applause. he took possession forthwith. the first need of this exhausted being was companionship. he flung himself down on the steeply sloping turf beside the motionless seated figure, and threw out a skirmishing line of gossip. his hearer lapsed into apathy; he stared dismally seaward, and spoke only in answer to isbister's direct questions--and not to all of those. but he made no objection to this benevolent intrusion upon his despair. he seemed even grateful, and when presently isbister, feeling that his unsupported talk was losing vigour, suggested that they should reascend the steep and return towards boscastle, alleging the view into blackapit, he submitted quietly. halfway up he began talking to himself, and abruptly turned a ghastly face on his helper. "what can be happening?" he asked with a gaunt illustrative hand. "what can be happening? spin, spin, spin, spin. it goes round and round, round and round for evermore." he stood with his hand circling. "it's all right, old chap," said isbister with the air of an old friend. "don't worry yourself. trust to me," the man dropped his hand and turned again. they went over the brow and to the headland beyond penally, with the sleepless man gesticulating ever and again, and speaking fragmentary things concerning his whirling brain. at the headland they stood by the seat that looks into the dark mysteries of blackapit, and then he sat down. isbister had resumed his talk whenever the path had widened sufficiently for them to walk abreast. he was enlarging upon the complex difficulty of making boscastle harbour in bad weather, when suddenly and quite irrelevantly his companion interrupted him again. "my head is not like what it was," he said, gesticulating for want of expressive phrases. "it's not like what it was. there is a sort of oppression, a weight. no--not drowsiness, would god it were! it is like a shadow, a deep shadow falling suddenly and swiftly across something busy. spin, spin into the darkness. the tumult of thought, the confusion, the eddy and eddy. i can't express it. i can hardly keep my mind on it--steadily enough to tell you." he stopped feebly. "don't trouble, old chap," said isbister. "i think i can understand. at any rate, it don't matter very much just at present about telling me, you know." the sleepless man thrust his knuckles into his eyes and rubbed them. isbister talked for awhile while this rubbing continued, and then he had a fresh idea. "come down to my room," he said, "and try a pipe. i can show you some sketches of this blackapit. if you'd care?" the other rose obediently and followed him down the steep. several times isbister heard him stumble as they came down, and his movements were slow and hesitating. "come in with me," said isbister, "and try some cigarettes and the blessed gift of alcohol. if you take alcohol?" the stranger hesitated at the garden gate. he seemed no longer aware of his actions. "i don't drink," he said slowly, coming up the garden path, and after a moment's interval repeated absently, "no--i don't drink. it goes round. spin, it goes--spin--" he stumbled at the doorstep and entered the room with the bearing of one who sees nothing. then he sat down heavily in the easy chair, seemed almost to fall into it. he leant forward with his brows on his hands and became motionless. presently he made a faint sound in his throat. isbister moved about the room with the nervousness of an inexperienced host, making little remarks that scarcely required answering. he crossed the room to his portfolio, placed it on the table and noticed the mantel clock. "i don't know if you'd care to have supper with me," he said with an unlighted cigarette in his hand--his mind troubled with ideas of a furtive administration of chloral. "only cold mutton, you know, but passing sweet. welsh. and a tart, i believe." he repeated this after momentary silence. the seated man made no answer. isbister stopped, match in hand, regarding him. the stillness lengthened. the match went out, the cigarette was put down unlit. the man was certainly very still. isbister took up the portfolio, opened it, put it down, hesitated, seemed about to speak. "perhaps," he whispered doubtfully. presently he glanced at the door and back to the figure. then he stole on tiptoe out of the room, glancing at his companion after each elaborate pace. he closed the door noiselessly. the house door was standing open, and he went out beyond the porch, and stood where the monkshood rose at the corner of the garden bed. from this point he could see the stranger through the open window, still and dim, sitting head on hand. he had not moved. a number of children going along the road stopped and regarded the artist curiously. a boatman exchanged civilities with him. he felt that possibly his circumspect attitude and position looked peculiar and unaccountable. smoking, perhaps, might seem more natural. he drew pipe and pouch from his pocket, filled the pipe slowly. "i wonder," ... he said, with a scarcely perceptible loss of complacency. "at any rate one must give him a chance." he struck a match in the virile way, and proceeded to light his pipe. he heard his landlady behind him, coming with his lamp lit from the kitchen. he turned, gesticulating with his pipe, and stopped her at the door of his sitting-room. he had some difficulty in explaining the situation in whispers, for she did not know he had a visitor. she retreated again with the lamp, still a little mystified to judge from her manner, and he resumed his hovering at the corner of the porch, flushed and less at his ease. long after he had smoked out his pipe, and when the bats were abroad, curiosity dominated his complex hesitations, and he stole back into his darkling sitting-room. he paused in the doorway. the stranger was still in the same attitude, dark against the window. save for the singing of some sailors aboard one of the little slate-carrying ships in the harbour the evening was very still. outside, the spikes of monkshood and delphinium stood erect and motionless against the shadow of the hillside. something flashed into isbister's mind; he started, and leaning over the table, listened. an unpleasant suspicion grew stronger; became conviction. astonishment seized him and became--dread! no sound of breathing came from the seated figure! he crept slowly and noiselessly round the table, pausing twice to listen. at last he could lay his hand on the back of the armchair. he bent down until the two heads were ear to ear. then he bent still lower to look up at his visitor's face. he started violently and uttered an exclamation. the eyes were void spaces of white. he looked again and saw that they were open and with the pupils rolled under the lids. he was afraid. he took the man by the shoulder and shook him. "are you asleep?" he said, with his voice jumping, and again, "are you asleep?" a conviction took possession of his mind that this man was dead. he became active and noisy, strode across the room, blundering against the table as he did so, and rang the bell. "please bring a light at once," he said in the passage. "there is something wrong with my friend." he returned to the motionless seated figure, grasped the shoulder, shook it, shouted. the room was flooded with yellow glare as his landlady entered with the light. his face was white as he turned blinking towards her. "i must fetch a doctor," he said. "it is either death or a fit. is there a doctor in the village? where is a doctor to be found?" chapter ii the trance the state of cataleptic rigour into which this man had fallen, lasted for an unprecedented length of time, and then he passed slowly to the flaccid state, to a lax attitude suggestive of profound repose. then it was his eyes could be closed. he was removed from the hotel to the boscastle surgery, and from the surgery, after some weeks, to london. but he still resisted every attempt at reanimation. after a time, for reasons that will appear later, these attempts were discontinued. for a great space he lay in that strange condition, inert and still--neither dead nor living but, as it were, suspended, hanging midway between nothingness and existence. his was a darkness unbroken by a ray of thought or sensation, a dreamless inanition, a vast space of peace. the tumult of his mind had swelled and risen to an abrupt climax of silence. where was the man? where is any man when insensibility takes hold of him? "it seems only yesterday," said isbister. "i remember it all as though it happened yesterday--clearer, perhaps, than if it had happened yesterday." it was the isbister of the last chapter, but he was no longer a young man. the hair that had been brown and a trifle in excess of the fashionable length, was iron grey and clipped close, and the face that had been pink and white was buff and ruddy. he had a pointed beard shot with grey. he talked to an elderly man who wore a summer suit of drill (the summer of that year was unusually hot). this was warming, a london solicitor and next of kin to graham, the man who had fallen into the trance. and the two men stood side by side in a room in a house in london regarding his recumbent figure. it was a yellow figure lying lax upon a water-bed and clad in a flowing shirt, a figure with a shrunken face and a stubby beard, lean limbs and lank nails, and about it was a case of thin glass. this glass seemed to mark off the sleeper from the reality of life about him, he was a thing apart, a strange, isolated abnormality. the two men stood close to the glass, peering in. "the thing gave me a shock," said isbister. "i feel a queer sort of surprise even now when i think of his white eyes. they were white, you know, rolled up. coming here again brings it all back to me." "have you never seen him since that time?" asked warming. "often wanted to come," said isbister; "but business nowadays is too serious a thing for much holiday keeping. i've been in america most of the time." "if i remember rightly," said warming, "you were an artist?" "was. and then i became a married man. i saw it was all up with black and white, very soon--at least for a mediocrity, and i jumped on to process. those posters on the cliffs at dover are by my people." "good posters," admitted the solicitor, "though i was sorry to see them there." "last as long as the cliffs, if necessary," exclaimed isbister with satisfaction. "the world changes. when he fell asleep, twenty years ago, i was down at boscastle with a box of water-colours and a noble, old-fashioned ambition. i didn't expect that some day my pigments would glorify the whole blessed coast of england, from land's end round again to the lizard. luck comes to a man very often when he's not looking." warming seemed to doubt the quality of the luck. "i just missed seeing you, if i recollect aright." "you came back by the trap that took me to camelford railway station. it was close on the jubilee, victoria's jubilee, because i remember the seats and flags in westminster, and the row with the cabman at chelsea." "the diamond jubilee, it was," said warming; "the second one." "ah, yes! at the proper jubilee--the fifty year affair--i was down at wookey--a boy. i missed all that.... what a fuss we had with him! my landlady wouldn't take him in, wouldn't let him stay--he looked so queer when he was rigid. we had to carry him in a chair up to the hotel. and the boscastle doctor--it wasn't the present chap, but the g.p. before him--was at him until nearly two, with me and the landlord holding lights and so forth." "do you mean--he was stiff and hard?" "stiff!--wherever you bent him he stuck. you might have stood him on his head and he'd have stopped. i never saw such stiffness. of course this"--he indicated the prostrate figure by a movement of his head--"is quite different. and the little doctor--what was his name?" "smithers?" "smithers it was--was quite wrong in trying to fetch him round too soon, according to all accounts. the things he did! even now it makes me feel all--ugh! mustard, snuff, pricking. and one of those beastly little things, not dynamos--" "coils." "yes. you could see his muscles throb and jump, and he twisted about. there were just two flaring yellow candles, and all the shadows were shivering, and the little doctor nervous and putting on side, and _him_--stark and squirming in the most unnatural ways. well, it made me dream." pause. "it's a strange state," said warming. "it's a sort of complete absence," said isbister. "here's the body, empty. not dead a bit, and yet not alive. it's like a seat vacant and marked 'engaged.' no feeling, no digestion, no beating of the heart--not a flutter. _that_ doesn't make me feel as if there was a man present. in a sense it's more dead than death, for these doctors tell me that even the hair has stopped growing. now with the proper dead, the hair will go on growing--" "i know," said warming, with a flash of pain in his expression. they peered through the glass again. graham was indeed in a strange state, in the flaccid phase of a trance, but a trance unprecedented in medical history. trances had lasted for as much as a year before--but at the end of that time it had ever been a waking or a death; sometimes first one and then the other. isbister noted the marks the physicians had made in injecting nourishment, for that had been resorted to to postpone collapse; he pointed them out to warming, who had been trying not to see them. "and while he has been lying here," said isbister, with the zest of a life freely spent, "i have changed my plans in life; married, raised a family, my eldest lad--i hadn't begun to think of sons then--is an american citizen, and looking forward to leaving harvard. there's a touch of grey in my hair. and this man, not a day older nor wiser (practically) than i was in my downy days. it's curious to think of." warming turned. "and i have grown old too. i played cricket with him when i was still only a boy. and he looks a young man still. yellow perhaps. but that _is_ a young man nevertheless." "and there's been the war," said isbister. "from beginning to end." "and these martians." "i've understood," said isbister after a pause, "that he had some moderate property of his own?" "that is so," said warming. he coughed primly. "as it happens--i have charge of it." "ah!" isbister thought, hesitated and spoke: "no doubt--his keep here is not expensive--no doubt it will have improved--accumulated?" "it has. he will wake up very much better off--if he wakes--than when he slept." "as a business man," said isbister, "that thought has naturally been in my mind. i have, indeed, sometimes thought that, speaking commercially, of course, this sleep may be a very good thing for him. that he knows what he is about, so to speak, in being insensible so long. if he had lived straight on--" "i doubt if he would have premeditated as much," said warming. "he was not a far-sighted man. in fact--" "yes?" "we differed on that point. i stood to him somewhat in the relation of a guardian. you have probably seen enough of affairs to recognise that occasionally a certain friction--. but even if that was the case, there is a doubt whether he will ever wake. this sleep exhausts slowly, but it exhausts. apparently he is sliding slowly, very slowly and tediously, down a long slope, if you can understand me?" "it will be a pity to lose his surprise. there's been a lot of change these twenty years. it's rip van winkle come real." "there has been a lot of change certainly," said warming. "and, among other changes, i have changed. i am an old man." isbister hesitated, and then feigned a belated surprise. "i shouldn't have thought it." "i was forty-three when his bankers--you remember you wired to his bankers--sent on to me." "i got their address from the cheque book in his pocket," said isbister. "well, the addition is not difficult," said warming. there was another pause, and then isbister gave way to an unavoidable curiosity. "he may go on for years yet," he said, and had a moment of hesitation. "we have to consider that. his affairs, you know, may fall some day into the hands of--someone else, you know." "that, if you will believe me, mr. isbister, is one of the problems most constantly before my mind. we happen to be--as a matter of fact, there are no very trustworthy connexions of ours. it is a grotesque and unprecedented position." "rather," said isbister. "it seems to me it's a case of some public body, some practically undying guardian. if he really is going on living--as the doctors, some of them, think. as a matter of fact, i have gone to one or two public men about it. but, so far, nothing has been done." "it wouldn't be a bad idea to hand him over to some public body--the british museum trustees, or the royal college of physicians. sounds a bit odd, of course, but the whole situation is odd." "the difficulty is to induce them to take him." "red tape, i suppose?" "partly." pause. "it's a curious business, certainly," said isbister. "and compound interest has a way of mounting up." "it has," said warming. "and now the gold supplies are running short there is a tendency towards ... appreciation." "i've felt that," said isbister with a grimace. "but it makes it better for _him_." "_if_ he wakes." "if he wakes," echoed isbister. "do you notice the pinched-in look of his nose, and the way in which his eyelids sink?" warming looked and thought for a space. "i doubt if he will wake," he said at last. "i never properly understood," said isbister, "what it was brought this on. he told me something about overstudy. i've often been curious." "he was a man of considerable gifts, but spasmodic, emotional. he had grave domestic troubles, divorced his wife, in fact, and it was as a relief from that, i think, that he took up politics of the rabid sort. he was a fanatical radical--a socialist--or typical liberal, as they used to call themselves, of the advanced school. energetic--flighty--undisciplined. overwork upon a controversy did this for him. i remember the pamphlet he wrote--a curious production. wild, whirling stuff. there were one or two prophecies. some of them are already exploded, some of them are established facts. but for the most part to read such a thesis is to realise how full the world is of unanticipated things. he will have much to learn, much to unlearn, when he wakes. if ever a waking comes." "i'd give anything to be there," said isbister, "just to hear what he would say to it all." "so would i," said warming. "aye! so would i," with an old man's sudden turn to self pity. "but i shall never see him wake." he stood looking thoughtfully at the waxen figure. "he will never awake," he said at last. he sighed. "he will never awake again." chapter iii the awakening but warming was wrong in that. an awakening came. what a wonderfully complex thing! this simple seeming unity--the self! who can trace its reintegration as morning after morning we awaken, the flux and confluence of its countless factors interweaving, rebuilding, the dim first stirrings of the soul, the growth and synthesis of the unconscious to the subconscious, the subconscious to dawning consciousness, until at last we recognise ourselves again. and as it happens to most of us after the night's sleep, so it was with graham at the end of his vast slumber. a dim cloud of sensation taking shape, a cloudy dreariness, and he found himself vaguely somewhere, recumbent, faint, but alive. the pilgrimage towards a personal being seemed to traverse vast gulfs, to occupy epochs. gigantic dreams that were terrible realities at the time, left vague perplexing memories, strange creatures, strange scenery, as if from another planet. there was a distinct impression, too, of a momentous conversation, of a name--he could not tell what name--that was subsequently to recur, of some queer long-forgotten sensation of vein and muscle, of a feeling of vast hopeless effort, the effort of a man near drowning in darkness. then came a panorama of dazzling unstable confluent scenes.... graham became aware that his eyes were open and regarding some unfamiliar thing. it was something white, the edge of something, a frame of wood. he moved his head slightly, following the contour of this shape. it went up beyond the top of his eyes. he tried to think where he might be. did it matter, seeing he was so wretched? the colour of his thoughts was a dark depression. he felt the featureless misery of one who wakes towards the hour of dawn. he had an uncertain sense of whispers and footsteps hastily receding. the movement of his head involved a perception of extreme physical weakness. he supposed he was in bed in the hotel at the place in the valley--but he could not recall that white edge. he must have slept. he remembered now that he had wanted to sleep. he recalled the cliff and waterfall again, and then recollected something about talking to a passer-by.... how long had he slept? what was that sound of pattering feet? and that rise and fall, like the murmur of breakers on pebbles? he put out a languid hand to reach his watch from the chair whereon it was his habit to place it, and touched some smooth hard surface like glass. this was so unexpected that it startled him extremely. quite suddenly he rolled over, stared for a moment, and struggled into a sitting position. the effort was unexpectedly difficult, and it left him giddy and weak--and amazed. he rubbed his eyes. the riddle of his surroundings was confusing but his mind was quite clear--evidently his sleep had benefited him. he was not in a bed at all as he understood the word, but lying naked on a very soft and yielding mattress, in a trough of dark glass. the mattress was partly transparent, a fact he observed with a sense of insecurity, and below it was a mirror reflecting him greyly. about his arm--and he saw with a shock that his skin was strangely dry and yellow--was bound a curious apparatus of rubber, bound so cunningly that it seemed to pass into his skin above and below. and this bed was placed in a case of greenish coloured glass (as it seemed to him), a bar in the white framework of which had first arrested his attention. in the corner of the case was a stand of glittering and delicately made apparatus, for the most part quite strange appliances, though a maximum and minimum thermometer was recognisable. the slightly greenish tint of the glass-like substance which surrounded him on every hand obscured what lay behind, but he perceived it was a vast apartment of splendid appearance, and with a very large and simple white archway facing him. close to the walls of the cage were articles of furniture, a table covered with a silvery cloth, silvery like the side of a fish, a couple of graceful chairs, and on the table a number of dishes with substances piled on them, a bottle and two glasses. he realised that he was intensely hungry. he could see no one, and after a period of hesitation scrambled off the translucent mattress and tried to stand on the clean white floor of his little apartment. he had miscalculated his strength, however, and staggered and put his hand against the glass like pane before him to steady himself. for a moment it resisted his hand, bending outward like a distended bladder, then it broke with a slight report and vanished--a pricked bubble. he reeled out into the general space of the hall, greatly astonished. he caught at the table to save himself, knocking one of the glasses to the floor--it rang but did not break--and sat down in one of the armchairs. when he had a little recovered he filled the remaining glass from the bottle and drank--a colourless liquid it was, but not water, with a pleasing faint aroma and taste and a quality of immediate support and stimulus. he put down the vessel and looked about him. the apartment lost none of its size and magnificence now that the greenish transparency that had intervened was removed. the archway he saw led to a flight of steps, going downward without the intermediation of a door, to a spacious transverse passage. this passage ran between polished pillars of some white-veined substance of deep ultramarine, and along it came the sound of human movements, and voices and a deep undeviating droning note. he sat, now fully awake, listening alertly, forgetting the viands in his attention. then with a shock he remembered that he was naked, and casting about him for covering, saw a long black robe thrown on one of the chairs beside him. this he wrapped about him and sat down again, trembling. his mind was still a surging perplexity. clearly he had slept, and had been removed in his sleep. but where? and who were those people, the distant crowd beyond the deep blue pillars? boscastle? he poured out and partially drank another glass of the colourless fluid. what was this place?--this place that to his senses seemed subtly quivering like a thing alive? he looked about him at the clean and beautiful form of the apartment, unstained by ornament, and saw that the roof was broken in one place by a circular shaft full of light, and, as he looked, a steady, sweeping shadow blotted it out and passed, and came again and passed. "beat, beat," that sweeping shadow had a note of its own in the subdued tumult that filled the air. he would have called out, but only a little sound came into his throat. then he stood up, and, with the uncertain steps of a drunkard, made his way towards the archway. he staggered down the steps, tripped on the corner of the black cloak he had wrapped about himself, and saved himself by catching at one of the blue pillars. the passage ran down a cool vista of blue and purple and ended remotely in a railed space like a balcony brightly lit and projecting into a space of haze, a space like the interior of some gigantic building. beyond and remote were vast and vague architectural forms. the tumult of voices rose now loud and clear, and on the balcony and with their backs to him, gesticulating and apparently in animated conversation, were three figures, richly dressed in loose and easy garments of bright soft colourings. the noise of a great multitude of people poured up over the balcony, and once it seemed the top of a banner passed, and once some brightly coloured object, a pale blue cap or garment thrown up into the air perhaps, flashed athwart the space and fell. the shouts sounded like english, there was a reiteration of "wake!" he heard some indistinct shrill cry, and abruptly these three men began laughing. "ha, ha, ha!" laughed one--a red-haired man in a short purple robe. "when the sleeper wakes--_when_!" he turned his eyes full of merriment along the passage. his face changed, the whole man changed, became rigid. the other two turned swiftly at his exclamation and stood motionless. their faces assumed an expression of consternation, an expression that deepened into awe. suddenly graham's knees bent beneath him, his arm against the pillar collapsed limply, he staggered forward and fell upon his face. chapter iv the sound of a tumult graham's last impression before he fainted was of the ringing of bells. he learnt afterwards that he was insensible, hanging between life and death, for the better part of an hour. when he recovered his senses, he was back on his translucent couch, and there was a stirring warmth at heart and throat. the dark apparatus, he perceived, had been removed from his arm, which was bandaged. the white framework was still about him, but the greenish transparent substance that had filled it was altogether gone. a man in a deep violet robe, one of those who had been on the balcony, was looking keenly into his face. remote but insistent was a clamour of bells and confused sounds, that suggested to his mind the picture of a great number of people shouting together. something seemed to fall across this tumult, a door suddenly closed. graham moved his head. "what does this all mean?" he said slowly. "where am i?" he saw the red-haired man who had been first to discover him. a voice seemed to be asking what he had said, and was abruptly stilled. the man in violet answered in a soft voice, speaking english with a slightly foreign accent, or so at least it seemed to the sleeper's ears. "you are quite safe. you were brought hither from where you fell asleep. it is quite safe. you have been here some time--sleeping. in a trance." he said, something further that graham could not hear, and a little phial was handed across to him. graham felt a cooling spray, a fragrant mist played over his forehead for a moment, and his sense of refreshment increased. he closed his eyes in satisfaction. "better?" asked the man in violet, as graham's eyes reopened. he was a pleasant-faced man of thirty, perhaps, with a pointed flaxen beard, and a clasp of gold at the neck of his violet robe. "yes," said graham. "you have been asleep some time. in a cataleptic trance. you have heard? catalepsy? it may seem strange to you at first, but i can assure you everything is well." graham did not answer, but these words served their reassuring purpose. his eyes went from face to face of the three people about him. they were regarding him strangely. he knew he ought to be somewhere in cornwall, but he could not square these things with that impression. a matter that had been in his mind during his last waking moments at boscastle recurred, a thing resolved upon and somehow neglected. he cleared his throat. "have you wired my cousin?" he asked. "e. warming, , chancery lane?" they were all assiduous to hear. but he had to repeat it. "what an odd _blurr_ in his accent!" whispered the red-haired man. "wire, sir?" said the young man with the flaxen beard, evidently puzzled. "he means send an electric telegram," volunteered the third, a pleasant-faced youth of nineteen or twenty. the flaxen-bearded man gave a cry of comprehension. "how stupid of me! you may be sure everything shall be done, sir," he said to graham. "i am afraid it would be difficult to--_wire_ to your cousin. he is not in london now. but don't trouble about arrangements yet; you have been asleep a very long time and the important thing is to get over that, sir." (graham concluded the word was sir, but this man pronounced it "_sire_.") "oh!" said graham, and became quiet. it was all very puzzling, but apparently these people in unfamiliar dress knew what they were about. yet they were odd and the room was odd. it seemed he was in some newly established place. he had a sudden flash of suspicion! surely this wasn't some hall of public exhibition! if it was he would give warming a piece of his mind. but it scarcely had that character. and in a place of public exhibition he would not have discovered himself naked. then suddenly, quite abruptly, he realised what had happened. there was no perceptible interval of suspicion, no dawn to his knowledge. abruptly he knew that his trance had lasted for a vast interval; as if by some processes of thought-reading he interpreted the awe in the faces that peered into his. he looked at them strangely, full of intense emotion. it seemed they read his eyes. he framed his lips to speak and could not. a queer impulse to hide his knowledge came into his mind almost at the moment of his discovery. he looked at his bare feet, regarding them silently. his impulse to speak passed. he was trembling exceedingly. they gave him some pink fluid with a greenish fluorescence and a meaty taste, and the assurance of returning strength grew. "that--that makes me feel better," he said hoarsely, and there were murmurs of respectful approval. he knew now quite clearly. he made to speak again, and again he could not. he pressed his throat and tried a third time. "how long?" he asked in a level voice. "how long have i been asleep?" "some considerable time," said the flaxen-bearded man, glancing quickly at the others. "how long?" "a very long time." "yes--yes," said graham, suddenly testy. "but i want--is it--it is--some years? many years? there was something--i forget what. i feel--confused. but you--" he sobbed. "you need not fence with me. how long--?" he stopped, breathing irregularly. he squeezed his eyes with his knuckles and sat waiting for an answer. they spoke in undertones. "five or six?" he asked faintly. "more?" "very much more than that." "more!" "more." he looked at them and it seemed as though imps were twitching the muscles of his face. he looked his question. "many years," said the man with the red beard. graham struggled into a sitting position. he wiped a rheumy tear from his face with a lean hand. "many years!" he repeated. he shut his eyes tight, opened them, and sat looking about him from one unfamiliar thing to another. "how many years?" he asked. "you must be prepared to be surprised." "well?" "more than a gross of years." he was irritated at the strange word. "more than a _what_?" two of them spoke together. some quick remarks that were made about "decimal" he did not catch. "how long did you say?" asked graham. "how long? don't look like that. tell me." among the remarks in an undertone, his ear caught six words: "more than a couple of centuries." "_what_?" he cried, turning on the youth who he thought had spoken. "who says--? what was that? a couple of _centuries_!" "yes," said the man with the red beard. "two hundred years." graham repeated the words. he had been prepared to hear of a vast repose, and yet these concrete centuries defeated him. "two hundred years," he said again, with the figure of a great gulf opening very slowly in his mind; and then, "oh, but--!" they said nothing. "you--did you say--?" "two hundred years. two centuries of years," said the man with the red beard. there was a pause. graham looked at their faces and saw that what he had heard was indeed true. "but it can't be," he said querulously. "i am dreaming. trances--trances don't last. that is not right--this is a joke you have played upon me! tell me--some days ago, perhaps, i was walking along the coast of cornwall--?" his voice failed him. the man with the flaxen beard hesitated. "i'm not very strong in history, sir," he said weakly, and glanced at the others. "that was it, sir," said the youngster. "boscastle, in the old duchy of cornwall--it's in the south-west country beyond the dairy meadows. there is a house there still. i have been there." "boscastle!" graham turned his eyes to the youngster. "that was it--boscastle. little boscastle. i fell asleep--somewhere there. i don't exactly remember. i don't exactly remember." he pressed his brows and whispered, "more than _two hundred years_!" he began to speak quickly with a twitching face, but his heart was cold within him. "but if it _is_ two hundred years, every soul i know, every human being that ever i saw or spoke to before i went to sleep, must be dead." they did not answer him. "the queen and the royal family, her ministers, church and state. high and low, rich and poor, one with another ... is there england still?" "that's a comfort! is there london?" "this _is_ london, eh? and you are my assistant-custodian; assistant-custodian. and these--? eh? assistant-custodians too!" he sat with a gaunt stare on his face. "but why am i here? no! don't talk. be quiet. let me--" he sat silent, rubbed his eyes, and, uncovering them, found another little glass of pinkish fluid held towards him. he took the dose. directly he had taken it he began to weep naturally and refreshingly. presently he looked at their faces, suddenly laughed through his tears, a little foolishly. "but--two--hun--dred--years!" he said. he grimaced hysterically and covered his face again. after a space he grew calm. he sat up, his hands hanging over his knees in almost precisely the same attitude in which isbister had found him on the cliff at pentargen. his attention was attracted by a thick domineering voice, the footsteps of an advancing personage. "what are you doing? why was i not warned? surely you could tell? someone will suffer for this. the man must be kept quiet. are the doorways closed? all the doorways? he must be kept perfectly quiet. he must not be told. has he been told anything?" the man with the fair beard made some inaudible remark, and graham looking over his shoulder saw approaching a short, fat, and thickset beardless man, with aquiline nose and heavy neck and chin. very thick black and slightly sloping eyebrows that almost met over his nose and overhung deep grey eyes, gave his face an oddly formidable expression. he scowled momentarily at graham and then his regard returned to the man with the flaxen beard. "these others," he said in a voice of extreme irritation. "you had better go." "go?" said the red-bearded man. "certainly--go now. but see the doorways are closed as you go." the two men addressed turned obediently, after one reluctant glance at graham, and instead of going through the archway as he expected, walked straight to the dead wall of the apartment opposite the archway. a long strip of this apparently solid wall rolled up with a snap, hung over the two retreating men and fell again, and immediately graham was alone with the newcomer and the purple-robed man with the flaxen beard. for a space the thickset man took not the slightest notice of graham, but proceeded to interrogate the other--obviously his subordinate---upon the treatment of their charge. he spoke clearly, but in phrases only partially intelligible to graham. the awakening seemed not only a matter of surprise but of consternation and annoyance to him. he was evidently profoundly excited. "you must not confuse his mind by telling him things," he repeated again and again. "you must not confuse his mind." his questions answered, he turned quickly and eyed the awakened sleeper with an ambiguous expression. "feel queer?" he asked. "very." "the world, what you see of it, seems strange to you?" "i suppose i have to live in it, strange as it seems." "i suppose so, now." "in the first place, hadn't i better have some clothes?" "they--" said the thickset man and stopped, and the flaxen-bearded man met his eye and went away. "you will very speedily have clothes," said the thickset man. "is it true indeed, that i have been asleep two hundred--?" asked graham. "they have told you that, have they? two hundred and three, as a matter of fact." graham accepted the indisputable now with raised eyebrows and depressed mouth. he sat silent for a moment, and then asked a question, "is there a mill or dynamo near here?" he did not wait for an answer. "things have changed tremendously, i suppose?" he said. "what is that shouting?" he asked abruptly. "nothing," said the thickset man impatiently. "it's people. you'll understand better later--perhaps. as you say, things have changed." he spoke shortly, his brows were knit, and he glanced about him like a man trying to decide in an emergency. "we must get you clothes and so forth, at any rate. better wait here until they can be procured. no one will come near you. you want shaving." graham rubbed his chin. the man with the flaxen beard came back towards them, turned suddenly, listened for a moment, lifted his eyebrows at the older man, and hurried off through the archway towards the balcony. the tumult of shouting grew louder, and the thickset man turned and listened also. he cursed suddenly under his breath, and turned his eyes upon graham with an unfriendly expression. it was a surge of many voices, rising and falling, shouting and screaming, and once came a sound like blows and sharp cries, and then a snapping like the crackling of dry sticks. graham strained his ears to draw some single thread of sound from the woven tumult. then he perceived, repeated again and again, a certain formula. for a time he doubted his ears. but surely these were the words: "show us the sleeper! show us the sleeper!" the thickset man rushed suddenly to the archway. "wild!" he cried. "how do they know? do they know? or is it guessing?" there was perhaps an answer. "i can't come," said the thickset man; "i have _him_ to see to. but shout from the balcony." there was an inaudible reply. "say he is not awake. anything! i leave it to you." he came hurrying back to graham. "you must have clothes at once," he said. "you cannot stop here--and it will be impossible to--" he rushed away, graham shouting unanswered questions after him. in a moment he was back. "i can't tell you what is happening. it is too complex to explain. in a moment you shall have your clothes made. yes--in a moment. and then i can take you away from here. you will find out our troubles soon enough." "but those voices. they were shouting--?" "something about the sleeper--that's you. they have some twisted idea. i don't know what it is. i know nothing." a shrill bell jetted acutely across the indistinct mingling of remote noises, and this brusque person sprang to a little group of appliances in the corner of the room. he listened for a moment, regarding a ball of crystal, nodded, and said a few indistinct words; then he walked to the wall through which the two men had vanished. it rolled up again like a curtain, and he stood waiting. graham lifted his arm and was astonished to find what strength the restoratives had given him. he thrust one leg over the side of the couch and then the other. his head no longer swam. he could scarcely credit his rapid recovery. he sat feeling his limbs. the man with the flaxen beard re-entered from the archway, and as he did so the cage of a lift came sliding down in front of the thickset man, and a lean, grey-bearded man, carrying a roll, and wearing a tightly-fitting costume of dark green, appeared therein. "this is the tailor," said the thickset man with an introductory gesture. "it will never do for you to wear that black. i cannot understand how it got here. but i shall. i shall. you will be as rapid as possible?" he said to the tailor. the man in green bowed, and, advancing, seated himself by graham on the bed. his manner was calm, but his eyes were full of curiosity. "you will find the fashions altered, sire," he said. he glanced from under his brows at the thickset man. he opened the roller with a quick movement, and a confusion of brilliant fabrics poured out over his knees. "you lived, sire, in a period essentially cylindrical--the victorian. with a tendency to the hemisphere in hats. circular curves always. now--" he flicked out a little appliance the size and appearance of a keyless watch, whirled the knob, and behold--a little figure in white appeared kinetoscope fashion on the dial, walking and turning. the tailor caught up a pattern of bluish white satin. "that is my conception of your immediate treatment," he said. the thickset man came and stood by the shoulder of graham. "we have very little time," he said. "trust me," said the tailor. "my machine follows. what do you think of this?" "what is that?" asked the man from the nineteenth century. "in your days they showed you a fashion-plate," said the tailor, "but this is our modern development. see here." the little figure repeated its evolutions, but in a different costume. "or this," and with a click another small figure in a more voluminous type of robe marched on to the dial. the tailor was very quick in his movements, and glanced twice towards the lift as he did these things. it rumbled again, and a crop-haired anemic lad with features of the chinese type, clad in coarse pale blue canvas, appeared together with a complicated machine, which he pushed noiselessly on little castors into the room. incontinently the little kinetoscope was dropped, graham was invited to stand in front of the machine and the tailor muttered some instructions to the crop-haired lad, who answered in guttural tones and with words graham did not recognise. the boy then went to conduct an incomprehensible monologue in the corner, and the tailor pulled out a number of slotted arms terminating in little discs, pulling them out until the discs were flat against the body of graham, one at each shoulder blade, one at the elbows, one at the neck and so forth, so that at last there were, perhaps, two score of them upon his body and limbs. at the same time, some other person entered the room by the lift, behind graham. the tailor set moving a mechanism that initiated a faint-sounding rhythmic movement of parts in the machine, and in another moment he was knocking up the levers and graham was released. the tailor replaced his cloak of black, and the man with the flaxen beard proffered him a little glass of some refreshing fluid. graham saw over the rim of the glass a pale-faced young man regarding him with a singular fixity. the thickset man had been pacing the room fretfully, and now turned and went through the archway towards the balcony, from which the noise of a distant crowd still came in gusts and cadences. the crop-headed lad handed the tailor a roll of the bluish satin and the two began fixing this in the mechanism in a manner reminiscent of a roll of paper in a nineteenth century printing machine. then they ran the entire thing on its easy, noiseless bearings across the room to a remote corner where a twisted cable looped rather gracefully from the wall. they made some connexion and the machine became energetic and swift. "what is that doing?" asked graham, pointing with the empty glass to the busy figures and trying to ignore the scrutiny of the new comer. "is that--some sort of force--laid on?" "yes," said the man with the flaxen beard. "who is _that_?" he indicated the archway behind him. the man in purple stroked his little beard, hesitated, and answered in an undertone, "he is howard, your chief guardian. you see, sire--it's a little difficult to explain. the council appoints a guardian and assistants. this hall has under certain restrictions been public. in order that people might satisfy themselves. we have barred the doorways for the first time. but i think--if you don't mind, i will leave him to explain." "odd!" said graham. "guardian? council?" then turning his back on the new comer, he asked in an undertone, "why is this man _glaring_ at me? is he a mesmerist?" "mesmerist! he is a capillotomist." "capillotomist!" "yes--one of the chief. his yearly fee is sixdoz lions." it sounded sheer nonsense. graham snatched at the last phrase with an unsteady mind. "sixdoz lions?" he said. "didn't you have lions? i suppose not. you had the old pounds? they are our monetary units." "but what was that you said--sixdoz?" "yes. six dozen, sire. of course things, even these little things, have altered. you lived in the days of the decimal system, the arab system--tens, and little hundreds and thousands. we have eleven numerals now. we have single figures for both ten and eleven, two figures for a dozen, and a dozen dozen makes a gross, a great hundred, you know, a dozen gross a dozand, and a dozand dozand a myriad. very simple?" "i suppose so," said graham. "but about this cap--what was it?" the man with the flaxen beard glanced over his shoulder. "here are your clothes!" he said. graham turned round sharply and saw the tailor standing at his elbow smiling, and holding some palpably new garments over his arm. the crop-headed boy, by means of one ringer, was impelling the complicated machine towards the lift by which he had arrived. graham stared at the completed suit. "you don't mean to say--!" "just made," said the tailor. he dropped the garments at the feet of graham, walked to the bed, on which graham had so recently been lying, flung out the translucent mattress, and turned up the looking-glass. as he did so a furious bell summoned the thickset man to the corner. the man with the flaxen beard rushed across to him and then hurried out by the archway. the tailor was assisting graham into a dark purple combination garment, stockings, vest, and pants in one, as the thickset man came back from the corner to meet the man with the flaxen beard returning from the balcony. they began speaking quickly in an undertone, their bearing had an unmistakable quality of anxiety. over the purple under-garment came a complex garment of bluish white, and graham, was clothed in the fashion once more and saw himself, sallow-faced, unshaven and shaggy still, but at least naked no longer, and in some indefinable unprecedented way graceful. "i must shave," he said regarding himself in the glass. "in a moment," said howard. the persistent stare ceased. the young man closed his eyes, reopened them, and with a lean hand extended, advanced on graham. then he stopped, with his hand slowly gesticulating, and looked about him. "a seat," said howard impatiently, and in a moment the flaxen-bearded man had a chair behind graham. "sit down, please," said howard. graham hesitated, and in the other hand of the wild-eyed man he saw the glint of steel. "don't you understand, sire?" cried the flaxen-bearded man with hurried politeness. "he is going to cut your hair." "oh!" cried graham enlightened. "but you called him--" "a capillotomist--precisely! he is one of the finest artists in the world." graham sat down abruptly. the flaxen-bearded man disappeared. the capillotomist came forward, examined graham's ears and surveyed him, felt the back of his head, and would have sat down again to regard him but for howard's audible impatience. forthwith with rapid movements and a succession of deftly handled implements he shaved graham's chin, clipped his moustache, and cut and arranged his hair. all this he did without a word, with something of the rapt air of a poet inspired. and as soon as he had finished graham was handed a pair of shoes. suddenly a loud voice shouted--it seemed from a piece of machinery in the corner--"at once--at once. the people know all over the city. work is being stopped. work is being stopped. wait for nothing, but come." this shout appeared to perturb howard exceedingly. by his gestures it seemed to graham that he hesitated between two directions. abruptly he went towards the corner where the apparatus stood about the little crystal ball. as he did so the undertone of tumultuous shouting from the archway that had continued during all these occurrences rose to a mighty sound, roared as if it were sweeping past, and fell again as if receding swiftly. it drew graham after it with an irresistible attraction. he glanced at the thickset man, and then obeyed his impulse. in two strides he was down the steps and in the passage, and in a score he was out upon the balcony upon which the three men had been standing. chapter v the moving ways he went to the railings of the balcony and stared upward. an exclamation of surprise at his appearance, and the movements of a number of people came from the great area below. his first impression was of overwhelming architecture. the place into which he looked was an aisle of titanic buildings, curving spaciously in either direction. overhead mighty cantilevers sprang together across the huge width of the place, and a tracery of translucent material shut out the sky. gigantic globes of cool white light shamed the pale sunbeams that filtered down through the girders and wires. here and there a gossamer suspension bridge dotted with foot passengers flung across the chasm and the air was webbed with slender cables. a cliff of edifice hung above him, he perceived as he glanced upward, and the opposite façade was grey and dim and broken by great archings, circular perforations, balconies, buttresses, turret projections, myriads of vast windows, and an intricate scheme of architectural relief. athwart these ran inscriptions horizontally and obliquely in an unfamiliar lettering. here and there close to the roof cables of a peculiar stoutness were fastened, and drooped in a steep curve to circular openings on the opposite side of the space, and even as graham noted these a remote and tiny figure of a man clad in pale blue arrested his attention. this little figure was far overhead across the space beside the higher fastening of one of these festoons, hanging forward from a little ledge of masonry and handling some well-nigh invisible strings dependent from the line. then suddenly, with a swoop that sent graham's heart into his mouth, this man had rushed down the curve and vanished through a round opening on the hither side of the way. graham had been looking up as he came out upon the balcony, and the things he saw above and opposed to him had at first seized his attention to the exclusion of anything else. then suddenly he discovered the roadway! it was not a roadway at all, as graham understood such things, for in the nineteenth century the only roads and streets were beaten tracks of motionless earth, jostling rivulets of vehicles between narrow footways. but this roadway was three hundred feet across, and it moved; it moved, all save the middle, the lowest part. for a moment, the motion dazzled his mind. then he understood. under the balcony this extraordinary roadway ran swiftly to graham's right, an endless flow rushing along as fast as a nineteenth century express train, an endless platform of narrow transverse overlapping slats with little interspaces that permitted it to follow the curvatures of the street. upon it were seats, and here and there little kiosks, but they swept by too swiftly for him to see what might be therein. from this nearest and swiftest platform a series of others descended to the centre of the space. each moved to the right, each perceptibly slower than the one above it, but the difference in pace was small enough to permit anyone to step from any platform to the one adjacent, and so walk uninterruptedly from the swiftest to the motionless middle way. beyond this middle way was another series of endless platforms rushing with varying pace to graham's left. and seated in crowds upon the two widest and swiftest platforms, or stepping from one to another down the steps, or swarming over the central space, was an innumerable and wonderfully diversified multitude of people. "you must not stop here," shouted howard suddenly at his side. "you must come away at once." graham made no answer. he heard without hearing. the platforms ran with a roar and the people were shouting. he perceived women and girls with flowing hair, beautifully robed, with bands crossing between the breasts. these first came out of the confusion. then he perceived that the dominant note in that kaleidoscope of costume was the pale blue that the tailor's boy had worn. he became aware of cries of "the sleeper. what has happened to the sleeper?" and it seemed as though the rushing platforms before him were suddenly spattered with the pale buff of human faces, and then still more thickly. he saw pointing fingers. he perceived that the motionless central area of this huge arcade just opposite to the balcony was densely crowded with blue-clad people. some sort of struggle had sprung into life. people seemed to be pushed up the running platforms on either side, and carried away against their will. they would spring off so soon as they were beyond the thick of the confusion, and run back towards the conflict. "it is the sleeper. verily it is the sleeper," shouted voices. "that is never the sleeper," shouted others. more and more faces were turned to him. at the intervals along this central area graham noted openings, pits, apparently the heads of staircases going down with people ascending out of them and descending into them. the struggle it seemed centred about the one of these nearest to him. people were running down the moving platforms to this, leaping dexterously from platform to platform. the clustering people on the higher platforms seemed to divide their interest between this point and the balcony. a number of sturdy little figures clad in a uniform of bright red, and working methodically together, were employed it seemed in preventing access to this descending staircase. about them a crowd was rapidly accumulating. their brilliant colour contrasted vividly with the whitish-blue of their antagonists, for the struggle was indisputable. he saw these things with howard shouting in his ear and shaking his arm. and then suddenly howard was gone and he stood alone. he perceived that the cries of "the sleeper!" grew in volume, and that the people on the nearer platform were standing up. the nearer platform he perceived was empty to the right of him, and far across the space the platform running in the opposite direction was coming crowded and passing away bare. with incredible swiftness a vast crowd had gathered in the central space before his eyes; a dense swaying mass of people, and the shouts grew from a fitful crying to a voluminous incessant clamour: "the sleeper! the sleeper!" and yells and cheers, a waving of garments and cries of "stop the ways!" they were also crying another name strange to graham. it sounded like "ostrog." the slower platforms were soon thick with active people, running against the movement so as to keep themselves opposite to him. "stop the ways," they cried. agile figures ran up from the centre to the swift road nearest to him, were borne rapidly past him, shouting strange, unintelligible things, and ran back obliquely to the central way. one thing he distinguished: "it is indeed the sleeper. it is indeed the sleeper," they testified. for a space graham stood motionless. then he became vividly aware that all this concerned him. he was pleased at his wonderful popularity, he bowed, and, seeking a gesture of longer range, waved his arm. he was astonished at the violence of uproar that this provoked. the tumult about the descending stairway rose to furious violence. he became aware of crowded balconies, of men sliding along ropes, of men in trapeze-like seats hurling athwart the space. he heard voices behind him, a number of people descending the steps through the archway; he suddenly perceived that his guardian howard was back again and gripping his arm painfully, and shouting inaudibly in his ear. he turned, and howard's face was white. "come back," he heard. "they will stop the ways. the whole city will be in confusion." he perceived a number of men hurrying along the passage of blue pillars behind howard, the red-haired man, the man with the flaxen beard, a tall man in vivid vermilion, a crowd of others in red carrying staves, and all these people had anxious eager faces. "get him away," cried howard. "but why?" said graham. "i don't see--" "you must come away!" said the man in red in a resolute voice. his face and eyes were resolute, too. graham's glances went from face to face, and he was suddenly aware of that most disagreeable flavour in life, compulsion. someone gripped his arm.... he was being dragged away. it seemed as though the tumult suddenly became two, as if half the shouts that had come in from this wonderful roadway had sprung into the passages of the great building behind him. marvelling and confused, feeling an impotent desire to resist, graham was half led, half thrust, along the passage of blue pillars, and suddenly he found himself alone with howard in a lift and moving swiftly upward. chapter vi the hall of the atlas from the moment when the tailor had bowed his farewell to the moment when graham found himself in the lift, was altogether barely five minutes. as yet the haze of his vast interval of sleep hung about him, as yet the initial strangeness of his being alive at all in this remote age touched everything with wonder, with a sense of the irrational, with something of the quality of a realistic dream. he was still detached, an astonished spectator, still but half involved in life. what he had seen, and especially the last crowded tumult, framed in the setting of the balcony, had a spectacular turn, like a thing witnessed from the box of a theatre. "i don't understand," he said. "what was the trouble? my mind is in a whirl. why were they shouting? what is the danger?" "we have our troubles," said howard. his eyes avoided graham's enquiry. "this is a time of unrest. and, in fact, your appearance, your waking just now, has a sort of connexion--" he spoke jerkily, like a man not quite sure of his breathing. he stopped abruptly. "i don't understand," said graham. "it will be clearer later," said howard. he glanced uneasily upward, as though he found the progress of the lift slow. "i shall understand better, no doubt, when i have seen my way about a little," said graham puzzled. "it will be--it is bound to be perplexing. at present it is all so strange. anything seems possible. anything. in the details even. your counting, i understand, is different." the lift stopped, and they stepped out into a narrow but very long passage between high walls, along which ran an extraordinary number of tubes and big cables. "what a huge place this is!" said graham. "is it all one building? what place is it?" "this is one of the city ways for various public services. light and so forth." "was it a social trouble--that--in the great roadway place? how are you governed? have you still a police?" "several," said howard. "several?" "about fourteen." "i don't understand." "very probably not. our social order will probably seem very complex to you. to tell you the truth, i don't understand it myself very clearly. nobody does. you will, perhaps--bye and bye. we have to go to the council." graham's attention was divided between the urgent necessity of his inquiries and the people in the passages and halls they were traversing. for a moment his mind would be concentrated upon howard and the halting answers he made, and then he would lose the thread in response to some vivid unexpected impression. along the passages, in the halls, half the people seemed to be men in the red uniform. the pale blue canvas that had been so abundant in the aisle of moving ways did not appear. invariably these men looked at him, and saluted him and howard as they passed. he had a clear vision of entering a long corridor, and there were a number of girls sitting on low seats, as though in a class. he saw no teacher, but only a novel apparatus from which he fancied a voice proceeded. the girls regarded him and his conductor, he thought, with curiosity and astonishment. but he was hurried on before he could form a clear idea of the gathering. he judged they knew howard and not himself, and that they wondered who he was. this howard, it seemed, was a person of importance. but then he was also merely graham's guardian. that was odd. there came a passage in twilight, and into this passage a footway hung so that he could see the feet and ankles of people going to and fro thereon, but no more of them. then vague impressions of galleries and of casual astonished passers-by turning round to stare after the two of them with their red-clad guard. the stimulus of the restoratives he had taken was only temporary. he was speedily fatigued by this excessive haste. he asked howard to slacken his speed. presently he was in a lift that had a window upon the great street space, but this was glazed and did not open, and they were too high for him to see the moving platforms below. but he saw people going to and fro along cables and along strange, frail-looking bridges. thence they passed across the street and at a vast height above it. they crossed by means of a narrow bridge closed in with glass, so clear that it made him giddy even to remember it. the floor of it also was of glass. from his memory of the cliffs between new quay and boscastle, so remote in time, and so recent in his experience, it seemed to him that they must be near four hundred feet above the moving ways. he stopped, looked down between his legs upon the swarming blue and red multitudes, minute and foreshortened, struggling and gesticulating still towards the little balcony far below, a little toy balcony, it seemed, where he had so recently been standing. a thin haze and the glare of the mighty globes of light obscured everything. a man seated in a little openwork cradle shot by from some point still higher than the little narrow bridge, rushing down a cable as swiftly almost as if he were falling. graham stopped involuntarily to watch this strange passenger vanish below, and then his eyes went back to the tumultuous struggle. along one of the faster ways rushed a thick crowd of red spots. this broke up into individuals as it approached the balcony, and went pouring down the slower ways towards the dense struggling crowd on the central area. these men in red appeared to be armed with sticks or truncheons; they seemed to be striking and thrusting. a great shouting, cries of wrath, screaming, burst out and came up to graham, faint and thin. "go on," cried howard, laying hands on him. another man rushed down a cable. graham suddenly glanced up to see whence he came, and beheld through the glassy roof and the network of cables and girders, dim rhythmically passing forms like the vanes of windmills, and between them glimpses of a remote and pallid sky. then howard had thrust him forward across the bridge, and he was in a little narrow passage decorated with geometrical patterns. "i want to see more of that," cried graham, resisting. "no, no," cried howard, still gripping his arm. "this way. you must go this way." and the men in red following them seemed ready to enforce his orders. some negroes in a curious wasp-like uniform of black and yellow appeared down the passage, and one hastened to throw up a sliding shutter that had seemed a door to graham, and led the way through it. graham found himself in a gallery overhanging the end of a great chamber. the attendant in black and yellow crossed this, thrust up a second shutter and stood waiting. this place had the appearance of an ante-room. he saw a number of people in the central space, and at the opposite end a large and imposing doorway at the top of a flight of steps, heavily curtained but giving a glimpse of some still larger hall beyond. he perceived white men in red and other negroes in black and yellow standing stiffly about those portals. as they crossed the gallery he heard a whisper from below, "the sleeper," and was aware of a turning of heads, a hum of observation. they entered another little passage in the wall of this ante-chamber, and then he found himself on an iron-railed gallery of metal that passed round the side of the great hall he had already seen through the curtains. he entered the place at the corner, so that he received the fullest impression of its huge proportions. the black in the wasp uniform stood aside like a well-trained servant, and closed the valve behind him. compared with any of the places graham had seen thus far, this second hall appeared to be decorated with extreme richness. on a pedestal at the remoter end, and more brilliantly lit than any other object, was a gigantic white figure of atlas, strong and strenuous, the globe upon his bowed shoulders. it was the first thing to strike his attention, it was so vast, so patiently and painfully real, so white and simple. save for this figure and for a dais in the centre, the wide floor of the place was a shining vacancy. the dais was remote in the greatness of the area; it would have looked a mere slab of metal had it not been for the group of seven men who stood about a table on it, and gave an inkling of its proportions. they were all dressed in white robes, they seemed to have arisen that moment from their seats, and they were regarding graham steadfastly. at the end of the table he perceived the glitter of some mechanical appliances. howard led him along the end gallery until they were opposite this mighty labouring figure. then he stopped. the two men in red who had followed them into the gallery came and stood on either hand of graham. "you must remain here," murmured howard, "for a few moments," and, without waiting for a reply, hurried away along the gallery. "but, _why_--?" began graham. he moved as if to follow howard, and found his path obstructed by one of the men in red. "you have to wait here, sire," said the man in red. "_why_?" "orders, sire." "whose orders?" "our orders, sire." graham looked his exasperation. "what place is this?" he said presently. "who are those men?" "they are the lords of the council, sire." "what council?" "_the_ council." "oh!" said graham, and after an equally ineffectual attempt at the other man, went to the railing and stared at the distant men in white, who stood watching him and whispering together. the council? he perceived there were now eight, though how the newcomer had arrived he had not observed. they made no gestures of greeting; they stood regarding him as in the nineteenth century a group of men might have stood in the street regarding a distant balloon that had suddenly floated into view. what council could it be that gathered there, that little body of men beneath the significant white atlas, secluded from every eavesdropper in this impressive spaciousness? and why should he be brought to them, and be looked at strangely and spoken of inaudibly? howard appeared beneath, walking quickly across the polished floor towards them. as he drew near he bowed and performed certain peculiar movements, apparently of a ceremonious nature. then he ascended the steps of the dais, and stood by the apparatus at the end of the table. graham watched that visible inaudible conversation. occasionally, one of the white-robed men would glance towards him. he strained his ears in vain. the gesticulation of two of the speakers became animated. he glanced from them to the passive faces of his attendants.... when he looked again howard was extending his hands and moving his head like a man who protests. he was interrupted, it seemed, by one of the white-robed men rapping the table. the conversation lasted an interminable time to graham's sense. his eyes rose to the still giant at whose feet the council sat. thence they wandered to the walls of the hall. it was decorated in long painted panels of a quasi-japanese type, many of them very beautiful. these panels were grouped in a great and elaborate framing of dark metal, which passed into the metallic caryatidae of the galleries, and the great structural lines of the interior. the facile grace of these panels enhanced the mighty white effort that laboured in the centre of the scheme. graham's eyes came back to the council, and howard was descending the steps. as he drew nearer his features could be distinguished, and graham saw that he was flushed and blowing out his cheeks. his countenance was still disturbed when presently he reappeared along the gallery. "this way," he said concisely, and they went on in silence to a little door that opened at their approach. the two men in red stopped on either side of this door. howard and graham passed in, and graham, glancing back, saw the white-robed council still standing in a close group and looking at him. then the door closed behind him with a heavy thud, and for the first time since his awakening he was in silence. the floor, even, was noiseless to his feet. howard opened another door, and they were in the first of two contiguous chambers furnished in white and green. "what council was that?" began graham. "what were they discussing? what have they to do with me?" howard closed the door carefully, heaved a huge sigh, and said something in an undertone. he walked slantingways across the room and turned, blowing out his cheeks again. "ugh!" he grunted, a man relieved. graham stood regarding him. "you must understand," began howard abruptly, avoiding graham's eyes, "that our social order is very complex. a half explanation, a bare unqualified statement would give you false impressions. as a matter of fact--it is a case of compound interest partly--your small fortune, and the fortune of your cousin warming which was left to you--and certain other beginnings--have become very considerable. and in other ways that will be hard for you to understand, you have become a person of significance--of very considerable significance--involved in the world's affairs." he stopped. "yes?" said graham. "we have grave social troubles." "yes?" "things have come to such a pass that, in fact, it is advisable to seclude you here." "keep me prisoner!" exclaimed graham. "well--to ask you to keep in seclusion." graham turned on him. "this is strange!" he said. "no harm will be done you." "no harm!" "but you must be kept here--" "while i learn my position, i presume." "precisely." "very well then. begin. why _harm_?" "not now." "why not?" "it is too long a story, sire." "all the more reason i should begin at once. you say i am a person of importance. what was that shouting i heard? why is a great multitude shouting and excited because my trance is over, and who are the men in white in that huge council chamber?" "all in good time, sire," said howard. "but not crudely, not crudely. this is one of those flimsy times when no man has a settled mind. your awakening--no one expected your awakening. the council is consulting." "what council?" "the council you saw." graham made a petulant movement. "this is not right," he said. "i should be told what is happening." "you must wait. really you must wait." graham sat down abruptly. "i suppose since i have waited so long to resume life," he said, "that i must wait a little longer." "that is better," said howard. "yes, that is much better. and i must leave you alone. for a space. while i attend the discussion in the council.... i am sorry." he went towards the noiseless door, hesitated and vanished. graham walked to the door, tried it, found it securely fastened in some way he never came to understand, turned about, paced the room restlessly, made the circuit of the room, and sat down. he remained sitting for some time with folded arms and knitted brow, biting his finger nails and trying to piece together the kaleidoscopic impressions of this first hour of awakened life; the vast mechanical spaces, the endless series of chambers and passages, the great struggle that roared and splashed through these strange ways, the little group of remote unsympathetic men beneath the colossal atlas, howard's mysterious behaviour. there was an inkling of some vast inheritance already in his mind--a vast inheritance perhaps misapplied--of some unprecedented importance and opportunity. what had he to do? and this room's secluded silence was eloquent of imprisonment! it came into graham's mind with irresistible conviction that this series of magnificent impressions was a dream. he tried to shut his eyes and succeeded, but that time-honoured device led to no awakening. presently he began to touch and examine all the unfamiliar appointments of the two small rooms in which he found himself. in a long oval panel of mirror he saw himself and stopped astonished. he was clad in a graceful costume of purple and bluish white, with a little greyshot beard trimmed to a point, and his hair, its blackness streaked now with bands of grey, arranged over his forehead in an unfamiliar but pleasing manner. he seemed a man of five-and-forty perhaps. for a moment he did not perceive this was himself. a flash of laughter came with the recognition. "to call on old warming like this!" he exclaimed, "and make him take me out to lunch!" then he thought of meeting first one and then another of the few familiar acquaintances of his early manhood, and in the midst of his amusement realised that every soul with whom he might jest had died many score of years ago. the thought smote him abruptly and keenly; he stopped short, the expression of his face changed to a white consternation. the tumultuous memory of the moving platforms and the huge façade of that wonderful street reasserted itself. the shouting multitudes came back clear and vivid, and those remote, inaudible, unfriendly councillors in white. he felt himself a little figure, very small and ineffectual, pitifully conspicuous. and all about him, the world was--_strange_. chapter vii in the silent rooms presently graham resumed his examination of his apartments. curiosity kept him moving in spite of his fatigue. the inner room, he perceived, was high, and its ceiling dome shaped, with an oblong aperture in the centre, opening into a funnel in which a wheel of broad vanes seemed to be rotating, apparently driving the air up the shaft. the faint humming note of its easy motion was the only clear sound in that quiet place. as these vanes sprang up one after the other, graham could get transient glimpses of the sky. he was surprised to see a star. this drew his attention to the fact that the bright lighting of these rooms was due to a multitude of very faint glow lamps set about the cornices. there were no windows. and he began to recall that along all the vast chambers and passages he had traversed with howard he had observed no windows at all. had there been windows? there were windows on the street indeed, but were they for light? or was the whole city lit day and night for evermore, so that there was no night there? and another thing dawned upon him. there was no fireplace in either room. was the season summer, and were these merely summer apartments, or was the whole city uniformly heated or cooled? he became interested in these questions, began examining the smooth texture of the walls, the simply constructed bed, the ingenious arrangements by which the labour of bedroom service was practically abolished. and over everything was a curious absence of deliberate ornament, a bare grace of form and colour, that he found very pleasing to the eye. there were several very comfortable chairs, a light table on silent runners carrying several bottles of fluids and glasses, and two plates bearing a clear substance like jelly. then he noticed there were no books, no newspapers, no writing materials. "the world has changed indeed," he said. he observed one entire side of the outer room was set with rows of peculiar double cylinders inscribed with green lettering on white that harmonized with the decorative scheme of the room, and in the centre of this side projected a little apparatus about a yard square and having a white smooth face to the room. a chair faced this. he had a transitory idea that these cylinders might be books, or a modern substitute for books, but at first it did not seem so. the lettering on the cylinders puzzled him. at first sight it seemed like russian. then he noticed a suggestion of mutilated english about certain of the words. "thi man huwdbi kin" forced itself on him as "the man who would be king." "phonetic spelling," he said. he remembered reading a story with that title, then he recalled the story vividly, one of the best stories in the world. but this thing before him was not a book as he understood it. he puzzled out the titles of two adjacent cylinders. "the heart of darkness" he had never heard of before nor "the madonna of the future"--no doubt if they were indeed stories, they were by post-victorian authors. he puzzled over this peculiar cylinder for some time and replaced it. then he turned to the square apparatus and examined that. he opened a sort of lid and found one of the double cylinders within, and on the upper edge a little stud like the stud of an electric bell. he pressed this and a rapid clicking began and ceased. he became aware of voices and music, and noticed a play of colour on the smooth front face. he suddenly realised what this might be, and stepped back to regard it. on the flat surface was now a little picture, very vividly coloured, and in this picture were figures that moved. not only did they move, but they were conversing in clear small voices. it was exactly like reality viewed through an inverted opera glass and heard through a long tube. his interest was seized at once by the situation, which presented a man pacing up and down and vociferating angry things to a pretty but petulant woman. both were in the picturesque costume that seemed so strange to graham. "i have worked," said the man, "but what have you been doing?" "ah!" said graham. he forgot everything else, and sat down in the chair. within five minutes he heard himself, named, heard "when the sleeper wakes," used jestingly as a proverb for remote postponement, and passed himself by, a thing remote and incredible. but in a little while he knew those two people like intimate friends. at last the miniature drama came to an end, and the square face of the apparatus was blank again. it was a strange world into which he had been permitted to see, unscrupulous, pleasure seeking, energetic, subtle, a world too of dire economic struggle; there were allusions he did not understand, incidents that conveyed strange suggestions of altered moral ideals, flashes of dubious enlightenment. the blue canvas that bulked so largely in his first impression of the city ways appeared again and again as the costume of the common people. he had no doubt the story was contemporary, and its intense realism was undeniable. and the end had been a tragedy that oppressed him. he sat staring at the blankness. he started and rubbed his eyes. he had been so absorbed in the latter-day substitute for a novel, that he awoke to the little green and white room with more than a touch of the surprise of his first awakening. he stood up, and abruptly he was back in his own wonderland. the clearness of the kinetoscope drama passed, and the struggle in the vast place of streets, the ambiguous council, the swift phases of his waking hour, came back. these people had spoken of the council with suggestions of a vague universality of power. and they had spoken of the sleeper; it had not really struck him vividly at the time that he was the sleeper. he had to recall precisely what they had said.... he walked into the bedroom and peered up through the quick intervals of the revolving fan. as the fan swept round, a dim turmoil like the noise of machinery came in rhythmic eddies. all else was silence. though the perpetual day still irradiated his apartments, he perceived the little intermittent strip of sky was now deep blue--black almost, with a dust of little stars.... he resumed his examination of the rooms. he could find no way of opening the padded door, no bell nor other means of calling for attendance. his feeling of wonder was in abeyance; but he was curious, anxious for information. he wanted to know exactly how he stood to these new things. he tried to compose himself to wait until someone came to him. presently he became restless and eager for information, for distraction, for fresh sensations. he went back to the apparatus in the other room, and had soon puzzled out the method of replacing the cylinders by others. as he did so, it came into his mind that it must be these little appliances had fixed the language so that it was still clear and understandable after two hundred years. the haphazard cylinders he substituted displayed a musical fantasia. at first it was beautiful, and then it was sensuous. he presently recognised what appeared to him to be an altered version of the story of tannhauser. the music was unfamiliar. but the rendering was realistic, and with a contemporary unfamiliarity. tannhauser did not go to a venusberg, but to a pleasure city. what was a pleasure city? a dream, surely, the fancy of a fantastic, voluptuous writer. he became interested, curious. the story developed with a flavour of strangely twisted sentimentality. suddenly he did not like it. he liked it less as it proceeded. he had a revulsion of feeling. these were no pictures, no idealisations, but photographed realities. he wanted no more of the twenty-second century venusberg. he forgot the part played by the model in nineteenth century art, and gave way to an archaic indignation. he rose, angry and half ashamed at himself for witnessing this thing even in solitude. he pulled forward the apparatus, and with some violence sought for a means of stopping its action. something snapped. a violet spark stung and convulsed his arm and the thing was still. when he attempted next day to replace these tannhauser cylinders by another pair, he found the 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 was very tired, with 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 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 the rooms. 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 sound-proof 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 system of concealment of which you are the face. 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 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, 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. then a dark hand was extended, the swift vane struck it, swung round and beat on with a little brownish patch on the edge of its thin blade, and something began to fall therefrom upon the floor, dripping silently. graham looked down, and there were spots of blood at his feet. he looked up again in a strange excitement. the figure had gone. he remained motionless--his every sense intent upon the flickering patch of darkness. he became aware of some faint, remote, dark specks floating lightly through the outer air. they came down towards him, fitfully, eddyingly, and passed aside out of the uprush from the fan. a gleam of light flickered, the specks flashed white, and then the darkness came again. warmed and lit as he was, he perceived that it was snowing within a few feet of him. graham walked across the room and came back to the ventilator again. he saw the head of a man pass near. there was a sound of whispering. then a smart blow on some metallic substance, effort, voices, and the vanes stopped. a gust of snowflakes whirled into the room, and vanished before they touched the floor. "don't be afraid," said a voice. graham stood under the vane. "who are you?" he whispered. for a moment there was nothing but a swaying of the fan, and then the head of a man was thrust cautiously into the opening. his face appeared nearly inverted to graham; his dark hair was wet with dissolving flakes of snow upon it. his arm went up into the darkness holding something unseen. he had a youthful face and bright eyes, and the veins of his forehead were swollen. he seemed to be exerting himself to maintain his position. for several seconds neither he nor graham spoke. "you were the sleeper?" said the stranger at last. "yes," said graham. "what do you want with me?" "i come from ostrog, sire." "ostrog?" the man in the ventilator twisted his head round so that his profile was towards graham. he appeared to be listening. suddenly there was a hasty exclamation, and the intruder sprang back just in time to escape the sweep of the released fan. and when graham peered up there was nothing visible but the slowly falling snow. it was perhaps a quarter of an hour before anything returned to the ventilator. but at last came the same metallic interference again; the fans stopped and the face reappeared. graham had remained all this time in the same place, alert and tremulously excited. "who are you? what do you want?" he said. "we want to speak to you, sire," said the intruder. "we want--i can't hold the thing. we have been trying to find a way to you--these three days." "is it rescue?" whispered graham. "escape?" "yes, sire. if you will." "you are my party--the party of the sleeper?" "yes, sire." "what am i to do?" said graham. there was a struggle. the stranger's arm appeared, and his hand was bleeding. his knees came into view over the edge of the funnel. "stand away from me," he said, and he dropped rather heavily on his hands and one shoulder at graham's feet. the released ventilator whirled noisily. the stranger rolled over, sprang up nimbly and stood panting, hand to a bruised shoulder, and with his bright eyes on graham. "you are indeed the sleeper," he said. "i saw you asleep. when it was the law that anyone might see you." "i am the man who was in the trance," said graham. "they have imprisoned me here. i have been here since i awoke--at least three days." the intruder seemed about to speak, heard something, glanced swiftly at the door, and suddenly left graham and ran towards it, shouting quick incoherent words. a bright wedge of steel flashed in his hand, and he began tap, tap, a quick succession of blows upon the hinges. "mind!" cried a voice. "oh!" the voice came from above. graham glanced up, saw the soles of two feet, ducked, was struck on the shoulder by one of them, and a heavy weight bore him to the earth. he fell on his knees and forward, and the weight went over his head. he knelt up and saw a second man from above seated before him. "i did not see you, sire," panted the man. he rose and assisted graham to rise. "are you hurt, sire?" he panted. a succession of heavy blows on the ventilator began, something fell close to graham's face, and a shivering edge of white metal danced, fell over, and lay fiat upon the floor. "what is this?" cried graham, confused and looking at the ventilator. "who are you? what are you going to do? remember, i understand nothing." "stand back," said the stranger, and drew him from under the ventilator as another fragment of metal fell heavily. "we want you to come, sire," panted the newcomer, and graham glancing at his face again, saw a new cut had changed from white to red on his forehead, and a couple of little trickles of blood starting therefrom. "your people call for you." "come where? my people?" "to the hall about the markets. your life is in danger here. we have spies. we learned but just in time. the council has decided--this very day--either to drug or kill you. and everything is ready. the people are drilled, the wind-vane police, the engineers, and half the way-gearers are with us. we have the halls crowded--shouting. the whole city shouts against the council. we have arms." he wiped the blood with his hand. "your life here is not worth--" "but why arms?" "the people have risen to protect you, sire. what?" he turned quickly as the man who had first come down made a hissing with his teeth. graham saw the latter start back, gesticulate to them to conceal themselves, and move as if to hide behind the opening door. as he did so howard appeared, a little tray in one hand and his heavy face downcast. he started, looked up, the door slammed behind him, the tray tilted side-ways, and the steel wedge struck him behind the ear. he went down like a felled tree, and lay as he fell athwart the floor of the outer room. the man who had struck him bent hastily, studied his face for a moment, rose, and returned to his work at the door. "your poison!" said a voice in graham's ear. then abruptly they were in darkness. the innumerable cornice lights had been extinguished. graham saw the aperture of the ventilator with ghostly snow whirling above it and dark figures moving hastily. three knelt on the vane. some dim thing--a ladder--was being lowered through the opening, and a hand appeared holding a fitful yellow light. he had a moment of hesitation. but the manner of these men, their swift alacrity, their words, marched so completely with his own fears of the council, with his idea and hope of a rescue, that it lasted not a moment. and his people awaited him! "i do not understand," he said. "i trust. tell me what to do." the man with the cut brow gripped graham's arm. "clamber up the ladder," he whispered. "quick. they will have heard--" graham felt for the ladder with extended hands, put his foot on the lower rung, and, turning his head, saw over the shoulder of the nearest man, in the yellow flicker of the light, the first-comer astride over howard and still working at the door. graham turned to the ladder again, and was thrust by his conductor and helped up by those above, and then he was standing on something hard and cold and slippery outside the ventilating funnel. he shivered. he was aware of a great difference in the temperature. half a dozen men stood about him, and light flakes of snow touched hands and face and melted. for a moment it was dark, then for a flash a ghastly violet white, and then everything was dark again. he saw he had come out upon the roof of the vast city structure which had replaced the miscellaneous houses, streets and open spaces of victorian london. the place upon which he stood was level, with huge serpentine cables lying athwart it in every direction. the circular wheels of a number of windmills loomed indistinct and gigantic through the darkness and snowfall, and roared with a varying loudness as the fitful wind rose and fell. some way off an intermittent white light smote up from below, touched the snow eddies with a transient glitter, and made an evanescent spectre in the night; and here and there, low down, some vaguely outlined wind-driven mechanism flickered with livid sparks. all this he appreciated in a fragmentary manner as his rescuers stood about him. someone threw a thick soft cloak of fur-like texture about him, and fastened it by buckled straps at waist and shoulders. things were said briefly, decisively. someone thrust him forward. before his mind was yet clear a dark shape gripped his arm. "this way," said this shape, urging him along, and pointed graham across the flat roof in the direction of a dim semicircular haze of light. graham obeyed. "mind!" said a voice, as graham stumbled against a cable. "between them and not across them," said the voice. and, "we must hurry." "where are the people?" said graham. "the people you said awaited me?" the stranger did not answer. he left graham's arm as the path grew narrower, and led the way with rapid strides. graham followed blindly. in a minute he found himself running. "are the others coming?" he panted, but received no reply. his companion glanced back and ran on. they came to a sort of pathway of open metal-work, transverse to the direction they had come, and they turned aside to follow this. graham looked back, but the snowstorm had hidden the others. "come on!" said his guide. running now, they drew near a little windmill spinning high in the air. "stoop," said graham's guide, and they avoided an endless band running roaring up to the shaft of the vane. "this way!" and they were ankle deep in a gutter full of drifted thawing snow, between two low walls of metal that presently rose waist high. "i will go first," said the guide. graham drew his cloak about him and followed. then suddenly came a narrow abyss across which the gutter leapt to the snowy darkness of the further side. graham peeped over the side once and the gulf was black. for a moment he regretted his flight. he dared not look again, and his brain spun as he waded through the half liquid snow. then out of the gutter they clambered and hurried across a wide flat space damp with thawing snow, and for half its extent dimly translucent to lights that went to and fro underneath. he hesitated at this unstable looking substance, but his guide ran on unheeding, and so they came to and clambered up slippery steps to the rim of a great dome of glass. round this they went. far below a number of people seemed to be dancing, and music filtered through the dome.... graham fancied he heard a shouting through the snowstorm, and his guide hurried him on with a new spurt of haste. they clambered panting to a space of huge windmills, one so vast that only the lower edge of its vanes came rushing into sight and rushed up again and was lost in the night and the snow. they hurried for a time through the colossal metallic tracery of its supports, and came at last above a place of moving platforms like the place into which graham had looked from the balcony. they crawled across the sloping transparency that covered this street of platforms, crawling on hands and knees because of the slipperiness of the snowfall. for the most part the glass was bedewed, and graham saw only hazy suggestions of the forms below, but near the pitch of the transparent roof the glass was clear, and he found himself looking sheerly down upon it all. for awhile, in spite of the urgency of his guide, he gave way to vertigo and lay spread-eagled on the glass, sick and paralysed. far below, mere stirring specks and dots, went the people of the unsleeping city in their perpetual daylight, and the moving platforms ran on their incessant journey. messengers and men on unknown businesses shot along the drooping cables and the frail bridges were crowded with men. it was like peering into a gigantic glass hive, and it lay vertically below him with only a tough glass of unknown thickness to save him from a fall. the street showed warm and lit, and graham was wet now to the skin with thawing snow, and his feet were numbed with cold. for a space he could not move. "come on!" cried his guide, with terror in his voice. "come on!" graham reached the pitch of the roof by an effort. over the ridge, following his guide's example, he turned about and slid backward down the opposite slope very swiftly, amid a little avalanche of snow. while he was sliding he thought of what would happen if some broken gap should come in his way. at the edge he stumbled to his feet ankle deep in slush, thanking heaven for an opaque footing again. his guide was already clambering up a metal screen to a level expanse. through the spare snowflakes above this loomed another line of vast windmills, and then suddenly the amorphous tumult of the rotating wheels was pierced with a deafening sound. it was a mechanical shrilling of extraordinary intensity that seemed to come simultaneously from every point of the compass. "they have missed us already!" cried graham's guide in an accent of terror, and suddenly, with a blinding flash, the night became day. above the driving snow, from the summits of the wind-wheels, appeared vast masts carrying globes of livid light. they receded in illimitable vistas in every direction. as far as his eye could penetrate the snowfall they glared. "get on this," cried graham's conductor, and thrust him forward to a long grating of snowless metal that ran like a band between two slightly sloping expanses of snow. it felt warm to graham's benumbed feet, and a faint eddy of steam rose from it. "come on!" shouted his guide ten yards off, and, without waiting, ran swiftly through the incandescent glare towards the iron supports of the next range of wind-wheels. graham, recovering from his astonishment, followed as fast, convinced of his imminent capture.... in a score of seconds they were within a tracery of glare and black shadows shot with moving bars beneath the monstrous wheels. graham's conductor ran on for some time, and suddenly darted sideways and vanished into a black shadow in the corner of the foot of a huge support. in another moment graham was beside him. they cowered panting and stared out. the scene upon which graham looked was very wild and strange. the snow had now almost ceased; only a belated flake passed now and again across the picture. but the broad stretch of level before them was a ghastly white, broken only by gigantic masses and moving shapes and lengthy strips of impenetrable darkness, vast ungainly titans of shadow. all about them, huge metallic structures, iron girders, inhumanly vast as it seemed to him, interlaced, and the edges of wind-wheels, scarcely moving in the lull, passed in great shining curves steeper and steeper up into a luminous haze. wherever the snow-spangled light struck down, beams and girders, and incessant bands running with a halting, indomitable resolution, passed upward and downward into the black. and with all that mighty activity, with an omnipresent sense of motive and design, this snow-clad desolation of mechanism seemed void of all human presence save themselves, seemed as trackless and deserted and unfrequented by men as some inaccessible alpine snowfield. "they will be chasing us," cried the leader. "we are scarcely halfway there yet. cold as it is we must hide here for a space--at least until it snows more thickly again." his teeth chattered in his head. "where are the markets?" asked graham staring out. "where are all the people?" the other made no answer. "_look_!" whispered graham, crouched close, and became very still. the snow had suddenly become thick again, and sliding with the whirling eddies out of the black pit of the sky came something, vague and large and very swift. it came down in a steep curve and swept round, wide wings extended and a trail of white condensing steam behind it, rose with an easy swiftness and went gliding up the air, swept horizontally forward in a wide curve, and vanished again in the steaming specks of snow. and, through the ribs of its body, graham saw two little men, very minute and active, searching the snowy areas about him, as it seemed to him, with field glasses. for a second they were clear, then hazy through a thick whirl of snow, then small and distant, and in a minute they were gone. "_now_!" cried his companion. "come!" he pulled graham's sleeve, and incontinently the two were running headlong down the arcade of iron-work beneath the wind-wheels. graham, running blindly, collided with his leader, who had turned back on him suddenly. he found himself within a dozen yards of a black chasm. it extended as far as he could see right and left. it seemed to cut off their progress in either direction. "do as i do," whispered his guide. he lay down and crawled to the edge, thrust his head over and twisted until one leg hung. he seemed to feel for something with his foot, found it, and went sliding over the edge into the gulf. his head reappeared. "it is a ledge," he whispered. "in the dark all the way along. do as i did." graham hesitated, went down upon all fours, crawled to the edge, and peered into a velvety blackness. for a sickly moment he had courage neither to go on nor retreat, then he sat and hung his leg down, felt his guide's hands pulling at him, had a horrible sensation of sliding over the edge into the unfathomable, splashed, and felt himself in a slushy gutter, impenetrably dark. "this way," whispered the voice, and he began crawling along the gutter through the trickling thaw, pressing himself against the wall. they continued along it for some minutes. he seemed to pass through a hundred stages of misery, to pass minute after minute through a hundred degrees of cold, damp, and exhaustion. in a little while he ceased to feel his hands and feet. the gutter sloped downwards. he observed that they were now many feet below the edge of the buildings. rows of spectral white shapes like the ghosts of blind-drawn windows rose above them. they came to the end of a cable fastened above one of these white windows, dimly visible and dropping into impenetrable shadows. suddenly his hand came against his guide's. "_still_!" whispered the latter very softly. he looked up with a start and saw the huge wings of the flying machine gliding slowly and noiselessly overhead athwart the broad band of snow-flecked grey-blue sky. in a moment it was hidden again. "keep still; they were just turning." for awhile both were motionless, then graham's companion stood up, and reaching towards the fastenings of the cable fumbled with some indistinct tackle. "what is that?" asked graham. the only answer was a faint cry. the man crouched motionless. graham peered and saw his face dimly. he was staring down the long ribbon of sky, and graham, following his eyes, saw the flying machine small and faint and remote. then he saw that the wings spread on either side, that it headed towards them, that every moment it grew larger. it was following the edge of the chasm towards them. the man's movements became convulsive. he thrust two cross bars into graham's hand. graham could not see them, he ascertained their form by feeling. they were slung by thin cords to the cable. on the cord were hand grips of some soft elastic substance. "put the cross between your legs," whispered the guide hysterically, "and grip the holdfasts. grip tightly, grip!" graham did as he was told. "jump," said the voice. "in heaven's name, jump!" for one momentous second graham could not speak. he was glad afterwards that darkness hid his face. he said nothing. he began to tremble violently. he looked sideways at the swift shadow that swallowed up the sky as it rushed upon him. "jump! jump--in god's name! or they will have us," cried graham's guide, and in the violence of his passion thrust him forward. graham tottered convulsively, gave a sobbing cry, a cry in spite of himself, and then, as the flying machine swept over them, fell forward into the pit of that darkness, seated on the cross wood and holding the ropes with the clutch of death. something cracked, something rapped smartly against a wall. he heard the pulley of the cradle hum on its rope. he heard the aeronauts shout. he felt a pair of knees digging into his back.... he was sweeping headlong through the air, falling through the air. all his strength was in his hands. he would have screamed but he had no breath. he shot into a blinding light that made him grip the tighter. he recognised the great passage with the running ways, the hanging lights and interlacing girders. they rushed upward and by him. he had a momentary impression of a great round mouth yawning to swallow him up. he was in the dark again, falling, falling, gripping with aching hands, and behold! a clap of sound, a burst of light, and he was in a brightly lit hall with a roaring multitude of people beneath his feet. the people! his people! a proscenium, a stage rushed up towards him, and his cable swept down to a circular aperture to the right of this. he felt he was travelling slower, and suddenly very much slower. he distinguished shouts of "saved! the master. he is safe!" the stage rushed up towards him with rapidly diminishing swiftness. then-- he heard the man clinging behind him shout as if suddenly terrified, and this shout was echoed by a shout from below. he felt that he was no longer gliding along the cable but falling with it. there was a tumult of yells, screams, and cries. he felt something soft against his extended hand, and the impact of a broken fall quivering through his arm.... he wanted to be still and the people were lifting him. he believed afterwards he was carried to the platform and given some drink, but he was never sure. he did not notice what became of his guide. when his mind was clear again he was on his feet; eager hands were assisting him to stand. he was in a big alcove, occupying the position that in his previous experience had been devoted to the lower boxes. if this was indeed a theatre. a mighty tumult was in his ears, a thunderous roar, the shouting of a countless multitude. "it is the sleeper! the sleeper is with us!" "the sleeper is with us! the master--the owner! the master is with us. he is safe." graham had a surging vision of a great hall crowded with people. he saw no individuals, he was conscious of a froth of pink faces, of waving arms and garments, he felt the occult influence of a vast crowd pouring over him, buoying him up. there were balconies, galleries, great archways giving remoter perspectives, and everywhere people, a vast arena of people, densely packed and cheering. across the nearer space lay the collapsed cable like a huge snake. it had been cut by the men of the flying machine at its upper end, and had crumpled down into the hall. men seemed to be hauling this out of the way. but the whole effect was vague, the very buildings throbbed and leapt with the roar of the voices. he stood unsteadily and looked at those about him. someone supported him by one arm. "let me go into a little room," he said, weeping; "a little room," and could say no more. a man in black stepped forward, took his disengaged arm. he was aware of officious men opening a door before him. someone guided him to a seat. he staggered. he sat down heavily and covered his face with his hands; he was trembling violently, his nervous control was at an end. he was relieved of his cloak, he could not remember how; his purple hose he saw were black with wet. people were running about him, things were happening, but for some time he gave no heed to them. he had escaped. a myriad of cries told him that. he was safe. these were the people who were on his side. for a space he sobbed for breath, and then he sat still with his face covered. the air was full of the shouting of innumerable men. chapter ix the people march he became aware of someone urging a glass of clear fluid upon his attention, looked up and discovered this was a dark young man in a yellow garment. he took the dose forthwith, and in a moment he was glowing. a tall man in a black robe stood by his shoulder, and pointed to the half open door into the hall. this man was shouting close to his ear and yet what was said was indistinct because of the tremendous uproar from the great theatre. behind the man was a girl in a silvery grey robe, whom graham, even in this confusion, perceived to be beautiful. her dark eyes, full of wonder and curiosity, were fixed on him, her lips trembled apart. a partially opened door gave a glimpse of the crowded hall, and admitted a vast uneven tumult, a hammering, clapping and shouting that died away and began again, and rose to a thunderous pitch, and so continued intermittently all the time that graham remained in the little room. he watched the lips of the man in black and gathered that he was making some explanation. he stared stupidly for some moments at these things and then stood up abruptly; he grasped the arm of this shouting person. "tell me!" he cried. "who am i? who am i?" the others came nearer to hear his words. "who am i?" his eyes searched their faces. "they have told him nothing!" cried the girl. "tell me, tell me!" cried graham. "you are the master of the earth. you are owner of the world." he did not believe he heard aright. he resisted the persuasion. he pretended not to understand, not to hear. he lifted his voice again. "i have been awake three days--a prisoner three days. i judge there is some struggle between a number of people in this city--it is london?" "yes," said the younger man. "and those who meet in the great hall with the white atlas? how does it concern me? in some way it has to do with me. _why_, i don't know. drugs? it seems to me that while i have slept the world has gone mad. i have gone mad.... who are those councillors under the atlas? why should they try to drug me?" "to keep you insensible," said the man in yellow. "to prevent your interference." "but _why_?" "because _you_ are the atlas, sire," said the man in yellow. "the world is on your shoulders. they rule it in your name." the sounds from the hall had died into a silence threaded by one monotonous voice. now suddenly, trampling on these last words, came a deafening tumult, a roaring and thundering, cheer crowded on cheer, voices hoarse and shrill, beating, overlapping, and while it lasted the people in the little room could not hear each other shout. graham stood, his intelligence clinging helplessly to the thing he had just heard. "the council," he repeated blankly, and then snatched at a name that had struck him. "but who is ostrog?" he said. "he is the organiser--the organiser of the revolt. our leader--in your name." "in my name?--and you? why is he not here?" "he--has deputed us. i am his brother--his half-brother, lincoln. he wants you to show yourself to these people and then come on to him. that is why he has sent. he is at the wind-vane offices directing. the people are marching." "in your name," shouted the younger man. "they have ruled, crushed, tyrannised. at last even--" "in my name! my name! master?" the younger man suddenly became audible in a pause of the outer thunder, indignant and vociferous, a high penetrating voice under his red aquiline nose and bushy moustache. "no one expected you to wake. no one expected you to wake. they were cunning. damned tyrants! but they were taken by surprise. they did not know whether to drug you, hypnotise you, kill you." again the hall dominated everything. "ostrog is at the wind-vane offices ready--. even now there is a rumour of fighting beginning." the man who had called himself lincoln came close to him. "ostrog has it planned. trust him. we have our organisations ready. we shall seize the flying stages--. even now he may be doing that. then--" "this public theatre," bawled the man in yellow, "is only a contingent. we have five myriads of drilled men--" "we have arms," cried lincoln. "we have plans. a leader. their police have gone from the streets and are massed in the--" (inaudible). "it is now or never. the council is rocking--they cannot trust even their drilled men--" "hear the people calling to you!" graham's mind was like a night of moon and swift clouds, now dark and hopeless, now clear and ghastly. he was master of the earth, he was a man sodden with thawing snow. of all his fluctuating impressions the dominant ones presented an antagonism; on the one hand was the white council, powerful, disciplined, few, the white council from which he had just escaped; and on the other, monstrous crowds, packed masses of indistinguishable people clamouring his name, hailing him master. the other side had imprisoned him, debated his death. these shouting thousands beyond the little doorway had rescued him. but why these things should be so he could not understand. the door opened, lincoln's voice was swept away and drowned, and a rash of people followed on the heels of the tumult. these intruders came towards him and lincoln gesticulating. the voices without explained their soundless lips. "show us the sleeper, show us the sleeper!" was the burden of the uproar. men were bawling for "order! silence!" graham glanced towards the open doorway, and saw a tall, oblong picture of the hall beyond, a waving, incessant confusion of crowded, shouting faces, men and women together, waving pale blue garments, extended hands. many were standing, one man in rags of dark brown, a gaunt figure, stood on the seat and waved a black cloth. he met the wonder and expectation of the girl's eyes. what did these people expect from him. he was dimly aware that the tumult outside had changed its character, was in some way beating, marching. his own mind, too, changed. for a space he did not recognise the influence that was transforming him. but a moment that was near to panic passed. he tried to make audible inquiries of what was required of him. lincoln was shouting in his ear, but graham was deafened to that. all the others save the woman gesticulated towards the hall. he perceived what had happened to the uproar. the whole mass of people was chanting together. it was not simply a song, the voices were gathered together and upborne by a torrent of instrumental music, music like the music of an organ, a woven texture of sounds, full of trumpets, full of flaunting banners, full of the march and pageantry of opening war. and the feet of the people were beating time--tramp, tramp. he was urged towards the door. he obeyed mechanically. the strength of that chant took hold of him, stirred him, emboldened him. the hall opened to him, a vast welter of fluttering colour swaying to the music. "wave your arm to them," said lincoln. "wave your arm to them." "this," said a voice on the other side, "he must have this." arms were about his neck detaining him in the doorway, and a black subtly-folding mantle hung from his shoulders. he threw his arm free of this and followed lincoln. he perceived the girl in grey close to him, her face lit, her gesture onward. for the instant she became to him, flushed and eager as she was, an embodiment of the song. he emerged in the alcove again. incontinently the mounting waves of the song broke upon his appearing, and flashed up into a foam of shouting. guided by lincoln's hand he marched obliquely across the centre of the stage facing the people. the hall was a vast and intricate space--galleries, balconies, broad spaces of amphitheatral steps, and great archways. far away, high up, seemed the mouth of a huge passage full of struggling humanity. the whole multitude was swaying in congested masses. individual figures sprang out of the tumult, impressed him momentarily, and lost definition again. close to the platform swayed a beautiful fair woman, carried by three men, her hair across her face and brandishing a green staff. next this group an old careworn man in blue canvas maintained his place in the crush with difficulty, and behind shouted a hairless face, a great cavity of toothless mouth. a voice called that enigmatical word "ostrog." all his impressions were vague save the massive emotion of that trampling song. the multitude were beating time with their feet--marking time, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. the green weapons waved, flashed and slanted. then he saw those nearest to him on a level space before the stage were marching in front of him, passing towards a great archway, shouting "to the council!" tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. he raised his arm, and the roaring was redoubled. he remembered he had to shout "march!" his mouth shaped inaudible heroic words. he waved his arm again and pointed to the archway, shouting "onward!" they were no longer marking time, they were marching; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. in that host were bearded men, old men, youths, fluttering robed bare-armed women, girls. men and women of the new age! rich robes, grey rags fluttered together in the whirl of their movement amidst the dominant blue. a monstrous black banner jerked its way to the right. he perceived a blue-clad negro, a shrivelled woman in yellow, then a group of tall fair-haired, white-faced, blue-clad men pushed theatrically past him. he noted two chinamen. a tall, sallow, dark-haired, shining-eyed youth, white clad from top to toe, clambered up towards the platform shouting loyally, and sprang down again and receded, looking backward. heads, shoulders, hands clutching weapons, all were swinging with those marching cadences. faces came out of the confusion to him as he stood there, eyes met his and passed and vanished. men gesticulated to him, shouted inaudible personal things. most of the faces were flushed, but many were ghastly white. and disease was there, and many a hand that waved to him was gaunt and lean. men and women of the new age! strange and incredible meeting! as the broad stream passed before him to the right, tributary gangways from the remote uplands of the hall thrust downward in an incessant replacement of people; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. the unison of the song was enriched and complicated by the massive echoes of arches and passages. men and women mingled in the ranks; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. the whole world seemed marching. tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; his brain was tramping. the garments waved onward, the faces poured by more abundantly. tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; at lincoln's pressure he turned towards the archway, walking unconsciously in that rhythm, scarcely noticing his movement for the melody and stir of it. the multitude, the gesture and song, all moved in that direction, the flow of people smote downward until the upturned faces were below the level of his feet. he was aware of a path before him, of a suite about him, of guards and dignities, and lincoln on his right hand. attendants intervened, and ever and again blotted out the sight of the multitude to the left. before him went the backs of the guards in black--three and three and three. he was marched along a little railed way, and crossed above the archway, with the torrent dipping to flow beneath, and shouting up to him. he did not know whither he went; he did not want to know. he glanced back across a flaming spaciousness of hall. tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. chapter x the battle of the darkness he was no longer in the hall. he was marching along a gallery overhanging one of the great streets of the moving platforms that traversed the city. before him and behind him tramped his guards. the whole concave of the moving ways below was a congested mass of people marching, tramping to the left, shouting, waving hands and arms, pouring along a huge vista, shouting as they came into view, shouting as they passed, shouting as they receded, until the globes of electric light receding in perspective dropped down it seemed and hid the swarming bare heads. tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. the song roared up to graham now, no longer upborne by music, but coarse and noisy, and the beating of the marching feet, tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp, interwove with a thunderous irregularity of footsteps from the undisciplined rabble that poured along the higher ways. abruptly he noted a contrast. the buildings on the opposite side of the way seemed deserted, the cables and bridges that laced across the aisle were empty and shadowy. it came into graham's mind that these also should have swarmed with people. he felt a curious emotion--throbbing--very fast! he stopped again. the guards before him marched on; those about him stopped as he did. he saw anxiety and fear in their faces. the throbbing had something to do with the lights. he too looked up. at first it seemed to him a thing that affected the lights simply, an isolated phenomenon, having no bearing on the things below. each huge globe of blinding whiteness was as it were clutched, compressed in a systole that was followed by a transitory diastole, and again a systole like a tightening grip, darkness, light, darkness, in rapid alternation. graham became aware that this strange behaviour of the lights had to do with the people below. the appearance of the houses and ways, the appearance of the packed masses changed, became a confusion of vivid lights and leaping shadows. he saw a multitude of shadows had sprung into aggressive existence, seemed rushing up, broadening, widening, growing with steady swiftness--to leap suddenly back and return reinforced. the song and the tramping had ceased. the unanimous march, he discovered, was arrested, there were eddies, a flow sideways, shouts of "the lights!" voices were crying together one thing. "the lights!" cried these voices. "the lights!" he looked down. in this dancing death of the lights the area of the street had suddenly become a monstrous struggle. the huge white globes became purple-white, purple with a reddish glow, flickered, flickered faster and faster, fluttered between light and extinction, ceased to flicker and became mere fading specks of glowing red in a vast obscurity. in ten seconds the extinction was accomplished, and there was only this roaring darkness, a black monstrosity that had suddenly swallowed up those glittering myriads of men. he felt invisible forms about him; his arms were gripped. something rapped sharply against his shin. a voice bawled in his ear, "it is all right--all right." graham shook off the paralysis of his first astonishment. he struck his forehead against lincoln's and bawled, "what is this darkness?" "the council has cut the currents that light the city. we must wait--stop. the people will go on. they will--" his voice was drowned. voices were shouting, "save the sleeper. take care of the sleeper." a guard stumbled against graham and hurt his hand by an inadvertent blow of his weapon. a wild tumult tossed and whirled about him, growing, as it seemed, louder, denser, more furious each moment. fragments of recognisable sounds drove towards him, were whirled away from him as his mind reached out to grasp them. voices seemed to be shouting conflicting orders, other voices answered. there were suddenly a succession of piercing screams close beneath them. a voice bawled in his ear, "the red police," and receded forthwith beyond his questions. a crackling sound grew to distinctness, and therewith a leaping of faint flashes along the edge of the further ways. by their light graham saw the heads and bodies of a number of men, armed with weapons like those of his guards, leap into an instant's dim visibility. the whole area began to crackle, to flash with little instantaneous streaks of light, and abruptly the darkness rolled back like a curtain. a glare of light dazzled his eyes, a vast seething expanse of struggling men confused his mind. a shout, a burst of cheering, came across the ways. he looked up to see the source of the light. a man hung far overhead from the upper part of a cable, holding by a rope the blinding star that had driven the darkness back. graham's eyes fell to the ways again. a wedge of red a little way along the vista caught his eye. he saw it was a dense mass of red-clad men jammed on the higher further way, their backs against the pitiless cliff of building, and surrounded by a dense crowd of antagonists. they were fighting. weapons flashed and rose and fell, heads vanished at the edge of the contest, and other heads replaced them, the little flashes from the green weapons became little jets of smoky grey while the light lasted. abruptly the flare was extinguished and the ways were an inky darkness once more, a tumultuous mystery. he felt something thrusting against him. he was being pushed along the gallery. someone was shouting--it might be at him. he was too confused to hear. he was thrust against the wall, and a number of people blundered past him. it seemed to him that his guards were struggling with one another. suddenly the cable-hung star-holder appeared again, and the whole scene was white and dazzling. the band of red-coats seemed broader and nearer; its apex was half-way down the ways towards the central aisle. and raising his eyes graham saw that a number of these men had also appeared now in the darkened lower galleries of the opposite building, and were firing over the heads of their fellows below at the boiling confusion of people on the lower ways. the meaning of these things dawned upon him. the march of the people had come upon an ambush at the very outset. thrown into confusion by the extinction of the lights they were now being attacked by the red police. then he became aware that he was standing alone, that his guards and lincoln were along the gallery in the direction along which he had come before the darkness fell. he saw they were gesticulating to him wildly, running back towards him. a great shouting came from across the ways. then it seemed as though the whole face of the darkened building opposite was lined and speckled with red-clad men. and they were pointing over to him and shouting. "the sleeper! save the sleeper!" shouted a multitude of throats. something struck the wall above his head. he looked up at the impact and saw a star-shaped splash of silvery metal. he saw lincoln near him. felt his arm gripped. then, pat, pat; he had been missed twice. for a moment he did not understand this. the street was hidden, everything was hidden, as he looked. the second flare had burned out. lincoln had gripped graham by the arm, was lugging him along the gallery. "before the next light!" he cried. his haste was contagious. graham's instinct of self-preservation overcame the paralysis of his incredulous astonishment. he became for a time the blind creature of the fear of death. he ran, stumbling because of the uncertainty of the darkness, blundered into his guards as they turned to run with him. haste was his one desire, to escape this perilous gallery upon which he was exposed. a third glare came close on its predecessors. with it came a great shouting across the ways, an answering tumult from the ways. the red-coats below, he saw, had now almost gained the central passage. their countless faces turned towards him, and they shouted. the white façade opposite was densely stippled with red. all these wonderful things concerned him, turned upon him as a pivot. these were the guards of the council attempting to recapture him. lucky it was for him that these shots were the first fired in anger for a hundred and fifty years. he heard bullets whacking over his head, felt a splash of molten metal sting his ear, and perceived without looking that the whole opposite façade, an unmasked ambuscade of red police, was crowded and bawling and firing at him. down went one of his guards before him, and graham, unable to stop, leapt the writhing body. in another second he had plunged, unhurt, into a black passage, and incontinently someone, coming, it may be, in a transverse direction, blundered violently into him. he was hurling down a staircase in absolute darkness. he reeled, and was struck again, and came against a wall with his hands. he was crushed by a weight of struggling bodies, whirled round, and thrust to the right. a vast pressure pinned him. he could not breathe, his ribs seemed cracking. he felt a momentary relaxation, and then the whole mass of people moving together, bore him back towards the great theatre from which he had so recently come. there were moments when his feet did not touch the ground. then he was staggering and shoving. he heard shouts of "they are coming!" and a muffled cry close to him. his foot blundered against something soft, he heard a hoarse scream under foot. he heard shouts of "the sleeper!" but he was too confused to speak. he heard the green weapons crackling. for a space he lost his individual will, became an atom in a panic, blind, unthinking, mechanical. he thrust and pressed back and writhed in the pressure, kicked presently against a step, and found himself ascending a slope. and abruptly the faces all about him leapt out of the black, visible, ghastly-white and astonished, terrified, perspiring, in a livid glare. one face, a young man's, was very near to him, not twenty inches away. at the time it was but a passing incident of no emotional value, but afterwards it came back to him in his dreams. for this young man, wedged upright in the crowd for a time, had been shot and was already dead. a fourth white star must have been lit by the man on the cable. its light came glaring in through vast windows and arches and showed graham that he was now one of a dense mass of flying black figures pressed back across the lower area of the great theatre. this time the picture was livid and fragmentary, slashed and barred with black shadows. he saw that quite near to him the red guards were fighting their way through the people. he could not tell whether they saw him. he looked for lincoln and his guards. he saw lincoln near the stage of the theatre surrounded in a crowd of black-badged revolutionaries, lifted up and staring to and fro as if seeking him. graham perceived that he himself was near the opposite edge of the crowd, that behind him, separated by a barrier, sloped the now vacant seats of the theatre. a sudden idea came to him, and he began fighting his way towards the barrier. as he reached it the glare came to an end. in a moment he had thrown off the great cloak that not only impeded his movements but made him conspicuous, and had slipped it from his shoulders. he heard someone trip in its folds. in another he was scaling the barrier and had dropped into the blackness on the further side. then feeling his way he came to the lower end of an ascending gangway. in the darkness the sound of firing ceased and the roar of feet and voices lulled. then suddenly he came to an unexpected step and tripped and fell. as he did so pools and islands amidst the darkness about him leapt to vivid light again, the uproar surged louder and the glare of the fifth white star shone through the vast fenestrations of the theatre walls. he rolled over among some seats, heard a shouting and the whirring rattle of weapons, struggled up and was knocked back again, perceived that a number of black-badged men were all about him firing at the reds below, leaping from seat to seat, crouching among the seats to reload. instinctively he crouched amidst the seats, as stray shots ripped the pneumatic cushions and cut bright slashes on their soft metal frames. instinctively he marked the direction of the gangways, the most plausible way of escape for him so soon as the veil of darkness fell again. a young man in faded blue garments came vaulting over the seats. "hullo!" he said, with his flying feet within six inches of the crouching sleeper's face. he stared without any sign of recognition, turned to fire, fired, and shouting, "to hell with the council!" was about to fire again. then it seemed to graham that the half of this man's neck had vanished. a drop of moisture fell on graham's cheek. the green weapon stopped half raised. for a moment the man stood still with his face suddenly expressionless, then he began to slant forward. his knees bent. man and darkness fell together. at the sound of his fall graham rose up and ran for his life until a step down to the gangway tripped him. he scrambled to his feet, turned up the gangway and ran on. when the sixth star glared he was already close to the yawning throat of a passage. he ran on the swifter for the light, entered the passage and turned a corner into absolute night again. he was knocked sideways, rolled over, and recovered his feet. he found himself one of a crowd of invisible fugitives pressing in one direction. his one thought now was their thought also; to escape out of this fighting. he thrust and struck, staggered, ran, was wedged tightly, lost ground and then was clear again. for some minutes he was running through the darkness along a winding passage, and then he crossed some wide and open space, passed down a long incline, and came at last down a flight of steps to a level place. many people were shouting, "they are coming! the guards are coming. they are firing. get out of the fighting. the guards are firing. it will be safe in seventh way. along here to seventh way!" there were women and children in the crowd as well as men. the crowd converged on an archway, passed through a short throat and emerged on a wider space again, lit dimly. the black figures about him spread out and ran up what seemed in the twilight to be a gigantic series of steps. he followed. the people dispersed to the right and left.... he perceived that he was no longer in a crowd. he stopped near the highest step. before him, on that level, were groups of seats and a little kiosk. he went up to this and, stopping in the shadow of its eaves, looked about him panting. everything was vague and grey, but he recognised that these great steps were a series of platforms of the "ways," now motionless again. the platform slanted up on either side, and the tall buildings rose beyond, vast dim ghosts, their inscriptions and advertisements indistinctly seen, and up through the girders and cables was a faint interrupted ribbon of pallid sky. a number of people hurried by. from their shouts and voices, it seemed they were hurrying to join the fighting. other less noisy figures flitted timidly among the shadows. from very far away down the street he could hear the sound of a struggle. but it was evident to him that this was not the street into which the theatre opened. that former fight, it seemed, had suddenly dropped out of sound and hearing. and they were fighting for him! for a space he was like a man who pauses in the reading of a vivid book, and suddenly doubts what he has been taking unquestionably. at that time he had little mind for details; the whole effect was a huge astonishment. oddly enough, while the flight from the council prison, the great crowd in the hall, and the attack of the red police upon the swarming people were clearly present in his mind, it cost him an effort to piece in his awakening and to revive the meditative interval of the silent rooms. at first his memory leapt these things and took him back to the cascade at pentargen quivering in the wind, and all the sombre splendours of the sunlit cornish coast. the contrast touched everything with unreality. and then the gap filled, and he began to comprehend his position. it was no longer absolutely a riddle, as it had been in the silent rooms. at least he had the strange, bare outline now. he was in some way the owner of the world, and great political parties were fighting to possess him. on the one hand was the council, with its red police, set resolutely, it seemed, on the usurpation of his property and perhaps his murder; on the other, the revolution that had liberated him, with this unseen "ostrog" as its leader. and the whole of this gigantic city was convulsed by their struggle. frantic development of his world! "i do not understand," he cried. "i do not understand!" he had slipped out between the contending parties into this liberty of the twilight. what would happen next? what was happening? he figured the red-clad men as busily hunting him, driving the black-badged revolutionists before them. at any rate chance had given him a breathing space. he could lurk unchallenged by the passers-by, and watch the course of things. his eye followed up the intricate dim immensity of the twilight buildings, and it came to him as a thing infinitely wonderful, that above there the sun was rising, and the world was lit and glowing with the old familiar light of day. in a little while he had recovered his breath. his clothing had already dried upon him from the snow. he wandered for miles along these twilight ways, speaking to no one, accosted by no one--a dark figure among dark figures--the coveted man out of the past, the inestimable unintentional owner of the world. wherever there were lights or dense crowds, or exceptional excitement, he was afraid of recognition, and watched and turned back or went up and down by the middle stairways, into some transverse system of ways at a lower or higher level. and though he came on no more fighting, the whole city stirred with battle. once he had to run to avoid a marching multitude of men that swept the street. everyone abroad seemed involved. for the most part they were men, and they carried what he judged were weapons. it seemed as though the struggle was concentrated mainly in the quarter of the city from which he came. ever and again a distant roaring, the remote suggestion of that conflict, reached his ears. then his caution and his curiosity struggled together. but his caution prevailed, and he continued wandering away from the fighting--so far as he could judge. he went unmolested, unsuspected through the dark. after a time he ceased to hear even a remote echo of the battle, fewer and fewer people passed him, until at last the streets became deserted. the frontages of the buildings grew plain, and harsh; he seemed to have come to a district of vacant warehouses. solitude crept upon him--his pace slackened. he became aware of a growing fatigue. at times he would turn aside and sit down on one of the numerous benches of the upper ways. but a feverish restlessness, the knowledge of his vital implication in this struggle, would not let him rest in any place for long. was the struggle on his behalf alone? and then in a desolate place came the shock of an earthquake--a roaring and thundering--a mighty wind of cold air pouring through the city, the smash of glass, the slip and thud of falling masonry--a series of gigantic concussions. a mass of glass and ironwork fell from the remote roofs into the middle gallery, not a hundred yards away from him, and in the distance were shouts and running. he, too, was startled to an aimless activity, and ran first one way and then as aimlessly back. a man came running towards him. his self-control returned. "what have they blown up?" asked the man breathlessly. "that was an explosion," and before graham could speak he had hurried on. the great buildings rose dimly, veiled by a perplexing twilight, albeit the rivulet of sky above was now bright with day. he noted many strange features, understanding none at the time; he even spelt out many of the inscriptions in phonetic lettering. but what profit is it to decipher a confusion of odd-looking letters resolving itself, after painful strain of eye and mind, into "here is eadhamite," or, "labour bureau--little side"? grotesque thought, that all these cliff-like houses were his! the perversity of his experience came to him vividly. in actual fact he had made such a leap in time as romancers have imagined again and again. and that fact realised, he had been prepared. his mind had, as it were, seated itself for a spectacle. and no spectacle unfolded itself, but a great vague danger, unsympathetic shadows and veils of darkness. somewhere through the labyrinthine obscurity his death sought him. would he, after all, be killed before he saw? it might be that even at the next corner his destruction ambushed. a great desire to see, a great longing to know, arose in him. he became fearful of corners. it seemed to him that there was safety in concealment. where could he hide to be inconspicuous when the lights returned? at last he sat down upon a seat in a recess on one of the higher ways, conceiving he was alone there. he squeezed his knuckles into his weary eyes. suppose when he looked again he found the dark trough of parallel ways and that intolerable altitude of edifice gone. suppose he were to discover the whole story of these last few days, the awakening, the shouting multitudes, the darkness and the fighting, a phantasmagoria, a new and more vivid sort of dream. it must be a dream; it was so inconsecutive, so reasonless. why were the people fighting for him? why should this saner world regard him as owner and master? so he thought, sitting blinded, and then he looked again, half hoping in spite of his ears to see some familiar aspect of the life of the nineteenth century, to see, perhaps, the little harbour of boscastle about him, the cliffs of pentargen, or the bedroom of his home. but fact takes no heed of human hopes. a squad of men with a black banner tramped athwart the nearer shadows, intent on conflict, and beyond rose that giddy wall of frontage, vast and dark, with the dim incomprehensible lettering showing faintly on its face. "it is no dream," he said, "no dream." and he bowed his face upon his hands. chapter xi the old man who knew everything he was startled by a cough close at hand. he turned sharply, and peering, saw a small, hunched-up figure sitting a couple of yards off in the shadow of the enclosure. "have ye any news?" asked the high-pitched wheezy voice of a very old man. graham hesitated. "none," he said. "i stay here till the lights come again," said the old man. "these blue scoundrels are everywhere--everywhere." graham's answer was inarticulate assent. he tried to see the old man but the darkness hid his face. he wanted very much to respond, to talk, but he did not know how to begin. "dark and damnable," said the old man suddenly. "dark and damnable. turned out of my room among all these dangers." "that's hard," ventured graham. "that's hard on you." "darkness. an old man lost in the darkness. and all the world gone mad. war and fighting. the police beaten and rogues abroad. why don't they bring some negroes to protect us? ... no more dark passages for me. i fell over a dead man." "you're safer with company," said the old man, "if it's company of the right sort," and peered frankly. he rose suddenly and came towards graham. apparently the scrutiny was satisfactory. the old man sat down as if relieved to be no longer alone. "eh!" he said, "but this is a terrible time! war and fighting, and the dead lying there--men, strong men, dying in the dark. sons! i have three sons. god knows where they are to-night." the voice ceased. then repeated quavering: "god knows where they are to-night." graham stood revolving a question that should not betray his ignorance. again the old man's voice ended the pause. "this ostrog will win," he said. "he will win. and what the world will be like under him no one can tell. my sons are under the wind-vanes, all three. one of my daughters-in-law was his mistress for a while. his mistress! we're not common people. though they've sent me to wander to-night and take my chance.... i knew what was going on. before most people. but this darkness! and to fall over a dead body suddenly in the dark!" his wheezy breathing could be heard. "ostrog!" said graham. "the greatest boss the world has ever seen," said the voice. graham ransacked his mind. "the council has few friends among the people," he hazarded. "few friends. and poor ones at that. they've had their time. eh! they should have kept to the clever ones. but twice they held election. and ostrog--. and now it has burst out and nothing can stay it, nothing can stay it. twice they rejected ostrog--ostrog the boss. i heard of his rages at the time--he was terrible. heaven save them! for nothing on earth can now he has raised the labour companies upon them. no one else would have dared. all the blue canvas armed and marching! he will go through with it. he will go through." he was silent for a little while. "this sleeper," he said, and stopped. "yes," said graham. "well?" the senile voice sank to a confidential whisper, the dim, pale face came close. "the real sleeper--" "yes," said graham. "died years ago." "what?" said graham, sharply. "years ago. died. years ago." "you don't say so!" said graham. "i do. i do say so. he died. this sleeper who's woke up--they changed in the night. a poor, drugged insensible creature. but i mustn't tell all i know. i mustn't tell all i know." for a little while he muttered inaudibly. his secret was too much for him. "i don't know the ones that put him to sleep--that was before my time--but i know the man who injected the stimulants and woke him again. it was ten to one--wake or kill. wake or kill. ostrog's way." graham was so astonished at these things that he had to interrupt, to make the old man repeat his words, to re-question vaguely, before he was sure of the meaning and folly of what he heard. and his awakening had not been natural! was that an old man's senile superstition, too, or had it any truth in it? feeling in the dark corners of his memory, he presently came on something that might conceivably be an impression of some such stimulating effect. it dawned upon him that he had happened upon a lucky encounter, that at last he might learn something of the new age. the old man wheezed awhile and spat, and then the piping, reminiscent voice resumed: "the first time they rejected him. i've followed it all." "rejected whom?" said graham. "the sleeper?" "sleeper? _no_. ostrog. he was terrible--terrible! and he was promised then, promised certainly the next time. fools they were--not to be more afraid of him. now all the city's his millstone, and such as we dust ground upon it. dust ground upon it. until he set to work--the workers cut each other's throats, and murdered a chinaman or a labour policeman at times, and left the rest of us in peace. dead bodies! robbing! darkness! such a thing hasn't been this gross of years. eh!--but 'tis ill on small folks when the great fall out! it's ill." "did you say--there had not been--what?--for a gross of years?" "eh?" said the old man. the old man said something about clipping his words, and made him repeat this a third time. "fighting and slaying, and weapons in hand, and fools bawling freedom and the like," said the old man. "not in all my life has there been that. these are like the old days--for sure--when the paris people broke out--three gross of years ago. that's what i mean hasn't been. but it's the world's way. it had to come back. i know. i know. this five years ostrog has been working, and there has been trouble and trouble, and hunger and threats and high talk and arms. blue canvas and murmurs. no one safe. everything sliding and slipping. and now here we are! revolt and fighting, and the council come to its end." "you are rather well-informed on these things," said graham. "i know what i hear. it isn't all babble machine with me." "no," said graham, wondering what babble machine might be. "and you are certain this ostrog--you are certain ostrog organised this rebellion and arranged for the waking of the sleeper? just to assert himself--because he was not elected to the council?" "everyone knows that, i should think," said the old man. "except--just fools. he meant to be master somehow. in the council or not. everyone who knows anything knows that. and here we are with dead bodies lying in the dark! why, where have you been if you haven't heard all about the trouble between ostrog and the verneys? and what do you think the troubles are about? the sleeper? eh? you think the sleeper's real and woke of his own accord--eh?" "i'm a dull man, older than i look, and forgetful," said graham. "lots of things that have happened--especially of late years--. if i was the sleeper, to tell you the truth, i couldn't know less about them." "eh!" said the voice. "old, are you? you don't sound so very old! but it's not everyone keeps his memory to my time of life--truly. but these notorious things! but you're not so old as me--not nearly so old as me. well! i ought not to judge other men by myself, perhaps. i'm young--for so old a man. maybe you're old for so young." "that's it," said graham. "and i've a queer history. i know very little. and history! practically i know no history. the sleeper and julius caesar are all the same to me. it's interesting to hear you talk of these things." "i know a few things," said the old man. "i know a thing or two. but--. hark!" the two men became silent, listening. there was a heavy thud, a concussion that made their seat shiver. the passers-by stopped, shouted to one another. the old man was full of questions; he shouted to a man who passed near. graham, emboldened by his example, got up and accosted others. none knew what had happened. he returned to the seat and found the old man muttering vague interrogations in an undertone. for a while they said nothing to one another. the sense of this gigantic struggle, so near and yet so remote, oppressed graham's imagination. was this old man right, was the report of the people right, and were the revolutionaries winning? or were they all in error, and were the red guards driving all before them? at any time the flood of warfare might pour into this silent quarter of the city and seize upon him again. it behoved him to learn all he could while there was time. he turned suddenly to the old man with a question and left it unsaid. but his motion moved the old man to speech again. "eh! but how things work together!" said the old man. "this sleeper that all the fools put their trust in! i've the whole history of it--i was always a good one for histories. when i was a boy--i'm that old--i used to read printed books. you'd hardly think it. likely you've seen none--they rot and dust so--and the sanitary company burns them to make ashlarite. but they were convenient in their dirty way. one learnt a lot. these new-fangled babble machines--they don't seem new-fangled to you, eh?--they're easy to hear, easy to forget. but i've traced all the sleeper business from the first." "you will scarcely believe it," said graham slowly, "i'm so ignorant--i've been so preoccupied in my own little affairs, my circumstances have been so odd--i know nothing of this sleeper's history. who was he?" "eh!" said the old man. "i know, i know. he was a poor nobody, and set on a playful woman, poor soul! and he fell into a trance. there's the old things they had, those brown things--silver photographs--still showing him as he lay, a gross and a half years ago--a gross and a half of years." "set on a playful woman, poor soul," said graham softly to himself, and then aloud, "yes--well go on." "you must know he had a cousin named warming, a solitary man without children, who made a big fortune speculating in roads--the first eadhamite roads. but surely you've heard? no? why? he bought all the patent rights and made a big company. in those days there were grosses of grosses of separate businesses and business companies. grosses of grosses! his roads killed the railroads--the old things--in two dozen years; he bought up and eadhamited the tracks. and because he didn't want to break up his great property or let in shareholders, he left it all to the sleeper, and put it under a board of trustees that he had picked and trained. he knew then the sleeper wouldn't wake, that he would go on sleeping, sleeping till he died. he knew that quite well! and plump! a man in the united states, who had lost two sons in a boat accident, followed that up with another great bequest. his trustees found themselves with a dozen myriads of lions'-worth or more of property at the very beginning." "what was his name?" "graham." "no--i mean--that american's." "isbister." "isbister!" cried graham. "why, i don't even know the name." "of course not," said the old man. "of course not. people don't learn much in the schools nowadays. but i know all about him. he was a rich american who went from england, and he left the sleeper even more than warming. how he made it? that i don't know. something about pictures by machinery. but he made it and left it, and so the council had its start. it was just a council of trustees at first." "and how did it grow?" "eh!--but you're not up to things. money attracts money--and twelve brains are better than one. they played it cleverly. they worked politics with money, and kept on adding to the money by working currency and tariffs. they grew--they grew. and for years the twelve trustees hid the growing of the sleeper's estate under double names and company titles and all that. the council spread by title deed, mortgage, share, every political party, every newspaper they bought. if you listen to the old stories you will see the council growing and growing. billions and billions of lions at last--the sleeper's estate. and all growing out of a whim--out of this warming's will, and an accident to isbister's sons. "men are strange," said the old man. "the strange thing to me is how the council worked together so long. as many as twelve. but they worked in cliques from the first. and they've slipped back. in my young days speaking of the council was like an ignorant man speaking of god. we didn't think they could do wrong. we didn't know of their women and all that! or else i've got wiser. "men are strange," said the old man. "here are you, young and ignorant, and me--sevendy years old, and i might reasonably before getting--explaining it all to you short and clear. "sevendy," he said, "sevendy, and i hear and see--hear better than i see. and reason clearly, and keep myself up to all the happenings of things. sevendy! "life is strange. i was twaindy before ostrog was a baby. i remember him long before he'd pushed his way to the head of the wind vanes control. i've seen many changes. eh! i've worn the blue. and at last i've come to see this crush and darkness and tumult and dead men carried by in heaps on the ways. and all his doing! all his doing!" his voice died away in scarcely articulate praises of ostrog. graham thought. "let me see," he said, "if i have it right." he extended a hand and ticked off points upon his fingers. "the sleeper has been asleep--" "changed," said the old man. "perhaps. and meanwhile the sleeper's property grew in the hands of twelve trustees, until it swallowed up nearly all the great ownership of the world. the twelve trustees--by virtue of this property have become masters of the world. because they are the paying power--just as the old english parliament used to be--" "eh!" said the old man. "that's so--that's a good comparison. you're not so--" "and now this ostrog--has suddenly revolutionised the world by waking the sleeper--whom no one but the superstitious, common people had ever dreamt would wake again--raising the sleeper to claim his property from the council, after all these years." the old man endorsed this statement with a cough. "it's strange," he said, "to meet a man who learns these things for the first time to-night." "aye," said graham, "it's strange." "have you been in a pleasure city?" said the old man. "all my life i've longed--" he laughed. "even now," he said, "i could enjoy a little fun. enjoy seeing things, anyhow." he mumbled a sentence graham did not understand. "the sleeper--when did he awake?" said graham suddenly. "three days ago." "where is he?" "ostrog has him. he escaped from the council not four hours ago. my dear sir, where were you at the time? he was in the hall of the markets--where the fighting has been. all the city was screaming about it. all the babble machines. everywhere it was shouted. even the fools who speak for the council were admitting it. everyone was rushing off to see him--everyone was getting arms. were you drunk or asleep? and even then! but you're joking! surely you're pretending. it was to stop the shouting of the babble machines and prevent the people gathering that they turned off the electricity--and put this damned darkness upon us. do you mean to say--?" "i had heard the sleeper was rescued," said graham. "but--to come back a minute. are you sure ostrog has him?" "he won't let him go," said the old man. "and the sleeper. are you sure he is not genuine? i have never heard--" "so all the fools think. so they think. as if there wasn't a thousand things that were never heard. i know ostrog too well for that. did i tell you? in a way i'm a sort of relation of ostrog's. a sort of relation. through my daughter-in-law." "i suppose--" "well?" "i suppose there's no chance of this sleeper asserting himself. i suppose he's certain to be a puppet--in ostrog's hands or the council's, as soon as the struggle is over." "in ostrog's hands--certainly. why shouldn't he be a puppet? look at his position. everything done for him, every pleasure possible. why should he want to assert himself?" "what are these pleasure cities?" said graham, abruptly. the old man made him repeat the question. when at last he was assured of graham's words, he nudged him violently. "that's _too_ much," said he. "you're poking fun at an old man. i've been suspecting you know more than you pretend." "perhaps i do," said graham. "but no! why should i go on acting? no, i do not know what a pleasure city is." the old man laughed in an intimate way. "what is more, i do not know how to read your letters, i do not know what money you use, i do not know what foreign countries there are. i do not know where i am. i cannot count. i do not know where to get food, nor drink, nor shelter." "come, come," said the old man, "if you had a glass of drink now, would you put it in your ear or your eye?" "i want you to tell me all these things." "he, he! well, gentlemen who dress in silk must have their fun." a withered hand caressed graham's arm for a moment. "silk. well, well! but, all the same, i wish i was the man who was put up as the sleeper. he'll have a fine time of it. all the pomp and pleasure. he's a queer looking face. when they used to let anyone go to see him, i've got tickets and been. the image of the real one, as the photographs show him, this substitute used to be. yellow. but he'll get fed up. it's a queer world. think of the luck of it. the luck of it. i expect he'll be sent to capri. it's the best fun for a greener." his cough overtook him again. then he began mumbling enviously of pleasures and strange delights. "the luck of it, the luck of it! all my life i've been in london, hoping to get my chance." "but you don't know that the sleeper died," said graham, suddenly. the old man made him repeat his words. "men don't live beyond ten dozen. it's not in the order of things," said the old man. "i'm not a fool. fools may believe it, but not me." graham became angry with the old man's assurance. "whether you are a fool or not," he said, "it happens you are wrong about the sleeper." "eh?" "you are wrong about the sleeper. i haven't told you before, but i will tell you now. you are wrong about the sleeper." "how do you know? i thought you didn't know anything--not even about pleasure cities." graham paused. "you don't know," said the old man. "how are you to know? it's very few men--" "i _am_ the sleeper." he had to repeat it. there was a brief pause. "there's a silly thing to say, sir, if you'll excuse me. it might get you into trouble in a time like this," said the old man. graham, slightly dashed, repeated his assertion. "i was saying i was the sleeper. that years and years ago i did, indeed, fall asleep, in a little stone-built village, in the days when there were hedgerows, and villages, and inns, and all the countryside cut up into little pieces, little fields. have you never heard of those days? and it is i--i who speak to you--who awakened again these four days since." "four days since!--the sleeper! but they've _got_ the sleeper. they have him and they won't let him go. nonsense! you've been talking sensibly enough up to now. i can see it as though i was there. there will be lincoln like a keeper just behind him; they won't let him go about alone. trust them. you're a queer fellow. one of these fun pokers. i see now why you have been clipping your words so oddly, but--" he stopped abruptly, and graham could see his gesture. "as if ostrog would let the sleeper run about alone! no, you're telling that to the wrong man altogether. eh! as if i should believe. what's your game? and besides, we've been talking of the sleeper." graham stood up. "listen," he said. "i am the sleeper." "you're an odd man," said the old man, "to sit here in the dark, talking clipped, and telling a lie of that sort. but--" graham's exasperation fell to laughter. "it is preposterous," he cried. "preposterous. the dream must end. it gets wilder and wilder. here am i--in this damned twilight--i never knew a dream in twilight before--an anachronism by two hundred years and trying to persuade an old fool that i am myself, and meanwhile--ugh!" he moved in gusty irritation and went striding. in a moment the old man was pursuing him. "eh! but don't go!" cried the old man. "i'm an old fool, i know. don't go. don't leave me in all this darkness." graham hesitated, stopped. suddenly the folly of telling his secret flashed into his mind. "i didn't mean to offend you--disbelieving you," said the old man coming near. "it's no manner of harm. call yourself the sleeper if it pleases you. 'tis a foolish trick--" graham hesitated, turned abruptly and went on his way. for a time he heard the old man's hobbling pursuit and his wheezy cries receding. but at last the darkness swallowed him, and graham saw him no more. chapter xii ostrog graham could now take a clearer view of his position. for a long time yet he wandered, but after the talk of the old man his discovery of this ostrog was clear in his mind as the final inevitable decision. one thing was evident, those who were at the headquarters of the revolt had succeeded very admirably in suppressing the fact of his disappearance. but every moment he expected to hear the report of his death or of his recapture by the council. presently a man stopped before him. "have you heard?" he said. "no!" said graham, starting. "near a dozand," said the man, "a dozand men!" and hurried on. a number of men and a girl passed in the darkness, gesticulating and shouting: "capitulated! given up!" "a dozand of men." "two dozand of men." "ostrog, hurrah! ostrog, hurrah!" these cries receded, became indistinct. other shouting men followed. for a time his attention was absorbed in the fragments of speech he heard. he had a doubt whether all were speaking english. scraps floated to him, scraps like pigeon english, like "nigger" dialect, blurred and mangled distortions. he dared accost no one with questions. the impression the people gave him jarred altogether with his preconceptions of the struggle and confirmed the old man's faith in ostrog. it was only slowly he could bring himself to believe that all these people were rejoicing at the defeat of the council, that the council which had pursued him with such power and vigour was after all the weaker of the two sides in conflict. and if that was so, how did it affect him? several times he hesitated on the verge of fundamental questions. once he turned and walked for a long way after a little man of rotund inviting outline, but he was unable to master confidence to address him. it was only slowly that it came to him that he might ask for the "wind-vane offices" whatever the "wind-vane offices" might be. his first enquiry simply resulted in a direction to go on towards westminster. his second led to the discovery of a short cut in which he was speedily lost. he was told to leave the ways to which he had hitherto confined himself--knowing no other means of transit--and to plunge down one of the middle staircases into the blackness of a cross-way. thereupon came some trivial adventures; chief of these an ambiguous encounter with a gruff-voiced invisible creature speaking in a strange dialect that seemed at first a strange tongue, a thick flow of speech with the drifting corpses of english words therein, the dialect of the latter-day vile. then another voice drew near, a girl's voice singing, "tralala tralala." she spoke to graham, her english touched with something of the same quality. she professed to have lost her sister, she blundered needlessly into him he thought, caught hold of him and laughed. but a word of vague remonstrance sent her into the unseen again. the sounds about him increased. stumbling people passed him, speaking excitedly. "they have surrendered!" "the council! surely not the council!" "they are saying so in the ways." the passage seemed wider. suddenly the wall fell away. he was in a great space and people were stirring remotely. he inquired his way of an indistinct figure. "strike straight across," said a woman's voice. he left his guiding wall, and in a moment had stumbled against a little table on which were utensils of glass. graham's eyes, now attuned to darkness, made out a long vista with tables on either side. he went down this. at one or two of the tables he heard a clang of glass and a sound of eating. there were people then cool enough to dine, or daring enough to steal a meal in spite of social convulsion and darkness. far off and high up he presently saw a pallid light of a semi-circular shape. as he approached this, a black edge came up and hid it. he stumbled at steps and found himself in a gallery. he heard a sobbing, and found two scared little girls crouched by a railing. these children became silent at the near sound of feet. he tried to console them, but they were very still until he left them. then as he receded he could hear them sobbing again. presently he found himself at the foot of a staircase and near a wide opening. he saw a dim twilight above this and ascended out of the blackness into a street of moving ways again. along this a disorderly swarm of people marched shouting. they were singing snatches of the song of the revolt, most of them out of tune. here and there torches flared creating brief hysterical shadows. he asked his way and was twice puzzled by that same thick dialect. his third attempt won an answer he could understand. he was two miles from the wind-vane offices in westminster, but the way was easy to follow. when at last he did approach the district of the wind-vane offices it seemed to him, from the cheering processions that came marching along the ways, from the tumult of rejoicing, and finally from the restoration of the lighting of the city, that the overthrow of the council must already be accomplished. and still no news of his absence came to his ears. the re-illumination of the city came with startling abruptness. suddenly he stood blinking, all about him men halted dazzled, and the world was incandescent. the light found him already upon the outskirts of the excited crowds that choked the ways near the wind-vane offices, and the sense of visibility and exposure that came with it turned his colourless intention of joining ostrog to a keen anxiety. for a time he was jostled, obstructed, and endangered by men hoarse and weary with cheering his name, some of them bandaged and bloody in his cause. the frontage of the wind-vane offices was illuminated by some moving picture, but what it was he could not see, because in spite of his strenuous attempts the density of the crowd prevented his approaching it. from the fragments of speech he caught, he judged it conveyed news of the fighting about the council house. ignorance and indecision made him slow and ineffective in his movements. for a time he could not conceive how he was to get within the unbroken façade of this place. he made his way slowly into the midst of this mass of people, until he realised that the descending staircase of the central way led to the interior of the buildings. this gave him a goal, but the crowding in the central path was so dense that it was long before he could reach it. and even then he encountered intricate obstruction, and had an hour of vivid argument first in this guard room and then in that before he could get a note taken to the one man of all men who was most eager to see him. his story was laughed to scorn at one place, and wiser for that, when at last he reached a second stairway he professed simply to have news of extraordinary importance for ostrog. what it was he would not say. they sent his note reluctantly. for a long time he waited in a little room at the foot of the lift shaft, and thither at last came lincoln, eager, apologetic, astonished. he stopped in the doorway scrutinising graham, then rushed forward effusively. "yes," he cried. "it is you. and you are not dead!" graham made a brief explanation. "my brother is waiting," explained lincoln. "he is alone in the wind-vane offices. we feared you had been killed in the theatre. he doubted--and things are very urgent still in spite of what we are telling them _there_--or he would have come to you." they ascended a lift, passed along a narrow passage, crossed a great hall, empty save for two hurrying messengers, and entered a comparatively little room, whose only furniture was a long settee and a large oval disc of cloudy, shifting grey, hung by cables from the wall. there lincoln left graham for a space, and he remained alone without understanding the smoky shapes that drove slowly across this disc. his attention was arrested by a sound that began abruptly. it was cheering, the frantic cheering of a vast but very remote crowd, a roaring exultation. this ended as sharply as it had begun, like a sound heard between the opening and shutting of a door. in the outer room was a noise of hurrying steps and a melodious clinking as if a loose chain was running over the teeth of a wheel. then he heard the voice of a woman, the rustle of unseen garments. "it is ostrog!" he heard her say. a little bell rang fitfully, and then everything was still again. presently came voices, footsteps and movement without. the footsteps of some one person detached itself from the other sounds, and drew near, firm, evenly measured steps. the curtain lifted slowly. a tall, white-haired man, clad in garments of cream-coloured silk, appeared, regarding graham from under his raised arm. for a moment the white form remained holding the curtain, then dropped it and stood before it. graham's first impression was of a very broad forehead, very pale blue eyes deep sunken under white brows, an aquiline nose, and a heavily-lined resolute mouth. the folds of flesh over the eyes, the drooping of the corners of the mouth contradicted the upright bearing, and said the man was old. graham rose to his feet instinctively, and for a moment the two men stood in silence, regarding each other. "you are ostrog?" said graham. "i am ostrog." "the boss?" "so i am called." graham felt the inconvenience of the silence. "i have to thank you chiefly, i understand, for my safety," he said presently. "we were afraid you were killed," said ostrog. "or sent to sleep again--for ever. we have been doing everything to keep our secret--the secret of your disappearance. where have you been? how did you get here?" graham told him briefly. ostrog listened in silence. he smiled faintly. "do you know what i was doing when they came to tell me you had come?" "how can i guess?" "preparing your double." "my double?" "a man as like you as we could find. we were going to hypnotise him, to save him the difficulty of acting. it was imperative. the whole of this revolt depends on the idea that you are awake, alive, and with us. even now a great multitude of people has gathered in the theatre clamouring to see you. they do not trust.... you know, of course--something of your position?" "very little," said graham. "it is like this." ostrog walked a pace or two into the room and turned. "you are absolute owner," he said, "of the world. you are king of the earth. your powers are limited in many intricate ways, but you are the figure-head, the popular symbol of government. this white council, the council of trustees as it is called--" "i have heard the vague outline of these things." "i wondered." "i came upon a garrulous old man." "i see.... our masses--the word comes from your days--you know, of course, that we still have masses--regard you as our actual ruler. just as a great number of people in your days regarded the crown as the ruler. they are discontented--the masses all over the earth--with the rule of your trustees. for the most part it is the old discontent, the old quarrel of the common man with his commonness--the misery of work and discipline and unfitness. but your trustees have ruled ill. in certain matters, in the administration of the labour companies, for example, they have been unwise. they have given endless opportunities. already we of the popular party were agitating for reforms--when your waking came. came! if it had been contrived it could not have come more opportunely." he smiled. "the public mind, making no allowance for your years of quiescence, had already hit on the thought of waking you and appealing to you, and--flash!" he indicated the outbreak by a gesture, and graham moved his head to show that he understood. "the council muddled--quarrelled. they always do. they could not decide what to do with you. you know how they imprisoned you?" "i see. i see. and now--we win?" "we win. indeed we win. to-night, in five swift hours. suddenly we struck everywhere. the wind-vane people, the labour company and its millions, burst the bonds. we got the pull of the aeroplanes." "yes," said graham. "that was, of course, essential. or they could have got away. all the city rose, every third man almost was in it! all the blue, all the public services, save only just a few aeronauts and about half the red police. you were rescued, and their own police of the ways--not half of them could be massed at the council house--have been broken up, disarmed or killed. all london is ours--now. only the council house remains. "half of those who remain to them of the red police were lost in that foolish attempt to recapture you. they lost their heads when they lost you. they flung all they had at the theatre. we cut them off from the council house there. truly to-night has been a night of victory. everywhere your star has blazed. a day ago--the white council ruled as it has ruled for a gross of years, for a century and a half of years, and then, with only a little whispering, a covert arming here and there, suddenly--so!" "i am very ignorant," said graham. "i suppose--i do not clearly understand the conditions of this fighting. if you could explain. where is the council? where is the fight?" ostrog stepped across the room, something clicked, and suddenly, save for an oval glow, they were in darkness. for a moment graham was puzzled. then he saw that the cloudy grey disc had taken depth and colour, had assumed the appearance of an oval window looking out upon a strange unfamiliar scene. at the first glance he was unable to guess what this scene might be. it was a daylight scene, the daylight of a wintry day, grey and clear. across the picture, and halfway as it seemed between him and the remoter view, a stout cable of twisted white wire stretched vertically. then he perceived that the rows of great wind-wheels he saw, the wide intervals, the occasional gulfs of darkness, were akin to those through which he had fled from the council house. he distinguished an orderly file of red figures marching across an open space between files of men in black, and realised before ostrog spoke that he was looking down on the upper surface of latter-day london. the overnight snows had gone. he judged that this mirror was some modern replacement of the camera obscura, but that matter was not explained to him. he saw that though the file of red figures was trotting from left to right, yet they were passing out of the picture to the left. he wondered momentarily, and then saw that the picture was passing slowly, panorama fashion, across the oval. "in a moment you will see the fighting," said ostrog at his elbow. "those fellows in red you notice are prisoners. this is the roof space of london--all the houses are practically continuous now. the streets and public squares are covered in. the gaps and chasms of your time have disappeared." something out of focus obliterated half the picture. its form suggested a man. there was a gleam of metal, a flash, something that swept across the oval, as the eyelid of a bird sweeps across its eye, and the picture was clear again. and now graham beheld men running down among the wind-wheels, pointing weapons from which jetted out little smoky flashes. they swarmed thicker and thicker to the right, gesticulating--it might be they were shouting, but of that the picture told nothing. they and the wind-wheels passed slowly and steadily across the field of the mirror. "now," said ostrog, "comes the council house," and slowly a black edge crept into view and gathered graham's attention. soon it was no longer an edge but a cavity, a huge blackened space amidst the clustering edifices, and from it thin spires of smoke rose into the pallid winter sky. gaunt ruinous masses of the building, mighty truncated piers and girders, rose dismally out of this cavernous darkness. and over these vestiges of some splendid place, countless minute men were clambering, leaping, swarming. "this is the council house," said ostrog. "their last stronghold. and the fools wasted enough ammunition to hold out for a month in blowing up the buildings all about them--to stop our attack. you heard the smash? it shattered half the brittle glass in the city." and while he spoke, graham saw that beyond this area of ruins, overhanging it and rising to a great height, was a ragged mass of white building. this mass had been isolated by the ruthless destruction of its surroundings. black gaps marked the passages the disaster had torn apart; big halls had been slashed open and the decoration of their interiors showed dismally in the wintry dawn, and down the jagged walls hung festoons of divided cables and twisted ends of lines and metallic rods. and amidst all the vast details moved little red specks, the red-clothed defenders of the council. every now and then faint flashes illuminated the bleak shadows. at the first sight it seemed to graham that an attack upon this isolated white building was in progress, but then he perceived that the party of the revolt was not advancing, but sheltered amidst the colossal wreckage that encircled this last ragged stronghold of the red-garbed men, was keeping up a fitful firing. and not ten hours ago he had stood beneath the ventilating fans in a little chamber within that remote building wondering what was happening in the world! looking more attentively as this warlike episode moved silently across the centre of the mirror, graham saw that the white building was surrounded on every side by ruins, and ostrog proceeded to describe in concise phrases how its defenders had sought by such destruction to isolate themselves from a storm. he spoke of the loss of men that huge downfall had entailed in an indifferent tone. he indicated an improvised mortuary among the wreckage, showed ambulances swarming like cheese-mites along a ruinous groove that had once been a street of moving ways. he was more interested in pointing out the parts of the council house, the distribution of the besiegers. in a little while the civil contest that had convulsed london was no longer a mystery to graham. it was no tumultuous revolt had occurred that night, no equal warfare, but a splendidly organised _coup d'état_. ostrog's grasp of details was astonishing; he seemed to know the business of even the smallest knot of black and red specks that crawled amidst these places. he stretched a huge black arm across the luminous picture, and showed the room whence graham had escaped, and across the chasm of ruins the course of his flight. graham recognised the gulf across which the gutter ran, and the wind-wheels where he had crouched from the flying machine. the rest of his path had succumbed to the explosion. he looked again at the council house, and it was already half hidden, and on the right a hillside with a cluster of domes and pinnacles, hazy, dim and distant, was gliding into view. "and the council is really overthrown?" he said. "overthrown," said ostrog. "and i--. is it indeed true that i--?" "you are master of the world." "but that white flag--" "that is the flag of the council--the flag of the rule of the world. it will fall. the fight is over. their attack on the theatre was their last frantic struggle. they have only a thousand men or so, and some of these men will be disloyal. they have little ammunition. and we are reviving the ancient arts. we are casting guns." "but--help. is this city the world?" "practically this is all they have left to them of their empire. abroad the cities have either revolted with us or wait the issue. your awakening has perplexed them, paralysed them." "but haven't the council flying machines? why is there no fighting with them?" "they had. but the greater part of the aeronauts were in the revolt with us. they wouldn't take the risk of fighting on our side, but they would not stir against us. we _had_ to get a pull with the aeronauts. quite half were with us, and the others knew it. directly they knew you had got away, those looking for you dropped. we killed the man who shot at you--an hour ago. and we occupied the flying stages at the outset in every city we could, and so stopped and captured the greater aeroplanes, and as for the little flying machines that turned out--for some did--we kept up too straight and steady a fire for them to get near the council house. if they dropped they couldn't rise again, because there's no clear space about there for them to get up. several we have smashed, several others have dropped and surrendered, the rest have gone off to the continent to find a friendly city if they can before their fuel runs out. most of these men were only too glad to be taken prisoner and kept out of harm's way. upsetting in a flying machine isn't a very attractive prospect. there's no chance for the council that way. its days are done." he laughed and turned to the oval reflection again to show graham what he meant by flying stages. even the four nearer ones were remote and obscured by a thin morning haze. but graham could perceive they were very vast structures, judged even by the standard of the things about them. and then as these dim shapes passed to the left there came again the sight of the expanse across which the disarmed men in red had been marching. and then the black ruins, and then again the beleaguered white fastness of the council. it appeared no longer a ghostly pile, but glowing amber in the sunlight, for a cloud shadow had passed. about it the pigmy struggle still hung in suspense, but now the red defenders were no longer firing. so, in a dusky stillness, the man from the nineteenth century saw the closing scene of the great revolt, the forcible establishment of his rule. with a quality of startling discovery it came to him that this was his world, and not that other he had left behind; that this was no spectacle to culminate and cease; that in this world lay whatever life was still before him, lay all his duties and dangers and responsibilities. he turned with fresh questions. ostrog began to answer them, and then broke off abruptly. "but these things i must explain more fully later. at present there are--duties. the people are coming by the moving ways towards this ward from every part of the city--the markets and theatres are densely crowded. you are just in time for them. they are clamouring to see you. and abroad they want to see you. paris, new york, chicago, denver, capri--thousands of cities are up and in a tumult, undecided, and clamouring to see you. they have clamoured that you should be awakened for years, and now it is done they will scarcely believe--" "but surely--i can't go ..." ostrog answered from the other side of the room, and the picture on the oval disc paled and vanished as the light jerked back again. "there are kineto-telephoto-graphs," he said. "as you bow to the people here--all over the world myriads of myriads of people, packed and still in darkened halls, will see you also. in black and white, of course--not like this. and you will hear their shouts reinforcing the shouting in the hall. "and there is an optical contrivance we shall use," said ostrog, "used by some of the posturers and women dancers. it may be novel to you. you stand in a very bright light, and they see not you but a magnified image of you thrown on a screen--so that even the furtherest man in the remotest gallery can, if he chooses, count your eyelashes." graham clutched desperately at one of the questions in his mind. "what is the population of london?" he said. "eight and twaindy myriads." "eight and what?" "more than thirty-three millions." these figures went beyond graham's imagination. "you will be expected to say something," said ostrog. "not what you used to call a speech, but what our people call a word--just one sentence, six or seven words. something formal. if i might suggest--'i have awakened and my heart is with you.' that is the sort of thing they want." "what was that?" asked graham. "'i am awakened and my heart is with you.' and bow--bow royally. but first we must get you black robes--for black is your colour. do you mind? and then they will disperse to their homes." graham hesitated. "i am in your hands," he said. ostrog was clearly of that opinion. he thought for a moment, turned to the curtain and called brief directions to some unseen attendants. almost immediately a black robe, the very fellow of the black robe graham had worn in the theatre, was brought. and as he threw it about his shoulders there came from the room without the shrilling of a high-pitched bell. ostrog turned in interrogation to the attendant, then suddenly seemed to change his mind, pulled the curtain aside and disappeared. for a moment graham stood with the deferential attendant listening to ostrog's retreating steps. there was a sound of quick question and answer and of men running. the curtain was snatched back and ostrog reappeared, his massive face glowing with excitement. he crossed the room in a stride, clicked the room into darkness, gripped graham's arm and pointed to the mirror. "even as we turned away," he said. graham saw his index finger, black and colossal, above the mirrored council house. for a moment he did not understand. and then he perceived that the flagstaff that had carried the white banner was bare. "do you mean--?" he began. "the council has surrendered. its rule is at an end for evermore." "look!" and ostrog pointed to a coil of black that crept in little jerks up the vacant flagstaff, unfolding as it rose. the oval picture paled as lincoln pulled the curtain aside and entered. "they are clamorous," he said. ostrog kept his grip of graham's arm. "we have raised the people," he said. "we have given them arms. for to-day at least their wishes must be law." lincoln held the curtain open for graham and ostrog to pass through.... on his way to the markets graham had a transitory glance of a long narrow white-walled room in which men in the universal blue canvas were carrying covered things like biers, and about which men in medical purple hurried to and fro. from this room came groans and wailing. he had an impression of an empty blood-stained couch, of men on other couches, bandaged and blood-stained. it was just a glimpse from a railed footway and then a buttress hid the place and they were going on towards the markets.... the roar of the multitude was near now: it leapt to thunder. and, arresting his attention, a fluttering of black banners, the waving of blue canvas and brown rags, and the swarming vastness of the theatre near the public markets came into view down a long passage. the picture opened out. he perceived they were entering the great theatre of his first appearance, the great theatre he had last seen as a chequer-work of glare and blackness in his flight from the red police. this time he entered it along a gallery at a level high above the stage. the place was now brilliantly lit again. his eyes sought the gangway up which he had fled, but he could not tell it from among its dozens of fellows; nor could he see anything of the smashed seats, deflated cushions, and such like traces of the fight because of the density of the people. except the stage the whole place was closely packed. looking down the effect was a vast area of stippled pink, each dot a still upturned face regarding him. at his appearance with ostrog the cheering died away, the singing died away, a common interest stilled and unified the disorder. it seemed as though every individual of those myriads was watching him. chapter xiii the end of the old order so far as graham was able to judge, it was near midday when the white banner of the council fell. but some hours had to elapse before it was possible to effect the formal capitulation, and so after he had spoken his "word" he retired to his new apartments in the wind-vane offices. the continuous excitement of the last twelve hours had left him inordinately fatigued, even his curiosity was exhausted; for a space he sat inert and passive with open eyes, and for a space he slept. he was roused by two medical attendants, come prepared with stimulants to sustain him through the next occasion. after he had taken their drugs and bathed by their advice in cold water, he felt a rapid return of interest and energy, and was presently able and willing to accompany ostrog through several miles (as it seemed) of passages, lifts, and slides to the closing scene of the white council's rule. the way ran deviously through a maze of buildings. they came at last to a passage that curved about, and showed broadening before him an oblong opening, clouds hot with sunset, and the ragged skyline of the ruinous council house. a tumult of shouts came drifting up to him. in another moment they had come out high up on the brow of the cliff of torn buildings that overhung the wreckage. the vast area opened to graham's eyes, none the less strange and wonderful for the remote view he had had of it in the oval mirror. this rudely amphitheatral space seemed now the better part of a mile to its outer edge. it was gold lit on the left hand, catching the sunlight, and below and to the right clear and cold in the shadow. above the shadowy grey council house that stood in the midst of it, the great black banner of the surrender still hung in sluggish folds against the blazing sunset. severed rooms, halls and passages gaped strangely, broken masses of metal projected dismally from the complex wreckage, vast masses of twisted cable dropped like tangled seaweed, and from its base came a tumult of innumerable voices, violent concussions, and the sound of trumpets. all about this great white pile was a ring of desolation; the smashed and blackened masses, the gaunt foundations and ruinous lumber of the fabric that had been destroyed by the council's orders, skeletons of girders, titanic masses of wall, forests of stout pillars. amongst the sombre wreckage beneath, running water flashed and glistened, and far away across the space, out of the midst of a vague vast mass of buildings, there thrust the twisted end of a water-main, two hundred feet in the air, thunderously spouting a shining cascade. and everywhere great multitudes of people. wherever there was space and foothold, people swarmed, little people, small and minutely clear, except where the sunset touched them to indistinguishable gold. they clambered up the tottering walls, they clung in wreaths and groups about the high-standing pillars. they swarmed along the edges of the circle of ruins. the air was full of their shouting, and they were pressing and swaying towards the central space. the upper storeys of the council house seemed deserted, not a human being was visible. only the drooping banner of the surrender hung heavily against the light. the dead were within the council house, or hidden by the swarming people, or carried away. graham could see only a few neglected bodies in gaps and corners of the ruins, and amidst the flowing water. "will you let them see you, sire?" said ostrog. "they are very anxious to see you." graham hesitated, and then walked forward to where the broken verge of wall dropped sheer. he stood looking down, a lonely, tall, black figure against the sky. very slowly the swarming ruins became aware of him. and as they did so little bands of black-uniformed men appeared remotely, thrusting through the crowds towards the council house. he saw little black heads become pink, looking at him, saw by that means a wave of recognition sweep across the space. it occurred to him that he should accord them some recognition. he held up his arm, then pointed to the council house and dropped his hand. the voices below became unanimous, gathered volume, came up to him as multitudinous wavelets of cheering. the western sky was a pallid bluish green, and jupiter shone high in the south, before the capitulation was accomplished. above was a slow insensible change, the advance of night serene and beautiful; below was hurry, excitement, conflicting orders, pauses, spasmodic developments of organisation, a vast ascending clamour and confusion. before the council came out, toiling perspiring men, directed by a conflict of shouts, carried forth hundreds of those who had perished in the hand-to-hand conflict within those long passages and chambers.... guards in black lined the way that the council would come, and as far as the eye could reach into the hazy blue twilight of the ruins, and swarming now at every possible point in the captured council house and along the shattered cliff of its circumadjacent buildings, were innumerable people, and their voices, even when they were not cheering, were as the soughing of the sea upon a pebble beach. ostrog had chosen a huge commanding pile of crushed and overthrown masonry, and on this a stage of timbers and metal girders was being hastily constructed. its essential parts were complete, but humming and clangorous machinery still glared fitfully in the shadows beneath this temporary edifice. the stage had a small higher portion on which graham stood with ostrog and lincoln close beside him, a little in advance of a group of minor officers. a broader lower stage surrounded this quarter-deck, and on this were the black-uniformed guards of the revolt armed with the little green weapons whose very names graham still did not know. those standing about him perceived that his eyes wandered perpetually from the swarming people in the twilight ruins about him to the darkling mass of the white council house, whence the trustees would presently come, and to the gaunt cliffs of ruin that encircled him, and so back to the people. the voices of the crowd swelled to a deafening tumult. he saw the councillors first afar off in the glare of one of the temporary lights that marked their path, a little group of white figures in a black archway. in the council house they had been in darkness. he watched them approaching, drawing nearer past first this blazing electric star and then that; the minatory roar of the crowd over whom their power had lasted for a hundred and fifty years marched along beside them. as they drew still nearer their faces came out weary, white, and anxious. he saw them blinking up through the glare about him and ostrog. he contrasted their strange cold looks in the hall of atlas.... presently he could recognise several of them; the man who had rapped the table at howard, a burly man with a red beard, and one delicate-featured, short, dark man with a peculiarly long skull. he noted that two were whispering together and looking behind him at ostrog. next there came a tall, dark and handsome man, walking downcast. abruptly he glanced up, his eyes touched graham for a moment, and passed beyond him to ostrog. the way that had been made for them was so contrived that they had to march past and curve about before they came to the sloping path of planks that ascended to the stage where their surrender was to be made. "the master, the master! god and the master," shouted the people. "to hell with the council!" graham looked at their multitudes, receding beyond counting into a shouting haze, and then at ostrog beside him, white and steadfast and still. his eye went again to the little group of white councillors. and then he looked up at the familiar quiet stars overhead. the marvellous element in his fate was suddenly vivid. could that be his indeed, that little life in his memory two hundred years gone by--and this as well? chapter xiv from the crow's nest and so after strange delays and through an avenue of doubt and battle, this man from the nineteenth century came at last to his position at the head of that complex world. at first when he rose from the long deep sleep that followed his rescue and the surrender of the council, he did not recognise his surroundings. by an effort he gained a clue in his mind, and all that had happened came back to him, at first with a quality of insincerity like a story heard, like something read out of a book. and even before his memories were clear, the exultation of his escape, the wonder of his prominence were back in his mind. he was owner of the world; master of the earth. this new great age was in the completest sense his. he no longer hoped to discover his experiences a dream; he became anxious now to convince himself that they were real. an obsequious valet assisted him to dress under the direction of a dignified chief attendant, a little man whose face proclaimed him japanese, albeit he spoke english like an englishman. from the latter he learnt something of the state of affairs. already the revolution was an accepted fact; already business was being resumed throughout the city. abroad the downfall of the council had been received for the most part with delight. nowhere was the council popular, and the thousand cities of western america, after two hundred years still jealous of new york, london, and the east, had risen almost unanimously two days before at the news of graham's imprisonment. paris was fighting within itself. the rest of the world hung in suspense. while he was breaking his fast, the sound of a telephone bell jetted from a corner, and his chief attendant called his attention to the voice of ostrog making polite enquiries. graham interrupted his refreshment to reply. very shortly lincoln arrived, and graham at once expressed a strong desire to talk to people and to be shown more of the new life that was opening before him. lincoln informed him that in three hours' time a representative gathering of officials and their wives would be held in the state apartments of the wind-vane chief. graham's desire to traverse the ways of the city was, however, at present impossible, because of the enormous excitement of the people. it was, however, quite possible for him to take a bird's-eye view of the city from the crow's nest of the wind-vane keeper. to this accordingly graham was conducted by his attendant. lincoln; with a graceful compliment to the attendant, apologised for not accompanying them, on account of the present pressure of administrative work. higher even than the most gigantic, wind-wheels hung this crow's nest, a clear thousand feet above the roofs, a little disc-shaped speck on a spear of metallic filigree, cable stayed. to its summit graham was drawn in a little wire-hung cradle. halfway down the frail-seeming stem was a light gallery about which hung a cluster of tubes--minute they looked from above--rotating slowly on the ring of its outer rail. these were the specula, _en rapport_ with the wind-vane keeper's mirrors, in one of which ostrog had shown him the coming of his rule. his japanese attendant ascended before him and they spent nearly an hour asking and answering questions. it was a day full of the promise and quality of spring. the touch of the wind warmed. the sky was an intense blue and the vast expanse of london shone dazzling under the morning sun. the air was clear of smoke and haze, sweet as the air of a mountain glen. save for the irregular oval of ruins about the house of the council and the black flag of the surrender that fluttered there, the mighty city seen from above showed few signs of the swift revolution that had, to his imagination, in one night and one day, changed the destinies of the world. a multitude of people still swarmed over these ruins, and the huge openwork stagings in the distance from which started in times of peace the service of aeroplanes to the various great cities of europe and america, were also black with the victors. across a narrow way of planking raised on trestles that crossed the ruins a crowd of workmen were busy restoring the connection between the cables and wires of the council house and the rest of the city, preparatory to the transfer thither of ostrog's headquarters from the wind-vane buildings. for the rest the luminous expanse was undisturbed. so vast was its serenity in comparison with the areas of disturbance, that presently graham, looking beyond them, could almost forget the thousands of men lying out of sight in the artificial glare within the quasi-subterranean labyrinth, dead or dying of the overnight wounds, forget the improvised wards with the hosts of surgeons, nurses, and bearers feverishly busy, forget, indeed, all the wonder, consternation and novelty under the electric lights. down there in the hidden ways of the anthill he knew that the revolution triumphed, that black everywhere carried the day, black favours, black banners, black festoons across the streets. and out here, under the fresh sunlight, beyond the crater of the fight, as if nothing had happened to the earth, the forest of wind vanes that had grown from one or two while the council had ruled, roared peacefully upon their incessant duty. far away, spiked, jagged and indented by the wind vanes, the surrey hills rose blue and faint; to the north and nearer, the sharp contours of highgate and muswell hill were similarly jagged. and all over the countryside, he knew, on every crest and hill, where once the hedges had interlaced, and cottages, churches, inns, and farm houses had nestled among their trees, wind-wheels similar to those he saw and bearing like them vast advertisements, gaunt and distinctive symbols of the new age, cast their whirling shadows and stored incessantly the energy that flowed away incessantly through all the arteries of the city. and underneath these wandered the countless flocks and herds of the british food trust, his property, with their lonely guards and keepers. not a familiar outline anywhere broke the cluster of gigantic shapes below. st. paul's he knew survived, and many of the old buildings in westminster, embedded out of sight, arched over and covered in among the giant growths of this great age. the thames, too, made no fall and gleam of silver to break the wilderness of the city; the thirsty water mains drank up every drop of its waters before they reached the walls. its bed and estuary, scoured and sunken, was now a canal of sea water, and a race of grimy bargemen brought the heavy materials of trade from the pool thereby beneath the very feet of the workers. faint and dim in the eastward between earth and sky hung the clustering masts of the colossal shipping in the pool. for all the heavy traffic, for which there was no need of haste, came in gigantic sailing ships from the ends of the earth, and the heavy goods for which there was urgency in mechanical ships of a smaller swifter sort. and to the south over the hills came vast aqueducts with sea water for the sewers, and in three separate directions ran pallid lines--the roads, stippled with moving grey specks. on the first occasion that offered he was determined to go out and see these roads. that would come after the flying ship he was presently to try. his attendant officer described them as a pair of gently curving surfaces a hundred yards wide, each one for the traffic going in one direction, and made of a substance called eadhamite--an artificial substance, so far as he could gather, resembling toughened glass. along this shot a strange traffic of narrow rubber-shod vehicles, great single wheels, two and four wheeled vehicles, sweeping along at velocities of from one to six miles a minute. railroads had vanished; a few embankments remained as rust-crowned trenches here and there. some few formed the cores of eadhamite ways. among the first things to strike his attention had been the great fleets of advertisement balloons and kites that receded in irregular vistas northward and southward along the lines of the aeroplane journeys. no great aeroplanes were to be seen. their passages had ceased, and only one little-seeming monoplane circled high in the blue distance above the surrey hills, an unimpressive soaring speck. a thing graham had already learnt, and which he found very hard to imagine, was that nearly all the towns in the country, and almost all the villages, had disappeared. here and there only, he understood, some gigantic hotel-like edifice stood amid square miles of some single cultivation and preserved the name of a town--as bournemouth, wareham, or swanage. yet the officer had speedily convinced him how inevitable such a change had been. the old order had dotted the country with farmhouses, and every two or three miles was the ruling landlord's estate, and the place of the inn and cobbler, the grocer's shop and church--the village. every eight miles or so was the country town, where lawyer, corn merchant, wool-stapler, saddler, veterinary surgeon, doctor, draper, milliner and so forth lived. every eight miles--simply because that eight mile marketing journey, four there and back, was as much as was comfortable for the farmer. but directly the railways came into play, and after them the light railways, and all the swift new motor cars that had replaced waggons and horses, and so soon as the high roads began to be made of wood, and rubber, and eadhamite, and all sorts of elastic durable substances--the necessity of having such frequent market towns disappeared. and the big towns grew. they drew the worker with the gravitational force of seemingly endless work, the employer with their suggestion of an infinite ocean of labour. and as the standard of comfort rose, as the complexity of the mechanism of living increased, life in the country had become more and more costly, or narrow and impossible. the disappearance of vicar and squire, the extinction of the general practitioner by the city specialist; had robbed the village of its last touch of culture. after telephone, kinematograph and phonograph had replaced newspaper, book, schoolmaster, and letter, to live outside the range of the electric cables was to live an isolated savage. in the country were neither means of being clothed nor fed (according to the refined conceptions of the time), no efficient doctors for an emergency, no company and no pursuits. moreover, mechanical appliances in agriculture made one engineer the equivalent of thirty labourers. so, inverting the condition of the city clerk in the days when london was scarce inhabitable because of the coaly foulness of its air, the labourers now came to the city and its life and delights at night to leave it again in the morning. the city had swallowed up humanity; man had entered upon a new stage in his development. first had come the nomad, the hunter, then had followed the agriculturist of the agricultural state, whose towns and cities and ports were but the headquarters and markets of the countryside. and now, logical consequence of an epoch of invention, was this huge new aggregation of men. such things as these, simple statements of fact though they were to contemporary men, strained graham's imagination to picture. and when he glanced "over beyond there" at the strange things that existed on the continent, it failed him altogether. he had a vision of city beyond city; cities on great plains, cities beside great rivers, vast cities along the sea margin, cities girdled by snowy mountains. over a great part of the earth the english tongue was spoken; taken together with its spanish american and hindoo and negro and "pidgin" dialects, it was the everyday-language of two-thirds of humanity. on the continent, save as remote and curious survivals, three other languages alone held sway--german, which reached to antioch and genoa and jostled spanish-english at cadiz; a gallicised russian which met the indian english in persia and kurdistan and the "pidgin" english in pekin; and french still clear and brilliant, the language of lucidity, which shared the mediterranean with the indian english and german and reached through a negro dialect to the congo. and everywhere now through the city-set earth, save in the administered "black belt" territories of the tropics, the same cosmopolitan social organisation prevailed, and everywhere from pole to equator his property and his responsibilities extended. the whole world was civilised; the whole world dwelt in cities; the whole world was his property.... out of the dim south-west, glittering and strange, voluptuous, and in some way terrible, shone those pleasure cities of which the kinematograph-phonograph and the old man in the street had spoken. strange places reminiscent of the legendary sybaris, cities of art and beauty, mercenary art and mercenary beauty, sterile wonderful cities of motion and music, whither repaired all who profited by the fierce, inglorious, economic struggle that went on in the glaring labyrinth below. fierce he knew it was. how fierce he could judge from the fact that these latter-day people referred back to the england of the nineteenth century as the figure of an idyllic easy-going life. he turned his eyes to the scene immediately before him again, trying to conceive the big factories of that intricate maze.... chapter xv prominent people the state apartments of the wind vane keeper would have astonished graham had he entered them fresh from his nineteenth century life, but already he was growing accustomed to the scale of the new time. he came out through one of the now familiar sliding panels upon a plateau of landing at the head of a flight of very broad and gentle steps, with men and women far more brilliantly dressed than any he had hitherto seen, ascending and descending. from this position he looked down a vista of subtle and varied ornament in lustreless white and mauve and purple, spanned by bridges that seemed wrought of porcelain and filigree, and terminating far off in a cloudy mystery of perforated screens. glancing upward, he saw tier above tier of ascending galleries with faces looking down upon him. the air was full of the babble of innumerable voices and of a music that descended from above, a gay and exhilarating music whose source he did not discover. the central aisle was thick with people, but by no means uncomfortably crowded; altogether that assembly must have numbered many thousands. they were brilliantly, even fantastically dressed, the men as fancifully as the women, for the sobering influence of the puritan conception of dignity upon masculine dress had long since passed away. the hair of the men, too, though it was rarely worn long, was commonly curled in a manner that suggested the barber, and baldness had vanished from the earth. frizzy straight-cut masses that would have charmed rossetti abounded, and one gentleman, who was pointed out to graham under the mysterious title of an "amorist," wore his hair in two becoming plaits _à la_ marguerite. the pigtail was in evidence; it would seem that citizens of chinese extraction were no longer ashamed of their race. there was little uniformity of fashion apparent in the forms of clothing worn. the more shapely men displayed their symmetry in trunk hose, and here were puffs and slashes, and there a cloak and there a robe. the fashions of the days of leo the tenth were perhaps the prevailing influence, but the aesthetic conceptions of the far east were also patent. masculine embonpoint, which, in victorian times, would have been subjected to the buttoned perils, the ruthless exaggeration of tight-legged tight-armed evening dress, now formed but the basis of a wealth of dignity and drooping folds. graceful slenderness abounded also. to graham, a typically stiff man from a typically stiff period, not only did these men seem altogether too graceful in person, but altogether too expressive in their vividly expressive faces. they gesticulated, they expressed surprise, interest, amusement, above all, they expressed the emotions excited in their minds by the ladies about them with astonishing frankness. even at the first glance it was evident that women were in a great majority. the ladies in the company of these gentlemen displayed in dress, bearing and manner alike, less emphasis and more intricacy. some affected a classical simplicity of robing and subtlety of fold, after the fashion of the first french empire, and flashed conquering arms and shoulders as graham passed. others had closely-fitting dresses without seam or belt at the waist, sometimes with long folds falling from the shoulders. the delightful confidences of evening dress had not been diminished by the passage of two centuries. everyone's movements seemed graceful. graham remarked to lincoln that he saw men as raphael's cartoons walking, and lincoln told him that the attainment of an appropriate set of gestures was part of every rich person's education. the master's entry was greeted with a sort of tittering applause, but these people showed their distinguished manners by not crowding upon him nor annoying him by any persistent scrutiny, as he descended the steps towards the floor of the aisle. he had already learnt from lincoln that these were the leaders of existing london society; almost every person there that night was either a powerful official or the immediate connexion of a powerful official. many had returned from the european pleasure cities expressly to welcome him. the aeronautic authorities, whose defection had played a part in the overthrow of the council only second to graham's, were very prominent, and so, too, was the wind vane control. amongst others there were several of the more prominent officers of the food department; the controller of the european piggeries had a particularly melancholy and interesting countenance and a daintily cynical manner. a bishop in full canonicals passed athwart graham's vision, conversing with a gentleman dressed exactly like the traditional chaucer, including even the laurel wreath. "who is that?" he asked almost involuntarily. "the bishop of london," said lincoln. "no--the other, i mean." "poet laureate." "you still--?" "he doesn't make poetry, of course. he's a cousin of wotton--one of the councillors. but he's one of the red rose royalists--a delightful club--and they keep up the tradition of these things." "asano told me there was a king." "the king doesn't belong. they had to expel him. it's the stuart blood, i suppose; but really--" "too much?" "far too much." graham did not quite follow all this, but it seemed part of the general inversion of the new age. he bowed condescendingly to his first introduction. it was evident that subtle distinctions of class prevailed even in this assembly, that only to a small proportion of the guests, to an inner group, did lincoln consider it appropriate to introduce him. this first introduction was the master aeronaut, a man whose sun-tanned face contrasted oddly with the delicate complexions about him. just at present his critical defection from the council made him a very important person indeed. his manner contrasted very favourably, according to graham's ideas, with the general bearing. he offered a few commonplace remarks, assurances of loyalty and frank inquiries about the master's health. his manner was breezy, his accent lacked the easy staccato of latter-day english. he made it admirably clear to graham that he was a bluff "aerial dog"--he used that phrase--that there was no nonsense about him, that he was a thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn't profess to know much, and that what he did not know was not worth knowing. he made a curt bow, ostentatiously free from obsequiousness, and passed. "i am glad to see that type endures," said graham. "phonographs and kinematographs," said lincoln, a little spitefully. "he has studied from the life." graham glanced at the burly form again. it was oddly reminiscent. "as a matter of fact we bought him," said lincoln. "partly. and partly he was afraid of ostrog. everything rested with him." he turned sharply to introduce the surveyor-general of the public schools. this person was a willowy figure in a blue-grey academic gown, he beamed down upon graham through _pince-nez_ of a victorian pattern, and illustrated his remarks by gestures of a beautifully manicured hand. graham was immediately interested in this gentleman's functions, and asked him a number of singularly direct questions. the surveyor-general seemed quietly amused at the master's fundamental bluntness. he was a little vague as to the monopoly of education his company possessed; it was done by contract with the syndicate that ran the numerous london municipalities, but he waxed enthusiastic over educational progress since the victorian times. "we have conquered cram," he said, "completely conquered cram--there is not an examination left in the world. aren't you glad?" "how do you get the work done?" asked graham. "we make it attractive--as attractive as possible. and if it does not attract then--we let it go. we cover an immense field." he proceeded to details, and they had a lengthy conversation. graham learnt that university extension still existed in a modified form. "there is a certain type of girl, for example," said the surveyor-general, dilating with a sense of his usefulness, "with a perfect passion for severe studies--when they are not too difficult you know. we cater for them by the thousand. at this moment," he said with a napoleonic touch, "nearly five hundred phonographs are lecturing in different parts of london on the influence exercised by plato and swift on the love affairs of shelley, hazlitt, and burns. and afterwards they write essays on the lectures, and the names in order of merit are put in conspicuous places. you see how your little germ has grown? the illiterate middle-class of your days has quite passed away." "about the public elementary schools," said graham. "do you control them?" the surveyor-general did, "entirely." now, graham, in his later democratic days, had taken a keen interest in these and his questioning quickened. certain casual phrases that had fallen from the old man with whom he had talked in the darkness recurred to him. the surveyor-general, in effect, endorsed the old man's words. "we try and make the elementary schools very pleasant for the little children. they will have to work so soon. just a few simple principles--obedience--industry." "you teach them very little?" "why should we? it only leads to trouble and discontent. we amuse them. even as it is--there are troubles--agitations. where the labourers get the ideas, one cannot tell. they tell one another. there are socialistic dreams--anarchy even! agitators _will_ get to work among them. i take it--i have always taken it--that my foremost duty is to fight against popular discontent. why should people be made unhappy?" "i wonder," said graham thoughtfully. "but there are a great many things i want to know." lincoln, who had stood watching graham's face throughout the conversation, intervened. "there are others," he said in an undertone. the surveyor-general of schools gesticulated himself away. "perhaps," said lincoln, intercepting a casual glance, "you would like to know some of these ladies?" the daughter of the manager of the piggeries was a particularly charming little person with red hair and animated blue eyes. lincoln left him awhile to converse with her, and she displayed herself as quite an enthusiast for the "dear old days," as she called them, that had seen the beginning of his trance. as she talked she smiled, and her eyes smiled in a manner that demanded reciprocity. "i have tried," she said, "countless times--to imagine those old romantic days. and to you--they are memories. how strange and crowded the world must seem to you! i have seen photographs and pictures of the past, the little isolated houses built of bricks made out of burnt mud and all black with soot from your fires, the railway bridges, the simple advertisements, the solemn savage puritanical men in strange black coats and those tall hats of theirs, iron railway trains on iron bridges overhead, horses and cattle, and even dogs running half wild about the streets. and suddenly, you have come into this!" "into this," said graham. "out of your life--out of all that was familiar." "the old life was not a happy one," said graham. "i do not regret that." she looked at him quickly. there was a brief pause. she sighed encouragingly. "no?" "no," said graham. "it was a little life--and unmeaning. but this--we thought the world complex and crowded and civilised enough. yet i see--although in this world i am barely four days old--looking back on my own time, that it was a queer, barbaric time--the mere beginning of this new order. the mere beginning of this new order. you will find it hard to understand how little i know." "you may ask me what you like," she said, smiling at him. "then tell me who these people are. i'm still very much in the dark about them. it's puzzling. are there any generals?" "men in hats and feathers?" "of course not. no. i suppose they are the men who control the great public businesses. who is that distinguished looking man?" "that? he's a most important officer. that is morden. he is managing director of the antibilious pill department. i have heard that his workers sometimes turn out a myriad myriad pills a day in the twenty-four hours. fancy a myriad myriad!" "a myriad myriad. no wonder he looks proud," said graham. "pills! what a wonderful time it is! that man in purple?" "he is not quite one of the inner circle, you know. but we like him. he is really clever and very amusing. he is one of the heads of the medical faculty of our london university. all medical men, you know, wear that purple. but, of course, people who are paid by fees for _doing_ something--" she smiled away the social pretensions of all such people. "are any of your great artists or authors here?" "no authors. they are mostly such queer people--and so preoccupied about themselves. and they quarrel so dreadfully! they will fight, some of them, for precedence on staircases! dreadful, isn't it? but i think wraysbury, the fashionable capillotomist, is here. from capri." "capillotomist," said graham. "ah! i remember. an artist! why not?" "we have to cultivate him," she said apologetically. "our heads are in his hands." she smiled. graham hesitated at the invited compliment, but his glance was expressive. "have the arts grown with the rest of civilised things?" he said. "who are your great painters?" she looked at him doubtfully. then laughed. "for a moment," she said, "i thought you meant--" she laughed again. "you mean, of course, those good men you used to think so much of because they could cover great spaces of canvas with oil-colours? great oblongs. and people used to put the things in gilt frames and hang them up in rows in their square rooms. we haven't any. people grew tired of that sort of thing." "but what did you think i meant?" she put a finger significantly on a cheek whose glow was above suspicion, and smiled and looked very arch and pretty and inviting. "and here," and she indicated her eyelid. graham had an adventurous moment. then a grotesque memory of a picture he had somewhere seen of uncle toby and the widow flashed across his mind. an archaic shame came upon him. he became acutely aware that he was visible to a great number of interested people. "i see," he remarked inadequately. he turned awkwardly away from her fascinating facility. he looked about him to meet a number of eyes that immediately occupied themselves with other things. possibly he coloured a little. "who is that talking with the lady in saffron?" he asked, avoiding her eyes. the person in question he learnt was one of the great organisers of the american theatres just fresh from a gigantic production at mexico. his face reminded graham of a bust of caligula. another striking looking man was the black labour master. the phrase at the time made no deep impression, but afterwards it recurred;--the black labour master? the little lady in no degree embarrassed, pointed out to him a charming little woman as one of the subsidiary wives of the anglican bishop of london. she added encomiums on the episcopal courage--hitherto there had been a rule of clerical monogamy--"neither a natural nor an expedient condition of things. why should the natural development of the affections be dwarfed and restricted because a man is a priest?" "and, bye the bye," she added, "are you an anglican?" graham was on the verge of hesitating inquiries about the status of a "subsidiary wife," apparently an euphemistic phrase, when lincoln's return broke off this very suggestive and interesting conversation. they crossed the aisle to where a tall man in crimson, and two charming persons in burmese costume (as it seemed to him) awaited him diffidently. from their civilities he passed to other presentations. in a little while his multitudinous impressions began to organise themselves into a general effect. at first the glitter of the gathering had raised all the democrat in graham; he had felt hostile and satirical. but it is not in human nature to resist an atmosphere of courteous regard. soon the music, the light, the play of colours, the shining arms and shoulders about him, the touch of hands, the transient interest of smiling faces, the frothing sound of skilfully modulated voices, the atmosphere of compliment, interest and respect, had woven together into a fabric of indisputable pleasure. graham for a time forgot his spacious resolutions. he gave way insensibly to the intoxication of the position that was conceded him, his manner became more convincingly regal, his feet walked assuredly, the black robe fell with a bolder fold and pride ennobled his voice. after all, this was a brilliant interesting world. he looked up and saw passing across a bridge of porcelain and looking down upon him, a face that was almost immediately hidden, the face of the girl he had seen overnight in the little room beyond the theatre after his escape from the council. and she was watching him. for the moment he did not remember when he had seen her, and then came a vague memory of the stirring emotions of their first encounter. but the dancing web of melody about him kept the air of that great marching song from his memory. the lady to whom he talked repeated her remark, and graham recalled himself to the quasi-regal flirtation upon which he was engaged. yet, unaccountably, a vague restlessness, a feeling that grew to dissatisfaction, came into his mind. he was troubled as if by some half forgotten duty, by the sense of things important slipping from him amidst this light and brilliance. the attraction that these ladies who crowded about him were beginning to exercise ceased. he no longer gave vague and clumsy responses to the subtly amorous advances that he was now assured were being made to him, and his eyes wandered for another sight of the girl of the first revolt. where, precisely, had he seen her?... graham was in one of the upper galleries in conversation with a bright-eyed lady on the subject of eadhamite--the subject was his choice and not hers. he had interrupted her warm assurances of personal devotion with a matter-of-fact inquiry. he found her, as he had already found several other latter-day women that night, less well informed than charming. suddenly, struggling against the eddying drift of nearer melody, the song of the revolt, the great song he had heard in the hall, hoarse and massive, came beating down to him. ah! now he remembered! he glanced up startled, and perceived above him an _oeil de boeuf_ through which this song had come, and beyond, the upper courses of cable, the blue haze, and the pendant fabric of the lights of the public ways. he heard the song break into a tumult of voices and cease. he perceived quite clearly the drone and tumult of the moving platforms and a murmur of many people. he had a vague persuasion that he could not account for, a sort of instinctive feeling that outside in the ways a huge crowd must be watching this place in which their master amused himself. though the song had stopped so abruptly, though the special music of this gathering reasserted itself, the _motif_ of the marching song, once it had begun, lingered in his mind. the bright-eyed lady was still struggling with the mysteries of eadhamite when he perceived the girl he had seen in the theatre again. she was coming now along the gallery towards him; he saw her first before she saw him. she was dressed in a faintly luminous grey, her dark hair about her brows was like a cloud, and as he saw her the cold light from the circular opening into the ways fell upon her downcast face. the lady in trouble about the eadhamite saw the change in his expression, and grasped her opportunity to escape. "would you care to know that girl, sire?" she asked boldly. "she is helen wotton--a niece of ostrog's. she knows a great many serious things. she is one of the most serious persons alive. i am sure you will like her." in another moment graham was talking to the girl, and the bright-eyed lady had fluttered away. "i remember you quite well," said graham. "you were in that little room. when all the people were singing and beating time with their feet. before i walked across the hall." her momentary embarrassment passed. she looked up at him, and her face was steady. "it was wonderful," she said, hesitated, and spoke with a sudden effort. "all those people would have died for you, sire. countless people did die for you that night." her face glowed. she glanced swiftly aside to see that no other heard her words. lincoln appeared some way off along the gallery, making his way through the press towards them. she saw him and turned to graham strangely eager, with a swift change to confidence and intimacy. "sire," she said quickly, "i cannot tell you now and here. but the common people are very unhappy; they are oppressed--they are misgoverned. do not forget the people, who faced death--death that you might live." "i know nothing--" began graham. "i cannot tell you now." lincoln's face appeared close to them. he bowed an apology to the girl. "you find the new world amusing, sire?" asked lincoln, with smiling deference, and indicating the space and splendour of the gathering by one comprehensive gesture. "at any rate, you find it changed." "yes," said graham, "changed. and yet, after all, not so greatly changed." "wait till you are in the air," said lincoln. "the wind has fallen; even now an aeroplane awaits you." the girl's attitude awaited dismissal. graham glanced at her face, was on the verge of a question, found a warning in her expression, bowed to her and turned to accompany lincoln. chapter xvi the monoplane the flying stages of london were collected together in an irregular crescent on the southern side of the river. they formed three groups of two each and retained the names of ancient suburban hills or villages. they were named in order, roehampton, wimbledon park, streatham, norwood, blackheath, and shooter's hill. they were uniform structures rising high above the general roof surfaces. each was about four thousand yards long and a thousand broad, and constructed of the compound of aluminum and iron that had replaced iron in architecture. their higher tiers formed an openwork of girders through which lifts and staircases ascended. the upper surface was a uniform expanse, with portions--the starting carriers--that could be raised and were then able to run on very slightly inclined rails to the end of the fabric. graham went to the flying stages by the public ways. he was accompanied by asano, his japanese attendant. lincoln was called away by ostrog, who was busy with his administrative concerns. a strong guard of the wind-vane police awaited the master outside the wind-vane offices, and they cleared a space for him on the upper moving platform. his passage to the flying stages was unexpected, nevertheless a considerable crowd gathered and followed him to his destination. as he went along, he could hear the people shouting his name, and saw numberless men and women and children in blue come swarming up the staircases in the central path, gesticulating and shouting. he could not hear what they shouted. he was struck again by the evident existence of a vulgar dialect among the poor of the city. when at last he descended, his guards were immediately surrounded by a dense excited crowd. afterwards it occurred to him that some had attempted to reach him with petitions. his guards cleared a passage for him with difficulty. he found a monoplane in charge of an aeronaut awaiting him on the westward stage. seen close this mechanism was no longer small. as it lay on its launching carrier upon the wide expanse of the flying stage, its aluminum body skeleton was as big as the hull of a twenty-ton yacht. its lateral supporting sails braced and stayed with metal nerves almost like the nerves of a bee's wing, and made of some sort of glassy artificial membrane, cast their shadow over many hundreds of square yards. the chairs for the engineer and his passenger hung free to swing by a complex tackle, within the protecting ribs of the frame and well abaft the middle. the passenger's chair was protected by a wind-guard and guarded about with metallic rods carrying air cushions. it could, if desired, be completely closed in, but graham was anxious for novel experiences, and desired that it should be left open. the aeronaut sat behind a glass that sheltered his face. the passenger could secure himself firmly in his seat, and this was almost unavoidable on landing, or he could move along by means of a little rail and rod to a locker at the stem of the machine, where his personal luggage, his wraps and restoratives were placed, and which also with the seats, served as a makeweight to the parts of the central engine that projected to the propeller at the stern. the flying stage about him was empty save for asano and their suite of attendants. directed by the aeronaut he placed himself in his seat. asano stepped through the bars of the hull, and stood below on the stage waving his hand. he seemed to slide along the stage to the right and vanish. the engine was humming loudly, the propeller spinning, and for a second the stage and the buildings beyond were gliding swiftly and horizontally past graham's eye; then these things seemed to tilt up abruptly. he gripped the little rods on either side of him instinctively. he felt himself moving upward, heard the air whistle over the top of the wind screen. the propeller screw moved round with powerful rhythmic impulses--one, two, three, pause; one, two, three--which the engineer controlled very delicately. the machine began a quivering vibration that continued throughout the flight, and the roof areas seemed running away to starboard very quickly and growing rapidly smaller. he looked from the face of the engineer through the ribs of the machine. looking sideways, there was nothing very startling in what he saw--a rapid funicular railway might have given the same sensations. he recognised the council house and the highgate ridge. and then he looked straight down between his feet. for a moment physical terror possessed him, a passionate sense of insecurity. he held tight. for a second or so he could not lift his eyes. some hundred feet or more sheer below him was one of the big wind-vanes of south-west london, and beyond it the southernmost flying stage crowded with little black dots. these things seemed to be falling away from him. for a second he had an impulse to pursue the earth. he set his teeth, he lifted his eyes by a muscular effort, and the moment of panic passed. he remained for a space with his teeth set hard, his eyes staring into the sky. throb, throb, throb--beat, went the engine; throb, throb, throb--beat. he gripped his bars tightly, glanced at the aeronaut, and saw a smile upon his sun-tanned face. he smiled in return--perhaps a little artificially. "a little strange at first," he shouted before he recalled his dignity. but he dared not look down again for some time. he stared over the aeronaut's head to where a rim of vague blue horizon crept up the sky. for a little while he could not banish the thought of possible accidents from his mind. throb, throb, throb--beat; suppose some trivial screw went wrong in that supporting engine! suppose--! he made a grim effort to dismiss all such suppositions. after a while they did at least abandon the foreground of his thoughts. and up he went steadily, higher and higher into the clear air. once the mental shock of moving unsupported through the air was over, his sensations ceased to be unpleasant, became very speedily pleasurable. he had been warned of air sickness. but he found the pulsating movement of the monoplane as it drove up the faint south-west breeze was very little in excess of the pitching of a boat head on to broad rollers in a moderate gale, and he was constitutionally a good sailor. and the keenness of the more rarefied air into which they ascended produced a sense of lightness and exhilaration. he looked up and saw the blue sky above fretted with cirrus clouds. his eye came cautiously down through the ribs and bars to a shining flight of white birds that hung in the lower sky. for a space he watched these. then going lower and less apprehensively, he saw the slender figure of the wind-vane keeper's crow's nest shining golden in the sunlight and growing smaller every moment. as his eye fell with more confidence now, there came a blue line of hills, and then london, already to leeward, an intricate space of roofing. its near edge came sharp and clear, and banished his last apprehensions in a shock of surprise. for the boundary of london was like a wall, like a cliff, a steep fall of three or four hundred feet, a frontage broken only by terraces here and there, a complex decorative façade. that gradual passage of town into country through an extensive sponge of suburbs, which was so characteristic a feature of the great cities of the nineteenth century, existed no longer. nothing remained of it here but a waste of ruins, variegated and dense with thickets of the heterogeneous growths that had once adorned the gardens of the belt, interspersed among levelled brown patches of sown ground, and verdant stretches of winter greens. the latter even spread among the vestiges of houses. but for the most part the reefs and skerries of ruins, the wreckage of suburban villas, stood among their streets and roads, queer islands amidst the levelled expanses of green and brown, abandoned indeed by the inhabitants years since, but too substantial, it seemed, to be cleared out of the way of the wholesale horticultural mechanisms of the time. the vegetation of this waste undulated and frothed amidst the countless cells of crumbling house walls, and broke along the foot of the city wall in a surf of bramble and holly and ivy and teazle and tall grasses. here and there gaudy pleasure palaces towered amidst the puny remains of victorian times, and cable ways slanted to them from the city. that winter day they seemed deserted. deserted, too, were the artificial gardens among the ruins. the city limits were indeed as sharply defined as in the ancient days when the gates were shut at nightfall and the robber foeman prowled to the very walls. a huge semi-circular throat poured out a vigorous traffic upon the eadhamite bath road. so the first prospect of the world beyond the city flashed on graham, and dwindled. and when at last he could look vertically downward again, he saw below him the vegetable fields of the thames valley--innumerable minute oblongs of ruddy brown, intersected by shining threads, the sewage ditches. his exhilaration increased rapidly, became a sort of intoxication. he found himself drawing deep breaths of air, laughing aloud, desiring to shout. after a time that desire became too strong for him, and he shouted. they curved about towards the south. they drove with a slight list to leeward, and with a slow alternation of movement, first a short, sharp ascent and then a long downward glide that was very swift and pleasing. during these downward glides the propeller was inactive altogether. these ascents gave graham a glorious sense of successful effort; the descents through the rarefied air were beyond all experience. he wanted never to leave the upper air again. for a time he was intent upon the landscape that ran swiftly northward beneath him. its minute, clear detail pleased him exceedingly. he was impressed by the ruin of the houses that had once dotted the country, by the vast treeless expanse of country from which all farms and villages had gone, save for crumbling ruins. he had known the thing was so, but seeing it so was an altogether different matter. he tried to make out familiar places within the hollow basin of the world below, but at first he could distinguish no data now that the thames valley was left behind. soon, however, they were driving over a sharp chalk hill that he recognised as the guildford hog's back, because of the familiar outline of the gorge at its eastward end, and because of the ruins of the town that rose steeply on either lip of this gorge. and from that he made out other points, leith hill, the sandy wastes of aldershot, and so forth. save where the broad eadhamite portsmouth road, thickly dotted with rushing shapes, followed the course of the old railway, the gorge of the wey was choked with thickets. the whole expanse of the downs escarpment, so far as the grey haze permitted him to see, was set with wind-wheels to which the largest of the city was but a younger brother. they stirred with a stately motion before the south-west wind. and here and there were patches dotted with the sheep of the british food trust, and here and there a mounted shepherd made a spot of black. then rushing under the stern of the monoplane came the wealden heights, the line of hindhead, pitch hill, and leith hill, with a second row of wind-wheels that seemed striving to rob the downland whirlers of their share of breeze. the purple heather was speckled with yellow gorse, and on the further side a drove of black oxen stampeded before a couple of mounted men. swiftly these swept behind, and dwindled and lost colour, and became scarce moving specks that were swallowed up in haze. and when these had vanished in the distance graham heard a peewit wailing close at hand. he perceived he was now above the south downs, and staring over his shoulder saw the battlements of portsmouth landing stage towering over the ridge of portsdown hill. in another moment there came into sight a spread of shipping like floating cities, the little white cliffs of the needles dwarfed and sunlit, and the grey and glittering waters of the narrow sea. they seemed to leap the solent in a moment, and in a few seconds the isle of wight was running past, and then beneath him spread a wider and wider extent of sea, here purple with the shadow of a cloud, here grey, here a burnished mirror, and here a spread of cloudy greenish blue. the isle of wight grew smaller and smaller. in a few more minutes a strip of grey haze detached itself from other strips that were clouds, descended out of the sky and became a coast-line--sunlit and pleasant--the coast of northern france. it rose, it took colour, became definite and detailed, and the counterpart of the downland of england was speeding by below. in a little time, as it seemed, paris came above the horizon, and hung there for a space, and sank out of sight again as the monoplane circled about to the north. but he perceived the eiffel tower still standing, and beside it a huge dome surmounted by a pin-point colossus. and he perceived, too, though he did not understand it at the time, a slanting drift of smoke. the aeronaut said something about "trouble in the under-ways," that graham did not heed. but he marked the minarets and towers and slender masses that streamed skyward above the city wind-vanes, and knew that in the matter of grace at least paris still kept in front of her larger rival. and even as he looked a pale blue shape ascended very swiftly from the city like a dead leaf driving up before a gale. it curved round and soared towards them, growing rapidly larger and larger. the aeronaut was saying something. "what?" said graham, loth to take his eyes from this. "london aeroplane, sire," bawled the aeronaut, pointing. they rose and curved about northward as it drew nearer. nearer it came and nearer, larger and larger. the throb, throb, throb--beat, of the monoplane's flight, that had seemed so potent, and so swift, suddenly appeared slow by comparison with this tremendous rush. how great the monster seemed, how swift and steady! it passed quite closely beneath them, driving along silently, a vast spread of wire-netted translucent wings, a thing alive. graham had a momentary glimpse of the rows and rows of wrapped-up passengers, slung in their little cradles behind wind-screens, of a white-clothed engineer crawling against the gale along a ladder way, of spouting engines beating together, of the whirling wind screw, and of a wide waste of wing. he exulted in the sight. and in an instant the thing had passed. it rose slightly and their own little wings swayed in the rush of its flight. it fell and grew smaller. scarcely had they moved, as it seemed, before it was again only a flat blue thing that dwindled in the sky. this was the aeroplane that went to and fro between london and paris. in fair weather and in peaceful times it came and went four times a day. they beat across the channel, slowly as it seemed now to graham's enlarged ideas, and beachy head rose greyly to the left of them. "land," called the aeronaut, his voice small against the whistling of the air over the wind-screen. "not yet," bawled graham, laughing. "not land yet. i want to learn more of this machine." "i meant--" said the aeronaut. "i want to learn more of this machine," repeated graham. "i'm coming to you," he said, and had flung himself free of his chair and taken a step along the guarded rail between them. he stopped for a moment, and his colour changed and his hands tightened. another step and he was clinging close to the aeronaut. he felt a weight on his shoulder, the pressure of the air. his hat was a whirling speck behind. the wind came in gusts over his wind-screen and blew his hair in streamers past his cheek. the aeronaut made some hasty adjustments for the shifting of the centres of gravity and pressure. "i want to have these things explained," said graham. "what do you do when you move that engine forward?" the aeronaut hesitated. then he answered, "they are complex, sire." "i don't mind," shouted graham. "i don't mind." there was a moment's pause. "aeronautics is the secret--the privilege--" "i know. but i'm the master, and i mean to know." he laughed, full of this novel realisation of power that was his gift from the upper air. the monoplane curved about, and the keen fresh wind cut across graham's face and his garment lugged at his body as the stem pointed round to the west. the two men looked into each other's eyes. "sire, there are rules--" "not where i am concerned," said graham, "you seem to forget." the aeronaut scrutinised his face "no," he said. "i do not forget, sire. but in all the earth--no man who is not a sworn aeronaut--has ever a chance. they come as passengers--" "i have heard something of the sort. but i'm not going to argue these points. do you know why i have slept two hundred years? to fly!" "sire," said the aeronaut, "the rules--if i break the rules--" graham waved the penalties aside. "then if you will watch me--" "no," said graham, swaying and gripping tight as the machine lifted its nose again for an ascent. "that's not my game. i want to do it myself. do it myself if i smash for it! no! i will. see i am going to clamber by this--to come and share your seat. steady! i mean to fly of my own accord if i smash at the end of it. i will have something to pay for my sleep. of all other things--. in my past it was my dream to fly. now--keep your balance." "a dozen spies are watching me, sire!" graham's temper was at end. perhaps he chose it should be. he swore. he swung himself round the intervening mass of levers and the monoplane swayed. "am i master of the earth?" he said. "or is your society? now. take your hands off those levers, and hold my wrists. yes--so. and now, how do we turn her nose down to the glide?" "sire," said the aeronaut. "what is it?" "you will protect me?" "lord! yes! if i have to burn london. now!" and with that promise graham bought his first lesson in aerial navigation. "it's clearly to your advantage, this journey," he said with a loud laugh--for the air was like strong wine--"to teach me quickly and well. do i pull this? ah! so! hullo!" "back, sire! back!" "back--right. one--two--three--good god! ah! up she goes! but this is living!" and now the machine began to dance the strangest figures in the air. now it would sweep round a spiral of scarcely a hundred yards diameter, now rush up into the air and swoop down again, steeply, swiftly, falling like a hawk, to recover in a rushing loop that swept it high again. in one of these descents it seemed driving straight at the drifting park of balloons in the southeast, and only curved about and cleared them by a sudden recovery of dexterity. the extraordinary swiftness and smoothness of the motion, the extraordinary effect of the rarefied air upon his constitution, threw graham into a careless fury. but at last a queer incident came to sober him, to send him flying down once more to the crowded life below with all its dark insoluble riddles. as he swooped, came a tap and something flying past, and a drop like a drop of rain. then as he went on down he saw something like a white rag whirling down in his wake. "what was that?" he asked. "i did not see." the aeronaut glanced, and then clutched at the lever to recover, for they were sweeping down. when the monoplane was rising again he drew a deep breath and replied, "that," and he indicated the white thing still fluttering down, "was a swan." "i never saw it," said graham. the aeronaut made no answer, and graham saw little drops upon his forehead. they drove horizontally while graham clambered back to the passenger's place out of the lash of the wind. and then came a swift rush down, with the wind-screw whirling to check their fall, and the flying stage growing broad and dark before them. the sun, sinking over the chalk hills in the west, fell with them, and left the sky a blaze of gold. soon men could be seen as little specks. he heard a noise coming up to meet him, a noise like the sound of waves upon a pebbly beach, and saw that the roofs about the flying stage were dense with his people rejoicing over his safe return. a black mass was crushed together under the stage, a darkness stippled with innumerable faces, and quivering with the minute oscillation of waved white handkerchiefs and waving hands. chapter xvii three days lincoln awaited graham in an apartment beneath the flying stages. he seemed curious to learn all that had happened, pleased to hear of the extraordinary delight and interest which graham took in flying. graham was in a mood of enthusiasm. "i must learn to fly," he cried. "i must master that. i pity all poor souls who have died without this opportunity. the sweet swift air! it is the most wonderful experience in the world." "you will find our new times full of wonderful experiences," said lincoln. "i do not know what you will care to do now. we have music that may seem novel." "for the present," said graham, "flying holds me. let me learn more of that. your aeronaut was saying there is some trades union objection to one's learning." "there is, i believe," said lincoln. "but for you--! if you would like to occupy yourself with that, we can make you a sworn aeronaut to-morrow." graham expressed his wishes vividly and talked of his sensations for a while. "and as for affairs," he asked abruptly. "how are things going on?" lincoln waved affairs aside. "ostrog will tell you that to-morrow," he said. "everything is settling down. the revolution accomplishes itself all over the world. friction is inevitable here and there, of course; but your rule is assured. you may rest secure with things in ostrog's hands." "would it be possible for me to be made a sworn aeronaut, as you call it, forthwith--before i sleep?" said graham, pacing. "then i could be at it the very first thing to-morrow again...." "it would be possible," said lincoln thoughtfully. "quite possible. indeed, it shall be done." he laughed. "i came prepared to suggest amusements, but you have found one for yourself. i will telephone to the aeronautical offices from here and we will return to your apartments in the wind-vane control. by the time you have dined the aeronauts will be able to come. you don't think that after you have dined you might prefer--?" he paused. "yes," said graham. "we had prepared a show of dancers--they have been brought from the capri theatre." "i hate ballets," said graham, shortly. "always did. that other--. that's not what i want to see. we had dancers in the old days. for the matter of that, they had them in ancient egypt. but flying--" "true," said lincoln. "though our dancers--" "they can afford to wait," said graham; "they can afford to wait. i know. i'm not a latin. there's questions i want to ask some expert--about your machinery. i'm keen. i want no distractions." "you have the world to choose from," said lincoln; "whatever you want is yours." asano appeared, and under the escort of a strong guard they returned through the city streets to graham's apartments. far larger crowds had assembled to witness his return than his departure had gathered, and the shouts and cheering of these masses of people sometimes drowned lincoln's answers to the endless questions graham's aerial journey had suggested. at first graham had acknowledged the cheering and cries of the crowd by bows and gestures, but lincoln warned him that such a recognition would be considered incorrect behaviour. graham, already a little wearied by rhythmic civilities, ignored his subjects for the remainder of his public progress. directly they arrived at his apartments asano departed in search of kinematographic renderings of machinery in motion, and lincoln despatched graham's commands for models of machines and small machines to illustrate the various mechanical advances of the last two centuries. the little group of appliances for telegraphic communication attracted the master so strongly that his delightfully prepared dinner, served by a number of charmingly dexterous girls, waited for a space. the habit of smoking had almost ceased from the face of the earth, but when he expressed a wish for that indulgence, enquiries were made and some excellent cigars were discovered in florida, and sent to him by pneumatic despatch while the dinner was still in progress. afterwards came the aeronauts, and a feast of ingenious wonders in the hands of a latter-day engineer. for the time, at any rate, the neat dexterity of counting and numbering machines, building machines, spinning engines, patent doorways, explosive motors, grain and water elevators, slaughter-house machines and harvesting appliances, was more fascinating to graham than any bayadère. "we were savages," was his refrain, "we were savages. we were in the stone age--compared with this.... and what else have you?" there came also practical psychologists with some very interesting developments in the art of hypnotism. the names of milne bramwell, fechner, liebault, william james, myers and gurney, he found, bore a value now that would have astonished their contemporaries. several practical applications of psychology were now in general use; it had largely superseded drugs, antiseptics and anesthetics in medicine; was employed by almost all who had any need of mental concentration. a real enlargement of human faculty seemed to have been effected in this direction. the feats of "calculating boys," the wonders, as graham had been wont to regard them, of mesmerisers, were now within the range of anyone who could afford the services of a skilled hypnotist. long ago the old examination methods in education had been destroyed by these expedients. instead of years of study, candidates had substituted a few weeks of trances, and during the trances expert coaches had simply to repeat all the points necessary for adequate answering, adding a suggestion of the post-hypnotic recollection of these points. in process mathematics particularly, this aid had been of singular service, and it was now invariably invoked by such players of chess and games of manual dexterity as were still to be found. in fact, all operations conducted under finite rules, of a quasi-mechanical sort that is, were now systematically relieved from the wanderings of imagination and emotion, and brought to an unexampled pitch of accuracy. little children of the labouring classes, so soon as they were of sufficient age to be hypnotised, were thus converted into beautifully punctual and trustworthy machine minders, and released forthwith from the long, long thoughts of youth. aeronautical pupils, who gave way to giddiness, could be relieved from their imaginary terrors. in every street were hypnotists ready to print permanent memories upon the mind. if anyone desired to remember a name, a series of numbers, a song or a speech, it could be done by this method, and conversely memories could be effaced, habits removed, and desires eradicated--a sort of psychic surgery was, in fact, in general use. indignities, humbling experiences, were thus forgotten, widows would obliterate their previous husbands, angry lovers release themselves from their slavery. to graft desires, however, was still impossible, and the facts of thought transference were yet unsystematised. the psychologists illustrated their expositions with some astounding experiments in mnemonics made through the agency of a troupe of pale-faced children in blue. graham, like most of the people of his former time, distrusted the hypnotist, or he might then and there have eased his mind of many painful preoccupations. but in spite of lincoln's assurances he held to the old theory that to be hypnotised was in some way the surrender of his personality, the abdication of his will. at the banquet of wonderful experiences that was beginning, he wanted very keenly to remain absolutely himself. the next day, and another day, and yet another day passed in such interests as these. each day graham spent many hours in the glorious entertainment of flying. on the third, he soared across middle france, and within sight of the snow-clad alps. these vigorous exercises gave him restful sleep; he recovered almost wholly from the spiritless anemia of his first awakening. and whenever he was not in the air, and awake, lincoln was assiduous in the cause of his amusement; all that was novel and curious in contemporary invention was brought to him, until at last his appetite for novelty was well-nigh glutted. one might fill a dozen inconsecutive volumes with the strange things they exhibited. each afternoon he held his court for an hour or so. he found his interest in his contemporaries becoming personal and intimate. at first he had been alert chiefly for unfamiliarity and peculiarity; any foppishness in their dress, any discordance with his preconceptions of nobility in their status and manners had jarred upon him, and it was remarkable to him how soon that 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 delight 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 tiresome 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 a monoplane." during those three days graham was so occupied with these 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 slender 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 department--" "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 department you own." "the labour department! 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 department has grown imperceptibly." "what _is_ this labour department?" 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 department 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. there had been a great agitation against the workhouse. 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 organise the labour of starving homeless people." "yes." "nowadays there are no workhouses, no refuges and charities, nothing but that department. 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 department 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 department's incorporation--and in return for a day's shelter the department 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 time 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 department 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 department's care. the mother owes them a month thereafter--the children they cherish and educate until they are fourteen, and they pay two years' service. you may be sure these children are educated for the blue canvas. and so it is the department works." "and none are destitute in the city?" "none. they are either in blue canvas or in prison. we have abolished destitution. it is engraved upon the department's checks." "if they will not work?" "most people will work at that pitch, and the department has powers. there are stages of unpleasantness in the work--stoppage of food--and a man or woman who has refused to work once is known by a thumb-marking system in the department's offices all over the world. besides, who can leave the city poor? to go to paris costs two lions. and for insubordination there are the prisons--dark and miserable--out of sight below. there are prisons now for many things." "and a third of the people wear this blue canvas?" "more than a third. toilers, living without pride or delight or hope, with the stories of pleasure cities ringing in their ears, mocking their shameful lives, their privations and hardships. too poor even for the euthanasy, the rich man's refuge from life. dumb, crippled millions, countless millions, all the world about, ignorant of anything but limitations and unsatisfied desires. they are born, they are thwarted and they die. that is the state to which we have come." for a space graham sat downcast. "but there has been a revolution," he said. "all these things will be changed. ostrog--" "that is our hope. that is the hope of the world. but ostrog will not do it. he is a politician. to him it seems things must be like this. he does not mind. he takes it for granted. all the rich, all the influential, all who are happy, come at last to take these miseries for granted. they use the people in their politics, they live in ease by their degradation. but you--you who come from a happier age--it is to you the people look. to you." he looked at her face. her eyes were bright with unshed tears. he felt a rush of emotion. for a moment he forgot this city, he forgot the race, and all those vague remote voices, in the immediate humanity of her beauty. "but what am i to do?" he said with his eyes upon her. "rule," she answered, bending towards him and speaking in a low tone. "rule the world as it has never been ruled, for the good and happiness of men. for you might rule it--you could rule it. "the people are stirring. all over the world the people are stirring. it wants but a word--but a word from you--to bring them all together. even the middle sort of people are restless--unhappy. "they are not telling you the things that are happening. the people will not go back to their drudgery--they refuse to be disarmed. ostrog has awakened something greater than he dreamt of--he has awakened hopes." his heart was beating fast. he tried to seem judicial, to weigh considerations. "they only want their leader," she said. "and then?" "you could do what you would;--the world is yours." he sat, no longer regarding her. presently he spoke. "the old dreams, and the thing i have dreamt, liberty, happiness. are they dreams? could one man--_one man_--?" his voice sank and ceased. "not one man, but all men--give them only a leader to speak the desire of their hearts." he shook his head, and for a time there was silence. he looked up suddenly, and their eyes met. "i have not your faith," he said, "i have not your youth. i am here with power that mocks me. no--let me speak. i want to do--not right--i have not the strength for that--but something rather right than wrong. it will bring no millennium, but i am resolved now, that i will rule. what you have said has awakened me... you are right. ostrog must know his place. and i will learn--.... one thing i promise you. this labour slavery shall end." "and you will rule?" "yes. provided--. there is one thing." "yes?" "that you will help me." "_i_--a girl!" "yes. does it not occur to you i am absolutely alone?" she started and for an instant her eyes had pity. "need you ask whether i will help you?" she said. there came a tense silence, and then the beating of a clock striking the hour. graham rose. "even now," he said, "ostrog will be waiting." he hesitated, facing her. "when i have asked him certain questions--. there is much i do not know. it may be, that i will go to see with my own eyes the things of which you have spoken. and when i return--?" "i shall know of your going and coming. i will wait for you here again." they regarded one another steadfastly, questioningly, and then he turned from her towards the wind-vane office. chapter xix ostrog's point of view graham found ostrog waiting to give a formal account of his day's stewardship. on previous occasions he had passed over this ceremony as speedily as possible, in order to resume his aerial experiences, but now he began to ask quick short questions. he was very anxious to take up his empire forthwith. ostrog brought flattering reports of the development of affairs abroad. in paris and berlin, graham perceived that he was saying, there had been trouble, not organised resistance indeed, but insubordinate proceedings. "after all these years," said ostrog, when graham pressed enquiries; "the commune has lifted its head again. that is the real nature of the struggle, to be explicit." but order had been restored in these cities. graham, the more deliberately judicial for the stirring emotions he felt, asked if there had been any fighting. "a little," said ostrog. "in one quarter only. but the senegalese division of our african agricultural police--the consolidated african companies have a very well drilled police--was ready, and so were the aeroplanes. we expected a little trouble in the continental cities, and in america. but things are very quiet in america. they are satisfied with the overthrow of the council. for the time." "why should you expect trouble?" asked graham abruptly. "there is a lot of discontent--social discontent." "the labour department?" "you are learning," said ostrog with a touch of surprise. "yes. it is chiefly the discontent with the labour department. it was that discontent supplied the motive force of this overthrow--that and your awakening." "yes?" ostrog smiled. he became explicit. "we had to stir up their discontent, we had to revive the old ideals of universal happiness--all men equal--all men happy--no luxury that everyone may not share--ideas that have slumbered for two hundred years. you know that? we had to revive these ideals, impossible as they are--in order to overthrow the council. and now--" "well?" "our revolution is accomplished, and the council is overthrown, and people whom we have stirred up--remain surging. there was scarcely enough fighting.... we made promises, of course. it is extraordinary how violently and rapidly this vague out-of-date humanitarianism has revived and spread. we who sowed the seed even, have been astonished. in paris, as i say--we have had to call in a little external help." "and here?" "there is trouble. multitudes will not go back to work. there is a general strike. half the factories are empty and the people are swarming in the ways. they are talking of a commune. men in silk and satin have been insulted in the streets. the blue canvas is expecting all sorts of things from you.... of course there is no need for you to trouble. we are setting the babble machines to work with counter suggestions in the cause of law and order. we must keep the grip tight; that is all." graham thought. he perceived a way of asserting himself. but he spoke with restraint. "even to the pitch of bringing a negro police," he said. "they are useful," said ostrog. "they are fine loyal brutes, with no wash of ideas in their heads--such as our rabble has. the council should have had them as police of the ways, and things might have been different. of course, there is nothing to fear except rioting and wreckage. you can manage your own wings now, and you can soar away to capri if there is any smoke or fuss. we have the pull of all the great things; the aeronauts are privileged and rich, the closest trades union in the world, and so are the engineers of the wind-vanes. we have the air, and the mastery of the air is the mastery of the earth. no one of any ability is organising against us. they have no leaders--only the sectional leaders of the secret society we organised before your very opportune awakening. mere busybodies and sentimentalists they are and bitterly jealous of each other. none of them is man enough for a central figure. the only trouble will be a disorganised upheaval. to be frank--that may happen. but it won't interrupt your aeronautics. the days when the people could make revolutions are past." "i suppose they are," said graham. "i suppose they are." he mused. "this world of yours has been full of surprises to me. in the old days we dreamt of a wonderful democratic life, of a time when all men would be equal and happy." ostrog looked at him steadfastly. "the day of democracy is past," he said. "past for ever. that day began with the bowmen of creçy, it ended when marching infantry, when common men in masses ceased to win the battles of the world, when costly cannon, great ironclads, and strategic railways became the means of power. to-day is the day of wealth. wealth now is power as it never was power before--it commands earth and sea and sky. all power is for those who can handle wealth. on your behalf.... you must accept facts, and these are facts. the world for the crowd! the crowd as ruler! even in your days that creed had been tried and condemned. to-day it has only one believer--a multiplex, silly one--the man in the crowd." graham did not answer immediately. he stood lost in sombre preoccupations. "no," said ostrog. "the day of the common man is past. on the open countryside one man is as good as another, or nearly as good. the earlier aristocracy had a precarious tenure of strength and audacity. they were tempered--tempered. there were insurrections, duels, riots. the first real aristocracy, the first permanent aristocracy, came in with castles and armour, and vanished before the musket and bow. but this is the second aristocracy. the real one. those days of gunpowder and democracy were only an eddy in the stream. the common man now is a helpless unit. in these days we have this great machine of the city, and an organisation complex beyond his understanding." "yet," said graham, "there is something resists, something you are holding down--something that stirs and presses." "you will see," said ostrog, with a forced smile that would brush these difficult questions aside. "i have not roused the force to destroy myself--trust me." "i wonder," said graham. ostrog stared. "_must_ the world go this way?" said graham with his emotions at the speaking point. "must it indeed go in this way? have all our hopes been vain?" "what do you mean?" said ostrog. "hopes?" "i come from a democratic age. and i find an aristocratic tyranny!" "well,--but you are the chief tyrant." graham shook his head. "well," said ostrog, "take the general question. it is the way that change has always travelled. aristocracy, the prevalence of the best--the suffering and extinction of the unfit, and so to better things." "but aristocracy! those people i met--" "oh! not _those_!" said ostrog. "but for the most part they go to their death. vice and pleasure! they have no children. that sort of stuff will die out. if the world keeps to one road, that is, if there is no turning back. an easy road to excess, convenient euthanasia for the pleasure seekers singed in the flame, that is the way to improve the race!" "pleasant extinction," said graham. "yet--." he thought for an instant. "there is that other thing--the crowd, the great mass of poor men. will that die out? that will not die out. and it suffers, its suffering is a force that even you--" ostrog moved impatiently, and when he spoke, he spoke rather less evenly than before. "don't trouble about these things," he said. "everything will be settled in a few days now. the crowd is a huge foolish beast. what if it does not die out? even if it does not die, it can still be tamed and driven. i have no sympathy with servile men. you heard those people shouting and singing two nights ago. they were _taught_ that song. if you had taken any man there in cold blood and asked why he shouted, he could not have told you. they think they are shouting for you, that they are loyal and devoted to you. just then they were ready to slaughter the council. to-day--they are already murmuring against those who have overthrown the council." "no, no," said graham. "they shouted because their lives were dreary, without joy or pride, and because in me--in me--they hoped." "and what was their hope? what is their hope? what right have they to hope? they work ill and they want the reward of those who work well. the hope of mankind--what is it? that some day the over-man may come, that some day the inferior, the weak and the bestial may be subdued or eliminated. subdued if not eliminated. the world is no place for the bad, the stupid, the enervated. their duty--it's a fine duty too!--is to die. the death of the failure! that is the path by which the beast rose to manhood, by which man goes on to higher things." ostrog took a pace, seemed to think, and turned on graham. "i can imagine how this great world state of ours seems to a victorian englishman. you regret all the old forms of representative government--their spectres still haunt the world, the voting councils, and parliaments and all that eighteenth century tomfoolery. you feel moved against our pleasure cities. i might have thought of that,--had i not been busy. but you will learn better. the people are mad with envy--they would be in sympathy with you. even in the streets now, they clamour to destroy the pleasure cities. but the pleasure cities are the excretory organs of the state, attractive places that year after year draw together all that is weak and vicious, all that is lascivious and lazy, all the easy roguery of the world, to a graceful destruction. they go there, they have their time, they die childless, all the pretty silly lascivious women die childless, and mankind is the better. if the people were sane they would not envy the rich their way of death. and you would emancipate the silly brainless workers that we have enslaved, and try to make their lives easy and pleasant again. just as they have sunk to what they are fit for." he smiled a smile that irritated graham oddly. "you will learn better. i know those ideas; in my boyhood i read your shelley and dreamt of liberty. there is no liberty, save wisdom and self-control. liberty is within--not without. it is each man's own affair. suppose--which is impossible--that these swarming yelping fools in blue get the upper hand of us, what then? they will only fall to other masters. so long as there are sheep nature will insist on beasts of prey. it would mean but a few hundred years' delay. the coming of the aristocrat is fatal and assured. the end will be the over-man--for all the mad protests of humanity. let them revolt, let them win and kill me and my like. others will arise--other masters. the end will be the same." "i wonder," said graham doggedly. for a moment he stood downcast. "but i must see these things for myself," he said, suddenly assuming a tone of confident mastery. "only by seeing can i understand. i must learn. that is what i want to tell you, ostrog. i do not want to be king in a pleasure city; that is not my pleasure. i have spent enough time with aeronautics--and those other things. i must learn how people live now, how the common life has developed. then i shall understand these things better. i must learn how common people live--the labour people more especially--how they work, marry, bear children, die--" "you get that from our realistic novelists," suggested ostrog, suddenly preoccupied. "i want reality," said graham. "there are difficulties," said ostrog, and thought. "on the whole--" "i did not expect--" "i had thought--. and yet perhaps--. you say you want to go through the ways of the city and see the common people." suddenly he came to some conclusion. "you would need to go disguised," he said. "the city is intensely excited, and the discovery of your presence among them might create a fearful tumult. still this wish of yours to go into this city--this idea of yours--. yes, now i think the thing over, it seems to me not altogether--. it can be contrived. if you would really find an interest in that! you are, of course, master. you can go soon if you like. a disguise asano will be able to manage. he would go with you. after all it is not a bad idea of yours." "you will not want to consult me in any matter?" asked graham suddenly, struck by an odd suspicion. "oh, dear no! no! i think you may trust affairs to me for a time, at any rate," said ostrog, smiling. "even if we differ--" graham glanced at him sharply. "there is no fighting likely to happen soon?" he asked abruptly. "certainly not." "i have been thinking about these negroes. i don't believe the people intend any hostility to me, and, after all, i am the master. i do not want any negroes brought to london. it is an archaic prejudice perhaps, but i have peculiar feelings about europeans and the subject races. even about paris--" ostrog stood watching him from under his drooping brows. "i am not bringing negroes to london," he said slowly. "but if--" "you are not to bring armed negroes to london, whatever happens," said graham. "in that matter i am quite decided." ostrog resolved not to speak, and bowed deferentially. chapter xx in the city ways and that night, unknown and unsuspected, graham, dressed in the costume of an inferior wind-vane official keeping holiday, and accompanied by asano in labour department canvas, surveyed the city through which he had wandered when it was veiled in darkness. but now he saw it lit and waking, a whirlpool of life. in spite of the surging and swaying of the forces of revolution, in spite of the unusual discontent, the mutterings of the greater struggle of which the first revolt was but the prelude, the myriad streams of commerce still flowed wide and strong. he knew now something of the dimensions and quality of the new age, but he was not prepared for the infinite surprise of the detailed view, for the torrent of colour and vivid impressions that poured past him. this was his first real contact with the people of these latter days. he realised that all that had gone before, saving his glimpses of the public theatres and markets, had had its element of seclusion, had been a movement within the comparatively narrow political quarter, that all his previous experiences had revolved immediately about the question of his own position. but here was the city at the busiest hours of night, the people to a large extent returned to their own immediate interests, the resumption of the real informal life, the common habits of the new time. they emerged at first into a street whose opposite ways were crowded with the blue canvas liveries. this swarm graham saw was a portion of a procession--it was odd to see a procession parading the city _seated_. they carried banners of coarse black stuff with red letters. "no disarmament," said the banners, for the most part in crudely daubed letters and with variant spelling, and "why should we disarm?" "no disarming." "no disarming." banner after banner went by, a stream of banners flowing past, and at last at the end, the song of the revolt and a noisy band of strange instruments. "they all ought to be at work," said asano. "they have had no food these two days, or they have stolen it." presently asano made a detour to avoid the congested crowd that gaped upon 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 vast excitement, perpetual crowds perpetually changing, surrounded graham; his mind was confused and darkened by an incessant tumult, by the cries and enigmatical fragments of the social struggle that was as yet only beginning. everywhere festoons and banners of black and strange decorations, intensified the quality of his popularity. everywhere he caught snatches of that crude thick dialect that served the illiterate class, the class, that is, beyond the reach of phonograph culture, in their commonplace intercourse. everywhere this trouble of disarmament was in the air, with a quality of immediate stress of which he had no inkling during his seclusion in the wind-vane quarter. he perceived that as soon as he returned he must discuss this with ostrog, this and the greater issues of which it was the expression, in a far more conclusive way than he had so far done. perpetually that night, even in the earlier hours of their wanderings about the city, the spirit of unrest and revolt swamped his attention, to the exclusion of countless strange things he might otherwise have observed. this preoccupation made his impressions fragmentary. yet amidst so much that was strange and vivid, no subject, however personal and insistent, could exert undivided sway. there were spaces when the revolutionary movement passed clean out of his mind, was drawn aside like a curtain from before some startling new aspect of the time. helen had swayed his mind to this intense earnestness of enquiry, but there came times when she, even, receded beyond his conscious thoughts. at one moment, for example, he found they were traversing the religious quarter, for the easy transit about the city afforded by the moving ways rendered sporadic churches and chapels no longer necessary--and his attention was vividly arrested by the façade of one of the christian sects. they were travelling seated on one of the swift upper ways, the place leapt upon them at a bend and advanced rapidly towards them. it was covered with inscriptions from top to base, in vivid white and blue, save where a vast and glaring kinematograph transparency presented a realistic new testament scene, and where a vast festoon of black to show that the popular religion followed the popular politics, hung across the lettering. graham had already become familiar with the phonotype writing and these inscriptions arrested him, being to his sense for the most part almost incredible blasphemy. among the less offensive were "salvation on the first floor and turn to the right." "put your money on your maker." "the sharpest conversion in london, expert operators! look slippy!" "what christ would say to the sleeper;--join the up-to-date saints!" "be a christian--without hindrance to your present occupation." "all the brightest bishops on the bench to-night and prices as usual." "brisk blessings for busy business men." "but this is appalling!" said graham, as that deafening scream of mercantile piety towered above them. "what is appalling?" asked his little officer, apparently seeking vainly for 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 the tone of one who makes a discovery. "i suppose it would, of course. i had forgotten. nowadays the competition for attention is so keen, and people simply haven't the leisure to attend to their souls, you know, as they used to do." he smiled. "in the old days you had quiet sabbaths and the countryside. 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 high class sects with quieter ways--costly incense and personal attentions and all that. these people are extremely popular and prosperous. they pay several dozen lions for those apartments to the council--to you, i should say." graham still felt a difficulty with the coinage, and this mention of a dozen lions brought him abruptly to that matter. in a moment the screaming temples and their swarming touts were forgotten in this new interest. a turn of a phrase suggested, and an answer confirmed the idea that gold and silver were both demonetised, that stamped gold which had begun its reign amidst the merchants of phoenicia was at last dethroned. the change had been graduated but swift, brought about by an extension of the system of cheques that had even in his previous life already practically superseded gold in all the larger business transactions. the common traffic of the city, the common currency indeed of all the world, was conducted by means of the little brown, green and pink council cheques for small amounts, printed with a blank payee. asano had several with 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 fabric of silken flexibility, interwoven with silk. across them all sprawled a facsimile of graham's signature, his first encounter with the curves and turns of that familiar autograph for two hundred and three years. some intermediary experiences made no impression sufficiently vivid to prevent the matter of the disarmament claiming his thoughts again; a blurred picture of a theosophist temple that promised miracles in enormous letters of unsteady fire was least submerged perhaps, but then came the view of the dining hall in northumberland avenue. that interested him very greatly. by the energy and thought of asano he was able to view this place from a little screened gallery reserved for the attendants of the tables. the building was pervaded by a distant muffled hooting, piping and bawling, of which he did not at first understand the import, but which recalled a certain mysterious leathery voice he had heard after the resumption of the 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 he watched the table service more immediately beneath, and interspersed with many questions and answers concerning details, that the realisation of the full significance of the feast of several thousand people came to him. 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. he discovered only now 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 fulfilment. 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 complex 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 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 vociferated. "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 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 gossiping 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 was embarrassed. "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 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 _crèches_ 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 _crèches_ 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 there human mortality had ever been most terrible. on the other hand this _crèche_ company, the international crèche syndicate, lost not one-half per cent, of the million babies or so that formed its peculiar care. but graham's prejudice was too strong even for those figures. along one of the many passages of the place they presently came upon a young couple in the usual blue canvas peering through the transparency and laughing hysterically at the bald head of their first-born. graham's face must have showed his estimate of them, for their merriment ceased and they looked abashed. but this little incident accentuated his sudden realisation of the gulf between his habits of thought and the ways of the new 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. as they went through these, the little officer pointed out the nature of the toys, developments of those devised by that inspired sentimentalist froebel. there were nurses here, but much was done by machines that sang and danced and dandled. graham was still not clear upon many points. "but so many orphans," he said perplexed, reverting to a first misconception, and learnt again that they were not orphans. so soon as they had left the _crèche_ he began to speak of the horror the babies in their incubating cases had caused him. "is motherhood gone?" he said. "was it a cant? surely it was an instinct. this seems so unnatural--abominable almost." "along here we shall come to the dancing place," said asano by way of reply. "it is sure to be crowded. in spite of all the political unrest it will be crowded. the women take no great interest in politics--except a few here and there. you will see the mothers--most young women in london are mothers. in that class it is considered a creditable thing to have one child--a proof of animation. few middle class people have more than one. with the labour department it is different. as for motherhood! they still take an immense pride in the children. they come here to look at them quite often." "then do you mean that the population of the world--?" "is falling? yes. except among the people under the labour department. in spite of scientific discipline they are reckless--" the air was suddenly dancing with music, and down a way they approached obliquely, set with gorgeous pillars as it seemed of clear amethyst, flowed a concourse of gay people and a tumult of merry cries and laughter. he saw curled heads, wreathed brows, and a happy intricate flutter of gamboge pass triumphant across the picture. "you will see," said asano with a faint smile. "the world has changed. in a moment you will see the mothers of the new age. come this way. we shall see those yonder again very soon." they ascended a certain height in a swift lift, and changed to a slower one. as they went on the music grew upon them, until it was near and full and splendid, and, moving with its glorious intricacies they could distinguish the beat of innumerable dancing feet. they made a payment at a turnstile, and emerged upon the wide gallery that overlooked the dancing place, and upon the full enchantment of sound and sight. "here," said asano, "are the fathers and mothers of the little ones you saw." the hall was not so richly decorated as that of the atlas, but saving that, it was, for its size, the most splendid graham had seen. the beautiful white-limbed figures that supported the galleries reminded him once more of the restored magnificence of sculpture; they seemed to writhe in engaging attitudes, their faces laughed. the source of the music that filled the place was hidden, and the whole vast shining floor was 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 screen that cut the dancing hall on one side from a sort of outer hall that showed 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 wearing the blue uniform of the labour department that was now so familiar to graham. too poor to pass the turnstiles to the festival, they were yet unable to keep away from the sound of its seductions. some of them even had cleared spaces, and were dancing also, fluttering their rags in the air. some shouted as they danced, jests and odd allusions graham did not understand. once someone began whistling the refrain of the revolutionary song, but it seemed as though that beginning was promptly suppressed. the corner 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 great moral emancipators and pioneers; for the most part their names were strange to graham, though he recognised grant allen, le gallienne, nietzsche, shelley and goodwin. great black festoons and eloquent sentiments reinforced the huge inscription that partially defaced the upper end of the dancing place, and asserted that "the festival of the awakening" was in progress. "myriads are taking holiday or staying from work because of that, quite apart from the labourers who refuse to go back," said asano. "these people are always ready for holidays." graham walked to the parapet and stood leaning over, looking down at the dancers. save for two or three remote whispering couples, who had stolen apart, he and his guide had the gallery to themselves. a warm breath of scent and vitality came up to him. both men and women below were lightly clad, bare-armed, open-necked, as the universal warmth of the city permitted. the hair of the men was often a mass of effeminate curls, their chins were always shaven, and many of them had flushed or coloured cheeks. many of the women were very pretty, and all were dressed with elaborate coquetry. as they swept by beneath, he saw ecstatic faces with eyes half closed in pleasure. "what sort of people are these?" he asked abruptly. "workers--prosperous workers. what you would have called the middle class. independent tradesmen with little separate businesses have vanished long ago, but there are store servers, managers, engineers of a hundred sorts. to-night is a holiday of course, and every dancing place in 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 had the beginning of the independent working-woman in your days. most women are independent now. most of these are married more or less--there are a number of methods of contract--and that gives them more money, and enables them to enjoy themselves." "i see," said graham, looking at the flushed faces, the flash and swirl of 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 way of seeing things. i have old habits of mind clinging about me--habits based, i suppose, on needs that are over and done with. of course, in our time, a woman was supposed not only to bear children, but to cherish them, to devote herself to them, to educate them--all the essentials of moral and mental education a child owed its mother. or went without. quite a number, i admit, went without. nowadays, clearly, there is no more need for such care than if they were butterflies. i see that! only there was an ideal--that figure of a grave, patient woman, silently and serenely mistress of a home, mother and maker of men--to love her was a sort 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 necessities of the barbarous state, the life of dangers. dourness is man's tribute to unconquered nature. but man has conquered nature now for all practical purposes--his political affairs are managed by bosses with a black police--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. and in my own time i should have passed as middle-aged." "they are young. there are few old people in this class in the work cities." "how is that?" "old people's lives are not so pleasant as they used to be, unless they are rich to hire lovers and helpers. and we have an institution called euthanasy." "ah! that euthanasy!" said graham. "the easy death?" "the easy death. it is the last pleasure. the euthanasy company does it well. people will pay the sum--it is a costly thing--long beforehand, go off 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 sour restraints was the consequence of danger and insecurity. the stoic, the puritan, even in my time, were vanishing types. in the old days man was armed against pain, now he is eager for pleasure. there lies the difference. civilisation has driven pain and danger so far off--for well-to-do people. and only well-to-do people matter now. i have been asleep two hundred years." for a minute they leant on the balustrading, following the intricate evolution of the dance. indeed the scene was very beautiful. "before god," said graham, suddenly, "i would rather be a wounded sentinel 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. i am primitive--paleolithic. _their_ fountain of rage and fear and anger is sealed and closed, the habits of a lifetime make them cheerful and easy and delightful. you must bear with my nineteenth century shocks and disgusts. these people, you say, are skilled workers and so forth. and while these dance, men are fighting--men are dying in paris to keep the world--that they may dance." asano smiled faintly. "for that matter, men are dying in london," he said. 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 under arms. half these people are keeping holiday. but we will go to the work places if you wish it." for a time graham watched the dancers, then suddenly turned away. "i want to see the workers. i have seen enough of these," he said. asano led the way along the gallery across the dancing hall. presently they 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 to it, and turned to graham with a smile. "here, sire," he said, "is something--will be familiar to you at least--and yet--. but i will not tell you. come!" he led the way along a closed passage that presently became cold. the reverberation of their feet told that this passage was a bridge. they came into a circular gallery that was glazed in from the outer weather, and so reached a circular chamber which seemed familiar, though graham could not recall distinctly when he had entered it before. in this was a ladder--the first ladder he had seen since his awakening--up which they went, and came into a high, dark, cold place in which was another almost vertical ladder. this they ascended, graham still perplexed. but at the top he understood, and recognised the metallic bars to which he clung. he was in the cage under the ball of st. paul's. the dome rose but a little way above the general contour of the city, into the still twilight, 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 saw the starry constellations all unchanged. capella hung in the west, vega was rising, and the seven glittering points of the great bear swept overhead in their stately circle about the pole. he saw these stars in a clear gap of sky. to the east and south the great circular shapes of complaining wind-wheels blotted out the heavens, so that the glare about the council house was hidden. to the southwest hung orion, showing like a pallid ghost through a tracery of iron-work and interlacing shapes above a dazzling coruscation of lights. a bellowing and siren screaming that came from the flying stages warned the world that one of the aeroplanes was ready to start. he remained for a space gazing towards the glaring stage. then his eyes went back to the northward constellations. for a long time he was silent. "this," he said at last, smiling in the shadow, "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 gambling and business quarters where the bulk of the fortunes in the city were lost and made. it impressed him as a well-nigh interminable series of very high halls, surrounded by tiers upon tiers of galleries into which opened thousands of offices, and traversed by a complicated multitude of bridges, footways, aerial motor rails, and trapeze and cable leaps. and here more than anywhere the note of vehement vitality, of uncontrollable, hasty activity, rose high. everywhere was violent advertisement, until his brain swam at the tumult of light and colour. and babble machines of a peculiarly rancid tone were abundant and filled the air with strenuous squealing 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 profoundly agitated or swelling with obscure cunning, yet he learnt that the place was comparatively empty, that the great political convulsion of the last few days had reduced transactions to an unprecedented minimum. in one huge place were long avenues of roulette tables, each with an excited, undignified crowd about it; in another a yelping babel of white-faced women and red-necked leathery-lunged men bought and sold the shares of an absolutely fictitious business undertaking which, every five minutes, paid a dividend of ten per cent, and cancelled a certain proportion of its shares by means of a lottery wheel. these business activities were prosecuted with an energy that readily passed into violence, and graham approaching a dense crowd found at its centre a couple of prominent merchants in violent controversy with teeth and nails on some delicate point of business etiquette. something still remained in life to be fought for. further he had a shock at a vehement announcement in phonetic letters of scarlet flame, each twice the height of 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 insuring your life. dozands of people are taking out policies, myriads of lions are 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 screen suddenly illuminated in still larger letters of burning purple. "anuetes on the propraiet'r--x pr. g." the people began to boo and shout at this, a number of hard breathing, wild-eyed men came running past, clawing with hooked fingers at the air. there was a furious crush about a little doorway. asano did a brief, inaccurate calculation. "seventeen per cent, per annum is their annuity on you. they would not pay so much per cent, if they could see you now, sire. but they do not know. your own annuities used to be a very safe investment, but now you are sheer gambling, of course. this is probably a desperate bid. i doubt if people will get their money." the crowd of would-be annuitants grew so thick about them that for some time they could move neither forward nor backward. graham noticed what appeared to him to be a high proportion of women among the speculators, and was reminded again of the economic independence of their sex. they seemed remarkably well able to take care of themselves in the crowd, using their elbows with particular skill, as he learnt to his cost. one curly-headed person caught in the pressure for a space, looked steadfastly at him several times, almost as if she recognised him, and then, edging deliberately towards him, touched his hand with her arm in a scarcely accidental manner, and made it plain by a look as ancient as chaldea 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 them in a cataclysmal rush towards that alluring "x pr. g." "i want to get out of this," said graham to asano. "this is not what i came to see. show me the workers. i want to see the people in blue. these parasitic lunatics--" he found himself wedged into a straggling mass of people. chapter xxi the under-side from the business quarter they presently passed by the running ways into a remote quarter of the city, where the bulk of the manufactures was done. on their way the platforms crossed the thames twice, and passed in a broad viaduct across one of the great roads that entered the city from the north. in both cases his impression was swift and in both very vivid. the river was a broad wrinkled glitter of black sea water, overarched by buildings, and vanishing either way into a blackness starred with receding lights. a string of black barges passed seaward, manned by blue-clad men. the road was a long and very broad and high tunnel, along which big-wheeled machines drove noiselessly and swiftly. here, too, the distinctive blue of the labour department was in abundance. the smoothness of the double tracks, the largeness and the lightness of the big pneumatic wheels in proportion to the vehicular body, struck graham most vividly. one lank and very high carriage with longitudinal metallic rods hung with the dripping carcasses of many hundred sheep arrested his attention unduly. abruptly the edge of the archway cut and blotted out the picture. presently they left the way and descended by a lift and traversed a passage that sloped downward, and so came to a descending lift again. the appearance of things changed. even the pretence of architectural ornament disappeared, the lights diminished in number and size, the architecture became more and more massive in proportion to the spaces as the factory quarters were reached. and in the dusty biscuit-making place of the potters, among the felspar mills, in the furnace rooms of the metal workers, among the incandescent lakes of crude eadhamite, the blue canvas clothing was on man, woman and child. many of these great and dusty galleries were silent avenues of machinery, endless raked out ashen furnaces testified to the revolutionary dislocation, but wherever there was work it was being done by slow-moving workers in blue canvas. the only people not in blue canvas were the overlookers of the work-places and the orange-clad labour police. and fresh from the flushed faces of the dancing halls, the voluntary vigours of the business quarter, graham could note the pinched faces, the feeble muscles, and weary eyes of many of the latter-day workers. such as he saw at work were noticeably inferior in physique to the few gaily dressed managers and forewomen who were directing their labours. the burly labourers of the old victorian times had followed that dray horse and all such living force producers, to extinction; the place of his costly muscles was taken by some dexterous machine. the latter-day labourer, male as well as female, was essentially a machine-minder and feeder, a servant and attendant, or an artist under direction. the women, in comparison with those graham remembered, were as a class distinctly plain and flat-chested. two hundred years of emancipation from the moral restraints of puritanical religion, two hundred years of city life, had done their work in eliminating the strain of feminine beauty and vigour from the blue canvas myriads. to be brilliant physically or mentally, to be in any way attractive or exceptional, had been and was still a certain way of emancipation to the drudge, a line of escape to the pleasure city and its splendours and delights, and at last to the euthanasy and peace. to be steadfast against such inducements was scarcely to be expected of meanly nourished souls. in the young cities of graham's former life, the newly aggregated labouring mass had been a diverse multitude, still stirred by the tradition of personal honour and a high morality; now it was differentiating into an instinct class, with a moral and physical difference of its own--even with a dialect of its own. they penetrated downward, ever downward, towards the working places. presently they passed underneath one of the streets of the moving ways, and saw its platforms running on their rails far overhead, and chinks of white lights between the transverse slits. the factories that were not working were sparsely lighted; to graham they and their shrouded aisles of giant machines seemed plunged in gloom, and even where work was going on the illumination was far less brilliant than upon the public ways. beyond the blazing lakes of eadhamite he came to the warren of the jewellers, and, with some difficulty and by using his signature, obtained admission to these galleries. they were high and dark, and rather cold. in the first a few men were making ornaments of gold filigree, each man at a little bench by himself, and with a little shaded light. the long vista of light patches, with the nimble fingers brightly lit and moving among the gleaming yellow coils, and the intent face like the face of a ghost, in each shadow, had the oddest effect. the work was beautifully executed, but without any strength of modelling or drawing, for the most part intricate grotesques or the ringing of the changes on a geometrical _motif_. these workers wore a peculiar white uniform without pockets or sleeves. they assumed this on coming to work, but at night they were stripped and examined before they left the premises of the department. in spite of every precaution, the labour policeman told them in a depressed tone, the department was not infrequently robbed. beyond was a gallery of women busied in cutting and setting slabs of artificial ruby, and next these were men and women working together upon the slabs of copper net that formed the basis of _cloisonné_ tiles. many of these workers had lips and nostrils a livid white, due to a disease caused by a peculiar purple enamel that chanced to be much in fashion. asano apologised to graham for this offensive sight, but excused himself on the score of the convenience of this route. "this is what i wanted to see," said graham; "this is what i wanted to see," trying to avoid a start at a particularly striking disfigurement. "she might have done better with herself than that," said asano. graham made some indignant comments. "but, sire, we simply could not stand that stuff without the purple," said asano. "in your days people could stand such crudities, they were nearer the barbaric by two hundred years." they continued along one of the lower galleries of this _cloisonné_ factory, and came to a little bridge that spanned a vault. looking over the parapet, graham saw that beneath was a wharf under yet more tremendous archings than any he had seen. three barges, smothered in floury dust, were being unloaded of their cargoes of powdered felspar by a multitude of coughing men, each guiding a little truck; the dust filled the place with a choking mist, and turned the electric glare yellow. the vague shadows of these workers gesticulated about their feet, and rushed to and fro against a long stretch of white-washed wall. every now and then one would stop to cough. a shadowy, huge mass of masonry rising out of the inky water, brought to graham's mind the thought of the multitude of ways and galleries and lifts that rose floor above floor overhead between him and the sky. the men worked in silence under the supervision of two of the labour police; their feet made a hollow thunder on the planks along which they went to and fro. and as he looked at this scene, some hidden voice in the darkness began to sing. "stop that!" shouted one of the policemen, but the order was disobeyed, and first one and then all the white-stained men who were working there had taken up the beating refrain, singing it defiantly--the song of the revolt. the feet upon the planks thundered now to the rhythm of the song, tramp, tramp, tramp. the policeman who had shouted glanced at his fellow, and graham saw him shrug his shoulders. he made no further effort to stop the singing. and so they went through these factories and places of toil, seeing many painful and grim things. that walk left on graham's mind a maze of memories, fluctuating pictures of swathed halls, and crowded vaults seen through clouds of dust, of intricate machines, the racing threads of looms, the heavy beat of stamping machinery, the roar and rattle of belt and armature, of ill-lit subterranean aisles of sleeping places, illimitable vistas of pin-point lights. here was the smell of tanning, and here the reek of a brewery, and here unprecedented reeks. everywhere were pillars and cross archings of such a massiveness as graham had never before seen, thick titans of greasy, shining brickwork crushed beneath the vast weight of that complex city world, even as these anemic millions were crushed by its complexity. and everywhere were pale features, lean limbs, disfigurement and degradation. once and again, and again a third time, graham heard the song of the revolt during his long, unpleasant research in these places, and once he saw a confused struggle down a passage, and learnt that a number of these serfs had seized their bread before their work was done. graham was ascending towards the ways again when he saw a number of blue-clad children running down a transverse passage, and presently perceived the reason of their panic in a company of the labour police armed with clubs, trotting towards some unknown disturbance. and then came a remote disorder. but for the most part this remnant that worked, worked hopelessly. all the spirit that was left in fallen humanity was above in the streets that night, calling for the master, and valiantly and noisily keeping its arms. they emerged from these wanderings and stood blinking in the bright light of the middle passage of the platforms again. they became aware of the remote hooting and yelping of the machines of one of the general intelligence offices, and suddenly came men running, and along the platforms and about the ways everywhere was a shouting and crying. then a woman with a face of mute white terror, and another who gasped and shrieked as she ran. "what has happened now?" said graham, puzzled, for he could not understand their thick speech. then he heard it in english and perceived that the thing that everyone was shouting, that men yelled to one another, that women took up screaming, that was passing like the first breeze of a thunderstorm, chill and sudden through the city, was this: "ostrog has ordered the black police to london. the black police are coming from south africa.... the black police. the black police." asano's face was white and astonished; he hesitated, looked at graham's face, and told him the thing he already knew. "but how can they know?" asked asano. graham heard someone shouting. "stop all work. stop all work," and a swarthy hunchback, ridiculously gay in green and gold, came leaping down the platforms toward him, bawling again and again in good english, "this is ostrog's doing, ostrog the knave! the master is betrayed." his voice was hoarse and a thin foam dropped from his ugly shouting mouth. he yelled an unspeakable horror that the black police had done in paris, and so passed shrieking, "ostrog the knave!" for a moment graham stood still, for it had come upon him again that these things were a dream. he looked up at the great cliff of buildings on either side, vanishing into blue haze at last above the lights, and down to the roaring tiers of platforms, and the shouting, running people who were gesticulating past. "the master is betrayed!" they cried. "the master is betrayed!" suddenly the situation shaped itself in his mind real and urgent. his heart began to beat fast and strong. "it has come," he said. "i might have known. the hour has come." he thought swiftly. "what am i to do?" "go back to the council house," said asano. "why should i not appeal--? the people are here." "you will lose time. they will doubt if it is you. but they will mass about the council house. there you will find their leaders. your strength is there--with them." "suppose this is only a rumour?" "it sounds true," said asano. "let us have the facts," said graham. asano shrugged his shoulders. "we had better get towards the council house," he cried. "that is where they will swarm. even now the ruins may be impassable." graham regarded him doubtfully and followed him. they went up the stepped platforms to the swiftest one, and there asano accosted a labourer. the answers to his questions were in the thick, vulgar speech. "what did he say?" asked graham. "he knows little, but he told me that the black police would have arrived here before the people knew--had not someone in the wind-vane offices learnt. he said a girl." "a girl? not--?" "he said a girl--he did not know who she was. who came out from the council house crying aloud, and told the men at work among the ruins." and then another thing was shouted, something that turned an aimless tumult into determinate movements, it came like a wind along the street. "to your wards, to your wards. every man get arms. every man to his ward!" chapter xxii the struggle in the council house as asano and graham hurried along to the ruins about the council house, they saw everywhere the excitement of the people rising. "to your wards! to your wards!" everywhere men and women in blue were hurrying from unknown subterranean employments, up the staircases of the middle path; at one place graham saw an arsenal of the revolutionary committee besieged by a crowd of shouting men, at another a couple of men in the hated yellow uniform of the labour police, pursued by a gathering crowd, fled precipitately along the swift way that went in the opposite direction. the cries of "to your wards!" became at last a continuous shouting as they drew near the government quarter. many of the shouts were unintelligible. "ostrog has betrayed us," one man bawled in a hoarse voice, again and again, dinning that refrain into graham's ear until it haunted him. this person stayed close beside graham and asano on the swift way, shouting to the people who swarmed on the lower platforms as he rushed past them. his cry about ostrog alternated with some incomprehensible orders. presently he went leaping down and disappeared. graham's mind was filled with the din. his plans were vague and unformed. he had one picture of some commanding position from which he could address the multitudes, another of meeting ostrog face to face. he was full of rage, of tense muscular excitement, his hands gripped, his lips were pressed together. the way to the council house across the ruins was impassable, but asano met that difficulty and took graham into the premises of the central post-office. the post-office was nominally at work, but the blue-clothed porters moved sluggishly or had stopped to stare through the arches of their galleries at the shouting men who were going by outside. "every man to his ward! every man to his ward!" here, by asano's advice, graham revealed his identity. they crossed to the council house by a cable cradle. already in the brief interval since the capitulation of the councillors a great change had been wrought in the appearance of the ruins. the spurting cascades of the ruptured sea-water mains had been captured and tamed, and huge temporary pipes ran overhead along a flimsy looking fabric of girders. the sky was laced with restored cables and wires that served the council house, and a mass of new fabric with cranes and other building machines going to and fro upon it projected to the left of the white pile. the moving ways that ran across this area had been restored, albeit for once running under the open sky. these were the ways that graham had seen from the little balcony in the hour of his awakening, not nine days since, and the hall of his trance had been on the further side, where now shapeless piles of smashed and shattered masonry were heaped together. it was already high day and the sun was shining brightly. out of their tall caverns of blue electric light came the swift ways crowded with multitudes of people, who poured off them and gathered ever denser over the wreckage and confusion of the ruins. the air was full of their shouting, and they were pressing and swaying towards the central building. for the most part that shouting mass consisted of shapeless swarms, but here and there graham could see that a rude discipline struggled to establish itself. and every voice clamoured for order in the chaos. "to your wards! every man to his ward!" the cable carried them into a hall which graham recognised as the ante-chamber to the hall of the atlas, about the gallery of which he had walked days ago with howard to show himself to the vanished council, an hour from his awakening. now the place was empty except for two cable attendants. these men seemed hugely astonished to recognise the sleeper in the man who swung down from the cross seat. "where is ostrog?" he demanded. "i must see ostrog forthwith. he has disobeyed me. i have come back to take things out of his hands." without waiting for asano, he went straight across the place, ascended the steps at the further end, and, pulling the curtain aside, found himself facing the perpetually labouring titan. the hall was empty. its appearance had changed very greatly since his first sight of it. it had suffered serious injury in the violent struggle of the first outbreak. on the right hand side of the great figure the upper half of the wall had been torn away for nearly two hundred feet of its length, and a sheet of the same glassy film that had enclosed graham at his awakening had been drawn across the gap. this deadened, but did not altogether exclude the roar of the people outside. "wards! wards! wards!" they seemed to be saying. through it there were visible the beams and supports of metal scaffoldings that rose and fell according to the requirements of a great crowd of workmen. an idle building machine, with lank arms of red painted metal stretched gauntly across this green tinted picture. on it were still a number of workmen staring at the crowd below. for a moment he stood regarding these things, and asano overtook him. "ostrog," said asano, "will be in the small offices beyond there." the little man looked livid now and his eyes searched graham's face. they had scarcely advanced ten paces from the curtain before a little panel to the left of the atlas rolled up, and ostrog, accompanied by lincoln and followed by two black and yellow clad negroes, appeared crossing the remote corner of the hall, towards a second panel that was raised and open. "ostrog," shouted graham, and at the sound of his voice the little party turned astonished. ostrog said something to lincoln and advanced alone. graham was the first to speak. his voice was loud and dictatorial. "what is this i hear?" he asked. "are you bringing negroes here--to keep the people down?" "it is none too soon," said ostrog. "they have been getting out of hand more and more, since the revolt. i under-estimated--" "do you mean that these infernal negroes are on the way?" "on the way. as it is, you have seen the people--outside?" "no wonder! but--after what was said. you have taken too much on yourself, ostrog." ostrog said nothing, but drew nearer. "these negroes must not come to london," said graham. "i am master and they shall not come." ostrog glanced at lincoln, who at once came towards them with his two attendants close behind him. "why not?" asked ostrog. "white men must be mastered by white men. besides--" "the negroes are only an instrument." "but that is not the question. i am the master. i mean to be the master. and i tell you these negroes shall not come." "the people--" "i believe in the people." "because you are an anachronism. you are a man out of the past--an accident. you are owner perhaps of the world. nominally--legally. but you are not master. you do not know enough to be master." he glanced at lincoln again. "i know now what you think--i can guess something of what you mean to do. even now it is not too late to warn you. you dream of human equality--of some sort of socialistic order--you have all those worn-out dreams of the nineteenth century fresh and vivid in your mind, and you would rule this age that you do not understand." "listen!" said graham. "you can hear it--a sound like the sea. not voices--but a voice. do _you_ altogether understand?" "we taught them that," said ostrog. "perhaps. can you teach them to forget it? but enough of this! these negroes must not come." there was a pause and ostrog looked him in the eyes. "they will," he said. "i forbid it," said graham. "they have started." "i will not have it." "no," said ostrog. "sorry as i am to follow the method of the council--. for your own good--you must not side with--disorder. and now that you are here--. it was kind of you to come here." lincoln laid his hand on graham's shoulder. abruptly graham realised the enormity of his blunder in coming to the council house. he turned towards the curtains that separated the hall from the ante-chamber. the clutching hand of asano intervened. in another moment lincoln had grasped graham's cloak. he turned and struck at lincoln's face, and incontinently a negro had him by collar and arm. he wrenched himself away, his sleeve tore noisily, and he stumbled back, to be tripped by the other attendant. then he struck the ground heavily and he was staring at the distant ceiling of the hall. he shouted, rolled over, struggling fiercely, clutched an attendant's leg and threw him headlong, and struggled to his feet. lincoln appeared before him, went down heavily again with a blow under the point of the jaw and lay still. graham made two strides, stumbled. and then ostrog's arm was round his neck, he was pulled over backward, fell heavily, and his arms were pinned to the ground. after a few violent efforts he ceased to struggle and lay staring at ostrog's heaving throat. "you--are--a prisoner," panted ostrog, exulting. "you--were rather a fool--to come back." graham turned his head about and perceived through the irregular green window in the walls of the hall the men who had been working the building cranes gesticulating excitedly to the people below them. they had seen! ostrog followed his eyes and started. he shouted something to lincoln, but lincoln did not move. a bullet smashed among the mouldings above the atlas. the two sheets of transparent matter that had been stretched across this gap were rent, the edges of the torn aperture darkened, curved, ran rapidly towards the framework, and in a moment the council chamber stood open to the air. a chilly gust blew in by the gap, bringing with it a war of voices from the ruinous spaces without, an elvish babblement, "save the master!" "what are they doing to the master?" "the master is betrayed!" and then he realised that ostrog's attention was distracted, that ostrog's grip had relaxed, and, wrenching his arms free, he struggled to his knees. in another moment he had thrust ostrog back, and he was on one foot, his hand gripping ostrog's throat, and ostrog's hands clutching the silk about his neck. but now men were coming towards them from the dais--men whose intentions he misunderstood. he had a glimpse of someone running in the distance towards the curtains of the antechamber, and then ostrog had slipped from him and these newcomers were upon him. to his infinite astonishment, they seized him. they obeyed the shouts of ostrog. he was lugged a dozen yards before he realised that they were not friends--that they were dragging him towards the open panel. when he saw this he pulled back, he tried to fling himself down, he shouted for help with all his strength. and this time there were answering cries. the grip upon his neck relaxed, and behold! in the lower corner of the rent upon the wall, first one and then a number of little black figures appeared shouting and waving arms. they came leaping down from the gap into the light gallery that had led to the silent rooms. they ran along it, so near were they that graham could see the weapons in their hands. then ostrog was shouting in his ear to the men who held him, and once more he was struggling with all his strength against their endeavours to thrust him towards the opening that yawned to receive him. "they can't come down," panted ostrog. "they daren't fire. it's all right. we'll save him from them yet." for long minutes as it seemed to graham that inglorious struggle continued. his clothes were rent in a dozen places, he was covered in dust, one hand had been trodden upon. he could hear the shouts of his supporters, and once he heard shots. he could feel his strength giving way, feel his efforts wild and aimless. but no help came, and surely, irresistibly, that black, yawning opening came nearer. the pressure upon him relaxed and he struggled up. he saw ostrog's grey head receding and perceived that he was no longer held. he turned about and came full into a man in black. one of the green weapons cracked close to him, a drift of pungent smoke came into his face, and a steel blade flashed. the huge chamber span about him. he saw a man in pale blue stabbing one of the black and yellow attendants not three yards from his face. then hands were upon him again. he was being pulled in two directions now. it seemed as though people were shouting to him. he wanted to understand and could not. someone was clutching about his thighs, he was being hoisted in spite of his vigorous efforts. he understood suddenly, he ceased to struggle. he was lifted up on men's shoulders and carried away from that devouring panel. ten thousand throats were cheering. he saw men in blue and black hurrying after the retreating ostrogites and firing. lifted up, he saw now across the whole expanse of the hall beneath the atlas image, saw that he was being carried towards the raised platform in the centre of the place. the far end of the hall was already full of people running towards him. they were looking at him and cheering. he became aware that a bodyguard surrounded him. active men about him shouted vague orders. he saw close at hand the black moustached man in yellow who had been among those who had greeted him in the public theatre, shouting directions. the hall was already densely packed with swaying people, the little metal gallery sagged with a shouting load, the curtains at the end had been torn away, and the antechamber was revealed densely crowded. he could scarcely make the man near him hear for the tumult about them. "where has ostrog gone?" he asked. the man he questioned pointed over the heads towards the lower panels about the hall on the side opposite the gap. they stood open, and armed men, blue clad with black sashes, were running through them and vanishing into the chambers and passages beyond. it seemed to graham that a sound of firing drifted through the riot. he was carried in a staggering curve across the great hall towards an opening beneath the gap. he perceived men working with a sort of rude discipline to keep the crowd off him, to make a space clear about him. he passed out of the hall, and saw a crude, new wall rising blankly before him topped by blue sky. he was swung down to his feet; someone gripped his arm and guided him. he found the man in yellow close at hand. they were taking him up a narrow stairway of brick, and close at hand rose the great red painted masses, the cranes and levers and the still engines of the big building machine. he was at the top of the steps. he was hurried across a narrow railed footway, and suddenly with a vast shouting the amphitheatre of ruins opened again before him. "the master is with us! the master! the master!" the shout swept athwart the lake of faces like a wave, broke against the distant cliff of ruins, and came back in a welter of cries. "the master is on our side!" graham perceived that he was no longer encompassed by people, that he was standing upon a little temporary platform of white metal, part of a flimsy seeming scaffolding that laced about the great mass of the council house. over all the huge expanse of the ruins swayed and eddied the shouting people; and here and there the black banners of the revolutionary societies ducked and swayed and formed rare nuclei of organisation in the chaos. up the steep stairs of wall and scaffolding by which his rescuers had reached the opening in the atlas chamber clung a solid crowd, and little energetic black figures clinging to pillars and projections were strenuous to induce these congested, masses to stir. behind him, at a higher point on the scaffolding, a number of men struggled upwards with the flapping folds of a huge black standard. through the yawning gap in the walls below him he could look down upon the packed attentive multitudes in the hall of the atlas. the distant flying stages to the south came out bright and vivid, brought nearer as it seemed by an unusual translucency of the air. a solitary monoplane beat up from the central stage as if to meet the coming aeroplanes. "what has become of ostrog?" asked graham, and even as he spoke he saw that all eyes were turned from him towards the crest of the council house building. he looked also in this direction of universal attention. for a moment he saw nothing but the jagged corner of a wall, hard and clear against the sky. then in the shadow he perceived the interior of a room and recognised with a start the green and white decorations of his former prison. and coming quickly across this opened room and up to the very verge of the cliff of the ruins came a little white clad figure followed by two other smaller seeming figures in black and yellow. he heard the man beside him exclaim "ostrog," and turned to ask a question. but he never did, because of the startled exclamation of another of those who were with him and a lank finger suddenly pointing. he looked, and behold! the monoplane that had been rising from the flying stage when last he had looked in that direction, was driving towards them. the swift steady flight was still novel enough to hold his attention. nearer it came, growing rapidly larger and larger, until it had swept over the further edge of the ruins and into view of the dense multitudes below. it drooped across the space and rose and passed overhead, rising to clear the mass of the council house, a filmy translucent shape with the solitary aeronaut peering down through its ribs. it vanished beyond the skyline of the ruins. graham transferred his attention to ostrog. he was signalling with his hands, and his attendants were busy breaking down the wall beside him. in another moment the monoplane came into view again, a little thing far away, coming round in a wide curve and going slower. then suddenly the man in yellow shouted: "what are they doing? what are the people doing? why is ostrog left there? why is he not captured? they will lift him--the monoplane will lift him! ah!" the exclamation was echoed by a shout from the ruins. the rattling sound of the green weapons drifted across the intervening gulf to graham, and, looking down, he saw a number of black and yellow uniforms running along one of the galleries that lay open to the air below the promontory upon which ostrog stood. they fired as they ran at men unseen, and then emerged a number of pale blue figures in pursuit. these minute fighting figures had the oddest effect; they seemed as they ran like little model soldiers in a toy. this queer appearance of a house cut open gave that struggle amidst furniture and passages a quality of unreality. it was perhaps two hundred yards away from him, and very nearly fifty above the heads in the ruins below. the black and yellow men ran into an open archway, and turned and fired a volley. one of the blue pursuers striding forward close to the edge, flung up his arms, staggered sideways, seemed to graham's sense to hang over the edge for several seconds, and fell headlong down. graham saw him strike a projecting corner, fly out, head over heels, head over heels, and vanish behind the red arm of the building machine. and then a shadow came between graham and the sun. he looked up and the sky was clear, but he knew the little monoplane had passed. ostrog had vanished. the man in yellow thrust before him, zealous and perspiring, pointing and blatant. "they are grounding!" cried the man in yellow. "they are grounding. tell the people to fire at him. tell them to fire at him!" graham could not understand. he heard loud voices repeating these enigmatical orders. suddenly he saw the prow of the monoplane come gliding over the edge of the ruins and stop with a jerk. in a moment graham understood that the thing had grounded in order that ostrog might escape by it. he saw a blue haze climbing out of the gulf, perceived that the people below him were now firing up at the projecting stem. a man beside him cheered hoarsely, and he saw that the blue rebels had gained the archway that had been contested by the men in black and yellow a moment before, and were running in a continual stream along the open passage. and suddenly the monoplane slipped over the edge of the council house and fell like a diving swallow. it dropped, tilting at an angle of forty-five degrees, so steeply that it seemed to graham, it seemed perhaps to most of those below, that it could not possibly rise again. it fell so closely past him that he could see ostrog clutching the guides of the seat, with his grey hair streaming; see the white-faced aeronaut wrenching over the lever that turned the machine upward. he heard the apprehensive vague cry of innumerable men below. graham clutched the railing before him and gasped. the second seemed an age. the lower vane of the monoplane passed within an ace of touching the people, who yelled and screamed and trampled one another below. and then it rose. for a moment it looked as if it could not possibly clear the opposite cliff, and then that it could not possibly clear the wind-wheel that rotated beyond. and behold! it was clear and soaring, still heeling sideways, upward, upward into the wind-swept sky. the suspense of the moment gave place to a fury of exasperation as the swarming people realised that ostrog had escaped them. with belated activity they renewed their fire, until the rattling wove into a roar, until the whole area became dim and blue and the air pungent with the thin smoke of their weapons. too late! the flying machine dwindled smaller and smaller, and curved about and swept gracefully downward to the flying stage from which it had so lately risen. ostrog had escaped. for a while a confused babblement arose from the ruins, and then the universal attention came back to graham, perched high among the scaffolding. he saw the faces of the people turned towards him, heard their shouts at his rescue. from the throat of the ways came the song of the revolt spreading like a breeze across that swaying sea of men. the little group of men about him shouted congratulations on his escape. the man in yellow was close to him, with a set face and shining eyes. and the song was rising, louder and louder; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. slowly the realisation came of the full meaning of these things to him, the perception of the swift change in his position. ostrog, who had stood beside him whenever he had faced that shouting multitude before, was beyond there--the antagonist. there was no one to rule for him any longer. even the people about him, the leaders and organisers of the multitude, looked to see what he would do, looked to him to act, awaited his orders. he was king indeed. his puppet reign was at an end. he was very intent to do the thing that was expected of him. his nerves and muscles were quivering, his mind was perhaps a little confused, but he felt neither fear nor anger. his hand that had been trodden upon throbbed and was hot. he was a little nervous about his bearing. he knew he was not afraid, but he was anxious not to seem afraid. in his former life he had often been more excited in playing games of skill. he was desirous of immediate action, he knew he must not think too much in detail of the huge complexity of the struggle about him lest be should be paralysed by the sense of its intricacy. over there those square blue shapes, the flying stages, meant ostrog; against ostrog, who was so clear and definite and decisive, he who was so vague and undecided, was fighting for the whole future of the world. chapter xxiii graham speaks his word 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 negroes 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 men 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 withdrawal from that contagious crowd, this 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 madrid. "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 madrid! they must have started before the main fleet. "oh! what can 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 indiscreet 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. graham turned, and the watching lights waned. through the open doorway he saw a slight girlish figure approaching. his heart leapt. it was helen wotton. 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 done," he said. she came in very quietly, and stood still, as if she did not want to interrupt graham's eloquence.... but his doubts and questionings 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 back to her. "you have helped me," he said lamely--"helped me very much.... this is very difficult." 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. he wished passionately for the gift of moving speech. "this night is a beginning," he said. "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. i think i may be 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 girl 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? "charity and mercy," he floundered; "beauty and the love of beautiful things--effort and devotion! give yourselves as i would give myself--as christ gave himself upon the cross. it does not matter if you understand. it does not matter if you seem to fail. you _know_--in the core of your hearts you _know_. there is no promise, there is no security--nothing to go upon but faith. there is no faith but faith--faith which is courage...." things that he had long wished to believe, he found that he believed. 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 as he spoke, dim attendants watched him out of the shadow.... 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. to all of you. i give it to you, and myself i give to you. and as god wills to-night, i will live for you, or i will die." he ended. 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. "i knew," she whispered. "oh! father of the world--_sire_! i knew you would say these things...." "i have said what i could," he answered lamely and grasped and clung to her outstretched hands. chapter xxiv while the aeroplanes were coming 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 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." 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 unprovided with ammunition; never was wilder firing in the history of warfare. it was a battle of amateurs, a hideous experimental warfare, armed rioters fighting armed rioters, armed rioters swept forward by the words and fury of a song, by the tramping sympathy of their numbers, pouring in countless myriads towards the smaller ways, the disabled lifts, the galleries slippery with blood, the halls and passages choked with smoke, beneath the flying stages, to learn there when retreat was hopeless the ancient mysteries of warfare. and overhead save for a few sharpshooters upon the roof spaces and for a few bands and threads of vapour that multiplied and darkened towards the evening, the day was a clear serenity. ostrog it seems had no bombs at command and in all the earlier phases of the battle the flying machines played no part. not the smallest cloud was there to break the empty brilliance of the sky. it seemed as though it held itself vacant until the aeroplanes should come. ever and again there was news of these, drawing nearer, from this spanish town and then that, and presently from france. but of the new guns that ostrog had made and which were known to be in the city came no news in spite of graham's urgency, nor any report of successes from the dense felt of fighting strands about the flying stages. section after section of the labour-societies reported itself assembled, reported itself marching, and vanished from knowledge into the labyrinth of that warfare. what was happening there? even the busy ward leaders did not know. in spite of the opening and closing of doors, the hasty messengers, the ringing of bells and the perpetual clitter-clack of recording implements, graham felt isolated, strangely inactive, inoperative. his isolation seemed at times the strangest, the most unexpected of all the things that had happened since his awakening. it had something of the quality of that inactivity that comes in dreams. a tumult, the stupendous realisation of a world struggle between ostrog and himself, and then this confined quiet little room with its mouthpieces and bells and broken mirror! now the door would be closed and graham and helen were alone together; they seemed sharply marked off then from all the unprecedented world storm that rushed together without, vividly aware of one another, only concerned with one another. then the door would open again, messengers would enter, or a sharp bell would stab their quiet privacy, and it was like a window in a well built brightly lit house flung open suddenly to a hurricane. the dark hurry and tumult, the stress and vehemence of the battle rushed in and overwhelmed them. they were no longer persons but mere spectators, mere impressions of a tremendous convulsion. they became unreal even to themselves, miniatures of personality, indescribably small, and the two antagonistic realities, the only realities in being were first the city, that throbbed and roared yonder in a belated frenzy of defence and secondly the aeroplanes hurling inexorably towards them over the round shoulder of the world. there came a sudden stir outside, a running to and fro, and cries. the girl stood up, speechless, incredulous. metallic voices were shouting "victory!" yes it was "victory!" bursting through the curtains appeared the man in yellow, startled and dishevelled with excitement, "victory," he cried, "victory! the people are winning. ostrog's people have collapsed." she rose. "victory?" "what do you mean?" asked graham. "tell me! _what_?" "we have driven them out of the under galleries at norwood, streatham is afire and burning wildly, and roehampton is ours. _ours_!--and we have taken the monoplane that lay thereon." a shrill bell rang. an agitated grey-headed man appeared from the room of the ward leaders. "it is all over," he cried. "what matters it now that we have roehampton? the aeroplanes have been sighted at boulogne!" "the channel!" said the man in yellow. he calculated swiftly. "half an hour." "they still have three of the flying stages," said the old man. "those guns?" cried graham. "we cannot mount them--in half an hour." "do you mean they are found?" "too late," said the old man. "if we could stop them another hour!" cried the man in yellow. "nothing can stop them now," said the old man. "they have near a hundred aeroplanes in the first fleet." "another hour?" asked graham. "to be so near!" said the ward leader. "now that we have found those guns. to be so near--. if once we could get them out upon the roof spaces." "how long would that take?" asked graham suddenly. "an hour--certainly." "too late," cried the ward leader, "too late." "_is_ it too late?" said graham. "even now--. an hour!" he had suddenly perceived a possibility. he tried to speak calmly, but his face was white. "there is are chance. you said there was a monoplane--?" "on the roehampton stage, sire." "smashed?" "no. it is lying crossways to the carrier. it might be got upon the guides--easily. but there is no aeronaut--." graham glanced at the two men and then at helen. he spoke after a long pause. "_we_ have no aeronauts?" "none." he turned suddenly to helen. his decision was made. "i must do it." "do what?" "go to this flying stage--to this machine." "what do you mean?" "i am an aeronaut. after all--. those days for which you reproached me were not altogether wasted." he turned to the old man in yellow. "tell them to put it upon the guides." the man in yellow hesitated. "what do you mean to do?" cried helen. "this monoplane--it is a chance--." "you don't mean--?" "to fight--yes. to fight in the air. i have thought before--. a big aeroplane is a clumsy thing. a resolute man--!" "but--never since flying began--" cried the man in yellow. "there has been no need. but now the time has come. tell them now--send them my message--to put it upon the guides. i see now something to do. i see now why i am here!" the old man dumbly interrogated the man in yellow nodded, and hurried out. helen made a step towards graham. her face was white. "but, sire!--how can one fight? you will be killed." "perhaps. yet, not to do it--or to let some one else attempt it--." "you will be killed," she repeated. "i've said my word. do you not see? it may save--london!" he stopped, he could speak no more, he swept the alternative aside by a gesture, and they stood looking at one another. they were both clear that he must go. there was no step back from these towering heroisms. her eyes brimmed with tears. she came towards him with a curious movement of her hands, as though she felt her way and could not see; she seized his hand and kissed it. "to wake," she cried, "for this!" he held her clumsily for a moment, and kissed the hair of her bowed head, and then thrust her away, and turned towards the man in yellow. he could not speak. the gesture of his arm said "onward." chapter xxv the coming of the aeroplanes two men in pale blue were lying in the irregular line that stretched along the edge of the captured roehampton stage from end to end, grasping their carbines and peering into the shadows of the stage called wimbledon park. now and then they spoke to one another. they spoke the mutilated english of their class and period. the fire of the ostrogites had dwindled and ceased, and few of the enemy had been seen for some time. but the echoes of the fight that was going on now far below in the lower galleries of that stage, came every now and then between the staccato of shots from the popular side. one of these men was describing to the other how he had seen a man down below there dodge behind a girder, and had aimed at a guess and hit him cleanly as he dodged too far. "he's down there still," said the marksman. "see that little patch. yes. between those bars." a few yards behind them lay a dead stranger, face upward to the sky, with the blue canvas of his jacket smouldering in a circle about the neat bullet hole on his chest. close beside him a wounded man, with a leg swathed about, sat with an expressionless face and watched the progress of that burning. behind them, athwart the carrier lay the captured monoplane. "i can't see him _now_," said the second man in a tone of provocation. the marksman became foul-mouthed and high-voiced in his earnest endeavour to make things plain. and suddenly, interrupting him, came a noisy shouting from the substage. "what's going on now?" he said, and raised himself on one arm to survey the stairheads in the central groove of the stage. a number of blue figures were coming up these, and swarming across the stage. "we don't want all these fools," said his friend. "they only crowd up and spoil shots. what are they after?" "ssh!--they're shouting something." the two men listened. the new-comers had crowded densely about the machine. three ward leaders, conspicuous by their black mantles and badges, clambered into the body and appeared above it. the rank and file flung themselves upon the vans, gripping hold of the edges, until the entire outline of the thing was manned, in some places three deep. one of the marksmen knelt up. "they're putting it on the carrier--that's what they're after." he rose to his feet, his friend rose also. "what's the good?" said his friend. "we've got no aeronauts." "that's what they're doing anyhow." he looked at his rifle, looked at the struggling crowd, and suddenly turned to the wounded man. "mind these, mate," he said, handing his carbine and cartridge belt; and in a moment he was running towards the monoplane. for a quarter of an hour he was lugging, thrusting, shouting and heeding shouts, and then the thing was done, and he stood with a multitude of others cheering their own achievement. by this time he knew, what indeed everyone in the city knew, that the master, raw learner though he was, intended to fly this machine himself, was coming even now to take control of it, would let no other man attempt it. "he who takes the greatest danger, he who bears the heaviest burden, that man is king," so the master was reported to have spoken. and even as this man cheered, and while the beads of sweat still chased one another from the disorder of his hair, he heard the thunder of a greater tumult, and in fitful snatches the beat and impulse of the revolutionary song. he saw through a gap in the people that a thick stream of heads still poured up the stairway. "the master is coming," shouted voices, "the master is coming," and the crowd about him grew denser and denser. he began to thrust himself towards the central groove. "the master is coming!" "the sleeper, the master!" "god and the master!" roared the voices. and suddenly quite close to him were the black uniforms of the revolutionary guard, and for the first and last time in his life he saw graham, saw him quite nearly. a tall, dark man in a flowing black robe he was, with a white, resolute face and eyes fixed steadfastly before him; a man who for all the little things about him had neither ears nor eyes nor thoughts.... for all his days that man remembered the passing of graham's bloodless face. in a moment it had gone and he was fighting in the swaying crowd. a lad weeping with terror thrust against him, pressing towards the stairways, yelling "clear for the start, you fools!" the bell that cleared the flying stage became a loud unmelodious clanging. with that clanging in his ears graham drew near the monoplane, marched into the shadow of its tilting wing. he became aware that a number of people about him were offering to accompany him, and waved their offers aside. he wanted to think how one started the engine. the bell clanged faster and faster, and the feet of the retreating people roared faster and louder. the man in yellow was assisting him to mount through the ribs of the body. he clambered into the aeronaut's place, fixing himself very carefully and deliberately. what was it? the man in yellow was pointing to two small flying machines driving upward in the southern sky. no doubt they were looking for the coming aeroplanes. that--presently--the thing to do now was to start. things were being shouted at him, questions, warnings. they bothered him. he wanted to think about the machine, to recall every item of his previous experience. he waved the people from him, saw the man in yellow dropping off through the ribs, saw the crowd cleft down the line of the girders by his gesture. for a moment he was motionless, staring at the levers, the wheel by which the engine shifted, and all the delicate appliances of which he knew so little. his eye caught a spirit level with the bubble towards him, and he remembered something, spent a dozen seconds in swinging the engine forward until the bubble floated in the centre of the tube. he noted that the people were not shouting, knew they watched his deliberation. a bullet smashed on the bar above his head. who fired? was the line clear of people? he stood up to see and sat down again. in another second the propeller was spinning and he was rushing down the guides. he gripped the wheel and swung the engine back to lift the stem. then it was the people shouted. in a moment he was throbbing with the quiver of the engine, and the shouts dwindled swiftly behind, rushed down to silence. the wind whistled over the edges of the screen, and the world sank away from him very swiftly. throb, throb, throb--throb, throb, throb; up he drove. he fancied himself free of all excitement, felt cool and deliberate. he lifted the stem still more, opened one valve on his left wing and swept round and up. he looked down with a steady head, and up. one of the ostrogite monoplanes was driving across his course, so that he drove obliquely towards it and would pass below it at a steep angle. its little aeronauts were peering down at him. what did they mean to do? his mind became active. one, he saw held a weapon pointing, seemed prepared to fire. what did they think he meant to do? in a moment he understood their tactics, and his resolution was taken. his momentary lethargy was past. he opened two more valves to his left, swung round, end on to this hostile machine, closed his valves, and shot straight at it, stem and wind-screen shielding him from the shot. they tilted a little as if to clear him. he flung up his stem. throb, throb, throb--pause--throb, throb--he set his teeth, his face into an involuntary grimace, and crash! he struck it! he struck upward beneath the nearer wing. very slowly the wing of his antagonist seemed to broaden as the impetus of his blow turned it up. he saw the full breadth of it and then it slid downward out of his sight. he felt his stem going down, his hands tightened on the levers, whirled and rammed the engine back. he felt the jerk of a clearance, the nose of the machine jerked upward steeply, and for a moment he seemed to be lying on his back. the machine was reeling and staggering, it seemed to be dancing on its screw. he made a huge effort, hung for a moment on the levers, and slowly the engine came forward again. he was driving upward but no longer so steeply. he gasped for a moment and flung himself at the levers again. the wind whistled about him. one further effort and he was almost level. he could breathe. he turned his head for the first time to see what had become of his antagonists. turned back to the levers for a moment and looked again. for a moment he could have believed they were annihilated. and then he saw between the two stages to the east was a chasm, and down this something, a slender edge, fell swiftly and vanished, as a sixpence falls down a crack. at first he did not understand, and then a wild joy possessed him. he shouted at the top of his voice, an inarticulate shout, and drove higher and higher up the sky. throb, throb, throb, pause, throb, throb, throb. "where was the other?" he thought. "they too--." as he looked round the empty heavens he had a momentary fear that this second machine had risen above him, and then he saw it alighting on the norwood stage. they had meant shooting. to risk being rammed headlong two thousand feet in the air was beyond their latter-day courage.... for a little while he circled, then swooped in a steep descent towards the westward stage. throb throb throb, throb throb throb. the twilight was creeping on apace, the smoke from the streatham stage that had been so dense and dark, was now a pillar of fire, and all the laced curves of the moving ways and the translucent roofs and domes and the chasms between the buildings were glowing softly now, lit by the tempered radiance of the electric light that the glare of the day overpowered. the three efficient stages that the ostrogites held--for wimbledon park was useless because of the fire from roehampton, and streatham was a furnace--were glowing with guide lights for the coming aeroplanes. as he swept over the roehampton stage he saw the dark masses of the people thereon. he heard a clap of frantic cheering, heard a bullet from the wimbledon park stage tweet through the air, and went beating up above the surrey wastes. he felt a breath of wind from the southwest, and lifted his westward wing as he had learnt to do, and so drove upward heeling into the rare swift upper air. whirr, whirr, whirr. up he drove and up, to that pulsating rhythm, until the country beneath was blue and indistinct, and london spread like a little map traced in light, like the mere model of a city near the brim of the horizon. the southwest was a sky of sapphire over the shadowy rim of the world, and ever as he drove upward the multitude of stars increased. and behold! in the southward, low down and glittering swiftly nearer, were two little patches of nebulous light. and then two more, and then a glow of swiftly driving shapes. presently he could count them. there were four and twenty. the first fleet of aeroplanes had come! beyond appeared a yet greater glow. he swept round in a half circle, staring at this advancing fleet. it flew in a wedge-like shape, a triangular flight of gigantic phosphorescent shapes sweeping nearer through the lower air. he made a swift calculation of their pace, and spun the little wheel that brought the engine forward. he touched a lever and the throbbing effort of the engine ceased. he began to fall, fell swifter and swifter. he aimed at the apex of the wedge. he dropped like a stone through the whistling air. it seemed scarce a second from that soaring moment before he struck the foremost aeroplane. no man of all that black multitude saw the coming of his fate, no man among them dreamt of the hawk that struck downward upon him out of the sky. those who were not limp in the agonies of air-sickness, were craning their black necks and staring to see the filmy city that was rising out of the haze, the rich and splendid city to which "massa boss" had brought their obedient muscles. bright teeth gleamed and the glossy faces shone. they had heard of paris. they knew they were to have lordly times among the poor white trash. suddenly graham hit them. he had aimed at the body of the aeroplane, but at the very last instant a better idea had flashed into his mind. he twisted about and struck near the edge of the starboard wing with all his accumulated weight. he was jerked back as he struck. his prow went gliding across its smooth expanse towards the rim. he felt the forward rush of the huge fabric sweeping him and his monoplane along with it, and for a moment that seemed an age he could not tell what was happening. he heard a thousand throats yelling, and perceived that his machine was balanced on the edge of the gigantic float, and driving down, down; glanced over his shoulder and saw the backbone of the aeroplane and the opposite float swaying up. he had a vision through the ribs of sliding chairs, staring faces, and hands clutching at the tilting guide bars. the fenestrations in the further float flashed open as the aeronaut tried to right her. beyond, he saw a second aeroplane leaping steeply to escape the whirl of its heeling fellow. the broad area of swaying wings seemed to jerk upward. he felt he had dropped clear, that the monstrous fabric, clean overturned, hung like a sloping wall above him. he did not clearly understand that he had struck the side float of the aeroplane and slipped off, but he perceived that he was flying free on the down glide and rapidly nearing earth. what had he done? his heart throbbed like a noisy engine in his throat and for a perilous instant he could not move his levers because of the paralysis of his hands. he wrenched the levers to throw his engine back, fought for two seconds against the weight of it, felt himself righting, driving horizontally, set the engine beating again. he looked upward and saw two aeroplanes glide shouting far overhead, looked back, and saw the main body of the fleet opening out and rushing upward and outward; saw the one he had struck fall edgewise on and strike like a gigantic knife-blade along the wind-wheels below it. he put down his stern and looked again. he drove up heedless of his direction as he watched. he saw the wind-vanes give, saw the huge fabric strike the earth, saw its downward vanes crumple with the weight of its descent, and then the whole mass turned over and smashed, upside down, upon the sloping wheels. then from the heaving wreckage a thin tongue of white fire licked up towards the zenith. he was aware of a huge mass flying through the air towards him, and turned upwards just in time to escape the charge--if it was a charge--of a second aeroplane. it whirled by below, sucked him down a fathom, and nearly turned him over in the gust of its close passage. he became aware of three others rushing towards him, aware of the urgent necessity of beating above them. aeroplanes were all about him, circling wildly to avoid him, as it seemed. they drove past him, above, below, eastward and westward. far away to the westward was the sound of a collision, and two falling flares. far away to the southward a second squadron was coming. steadily he beat upward. presently all the aeroplanes were below him, but for a moment he doubted the height he had of them, and did not swoop again. and then he came down upon a second victim and all its load of soldiers saw him coming. the big machine heeled and swayed as the fear-maddened men scrambled to the stern for their weapons. a score of bullets sung through the air, and there flashed a star in the thick glass wind-screen that protected him. the aeroplane slowed and dropped to foil his stroke, and dropped too low. just in time he saw the wind-wheels of bromley hill rushing up towards him, and spun about and up as the aeroplane he had chased crashed among them. all its voices wove into a felt of yelling. the great fabric seemed to be standing on end for a second among the heeling and splintering vans, and then it flew to pieces. huge splinters came flying through the air, its engines burst like shells. a hot rush of flame shot overhead into the darkling sky. "_two_!" he cried, with a bomb from overhead bursting as it fell, and forthwith he was beating up again. a glorious exhilaration possessed him now, a giant activity. his troubles about humanity, about his inadequacy, were gone for ever. he was a man in battle rejoicing in his power. aeroplanes seemed radiating from him in every direction, intent only upon avoiding him, the yelling of their packed passengers came in short gusts as they swept by. he chose his third quarry, struck hastily and did but turn it on edge. it escaped him, to smash against the tall cliff of london wall. flying from that impact he skimmed the darkling ground so nearly he could see a frightened rabbit bolting up a slope. he jerked up steeply, and found himself driving over south london with the air about him vacant. to the right of him a wild riot of signal rockets from the ostrogites banged tumultuously in the sky. to the south the wreckage of half a dozen air ships flamed, and east and west and north they fled before him. they drove away to the east and north, and went about in the south, for they could not pause in the air. in their present confusion any attempt at evolution would have meant disastrous collisions. he passed two hundred feet or so above the roehampton stage. it was black with people and noisy with their frantic shouting. but why was the wimbledon park stage black and cheering, too? the smoke and flame of streatham now hid the three further stages. he curved about and rose to see them and the northern quarters. first came the square masses of shooter's hill into sight, from behind the smoke, lit and orderly with the aeroplane that had landed and its disembarking negroes. then came blackheath, and then under the corner of the reek the norwood stage. on blackheath no aeroplane had landed. norwood was covered by a swarm of little figures running to and fro in a passionate confusion. why? abruptly he understood. the stubborn defence of the flying stages was over, the people were pouring into the under-ways of these last strongholds of ostrog's usurpation. and then, from far away on the northern border of the city, full of glorious import to him, came a sound, a signal, a note of triumph, the leaden thud of a gun. his lips fell apart, his face was disturbed with emotion. he drew an immense breath. "they win," he shouted to the empty air; "the people win!" the sound of a second gun came like an answer. and then he saw the monoplane on blackheath was running down its guides to launch. it lifted clean and rose. it shot up into the air, driving straight southward and away from him. in an instant it came to him what this meant. it must needs be ostrog in flight. he shouted and dropped towards it. he had the momentum of his elevation and fell slanting down the air and very swiftly. it rose steeply at his approach. he allowed for its velocity and drove straight upon it. it suddenly became a mere flat edge, and behold! he was past it, and driving headlong down with all the force of his futile blow. he was furiously angry. he reeled the engine back along its shaft and went circling up. he saw ostrog's machine beating up a spiral before him. he rose straight towards it, won above it by virtue of the impetus of his swoop and by the advantage and weight of a man. he dropped headlong--dropped and missed again! as he rushed past he saw the face of ostrog's aeronaut confident and cool and in ostrog's attitude a wincing resolution. ostrog was looking steadfastly away from him--to the south. he realized with a gleam of wrath how bungling his flight must be. below he saw the croydon hills. he jerked upward and once more he gained on his enemy. he glanced over his shoulder and his attention was arrested. the eastward stage, the one on shooter's hill, appeared to lift; a flash changing to a tall grey shape, a cowled figure of smoke and dust, jerked into the air. for a moment this cowled figure stood motionless, dropping huge masses of metal from its shoulders, and then it began to uncoil a dense head of smoke. the people had blown it up, aeroplane and all! as suddenly a second flash and grey shape sprang up from the norwood stage. and even as he stared at this came a dead report; and the air wave of the first explosion struck him. he was flung up and sideways. for a moment his monoplane fell nearly edgewise with her nose down, and seemed to hesitate whether to overset altogether. he stood on his wind-shield, wrenching the wheel that swayed up over his head. and then the shock of the second explosion took his machine sideways. he found himself clinging to one of the ribs of his machine, and the air was blowing past him and _upward_. he seemed to be hanging quite still in the air, with the wind blowing up past him. it occurred to him that he was falling. then he was sure that he was falling. he could not look down. he found himself recapitulating with incredible swiftness all that had happened since his awakening, the days of doubt, the days of empire, and at last the tumultuous discovery of ostrog's calculated treachery. the vision had a quality of utter unreality. who was he? why was he holding so tightly with his hands? why could he not let go? in such a fall as this countless dreams have ended. but in a moment he would wake.... his thoughts ran swifter and swifter. he wondered if he should see helen again. it seemed so unreasonable that he should not see her again. it _must_ be a dream! yet surely he would meet her. she at least was real. she was real. he would wake and meet her. although he could not look at it, he was suddenly aware that the earth was very near. the end. meccania the super-state meccania the super-state by owen gregory methuen & co. ltd. essex street w.c. london _first published in _ inscribed to w. h. s. in token of twenty-eight years' friendship contents page introduction: a few words about mr. ming and his journal ix chap. i. i become a foreign observer ii. bridgetown, tour no. iii. introduction to mecco iv. professor proser-toady's lecture v. culture in mecco vi. more culture in mecco vii. a meccanian apostle viii. the mechow festival ix. meccanisation x. conversations xi. an academic discussion xii. the latest institution xiii. never again introduction a few words about mr. ming and his journal as this book is little more than a transcript of a document originally written in the form of a journal by a man who, until about a year ago, was an entire stranger to me, and as the document itself contains not a few statements which make large demands upon the credulity of the average reader, it seems necessary to offer some explanation regarding both the journal and its author, mr. ming--or, to give him his full name, ming yuen-hwuy. if i were able to go bail for mr. ming and assure the british public that he was an entirely credible and impartial witness, the book might have stood on the same foundation as other volumes of 'revelations' concerning a country with which englishmen are still insufficiently acquainted. but i cannot go bail for mr. ming. the chief source of my knowledge of him is the journal itself. it has even been suggested to me that mr. ming did not write the journal, but must have stolen it from some european, probably an englishman. on this point i shall have something to say presently. perhaps the best solution of these difficulties will be to say what i know of the origin of the book. mr. ming was introduced to me, by a friend whose name it is unnecessary to give, in november or december . my friend said he remembered meeting him in london as far back as . since then, however, mr. ming had not only lived in london and travelled throughout england, but had also spent about two years in france and italy, and had visited america. what his previous career had been i do not know, nor did my friend know. he appeared always to have plenty of money, and we surmised that he might have been attached in some way to the chinese legation; but he never gave the least hint about any such connection. what i do know is that he had a remarkable knowledge of our language, and a remarkable familiarity with our laws, customs and political institutions. he professed a great admiration for our british constitutions, a circumstance which may account for some of the political views to which he gives expression in his journal. a day or two after he had been introduced to me i invited him to dinner and on this occasion we found much to talk about--chiefly european politics. at length, after we had finished a bottle of wine and a liqueur or two, he remarked that of all the countries he had visited in western europe he had been most impressed by meccania. (he pronounced the word '_mek-kah´-nia_.') my knowledge of geography is not complete, i admit, but i thought i knew all the countries of western europe (the war has helped wonderfully to fill up certain gaps). i replied that i had never heard of such a country. "probably not," he answered. "but it exists. and the proof of it is that i spent some five months there in , and kept a journal of my experiences." "you mean ," i said. "no, ," he replied. i hardly knew whether he were experimenting upon my sense of humour, or had got confused between chinese and european chronology; or whether the liqueur had gone to his head. possibly--and here i became a little nervous--he was a little 'abnormal.' "anyhow," he said, "one of my chief objects in seeking an interview with you was to consult you about publishing this journal." we were dining in my chambers and he begged permission to fetch his hand-bag from the anteroom. he returned with a bulky manuscript. i wondered if he were hard up and wanted to draw me into some sort of bargain, but i reflected that he seemed to be a much wealthier man than i. he said he was convinced that his journal was an important contribution to political literature, and would be found of interest not only in great britain but in france and america as well. it would be a good thing also if the meccanians themselves could read it. unfortunately there was no chance of that, he said, because nothing was read in meccania except by permission of the government. he went on to explain that the journal had been kept partly in english, partly in chinese and partly in meccanian; but that he had since written a rough translation of the whole in english. his knowledge of english, though sufficient for most practical purposes, was not such as to satisfy the literary critics; and that was one of the reasons why he sought my assistance. the upshot was that i promised to read the manuscript, which i did in a few hours next day. i found that it purported to be the journal of a visit or tour, made in , to a country he called meccania. i had little difficulty in penetrating the fiction. (it was obvious what country was meant.) as to the date, , i soon came to the conclusion that this was another literary device, to enable him to describe with greater freedom what he considered to be the probable, or as he would be inclined to say, the inevitable development of the tendencies he had observed in that country. whilst some parts of the description were clear, and even vivid, many things were left in obscurity. for instance, the extent and the limits of the country were quite vague. only two cities were described in any detail. little was said about domestic life, little about religion, little about women and children. when i questioned him subsequently on these points, he said that the obstacles to obtaining full information had proved insuperable: he had not been at liberty to travel about when and where he pleased, nor to get into close contact with the common people. the journal itself if carefully read, he said, gave a sufficient answer on these points, and he had preferred to give a faithful account of what had actually happened to him, and of the conversations he had had with representative meccanians, leaving the evidence to speak for itself. if he had said little about education the little that he had said would be found most illuminating, by the aid of insight and imagination. if he had said little about military matters, that was because it would have been positively dangerous to be suspected of spying. i then questioned him about his references to luniland, which occur on the very first page of the journal and are scattered throughout the book. did he mean to indicate england by this term? if so, it was not exactly flattering. mr. ming said he intended no offence. the references _were_ perhaps a little obscure. the simple fact was that some years ago he had, for his own amusement, written a harmless satire upon some of our national characteristics. he had then hit upon the phrase luniland and lunilanders, and he could not get it out of his head. it was just an instance of his whimsicality. "but why luniland?" i asked. "why not?" he said. "you do such funny things without seeing that they are funny." "such as what?" i asked. "well, to take a few things that have happened recently in connection with your great war. you are intensely proud of all your soldiers, and rightly. yet you seem to pay the citizens who stay at home about three times as much as the soldiers who go out to fight; and i have been told, although this seems more difficult to believe, that you pay the men who volunteered from the very first less than those whom you subsequently had to compel to serve in your armies." "i am afraid these things you allege are true," i replied, "but they do not seem funny to us." "no, probably not," he said. "each nation has its own sense of humour!" "have you noticed anything else of the same kind?" i asked. "oh, a great many things," he said, "but i just gave you a sample of what first occurred to me. i did hear of some men being excused from serving in the army because they were engaged in carving gravestones." "for the soldiers, i suppose?" "oh no," he replied, "there is no time to carve gravestones for the soldiers; for people who die in their beds at home. yet you do not profess to be worshippers of the dead." "do not misunderstand me," he added. "you are a wonderful people, and it is perhaps because you are lunilanders that i cannot help liking you. we are lunilanders ourselves if only we knew it. if you were to come to my country you would find many things just as funny as those i have observed here. perhaps when you have more time and the opportunity is favourable you may like to read my book of observations on luniland, but meccania is a more important subject." after a careful reading of mr. ming's account of meccania i was inclined to agree with him. indeed, i would go so far as to say that the dangers to be apprehended from meccania, or meccanianism, are far more real and imminent than the dangers from what he would call our lunilandishness, and for that reason i have done my best to bring before the british public his account of meccania, although i hope at some future time to produce, perhaps for a smaller circle of readers, his notes on luniland and the lunilanders. lastly, a word about the suggestion that the journal cannot be the work of a chinaman. it is implied that the sentiments professed by mr. ming, his interests and his way of looking at things, are those of an englishman. what does this really amount to? mr. ming does not like the meccanians. certainly _we_ should not like the meccanians. therefore mr. ming is an englishman. mr. ming does not like interferences with his personal habits: he has some belief in the political value of individual liberty. an englishman resents interference and is also credited with a passion for liberty. therefore mr. ming must be an englishman. now i would suggest that, so far from mr. ming's sentiments being evidence against him, they really substantiate his character as a chinaman and remove all suspicion of his having stolen the document from some englishman, or some other european. in the first place, he submits calmly to indignities that a typical englishman would fiercely resent. in the second place, he records things with a detachment that few englishmen would be capable of, and resigns himself to the customs of the country in the manner of a mere spectator. in the third place, he betrays a philosophical interest, which is again very different from the behaviour of most of our countrymen. he records at great length conversations which we perhaps find tedious, because he thinks the ideas of the meccanians even more significant than their customs. an englishman's journal, in the same circumstances, would be certain to contain angry diatribes against the meccanians, whereas mr. ming writes with singular restraint, even when he is describing features of meccanian life which we should consider revolting. possibly the style in which the book is presented, the turns of expression and the colloquialisms, give the journal an english appearance; but for these features the editor is responsible, as it was mr. ming's wish that the book should not suffer from the most common defects of a mere translation. note on personal names the names which occur in the narrative are exactly as given by mr. ming in his journal, but it would appear that he has taken some liberties with the language in attempting to give an approximate english equivalent for the original meaning. the translation of personal names and place-names is notoriously difficult as many names are either corrupt or obscure. meccania the super-state chapter i i become a foreign observer i had already spent several years in various parts of western europe, staying for long periods in francaria, romania and luniland, before i made up my mind to pay a visit to meccania. before coming to europe i had read a great deal about western civilisation generally and had conceived a great admiration for many of its features. my experiences during my travels had, on the whole, strengthened my feelings of admiration; although even an oriental may be allowed to criticise some of the characteristics of western nations. in romania i had been delighted with the never-ending spectacle of history displayed in every part of the country. the whole land was like an infinite museum; but it was not in romania that the living forces of the present were to be found. in francaria, on the other hand, the people were more interesting than the country, charming as that country was in many ways. one perceived that the people were highly civilised; they displayed a combination of intellectual and moral refinement, an appreciation of the material and sensuous enjoyment of life as well as a traditional standard of conduct and manners, while at the same time they were keenly alive to the most modern political ideas, and were perpetually discussing new phases of all those problems which must constantly emerge wherever political liberty is held as an article of popular faith. but it was in luniland that i felt most at home. just what it was that kept me constantly pleased and interested it would take long to tell, and i must reserve my observations on luniland for another occasion. it will be sufficient to say here that i was not so much impressed with the wealth of ideas current in society in luniland--francaria was more prolific in ideas, and in francaria intellectual discussion was more brilliant--as with the stability of certain political principles which, as it seems to me at any rate, are destined to prevail ultimately throughout the world. for many reasons i thoroughly enjoyed the three or four years which, with short intervals of absence, i had spent there. i had made many acquaintances and even a considerable number of friends. in fact, i had stayed so long, contrary to my original intention, that there was little time left for carrying out the project of visiting meccania, and i was in some doubt whether i should not have to return home without seeing that remarkable country. for i had already received one or two pressing reminders from my family that they were expecting my return. before leaving home, however, i had promised some of my political friends, who were interested in the subject of meccanian culture, that i would not return without investigating the social and political life of meccania. they had, in fact, written several times to remind me of my promise, and i had put them off by explaining that, whilst travelling in the rest of europe was a simple and easy matter, i could not enter meccania without elaborate preparation. when i began to talk to some of my friends in luniland of my idea of investigating meccanian culture on the spot, i received the most conflicting advice. some said, "don't go on any account. you will be arrested as a spy, and probably shot!" others said meccania was ahead of luniland in every respect, and that i should certainly see something worth remembering if i went there. others, again, said that if i did go, i should be looked upon with suspicion on my return. in fact, i gathered that most of my friends would never open their doors to me again. finally, i took counsel with mr. yorke, a gentleman occupying an important position in lunopolis, a man of wide culture and sober views, whom it was a great privilege to count among my friends. he discussed the matter very frankly with me. i remember it was a cold evening early in march, and we sat by the fire in his study after an excellent dinner. "we lunilanders," he said, "do not like the meccanians, and few of us ever visit meccania. we prefer to have nothing to do with that country, and if you followed the advice which nine out of ten of my countrymen would give you, you would not go near meccania. but you have come to europe partly, at all events, to study our civilisation, and not simply to amuse yourself; and although there is little intercourse between the meccanians and the rest of us, if you want to know europe you cannot afford to neglect meccania. if i may advise you, i should say, go there by all means. see as much as you can with your own eyes. but try to see the country as a whole. don't be content to see just what interests you, or amuses you, or what excites your admiration. if you do that, you will be like certain cranks from this country who come back and tell us there is no poverty in meccania, there are no strikes, there is no disorder, no ignorance, no preventible disease. you at any rate are not a simpleton to be taken in by any sort of hocus-pocus. but the meccanians are very clever, and they manage to impose on many people who are not so wideawake as you are. how much you will be allowed to see i don't know. it is a good many years since i was there, but, if things are managed as i am told they are now, you will not see all you want by any means. in fact, in one sense, you would learn far more from books--you read meccanian easily already, i know--than from an actual visit. but unless you go there you will not feel satisfied that what you read is true, and you will not have the same sense of reality. "the great thing is to look at the country as a whole--i don't mean geographically, but spiritually. there is always a tendency for foolish people to take this idea from one country and that institution from another. enthusiastic reformers are ready to shut their eyes to everything else if only they can get support for their particular fads. if you find after a real study of meccanian life that you would like to turn your own country into a second edition of meccania, i shall say, like old dogberry, that you are not the man i took you for." he impressed upon me the importance of a thorough knowledge of the language, but i was able to satisfy him on that score; for i had learnt to read easily before coming to europe, and had already undertaken a long course of colloquial meccanian under a good teacher during a visit to francaria. besides, i rather prided myself on my aptitude for languages, and considered myself well equipped. so i packed up all the miscellaneous goods i had collected, and stored them in lunopolis, reserving only a couple of trunks filled with the usual necessaries for a mere tourist. i had my passport from our own government. i procured another from the luniland foreign office. i obtained, further, the necessary permission from the meccanian government, and, choosing the shortest route, arrived at the outer frontier on march th. as most people know, meccania has a double frontier on the western side. a belt of country twenty miles wide is preserved as neutral territory, a veritable no man's land. this is a relic from the great war. it is entirely uninhabited and uncultivated. not a single line of railway crosses it, and only five roads, which are merely rough tracks, lead across it from various points to the five frontier towns on the inner side. these are the only gates into meccania on the west. the small town on the outer frontier in francaria, through which i was to pass, is called graves. here my first delay occurred. intercourse with meccania is so limited that although the official conveyance goes only once a week, i found no more than a dozen persons collected there in readiness for the journey across no man's land. i was about to take my place in the conveyance provided to carry us to bridgetown on the inner frontier, when it was discovered that i had no ticket authorising me to make this journey. i produced my passports and the letter giving me permission to travel in meccania, but the official who took charge of foreigners pointed to a printed instruction on the back of the letter informing me that a ticket would be forwarded by a later post. no explanations or expostulations were of any use. until i had that ticket i could not enter meccania. the conveyance went only once a week. there was nothing for it therefore but to stay at some hotel in graves, or return to lunopolis in search of my missing ticket. i put up at a small hotel in graves and telegraphed to my last address for my letters. these arrived two days later, and among them was my precious ticket. the week i spent in graves forms no part of my meccanian tour, so i will say nothing about it except that it gave me an opportunity of seeing the extraordinary sight of no man's land. it stretched like a belt of desert as far as one could see. rough grass grew here and there, but no other vegetation. every year, in the warm weather, the grass was fired, and other means were taken also to ensure that the weeds should not injure the vegetation on the cultivated side, which by contrast looked like a garden. at intervals of every twenty yards or so an iron pole was erected with wire between. otherwise there was no obstacle; but no unauthorised person, so i was told, ever crossed the line. at the end of the week a few more travellers arrived and were met by the conveyance from bridgetown. it was something like a large prison van, but quite comfortable inside except for the fact that the passengers could not see outside. my fellow-passengers were evidently strangers to one another. one or two, i thought, were meccanians returning home, but as there was little conversation and the journey lasted not more than an hour, i was able to learn nothing about any of them. when the car stopped--it was a sort of large motor-omnibus--the door was opened by a porter in a dark blue uniform, and i found myself in the large courtyard of the bridgetown police office. what became of my fellow-passengers i have no idea, but i was conducted to a waiting-room, where another subordinate official in a grey uniform took my papers, and about ten minutes after led me into a small office adjoining, where a man in a green uniform sat at a desk surrounded by neat little bundles of papers of various colours. he was a rather stout man of middle age, with bushy iron-grey hair and whiskers, yet rather bald in front. with his light grey eyes slightly protruding, he looked at me for a few seconds and said, "mr. ming?" i said, "i am mr. ming." "i am inspector of foreigners stiff," he said very distinctly, "and whilst you are in bridgetown you will be responsible to me for your good conduct. by what title are you authorised to be addressed?" "i am plain mr. ming, or citizen ming," i replied. "but you have some other title, doubtless," he said. "what office do you hold in your own country?" "well," i replied, "i am what we call a national councillor. i am also the president of the literary society of my own province, and i have been once the mayor of my native town." "then you had better be addressed as national councillor ming, or as literary president ming, or mayor ming," he answered promptly. "choose which you prefer, and write down the title on the third line of this form." i wrote down, with a smile, "national councillor ming." "national councillor ming," he said, as i handed the form back to him, "before we have any further conversation, you will please pass into the next room and undergo your medical examination." i passed into the next room, where i found a man, also in a green uniform, but with different facings from those worn by inspector of foreigners stiff. "national councillor ming," he said, "allow me to make my necessary medical examination." i wondered how he had got my name so pat. then i remembered that immediately before passing me into the next room, inspector stiff had put a card into a pneumatic tube by the side of his desk. the doctor led me out of his office into a small bedroom, next to which stood a bathroom fitted with various apparatus. after undressing in the bedroom, i was ordered to step into the bathroom, where first of all i was carefully measured in at least a score of places: head, ears, arms, hands, legs, feet, chest, etc. etc. thumb-prints and foot-prints were taken; i was weighed; my chest was sounded; my organs were investigated with various curious instruments; a record of my speaking voice was taken, for which purpose i had to pronounce several long sentences in meccanian and in my own language. a lock of my hair was cut off, and finally i was photographed in several different positions. i was then ordered to bathe, at first in water, afterwards in a fluid which was evidently some sort of disinfectant. at the end of about an hour and a half the doctor pronounced me to be "disease-free," and asked me to dress myself in some garments specially used on these occasions. the garments were made either of paper, or of some substance like paper, and were intended to be destroyed after use. i was now in the bedroom. the doctor had disappeared, but a sort of orderly in a grey uniform knocked at the door and brought in a tray with some food and coffee. he announced that inspector of foreigners stiff would be ready to see me again in fifteen minutes. i was very glad of the food, the first i had eaten since my arrival, and at the end of the fifteen minutes i was again led into mr. stiff's room, still wearing my paper suit. "now," said he, "you will remain in your room until morning, when your own clothes will be restored to you after having been thoroughly disinfected. you can have supper supplied to you in your room, and as you will have a few hours to spare i should advise you to make yourself acquainted with the contents of these documents. you will find they contain all the instructions you require for the first few days." i retired to my room feeling rather fatigued by the various experiences i had already gone through, but for want of something more interesting i began to study my 'instructions.' the first document was a closely printed circular of eight foolscap pages containing numerous extracts from the law relating to the conduct of foreign observers. by the time i had waded through this i thought i had done enough for one day, and as the orderly came in with preparations for some supper i asked him if i might see the daily paper. he did not seem to understand what i meant. after some further explanation he said, "we have no daily paper in bridgetown: we have only the weekly local gazette." "but you have some kind of newspaper which circulates in bridgetown," i said. "perhaps it is published in some other large town, perhaps in mecco?" i suggested. (mecco is the capital of meccania.) "we have no general newspaper published daily," he replied. i thought he had misunderstood me, so i begged him to bring me the local gazette. he said he would try to get me a copy. presently, while i was eating my supper, another official, dressed in a bright chocolate-coloured uniform with green facings, made his appearance. he explained that inspector stiff had gone home--it was then about seven o'clock or later--and that he was left in charge of the office. i had asked for a newspaper. for what purpose did i require a newspaper? "oh," i said, "just to see the current news." "news what about?" he asked. "about anything," i replied. "one likes to see the newspaper to see what is going on." "but no one wants anything except for some purpose," he replied, "and you have not explained the purpose for which you require a newspaper. also, there are no general newspapers. there are the various gazettes issued by the different departments of government, and there are a few local gazettes dealing with purely municipal matters. but until you have entered upon your authorised tour of observation, i should have no authority to supply you with any of these." what a fuss about such a trifle, i thought, and wished i had never troubled him. i apologised for making the request, whereupon he said, "if you wish for something to read after supper there is a case of books in the office, from which, no doubt, i can supply your needs." i thanked him, and presently went to see the books. there was a work on the _law in relation to foreign observers_, in three volumes; a _history of the development of town planning_, in five volumes; a treatise on _sewage_, in two volumes; a series of reports on the various municipal departments of bridgetown; an _encyclopædia of building_; and a few other works equally interesting. i took away a volume, hardly noticing what it was, intending to use it only as a means of inducing sleep, which it did most effectively. i was awakened about half-past six next morning by the orderly in the grey uniform entering the bedroom to announce that my bath would be ready in five minutes, and that it was against the rules to be late. i promptly went into the bathroom and found the bath half filled with a thin, greeny-yellowish fluid which smelt like a strong disinfectant. the orderly explained that all foreigners were obliged to be disinfected in this way. "but," i said, "i was disinfected only yesterday." "the bath yesterday," he explained, "was to ensure that you brought no disease into the country." "and what is this for?" i asked. "this is to prevent you from contracting any new disease through the change in climate," he answered. i remarked that the authorities were very solicitous of the welfare of foreigners, to which he replied: "ah, we must look after ourselves; a sick man is a source of infection." i was told to remain in the bath forty-five minutes. i found i had no choice, for, once in, i had no power to get out. at the end of the forty-five minutes the orderly came and lifted me out, turned on a shower bath, and said, "breakfast in ten minutes." my own clothes had been returned to me. i dressed quickly, ate my breakfast, which was the usual light continental early breakfast of rolls and coffee, and was preparing to leave the police office when the orderly informed me that inspector of foreigners stiff was ready to see me. "national councillor ming," he began, as soon as i entered his room, "i find you have with you letters of introduction to several persons in meccania." (so my private papers had been closely scrutinised during the process of disinfection.) "you will, of course, not present these until you have received permission from the proper authority. in no case can this be given until a period of three months has elapsed. now after completing these forms, in accordance with the instructions i handed you yesterday, you will be authorised to begin your tour of observation in bridgetown." here he handed me four forms. "you must first decide whether you mean to stay a week, or a month, or longer; for that will naturally determine the programme of your tour of observation. you cannot in any case leave without giving three clear days' notice and completing your arrangements as to the place you are proceeding to." "oh," i said in some surprise, "i had no idea that would be necessary. i thought i would just look round, perhaps for a day or two, then go on to one of your other important cities and make my way by degrees to mecco." "then you cannot have read the instruction form no. , or you would know that is quite impossible. if you intend to stay a month, please fill up this blue form." "i think, perhaps, it would be better to say a week," i replied; "then if i want to stay longer i suppose i could do so?" "if you had read the instructions you would have seen that the plan of a tour of a week is on quite a different scale from that of a tour of a fortnight or a month. you must decide now which you will take." i stuck to the week, and we filled up the necessary forms for tour no. . "your conductor will be sub-conductor of foreign observers sheep," he said next. "my conductor?" i exclaimed. "is it necessary to have a conductor?" "you are not still in luniland," he replied testily, "and i must again remind you that if you had read the extracts from the law with reference to foreign observers you would not have asked the question. sub-conductor sheep will be here in five minutes," he said, evidently anxious to get rid of me, "and as soon as you have discharged this bill of expenses he will take you to the hotel for foreign observers, and you will begin your tour." here he handed me a sort of invoice containing the following items:-- to food, s.; to bed, one night, s.; to medical examination, s.; to temporary garments, s.; to service, s.--total, s. there was certainly nothing exorbitant about the charges; all the same, i grudged the s. for the medical examination. chapter ii bridgetown, tour no. sub-conductor of foreign observers sheep came in as i was paying the bill. he was a well-set-up man about fifty, and had the appearance of an old non-com. he looked quiet and rather stolid. i never saw him smile during the whole week i was with him, but he was not offensive in his manner. like inspector stiff he wore a green uniform, but one with fewer facings and with chocolate-coloured buttons. before we started to walk across to the hotel he asked if i had got my pocket-diary. i fished out a small notebook, such as i had used in luniland for marking engagements. "that is of no use for the purpose," he informed me. "you must have one like this"; and he showed me a book about six inches by four inches, with four pages for each day. "oh!" i said, "i shall never need all that; besides, it is spaced for a month only." in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice he said calmly, "every person in meccania uses a pocket-diary like this. you will find it indispensable in order that you may make your entries correctly in your weekly diary for the time department." "the what department?" i asked, rather puzzled. "the time department: but never mind; i will explain all that in its proper place. we will get a pocket-diary as we go along." we walked to the hotel, and on the way sheep slipped into an office of some kind and handed me a pocket-diary of the regulation type. as we entered the hotel, which was a very small affair,--evidently the number of foreigners in bridgetown at any one time could not be more than a dozen if they were all lodged here,--he popped his head into a sort of box-office near the door and said in a loud voice, "nine o'clock. national councillor ming." a girl in the box-office echoed the words whilst making an entry on a large sheet, and handed him a buff-coloured sheet of cardboard, divided or ruled into small squares. this he presented to me, telling me to note down on it the exact time when i entered and left the hotel, and to get it initialed every other day by the girl clerk in the box-office. if the times did not tally with her record i was to consult the manager of the hotel. "the first thing to do is to report yourself to the manager of the hotel," said sheep when he had taken me to my room, where i found my baggage, which i had not seen since i left graves. the manager was a rather fussy little man, also in a green uniform like sheep's but with different facings. he did not seem specially pleased to see me. all he said was, "i hope you will not give so much trouble as the last of your fellow-countrymen we had here. if you will study the regulations you will save yourself and me much inconvenience. meals are at eight, one, and six, and at no other times. and remember that conversation with other foreign observers is prohibited until you have received the certificate of approval." conductor sheep had rung up for a motor-car, and as we waited a few minutes for its arrival he said, "as you will have seen from the printed programme of tour no. , we shall first make a geographical survey of the town, then we shall visit the public buildings, taking note of their architectural features, and beginning first with those under local control, following on with those under the joint control of the central and local government, and concluding with those solely under the control of the central government. and of the first category we shall see those first which have to do with the bodily needs, and of these we shall take first those connected with food, then with clothing, then with housing; for that is the only logical order. everything has been carefully prescribed by the department of culture and the department of sociology, and the same plan is followed by all foreign observers, whatever city they may be visiting." we went first to a look-out tower which stood on a hill about a mile outside the town. here we had a view of the surrounding country. the town lay in a bend of the river. it was not exactly picturesque, but the large number of new public buildings near the centre, the broad streets lined with villas, each surrounded by a garden in the large residential quarter on the western side, and even the orderly streets of houses and flats on the more thickly populated eastern side, produced altogether a fine effect. the country round was magnificent. low wooded hills rose on three sides, backed by higher hills in the distance. sheep talked almost learnedly about the geology of the district and the historical reasons for the situation of bridgetown. then he pointed out that the plan of the town was like a wheel. in the centre were the public buildings and squares. the main streets radiated like spokes, and between these came the residential quarters of the seven social classes; those of the first three on the west side, those of the fourth to the north and south, those of the fifth, sixth and seventh, to the east. on the east side also lay the factories, workshops and warehouses. the shops were arranged in a sort of ring running through the middle of each of the residential quarters. "the seven social classes?" i asked. i had heard in a vague way of the existence of this arrangement, but had little idea what it meant. "yes," answered sheep, as if he were reading from a guide-book, "the first consists of the highest aristocracy, military and civil; the second, of the military and naval officers, all of noble birth; the third, of the highest mercantile class with an income of £ a year and the officials of the first grade in the imperial civil service; the fourth, of the officials of the civil service of lower grades and the bulk of the professional classes; the fifth, of the skilled artisan class; the sixth, of the semi-skilled; and the seventh, of the menial industrial groups." i asked him to go over it again whilst i took a note for future reference. the rest of the morning passed in listening to sheep's elaborate descriptions of the drainage and sewage systems, the water supply, the power and light and heat supply, the tramway system, the parcels system, the postal delivery system, the milk delivery system, all from the geographical point of view. after lunch we spent some time in going all over the town on the tramways. this completed the geographical survey. at six o'clock i was deposited in the hotel just in time for dinner. presently i prepared to go out to some place of amusement; but on attempting to leave the hotel i was stopped by the porter, who told me i could not leave the hotel unless accompanied by my conductor. so i spent the evening in writing up my journal. during the day i had noticed that everywhere all the men were dressed in a sort of uniform, and that the colours of these uniforms corresponded to the rank or class of the wearers. perhaps i ought to have mentioned this circumstance earlier, for certainly it was one of the first things i noticed when i began to go into the streets. the colours of the uniforms are very striking and even crude. they supply the only touch of the picturesque in bridgetown, for, judging by my first day's impressions of the town, i should imagine that the authorities responsible for rebuilding it have swept away every vestige of the tiny mediæval city which once existed on this spot and have replaced it by a perfectly uniform piece of meccanian town-planning. in such a setting these uniforms strike one at first as out of place, but perhaps i have not yet grasped their purpose or significance. the colour of the uniforms of the members of the first class is white; that of the second class, red or scarlet; of the third, yellow; of the fourth, green; of the fifth, chocolate; of the sixth, grey; of the seventh, dark blue. but so far i have seen no white uniforms, and only a few scarlet. i saw several yellow uniforms to-day, but the most common were the green uniforms of the fourth class and the chocolate uniforms of the fifth class, to which the skilled artisans belong. greys and dark blues were also fairly numerous; but what surprised me most of all was the small number of people to be seen in the streets. i must ask sheep for the explanation of this. promptly at nine o'clock next morning sub-conductor of foreign observers sheep made his appearance at the hotel, and we began our tour of the public buildings. he took me first to the 'import-food-hall,' which stood alongside the railway on the outskirts of the town near the industrial quarter. it was a great warehouse through which all the food brought into the town has to pass before it is allowed to be sold in the markets and shops. (the sole exception is milk, which is distributed by municipal servants.) the building was very extensive and several stories high. the two ends were open for the passage of railway wagons. the architecture was not without a certain coarse dignity. the arches were decorated in romanesque style, and the whole front facing the street was covered with rude sculptures in high relief of scenes connected with the production of food. the interior walls were covered with frescoes depicting similar scenes. conductor sheep grew almost enthusiastic over this exhibition of meccanian art. all these decorations, he said, had been executed by the students of the bridgetown art school. i was not altogether surprised to hear this; there was something so very naïve and obvious about the whole idea. we next saw the municipal slaughter-houses, which were almost adjoining. inspector sheep informed me how many minutes it took to kill and prepare for the meat market a given number of cattle, sheep or pigs. he dilated on the perfection of the machinery for every process, and assured me that not a single drop of blood was wasted. the amount of every particular kind of animal food required for each week in the year was ascertained by the sociological department, and consequently there was no difficulty in regulating the supply. the perfection of the methods of preserving meat also effected some economy. conductor sheep assured me that the meccanian slaughter-houses had become the models for all the civilised world, and that a former director of the bridgetown slaughter-houses had been lent to a foreign government to organise the system of technical instruction for butchers. the five markets were in five different parts of the city. they served to distribute perishable foods only, which were not allowed to be sold in the ordinary shops. all women in the fifth, sixth and seventh classes were obliged to do their marketing in person. each person was obliged to deal solely with one dealer for a year at a time, and to attend at the market at a particular hour, so that there should be no congestion and no waste of time on the part of the dealers. this, i suppose, explains the wonderful orderliness of these markets. there was no gossiping or chaffering. whether the people enjoy this arrangement is a matter upon which sheep did not enlighten me. he said it had been calculated by the time department that an economy of per cent had been effected in the time spent upon the daily purchase of food since the introduction of the modern market system. foods that are not perishable are sold in the shops, and as regards certain articles there is the same system of choosing each year the shop at which one buys a particular article, whilst as regards others trade is free. the housewife must buy her bread always from the same baker; but things like mustard, spices, coffee or preserved food may be bought at any shop. the sale of drink is regulated in a different way. the three lowest classes are not allowed to keep drink in their houses; but as the favourite national drink is a mild kind of beer which can be got in any restaurant, there is no apparent hardship in this regulation. the way in which excess is checked is very curious. the weekly budgets of every family, in all classes below the fourth, are checked by the authorities--by which department i do not know--and if the amount spent on drink exceeds a certain sum per head, a fine is inflicted and the offender warned. if the offence is persisted in, the offender is forbidden to buy any drink for a specified period. one might suppose that such regulations could easily be evaded; so they could in most countries, but not in meccania. everything is so perfectly scrutinised that no evasion seems possible--at any rate as far as the three lowest classes are concerned. "this scrutiny of family budgets," i remarked, "is it not resented and even evaded?" "i do not think it is resented," answered sheep, "but it certainly cannot be evaded. why should it be resented? the facts are only known to the officials, and in any case they would be required by the sociological department. how else could it obtain the necessary data for its researches? every woman is taught how to keep her household accounts in the proper manner, and she sends in her account book at the end of each quarter. that is necessary for many reasons. no," he concluded, as if the idea had not occurred to him before, "i have never heard of any complaints. only those would wish to complain who desired to evade some salutary regulation; consequently there is no reason why, out of regard for them, we should interfere with a practice that has so many advantages." "what are the advantages?" i asked, for so far i had seen no advantage except the possibility of checking expenditure upon drink. "the use of these accurate family budgets and household accounts to the sociological department is simply indispensable. to the department of trade and industry also they are very valuable. in fact, you may take it that all our meccanian institutions are so arranged that they serve several purposes and fit in with the whole meccanian scheme of life." incidentally, in connection with the family expenditure on food, he mentioned model dietaries. i was curious to know what these were. he explained that there were three recognised kinds of dietaries. first, the food department prescribed model dietaries for families of the three lowest classes in normal health. secondly, when each person was medically examined--and this happened at least once a year--the medical officer might prescribe a dietary for the individual; and lastly, if a person were positively ill, it would be the duty of the medical officer in charge of the case to prescribe a dietary. i was going to ask some further questions about the medical department, when sheep reminded me that we had still several other municipal departments to visit before we came to the medical department, and that we must not depart from the programme of our tour. the department for the inspection and regulation of clothing came next. i was rather surprised that this should be a municipal institution, seeing that the regulations were uniform for the whole country. sheep explained that it was just because the regulations were so perfectly uniform that the function of administering them could be entrusted to the municipality. the department was quite a small affair. only about ten inspectors were required for bridgetown. their duties were to see that no person wore any uniform to which he was not entitled, and that on ceremonial occasions full-dress uniform was worn. it was quite easy to ensure that a uniform of the right colour was worn, but in addition to that the various grades of each class were indicated by the various facings, stripes, buttons and badges, as were also the different occupations within each class and grade. the penalties for wearing unauthorised decorations were very heavy, and infringements were very rare, as detection was almost certain. "i should have thought that the whole clothing trade would be in the hands of the government," i remarked. "that is not part of our system," replied sheep. "the production of all the kinds of cloth for all the uniforms is so standardised that there would be no advantage in the state taking over the mere manufacture. each person chooses his tailor from a small panel. naturally the members of the higher classes have the best tailors. in fact, a tailor of the first grade would not be allowed to make suits for the three lowest classes; it would be a waste of talent." "and what about the women's clothing?" i inquired. "they do not wear uniforms. is their dress regulated in any way?" "only in two ways," answered sheep. "every woman must wear, on the front upper part of each of her outdoor dresses, a piece of cloth of the regulation pattern and colour, to indicate the class to which she belongs. also the expenditure on dress is limited according to the social class." when we came to the offices of the department of health, sheep said i had made a grave error of judgment in choosing tour no. --the tour for a single week only--as there was enough to occupy us for a week in the department of health alone. it included the sanitation section, the medical inspection section, the medical dispensing section, the medical attendance section, the hospital section, the section of the special medical board, the marriages and births section, the post-mortem section, and the buildings section. after this i was not surprised to hear that over a thousand persons were employed in the health department, in addition to the workmen--chiefly of the sixth and seventh classes--who did the actual menial work of keeping the sewage system in order and keeping the streets clean. i might write a whole chapter on the health department, but it will perhaps suffice if i mention the most singular features. inspectors visit every house twice a year to see that each house and flat is kept in a sanitary condition. each person is medically examined once a year--this is in addition to the system of medical inspection in schools--and whatever treatment is prescribed he must submit to. "what happens," i asked, "if a person declines to submit to treatment?" "he would be taken before the special medical board," answered sheep. "and what is that?" i asked. "we shall come to that presently," said sheep reprovingly. he went on to explain that the dispensing section treated all persons of the three lowest classes who did not require to go into a hospital. the doctors were municipal officials and there was no choice of doctor. "why do you not allow choice of doctor?" i asked. "that would interfere with the proper classification of the diseases," he answered. "as soon as a complaint is diagnosed, it is handed over to the appropriate doctor for treatment. the same applies to the medical attendance section; but persons in the three lowest classes are not generally attended in their homes, they are brought into the hospitals. the chief work of the medical attendance section is in connection with births; consequently we employ a number of women doctor-nurses in this section. now we come to the special medical board. it is a sort of higher general staff. it collates the results of the work of all the other medical sections, and is responsible for the annual report. it receives the instructions of the central medical department of meccania, and sees that these are carried out. it directs special investigations in all abnormal cases. in the case of so-called incurable diseases it pronounces its decree as to whether the case is incurable, and in that event it authorises the death of the patient." "authorises the death of the patient?" i said. "without the patient's consent?" "the patient can hardly be the best judge," said sheep. "what about the relatives then?" i asked. "the relatives have no voice in the matter," said sheep. "that sounds very drastic," i remarked; "and what about the sort of case you mentioned a little while ago?" "the case _you_ mentioned?" said sheep. "i do not remember any such cases, but if one occurred it would be dealt with under section of the medical regulations, which prescribes that in case of persistent disregard of the instructions of the authorised medical officer, with the consent of the special medical board, the person guilty of such refusal is to be removed to an asylum for mental abnormality." "a lunatic asylum!" "we do not call them lunatic asylums. the term is obsolete; it does not accord with our system of classification." sheep next dealt with the marriages and births section. this is in some ways the most remarkable of all. it appears that a licence to marry is issued to all persons in normal health, the department prescribing the number of children to be born within each period of five years. persons classified as abnormal are specially dealt with, and on this subject sheep referred me to the report of the central medical department, which i could obtain in the great meccanian library at mecco. the post-mortem section carried out an examination in all cases of interest to the health department before cremation. i asked what the buildings section was. it seems to be a sort of link between the architectural department and the health department, and supervises the building regulations from the hygienic point of view. the next day conductor sheep called punctually at nine o'clock to continue the tour of observation. we had come to the end of one section, as marked out in the mind of the 'authority,' and were now to begin another, namely, the institutions controlled partly by the city and partly by the state. i suspect that the control by the city is a good deal of a fiction, for the state has power to take over any of the functions that are not performed to its satisfaction. we began with the police. the office of the central police station was in the building where i had first been inspected, examined and instructed, on my arrival. it was a large building for a town of the size of bridgetown, and seemed full of officials, police officers and clerks. yet i had noticed very few police officers in the streets. i remarked upon this to my guide. i said, "in the country i have just come from they have a great many police officers in the streets of the large towns, but very few other officials connected with the police service. here, apparently, you have few police officers in the streets, but a great many other officials connected with the police service. can you explain that?" "yes," he said; "i have heard something of the kind before, and although i have never been abroad to other countries, the books in our libraries describe the police systems so fully that i think i can answer your question. the police in luniland--so i am informed--do little else besides keeping order in the streets and following up criminals." "exactly," i remarked. "what else should they do?" "here," said sheep, "these are the least of their functions. we employ fewer police in keeping order in the streets, and in detecting criminals, than any country in the world. crime and disorder are almost unknown in meccania. our people are so well brought up that they have little desire to commit crime. those who do show any propensity in that direction are deported to criminal colonies and give very little trouble afterwards. besides, there is, after all, very little opportunity to commit crime, as you would soon discover if you attempted to do so." "i can well believe that," i said. "but what, then, do your police find to do?" "speaking generally, their function is to see that the regulations devised for the good of the state are properly carried out." "and those regulations are rather numerous, i suppose?" "undoubtedly. as they affect every department of life, there are many occasions upon which the assistance of the police is necessary in order that people shall not make mistakes," said sheep. "but," i said, "i thought that the officials of each department of state attended to so many things that there would be little left for the police. for instance," i added, "the inspectors of food and clothing, of buildings, of public health, of education, and so forth." "yes, yes," answered conductor sheep; "but suppose some matter arises which may belong to several departments; the citizen needs guidance. quite apart from that, the police watch over the life of the people from the point of view of the general public interest. they collect information from all the other departments. suppose a man neglects his attendance at the theatre: the amusement authority must report the case to the police. similarly with all the other departments. suppose, for instance, a man were to try to make an unauthorised journey, or to remain absent from work without a medical certificate, or to exceed his proper expenditure and get into debt, or try to pass himself off as a member of a higher class: in such cases it is the police who take cognisance of the offence. then there is the annual report and certificate of conduct with respect to every citizen. how could this be filled up without exact information? all this involves a great deal of work." "indeed it must," i replied. "you see, then, that our police are not idle," said sheep triumphantly. "indeed i do," i replied. after this enlightening explanation the offices of the police department no longer presented a mystery to me. i looked with awe at the hundreds of volumes of police reports in the official library of the bridgetown police office, and wondered what the central police office library would be like; for i was told it contained a copy of every police report of every district in the country, as well as those for the great capital mecco. when we came to the department of education, which was one of the institutions managed by the state and the municipality, conductor sheep regretted once more that i had chosen tour no. . we could only spare half a day at most for this important department. here, again, i can only note a few of the unusual features of the system, as explained to me by my encyclopædic conductor. we saw no schools except on the outside, but i noticed the children going to and from school. they all marched in step, in twos or fours, like little soldiers. they did not race about the streets or play games. wherever they started from they fell into step with their comrades and carried their satchels like knapsacks. the state inspectors, it seems, decide what is to be taught, and how it is to be taught: the local officers carry out their instructions and classify the children. in the office of the department there is a sort of museum of school apparatus in connection with the stores section. the books are all prescribed by the central department, and no others may be used. the children of the sixth and seventh classes attend common schools in order to get the benefit of better classification. there are no schools in bridgetown for the members of the first and second classes. they go elsewhere, but the other classes have separate schools. the children of the sixth and seventh classes stay at school until they are twelve; but their instruction is largely of a practical and manual kind. those of the fifth class remain until fifteen, and are trained to be skilled workmen. after fifteen they receive instruction in science in connection with their several occupations. closely connected with the system of education, for the three lowest classes, is the juvenile bureau of industry. this is controlled by the department of industry and commerce. no young person in meccania can take up any employment without a certificate granted by this department. the officials of the juvenile bureau, after consultation with the officials of the education department, decide what occupation boys and girls may enter, and no employer is allowed to engage a boy or girl except through the medium of the bureau. "what about the inclinations of the boys and girls, and the desires of their parents?" i remarked to sheep. "the inclinations of the boys?" said sheep, more puzzled than surprised. "in what way does that affect the question?" "a boy might like to be a cabinet-maker rather than a metal worker, or a mason rather than a clerk," i said. "but such a question as that will have been determined while the boy is at school." "then when does he get the chance of choosing an occupation?" "it will depend upon his abilities for different kinds of work. and he can hardly be the judge of that himself," added sheep. "where do the parents come in, then?" i asked. "the parents will naturally encourage the boy to do his best at school. and after all, does it matter much whether a boy is a mason or a carpenter? in any case, the number of carpenters will be decided each year, and even each quarter, by the department of industry. it is not as if it would alter his class, either; he will be in the same class unless he is very exceptional and passes the state examination for promotion." i saw it would be useless to suggest any other ideas to sub-conductor sheep, who seemed constitutionally unable to understand any objections to the official point of view. i could hardly hope to learn much about education in a single afternoon. all we saw was the mere machinery from the outside, and not even a great deal of that. i gathered that there was a most minute classification, with all sorts of subdivisions, of the children according to their capacities and future occupations. there were sufficient local inspectors to provide one for each large school, and their chief business was to conduct psychological experiments and apply all sorts of tests of intelligence in order to introduce improved methods of instruction. the inspectors themselves were all specialists. one was an expert on mental fatigue, another devoted himself to classifying the teachers according to their aptitude for teaching particular subjects, another specialised in organising profitable recreative employments for different grades of children; another superintended all juvenile amusements. sheep showed me the exterior of a large psychological laboratory attached to the technical college. bridgetown was too small to have a university of its own, but it had two large 'secondary' schools for pupils in the third and fourth classes, and an enormous technical school for the boys of the fifth class. it was fitted up like a series of workshops for all sorts of trades, with class-rooms and laboratories attached. sheep asserted that it was through these schools that the meccanian artisans had become by far the most efficient workmen in the whole world. i had not time to ask many questions about the provision for games or physical training, but from something sheep said i inferred that whilst games had been reduced to a minimum the experts had devised a system of physical training which satisfied all meccanian requirements. sheep strongly advised me to study meccanian education in mecco if i ever got there. all true meccanians recognised, he said, that the whole national greatness of meccania rested on their system of education. no doubt statesmen had done much, but the ground had been prepared by the schoolmasters, and the statesmen themselves had been brought up in the meccanian system of education. he himself, he confided, was the son of a meccanian village schoolmaster. why then, i asked, begging his pardon if the question were indiscreet, did he wear the chocolate button which indicated that he had once been a member of the fifth class? "when the sevenfold classification was introduced," he answered, "village schoolmasters who were not graduates were in the fifth class, and i was in the fifth class until i was thirty and gained my promotion in the police department." * * * * * tour no. made no provision for studying the lighter side of life in bridgetown. sheep said that practically all forms of amusement were controlled by a section of the department of culture, but that the organising inspectors of private leisure were appointed locally, subject to the approval of the central department. "organising inspectors of private leisure!" i exclaimed. "what an extraordinary institution!" "in what way extraordinary?" said sheep. "i am sure they do not exist in any other country," i replied. "perhaps not," replied sheep; "but, then, our culture is not modelled on that of any other country. possibly other countries will discover the use of such officials when they have developed a better system of education." "but what is their function?" i asked. "any person who has more than an hour a day unaccounted for, after doing his day's work, and fulfilling all his other duties, is required to submit a scheme every half-year, showing what cultural pursuit he proposes to follow. the inspectors will assist him with expert advice and will see that he carries out his programme." "is there nothing left unregulated in this country?" i asked in as innocent a tone as i could command. "that is a very interesting question," replied sheep. "if you will consult the _forty-eighth annual report of the ministry of culture_ you will find an interesting diagram, or map, showing the whole field of meccanian life and the stages in its organisation. one by one all the spheres of life have been gradually organised. if you examine the diagram showing the present state of meccania, and compare it with similar maps for other countries, you will perceive how very much more advanced our culture is than that of any other country." "and what regions still remain for the department of culture to conquer?" "an investigation is going on at the present time into the interesting question of individual taste," he answered. "it is being conducted by the Æsthetic section of the department, but they have not yet reported." where everything is so completely regulated it is not surprising to find that poverty, as understood in many countries, no longer exists; but i was not quite clear how it was provided against. once more sheep was ready with a complete explanation. "our laws," he said, "do not permit anyone to remain idle, and the regulation of the expenditure of the lower classes secures them against improvidence. besides, as they contribute to insurance funds, they receive a pension in old age, and allowances during sickness or disablement. poverty is therefore impossible." "apparently, then," i remarked, "if the labouring classes will surrender their liberty to the state they can be relieved of all danger of poverty." "i do not understand what you mean by surrendering their liberty," replied sheep. "in many other countries," i said, "people desire to please themselves what they will work at, and indeed whether they will work at all. they like to have the liberty of striking, for instance, against wages or other conditions that do not satisfy them, and i have heard people in such countries declare that they would rather preserve their freedom in such things than be secured even against poverty." "it is no part of my business to discuss such questions," replied sheep, "but i have never heard such a question even discussed in meccania. the foundation of meccanian law is that the private individual has no rights against the state." * * * * * it was towards the end of the week that i mentioned to conductor sheep that i had had great difficulty in procuring a copy of the local newspaper published in bridgetown; in fact, i had not managed to get a sight of it. sheep explained that tour no. did not allow time for the study of local social life in such detail as to provide a place for such a thing, but he was good enough to procure me a sight of the _bridgetown weekly gazette_. it was well printed on good paper, but it was more like an official municipal record than a newspaper. it contained brief reports of municipal committee meetings, announcements as to forthcoming examinations, lists of persons who had passed various examinations; and statistics of births, deaths and marriages. the figures for the births were given in an unusual form. there were fifty first-born boys, forty-five first-born girls; forty-seven second-born boys, forty-eight second-born girls; and so on down to three fourteenth-born boys and seven fourteenth-born girls. there were statistics of accidents, with brief details. there was a list of small fines inflicted for various infringements of regulations, and announcements of forthcoming legal cases. the only advertisements were a few concerning sales of property and household goods. it was altogether the driest document calling itself a newspaper i had ever seen. i tried to draw sheep on the subject of newspapers in general, but he seemed rather annoyed. "i procured this _gazette_," he said, "as a concession to your curiosity, although it forms no part of our programme, and now you wish to go into a subject which is totally unconnected with our tour. the question is of historical interest only, and if you stay in meccania long enough to study the historical development of our culture, you will study the history of the press in its proper place and connection. i will, however, add for your present information that the central government issues a complete series of gazettes, which serve the same purpose for the country as a whole as the _bridgetown weekly gazette_ for his locality." with that the subject was closed for the present. * * * * * although i had now been here nearly a whole week, i had not yet had an opportunity of strolling round to see anything that might catch my fancy. everything had been done according to the programme. nevertheless, i had noticed a few things in the course of my daily tours which conductor sheep did not think worthy of comment. i got very tired of his guide-book style of explanation. bridgetown was hardly worth the painful and systematic study which he compelled me to give to it, and i decided to go straight on to the capital in a few days. i saw no drunken people--the regulations do not permit drunkenness. i saw no loose women in the streets. on this subject i can get no information from sheep, but i suspect there is something to learn. there were no advertisement hoardings. i must confess i rather missed them; they may be ugly, but they are often interesting. the shops were very dull. nothing was displayed in the windows to tempt people to buy, and there were no people about the streets shopping in a casual way. people must know what they want, and go to the shops which specialise in the particular article. there were large stores; but even these were so divided into departments that there was little fun in shopping. indiscriminate and casual shopping is distinctly discouraged by the state. advertising is restricted to trade journals, except for a little in the miserable local gazettes. only those forms of production which the state considers necessary are allowed to expand indefinitely; all the others are regulated. consequently there are none of the incitements to expenditure which exist in most modern countries. i have never been a great shopper, but i could not have believed how much duller life was without the attractions of the shop windows and the stores, if i had not been here. for instance, i found that i had very foolishly come without a pair of bedroom slippers, so i wanted to buy a pair. i looked round naturally for a shop where i should see such things displayed in the window, but i had to go to the slipper section of the boot department of a store, choose from an illustrated catalogue the quality i wanted, and take whatever they had. i thought i should have seen book-shops displaying all the most recent books and publications. in other countries i found it possible to pick up a great deal of information by noticing the kind of literature exposed for sale. booksellers' shops have always an attraction for me. to my amazement the book-sellers' shops have disappeared from meccania, yet i know from my own reading they used to be quite a feature in the life of the old meccania. the censorship of the printing trade has apparently revolutionised the book-selling business. at any rate, the only place in which i could get to see books in bridgetown was at a sort of office in the technical college. it seems that the publications department of the ministry of culture--i think that is the right name--has in every town a public room, fitted up like a small library, in which all the current books published are exhibited for six months at a time. this is really a very useful institution in itself, but the books exhibited were not on sale, so all the pleasurable excitement of a book-_shop_ was wanting. to _buy_ books one must order them through an authorised book-agent, who has a sort of monopoly. i wondered why such an extraordinary arrangement should have been made, but when i got the explanation from sheep it was quite consistent with the general scheme of things here. i asked him whether the government discouraged the public from reading. he said, "not at all. our people are great readers; they do not need any incitements to read. they consult the lists of new books and come to the book-room to see any book in which they are interested. then they decide whether to buy it or to borrow it from the public library." "but why do you not permit people to open book-shops?" "it would be a sheer waste," replied sheep. "one book-agent can supply all the books required in bridgetown without keeping a stock of thousands of books that would never be wanted or not wanted for years. apply the same principle to other towns and you will see that by keeping only one central stock we effect a great economy." i pointed out that in other countries the publishers kept the stock and supplied booksellers with what they wanted, allowing them to keep a few copies for the immediate sales; and that consequently this was almost as economical an arrangement. "but," said sheep, "we have no publishers in your sense of the word. when a book is written it cannot be printed without the sanction of the government censors, who decide how many copies in the first instance are to be issued. the publishers are really printers who arrange the form and style of the book, but undertake no responsibility such as publishers in other countries undertake." "then the government are really the publishers?" i suggested. "well," answered sheep, "the government _are_ the publishers of most books. that is to say, the number of government publications exceeds the number of private publications, but as regards the latter the publishers or printers assume the financial responsibility for the sales but are insured by the government against loss, so long as they comply with the conditions imposed by the publishing department." but i have digressed too far. my interest in book-shops must be my excuse. not only were there no casual shoppers, but i saw no one sauntering about the streets. everybody seemed to have an object in view. there were no children playing. the children were either marching in step to or from school, or they were performing some kind of organised game--if it could be called a game--under the supervision of a teacher or guardian. the workmen going to their work, or returning, also marched in step like soldiers. the women going to market went at the appointed time and took their place in a little queue if there were more than three or four in front of them. at the theatre there was no crowd outside; every one had his numbered seat and went to it at the minute. each man's ticket has printed on it the day of his attendance, the number of the seat and the exact time at which he must be present. there are no such things here as football matches or other sports witnessed by crowds. the men attend military drill once a week, some on sundays and some on saturdays. this is in addition to their annual periods of drill. the only custom which survives from old times, resembling the customs of other countries, is that of sitting in the evening in gardens attached to restaurants. here the people listen to bands of music whilst they drink a thin kind of liquor and smoke cigars. the sense of orderliness is almost oppressive. every hour of the day has been mapped out for me, except when i have been writing my journal in the evening. the day before yesterday we began to visit the state institutions. the chief of these is the post office, but the most remarkable is the time department. the post office is very much like any other post office, except that it has a censor's department. all letters are actually read by the clerks in the censor's department. sheep gave me a curious explanation in justification of this extraordinary institution. put briefly, his case was this. the state could not, with due regard to the interests of the community, allow _all_ letters to go uncensored. all sorts of mischief might be hatched. if the state censors any letters it cannot logically stop short of censoring all. as to the labour involved, this pays for itself. for the public, knowing that its letters are liable to be read, does not indulge in unnecessary letter-writing. thus time is saved, which can be devoted to more useful purposes. the statistics compiled by the time department have completely proved that the labour of the fifty clerks employed in censoring the letters effects a saving of more than four times the amount of time which would otherwise be spent by the public in useless letter-writing. this time department is the most extraordinary institution of all i have seen so far. every person over ten years of age is required to fill in a diary-form each week showing the time spent daily on every separate operation. the diary form is a stout double sheet of foolscap providing four pages altogether. the first page is stamped with the name, address, and other particulars of the 'diarist.' the two open pages are ruled into small oblong spaces, one for each half-hour of the week. in these spaces brief entries are made, such as 'breakfast,' 'tram-journey,' 'conversation,' 'sleeping,' etc. this part of the diary thus gives a chronological account of each day in successive half-hours. on the back page is printed a long list of about categories in three columns. i noticed such headings as these:--sleep, dressing, meals (subdivided), travelling (conveyance specified), employment (specified under many heads), study (specified), reading, letter-writing, interviews with officials, attendance at theatre, concert, church, museum, etc., conversation (subdivided into family, friends, others), other amusements (specified), public ceremonies, drill, etc. against each of these headings the total number of minutes spent during the week is recorded. the information derived from these diaries is scrutinised and worked up into elaborate reports and statistics for the benefit of the sociological department, the police department, the department of trade and industry, and so forth. i hope to learn more of this most remarkable feature of meccanian life when i reach the capital, where the central time department carries on its work. i have good reason to remember the time department, for on sunday morning after breakfast i was sent for by the official who manages the hotel for foreign observers. he told me rather curtly that he had just received a telephone message from the local office of the time department inquiring whether i had sent in my diary, as it had not been received. i told him i knew nothing about such a thing. he said, "nonsense. you have had the usual instructions given to all foreigners. look among your papers." i did look, and there, sure enough, was a sheet of instructions and three blank forms. he said, "you had better fill it up at once." so i went to the writing-room and began. but i could not remember what had happened at all clearly enough to fill the half of it in. at the end of an hour the hotel manager came to ask what i was doing all this time. i explained my difficulty. he asked if i had not kept a pocket-diary: it was indispensable. i suddenly remembered the pocket-diary sheep had procured for me; but i had forgotten to make use of it. what a fool i was! we spent the next hour doctoring up the diary and then sent it in. he told me i should have to pay a fine of ten shillings for the delay. i did not mind that, but the next day i received a visit from an official from the time department, who came with conductor sheep to point out that there were many errors in the diary. the times for a number of items did not tally with those in conductor sheep's diary, although we had been together the whole week from a.m. to p.m. each day. i should have to make out a fresh diary with the assistance of conductor sheep, and pay a fine of £ . the charge of falsifying my diary would not be made, in view of my colossal ignorance; the charge would be reduced to that of negligence to verify particulars. conductor sheep was rather disagreeable about the affair, as it might be considered to reflect on him. i certainly thought he might have taken the trouble to instruct me more fully upon such a momentous business. however, as i was on the point of leaving bridgetown for mecco, i was not much disturbed by his ill-humour. chapter iii introduction to mecco it is a week since i arrived in mecco, and for the first time i have leisure to write up my journal. the life of a foreign observer is very strenuous, for the meccanian method of seeing everything according to programme and timetable is very fatiguing. already i feel that a holiday will be welcome at the end of my tour. in the whole of this vast city of mecco there is nothing casual, nothing incidental, nothing unprovided for. although i am only a spectator, i feel like a little cog in the huge complicated machine. the machine seems to absorb everything; the individual counts for nothing. that is perhaps the reason why it seems impossible to get into contact with any human being other than the officials who instruct me and conduct me every moment of my time. i begin to wonder whether the individual meccanian really exists, or whether his personality is merged in the official personality which is all that is visible to me. to resume the record of my experiences. before i left bridgetown, sub-conductor sheep repeated his opinion that in choosing tour no. , which allowed only a week for the study of an important town, i had revealed my incapacity as a foreign observer. he evidently put me down in one of the pigeon-holes of his mind as a mere tourist--a creature almost extinct in meccania. the day before my departure i paid the bill for his services, which were reckoned at the modest rate of s. a day. my hotel bill was also discharged, and i proceeded to my final interview with the police authorities. i had to submit to another disinfecting bath, but apart from this the medical examination was a formality. at the police office, inspector of foreigners stiff was very sarcastic at my expense. "so you think there is nothing more to be learnt in bridgetown," he remarked. "it is not more than ten days since you left luniland, and you think yourself qualified to proceed to the very centre of our national culture. evidently your stay in luniland has not improved whatever powers of appreciation you may have possessed; but that is what one would expect from that country of amateurs, charlatans and cranks. you have seen nothing of our museum, our art collections, our libraries: you are not interested in such things. how, then, do you suppose you will be able to appreciate what you will find in mecco? we do our best to assist all foreign observers, but it is rather a waste of time to provide an experienced and qualified conductor for persons who are so clever that they only require a week to learn all there is to know in a whole city. however," he added, "the law with respect to foreign observers does not forbid you to proceed to mecco. you have your medical certificate, i suppose, to show that you are still disease-free?" i produced it. "have you notified the railway authority of your intention to travel to mecco?" i had not done so. "turn to paragraph of your instructions and you will see that a day's notice must be given," he said brusquely. "you will have to stay another night in the hotel and travel to-morrow. good morning." sheep accompanied me to the booking-office at the station, where i filled up a form of application. when this was presented to the clerk in charge, a fussy little old man in a chocolate-coloured uniform, he turned to sheep in great excitement and whispered something which i did not hear. then he turned indignantly to me and said, "but you are not an ambassador, nor even a government agent." "no," i said; "i am merely national councillor ming." "so i see," he answered testily, "but why do you wish to travel first class?" (i had filled in the word "first" in the space for "class.") "are you not aware," he said, "that only foreigners who are ambassadors are ever permitted to travel first class? you will travel third class in the compartment for foreign observers." next morning i went to the station in good time. an attendant from the hotel brought my bags over and handed them to one of the porters. i did not see them again until i found them in the hotel at mecco. i was handed over to an official at the station. this person looked at my travel-permit and informed me curtly that i had arrived too early. i said, "oh, that does not matter. i can look about the station until the train starts." "that is not permitted," he said. "you will go to the waiting-room--that is what a waiting-room is for. your train will come in a quarter of an hour before it is due to leave, and you will then take your seat, coach third class, compartment iv., seat no. ." so i was taken to the waiting-room. apparently i did not miss much of interest, for the station was one of the quietest and dullest i have ever seen. there is very little traffic across the frontier, so that bridgetown station is a sort of dead-end. only three passenger trains a day go direct to mecco, and these are by no means crowded. i have since learnt that the restrictions on travelling in all parts of meccania are part of the general policy designed to keep down unnecessary forms of expenditure to a minimum. the train was due to leave at ten o'clock. at a quarter before ten exactly, as i looked through the window screen i saw it gliding along the platform into the bay. a bell rang, and my porter came to take me to my place. as i stepped across the platform i saw about a hundred people preparing to get into the train. where they had been up to this moment i do not know. there was no bustle. each person took his place as if he had been taking his seat in a concert-room. there was no examination of tickets. every one had booked his seat the day before, and every seat was numbered. the train was made up of five passenger coaches, a post-office van, a baggage wagon, two wagons for perishable goods and a special coach for soldiers (privates). one of the passenger coaches painted red bore a large roman ii., indicating that it was a second class coach, another painted yellow was marked iii., two others painted green were marked iv., and another painted chocolate was marked v. there was no first class coach on this train, as there were no persons of the first class travelling by it. neither, apparently, were there any sixth or seventh class passengers. every one travelling wore a sort of uniform overcoat of the same colour as that of the coach in which he travelled. it was only later that i was able to recognise readily and without confusion the colours appropriate to the seven social classes, but i did notice that the fifth class wore chocolate, the fourth green, the third yellow and the second red or scarlet. i was taken to a compartment temporarily set apart for foreigners in the third class coach. there was still ten minutes before the train started, so i looked out of the window and saw the porters and minor officials storing the luggage, putting in the mails, and so forth. the perishable goods had already been loaded, in a siding i suppose. no one was permitted on the platform except the railway servants, so that the station looked almost deserted. presently the stationmaster, dressed in a green uniform with chocolate facings and a bit of gold braid on his cap, came on the platform and looked at his watch. then, exactly as the big bell of the station clock began to strike ten, he waved a signal and the train glided out. in a few minutes we were going at miles an hour, and in less than a quarter of an hour the speed increased to . the track was smooth, but i began to feel dizzy when i looked out of the window. there was little to be seen, for every now and then we passed between embankments that shut out the view. i pulled down the blinds, turned on the light and tried to read. in a short time i had almost forgotten the immense speed at which we were travelling. i had previously learnt that if i went to mecco by the express i should see nothing of the country, and had consequently proposed to travel by a stopping train, perhaps breaking my journey a few times. but when i mentioned this to sheep he said it would be impossible. i could not stop at any place to make a stay of less than three days, and each of the places i stopped at would have to be notified. i must either go direct to mecco, or to some other city. so here i was, almost flying to mecco. after about an hour, one of the guards came in to see that everything was in order. he wore a chocolate uniform, with a number of stripes and other symbols to indicate his particular grade, occupation and years of service. after stamping my ticket he grinned good-humouredly for a meccanian, and said, "so you are going to see the wonders of our wonderful mecco. lucky man! there is nothing like it anywhere in the world." "indeed," i said, "you have travelled abroad a good deal, then?" "oh no. i have never been out of meccania, thank god!" "what makes you think there is nothing like it, then, in any other country?" i asked. "oh, the wide streets, the buildings, the gardens, the monuments, the uniforms, the music, everything--it is c-o-l-o-s-s-a-l! when you have seen the great monument, the statue of prince mechow! there is nothing like it anywhere. you will see! and you must not miss the memorial museum of prince mechow! i tell you it is a privilege to live in mecco. but i must not gossip," he said, as if half ashamed; "i have many duties," and off he went. towards the end of the journey, which lasted a little over two hours, he looked in again and said, "you must not leave mecco until you have seen the great festival on prince mechow's birthday." i promised to remember it. as we drew near to mecco the train slackened speed, and i could see, but only for a minute or two, a great city spread over a wide plain. there were domes and towers, steeples and pinnacles, huge masses of masonry suggesting great public buildings, then miles of houses and gardens and in the far distance warehouses and factories, but no smoke. we plunged into a tunnel and then emerged suddenly into a blaze of light. the train glided along the platform, and as i stepped out i could not help looking round in admiration at the truly magnificent arches and lofty dome of the great central station of mecco. the roof seemed to be made of some wonderful prismatic glass that radiated light everywhere. the ground was covered with immense tiles in coloured patterns, all as clean as if they had been washed and scrubbed that very hour. not a speck of dirt or smoke was to be seen. although hundreds of people were in the station, there was no bustle. no one sauntered about; every one seemed to go just where he had business. there was no scrambling for luggage or for cabs. no one was allowed to take luggage with him unless it could be carried in one hand; the rest was all registered and sent to its destination by the railway servants. only persons of the third or a higher class were allowed to use motor-cabs, and these were all ordered beforehand. the impression of orderliness was almost uncanny. as i reached the end of the platform i was touched on the shoulder by a man in the green uniform of the fourth class, decorated with several stripes and badges. "you are national councillor ming," he said, "and i am conductor of foreign observers prigge." he seemed to be in very good spirits, but this made him rather offensive than amiable. he treated me as if i were a sort of prisoner, or at any rate as if i were a very juvenile pupil. he said that as my bags had gone to the hotel for foreign observers we need not go there first, but could proceed straight to the police office. this was not far from the station and was a large building, almost like a fortress in front. viewed from the other side, as i afterwards saw, it was more like a set of offices with large windows. first of all i was taken to the police doctor, who spent nearly two hours upon a minute medical examination of me. the object of this could not have been to make sure that i was "disease-free," for i had been seen the day before by the police doctor at bridgetown. it could not have been for the purpose of identification, seeing that the authorities had obtained all the finger-prints and everything else they required, on my first arrival. i could only conclude that it was for the purpose of scientific research. i judged from the remarks made by doctor pincher in the course of his investigations that he was an expert anthropologist. he took samples of my hair, not only from my head, but from various parts of my body. he took a sample of my blood, and of the perspiration from several different glands. he even removed a small particle of skin, without any pain. he tested my eyesight, hearing and smell, my muscular powers, and all sorts of reactions to various stimuli. he informed me that i should require a pair of spectacles. i said i did not think it was worth while, as i had never yet experienced any discomfort. he replied that that made no difference, and proceeded to write out a prescription which he told me to take to a certain office, where, in a few days, i should be supplied with the necessary glasses. he then took a cast of my mouth and of my ears, and measured me in twenty different places. finally he gave me a drink of what appeared to be water, but which made me unconscious for several minutes. what he did during those few minutes i do not know, and he did not deign to inform me. as i left him he smiled--i suppose he thought he was being amiable--and said, "we do not have the pleasure of seeing a chinaman here every day." i was then taken to the office of chief inspector of foreigners pryer. he looked at me, asked a few trivial questions, and handed me over to a subordinate, lower inspector of foreigners bulley. this gentleman sat at a desk, and after noting the time and my name on a sort of tablet, took out a yellow form, foolscap size, upon which he proceeded to make notes of my answers to his questions. he put me through a catechism as to what i had seen in bridgetown. which of the local institutions had i visited, which of the national, which of the local and national? what had i learnt of the industrial and social economy of bridgetown? what had i learnt of the cultural institutions? had i made notes of my daily tours, and could i produce them? (luckily all my notes were in a language that inspector bulley could not read.) he then proceeded to discuss plans for my tours of observation in mecco. in the first place, how long did i propose to stay? i did not know. what did the length of my stay depend upon? i said it would largely depend upon my ability to stand the strain of it. i thought this would perhaps annoy him, but on the contrary it pleased him immensely. "good!" he said. "you are here to study the institutions of mecco, and you will stay as long as you have the strength to carry out your task." that was not what i meant, but i let it pass. "i think you had better select the preliminary six months' tour of observation," he said. "after that, you can begin the study of any special branch for which you are qualified, and for which you have an inclination; possibly industry, possibly art, possibly sociology, possibly education. we can decide that at the end of your preliminary period. you will have for your guide, for the first few weeks, lower conductor prigge. as, however, he has just been promoted to a higher rank in the police service, he will not be available after the first few weeks, but i will arrange for a suitable successor." he then presented me with several documents. "this," he said, handing me a thick notebook of some two hundred pages, "is the preliminary diary in which you make your notes in whatever form you like. there are four pages for each day. this is the formal diary for the time department, to be carefully entered up each week and posted before sunday morning. these are the sheets of instructions specially drawn up for foreign observers in mecco; you will notice they are all marked 'tour no. ,' and numbered consecutively. and this," handing me a thin metal plate about half the size of a postcard, "is your identification ticket." it was now the middle of the afternoon. i had had no luncheon, so when prigge came to take me off to the hotel, i proposed that we should have some tea. he demurred a little, as he did not drink tea, but he consented to have some coffee and a cigar in the smoke-room if i would drink my tea there. so we went on talking over our tea and coffee, and this is a specimen of the conversation:-- "you will understand," said prigge, "that everything depends upon your own energy and intelligence. if you apply yourself thoroughly to the work before you, you will learn more in a fortnight under my guidance than in a whole year in luniland. i have had a long experience in conducting foreigners. most of them have no idea how to observe, especially those who come from luniland. they want to roam about without any system or method at all. they want to see an art gallery one day, and a manufactory the next; or even on the same day. then they want to see a natural history museum on the same day as an archæological museum; they will fly from pottery to pictures, and from geology to botany. why, i was taking one of them through our great museum illustrative of the stages of culture, which is arranged in twenty successive centuries, and when we had reached the sixteenth he actually wanted to turn back to look at something in the twelfth!" "i think it will be a good thing," i said, "if i ask you questions as we go along, about matters that strike me. with all your knowledge you will be able to tell me many things outside the regular routine." "your proposal implies," he replied, "that i shall not give you the appropriate information in proper order. if you will follow my directions you will learn more than by any amount of aimless and desultory questioning. i have studied the principles of pedagogy as applied to conducting foreign observers, and i shall accommodate the presentation of new matter to the existing content of your mind, in so far as your mind has any definite content. you will not be precluded from asking questions, but whether i shall answer them will depend upon their relevance to the subject in hand." before we parted he gave me some general instructions. "for the first week," he said, "you will not be permitted to converse with other foreigners staying in the hotel. tonight you will be free to attend to your private affairs and prepare for tomorrow. we shall begin by a survey of the general geography of the city, and in the evening you will have permission to attend one of the lectures specially given to foreign observers by professor proser-toady on prince mechow, the re-founder of the meccanian state. professor proser-toady is the professor of historical culture in mecco, and this course of lectures is given periodically, so that foreigners may have no excuse for being ignorant of the true history of the rise and development of meccanian culture." so i spent the evening in writing letters, looking up my 'instructions,' and filling up my diary. for this day, interviews with officials accounted for at least five hours. next morning at nine o'clock conductor prigge turned up, looking more perky than ever. he had all the airs of a professor, a police officer, and a drill sergeant rolled into one. "our first business will be to study the map," he said. "to that we will give one and a half hours. after that we will ascend the look-out tower in the meteorological department and take a view of the city in the concrete. in the afternoon we will go by tram-car in three concentric circles, and in the evening you will attend professor proser-toady's lecture." we began with the maps. i remembered something of the maps of the old city from my geographical studies at home, and i remarked on the great changes, for hardly a vestige of the old city seemed to remain. prigge appeared rather pleased. "that is an instance of the superiority of our culture," he remarked. "all the other capitals of europe," he said, "still preserve the plan of the mediæval city, in the central parts at least. and the central parts are the most important. the authorities profess to have preserved them because of their historical interest. in reality it is because they do not know how to remodel them. against human stupidity the very gods fight in vain, but to intelligence all things are possible. any dolt can plan a new city, but we are the only people in europe who know how to remodel our old cities. now you will notice," he went on, "that we have preserved the old royal palace and several other important buildings. they do not interfere with the general plan. the large central ring, over a square mile in extent, is occupied by government buildings; and although there is a larger number than in all the european capitals put together, they are not crowded. the square of prince mechow, where the great statue stands, is the largest in europe. the ring outside that is occupied by cultural institutions, museums, art galleries, libraries, the university, the zoological gardens, the botanical gardens, and so forth. next comes a very much larger ring, occupied almost entirely by the residential quarters of the six social classes. (in mecco itself there are no members of the seventh class.) the whole presents a superficial resemblance to a great wheel." "where, then, is the manufacturing quarter and the business quarter?" "now where would you expect?" he asked, as if to show off his own cunning. "i saw a number of factories in the distance," i said. "yes," he answered, "the manufacturing quarter lies outside the ring and forms a sort of town by itself." "and the business quarter? that must be centrally placed," i said. "not necessarily. if you draw a line from the centre of mecco to the industrial quarter you will find the commercial quarter occupying a long rectangle between the second ring and the outer edge of the exterior circle. the commercial quarter thus cuts the residential ring on one side. the residential quarters of the sixth and fifth classes lie on each side of the commercial quarter and are therefore nearest to the industrial quarter. [illustration] "you will observe," he continued, "that we have no seventh class in mecco itself. we are an imperial city, and even the servants of the well-to-do belong to the sixth class. it is the greatest privilege of a meccanian citizen to live in mecco, and all the citizens of mecco are, so to speak, selected. none but loyal upholders of the national and imperial ideal are allowed the privilege of living here. it would not be right. there again, it is our superior national culture that has enabled us to realise such a plan. what government in europe could drive out of its capital all citizens who did not actively support the state?" "it is indeed a wonderful thing," i said. "but what becomes of such disloyal citizens when they are, shall i say, expelled or exiled?" "ah! you must not believe that _we_ have had to indulge in any policy of expulsion. you will not find any disloyal element anywhere in meccania. a few individuals you might find, but most of them are in lunatic asylums." "but surely," i said, "i have read in the histories of meccania, that formerly there were large numbers of people, among the working classes chiefly, who were, well, rather revolutionary in their ideas, and whom i should not have expected to see becoming loyal to such a state as the meccania of to-day." he smiled a very superior smile. "really," he said, "the ignorance of our country which foreigners betray is extraordinary. disloyalty to the state is found in every country _except_ meccania. we have got rid of it long ago by the simple process of education. if we find an odd individual who displays disloyal sentiments we regard him as a lunatic and treat him accordingly." "how?" i asked. "we put him in a lunatic asylum." "and your lunatic asylums? have you enough for the purpose?" i ventured to ask. conductor prigge luckily did not see the point. "in most cases," he said, "the threat is sufficient. we require very few lunatic asylums, just as we require few prisons. but we are wandering from the subject," he remarked; and he drew out a map of the residential quarters, coloured in white, red, yellow, green, chocolate and grey, the colours of the classes, omitting the seventh. i noticed that the parts coloured white, red and yellow covered about half the circle. i was going to put some questions to prigge as to the relative numbers of the classes, when he said, "i do not think you have yet grasped our sevenfold classification of the citizenship of meccania." "somewhat imperfectly, i am afraid," i replied. "then you have not grasped it," he said. "you cannot be said to grasp it if you are not perfectly clear about it. i will explain. attend! begin with the lowest. that is the logical order. the seventh class consists of persons of the lowest order of intelligence who cannot profit by the ordinary instruction in the schools beyond a very moderate degree. they are not very numerous. from the age of ten they are taught to do simple work of a purely mechanical kind, and when strong enough are set to do the most menial work which requires little intelligence. a few other persons, who have failed in life through their own fault, are relegated to this class as a punishment. "the sixth class corresponds to the unskilled labouring class of most foreign countries. they are recruited from the children who at twelve years of age show only average ability. they are then trained to do either simple manual work, or to act as servants in families below the second class. "the fifth is the largest class; it is larger than the sixth and seventh together. we require a very large number of skilled artisans and clerks in a subordinate capacity. consequently, we train all who are capable of profiting by a combination of theoretical and practical instruction until the age of fifteen, and even for some years after that, in industrial schools, where they study the practical aspects of mathematics and science. consequently, they are by far the most skilled artisan class in the world. we have no trouble in inducing them to apply themselves to study, for any member of the fifth class who failed to profit by the system of instruction provided for him would soon find himself in the sixth class, which enjoys much less in the shape of privileges and material well-being than the fifth. "the fourth class includes most of the bourgeoisie, the bulk of the officials and clergy, as well as the small group of professional people who are not officials. in detail it comprises tradesmen, managers of businesses and foremen in responsible positions. all these are in the industrial and commercial world. then come all civil servants below the first grade, all non-commissioned officers in the army and navy, all the clergy below the rank of bishops. the professional people i referred to are a few who have not been absorbed in the official class. we have no journalists in meccania, no doctors who are not in the state service, and no lawyers who are not officials." "then who _are_ these professional people?" i interrupted. "they are merely a handful of people, mostly possessed of small private means, who write books that are never published, or cultivate art, or music, or science. they are not good enough to be taken into the state service, and they are gradually disappearing altogether. "the third class," he resumed, "corresponds partly to the higher bourgeoisie of other countries, but it also includes several more important elements. it comprises the richer merchants and manufacturers, who must possess an income of at least £ a year; the first class of civil servants, the higher clergy, those university professors who have held their posts for ten years and are approved by the ministry of culture, landed proprietors who are district councillors and magistrates, and all fund-holders with an income of £ , a year. "the second class is the military class. it includes all officers, who must be of noble birth. a few of the highest civil servants are in this class, but they must have previously served as officers in the army or navy. "the first class is partly military and partly civil; but, except members of royal or ducal families, all in the first class have previously passed through the second. ambassadors are in the first class, but they have all served for a period as officers in the army. even the head of a department of state is not admitted to the first class unless he has previously been in the second class. "lastly, the relative numbers of the various classes are as follows: out of a total population of , , only about , are in the first class; , , are in the second; , , are in the third; , , are in the fourth; , , are in the fifth; , , are in the sixth; and the rest, nearly , , , in the seventh class. "all women take the rank of their fathers or their husbands, whichever is the higher; children take the rank of their parents until their sixteenth year. is that clear?" "quite clear," i replied, "except in one particular." "what is that?" "i take it that some, at any rate, pass from one class to another. by what means, for example, does a person who starts life, let us say in the fourth class, obtain admission to the third?" "we must take some particular category." "a business man, a small manufacturer who is highly successful, perhaps makes some valuable discovery which enriches him. how does he obtain admission to the third class?" "he must have an income of at least £ a year, and he must have performed some service to the state," answered prigge promptly. "and a civil servant?" "if he is promoted to the first grade he also is admitted to the third class, but this does not frequently happen." "then, on the whole, the children of those in each class respectively remain in the class in which they are born?" "that is so as a rule. the percentage has been worked out carefully by the statistical branch of the sociological department. about per cent of the seventh class enter the sixth, about per cent of the sixth enter the fifth, about per cent of the fifth enter the fourth, about per cent of the fourth enter the third. no one, strictly speaking, enters the second from the third, but as many of the men of the second class marry women in the third class, which is the rich class, the sons may enter the second class, if they are suitable as officers in the army. also, a number of the women of the second class marry men in the third class, and their sons also may enter the army." "it is a wonderful system," i ventured to observe. "it is simplicity itself," said prigge, "yet no other nation has had the intelligence to discover it, nor even to copy it. as a matter of fact, it is the only logical and scientific classification of society; it puts everybody in his proper place." * * * * * after this conversation, or rather this discourse, we walked out to ascend the look-out tower; but on the way we had to cross the great square of prince mechow, and there, for the first time, i saw the great monument about which i had heard so much. i had expected something extraordinary, but i was not prepared for the actual thing. it was as high as a church steeple. at the base was a huge shapeless mass of basalt. above this rose a square granite block, twenty feet high, covered with high-relief sculptures representing in allegorical form the reconstruction of the meccanian super-state. at the four corners were four figures representing arms, intellect, culture and power. above this again towered a great pedestal a hundred feet high and forty feet in diameter. on the top stood the colossal statue of prince mechow, a gigantic portrait-figure of a man in the uniform of the first class, his breast covered with decorations, a sword in one hand and a mace or some symbolical weapon in the other. the impression of brute force which it conveyed was terrific. every person in the square, as he came within sight of it, took off his hat; those in military dress saluted it, and pronounced the words, "long live meccania and god bless prince mechow!" my first feeling on seeing it was one of intense disgust at the barbarity of the thing, and i was just going to make some satirical remark when i caught sight of prigge's face. it wore an expression of absolute ecstasy, and the look of fierce disdain with which he said "uncover!" was startling. he added something which sounded like "mongolian monkey," but in the excitement of the moment i was not quite sure what he said. i tried to pacify him by saying, in as innocent a tone as i could assume, "it is indeed the most remarkable statue i have ever seen." "it is the most perfect embodiment of meccanian culture: no other country could produce such a work," he replied solemnly. "i am inclined to agree," i said. "who was the artist who conceived and executed a monument of such wonderful proportions?" "the artist? what other nation could produce a man who united such gifts with such a true meccanian spirit? he desired that his name should never be spoken. when the work was completed after ten years, he gave up his life, and begged to be allowed to be buried underneath the rock with all the tools that had been used in the execution of the statue. his dying request was respected. his name is never uttered, but every child in meccania knows it, and every citizen in meccania comes once every ten years to salute the statue of prince mechow and do honour to the hero-artist who lies buried beneath." "i shall never forget the story," i said, and we walked on to the look-out tower. on the way, i noticed that every person in the street saluted every other person of higher rank than himself. i have since learnt that there are six different forms of salute, one for each class above the seventh, and that it is a point of strict etiquette to give the right salute. a salute appropriate to the fourth class given to a member of the third is an insult, and the wrong salute given to a member of the second (military) class may cost the offender his life. we ascended the look-out tower. the sight was magnificent. from where we stood the details of the architecture could not be seen, nor even the style of the buildings. but the general impression produced by such a vast assemblage of massive edifices was one of grandeur and power, while the bright sunlight and the absence of smoke and dirt gave the whole city the appearance of having suddenly sprung up in a night, like aladdin's palace. to the west, in a great semicircle, the quarters of the first three classes presented a spectacle such as i have not seen in any capital. every house was a mansion or a villa surrounded by a pleasant garden. here and there one saw large stretches of beautiful park. to the east the houses were clustered more thickly together, but even on this side there was an air of orderliness and comfort, although certainly not of luxury, which contrasted favourably with the populous districts of the towns i had seen in other countries. about five miles away we could see distinctly, with the aid of the glasses, the manufactories and workshops and warehouses of the industrial town that served the needs of the whole capital. conductor prigge seemed duly satisfied with the impression made on me. "here," he said, "you are at the centre of the civilisation of the modern world. here are three million thoroughly efficient meccanians, every one in his proper place, every one fulfilling his appointed duty. think of the disorder, the squalor, the conflict of aims, the absence of ideals, represented by a city like lunopolis, or prisa, and look on this picture!" we descended and returned to the hotel. after luncheon we proceeded with our tour of the tramway system. by this means i got a good view of the exterior appearance of the houses of the various classes. it confirmed the impression i had gained from the look-out tower, except in one respect. the houses of the well-to-do looked as if they had all been designed by the same school of architects, and except that they differed in size they might have been turned out by machinery. the houses of the rest of the population were 'standardised' to an even greater degree. the dwellings of the sixth class are really blocks of small flats of a standard size; those of the fifth class are similar, except that the rooms are a little larger and there are more of them. one curious fact came to light in the course of conductor prigge's explanation of the housing system. it seems that the births department determines the number of children each family is expected to have within a given period of years, and the houses are distributed accordingly. thus a family in the fifth class which is due to have, let us say, four children within the next seven years, is assigned a flat of five rooms. then, if the same family is due to have two more children within the next five years, they move into a house with seven rooms. persons in the first grade of the fifth class are allowed to take a flat with more rooms on payment of a special rate or tax. apparently there is very little choice of houses. as all the houses of a certain grade are practically alike, if a tenant wishes to move to another street he has to furnish valid reasons; and it is not easy to furnish reasons satisfactory to the authorities. besides, the number of houses or flats is very closely proportioned to the number of tenants, and there are never many vacant houses. the members of the third and higher classes own their own houses, and can therefore change their residences by purchasing or exchanging. by special privilege members of the fourth class can obtain permission to buy their houses, but as these are mostly flats they are usually rented from the municipality. chapter iv professor proser-toady's lecture following conductor prigge's instructions, i presented myself at six o'clock in the evening at the entrance to the great university of mecco. it was the first time i had been out without my 'keeper,' but as everybody else was dressed in the meccanian costume, whilst i was wearing the clothes i had been accustomed to wear in luniland and francaria, there was little risk of my going astray. a porter darted out of a box in the entrance hall and directed me to room , where the professor of historical culture was to deliver his monthly four-hour lecture to foreign observers. i found about a dozen foreign observers of various nationalities waiting in the small lecture-room, and presently a few more arrived. some were scandinavians, some south americans; a few, i thought, were turks; several were from some part of india. at . precisely the professor came in. he wore a brilliant yellow uniform of the third class, with green facings and buttons and a number of little ribbons indicating, i suppose, various services rendered to the cause of meccanian culture. apart from his dress he resembled the caricatures of meccanian professors in our comic prints. his head was bald on the top and at the front, but at the sides great tufts of white hair protruded. his grey beard was of ample proportions. his coarse wizened face and staring eyes, covered by a pair of huge spectacles, gave him the appearance of a jack-in-the-box as he sat behind a high reading-desk. his voice was tough and leathery. at the end of three hours it sounded as fresh and as harsh as in the opening sentences. i cannot reproduce the whole lecture; if i did it would almost fill a book by itself. i can only hope to give a rough idea of it by paraphrasing some of the most salient passages. he began by saying that to accommodate himself to the culture of his foreign auditors he would endeavour to present his subject in the simplest possible form, which was the narrative, and would sketch the biography of the great re-founder of the meccanian state, the true architect of the first super-state in the world, the greatest political creative genius that had ever stepped upon the world stage, prince mechow. we had all seen his memorial statue, a unique monument to a unique individual, and no doubt it had made an impression upon our imagination; but it was impossible for any work of art however great--and here he paid a tribute to the hero-artist who built the monument--to convey more than a symbolical suggestion of the all-embracing magnificence of prince mechow's truly meccanian personality. for that we must look around at the super-state itself. prince mechow, he said, was historically the culminating figure of the national development of meccania. compared with many countries in europe, meccania could not boast a long history. some historians sought a false glory for meccania by tracing its greatness back to the so-called roman empire of the middle ages, but true meccanian history went back only a few hundred years. in fact, it was not until the eighteenth century that the meccanian state in the proper sense of the word began, and only in the nineteenth century did it take its place among the powers of the modern world. in the nineteenth century the meccanian state was saved by the genius and will of one great man, the worthy predecessor of prince mechow, his great-uncle prince bludiron. from a scientific or philosophical point of view it was difficult to say whether prince bludiron had not contributed as much to the greatness of meccania as prince mechow; for it was he, undoubtedly, who laid the foundations upon which the final structure rested. the work of prince bludiron was very different from, but also similar in spirit to, the work of prince mechow. his task had been to rescue the young and inexperienced state from the perils and distractions of the false ideals of liberty and democracy, to secure the power of the state over all sections and classes, to create the proud and confident meccanian spirit and to set the nation on the right path. the task of prince mechow was to erect the super-state on the foundations laid by prince bludiron; in other words, to organise the energies of the whole nation to one supreme end, to train and direct the powers of every individual so as to produce one mind and one will. turning to the work of prince bludiron, the professor said that when he began his work meccania was distracted by false and conflicting ideals, of foreign origin. revolution was in the air. people were ready to drive out their lawful rulers. popular government was demanded. parliaments were being set up. it was the saddest page in meccanian history. had these anarchic forces triumphed, meccania would have sunk to the level of other nations, and the super-state would never have arisen. it was the greatest testimony to the intellectual genius and moral power of prince bludiron that, after forty years of strenuous work, the whole outlook for meccania was completely changed. the false ideal of individual liberty was dead and buried. popular government was a discredited superstition. the military aristocracy were secure in their rightful position. the efficiency of the government was demonstrated in every direction, and not least on the field of battle. wars had been won with a rapidity unprecedented in any age. prince bludiron's success was so complete that it was almost impossible for us now to realise how great his difficulties had been. so strong were the forces of democracy that even he had to temporise and set up a parliament. he even granted manhood suffrage. dr. proser-toady then explained how prince bludiron outwitted the disloyal elements among the people by securing the reality of power to the organised centralised state, whilst leaving the semblance of control to the representative bodies. he quoted a foreign observer, at the end of prince bludiron's career, who declared that the institutions set up by him enabled the state to wield the maximum of power with the minimum of opposition. strangely enough, said the professor, the very movement that threatened to undo all his work was in reality of the greatest service. he referred to the movement of meccanian socialism or social democracy which owed its peculiar character to a certain demagogue named spotts. the career and influence of spotts was for a time almost as remarkable as prince bludiron's. spotts persuaded his followers that the economic tendencies of modern life must inevitably create the socialist state. the people need only wait until these tendencies had worked themselves out and then seize the power of the state, which would drop into their hands like ripe fruit. he saw in the existing state nothing but organised capitalism. consequently he encouraged his followers to take no part in the actual government, but to maintain themselves in permanent opposition until the inevitable revolution came about, when they were to assume the whole control. spottsian socialism became the universal doctrine of the meccanian proletariat of those days. they talked about the economic interpretation of history, about economic forces, about economic revolutions, mixed with vague notions of liberty and equality. but in reality they cared not a straw for liberty; what they sought was power. yet by standing in permanent opposition to every other element in the state they played into prince bludiron's hands. whilst they waited for the inevitable revolution, he had accustomed the people to prosperity; and had raised the prestige of the state at home and abroad. he had gained the support of all the strongest elements in society, had trained an efficient bureaucracy and an efficient military aristocracy. and yet at his death the followers of spotts went on waiting for the economic revolution! the professor then dealt briefly with what he said was the most difficult period for a meccanian historian, the period between the death of prince bludiron and the rise of the still greater statesman, prince mechow. in that interval no great leader arose, but a number of foolish statesmen who fancied they were cast in the mould of the great bludiron. at that time meccania had commercial relations with the whole world, and was rapidly penetrating every country with its peculiar culture. its army and navy were growing in strength, and the temper of the people was becoming restless and aggressive. they lacked the controlling hand of prince bludiron. they were carried away by dreams of sudden world-conquest. foolish statesmen allowed the country to be plunged into war with half the world at once. the meccanians performed wonders, but they could not perform miracles, and in the end the country was reduced to great straits. provinces were torn away. its accumulations of wealth were exhausted; its manhood was decimated. the situation was terrible, yet it was this tremendous ordeal that indirectly created the most favourable conditions for the work of prince mechow. during the war the government had been compelled to take over, more and more, the control of every department of life. under the pressure of war the last vestiges of the obsolete doctrines of individualism had disappeared. now that the war was over, the necessity for increasing all the means of wealth-production placed a new power in the hands of the state. it was in these years of what was called 'reconstruction' that prince mechow came to the front. every one was depressed. the most conflicting views were expressed. some people lamented that the whole work of prince bludiron had been destroyed. others said it had been all a mistake, and that the nation ought to have followed the example of the rest of europe. some advocated hare-brained schemes of 'internationalism,' as they called it. prince mechow was one of the few who kept a clear head. he saw exactly where the blunder had been made. meccania had ventured upon projects of world-conquest before completing the internal work of perfecting the super-state on the foundations laid down by prince bludiron. he saw that we must go back exactly to the point where prince bludiron left off. but the first step was the most difficult. prince mechow was quite a young man, not more than thirty, and was only an under-secretary. he had one advantage in that he was a grand-nephew of prince bludiron and had the ear of the emperor, who very soon made him minister of the interior, a post created to relieve the chief minister. professor proser-toady said we should obtain the clearest conception of prince mechow's views and the best key to his policy in a volume of correspondence with his cousin general count block. count block, like many of his military colleagues, was alarmed at the general confusion. he declared there was nothing for it but to sweep away all popular representative institutions, restrict education to the upper classes and fall back upon the direct rule of the military. prince mechow pointed out that such a policy would fail utterly: it would bring about the very revolution it sought to avoid. efficiency could never be created by the military alone. industrial efficiency was absolutely necessary to military power. he agreed in the main with count block's objects, but declared that his means were clumsy and inadequate. the work of prince bludiron must be continued by the creation of a super-state. the _term_ had already been coined, but the _thing_ did not yet exist. it is in prince mechow's clear conception of the super-state that we see his intellectual genius, but it is in the steps he took to bring it into being that we realise his kinship with his famous predecessor, prince bludiron. prince bludiron had had to live from hand to mouth relying upon his statesman's instinct. prince mechow, even before he became chief minister, foresaw every detail of the structure he was determined to erect. the state, he said, has hitherto done only what is forced upon it by necessity. it has never attempted to utilise the whole energies of the nation. the super-state will only come into being by uniting in itself the will, the knowledge, the wisdom, and the multifarious energies, of the whole people. the state has been merely the strongest organ of society: the super-state must be the only organ, uniting all others in itself. how was such a conception to be realised concretely? in explaining his plans he found ample illustration in the circumstances of the recent great war. the state had not only controlled everything essential to the conduct of the war; it had not only regulated the manufacture of all supplies, including food and clothing for the whole nation, but had undertaken a thousand activities never previously dreamt of, except by the socialists. he proposed to capture the whole armoury of the socialists by gradually seizing everything for the state itself. the motto of the super-state must be efficiency. but to be efficient the state must absorb all the persons who represented efficiency. the whole conception of bureaucracy must be revolutionised by being carried to its logical conclusion. the efficiency of a business firm depends upon the efficiency of the persons composing it. the efficiency of the super-state will depend upon the efficiency of the new bureaucracy and the military class. there was no instance in history of an efficient government being overthrown by any popular forces. a century of industrial development had transformed the material world, whilst in the meantime the organisation of the state had almost stood still. the super-state must borrow from the socialists the conception of an all-embracing power and activity, and from the industrial world the machinery for the execution of its will. the most efficient and successful business firms were those which got every ounce of work out of every member of the firm. the super-state must not be less resourceful. now as to the methods, said the professor. how was the state to absorb into its service all the energies of the nation, without at the same time becoming a social democracy? already the social democrats, as in prince bludiron's time, were proclaiming that the capitalist state was working out for them the social revolution predicted by spotts; and as in prince bludiron's days so under prince mechow they went on waiting for the social revolution. they are waiting still. in the meantime prince mechow got into the saddle and began his practical reforms. he was a man of the most extraordinary energy and versatility. he was not content to begin with education and wait for a generation. he attacked a dozen different problems at the same time: education, industry, commerce, railways, finance, the press, the stage, the professions, the church--every side of national life received his attention; but the prime instrument through which he worked was the bureaucracy. he laid it down as an axiom that the machinery of the state must work so smoothly that the people should be unaware of its operations. there have been instances in history, he wrote in one of his letters, in which a government has been overturned in a single day. how? by a perfectly planned _coup d'état_. what can be accomplished on a single occasion can be done as a part of the regular working of the state machinery. our super-state must be capable of a _coup d'état_ every day. those of his friends who did not see the necessity for his reforms he silenced by showing them that if they did not capture the state the social democracy would do so. during the first ten years of his regime he worked wonders. he renewed the state control of all the large industries. he took into the service of the state all the most capable business men and manufacturers, all the best scientists and engineers as well as the best administrators. the censorship of the press was continued and extended to every form of literature. he bought up all the big newspapers and drove all the little ones into bankruptcy. when every clever journalist was engaged on the state newspapers and all advertisements were controlled, there was not much room for an 'opposition' press. the schools and universities were already well under control, but he revised the whole system. he made every teacher and every professor a direct servant of the state. every textbook was revised. he paid particular attention to history, philosophy and literature. the new generation were thus educated in an atmosphere calculated to cultivate the true meccanian spirit. inspectors, organisers and directors of education infused new energy into the system and trained the whole population to co-operate with the super-state. as to the proletariat, he saw to it that there was no unemployment. production went up by leaps and bounds, wages were increased, but there was no waste. goods that could not be disposed of immediately were stored, but methods of control and regulation were introduced to direct industry into the right channels. whilst he controlled the wage-earners he at the same time controlled the employers. all surplus wages and profits were invested in the state funds. of course there was opposition to these reforms. the military class were slow to understand his methods, so he established periodical military councils, took them into his confidence and eventually won them over completely. as for the social democrats, he did not scruple to employ against them the same methods they would have employed against him. he made use of secret agents to preach the doctrine that by his methods the way would be prepared for the social revolution. when at length he inaugurated the system of the seven social classes the social democrats professed to see in this a means of stimulating class consciousness; but after a few years they discovered that no class was willing to surrender its privileges. the fifth class, which includes the most skilled artisans in europe, began to see that no revolution would improve their position, whilst it might lower them to the level of the sixth or seventh class. the boasted solidarity of the proletariat proved to be an illusion, like most of spotts's ideas. when he reformed the railway system he made travelling free. but of course if travelling were to be free, restrictions must be imposed. similarly in regard to housing. he applied all the technical knowledge in the country to the problem. standardised houses and other devices made it possible to rebuild any portions of our cities and to transfer population from one region to another with the greatest ease. on the other hand, restrictions were necessary. you cannot have free trade in houses and at the same time guarantee a house to every family. i have condensed dr. proser-toady's lecture, which lasted several hours, into such short compass that it gives very little idea, i am afraid, of the complete revolution worked out by prince mechow's reforms. for instance, he showed how the whole character of politics had been transformed, how the questions that agitated meccania sixty years ago had entirely disappeared; how the press no longer existed, because its functions had been absorbed by other agencies; how the parliament, which i was surprised to hear still existed, was now organised to correspond with the seven social classes; how the state was so wealthy that control over taxation was no longer necessary. he ended with a remarkable passage about the seven social classes and the national meccanian uniforms. "many foreign observers," he said, "in times past, have made merry over our sevenfold classification and our national costumes. what have other nations to put in their place? they too have these classes, for they are natural and inevitable. they have their nobles, their soldiers, their officials and professional men, their bourgeoisie, their artisans, their labourers and their degraded 'submerged tenth.' but they are afraid to call them by their proper names, afraid to recognise them. they have no uniforms, no dignified and pleasing costumes; but you never mistake one class for another. you never mistake the labourer for the wealthy bourgeois or the popinjay aristocrat. nowhere else, they say, would people consent to wear the servile badge of their caste. we meccanians are proud of our seven national colours. so far from being a degradation, the historical origin of the costumes proves that it is a privilege to wear them. the seven uniforms were once the ceremonial dress of the seven guilds established by prince mechow. when permission was granted for all the members of the classes to wear the ceremonial dress it was the occasion of national rejoicings everywhere. the national costumes are part of the ritual of the super-state." * * * * * long-winded as some parts of the lecture were, i must confess it was most illuminating, and to me, as a student of politics and sociology, exceedingly interesting. i begin to understand now what the meccanian super-state really is. chapter v culture in mecco during the first few weeks of my tour in mecco--tour no. --conductor prigge kept my nose well to the grindstone. at times he made me feel like a small schoolboy, at times like a prisoner in charge of a warder. it would be tedious to detail all the incidents of my daily rounds, or to describe everything in the exact order in which it was presented to my view. so i propose to set down, as they remain in my mind, the most interesting or remarkable features of this truly remarkable city. one circumstance, however, annoys and almost distresses me. i cannot get into contact with any individual living people. i see everything as a spectacle from the outside. as i go about, the impression of orderliness, cleanliness, and even magnificence of a kind, is such as i have seldom felt in any part of the world. at times the whole city gives one the same sort of feeling that one experiences in going through a gigantic hospital, where everything is spotless and nothing is out of its place. i am even getting used to the coloured uniforms of the seven classes. in the central parts of the city green and yellow predominate; for the number of people belonging to the official class is enormous. even apart from their actual number they are the most conspicuous, because the lower classes are at work in their factories and business houses, and are consequently seldom seen except when returning home in the evening. occasionally i notice a few white uniforms (of the very select first class) and occasionally, too, a crowd of officers in their brilliant scarlet uniforms. at the other end of the scale, the most common colour visible is the grey, worn by the numerous servants in the well-to-do quarters. the few servants who wear chocolate are mostly the lackeys of the very rich, and the upper servants in the large hotels. on the day after dr. proser-toady's lecture, conductor prigge was more than usually "pedagogic." i wanted to look about the streets and ask questions about many things that occurred to me at the moment, but he insisted upon pouring out detailed information about the drainage system, the postal areas, the parcels' delivery areas, the telephone system, the market system, and so forth. what did interest me, however, was the organisation known as the time department, of which i had already seen something at bridgetown. there is, as i have said, an enormous number of public buildings in mecco, but nobody can miss the gigantic office of the time department. it towers up, about seven stories high, over the surrounding buildings, and above it rises a great clock that can be seen for miles. in this central department alone, ten thousand people are employed--that is, of course, in addition to all those employed in the local offices of the time department in various parts of the country. conductor prigge was tremendously proud of the time department. "other nations," he said, "have never thought of establishing such an institution for themselves. they have not even had the intelligence to imitate ours. we meccanians were the first to discover both time and space: our philosophers were the first to understand time and space: we have been the first government to organise time and space. we can tell you," he went on, "the exact amount of time occupied by any person, or any group of persons, in doing anything. we know exactly how much time is devoted to eating and drinking, as well as the time required to produce a picture, or a piece of sculpture, or a poem, or a musical composition; or how long it takes to learn any language, or any subject of study." "but," i said, "what about the time spent by all the clerks and officials employed all over the country, as well as here, in the time department itself; isn't it rather extravagant? what is the object of it all?" "do you think," he replied, "that we should keep up such an institution if it had not proved to be useful in the highest degree? foreigners have such childish ideas of organisation," he continued. "this was one of the most brilliant inventions of prince mechow, but it has taken thirty years to bring it to its present state of perfection. it pays for itself over and over again, in the mere economy it effects; and it has other far-reaching effects on the whole social and economic life of the nation. in the first place, in the matter of material production, in every trade and occupation it enables us to speed-up scientifically. an increase of ½ per cent in the productiveness of the four main industries alone would more than pay all the expenses of the time department. we have increased productiveness all round by at least per cent since the introduction of the time department; and although not all of this increase is due to the time department, we may safely reckon per cent. we have done away with all the dawdlers in art, all the incompetent painters and novelists and poets. in connection with the post office we have been able to diminish the amount of time spent in writing useless letters by per cent. why, without the time department the department for the direction of leisure would be helpless. in education, how should we know the right proportion of time to be devoted to the various subjects, the right amount to recreation or amusement? and apart from economy, the aid given to the researches of the sociological department is simply invaluable. the efficiency of the police department is due in great measure to the time department." "but," i inquired innocently, "is there no feeling of resentment on the part of the public at the somewhat inquisitorial methods of the time department?" "resentment!" he said, almost angrily. "why should there be resentment?" "at having to give an account of all that one does even in one's leisure time?" "but when everybody knows that we save millions a year by it, and when the state has decided that it is for the public benefit, and the obligation is imposed upon everybody; why should anyone raise objections?" "still," i said, remembering my unfortunate experience, "you find it necessary to inflict fines in order to ensure compliance with the regulations about filling up the weekly diaries." "naturally. but perhaps you overlook the educative effect of having to keep the diary. the proper keeping of the diary is almost an education in itself." my conductor said this with such an air of finality that i thought it was not worth while to pursue the question further. i was much amused by a conversation i had a few days ago on another subject. it was about five o'clock and i was feeling rather tired, so i proposed that we should have a meal in a restaurant, and then go to some place of amusement in the evening. "you may return to the hotel if you are indisposed," said prigge, "and rest there during the evening; or you may have a meal in a restaurant and resume your tour. but until we have completed at least the first week's tour of observation, you cannot possibly be permitted to visit any place of amusement, as you call it. besides, such places as you probably have in mind, do not exist in mecco. i have seen, in other countries, what are termed music halls, where a lot of so-called actors were making fools of themselves." "perhaps," i ventured to say, "you did not look at the performance from the right point of view." "i see! you mean that i should have regarded these childish performances as illustrating the stage of mental culture of the people. from that point of view your 'music halls' may be of some interest, just as the drama of foreign countries is of interest; but it is so very primitive." "primitive? in what way primitive?" i asked. "primitive by comparison with our highly developed drama. for example, all the foreign dramas i have seen are written in the narrative form, or rather, i should say, the drama is still in the chronological stage. we have left that behind." "indeed," i said, "i am afraid i can hardly conceive of drama in any other form." "exactly. _you_ cannot understand. but our meccanian culture is not exactly designed for the intelligence of foreigners. if you are specially interested in the subject of the drama--it is not one of my specialities, although of course i am not ignorant of the drama, no meccanian is--i will introduce you to my friend in the department of public amusement, which is a branch of the ministry of education and culture. he will probably enable you in the shortest period of time--and that is always a consideration, although most foreigners are often quite oblivious of the time aspect of such matters--to understand the meccanian drama, in so far as it is possible for a foreigner to understand it." i thanked him, and he made a note in his pocket-book to remind him of his promise. "perhaps you can tell me," i said, "how your people do amuse themselves, apart from going to the theatre; for they cannot go to the theatre every evening." "i notice that, like all foreigners, you are more interested in amusement than in the serious aspects of life. you will receive full information at the proper time if you will avail yourself of my offer to take you to my friend dr. dodderer, the sub-controller of public amusements (section b); but i do not mind giving you a few facts such as are common knowledge among all meccanians." "well," i said, "take your commercial travellers, who must spend a good deal of time in towns away from home. what do they do in the evenings?" "if you were to go to the great meccanian library," he replied, "and consult the reports of the sociological department for the last twenty years, you would be able to see exactly how all these persons have spent their time. but you would perhaps be surprised to find that the number of persons travelling about and staying away from home is very small. when you have studied our industrial and commercial system you will see that we require comparatively few commercial travellers. as to the way they spend their time, you must understand that in every town there are guilds of all the professions. consequently, as every commercial traveller naturally wishes to improve his knowledge, he frequents the guild house, where he meets with other members of his profession and discusses matters of interest. if he comes from mecco he will be welcomed, as the provincial members will be only too glad to learn anything from one who comes from the very centre of meccanian culture. also, he may wish to visit the local museums, or other cultural institutions. if not, he will attend either an outdoor or an indoor concert." "the commercial travellers of meccania must be quite unlike the commercial travellers of all other countries if they spend their leisure in the way you have described," i remarked. "you spoke of concerts," i continued. "i suppose music is still the most popular form of amusement in meccania?" "neither the drama nor music are, strictly speaking, mere amusements," answered conductor prigge. "they may be so regarded in other countries, but not in meccania." "then what are they?" i asked. "they form part of our general scheme of culture," replied prigge. "as you probably know, attendance at the theatre once a week is compulsory for all persons over eighteen. those below eighteen attend the juvenile theatre as part of their school course in literature." "attendance compulsory?" i said. "but if meccanians are so advanced in the cultivation of the drama, why should it be necessary to enforce attendance?" "perhaps it is not really necessary, but i doubt whether our scheme of dramatic culture could be carried out without strict regulation. for instance, there are some plays more popular than others. people would want to see these plays in great numbers and there would not be room for them; whilst the less popular plays would not be well attended." "just so," i said, "that is what one would naturally expect; and where is the harm?" "our scheme provides a succession of plays throughout the year, all designed as part of our culture, and if people were at liberty to pick and choose what they would see, and what they would not see, we should have no guarantee that they would have gone through the course." "would that matter," i asked, "so long as they were amused?" "may i repeat that the meccanian drama is something more than amusement," he replied testily. "you will learn more of this subject from dr. dodderer. we need not pursue it further." "then may i ask whether attendance at concerts is compulsory also?" "it is not compulsory, but it is strictly regulated as regards the different grades of music," he answered. "i should like to know how you regulate attendance at concerts," i said; "i have never heard of it elsewhere." "i dare say not," said prigge. "other countries are still in a very backward state as regards musical culture. in the first place, all persons below eighteen have to pass an examination in some branch of practical or theoretical music, unless they are defective in the musical sense. then, before any adult is admitted to the first, second or third grades of concerts, he has to pass an examination in musical appreciation. that is to say, only those are admitted to concerts of the first class who hold a first-class certificate in musical appreciation, and so on with the other grades. otherwise we should have people whose musical knowledge is very moderate listening to the best music by the best performers. by means of our system we can provide exactly the right standard of music at all public concerts. at the beginning of each season the programmes of all the concerts of the first three grades are issued. each person enters his name for a course of concerts according to the grade of musical culture attained by him. he is informed how many concerts he may attend in the season; he then chooses which concerts he will attend, and after that there is no difficulty." "no," said i, "i should think there would be no difficulty after such careful preparation. then the open-air concerts in the beer gardens," i said; "where do they come in?" "those are not regulated in the same way. we can tell from the time department whether any person is spending too much time at these performances, and any person who neglects to pass his examination in musical appreciation before the age of thirty is forbidden to attend such concerts--if they can be called concerts--more than once a week." "and is it possible to carry out such a regulation?" i asked. "you have not studied our time department to much purpose if you ask such a question," answered prigge. "i suppose, then," i said, "as i have no certificate i shall not be permitted to hear any of your best music?" "foreigners who are doctors of music of any university," replied prigge, "are admitted by special leave of the ministry of culture to attend a specified number of concerts even of the first grade, and others can attend a few concerts of the third grade, likewise by special permission of the ministry of culture." i think it was on the same day that prigge said to me, "i notice you are not wearing your spectacles." "i have never worn spectacles," i said. "but you were ordered to wear spectacles by dr. pincher." "he did prescribe them," i said, "but i have not troubled to get them, as i do not really require them." conductor prigge looked positively aghast. "you must go at once," he said; "you have the address. you had better pretend that there has been some delay--but no, your diary will show that you have not been to the optician. you will certainly be fined in accordance with regulation of the instructions to foreign observers." i went accordingly, and in a few days i had the spectacles. i suppose this incident caused me to notice that nearly all meccanians wear spectacles or eyeglasses. some wear two pairs at once, and i have seen even three pairs worn. i felt thankful nothing wrong with my teeth had been discovered. a day or two later i was taken by prigge to see dr. dodderer. what i learnt from him was even more remarkable than what my conductor had told me, so i will not apologise for giving a fairly full account of my interview. we were due at ten o'clock, and a whole hour had been reserved for me. as we entered his room he noted the exact time on his tablet and said, "the object of your visit is to learn something of the meccanian drama, as part of the system of culture, and the relation of amusement to our system of culture. very good; if you will be seated i will do my best to enlighten you." he was a dried-up little man, with bright black eyes and a narrow but lofty forehead. i thanked him and prepared to listen. i knew he would think me disrespectful if i did not make use of my notebook, so i prepared to make copious notes. when he saw i was ready, he sat with his eyes shut and his hands clasped together in front of him, and proceeded to pour forth a long discourse. he began by saying that all the higher animals showed some disposition towards play; and that, in particular, the human animal was pre-eminently distinguished in this respect. some anthropologists had argued that the persistence of the play-instinct was a proof of the essential usefulness of play, in developing both muscular and intellectual power. he himself did not adopt this view, or, at any rate, only in a modified form. he held that play was one of the most wasteful methods of nature, and that if the competition between the various races and subdivisions of the human species had been perfect, the race that could reduce play to an absolute minimum, confined perhaps to the first three years of life, would--_ceteris paribus_--succeed in winning the foremost place. play was certainly the least profitable form of mental activity, and one of the problems of education was the gradual elimination of play from the scheme of national culture. it was unfortunately true that even the best system of education had to make concessions to this instinct of play, and it would take many generations before it could be reduced to a minimum. but the experiments of the meccanian psychologists had demonstrated that the amount necessary, both in the case of children and in the case of adults, had been grossly exaggerated in the past, and was still grossly exaggerated by other nations. these experiments would have been impossible without the assistance of the time department, and the absence of a time department in other countries probably accounted for the little progress they had made in this direction. "for example," he continued, "other nations have almost entirely neglected the value of cultural toys. they have been content, even where they have given any thought at all to the subject, to devise toys which gave a little more opportunity for ingenuity, but their object has been mainly to amuse; they have had no clear conception of the ultimate purpose of toys in a complete cultural scheme. now we have a carefully thought-out scheme, and although it does not come under my department, but under section a , it affords a good illustration of the basis of our system. all our toys are classified in fifteen stages. we began with only five stages, but the number has gradually increased, for the system necessarily becomes more complex as it becomes more perfect. stage i. is represented by simple objects which a baby can grasp and recognise before the age of eighteen months. stage ii. is represented by balls and cubes and objects of that order. stage iii. by dolls and images. stage iv. by objects which can be grouped so as to afford a basis for the teaching of number. stage v. by simple mechanical toys and simple tools. stage vi. by constructive blocks of various kinds...." here, i am afraid, i became confused, but i remember that stage xiii. was represented by toys which formed an introduction to chemistry, and that the toys of stage xiv. could only be worked by boys whose mathematical knowledge was far in advance of what i should have thought possible. he explained that visits were paid by the domestic inspectors of child-life to see that the parents made proper use of the system of cultural toys. there had been great difficulty at first, but the parents were now properly instructed; and in a short time there would be no need to instruct them, as they would have grown up in familiarity with the system. "other experiments equally valuable have been conducted in order to discover what forms of amusement are most profitable from the cultural point of view; these include experiments designed to improve production. "for example, in our schools for the children of the seventh class, we find we have to allow a considerable time for non-intellectual pursuits. it would be sheer waste to allow all this time to be given to mere amusement. children who cannot give more than three hours a day to study, can be very usefully employed in making simple articles. we have a number of simple machines which can be worked by quite small children. you would be surprised to learn, perhaps, that goods worth a million are exported annually which are all the product of the semi-recreative work of these children. on the other hand, any boys of the _second_ class who cannot profitably be kept at intellectual pursuits for more than a few hours a day, are trained to be active and bold and self-reliant in preparation for their military career. "the same principle applies not only to children at school but to people of all ages. for example, we discovered, through our time department again, that thousands of men were wasting precious hours upon games such as chess. we have introduced mathematical exercises of an interesting kind as a substitute, with most beneficial results. others were addicted to aimless walks and rambles in the country. we began by offering prizes for botanical, entomological and other specimens, and for essays upon scientific subjects. we have, in fact, almost eliminated aimless amusement from the life of our common people. in the fifth class, which is a highly intelligent class, we encourage the pursuit of science by promoting those who pass certain examinations, which include a thesis, to the first grade of their class, and in a few cases we are able to promote exceptionally promising young men to the fourth class." "in what way does this bear upon the drama?" i said in a pause in dr. dodderer's discourse. "i have been trying to show you the basis of our system of public amusement. with us, amusement is never an end in itself. we find a certain crude kind of interest in the drama, or shall i say in the theatre, in almost all peoples, and some of the greatest poets have utilised that interest in order to reach the minds of their hearers. the greatest poets are those who have conceded least to the mere instinct for amusement. we have followed the same principle. but we could not carry out this scheme of dramatic culture without first getting control over the theatre. prince mechow, with his usual insight, saw that it was useless to control and direct the press, if he did not at the same time control and direct the theatre. first of all he made the censorship a reality. then he took all the most popular playwrights into the state service. then he was able to weed out those who were incapable of entering into his purpose. gradually all the theatres became cultural institutions of the state. all this took time, of course. even now there are a few popular theatres where only the lower kinds of dramatic varieties are performed. attendance at these is not compulsory." "i do not yet understand," i said, "why it should be necessary to make attendance compulsory when the drama is so popular." "for the majority of the people," replied dr. dodderer, "compulsion is quite unnecessary; but it is just those who are most in need of the culture that can be given through the medium of the drama who would be lax in their attendance. the whole subject has been investigated," he continued, "by the aid of the time department, and we are satisfied that we get the best results through our present system." "since your playwrights became civil servants has there been no decline in the quality of your dramatic productions?" i asked. "on the contrary," replied dr. dodderer. "our modern plays are on a much higher level. there are several reasons for this. in the first place, in the old days the uninstructed public were hardly fit judges of dramatic or literary excellence. they often preferred plays of little cultural value. consequently, the men who could write really good plays often found it impossible to get them produced. our board of dramatic criticism is now able to decide the merits of all plays, and the dramatists are quite independent of the caprice of the public. also, we can carry specialisation to a point undreamt of in former times." "specialisation?" i said; "that is quite a new idea to me." "naturally, there are writers who have plenty of ingenuity in devising plots, but who are lacking in literary style; others who write excellent meccanian, both prose and verse, but who are weak in the dramatic instinct. it is, in fact, very seldom that a modern meccanian drama is the sole work of any single author. moreover, the drama as developed by us lends itself particularly to specialisation. for example, most of our classical plays are presented in four phases. the simplest phase comes first. the subject is presented in chronological-dramatic form, somewhat resembling the dramas of other days and other countries. next comes the analytical phase, and after that the synthetic. the last phase or act is a complete philosophical symposium in which the whole subject is presented in its highest and most abstract form." "when you speak of the subject of a play, what do you mean exactly?" i asked. "the old plays had often no real subject; they had titles, it is true, but these titles were mere names of persons, or mere names of places or incidents. what, for instance, can you make of a title such as _julius cæsar_? or _the emperor of the east_? or _catherine_? or _the tyrant of genoa_? or _the crime of boniface_? if you are acquainted with the development of the drama, you will know that about ninety years ago a great advance was made by means of what was then called 'the problem play.' some of these plays had a real subject. we have gone much further, of course. take the subjects of some of our best-known plays: _efficiency_, _inefficiency_, _national self-consciousness_. these are all by our chief dramatic-composer grubber. his latest play, _uric acid_, is in my opinion even better than these." "_uric acid_!" i exclaimed; "what an extraordinary subject!" "it is one of a series of medical plays," explained dr. dodderer, quite undisturbed. "the subject lends itself splendidly to the methods of meccanian art. the part played by uric acid in the life of the individual, the family, the state, treated physiologically, pathologically, sociologically, ethically and philosophically, is almost infinite in its possibilities, and grubber has made the most of them." "and do the public enjoy these medical plays?" "you appear to be obsessed, if i may say so," replied dr. dodderer, "with the idea of enjoyment. you must bear in mind our standpoint, which i have already explained. but certainly the public take great interest in the medical plays. sub-dramatist smellie wrote a series, _phthisis_, _nephritis_ and _meningitis_, which are almost equal to grubber's _uric acid_, but he fails a little in the higher aspects of the subject, and consequently his fourth acts fall short of the highest philosophical perfection. i remember reading the proofs of his first play, _gall stones_. it was excellent until he came to the philosophical phase. it reminded me of an older play produced in the transition period, some fifty years ago, called _the blind and the deaf_. it had a considerable vogue for several years, but you see from its title that the conception was not fully developed." "these medical plays," i said, "are not the most typical productions of the dramatic genius of modern meccania, i suppose?" "in some ways they are," replied dr. dodderer. "that is to say, they are almost peculiar to our country. but one of our younger playwrights has developed the subject of economics in a way almost equally unique. his _significance of food_, and his _insurance_, and _distribution_, are a mere introduction to his masterpiece, _value_. a very slight work on _inaccuracy_, which was almost a farce, first attracted the attention of the board of criticism. they refused to produce _inaccuracy_ in its original form, and he embodied it in a more mature work, _production_, which was the first of his genuine economic plays." "i suppose, then, you have historical or at least political plays?" "historical plays are mostly performed in the juvenile theatres," he said. "i have very little to do with them. they fall under section a, and, as you know, i am the sub-controller of section b," replied dodderer. "but," he continued, "we have a certain number of more advanced historical plays for adults. for instance, _the evolution of society_, with its sequel, _the triumph of meccania_, are excellent historical plays. political plays have become almost obsolete, but there are still a few produced occasionally. _the principle of monarchy_ is still quite a classic in its way, and _the futility of democracy_ is one of the most brilliant pieces of meccanian satire. _obedience_ is another classic." "it seems to me a very remarkable fact that your sixth and seventh classes should be able to appreciate such plays as those you have been describing," i said, "especially in parts of the country which cannot be so far advanced as the capital." "i do not say that they appreciate the drama in the same degree as the more educated classes; but you must remember they have gone through a long course of training. you perhaps now appreciate our wisdom in making attendance compulsory. without regularity in attendance we could not arrange for a proper sequence of plays. also, i must admit that on the days when the sixth and seventh classes are due to attend, we put on the less advanced plays as a rule." "what happens," i asked, "to the old plays which were written, say, a hundred years ago; are they never performed?" "oh dear, yes," replied dr. dodderer; "the performance of such plays forms a regular part of the literature course at all our universities and colleges. we also utilise quite a number of them in the courses of plays for the fifth, sixth and seventh classes; but the form in which they are written is so simple and childish, such a contrast to the ripe perfection of the fully developed meccanian drama." "it must be a difficult matter," i remarked, "to arrange for progressive courses of plays for so many people as you have in mecco." "on the contrary, the larger the city the easier it is. members of the third class and, of course, of higher classes, are considered capable of appreciating all kinds of plays. class four consists of four grades, and the two higher grades, all the members of which are over thirty, are likewise eligible to attend any plays. we have a very simple plan of classifying all the others. at the age of eighteen they are all at liberty to attend plays which are classed as stage i.; then after six months any one is at liberty to apply for a certificate entitling him to attend plays in stage ii. after another year they can obtain a certificate for stage iii.; and so on. we seldom refuse an application, and in fact we rather encourage our people to advance, otherwise many people would be content to remain in stage ii., or stage iii., all their lives. then, at the beginning of each season, we know how many to provide for in each class, and at each stage; and the greater the number of theatres the easier it is to arrange the plays accordingly." "what about the actors?" i asked. "in most countries the leading actors are very much sought after, and can make large fortunes. i should imagine your system does not allow of that kind of career for a successful actor." "all our actors," replied dr. dodderer, "are trained in the imperial meccanian dramatic college. the lower grades belong to the fifth class, the higher grades to the fourth. the technique of acting has been brought to such perfection that the 'star' as he used to be called, has entirely disappeared. there is no room for him in our system. the 'star' was a mere product of popular enthusiasm." "how do you judge, then, of the popularity of any particular actor?" "we take no account of it at all," replied dr. dodderer. "our expert board of dramatic criticism determines the standing of each actor. we have, of course, expert psychologists, who are able to test the particular psychological effect both of each phase of the play and of the impression made by individual actors. their experiments are of great value both to our dramatic managers and to the writers of plays." at this point dr. dodderer announced that the hour he had reserved for me was at an end. chapter vi more culture in mecco i returned to conductor prigge and my daily grind. but as most of this first period was spent in visiting systematically a number of institutions similar to those i had seen in bridgetown, but on a larger scale, it is hardly necessary to describe them here. for instance, the arrangements for receiving and distributing food are on the same principle: the markets are managed in the same way. the general system of shopping is the same, except that, as the city is much larger, there is very much more 'shopping by post.' as the shops are not permitted to display anything in shop windows, nor to advertise except in the trade gazettes and catalogues, there is not much incentive to spend time in desultory shopping. the great stores are more like warehouses than shops. i had gathered from my conversations with sheep that the state seemed to place obstacles in the way of personal expenditure, and yet at the same time production was encouraged. sheep's explanations had not seemed to me entirely satisfactory, so i decided to question prigge on this interesting point. as his services were charged for at double the rate of sheep's, i thought i ought to get more complete information from him. so one day i said to him, "how is it that in meccania, as far as i can judge, you have brought production to such a pitch of perfection--i mean as regards the enormous quantities manufactured--whilst at the same time you seem to restrict expenditure or consumption in so many ways?" prigge tilted back his head and put on his professorial air. "such a question would be better dealt with when you come to make a definite study of our national economy, but as it is really quite an elementary question--a commonplace of all our textbooks--i do not mind explaining it briefly now. your first error is in supposing that the state encourages production indiscriminately. we produce what we require and no more, but we are able to measure our requirements better than other nations. in other countries people are allowed to buy a lot of things they do not require; this causes unnecessary production, of course. unregulated consumption gives rise to unregulated production." i still felt puzzled as to what became of the wealth produced by the wonderfully efficient system of wholesale production, for, as far as i could tell, the people seemed less luxurious in their habits than those of countries far less advanced in machine production. but i felt i should be getting on dangerous ground, and forbore. the commercial quarter, in which we spent a whole day, was remarkably small for so large a city, especially considering that the city is not commercially self-contained. but i learnt that mecco is not really the commercial centre of meccania. the merchants are little more than the agents for the distribution of goods. the quantities are largely fixed by the department of industry and commerce, consequently there is not much room for enterprise, except in effecting economies in distribution, in bargaining with the government as to the kinds of goods to be produced, and in discussing with manufacturers matters of detail as to patterns and styles. for example, the schools of art produce every year designs for cloth for women's dress. the merchants select from these the patterns to be manufactured. there is little excitement in a merchant's career. most of the clerks seem to be occupied in the preparation and revision of catalogues, which are the substitute for advertisements. no new article can be produced until it has been approved by the improvements section of the department of industry and commerce. all this side of the life of mecco was very tame and stereotyped. prigge discoursed at length on the merits of the post office and all its works, but the only remarkable thing i noticed about it, besides the censorship of letters, and the enormous number of people employed, was the ingenious arrangement whereby a conversation carried on in any part of meccania could be overheard at the central office. the absence of life and bustle in the streets was as striking as in bridgetown. most of the people in the government offices belonged to the fourth class, and as these all lived in the two quarters running north and south of the central ring, they could reach their offices in a very short time. the midday meal was taken in a canteen within the office. the few inferior employees, messengers, porters, cleaners, etc., who belonged to the fifth or sixth class, lived almost as near. the higher civil servants of the third class, who of course were less numerous, did not make a crowd in the street. the green uniforms of the fourth class were the most conspicuous object everywhere. the industrial classes, living as they do on the side nearest the industrial town, are transported by an ingenious system of trams and underground and overhead railways, so that in half an hour they can all get from their homes to their work, where they remain all day. all goods arriving from the industrial town for distribution to the stores are carried by a regular service of motor-vans. the distribution of goods to houses is so systematised as to require comparatively few vehicles. for instance, certain kinds of goods can be delivered only once a month for each household, others only once a week. consequently one sees a perfectly regular stream of traffic, which is never very dense and never congested. all this might have been very interesting to a student of municipal socialism and mechanical organisation, but my chief interests lay in other directions, and it was not until we came to the cultural institutions that i found things so remarkable, at any rate from my own point of view, that i shall make no apology for describing them with some fullness here, even at the risk of being tedious to those who think more of locomotion than of liberty, or who regard the post office as the highest symbol of civilisation. i had looked forward with some curiosity to my first visit to a meccanian art gallery, for, as i had not been into any private houses, and as there are no shop windows, i had seen hardly any signs of meccanian art culture, except in architecture. the decorative work in the public buildings did not impress me favourably. it was patriotic art, executed by the students of the imperial meccanian academy. prigge announced that, as he had been promoted to a higher grade in the police service, he would no longer be available to conduct me. by way of consoling me for the deprivation he said that in any case i should have to be handed over to various specialist conductors, as i had almost completed the general part of my tour and had reached the stage when i should have to begin the study of definite branches of meccanian culture. he had consequently arranged for me to spend the first three days in the great meccanian gallery under the guidance of specialist art section sub-conductor musch. sub-conductor musch met me at the appointed time at the hotel. he was a very different type from prigge. he was much less of the drill-sergeant; in fact he looked rather 'decadent,' if a meccanian can be decadent. he spoke in a soft voice, which was quite a contrast to the leathery voices of most officials i had encountered previously. he began by saying that before we actually began our inspection of the pictures there were certain preliminaries. the great meccanian gallery, he said, was the temple of all that was sacred in the æsthetic world. i must be properly prepared for it, so that i could concentrate my attention upon what i saw and not be distracted by having to ask questions about extraneous matters. if i would pay careful attention he would describe the general arrangements. "the great meccanian gallery," he said, "is one of the four galleries in mecco; the other three are subsidiary. the first gallery is devoted to the old historical collections that existed before the time of prince mechow, and contains only foreign pictures. the second gallery contains meccanian pictures of a date previous to the foundation of the great meccanian gallery by prince mechow. the fourth gallery contains foreign pictures contemporary with those in the great meccanian gallery. and now we come to the great meccanian gallery itself. "every picture in that gallery is an expression of the meccanian spirit; otherwise it is not admitted. its technique must also satisfy the board of art of the department of culture. consequently, as soon as you enter you are in the atmosphere of pure meccanian art. previous to the creation of this gallery, the influence of art was rather de-nationalising. the æsthetic sense was cultivated in total ignorance of the possibility of marrying it to the meccanian spirit. the meccanian spirit is the active, creative male; the æsthetic sense is receptive, conceptive, essentially female. of the two, meccanian art is born." he went on in this style for several minutes until i thought i had better get something more definite from him for my 'guidance.' so i said, "how does one tell whether a picture is an expression of the meccanian spirit?" "to the true meccanian, all things truly meccanian are sacred, and by the inward cultivation of the sense of reverence for what is most characteristically meccanian he arrives at a certainty which is incommunicable to others." "but suppose opinion is divided. suppose, for example, one man says, here is a picture which is full of the meccanian spirit, and another man says the contrary." musch smiled in a sad, superior way, by which i saw that after all, in spite of his 'decadence,' he was a true meccanian. "you are evidently not well acquainted with either meccanian history or philosophy," he said. "even our early philosophers taught that the meccanian spirit must embody itself in institutions or it would evaporate. the imperial meccanian academy is the visible embodiment of the highest manifestation of the meccanian æsthetic spirit. all meccanian artists are trained under the influence of the academy. its judgment, as expressed by the central board, is infallible. none of its decisions has ever been reversed. i do not think you realise how completely the influence of the academy has moulded the meccanian appreciation of art during the last generation," he went on in his slow, soft speech. "you have heard something from my friend dr. dodderer of the care taken by our all-beneficent super-state in the cultivation of the appreciation of the drama, and you have probably heard something too of our musical culture. other forms of art are equally sacred, since they are all meccanian. every person in the fourth and higher classes goes through a course of art appreciation, which extends over several years. no person is admitted beyond the fifth stage of the great meccanian gallery unless he has passed the advanced test. attendance at the gallery is compulsory, once a fortnight, for all persons of the fourth and third classes between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five. the fifth class are not admitted to rooms beyond stage iii., except by special permission on four days in the year. for them we have a few local galleries, as we have for the sixth class also, containing pictures which are soundly meccanian in spirit but which do not come up to the standard of the great gallery." presently we proceeded to the gallery containing the old historical collection. musch said that we should see what we wanted of this in an hour, in fact it was rather a formality to visit it, but the regulations for foreign observers made it necessary that i should see this first. it turned out to be really a fine collection, such as i had seen in many others parts of europe; but i almost gasped at the strange freak which had inspired the curators in arranging the pictures. they were arranged strictly according to subject. all the "nativities" were together in one room, all the "madonnas" together in another, all the "adam and eves" together, all the "deluges," all the "susannas," all the "prodigal sons," all the "venuses," all the "bacchuses"; whatever the subject, every picture relating to that subject was placed together as if the gallery were a collection of butterflies. musch took no interest in this collection. it was all dead, he said, obsolete, pre-meccanian, untouched by the spirit. when we came to the second gallery containing the older meccanian pictures he showed more interest. some painted three centuries ago i thought very fine, but musch said they were lacking in self-consciousness. the meccanian spirit was overlaid by false foreign culture. only when we came to some weird and powerful but almost revolting pictures, dating from the beginning of the century, did he grow enthusiastic. these, he said, were the genuine precursors and pioneers of meccanian art. it was afternoon when we entered the first section or stage of the great meccanian gallery. this was the first stage for young persons, and was divided into a section containing 'elementary-general' pictures, and another containing historical pictures. the general pictures were mostly scenes of places of interest in various parts of meccania, or national customs and public ceremonies. the technique was distinctly good. the historical pictures mostly represented wars against foreign enemies. i noticed that the meccanians were represented as heroes, and their enemies as brutalised hordes of semi-lunatics. others represented meccanians discovering all the arts of peace and war. i spent a dreary day and more, working painfully through stages i., ii. and iii., up to xix., until, on the third day, we came to the most advanced specimens. these reminded me of dr. dodderer's account of the meccanian drama. there was a number of allegorical subjects--"the birth of the meccanian spirit," "the victory of time over space," "the festival of chemistry," "the nuptials of science and force," "the conquests of culture." others were more mystical--"war the servant of culture," "the deity instructing monarchy," "the eternal principle of meccanian monarchy," "the wisdom of the super-state," "the unity of the seven classes." some of these were immense canvases forty feet long, full of life-size figures drawn with microscopic exactness. the artists had certainly managed to catch and even accentuate the meccanian features of every face. i felt the meccanian atmosphere, but i still could not understand why such careful cultivation should have been required to produce this extraordinary collection. i would gladly have given the whole gallery for a few masterpieces from the old collection. i could not imagine that any effect produced on the mind even of patriotic meccanians could be worth all the trouble spent upon either the creation of the gallery itself or the organisation of artistic culture that centred round it. i was therefore curious to see what sort of effect the sight of the pictures had upon other visitors. in one of the lower rooms i had seen some groups of schoolgirls accompanied by a teacher. they all had their notebooks, and were taking down notes in shorthand. musch explained enthusiastically that these girls would spend a whole afternoon on half a dozen pictures, and that by the time they were twenty years of age they would have studied every picture up to stage xix. in the gallery. what i overheard from the teacher's lecture was something like this: "now let us analyse the colour scheme. by the aid of the colour divider you perceive at once the proportions in which the colours are distributed. now notice that red, which occupies only per cent of the canvas, is more conspicuous than green, which occupies more than per cent." i did not catch the next passage, but presently i heard: "all the pictures by the same artist have the same distribution of colour. consequently it would be possible to determine by an analysis of the colour scheme the authenticity of any picture by this artist. next notice the method of the brush strokes. under the microscope" (here the microscope came into play) "you will see the characteristic quality of the brush stroke. it has been already ascertained that in this picture there are down-strokes of an average length of millimetres, strokes from right to left of an average length of ½ millimetre, only from left to right, and upward strokes. the same proportion of strokes has been discovered in several other pictures by the same artist, according to the size of the picture. this picture was painted in exactly hours. the quantity of paint used must have been almost exactly three-quarters of a litre, so you can make a calculation to ascertain the number of brush strokes to the litre." in another gallery i noticed some superior young men of the fourth class in their green uniforms, discussing the merits of a popular artist. one of them was saying, "and i maintain that his morality is pre-meccanian; he lacks super-masculinity." in another room a few stolid citizens of middle age were slowly making a pilgrimage. i wondered why they did not move faster and get it over, until i discovered there was a rule that, at each visit, non-students were not allowed to spend less than half an hour in one room, or more than three-quarters of an hour. this regulation did not apply to me so long as i was under the charge of musch, who had access to the whole gallery. i found musch a less desirable acquaintance than prigge. i suspected him of being addicted to drugs, and wondered how far his enthusiasm for the meccanian spirit was an official pose; for, after completing my visit to the great gallery, i was asking him whether all artists were employed by the state, and whether there were not other types of pictures produced, besides those represented in the great gallery, when he began to tell me of another phase of art. "all artists," he said, "who in the seventh year of their training are accepted by the academy are employed permanently by the state; the others are found other employment according to their capacity, but are not permitted to produce pictures." "i suppose," i said, "the artists who are taken into the service of the state are controlled in some way. what happens, for instance, if they turn out to be idlers?" "they are certainly controlled. the board selects the subjects for the year, for each artist, according to his capacity. of course he may suggest subjects too, but until they are approved he is not allowed to proceed. he must also submit a plan or sketch of his proposed treatment." "and is a painter not allowed even in his own leisure to paint subjects of his own choice?" "ah, there you touch upon an interesting subject," replied musch, with something like a leer. "the board are naturally desirous of preserving the meccanian spirit in all its purity, but the effort to rise to the sublime heights of emotion which that demands, produces a reaction, and many of our artists find an outlet for this, so that beside the pure stream of meccanian art there flows, as it were, another stream." "in other words," i suggested, "they carry on an illicit production of works of a lower ethical quality, which can only be disposed of by being sold to the rich." "your intuition is remarkable," he replied. "not in the least," i said. "one only requires a little knowledge of human nature to see what must happen. but how does this practice escape the attention of the super-state?" i said. "there are many patrons of art among the higher official class," replied musch significantly. this was the first time i had learnt from any person that the state had any chinks in its armour. "perhaps you can tell me," i said, "something which has puzzled me ever since i came here, and that is--why your super-state occupies itself so meticulously with such things as music, and the drama, and art. such interests seem rather foreign to the main purpose for which, as i understand it, the great statesmen who have made meccania what it is, designed it." "i have often wondered the same thing myself," replied musch. "i can only say that if all this side of life were left unregulated, the life of the state would be incomplete. sooner or later the consciousness of the state must embrace all things." i said no more, and this was the last i saw of poor musch, for next day he was ill, and i was taken by another sub-conductor, whose name was grovel, to see the mechow memorial museum. almost everything in mecco is a sort of memorial or reminder of prince mechow. mechow street, mechow square, the mechow monument, mechow park, the mechow palace, mechow hotels meet one at every turn. there are even mechow whiskers, of a pattern seldom seen outside meccania, but immensely popular among middle-aged officials of the third and fourth classes. curiously enough, i learnt that the higher officials rather resent the wearing of this style of whisker by subordinate officials, but as it is a sort of symbol of loyalty it is not considered proper to repress it. the museum is near the square and is the largest biographical museum in existence. it contains a model of the house prince mechow was born in, with all his clothes and toys, all the schoolbooks he used, and models of all the rooms he lived in, including his bedrooms. one room contains all the letters he wrote, all the letters written to him, all the minutes he wrote as a civil servant, the very pens he used, the office furniture, etc. etc. the library contains not only the books he read, and the few he wrote, but an enormous number of books and pamphlets written about him personally and about all his work. besides his printed speeches, which run into many volumes, there are phonographic records of them, which are 'performed' daily in a special hall, to youths and girls from the high schools. one large room contains models of all the towns in meccania, as they were before his reforms and as they are now. another room is devoted to the great monument. it contains the original plans and models, as well as a model of all the copies erected in various towns. adjoining this room is a large collection of photographs of prince mechow, casts of his face and waxwork models of him as he appeared on several great historical occasions. one case in the library struck me as very characteristic. it was a series of volumes in folio, sumptuously bound. the first was entitled _prince mechow as statesman_; and there were at least thirty others with such titles as prince mechow as subject, prince mechow as conservative, prince mechow as reformer, prince mechow as student, prince mechow as author, prince mechow as orator, prince mechow as philosopher, prince mechow as husband and father, prince mechow as agriculturist, prince mechow's taste in art, prince mechow's taste in music, prince mechow's taste in literature, prince mechow's taste in nature, prince mechow's loyalty, prince mechow's generosity, prince mechow's pets, prince mechow's religion. chapter vii a meccanian apostle it was a week or two after my visit to the mechow museum that i made the acquaintance of one of the foreign observers who was staying at the hotel. a day or two before, i had been sent for by the hotel manager, and had been presented with a small certificate authorising me to take my meals in the common dining-room, and to converse with other foreigners whose names i was instructed to enter in my diary. i had previously noticed a certain gentleman from luniland whose face seemed familiar to me. on this particular evening he came across to my table and introduced himself as mr. johnson, a friend of mr. yorke, in whose house i had stayed and where he had met me. we soon fell into conversation, and when dinner was over we retired for a long chat to a corner of the smoke-room. it appeared that he had been in mecco over a year, and had travelled also in various parts of the country. in fact, this was his second visit, he said, his first having been made a few years before. he was a man of about forty-five, tall and slim, with a rather large bony nose and a grave but kindly expression. his manner was quiet and dignified, and at first he spoke with a certain obvious restraint; but afterwards he became more genial and was rather humorous, after the manner of many of his countrymen. "i should rather like to ask what you think of this country, but it would hardly be fair, because the chances are that every word we say here is overheard. i always suspect they have one of those beastly contrivances fixed in the walls, to enable the manager or somebody representing the authorities to listen to everything that goes on. i don't much mind if they turn me out of their precious country, but i wouldn't like to get you into trouble. anyhow, i believe if we were to begin talking in my language, which i remember you speak very well, we should presently have somebody round reminding us that it is against the rules." "yet you have spent quite a long time in the country apparently," i remarked. "i have really been wondering whether to stay here much longer, and perhaps you could give me some tips if i decide to stay." "well," he replied, "it's just a matter of taste whether you like the country. i shouldn't be able to stand it but for one thing." "and what is that?" i asked. "it enables me to thank god every hour that i am not a meccanian." "yes," i said, "there's something in that. i myself object to some of the inconveniences that these numerous regulations about everything entail, but they are nothing, i suppose, compared with what it would feel like if one expected to spend one's life here." "it's just possible they really like it. but what sort of 'tips' were you thinking of? perhaps i know the ropes a little better than you, if you have been here only a month or two." "well, there are two things i would like to know," i replied. "i am rather tired of being 'conducted' about everywhere. that's the first. and i want to get to know individual people as i did in luniland. here, so far, i have met only officials, always on duty. it seems impossible to get into contact with real live people. until lately, as you know, i was forbidden to talk to the people staying in the hotel; but now that i have got over that difficulty, although, no doubt, i can pick up a certain amount of information from my fellow foreign observers and enjoy their conversation, i am no nearer getting to know the meccanian private citizens themselves." "and do you particularly want to know them?" asked mr. johnson. "one naturally wants to know what the people of any country are like, and unless one has some fairly intimate intercourse of a social kind with people of different ranks and types, one might almost as well stay at home and read the matter up in books," i replied. "i see. you are a genuine foreign observer. well, to tell the truth, so am i," he said more confidentially. "i am not here because i like it. i detest the whole lot of them. i came here for the first time five or six years ago. i had heard a lot about the country and its wonderful organisation. organisation! blessed word! i had also heard some rather tall stories, and thought the accounts had been exaggerated. i came with an open mind. i rather prided myself on being an impartial observer. i was prepared to allow a lot for the natural differences of taste between one nation and another. at first i was so keenly interested that i didn't mind the little restrictions, but when the novelty had worn off, and i began to realise what it all meant, i determined to make a more thorough study of the country than i had at first thought would be worth while. so i am here now studying meccanian education. now the only way, so far as i know, of getting rid of your everlasting 'conductors' is to get permission to study some special subject. i went through just the same experience. i was what they call merely a 'general' observer. the authorities don't exactly like the 'general' observer. they can't find it in their hearts to let him alone. as they regulate their own people they must keep as close a watch on the foreigner. as he doesn't fit into their system, they have to invent a system for him. it is troublesome to them, and not very pleasant for the foreigner; but meccanian principles make it necessary. however, if you can satisfy them that you are a _bona fide_ student of some special subject--it doesn't matter what it is, you may choose anything from the parasites in the intestines of a beetle to the philosophy of the absolute--they will treat you quite decently, according to their lights." "how do you account for this difference?" i asked. "they are immensely flattered by the notion that if you come here to study anything, it must be because their knowledge is so superior to what can be found elsewhere. however, if you want to get rid of the daily worry of a 'conductor,' that is what you must do. but you must be a specialist of some sort, or they won't admit you to the privilege." "but there is no special subject i want to study," i said. "i am just a 'general' observer, and if i undertake to study a special subject i shall miss seeing what i most want to see." "that is a difficulty. perhaps you had better go on as you have been doing, and when you have had enough of that, go in for some political institutions; they have got you registered as a national councillor, so you can pretend to study the working of the constitution or some such thing." "that's rather a good idea," i said; "but, judging from what i have seen, i should doubt whether they will let me see what i want to see." "why, what do you want to see?" "just what i cannot get from an inspection of the machinery of the state--the effect of the laws and customs on the actual life of the people." "ah, that you will have to get by the aid of your imagination." "but," i suggested, "is it not possible to get permission to live in some family, or with several different families in different classes in succession?" "oh yes," replied johnson, "quite possible, if you are prepared to go through all the necessary formalities; but i doubt whether you will get much by it. you see, each family is a sort of replica, in miniature, of the state. they will have to report to the police once a week upon all your doings. every word you say will be listened to. they will be studying you, just as you will be studying them. i have tried it. there _is_ no natural intercourse in this country. try it if you like, but i am sure you will come to my opinion in the end. "don't forget to enter the time of this conversation in your diary," mr. johnson said as we parted. "if you make a mistake, or if i make a mistake, we shall have an interview with an inspector from the time department, and the hotel manager will worry us to death about it." the next day i resumed my tour of observation with a new 'conductor' whose name was lickrod. he was almost affectionate in his greeting when we met at the police office, and we had not been long together before i recognised that he was a different type from prigge, or sheep, or any of the others i had met. he was to take me to see the industrial town, and he was full of enthusiasm for everything we were to see. as we went along in the tram he explained rather effusively that it was a great pleasure to him to meet foreigners. he had a mission in life, just as meccania had a mission among all the nations. he was a loyal meccanian--in fact, he yielded to no man in his loyalty to the state; but for that very reason he ventured to criticise one defect in the policy of the government. i began to wonder what that could be. "i have travelled abroad," he said, "and i have seen with my own eyes the benighted condition of so many millions of my fellow-creatures. i come home, and i see everywhere around me order, knowledge, prosperity, cleanliness--no dirt, no poverty, no disorder, no strikes, no disturbance, no ignorance, no disease that can be prevented--culture everywhere. it makes me almost weep to think of the state of the world outside. we have not done all that we might have done to carry our culture abroad. we have kept it too much to ourselves. in my humble way, as a conductor of foreigners, i take every opportunity i can of spreading a knowledge of our culture. but instead of a few score, or at most a few hundred, foreigners every year, we ought to have thousands here. then they would become missionaries in their own countries. i always impress upon them that they must begin with the reform of education in their countries; and i would advise you, before you return, to make a thorough study of our system of education. without that you cannot hope to succeed." "but," i suggested, "if other countries followed your example would they not become as strong as you? perhaps your government looks at it from that point of view." "there are, on this question," he observed sagely, "two opposite opinions. one is that it is better to keep our culture to ourselves; the other is that we ought to teach other nations, so that ultimately all the earth can become one great and glorious meccania." by this time we had arrived at the entrance to the industrial town. conductor lickrod broke off to note the time of our arrival, and to lead me into the office of the governor or controller of what, for convenience, i may call worktown. indeed the industrial quarter is known by a similar term in mecco. this controller is responsible for the preservation of order; but as there is no difficulty about discipline in the ordinary sense of the word, his functions are rather to promote a high standard of meccanian conduct among the workers of all ages and grades. in this work he is assisted by scores of sub-controllers of industrial training, as they are called. the organisation of the controller's department was explained before we proceeded to any of the works. there was a large room filled with thousands of little dossiers in shelves, and card-index cases to correspond. the particulars of the character and career of every worker in the town could be ascertained at a moment's notice. all the workers were either in the fifth or sixth class, but they were divided into more than a dozen subgrades, and the card-index showed by the colour which of the many grades any particular person had attained. i asked how the workmen were engaged. "the industrial career of a workman," said lickrod enthusiastically, "begins, if i may so express myself, with the dawn of his industrial intelligence. in our schools--and here you perceive one of the perfections of our educational system--our teachers are trained to detect the signs of the innate capacity of each child, and to classify it appropriately. in ½ per cent of cases, as you will see from the last report of the industrial training section of the department of industry and commerce, the careers of boys are determined before the age of thirteen. the rest is merely a question of training. by a proper classification we are able to adjust the supply of each different kind of capacity to the requirements of our industry. we avoid all the waste and uncertainty which one sees in countries where even the least competent workmen are allowed to choose their employment. we guarantee employment to everybody, and on the other hand we preserve the right to say what the employment shall be." "does that mean," i asked, "that a workman can never change his employment?" "in some of the more backward parts of the country it is sometimes necessary for workmen to change their employment; but here, in mecco, we should think we had managed our business very badly if that were necessary." "but without its being necessary, a man might wish to change. i have heard of many cases, in luniland and transatlantica, of a clever and enterprising man having risen to eminence, after an experience in half a dozen different occupations. here, i understand, that is impossible." "ah," replied lickrod, "i see you have not grasped the scientific basis of our system. you say such and such a person rose to eminence, shall we say as a lawyer, after having been, let us say, a printer or even a house-painter. if there had been a sufficient supply of good lawyers it is probable that he would not have succeeded in becoming an eminent lawyer. now, _we_ know our requirements as regards lawyers, just as we know our requirements as to engineers. we have also the means of judging the capacity of our young people, and we place them in the sphere in which they can be of most service." i thought i could see holes in this theory, but all i said was, "so you think of the problem from the point of view of the good of the state, regardless of the wishes of the individual." "certainly of the good of the state; but you mistake the true meaning of the wishes of the individual. the apparent wish of the individual may be to follow some other course than that which the state, with its fuller knowledge and deeper wisdom, directs; but the real inward wish of all meccanians is to serve the interests of meccania. that is the outcome of our system of education. we must talk about that some other time, but just now i want you to see that our system produces such wonderful fruits that it never enters the head of any meccanian workman to question its wisdom." we entered a gigantic engineering works, full of thousands of machine tools. everything appeared as clean and orderly as in the experimental room of an engineering college. some of the workmen wore grey-coloured overalls, showing that they belonged to the sixth class, but most of them wore the chocolate uniform of the men of the fifth class. these were evidently performing highly skilled work. even the moulding shops were clean and tidy, and the employment of machinery for doing work that elsewhere i had been accustomed to see done by hand astonished me. the workmen looked like soldiers and behaved like automatons. conversation went on, but i was informed by lickrod, again in a tone of pride, that only conversation relative to the work in hand was permitted. here and there i saw a man in a green uniform, applying some mysterious instrument to one of the workmen. i asked lickrod what this meant. "that is one of our industrial psychologists, testing the psycho-physiological effects of certain operations. by this means we can tell not only when a workman is over-fatigued, but also if he is under-fatigued. it is all part of our science of production." "what happens if a man is under-fatigued persistently?" i asked. "he will have to perform fatigue duty after the usual hours, just as he would in the army," he answered. "and do they not object to this?" "who?" "the workmen." "why should they? the man who is guilty of under-fatigue knows that he is justly punished. the others regard the offence as one against themselves. it is part of our industrial training. but we have indeed very few cases of under-fatigue in mecco. you know, perhaps, that all our citizens are, so to speak, selected. anyone who does not appreciate his privileges can be removed to other cities or towns, and there are thousands of loyal meccanians only too eager to come to live in mecco." one of the most remarkable industries i saw carried on was the house-building industry. the plans for houses of every kind, except those for the third and higher classes, are stereotyped. that is to say, there are some forty or fifty different plans, all worked out to the minutest detail. suppose ten houses are wanted in any particular quarter, the building department decides the type of house, the order is given for ten houses, type no. let us say. this goes to the firm which specialises in type no. . there are no architect's fees, and the expenses of superintending the work are almost _nil_. i asked conductor lickrod why it was that, when the whole industry of house-building had been reduced to a matter of routine, the state did not itself carry on the work, but employed private firms. "that question," he said, "touches one of the fundamental principles of our meccanian policy. if you study our national economy you will learn all you require about it, but for the moment i may say that the control of the state over industry is complete, yet we have not extinguished the capitalist. we do not desire to do so, for many reasons. the third class, which includes all the large capitalists, and the fourth class, which includes the smaller capitalists, furnish a most important element in the national economy. their enterprise in business and manufacture is truly astonishing." "but what motive have they for displaying enterprise?" i asked. "what motive? why, every motive. their livelihood depends upon the profits made; their promotion to a higher grade in their own class, and in the case of those in the fourth class their promotion to the ranks of the third class, also depends upon their skill and enterprise. but most of all, the meccanian spirit, which has been inculcated by our system of education, inspires them with the desire to excel the business men of all other nations for the sake of meccanian culture." certainly the organisation of industry was marvellous, and the production of everything must be enormous. we spent three days going through factory after factory. there was the same marvellous order and cleanliness and perfect discipline, wherever one turned. on leaving the works the men all marched in step, as if on parade. inside, they saluted their 'officers,' but the salute was of a special kind--the hand was raised to the shoulder only, so as to avoid a sweeping motion which might have brought it in contact with some object. one of the triumphs of organisation, to which lickrod called my attention, was the arrangement whereby the workmen reached their work at the proper time, got their midday meal, and reached home in the evening without any congestion. each separate workshop had its appointed time for beginning work; some began as early as , others at . , the last to begin were a few that had a comparatively short day, starting at . . the midday meal began at . , and was taken by relays until about . . all the women employed in the canteens were the wives and daughters of workmen, who spent the rest of their time in household work at home. at the end of the third day, as i was taking coffee with conductor lickrod, i took advantage of his communicativeness, which was rather a contrast to the brusqueness of prigge, to get some light on several matters that had so far puzzled me. "your industrial system," i remarked, "as a productive machine, appears to me to be quite marvellous." lickrod beamed. "i knew you would think so," he said. "we have a word in our language which, so far as i am aware, has no exact equivalent in other languages, because their culture does not include the thing. it means 'the adaptation of the means to the end.' our industrial system exemplifies the virtue connoted by that expression; but our whole industrial system itself is only a means perfectly adapted to its end. we have no 'industrial problem' in the old sense of that word. of course we are always effecting improvements in detail." "but i have been wondering how it is," i said, "that with all this marvellous efficiency in production, your workmen in the fifth and sixth, and i suppose in the seventh class also, appear to work as long as those in other countries; they do not appear to be richer and they seem to have fewer opportunities of rising in the social scale." "i have heard the same question put by other foreign observers," replied lickrod, "and i am glad you have come to me for information on the subject. a complete answer involves a correct understanding of our whole culture. to begin with, the supreme good of the state can only be determined by the state itself. the wishes or opinions of the private individual are of no account. now, the state knows what its requirements are, and determines the amounts and kinds of work necessary to meet these requirements. by means of our sociological department, our industrial department, our time department, and the various sections of our department of culture, we know perfectly how to adjust our industries to the end determined by the state. every class and grade therefore is required to contribute towards the supreme good of the state according to its ability." "i quite understand," i interrupted, "the point of view you are expounding; but what i am wondering is why, with all this efficient machinery of production, everybody in the country is not in the enjoyment either of wealth or of leisure." "i am afraid it is not easy for a foreigner, without longer experience, to appreciate the different value we attach to things such as wealth and leisure, and other things too. suppose, purely for the sake of argument, that our working class worked only five hours a day instead of nine or ten: what would they do with their leisure?" "i suppose they would enjoy themselves," i replied; "and seeing that they have had the benefit of a good education, i take it that they would know how to enjoy themselves in a decent manner. besides, your regulations would be able to prevent any excesses or disorders." "and you think they would be better employed in enjoying themselves than in serving the state as they do now?" asked lickrod. "who is to judge whether they would be better employed?" i answered. "that is just the question," said lickrod, "and it is there that our culture is so much in advance of other nations. private enjoyment is not the supreme end of the state." "but surely," i said, "you do not go on producing wealth simply for the sake of keeping your working classes employed ten hours instead of five? what becomes of the wealth?" "as i said before, we produce just the wealth we require." "then i confess i am baffled," i said. "possibly a great deal is required for your army and navy and other public services. you have, you must acknowledge, a very large number of people employed as officials of all kinds. as these are not producing material goods, perhaps the surplus wealth is drained away into these channels?" "all that is included in my statement, that we produce what we require," answered lickrod. "can you give me any idea," i asked, with some hesitation, fearing i was getting on delicate ground, "how much of the industrial product is required for military and naval purposes? i don't suppose you can, because i am aware that your government does not publish its military estimates; and even if it did, it would not be possible to tell how much of the labour of the working classes is absorbed in that way. but whilst i do not ask for any information that it is not usual to give, i suggest to you that when i see the extraordinary productivity of your economic machine, coupled with the comparative simplicity of the mode of life pursued by the bulk of your population, i am bound to infer one of two things: either a vast amount must be absorbed by some rich class, or it must be in some way absorbed by the state itself." "i think your reasoning is perfectly sound," replied lickrod. "i could not tell you what proportion of the wealth product is absorbed by the army if i wished; for i do not know, and nobody in meccania knows, except the supreme authority. the finance department knows only in terms of money what is spent upon the various services. but without knowing either exact amounts or proportions, i have no hesitation in saying that a very great deal of the wealth product does go in these directions. but that is part of our meccanian ideal. the army is the nation, is it not? every workman you have seen is a soldier; and he is a soldier just as much when he is in the factory as when he is in the camp or the barracks. he spends five years of his life between twenty and thirty in the camp, and he spends from one to two months of every year afterwards in keeping up his training. then of course there is the equipment of both army and navy, which of course is always developing. your idea is, i suppose, that if we devoted less to such objects as these, the people of the working classes, or even the whole body of people, would have more to spend upon pleasure, or could enjoy more leisure." "yes," i said, "in most other countries every penny spent upon either military purposes or upon state officials, beyond what is strictly necessary, is grudged. the people scrutinise very keenly all public expenditure. they prefer to spend what they regard as their own money in their own way. it seems to me therefore, that either your people do not look at the matter in the same way, or if they do, that the state has discovered a very effective way of overcoming their objections." "what you say," replied lickrod, "only brings out more and more the difference between our culture and that of other nations. this sense of antagonism between the interests of the individual and the interests of the state, which has hindered and apparently still hinders the development of other countries, has been almost entirely eradicated among the meccanians." "what!" i said, "do you mean that a meccanian pays his taxes cheerfully?" "what taxes?" asked lickrod blandly. "i do not know in what form your taxes are paid," i said, "but they must be paid in some way, and i suspect that even in meccania, if they were left to voluntary subscription, the exchequer would not be quite so full." "now that is a very curious instance of what i am tempted to call the political stupidity of other nations. instead of removing all circumstances that provoke a consciousness of difference between the individual and the state, they seem to call the attention of the private citizen, as they call him, to these differences. they first allow a man to regard property as entirely his own, and then discuss with him how much he shall contribute, and finally make him pay in hard cash." "and how do you manage to get over the difficulty?" i said. "all meccanians are taught from their youth--even from early childhood--that all they have they owe to the beneficent protection of the state. the state is their father and their mother. no one questions its benevolence or its wisdom or its power. consequently all this haggling about how much shall be paid this year or that year is avoided. the state is the direct paymaster of nearly half the nation. hence it can deduct what is due without any sense of loss. through our banking system the collection of the rest is quite easy. the private employers deduct from the wages of their employees, and are charged the exact amount through the banks. no one feels it." "but does your parliament exercise no control over taxation?" i asked in some surprise. "our parliament is in such complete accord with the government that it would not dream of disturbing the system of taxation, which has worked so well for over thirty years," replied lickrod. "have they the power to do so?" i asked. "they have the power to ask questions, certainly," he replied; "but the taxes are fixed for periods of seven years. that is to say, the direct taxes falling upon each separate class are fixed every seven years in each case; so that the taxes for the first class come up for revision one year, those for the second class the next year, and so on. the constitution does not allow parliament to increase the amount asked for by the government, and as the vote is taken not individually but by classes, it is hardly to the interest of any of the classes to try to reduce the amount assessed upon any one class. besides, the government derives a considerable proportion of its income from its own property in the shape of mines, railways, forests, farms, and so forth. when we hear foreigners speak of parliamentary opposition we hardly know what the term means. it is entirely foreign to the meccanian spirit." "you speak of the government," i remarked, "but i have not yet discovered what the government is." "i am afraid i must refer you to our manuals of constitutional law," replied lickrod. "oh, i know in a general way the outline of your constitution," i said, "but in every country there is a real working constitution, which differs from the formal constitution. for instance, constitutions usually contain nothing about political parties, yet the policy and traditions of these parties are the most important factors. the merely legal powers of a monarch, for instance, may in practice lapse, or may be so rarely exercised as not to matter. now in meccania one sees a powerful government at work everywhere--that is, one sees the machinery of government, but the driving force and the controlling force seem hidden." "you may find the answer to your question if you make a study of our political institutions. at present i am afraid your curiosity seems directed towards matters that to us have only a sort of historical interest. it would never occur to any meccanian to ask who controls the government. his conception of the state is so entirely different that the question seems almost unmeaning." "i have recently spent a long time in luniland," i remarked at this point, "and i am afraid a lunilander would say that if such a question has become unmeaning to a meccanian, the meccanians must have lost the political sense." "and we should say that we have solved the problem of politics. we should say," he went on, "that the lunilanders have no government. a government that can be changed every few years, a government that has to ask the consent of what they call the taxpayers for every penny it is to spend, a government that must expose all its business to an ignorant mob, a government that must pass and carry out any law demanded by a mere majority--we do not call that a government." "they regard liberty as more important than government," i replied, with a smile. "they are still enslaved by the superstitions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries," he replied solemnly. "no nation will make real progress until it learns how to embody its physical, intellectual and spiritual forces in an all-embracing state. our state may be imperfect--i know it is--but we are in the right way; and developed as it may be in another century it will completely answer all human requirements." "developed?" i said, almost betraying my amusement, for i wondered what further developments the super-state was capable of. "in what directions do you anticipate development?" "there is still an immense fund of religious sentiment that is squandered upon unworthy objects: this may be--i feel sure it will be--directed into a nobler channel. our ritual, too, in no way corresponds to the sublimity of the idea of the super-state. the ritual of the catholic church--which is after all but a section of the whole state--is still superior, from the sensuous and the artistic point of view, to our state ritual. our reverence for the state is too cold, too inarticulate. i have sometimes thought that the emperor might found an order of priests or monks who would cultivate an inward devotion that would inevitably give birth to a real religion of the state." "you are a true missionary," i said; "in fact, i think you are entitled to be considered a meccanian apostle. i have learnt a great deal from our intercourse, and just as you have suggested that the government might bring more foreigners to see the wonders of your meccanian culture, i would suggest that they should send you and others like yourself into other countries to enlighten them as to the real mission of meccania." he was pleased to accept this testimony from an innocent and well-disposed foreign observer, and said that i could best show my appreciation by inducing more of my fellow-countrymen to come and study the wonders of meccanian culture. chapter viii the mechow festival i told mr. johnson of this conversation when next we met, and he seemed immensely amused by it. "you will have a chance of seeing a bit of meccanian ritual to-morrow," he said. "you mean this prince mechow festival," i replied. "what is it like? i suppose you have seen it before?" "haven't you noticed the whole town is crowded with visitors?" he said. "but i won't take the edge off by telling you anything about it. you shall see it for yourself without prejudice." i was aroused about five o'clock next morning by a tremendous booming of guns. it lasted for half an hour, and sounded like a bombardment. then, for the next half-hour, all the bells in mecco began ringing. by this time i was dressed and out on the veranda of the hotel. i had tried to go outside the hotel, but was reminded by the porter that we were instructed to remain indoors until we were taken to a building in the great square to watch the proceedings. at a few minutes after six we were conveyed in a motor-car to one of the hotels in the square, and provided with seats at the windows. there were only about twenty foreign observers in mecco altogether, and as most of them were not very desirable acquaintances i sought the company of mr. johnson. the streets were rapidly filling with people, the great majority being dressed in grey and chocolate uniforms, with a fair sprinkling of green. there were also quite a number of dark blue uniforms. as there is no seventh class in mecco, i pointed this out to johnson, who said that all the people in the streets were from the provinces. "you will see the citizens of mecco presently," he said. "where have they lodged all these people?" i asked, for i knew the hotels would not hold them. "oh, every person is billeted upon somebody of his own class as far as possible. some of them have relatives here." at seven o'clock, about fifty bands of music struck up, in different parts of the great central circle. they all played the same tunes and kept wonderful time. as soon as they struck up, johnson said, "that means the processions have started." we waited about a quarter of an hour. the square itself was quite clear of people, but a few sentries in brilliant uniforms stood guarding the entrances from the four streets that led into it. the great statue towered above everything. presently, headed by a band, the first of the processions, composed of members of the sixth class, in their best grey uniforms with all their badges and stripes, reached the square. six men, at the head, carried a great banner, and were followed by another six, carrying an enormous wreath, which they deposited at the foot of the statue. then, as the procession moved on across the square, six abreast, the two outside files left the procession, and separating, one to the right the other to the left, filled up the back of the whole square four deep. how many men there were altogether of the sixth class i have no idea, but they took half an hour to file past. then followed another still bigger procession of the fifth class. these performed a similar ceremony, and proceeded to fill up the square ten deep. after them came the fourth class, in their green uniforms. this procession was much more brilliant in appearance than even the fifth class in its bright chocolate uniform. there were apparently ten grades of the fourth class, including as it does nearly all the professional men, as well as officials and business men. some of the men in the first two grades had their breasts almost covered with badges and decorations. last came a much smaller procession of the third class. the yellow against the background of green and chocolate and grey, as they filed into the square, filling the inner part about four deep, made a brilliant colour effect. there were no women in the processions, but the buildings in the square were full of the wives and daughters of the men of the upper classes, who watched the proceedings from the open windows and balconies. the bands went on playing all the time the processions were moving in and filling up the square. it must have been half-past nine when the music suddenly stopped. there was silence for five minutes. then suddenly the guns burst forth again, and for a quarter of an hour the noise was deafening. then the bells rang for half an hour, but after the guns they sounded like a mere tinkling. at half-past ten, after a short silence, a subdued kind of murmur went through the crowd, and we saw advancing from the imperial church, which stands back from one side of the square, a new procession, this time in military uniforms. they seemed to be arranged in companies of about fifty, and there must have been a hundred companies. they were all on foot, as it would have been very inconvenient to have cavalry in the crowded square. they filled up the central space. immediately after came a group of about fifty generals, all belonging to the army council. they were followed by the members of the imperial council, all dressed in generals' uniforms. then came the emperor himself, followed by the prime minister and some of the chief officials of the state. i could not see the face of the emperor from where i stood. he was dressed in the most gorgeous sort of uniform i have ever seen, and as he appeared, at a given signal (which i did _not_ see), a great shout went up from all the people present, "hail the emperor! hail the emperor! hail the emperor!" then everybody knelt on one knee for about half a minute, whilst he uttered some kind of blessing which i could not hear. the bands then struck up the national hymn, after which there was complete silence for a minute or two. suddenly a loud voice was heard. it must have been produced by a kind of megaphone, but it was perfectly clear. we were listening to the emperor's formal speech on the occasion. i have not the exact words, but as near as i can reproduce it the speech was something like this: "we meet for the sixteenth time since the death of the illustrious prince mechow, to commemorate his never-to-be-forgotten services and to thank god for the blessings which, through the divinely appointed instrumentality of that noble statesman, he has so abundantly bestowed upon this his most beloved country.... "superior to all other nations and races in our god-given endowments, we had not achieved those triumphs of culture of which our noble race and nation was capable, until by god's grace my father's minister, prince mechow, showed my people of all ranks and classes how to direct their efforts, through discipline and knowledge and devotion, to the strengthening and glorifying of our divinely founded state.... "to-day we again show our gratitude to god for having raised up, in the direct succession of great servants of the state, one who knew how to serve his emperor and his god, and thus to defeat the evil intentions of all the host of envious and malignant enemies--enemies to god as well as to our nation--by whom we are surrounded.... "let those enemies beware how they set god at defiance by thwarting the divine mission he has entrusted to us. he has set our glorious and invincible state in the midst of all the nations, but in their blindness and ignorance they have scorned our mission.... if, whilst all other nations are striving within themselves, class against class and man against man and rulers against ruled, in our nation and among my people there is but one will, one purpose, one mind, we owe it, under god, more to prince mechow than to any other.... this monument, which to-day we decorate with the wreaths of memory, is but a symbol of that monument which exists in the shape of the whole nation, whose forces he organised and whose purposes he directed to one end, the strength and unity of the state. hail to prince mechow! hail! hail! hail!" the whole crowd burst out in shouts of "hail to prince mechow! hail!" then came renewed shouts of "hail the emperor! hail!" after he had bowed a dozen times or so, those near him prepared to form the procession back towards the imperial church, and for the next two hours the processions filed out to the sound of music. it grew very tiresome, and i was getting hungry, so we got permission to return to our hotel for a meal. until now everybody had fasted, but the rest of the day was given up to a sort of carnival. banquets were arranged to take place in every part of the city, and the whole population prepared to enjoy itself. at these banquets it is the custom to make patriotic speeches, which are faithfully reported. the man who is adjudged to have made the best patriotic speech is awarded a special decoration called the prince mechow prize. as the streets were liable to be crowded with strangers, it was not thought fit to allow us to wander about; but i learnt from johnson that as the day goes on, and a large quantity of beer is drunk, the streets become filled with a boisterous crowd, which is a most unusual sight in mecco. two things seemed to me rather odd about this festival: why was it that the emperor allowed such adulation to be paid to a former subject; and why was the commemoration of prince mechow, who had done so much to introduce the strictest discipline, the one occasion when licence was allowed? i put these questions to mr. johnson as we sat talking in the smoke-room, where we could faintly hear the murmur of the crowd in the streets in the distance. "it is just as well you did not ask these questions of any of your meccanian conductors," replied johnson. "the real reason is one which i don't believe any meccanian would avow. this mechow festival is a genuine expression of national character. they used to 'enthuse' about bludiron in almost the same way, some eighty years ago. i have heard my father tell of some of the scenes he saw here. they have a childish belief in national heroes. then, the upper classes have a very special reason for encouraging this cult of mechowism. they realise how completely he did their work for them and made their power secure, and it suits them to cultivate the superstition that there is something sacred about everything he established. perhaps you know that the military class are the real power behind the throne here. they let the emperor play his part on the stage in public, but he takes good care not to do anything to offend them; and this worship of mechow is a sort of symbol of their power. the real effect of mechow's reforms was not to make the emperor himself supreme, but to make the military caste all-powerful. they take care, therefore, to make this festival popular. i don't suppose the emperor altogether enjoys the part he has to play on an occasion like to-day." "what you say about the military is rather interesting," i replied, "for only a day or two ago i was trying to get lickrod to tell me what the government really is. i couldn't make out whether he knew or not, but he certainly didn't enlighten me much." "of course it's the military class," said johnson, with a laugh. "i thought everybody knew that. it's a very open secret." "i have heard that theory put forward," i said, "but i can't quite make it square with the facts." "why not?" asked johnson. "well, if the military are the supreme power, why should they have such an elaborate bureaucracy and make such a parade of culture in every direction?" i said. "ah," replied johnson, "you must remember we are living in the twentieth century; in fact, you must remember all that this wonderful rascal of a mechow taught his countrymen. the clumsy methods of the military autocracy of a barbarous age would not be of the slightest use in our times. human society in modern times, even under an autocracy, is tremendously complex. an elaborate bureaucracy is a necessary part of the machine. suppose, for instance, that you were an autocrat, and you wanted to be able to wield the whole force of the nation over which you ruled, how could you give effect to your will unless the whole nation were organised with that end in view? suppose you had absolute power, as far as the law could give it you, and suppose you wanted a powerful army; you would want also the best equipment. how would you get it unless your industries were already organised and under control? there is no doubt at all that the nation that can control and mobilise all its resources for whatever purposes it happens to require them, has a great advantage, from the military standpoint, over other nations not so organised." "but," i said, "they organise all sorts of things that have nothing to do with military efficiency. look at the theatres, and at art, and music: their organisation of these is carried to an absurd point." "that is quite true, but did you ever know any big organisation that did just exactly what it ought to do, and stopped short of the things it ought not to do? once set up a bureaucracy and it will inevitably extend its functions. people are dirty, so the bureaucrat says, let us make them wash. then, he says, let us make them keep their houses clean. then, he says, let us make them keep their clothes tidy. he doesn't like the way they walk, so he makes them march in step. you can see that there was a tremendous advantage in having a well-instructed middle class and a well-instructed working class. to secure this, a powerful department to organise and enforce education was necessary. once the bureaucracy was created there was hardly any limit to its functions. besides, and this seems to me rather important, the more widely extended are the functions of the bureaucracy, the more effectually is its main purpose disguised. the people are accustomed to being directed and 'organised.' they imagine, in a vague sort of way, that it is all for their good. another little turn of the screw is not felt. if the state tells me what to eat, why shouldn't it tell me what to wear, and what to read, and what to think? "there is another reason why it 'organises' all this culture. in every nation some kind of intellectual life goes on. it must be either free or controlled. if it is let alone, the force of ideas is such that, in the long run, they will shape the political structure. the state, if it means to preserve itself as an autocracy, must get control over the intellectual life of the nation. in ancient times it succeeded for a time. in the middle ages the church tried the same thing. in modern times most states have _not_ made the attempt, but this state _has_ made the attempt. it has done no more than plato would have done. it has done it rather differently perhaps, but it has followed the same idea." "they would feel rather flattered, don't you think," i said, "if you told them they were carrying out plato's principles?" "perhaps they would, but that only means they have learnt nothing from twenty centuries of political experience." "on the contrary, it looks as if they have learnt a good deal," i said. "they have learnt how to make a nation of slaves and tyrants." "and yet they don't seem to mind being slaves, if they are slaves." "i wonder," replied johnson. "a hundred years in the life of a nation is not a long time. human nature is a strange thing. they kiss the rod so affectionately that i don't mind how long _they_ remain in bondage: all i care about is that they should not make slaves of the rest of us." "do you think there is any danger?" i asked. "i do indeed," replied johnson. "a great danger." "why, how could it be brought about?" i said. "in all sorts of ways. liberty is the most precarious possession of the human race. very few nations have possessed it for long together." "but surely," i said, "meccania is so unpopular, to put it mildly, with almost all other nations, that her influence can hardly be dangerous." "oh, but it is," insisted johnson. "the danger takes several forms. meccania is tremendously strong as a military power. she knows it, and other nations know it. suppose a great war took place, and she were successful; she would bring other nations under her power, as she has done in the past. these would soon be compelled to adopt her institutions. then, in self-defence, other nations would feel themselves compelled to resort to the same means as have proved successful in her case, to make themselves strong too. to a certain degree that has already taken place. lots of our military people now are always agitating to introduce what they call reforms, to place us on a level with meccania. then all sorts of cranks come over here: sanitary reformers, eugenists, town planners, educationists, physical culturists, temperance reformers, scientific industrialists, and so forth. each of them finds some idea he wants to push. there are people who think that if they could only cure unemployment they would bring in the millennium, and they are willing to reconstruct society for the sole purpose of doing away with unemployment. and so we get disconnected bits of bureaucracy set up, first for this and then for that. by and by some one will come along who will try to co-ordinate the whole thing." i had evidently set mr. johnson on to a train of thought that excited him, for he usually took things very calmly. after a short pause he went on: "and yet i don't think the greatest danger comes from these would-be bureaucrats of ours. with us the bureaucrat only gets his chance when we have played the fool so badly that somebody has got to step in and set things right. for instance, we had what we called magistrates at one time. they were supposed to be the prominent citizens with common sense and initiative; but they became so incompetent, and the authorities chose them so foolishly, that they lost the public confidence; so we had to replace them partly by officials and partly by paid judges. then look at our manufacturers; they hadn't the sense to apply a reasonable proportion of their profits to developing their business on scientific lines, so the state had to step in and compel them to. they hadn't the sense, either, to encourage their workpeople to become educated, nor even to pay them any more than they could help. consequently the state had to step in again. no, what i am most afraid of is our disinclination to set things right ourselves. we can't let mothers go on murdering their babies, we can't let food dealers poison the public, we can't let seducers of children traffic in obscenity; and as the public is apathetic about all these things the bureaucrat steps in and adds another department to the fabric. what i am afraid of chiefly is that we shall get into a bad mess that will place us at the mercy either of the meccanians over here or of our own meccanians at home." chapter ix meccanisation when i came to reflect that night upon the experience of the last few days, i was much impressed by three things which somehow seemed to hang together. there was first my conversation with lickrod. if all meccanians, or even a majority, took the same view of the state that he did, there could be no limit to the functions of the state. he seemed to claim for it all the moral authority of the mediæval church, and although in other countries theories are put forward for academic discussion without having much influence upon practical politics, in meccania the powers that be are able to carry out their ideas without the obstruction which necessarily arises in countries where public opinion is more spontaneous. he had evaded the question as to the control of the government, and had maintained that such a question had no meaning in a country where the people were not conscious of any difference between the state and themselves. then there was this mechow festival. now, it was either a sincere manifestation of a national admiration of prince mechow, and an approval of his work in creating a super-state with unlimited powers, or it was a proof that the ruling class, whatever that was, could manipulate the whole life of the nation as it pleased. lastly, there was the idea that johnson had thrown out. he was quite confident of the accuracy of his own view that the military class was the power behind everything, and that the whole elaborate bureaucratic organisation of society had for its motive and driving force the desire and the will to make meccania a perfect instrument of militarism. up to this time i had been partly amused and partly annoyed by what i had seen and heard and experienced. i was amused by the meticulous regulation and organisation of all the petty details of life, by the pedantic precision of all the officials i had met, and by the utter absence of a sense of humour in the mentality of the meccanian people. i had been annoyed by the meddlesome interference with my private habits, but i tried to disregard this, because, as an experienced traveller, i had sufficient experience to tell me that in every country one has to accommodate oneself to the customs and prejudices of the community. but most of all, i felt baffled by my failure to find out anything about the real life and thought and feeling of the people. i determined that i would make a more serious attempt to get behind the screen which all this officialism set up between the people and a well-intentioned foreign observer like myself or mr. johnson. i would find out whether the screen was erected only between the foreigner and the people, or whether the people themselves were so 'organised' that, even for them, intercourse was made difficult. i promised myself that lickrod, with his genuine enthusiasm for every feature of meccanian culture, would be much more likely to enlighten me than any person i had come in contact with before. we had still some days to spend in completing our general survey of industry in mecco. as president of an important literary society, i expressed a desire to see how the whole business of literary production was conducted in meccania, for i understood that several features in the system were quite unlike what could be found anywhere else in the world. conductor lickrod was almost eager to gratify my curiosity--at any rate up to a certain point. "the printing industry," said he in answer to my questions, "is a perfect example of the effect of prince mechow's reforms. it would be impossible in any other country to do what we do, even if they employed three times the number of men. in other countries the waste of labour, not only manual labour but brain labour and business enterprise, is ridiculous. look at the amount of advertising, the number of rival newspapers and magazines, the number of rival publishers of all sorts. it is a perfect chaos. now we have no advertising, as advertising is understood abroad. every commodity can be classified, whether it be a hair restorer or a mansion for sale. our system of commerce gets rid of advertising miscellaneous commodities. the wholesale merchants have their regular catalogues issued to the trade, and the same system is extended to retail trade. for example, if you want to buy an article of clothing, apart from your regular uniform, you consult a directory of the retail dealers. then you consult a catalogue of any particular firm at the bureau for retail trade, where you will find a catalogue of every shop in the town you happen to be in. there are no hoardings covered with posters tempting people, out of mere curiosity, to buy things they don't want. now look at a typical newspaper in any foreign country. half of it is covered with advertisements of concerts, theatrical performances, other amusements, sales, situations vacant and wanted, clothing, patent medicines, books--every imaginable thing. with us that is all unnecessary. the bureaux of employment do away with all advertisements for employment--but in any case we should require few of these, because our system of employment is so much better organised. as to concerts and theatres, everybody knows, through the official gazettes, what amusements are available for months in advance." "you have not only got rid of the advertisements," i remarked, "but even of the newspapers themselves, i understand. i have certainly seen none except the local gazettes." "exactly; i was coming to that," he continued. "look at the enormous waste of effort that goes to the production of forty or fifty big newspapers. what is the use of them? every item of information can be classified. it may be a crime, an accident, an event in foreign politics, a new law, a trial, a new discovery in some branch of science or industry, and so on. now look at all the ingenuity displayed in getting hold of some sort of account of these things at the earliest moment, in order to gratify the mere curiosity of crowds of ignorant people. then look at the special articles, all or nearly all produced in haste, and the so-called leading articles, all designed to influence the mind of the public by giving some particular colour or interpretation to the alleged facts. our official gazettes give the public all they require to know. the _law gazette_, issued each week, gives information about all the breaches of the law committed, all the important processes before the law courts, all the changes in the law. all the 'articles' which are necessary to throw light upon legal matters are written by real experts. as you know, the journalist is extinct in meccania. the industrial gazettes--one for each of the main branches of industry, with a general industrial gazette for matters affecting industry generally, contain everything required in a much more complete form than can be given in a daily newspaper. so you see that, applying the same principle to the various aspects of our public life, we are able to substitute one well-organised publication, dealing completely with all matters and issued with all the authority of the state, for the miscellaneous jumble of scraps which are called newspapers in other countries. "then look at the number of magazines; they represent a stage of culture which we have left entirely behind. we have our literary gazettes to keep the public informed about all the recent publications. we have our quarterly records for every department of knowledge. if you want the latest contributions to history or archæology, philology, ethnology, or anthropology, you know where to go for them. everything is done by experts, and we do not go to the trouble of printing anything by anyone else on such subjects." "then you have no popular magazines such as would interest people who are not strictly students, but who take an interest in things?" i asked. "no. as i said a moment ago, we have left that stage of culture behind. we provide a good education for all those who, we think, are able to utilise it for the good of the state. after that, every one is encouraged to pursue that branch of knowledge which will be most useful to him in his calling. in a certain sense every man is a specialist. we do not encourage people to dabble in things they only half understand." "but is there not also a need," i said, "for what i may call general knowledge on the part of the public? for instance, suppose a new law is to be introduced which is to affect people's lives, _everybody_ is concerned, whether he is a specialist or not. or suppose some question of public morals, or some question of political interest arises, you surely want the public to discuss such things. how, indeed, can your authorities keep in touch with the public mind unless there is some medium by which the general public can express itself?" "what you say," answered lickrod, "only serves to demonstrate the truth of what i am trying to convey to you, namely, that our culture is so differently conceived that you foreigners cannot understand our attitude. you use the expression 'public opinion.' our psychologists will tell you exactly how that public opinion is formed. they made a careful study of it before we decided to replace it by something better. it was one of the superstitions of the nineteenth century, which has not only lingered on but has become a serious hinderance to the development of scientific government in all countries except meccania. they actually allow their fiscal policy to be determined by 'public opinion.' fiscal policy is entirely a matter for the state, and the only persons qualified to advise the state are the experts. you speak of public morals, but the business of guiding the morals of the nation is the highest function of the state itself. now the organs through which every nation or state functions are determined and developed by the national consciousness: this consciousness expresses itself just as legitimately through experts as through an uninstructed public opinion." "so you would be prepared to say, then," i said, "that your people fully acquiesce in the suppression or abolition of one of the institutions which most foreigners consider almost the last safeguard of liberty? i mean, of course, the daily press." "the present generation of meccanians, that is, the young people, say between twenty and thirty, have never known the press. the older men were, i confess, bitterly opposed for some years, or at least a section of them were; but if anyone proposed to revive the press nowadays he would be regarded as one would be who wished to revive steam-trams, or wigs, or general elections." "but suppose some people were mad enough to want to publish a newspaper, could they not do so?" i asked. "well, there is no positive law against it, but it would be impossible, all the same." "why?" "the expense would be very great, for one thing. there would be no advertisements, remember. they would not be allowed to publish news before it had been submitted to the censor, or before it was given to the public through the official gazettes...." "you need say no more," i said. "i quite see it would be impossible. the censorship extends to all printed matter, i gather?" "certainly," he replied. "the state would be guilty of a grave neglect of its function as guardian of the meccanian spirit if it permitted any scribbler who wished to seduce the minds of the people to mislead them." "but," i could not help replying, "i thought that your people were on the whole so well educated that there would be less danger of their being misled in meccania than in any country. also i have been informed that all the best writers are already in the employ of the state; and, further, that the people generally are so completely at one in sentiment with the spirit and policy of the state that there could be no real danger from the free expression of opinion." conductor lickrod smiled. it was a benevolent, almost a pitying smile. "i perceive," he said, "that some of the most commonplace axioms of our policy seem like abstruse doctrines to people whose culture is less advanced. but i think i can make all this clear. your argument is that our people are well instructed, our writers--the best of them--are employed by the state, and our common loyalty to the meccanian ideal is so firmly established that even a free press, or at least the free expression of opinion in books, would give rise to no danger. now do you not see that it is only by means of our system--so wisely conceived by the greatest statesman who ever lived--that we _have_ this instructed public, that we _have_ all the best writers in the service of the state, that we _possess_ this common allegiance to the meccanian spirit? when we have achieved what no other nation has achieved, should we not be fools to introduce an entirely contrary principle, and for the sake of what? in order to provide an opportunity for the few people who are not loyal to meccania to attack the very state whose children they are. for, examine what it is you propose. no one who is a loyal meccanian finds the least fault with our present system. it has the enormous advantage over all the systems of other countries that, without any waste, it provides the most authentic information about every conceivable subject, it gives the public the benefit of the services of such a body of experts as no other country possesses. and the people who would write such books as _you_ are thinking of; who would support them? they are already fully employed in some manner, and in the manner considered by the state to be the most useful. i assure you this is a purely academic discussion, for no one would dream of putting into practice such a proposal." "there must be something in the mentality of the meccanians very different from that of other nations, and that is all the more surprising because, at least according to the ethnologists, they are not racially different from several of the surrounding nations." "that is quite true, with some slight reservations. we are not a pure race by any means. we have racial elements within our nation which are indeed distinct from those of the surrounding nations, and they have perhaps contributed to the final result much more than in proportion to their actual numbers. what you call latin culture has never done more than furnish us with the material for such elements of our culture as we wished to utilise. you see it has hardly affected our language. no, the meccanian culture of to-day is the result of education and scientific statesmanship." "excuse my putting the question so bluntly," i said, "but it seems to me that the principles you have put forward would justify even a revival of an institution known in mediæval times, and even later, as the inquisition. i suppose there is no institution corresponding to that in meccania?" "it is quite unnecessary. and that is one powerful argument in favour of our system of controlling the press. that control, together with our other institutions of which it forms part--our whole polity is a perfect harmony--makes an 'inquisition,' as you call it, an anachronism." "but," i said, "i was told by one of your own people of something that seems to a mere outsider to resemble an incipient inquisition." "indeed," he said, "and what is that?" "well, i gathered that in certain cases the special medical board uses its discretionary power to incarcerate persons whose opinions or convictions make it impossible for them to embrace what i may call the meccanian ideals of life." i felt i was treading on delicate ground, but as prigge on a previous occasion had openly approved of putting people into lunatic asylums if they did not accept the authority of the super-state i felt justified in sounding lickrod on the point. to my surprise he betrayed no embarrassment. "you are probably not aware," he said, "of the remarkable strides that have been made by our medical scientists in meccania during the last fifty years. the pathological side of psychology has received great attention, with the consequence that our specialists are able to detect mental disease in cases where it would not be suspected by less skilled doctors. i believe i am right in saying that our experts detected the disease now widely recognised as _znednettlapseiwz_ (chronic tendency to dissent) long before it was known in other countries that such a characteristic was in any way connected with brain disease. the microbe has been fully described in the twenty-seventh volume of the _report of the special medical board_. the first clue to the existence of this disease was discovered during the great war, or perhaps a little later. a number of people persisted in putting forward views concerning the origin of the war, which were totally at variance with the official, and even the imperial, explanatory statements made for the enlightenment of the public. at the time, it was regarded as just mental perversity. but what led to the discovery was that, after ten, and even fifteen years in some cases, notwithstanding every natural inducement to desist from such perversity, these people deliberately and persistently maintained the objectivity of their hallucinations. experiments were made; they were under close observation for some years, and at length doctor sikofantis-sangwin produced his theory and confidently predicted that the bacillus would be found in a few years. from that time the path was clear. the disease was most rife some forty years ago, soon after the beginning of prince mechow's premiership; but since then it has almost disappeared. you see it is not hereditary, and the normal conditions of meccanian life are very unfavourable to its development. but coming back to your point, although no doubt this is what has given rise to the calumny that the special medical board uses its powers as an inquisition, there is not a vestige of truth in the charge. each case--and the cases are becoming very rare indeed--is investigated on strictly psycho-physiological lines. the patients in all cases are isolated, and placed under observation for some months before any pronouncement is made." "your explanation is as usual most illuminating," i replied, "and the patience with which you deal with my questions emboldens me to put to you some further difficulties that have been puzzling me." "proceed," replied lickrod encouragingly. "well now," i said, "your whole national culture is so elaborately perfect, from the standpoint of its basic principles, that it is certainly well worth studying by any student of sociology or politics or economics; yet we foreigners find ourselves hampered at many points whenever we wish to get into contact with certain kinds of facts. for instance, we may wish to find out what are the ideas, the current thoughts and feelings, of the various groups, and even individuals, who make up society. we cannot go and live with people and converse freely with them. i have not been able to understand why your government takes such precautions to keep secret, as it were, facts which in any other country are as open as the day." "that is not at all difficult to answer by anyone who really understands the principles of our culture, and i am surprised that none of the conductors who have instructed you have explained it--that is, if you have asked them," he answered. "you have been hampered, you say. yes, but you have been assisted too. you have been shown things in a way that would be impossible in most other countries within such a short time. our government has paid great attention to the instruction of foreigners. instead of leaving them to gather all sorts of erroneous impressions, it provides them with authentic information. if, on the other hand, there are things which it does not wish foreigners to know, it takes care, and quite rightly, that they shall not obtain the information by any illicit means. for instance, if you were foolish enough to attempt to obtain information about our military affairs, you would find yourself against a blank wall; and, if i may say so, you might hurt your head against the wall. but then there are matters which, without being secret, cannot well be investigated by the individual inquirer. take such a thing as the current thought of any particular class or group. only a trained and well-equipped social-psychologist is capable of making such an inquiry. the liability to error is tremendous. all the books written by travellers reveal this. we do not wish to be exploited by casual and irresponsible travellers. we provide opportunities, under proper conditions, for expert investigators; but very few are willing to comply with the conditions. besides, our culture, like all the finest products of the human intellect, is a very delicate thing. when we have carefully educated our people in the meccanian spirit we are not prepared to expose them to the insidious influences of irresponsible busybodies. every meccanian is valuable in our eyes, and just as we protect him from infection in the shape of physical disease, so we protect him from the more insidious but not less injurious influence of foreign ideas. you will find plenty of philosophical justification for that policy in the writings of plato and aristotle--two philosophers who are studied in all the foreign universities but whose systems of thought are utterly misunderstood except in meccania." chapter x conversations it must have been more than a week after my long talk with conductor lickrod that i was sitting one evening in the hotel with mr. johnson and a certain francarian gentleman to whom he had introduced me, when the latter made a suggestion that has since proved very useful to me. mr. villele the francarian is a short and rather stout man of middle age, with a pair of merry black eyes, a swarthy complexion, and dark hair beginning to turn grey. he professes to find meccania and the meccanians amusing, but i suspect from the nature of his sarcasms that he entertains a deep hatred of them. we were talking of my journal when he said, "and what is the use of it?" "well," i said, "i do not flatter myself that i can produce a great literary work, but the facts i have been able to place on record are so interesting in themselves that i believe my countrymen would welcome a plain straightforward account of my visit to this most extraordinary country." "i have heard," he said, "that the chinese have very good verbal memories. have you committed your record to memory in its entirety?" "why should i?" i replied; "it is to save my memory that i am taking the trouble of making such full notes, even of such things as conversations." "and how do you propose to get your journal out of the country?" "i propose to take it with me when i return," i said. at this he turned to johnson and laughed, but immediately apologised for his apparent rudeness. "and what about the censor?" he asked. "surely," i replied, "these people take such precautions not to let us foreigners see anything they do not want us to see, that they cannot object to a faithful record being made of what they do permit us to see!" "then you have not even read regulation of the law concerning foreign observers." "what is that?" i asked. "simply that foreigners are not allowed to take out of the country anything they have not been permitted to bring in, except with the consent of the chief inspector of foreign observers." "and you think they will object?" "i have not the slightest doubt." "but it is written partly in chinese; they would have to translate it." "all the more reason for detaining it. if you ever get it again, it will be in a few years, after it has been translated for the benefit of the sociological section of the ministry of culture." "what do you advise me to do, then?" i asked. "have you any friends at the chinese embassy?" he asked. "i have no personal friends. at least i have not troubled to inquire. i have had no business at the embassy; there seemed no reason why i should trouble them." "there is a fellow-countryman of yours here in mecco who is _persona grata_ with the authorities," said villele, "but he is rather a dark horse." "a dark horse?" i said. "he is a sort of convert to meccanianism. he has written books in appreciation of meccanian principles, meccanian ideals, meccanian institutions, and so forth. they are eagerly read by the meccanians. they even use them in their colleges. i have read them, and they seem to me very clever indeed. i translated them for the benefit of my countrymen, and i am not exactly an admirer of things meccanian." i must have looked rather puzzled, for mr. johnson came to my rescue. "mr. villele means," he said, "that these books have a double meaning. i have read one of them. under cover of the most exuberant flattery he gives such an impression of the cold-blooded devilishness of the system, that some of us suspect his real purpose to be that of exposing the whole business." "he knows more of meccania than anyone who is not a high official," said villele; "and if you want to pursue your investigations any further, and incidentally get your manuscript conveyed out of the country, i should advise you to seek an interview with him." "will that be possible," i asked, "without arousing suspicion?" "oh, quite easily," answered villele. "_he_ is above suspicion, if you are not," he added, smiling. "he holds a weekly _salon_ for foreigners, and you can easily get permission to attend. after that i leave it to you, and him." that evening we went on talking a long time. mr. villele related some remarkable things, but i was not sure whether he was merely making fun of the meccanians. "you have not seen much of the meccanian women?" he remarked. "no," i said; "i have had no opportunity." "they are quite as wonderful as the men," he said. "you never heard, for instance, of the great emancipation act, regulation of the marital law?" "no," i replied; "what is it?" "no meccanian woman is obliged to submit to the embraces of her lawful husband." "but how did the men ever consent to such a law?" i asked; "for in this country it is the men who make the laws." "it is rather a queer story," he replied. "it is quite a long time ago, forty years or more, since a movement arose among the women, influenced no doubt by the women's movement in europe, which had for its object, or one of its objects, greater freedom from the domestic tyranny of the meccanian husband. some of them, of course, thought that the way to secure everything they wanted was to get the right to vote for the national council; but the wiser among them saw that the vote was merely a bad joke. anybody could have the vote, because it was worth nothing; seeing that the powers of the representatives were being reduced to nothing. all the same, this women's movement, such as it was, was the nearest approach to a revolutionary movement that the meccanians have ever shown themselves capable of. once more our dear old prince mechow came to the rescue. he was a real genius." "but i thought you did not admire the mechow reforms?" i interrupted. "i do not; but i recognise a genius when i see him. believe me, prince mechow was the first meccanian to understand his countrymen. he knew exactly what they wanted, what they would stand, what they could do, what they could be made to believe. he was absorbed in his early reforms when this women's movement broke out, and some people were afraid of it. he attacked the problem in his characteristic fashion. he knew the women didn't want political power; he knew also that there was not the slightest danger of them getting it; but he saw immense possibilities in having the women as his allies in certain of his reforms, especially his eugenic reforms. he hit upon a really brilliant idea. i don't suppose you can guess what it was?" "how can i?" i said. "all this is quite new to me." "well, if you had read meccanian literature, or even the writings of the old travellers in meccania--your predecessors as foreign observers--you would know that the meccanian women are the most primitive in europe. they have one ideal as regards men. they have a superstitious admiration for physical strength. if a meccanian woman were really free to choose her mate, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred she would choose the strongest man. they have always been like that. probably many primitive peoples have had that characteristic, but the meccanians have preserved that trait longest. you think i am joking or spinning a theory?" "i was thinking that as they have had the same marriage laws as the rest of europe for many centuries, the fact, if it is a fact, cannot be of much practical importance," i said. "the fact itself is vouched for by dozens of writers among the meccanians. they pride themselves on having preserved these primitive characteristics; they glory in never having been influenced by latin culture. the marriage laws you speak of have been adopted by the men, in self-defence, so to speak. in very early times the meccanian marriage laws were essentially the same as they have been for two thousand years, and the penalties on the women for infractions of the marriage laws were more severe in practice than in any other country. notice the facts: breaches of the 'moral code' before marriage are regarded very lightly: illegitimacy in meccania, as is proved by statistics, was more prevalent than in most countries; but the men took care that breaches after marriage should be severely dealt with. i told you it was a long story, and i have not yet come to the point. for twenty or thirty years before prince mechow got into the saddle all the young hot-headed meccanian patriots got eugenics on the brain, but none of them knew how to put their ideas into practice. mechow himself was a eugenist of the most brutal type. he believed that if he could once utilise this primitive instinct of the meccanian women, he could do something much more effective than eliminating certain feeble types, which was all that the eugenist theorists had so far aimed at. he proposed to give every woman the right to choose, within limits, the father of her children. he knew that all the meccanian women were obsessed with a frantic admiration for the military class--in the old days it was the ambition of every woman to marry an officer, and that was why the officers who were not well-to-do never had any difficulty in getting a rich _partie_. well, he actually made a law to the effect that any woman could claim a sort of exemption from the marital rights of her husband, upon the recommendation of an authorised medical man." "but why on earth did the men consent to such a law?" i asked once more. "that was easily done. you had only to invoke the meccanian spirit, devotion to the supreme interests of the state, the opinion of the experts and all the rest of it. the opposition was stifled. the three highest classes were all for it; the women supported it, and although they had no political power they made opposition impossible." "and what effect has this law had? i am afraid i do not see how it would effect the purpose prince mechow had in view," i said. "the consequences have been enormous. i do not mean that the law by itself effected much, but taken as part of a system it solved the whole problem from mechow's point of view." "but how?" i asked, somewhat puzzled. "you understand, i suppose, the system of medical inspection and medical supervision and medical treatment?" "to a certain extent," i replied. "well, you realise perhaps that, in the hands of a patriotic medical staff, the system can be so worked that every woman who is 'approved' can be provided with a 'eugenic' mate from an approved panel, drawn chiefly from the military class, eh?" "is this one of mr. villele's jokes at the expense of the meccanians?" i asked mr. johnson. "he is telling the story in his own way," answered johnson, "but in substance it is quite true." "but it sounds incredible," i said. "what do the husbands say to it?" "oh, the business is done very quietly. a woman is ordered a 'cure' by the 'medical authority,' and she goes away for a little time. the men on the panel are kept in training, like pugilists used to be. as for the husbands--did you ever attend any lectures in the universities on meccanian ethics? of course you have not been in the country very long. jealousy is regarded as an obsolete virtue, or vice, whichever you like. besides, you must not imagine the custom affects large numbers. probably not more than per cent of the women, chiefly in the fifth and sixth, and to some extent in the fourth, class, are affected." "but i should have thought that social caste would be an insuperable obstacle," i said. "surely not! when did you hear that women were chosen for such purposes from any particular class? it is not a question of marriage." "there is one circumstance," interposed mr. johnson, "that has some bearing on this subject. domestic life in meccania for generations past has been based on quite a different ideal from that prevalent in other parts of europe. a meccanian in the old days used to choose a wife very much as he would choose a horse. she was thought of as the mother of children; in fact, the meccanian sociologists used to maintain that this was one of the marks of their superiority over other european nations. conjugal affection was recognised only as a sort of by-product of marriage. of course they always pretended to cultivate a kind of romanticism because they wrote a lot of verse about the spring, and moonlight and kisses and love-longing, but their romanticism never went beyond that. as the object of meccanian sentiment, one person would do just as well as another." "our friend seems very much surprised at many things he finds in meccania," remarked mr. villele, "and my own countrymen, and more especially my own countrywomen, only half believe the accounts they read about this country, simply because they think human nature is the same everywhere; but then they are ignorant of history. civilisations just as extraordinary have existed in ancient times, created through the influence of a few dominant ideas. the meccanians are a primitive people with a mechanical culture. they have never been civilised, because they have no conception of an individual soul. consequently they find it easy to devote themselves to a common purpose." the conversation went on for a long time. it was a warm summer evening and we were sitting in the garden at the back of the hotel, otherwise we should have been rather more guarded in our remarks. as we parted, mr. villele repeated his advice to seek an interview with mr. kwang, as he called him. (his name was sz-ma-kwang, but for convenience i shall allude to him as mr. kwang.) a day or two later, i contrived to get an interview with him, and although conductor lickrod was present i soon discovered that mr. kwang and i were members of the same secret society. he promised that i should see him again before long, and that he would be happy to assist me in any way he could. he told lickrod that he had been doing his best, for the last five years, to induce the chinese government to send more 'observers' to meccania; but his enthusiasm for meccania had perhaps defeated its own object, as it caused him to be mistrusted. his writings on meccania were well known, and it was thought that he was trying to proselytise. he spoke most flatteringly of me to lickrod, and said that, in view of the influence i should have in my own country, it was well worth while giving me every facility to see all i wished. he would guarantee that, under his tutelage, i should soon learn to appreciate things from the right point of view. two days after this, i received a message to call on the chief inspector of foreigners. he received me most politely, and almost apologised for not having had time to see me before. he had only just learnt that i was a friend of the excellent mr. kwang. he said i should be permitted to visit mr. kwang whenever i chose, and that i was now at liberty to make use of the letters of introduction i had brought with me to several persons in meccania. it would not be necessary for me to be accompanied by a 'conductor' every day. he would transfer me to class b, stage ii. class b meant foreign observers staying not less than six months; and stage ii. meant that they were permitted to submit a plan each week showing how they proposed to spend the following week; so that on the days which were occupied to the satisfaction of the inspector of foreign observers for the district, the services of a 'conductor' could be dispensed with. i did not know whether to avail myself of my new-found liberty or not. for when i came to talk the matter over with the only person at hand, conductor lickrod, i found that it was not very easy to prepare a plan that would be accepted by the authorities, unless i were prepared to pursue some definite line of research. when i talked of taking a few walks in the poorer quarters, calling in for a few lectures in the university, hearing some concerts, and seeing some plays and other amusements, looking round the museums,--a programme innocent enough in all conscience,--lickrod said no inspector would sanction such a miscellaneous time-table for an observer in stage ii. i was not qualified to attend concerts; i had not yet received permission to visit the theatre. unless i were pursuing some particular study, i could only visit the museums in company with a conductor. as for a stroll through the poorer quarters, he failed to see the object of that. on the whole, i decided to stick to lickrod for another week at any rate. i asked if i might see something of education in mecco. he said certainly, if i desired to make a study of meccanian pedagogics for a period of not less than four months. otherwise it would not be possible to enter any of the educational institutions. i could get permission to read in the great library, if i would specify the subject, or subjects, and show that i was qualified to pursue them. in that way i could read up meccanian education. if i were not willing to do this, he advised me to talk to mr. johnson, who was a keen and capable student of meccanian pedagogics. i suggested investigating meccanian political institutions, but similar difficulties arose there. i could only study meccanian politics if i were registered as a specialist, and for that i should have to obtain permission from the department for foreign affairs as well as from the chief inspector of foreign observers. he remarked, however, that in his opinion there was little to study beyond what could be got from books. the political system of meccania was really simplicity itself when once the fundamental principles had been grasped. i replied that in most countries it took a foreigner rather a long time to understand the views and policy of the many different groups and sections in the representative assemblies. each of them usually had their organisations and their special point of view. he replied that in meccania the state itself was the only political organisation. "but," i said, "when your members of the national council meet, do they not fall into groups according to their views upon policy?" "they are grouped according to classes, of course," he answered. "each of the seven classes has the same number of representatives, and there is no doubt a tendency for the representatives of each class to consider things somewhat from the point of view of the interests of their class. but the members have no meetings, except in the full assembly and in the committees. such group-meetings form no part of the constitution. we do not do things by halves. when the state decided to have nothing to do with party government, it decided also not to have anything to do with group government. there is no room for such trifling in meccania. so you see there is nothing for you to investigate in this direction." "the classes themselves, then? is there no body of opinion, no collective political tradition or sentiment cultivated by the various classes?" "you might find something there," said lickrod, musing a little. "but except in the shape of books i do not know how you would get at it." "but all books are censored, are they not?" i said. "certainly, but how does that affect the question?" "books would hardly give me a truthful idea of all the currents of thought." "but surely you cannot suppose that the state would assist you in trying to discover things which, by its deliberate action, it had already thought it desirable to suppress?" he answered. "besides," he added, "such things belong rather to the pathology of politics. by the way, you would find some useful matter in doctor squelcher's great work on political pathology." "that is a new term to me," i said. "doctor squelcher's researches have proved invaluable to the special medical board in connection with the disease _znednettlapseiwz_ (chronic tendency to dissent) which you also had not heard of." in view of this conversation my attempt to investigate meccanian politics did not seem likely to meet with much success. before seeing mr. kwang again, i received an invitation to dine with a certain industrial director blobber, one of the persons to whom i had a letter of introduction. he lived in a very pleasant villa in the third quarter, and as it was the first time i had had an opportunity of seeing the interior of any private _ménage_, i was naturally rather curious to observe everything in the house. the door was opened by a servant in a livery of grey. the hall was spotlessly clean, and decorated in yellow tones, to indicate the class to which my host belonged. i was shown into what i took to be a drawing-room, the prevailing tone of which was also yellow. the first thing that struck me was the peculiar construction of the easy chairs in the room. they were all fitted with mechanical contrivances which enabled them to be adjusted in any position. at first i thought they were invalids' chairs, but they were all alike. the other furniture suggested the latest phases of meccanian decorative art, but it would be tedious to describe it in detail. the frieze was decorated with a curious geometrical design executed in the seven colours. there were silk hangings which at first i took to be chinese, but which i soon saw were imitations. the carpet had the imperial arms woven in the centre. it seems it is one of the privileges of officials of the third class to have the imperial arms as a decoration on certain articles of furniture; only members of the second and first classes may have their own arms. the mantelpiece was large and clumsy. a bust of the reigning emperor stood on one side and one of prince mechow on the other. mr. blobber joined me in a few minutes. he was dressed in a lounge suit of bright yellow with green buttons. (the buttons indicated that he had been promoted from the fourth class.) he was polite, in a condescending sort of way, and spoke to me as if i had been a child. he was a foot taller than i am, and decidedly portly in build. he had a red face, a rather lumpy nose and a large bald forehead. he wore spectacles and was decorated with the 'mechow' beard, which he not only stroked but combed in my presence. after the first formal greetings, he said, "so you have come all the way from the other side of the world to see our wonderful country. you had all the countries in the world to choose from, and you had the good sense to come to meccania. you decided well, and i hope you have been profiting by your stay." "yes," i said; "i have seen a great many things to admire already." "for example?" he said. "the wonderful roof of your great central station," i said. "ah, yes unique, is it not? we have, of course, the finest railway stations in the world, and the finest railway system too. but that is only part of our industrial organisation." "you have indeed a wonderful industrial system," i said, "and no industrial problem." "no industrial problem?" he replied. "we have a great many. we do not produce half enough. of course, compared with other countries, it may seem that we are doing very well, but we are not satisfied." "i meant rather that you have no disturbances, no strikes, no trade unionism or anything of that sort." "of course, you cannot help thinking of what you have seen in other countries. no, we have no time for nonsense of that kind. but i take no interest in that sort of thing. i have enough to do with my work. the chief director of the imperial porcelain factory is a busy man, i assure you." at this moment madame blobber came in and i was introduced to her. she was a great contrast to her husband in many ways. she was tall and rather thin--at any rate for a meccanian--and would have been graceful but for a certain stiffness and coldness in her manner and bearing. she had a pale face with cold blue eyes. her mouth was rather large, and her lips thin and flexible. while her husband's voice was leathery, like that of most meccanians, hers was thin and penetrating, but not loud. we crossed into the dining-room. a butler in a chocolate-coloured livery saw that all was in order, and left the room. waiting was unnecessary. the first dishes were on the table, where they were kept hot by electricity, and others on the sideboard were afterwards handed by a woman servant in a grey uniform. it was a rather silent meal. mr. blobber was much occupied with his food, which he evidently enjoyed, and at a later stage he relapsed into a sleepy condition. madame blobber then took the lead in the conversation. she was evidently a very well-read woman, especially in all matters relating to art. i suspected she had no children and had made herself a blue-stocking. she talked like a professor, and with all the dogmatism of one. she said the chinese had never had any true knowledge of colour. they had merely hit upon some colours which were pleasing to a crude taste. the meccanians in fifty years had absorbed all the knowledge the chinese had ever possessed, and much more besides. i ventured to say that there were still some secrets of artistic production in porcelain that foreigners had not discovered. she laughed at the idea. the 'secrets,' she said, were the very things the meccanian experts had rejected as of no value. i might as well say that the chinese political constitution was a secret because the meccanians had not adopted it. when i suggested that scientific knowledge was not a complete equipment for art, and would not necessarily increase the artistic powers of a nation, she said this was a mere superstition. art was not a mystery. every work of art admitted of being analysed; the laws of its production were ascertainable; and it could be reproduced or modified in every conceivable way. i asked if the same were true of music. i had heard, i said, that for nearly a hundred years even the meccanians had produced no great musician. "another superstition," she declared. "the great musicians, as they were called, were merely the pioneers of music. their works were much overrated in foreign countries. we have proved by analysis," she said, "that they were merely groping for their effects. _we_ know what they wanted to effect, and we have discovered how to get those effects. musical psychology was an unknown science a hundred years ago. why, the old composers had simply no means of testing the psychological effects of their works by experiment." "i am afraid i am very ignorant of musical science," i said. "in fact, i did not even know there was such a thing as a science of music." "what did you think music was?" she almost snapped. "simply one of the arts," i said. "there can be no art in the proper sense without a science." "but i thought you europeans considered that in sculpture, for example, the ancients had never been surpassed; and yet they had no science of sculpture." "their science was probably lost: but _we_ have recovered the true science. the basis of all sculpture is accurate measurement. whatever has bulk, whatever occupies space, can be measured, if your instruments are fine enough. our instruments _are_ fine enough. we can reproduce any statue ever made by any artist." "but that is only copying," i said. "how do you create?" "the process is a little more elaborate, but the principles are exactly the same. even the classical sculptors had models, had they not? well, our sculptors also use models; they pose them in thousands of different positions until they have the attitude they want; they have instruments to enable them to fix them in position, and the rest is merely accurate measurement." "i should never have imagined that sculpture had been carried to such a point," i remarked. "is there much of it in meccania?" "not a great deal of the finer work. accurate measurement is a slow and costly business even with our improved instruments." "tell me," i said,--"you see i am very ignorant of art as understood in meccania,--has literature been pursued by the same scientific methods?" "it depends upon what you mean by literature," replied madame blobber. "broadly speaking," i said, "i mean the art of expressing ideas in language that satisfies one's sense of beauty." "all our professional writers go through a period of training in the particular department they cultivate. for example, our writers of history are very carefully trained, writers of scientific treatises also." "but what of your novelists and poets?" i asked. "we do not specially encourage the writing of novels. all stories are merely variations of a few themes: all the stories worth writing have been written long ago. we print a certain number of the old novels, and we employ a few specialists to 'vamp' up new stories from the old materials, chiefly for the benefit of the lower classes. we meccanians never really took to novel-writing, except under foreign influence, and that passed away long ago. the theme of almost all novels is domestic life and individual passion: they treat of phases of thought and feeling that our culture tends more and more to make obsolete. we have developed the drama much more; in fact, the drama takes the place of the novel with us." "i have heard something of your drama from dr. dodderer," i said. "indeed! then you understand the fourfold treatment. that in itself would explain why we have discarded the novel. we still keep up the philosophical parable, which is a sort of link between the novel and our modern drama." "i am afraid i should find it difficult to appreciate some of your plays," i said; "_uric acid_, for instance." "that is only because our mental environment is in advance of the rest of europe. physical science, including of course medical science, is part of our mental furniture: we have assimilated whole masses of ideas that are still unfamiliar to other peoples. naturally our drama finds its material in the affairs that interest us." "and poetry?" i said. "is poetry still cultivated?" "naturally! most of our dramas are in poetry: our language lends itself admirably; it is almost as easy to write poetry as prose in our language." "but is there no lyrical poetry?" "certainly; we utilise it as one of the means of cultivating the meccanian spirit, especially among the young. no poetry is published unless it contributes to the uplifting of the meccanian spirit." at this point director blobber woke up and proposed that we should retire to his study for a glass of spirits and a cigar. madame blobber left us, and for the next half-hour i did my best to keep mr. blobber awake. but it was evident he wanted to go to bed, and by half-past nine i left the house, without any desire to see either of my hosts again. two days later i received another invitation, this time to dine with an under-secretary of the ministry for foreign affairs. i had not presented any letters of introduction to him. i could therefore only suspect that this invitation was in some way due to mr. kwang. i went, of course; but i could hardly help wondering what was in store for me. under-secretary count krafft belonged to one of the great families and wore the uniform of the second class, with a badge to indicate that he was now in the civil service, although of course he had served as an officer in the army. his wife was apparently dining elsewhere, for i saw no sign of her, and we dined _tête-à-tête_ in a small apartment in his large mansion in the second quarter. he was much more a man of the world than the others i had met, and in his manners resembled the men of good family whom i had met in luniland. after a short preliminary talk, about nothing in particular, he said he was sorry that he had not learnt of my presence in mecco when i first arrived, particularly as i was a friend of mr. kwang. "the applications from foreigners for permission to travel in meccania," he said, by way of apology, "are not very numerous, and they are always referred to me for my signature. yours reached us from luniland, and was regarded as that of a mere globe-trotter. it is a pity you did not give the name of your friend, mr. kwang, as a reference. we think very highly of mr. kwang, and i should be pleased to give special facilities to any of his friends. i don't suppose you have been neglected," he added; "our officials have instructions to pay attention to the comfort of all foreign observers, and i am sure we do more for them than any government i am acquainted with." we were by this time about half-way through dinner, and under its influence i ventured upon a mild joke. "you do everything for them," i said, "except leave them alone." he took this in good part. "you have been in luniland," he remarked, "where every one does what he pleases. when you have spent as long a time here you will appreciate the wisdom of our arrangements. no doubt it seems a little irksome at first, and perhaps rather dull, especially as you have seen only the mere routine aspects of the life of the lower and middle classes--i use the old-fashioned terms, you see. but how else would you arrange matters? we cannot invite all foreign visitors, indiscriminately, to take part in our higher social life, and it would not be fair to our own citizens to allow foreigners a greater liberty than we allow to ourselves." "so you put us in a strait-jacket," i said, laughing, "because you have to put your whole nation in a strait-jacket." "our whole nation in a strait-jacket," he replied, with a smile. "so that is how it strikes you, is it?" "well, isn't it so?" i said. "your children are sorted out while they are at school, their play is turned into useful employment, their careers are decided for them; hardly any of them rise out of their original class. then everybody is under the eye of the time department, everybody is inspected and looked after from the cradle to the grave. it is almost impossible to commit a real crime or to set up any independent institution. there is, you must admit, a certain want of freedom in your arrangements." "but of what people are you speaking?" said count krafft. "you seem to have confined your attention to the lower classes. for them, in all countries, something of a strait-jacket is needed surely. certainly it is for ours. we know our own people. when they are properly drilled and led they do wonders, but left to themselves they have always relapsed into laziness and barbarism, or else have burst out into anarchy and revolutionary fury." "but what scope does your system allow for their energies?" i asked. "every aspect of life seems confined by your meticulous regulations." "that is an illusion," he replied. "you see, we are a highly intellectual people and it is quite natural for us to formulate regulations. modern life is necessarily complex, and the chief difference between us and other nations is that we recognise the complexity and organise our activities accordingly. we are simply in advance of other nations, that is all. take a simple thing like railways. we organised our railway system to suit our national purposes instead of leaving them to commercial enterprise. take the education of the people. the state took charge of it fifty years before other nations recognised its vital importance. take the question of public health; even those states which prate about individual liberty have had to follow in our wake and organise the medical service. besides, it is only by organising the activities of the lower classes that the state can maintain its supremacy." "i see," i replied, "the strait-jacket is for the lower classes. i thought it was a garment worn by everybody." "the expression was yours," he said, with an indulgent smile. "we certainly do not regard it as a strait-jacket." "that is perhaps because the ruling classes do not wear it," i replied. "we do not recognise any classes as ruling classes," he said suavely. "it is an obsolete expression." "but i thought you liked to recognise facts and call things by their proper names," i replied. "certainly we do," he answered. "but which are the ruling classes? the super-state is the supreme and only ruler in meccania." "even in a super-state," i said, "i should have thought, from what you have said, that some groups of persons really wielded the power of the state." "under the crude organisation of most foreign states that is quite possible," answered count krafft; "but the essence of the super-state is that, in it, power cannot be exercised without authority, and only these persons are authorised through whom the super-state chooses to express its will. it places everybody in such a position as enables him to render the greatest service to the state that he is capable of rendering. consequently no fault can be found, by any class or section, with the power exercised by any other class or section; because they are merely the instruments of the state itself." "that sounds a very comfortable doctrine for those who happen to wield the power," i said. "it leaves no room for any 'opposition.'" "the super-state would not be the super-state if it contained within it any opposition," he replied. "you ought to read the speech of prince mechow on the super-state as the final expression of the meccanian spirit," he went on. "foreigners are apt to confuse the super-state with an autocracy. it is essentially different. in an autocracy of the crude, old-fashioned type, an exterior power is visible, and your talk of ruling classes would be appropriate there. in the super-state all the functions are so organised that the whole body politic acts as one man. we educate the will of the component units in such a way that all conflicting impulses are eradicated. after all, that was the ideal of the catholic church. prince mechow applied the same principle when he reformed our educational system. a good meccanian would no more seek to violate the obligations laid upon him by the super-state than a good catholic would seek to commit deadly sin." "then there is no room for a free press in the super-state," i remarked. he saw my point and replied, "a 'free press,' as you call it, would be an anachronism. what necessity is there for it? its function has disappeared. it only existed during a brief historical phase in the earlier development of the modern state. our great prince bludiron was the first to perceive its inconsistency with the line of true development. prince mechow absorbed all the functions of the independent professions, and among them those of the journalists, who were always an element of weakness in the state." "but what, then, is the object of this complete unity which, as far as i can make out, the super-state seems always to be aiming at?" i asked. "the object?" he replied, almost bored by my pertinacity. "unity is the law of all organic life. we are simply more advanced in our development than other states, that is all." "then it is not true that all this super-organisation is for the purpose of fostering national power?" i said. "that is the old argument of the weak against the strong, the poor against the rich, the ignorant against the educated. every healthy person is a strong person; the rich man is stronger than the poor man; the educated man is stronger than the ignorant. the modern state, even among our neighbours, is infinitely 'stronger' than the incoherent political organisms of earlier times. it cannot help itself. its resources are enormously greater. how can the super-state help being strong? no state deliberately seeks to weaken itself, or deprive itself of its natural force." then, as if tired of the discussion into which our conversation had led us, he said, "but these are all matters about which you will learn much more from my friend the professor of state science. i am afraid i have been dishing up one of his old lectures. you will find this liqueur quite palatable." we then drifted on to more trivial topics. he said i had spent too long among the petty officials, grubbing about with my tour no. . i ought to see something of better society. unfortunately it was the dead season just then, and i might have to wait a little time, but there were still some dinners at the university. some of the professors never went out of mecco and would be glad to entertain me. we parted on very good terms. his manner had been friendly, and if he had done little besides expound meccanian principles he had at any rate not been dictatorial. i wondered whether he really believed in his own plausible theories or whether he had been simply instructing the foreign observer. when i saw mr. kwang a day or two afterwards--this time alone--he greeted me cordially and said, "so things are improving?" "they promise to do so," i said, "but so far, all that has happened has been a very tedious visit to director blobber and an academic discussion with count krafft." "so you don't appreciate the honour of dining with an under-secretary of the super-state?" he said. "you have stayed too long in luniland." "i am promised the privilege of seeing something of the best meccanian society, but what i was more anxious to see was the worst meccanian society." "they will take care you don't," he answered, laughing. "but why? in any other country one can associate with peasants or vagabonds or artisans or tradesmen or business men." "you ought to know by this time--i am sure it has been explained to you over and over again. you would gather false impressions, and you might contaminate the delicate fruits of meccanian culture." "that is the theory i have heard _ad nauseam_. but there is nothing in it." "why not?" "because by keeping us apart they arouse the suspicions of both." "oh no, they may arouse _your_ suspicions, but the meccanian knows that what the state prescribes for him must be for his good. this is the only country where theories are carried into practice. it is a super-state." "and you admire it? you have become a proselyte," i said jokingly. "have you read my books yet?" he asked. "i saw one for the first time this week," i said. "well?" "i recognise it as a masterpiece." he bowed and smiled. "from the president of the kiang-su literary society that is high praise indeed." "i am undecided whether to remain here longer," i said, "or to return home, perhaps calling for a rest and a change to see my friends in lunopolis. i should like your advice." "of course that depends upon circumstances. i do not yet understand your difficulty or the circumstances." "well," i said, "i came here prepared to stay perhaps a year, if i liked the country, with the intention of obtaining general impressions, and some definite information on matters in which i am interested; but every meccanian i have met is either a government agent or a bore." "what, even madame blobber?" he interposed, smiling. "even madame blobber," i said. "i am getting tired of it. i try all sorts of means to gratify my perfectly innocent curiosity, and am baffled every time. now i am promised a sight of high society, but i expect they will show me what they want me to see and nothing they don't want me to see." "why should they show you what they don't want you to see?" he laughed. "i don't know how you stand it," i said. "i have had the virtue of patience," he said, "and patience has been rewarded. i, too, am going home before long. i have got what i want." he made the signal that bound me to absolute secrecy, and told me what his plans were. when i said that he ran a risk of being victimised he shook his head. "i am not afraid," he said. "by the time i reach home, every meccanian agent in china will have been quietly deported. and they will not come back again. we are not a super-state, but our country is not idiotica." "and in the meantime," i said, "suppose i stay here another month or so, what do you advise me to do?" "oh, just amuse yourself as well as you can," he said. "amuse myself! in meccania?" "yes; it is not worth while trying now to do anything else. you will find out nothing new--nothing that i have not already found out. it takes ten years to penetrate beneath the surface here, even with my methods," he said. "but i have got what i want." "and how am i to amuse myself?" "accept all the invitations you get, keep your ears open and use your own considerable powers of reflection. by way of relief, come and talk to me whenever you want." i followed sz-ma-kwang's advice: i gave up all thought of investigating either meccanian politics, or 'social problems,' or anything of the kind. i thought i should probably get better information at second hand from mr. kwang than i could get at first hand for myself, in the short time that i was prepared to stay, and i am satisfied now that i decided rightly.... i saw lickrod almost daily, and went with him to a number of places, museums, the great library, industrial exhibitions, manufactories and so forth. we spent a day or two looking at examples of meccanian architecture, which was more interesting from the engineering point of view than from the artistic. i began to receive invitations to several houses, chiefly of high officials in the civil service and one or two members of the higher bourgeoisie. in the meantime i had some interesting conversation with my friends, mr. johnson and mr. villele, as we sat in the garden after dinner. i had never yet asked mr. johnson why he was pursuing what i could not help thinking was the distasteful study of meccanian pedagogics, but as lickrod had recommended me to talk to mr. johnson about meccanian education the question came up naturally. i put it to him quite frankly. "you are what i should describe as an anti-meccanian by temperament," i said, "and it seems very odd that you should be studying meccanian pedagogics of all things in the world." "it is because i am an anti-meccanian, as you put it, that i am doing so," he replied. "you see in luniland we never do things thoroughly--thank god!--and we have no pedagogical system. but every now and then a sort of movement arises in favour of some reform or other. for a long time meccanian education was out of court; people would hear of nothing that savoured of meccania, good or bad. then there was a revival of interest, and societies were started to promote what they called education on a scientific basis--by which they meant, not the study of science, but meccanian education. as professor of education in one of our smaller universities i was obliged to take some line or other, and the more i studied meccanian education from books, the less i liked it. so i came to equip myself with a better knowledge of the whole thing than the cranks who have taken it up." "i suppose you find some things worth copying," i suggested, "in a field so wide, especially seeing that they have applied psychological science to methods of study?" "oh yes, there are certain pedagogical tricks and dodges that are decidedly clever. in fact, if the human race were a race of clever insects, the meccanian system of education would be almost perfect. the pupils store up knowledge as bees store honey, and they learn to perform their functions, as members of an organisation, with wonderful accuracy. i cannot help thinking sometimes that meccania is a society of clever insects." "exactly," struck in mr. villele. "there are the soldier ants, and the slave ants, and the official ants, and the egg-producing ants. we ought to call meccania the super-insect-state, eh?" "yes; the land of the super-insects," said johnson. "no person in meccania, certainly no child, is ever looked upon as an 'end in itself'; he is simply one of a community of ants." "of course," i said, "to be quite fair, we cannot consider anybody strictly as an end in himself, even in luniland." "theoretically that is so," replied johnson, "but in practice it makes all the difference in the world whether you regard a man as an individual soul, or as a cell in an organism or a wheel in a machine." "why do you lunilanders and francarians, if i may ask such a large question, allow yourselves to be influenced at all by what is done in meccania? there is so little intercourse between the countries that it hardly seems worth while having any at all," i said. "because in both countries there are still many people who regard the meccanians not as super-insects, but as human beings," answered johnson. "and there is always, too, the ultimate possibility of conflict. if they were on another planet it would not matter, providing they could invent no means of communicating with us. in itself meccanian education is of little interest, except, of course, as education in the insect world might be interesting, or perhaps as a branch of pedagogical pathology or psychological pathology." "in effect," interrupted mr. villele, "it all comes back to what mr. johnson was saying a few nights ago, that the key to the whole polity of meccania is military power. meccanian education is merely a means to that end, just as the time department, and every other institution--and the absence of certain other institutions like the press, for example--is. the super-state is the grand instrument of militarism." "is it not possible," i said, "that the real key to the super-state is the desire of the ruling classes to keep themselves in power?" "but the two things go together," answered villele. "the meccanian maxim is that 'the state must be strong within in order to be strong without.'" "and is not that true doctrine?" i said, wondering how they would answer the argument. "to a certain extent," answered johnson cautiously. "but where are their enemies? why should they want all this 'super-strength'?" "they say they are surrounded by unfriendly nations," i replied. "so they are," answered villele, "but they have done their best to make them unfriendly. if you knock a man down, and trample on him, and rob him into the bargain, you can hardly expect him to be a friendly neighbour next day." "we started by talking about education," i remarked, "but we have very soon got into a discussion about militarism--somehow we seem to get to that no matter what point we start from." "and with very good reason," said villele. "there used to be a saying that all roads lead to rome. in meccania all roads lead to militarism. you who are not faced by the problem it presents may regard it as an obsession, but a man who refuses to admit the plainest evidence is also the victim of an obsession." "and you think the evidence is unmistakable?" i said. "for what purpose does the meccanian parliament--if it can be called a parliament--surrender its control over taxation? for what purpose does the government conceal its expenditure upon army and navy? for what purpose does it destroy the freedom of the press, and freedom of speech? for what purpose does the government keep every person under supervision? for what purpose does it control all production?" "i cannot answer these questions," i said; "but what evidence is there that the meccanian system of education is designed as part of the scheme of militarism?" "the evidence is abundant," answered johnson, "but it is not so plain as to be unmistakable. if you see one of our elaborate pieces of modern machinery, a printing-machine or a spinning-machine, you will find that it contains a thousand separate contrivances, and unless you are an expert you will not be able to perceive that every part is absolutely necessary to the performance of the simple function of printing or spinning. yet that is the fact. it is just the same with the meccanian educational machine. its chief purpose, according to the meccanian theory, is to enable the citizen--or, as villele and i might say, the super-insect--to perform his functions as a member of the super-insect community. but the chief end of the super-insect state is power. the meccanians say so themselves. anyhow, we can easily see for ourselves that their system of education fits in exactly with militarism. it makes men efficient for the purposes required of them by the super-state; it makes them not only docile and obedient, but actively devoted to the interests, not of themselves individually, but of what they are taught to regard as something more important, namely, the super-state; it fosters the superstition which makes possible such an incredible custom as villele has told you of; it keeps them ignorant of all other ideals of civilisation." "all that may be true," i replied. "it may very well be that the system of education does favour militarism, but it may not have been deliberately designed to that end. it has been put to me," i added, "that all this elaborate organisation, including education, is part of the inevitable tendency of things in the modern world, and that the meccanians are only doing a little in advance of other people what they will all do sooner or later." "that won't do at all," interposed villele. "they cannot have it both ways. what becomes of the genius of prince mechow if it is all an inevitable tendency? they tell us other nations are not clever enough, or not far-seeing enough, or not strong-willed enough, to produce such a system. these reforms had to be introduced in the teeth of opposition. other nations have not adopted them and will not adopt them except under the pressure of fear. it is militarism alone that is strong enough to impose such a system." "but," said i, "i find it difficult to believe that any civilisation, even meccanian, can be really the result of the domination of a single idea. not even the communities of the ancient world were so simple in their principles." "that fact tells in favour of our contention," answered villele. "how so?" i said. "why, you admit the natural tendency of all civilised peoples towards diversity of aims. the more highly developed, the more diversified. if, therefore, you find a people becoming less diversified, subordinating all individual wills to the will of the state, you must suspect some extraordinary force. you would not deny the fact that individual liberty has been suppressed?" "no," i said, "i do not deny that." "but you think the super-state has such an interest in the tender plant of the individual souls of its children, their moral and spiritual and physical life, that it is merely a meticulous grandmother trying to prepare them all for a better world, eh?" i laughed. "no, that won't do. only two things are strong enough to suppress the spirit of liberty: one is superstition calling itself religion; the other is militarism." "if it were less well done," resumed johnson, "it would be easier to detect. but it is diabolically well done. who but the meccanians would think it worth while to control the whole teaching of history for the sake of cultivating militarism? in most countries anybody may write history, although very few people read it. here only the official historians may write: only the books prescribed by the state may be read. and all the people while they are at school and college must read it. in this way they create a powerful tradition. one need not laugh at the idea of state historians. they have done their work too well for that. their falsification of history is not a clumsy affair of inventing fairy tales. it is scientific falsification. they utilise every fact that can tell against, or discredit, other nations, and every fact about their own people which can raise their national self-esteem. the method is not new, for you may say that all historians are biased. but in other countries the bias of one historian is counterbalanced by the bias of others. the _method_ is not new but the _system_ is. as an example, take their treatment of a well-known luniland statesman of the beginning of the last century--and this is a fairly harmless instance. he was undoubtedly a single-minded, public-spirited man, a patriot who was also a good european, for he did as much as any one man to save europe from a military tyranny. but he shared many of the current ideas of his age and lived according to its customs. in _meccanian_ history all we are told of him is that he drank heavily, gambled, persecuted ignorant and misguided labourers, bribed the people's representatives, enriched capitalists and landlords by his fiscal system, and displayed his ignorance of finance by inventing a fallacious sinking fund that any schoolboy could see through." "mr. johnson is putting the case much too mildly," interposed villele. "there are in the 'reports' issued by the government on all sorts of matters, but particularly with regard to foreign affairs, falsifications of fact of the most barefaced character. now the writers of the school and college histories quote very extensively from these official reports, implying always that the statements are true. further than this, you know, but not perhaps as well as we do, that in countries where speech is free and the press is free there are any number of libellous writers who vilify their opponents in a shameless fashion. in luniland in particular, if my friend will pardon my saying so, there are enthusiasts for some particular cause who have no sense whatever of proportion. for instance, to hear some of the so-called temperance advocates you would imagine that the lunilanders were a nation of drunkards, wife-beaters, seducers, abandoned wretches of every kind. to listen to their socialist fanatics you would imagine that every working man was a down-trodden slave. to listen to their anti-vivisectionists you would imagine that the whole medical profession spent its leisure in the sport of torturing animals. to listen to some of the priests you would think the whole nation was sunk in vice. to listen to the anti-priests you would think the priests were a tribe of grasping hypocrites, and so on and so on. now you will find meccanian histories, and works on the social and political life of foreign nations, full of quotations from such writers." "as i said at the outset," remarked johnson, "this may seem a little thing in itself, but it is symptomatic and characteristic. look at an entirely different aspect of the system. the whole teaching profession is honeycombed with sycophancy. every teacher is a spy upon every other. every one tries to show his zeal, and gain some promotion, by a display of the meccanian spirit. as you know, there are no private schools. there is not a single independent teacher in the whole country. it is in the universities even more than in the schools that sycophancy runs riot." "that may be perfectly true," i said, "but would you not get this disease of sycophancy wherever you have a bureaucracy, quite apart from militarism? suppose there were no army at all, but suppose that the state were the sole employer and controller of every person and thing, you might still have all the petty tyranny and sycophancy that you describe." "but there is a difference," said johnson. "under a mere bureaucracy it is still possible for the large groups of workers to combine, and very effectually, to safeguard their interests; especially if at the same time there is a real parliamentary system. indeed, many years ago one of the strongest arguments brought forward in luniland against any large extension of state employment was that the employees, through their trade combinations, would be able to exert political pressure, and rather exploit the state than be exploited by it. no, i maintain that a military autocracy without a bureaucracy may be brutal and tyrannical, in a spasmodic sort of way; but it is loose-jointed and clumsy: a bureaucracy apart from a military control of the state may be meddlesome and irritating; but it is only when you get the two combined that the people are bound hand and foot. anyhow, i cannot conceive of the whole teaching profession, including the highest as well as the lowest branches, being so completely enslaved as it is here, without there being a driving power at the back of the bureaucratic machine, such as only militarism can supply in our times--for religion is out of the question." "well, now, is there any other sort of evidence," i said, "that the educational system is inspired by militarism? so far the case is 'not proven.'" "the cultivation of 'the meccanian spirit,' which is one of the prime aims of all the teaching, points at any rate in the same direction." "but the meccanian spirit is only another name for patriotism, is it not?" i said. "your scepticism," remarked villele, "would almost make one suppose you were becoming a convert to meccanianism." "not at all," i said. "i have tried to get firsthand information on these matters and i have failed. here i am, listening to you who are avowedly, if i may say so in your presence, anti-meccanians." they both nodded assent. "would it not be foolish of me to accept your views without at any rate sifting the evidence as fully as i am able? it has this advantage, i shall be much more likely to become convinced of the correctness of your opinions if i find that you meet the hypothetical objections i raise than if i merely listen to your views." "the meccanian spirit is another name for patriotism," said johnson; "but it is meccanian patriotism. patriotism is not a substitute for ethics in the rest of europe, nor was it in meccania two centuries ago. absolute obedience to the state is definitely inculcated here. no form of resistance is possible. resistance is never dreamt of; the meccanian spirit implies active co-operation with the super-state, not passive obedience only but reverence and devotion. and remember that the super-state when you probe under the surface _is the second class, the military caste_." "but do not all states inculcate obedience to themselves?" i said. "no," replied johnson bluntly. "they may inculcate obedience to the laws for the time being; it is only churches claiming divine inspiration that arrogate to themselves infallibility, and demand unconditional obedience. in the rest of europe the state is one of the organs--a most necessary and important organ--of the community: here, the state or the super-state is the divinity in which society lives and moves and has its being. it is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent." "admitting all you say about the deliberate policy of the super-state," i answered, "is it not strange that a hundred millions of people submit themselves to it, and that even outside meccania there are many advocates of meccanian principles?" "tyrannies have flourished in the world in every age," replied johnson, "because there is something even worse than tyranny. to escape a plague a man will take refuge in a prison. anarchy, such as that which broke out in idiotica some fifty years ago, was a godsend to the rulers of meccania. they persuaded the public that there was a choice only between the super-state and anarchy or bolshevism as it was then called. we know that is false. liberty may be attacked by an open enemy or by a secret and loathsome disease; but that is no reason for surrendering either to the one or the other." chapter xi an academic discussion it was some days after this conversation with my friends at the hotel that i was present at a dinner-party given by the president of mecco university. there were about thirty guests, so that at table a general conversation was almost impossible; i could hear only what was said by those close to me. i was seated between a member of the diplomatic corps and a general. general wolf, a benevolent-looking old gentleman with a large, coarse face and a double chin, seemed rather disappointed that i could not discuss with him the higher mathematics. he deplored the neglect of mathematics in meccania. he admitted that unless a person had a mathematical brain it was useless to attempt to make him a mathematician; but he said the eugenics section of the health department was not sufficiently alive to the importance of improving the mathematical stock. he railed very bitterly against a member of the eugenics board who had tried to get authority to improve the supply of artists. happily the board had turned down his proposals. count hardflogg, who wore the mechow whisker and an eyeglass, and frowned fiercely at everything one said to him, was full of a recent report by the experts in the industrial psychology section of the department of industry and commerce. it seems they had recommended a shortening of hours for the members of the sixth and fifth classes in a number of provincial towns, to bring them more on a level with the same class of workers in mecco itself. he said it was the thin end of the wedge; that they ought not to have reported until experiments had been made with a different diet: he blamed the eugenics section, too, for not being able to produce a tougher strain of workers. reduction of working hours should not be resorted to, he maintained, until every other expedient had been tried: it was so very difficult to increase them afterwards. besides, in the strenuous month, it had been proved over and over again that the men could easily stand a longer working day without physical injury. "and what is the strenuous month?" i asked. "oh, of course," he said, "you have not studied our industrial system as a factor of military organisation. there is a very good account of it in mr. kwang's _triumphs of meccanian culture_. briefly it is this. every year, but not always in the same month, the signal is given for the strenuous month to begin. the workmen then work at top speed, and for as many hours a day as the industrial psychologists determine, for thirty days consecutively. it is excellent training, and incidentally has a very good effect on the output for the other months of the year. the men are so glad when it is over that, unconsciously, they work better for the rest of the year." "but i should have thought they would be so fatigued that you would lose as much as you gain, or more perhaps," i said. "oh no," he answered; "they are allowed one day's complete rest, which they must spend in bed; their diet is arranged, both during the time and for a month after. they must go to bed for two hours extra every night for the following month. the effect is most beneficial. they like it too, on the whole, for they get paid for all the extra product--that is to say, it is added to their pension fund." "but i thought the pension fund was so calculated," i said, "that it tallies exactly with what is required for the support of each man from the time he ceases to be able to work." "certainly," he replied. "after fifty-five most of our men work an hour a day less every two years, with variations according to their capacity, as tested by the medical examinations." "then how do they benefit," i asked, "by the product of the strenuous month, if it is only added to their pension and not paid at the time?" "if it is added to the pension fund," he replied, "it is obvious that they must benefit." i did not pursue the matter further. he asked me if i had been to the annual medical exhibition. i said i had not heard of it, and did not suppose i should receive permission to see it, as i was not altogether well qualified to understand it. he said it was most interesting. he was not a medical man himself, of course; but as an officer in the army he had had to get some acquaintance with physiology. "the medical menagerie gets more interesting every year," he said. "the medical menagerie!" i exclaimed. "whatever is that?" "it is a wonderful collection of animals, not only domestic but wild animals too, upon which experiments have been carried out. there are goats with sheep's legs. there are cows with horses' hearts, and dogs with only hind-legs, and pigs without livers--oh, all sorts of things. the funniest is a pig with a tiger's skin." "and what is the object of it all?" i said. "oh, just a regular part of medical research. the most valuable experiments are those with bacilli, of course; but only the experts can understand these, as a rule." "but it is not safe to infer that the results of experiments on animals will be applicable to human beings," i said. "of course not, without further verification; but the special medical board have ample powers to carry out research." "what, upon human beings?" i exclaimed. "people do not always know when they are being experimented upon," he remarked significantly. "besides, if a man is already suffering from an incurable disease, what does it matter? of course, we use anæsthetics, wherever possible at least; that goes without saying." after dinner we drank wine for a little time, seated in little groups after the manner of a custom in some of the colleges in luniland. here, instead of being placed with the two gentlemen who had been my neighbours at table, i was one of a group of four, the others being two professors and a high official in the sociological department. one of the professors was secret councillor sikofantis-sauer, an economist; the other was church councillor muhgubb-slimey, a theologian. we talked of indifferent matters for some time until the high official left us, when the idea occurred to me to try whether the economist would enlighten me upon the subject of the ultimate destination of the phenomenal production of the meccanian economic organisation. i remarked that i had never seen in any country so few signs of discontent as in meccania, and i asked if this was due to the great wealth that must necessarily be produced by the efficiency of the methods of production. professor sikofantis-sauer, the economist, said that my question betrayed that i was not acquainted with the meccanian system of ethics. i wondered why the professor of economics should begin talking of ethics. he went on, "social discontent was never really due to lack of wealth. properly speaking, it has no relation to material wealth at all. this has been proved up to the hilt--if it needed any proof--by our researches in economic and social history. in a nutshell the proof is this. what was called poverty in the early nineteenth century would have been considered affluence in, let us say, the fifth or even the tenth century. the whole idea of wealth is subjective. now anyone knows that, where wealth is allowed to become the main objective of the social activities of the people, the desire for individual wealth is insatiable. the notion that you can ever reach a state of contentment, by increasing the wealth of the people, is one of the greatest fallacies that even the economists of luniland ever entertained--and that is saying a good deal. consequently, if we have succeeded in eradicating discontent, it has not been by pursuing the mirage of a popular el dorado. no, you must replace the insane desire for the gratification of individual indulgence by a conception of a truer kind of well-being. if the individual once grasps the fact that in himself, and by himself, he is little better than an arboreal ape, and that all he possesses, all he can possess, is the gift of the state--which gives him nourishment, language, ideas, knowledge; which trains him to use his powers, such as they are--he will assume an entirely different attitude. our system of education, far more than our system of production, is responsible for the eradication of social and of every other kind of discontent." "then i suppose," i said, "the lower classes, as we sometimes call them abroad--your fifth and sixth and seventh classes, for example--never inquire whether they receive what they consider a fair share of the national product?" professor sauer laughed aloud. "pardon me," he said, "but you remind me of a story i used to hear when i was a boy, of a man who had slept in some cave or den for fifty years, or was it a century, and woke up to find a different world. such a question belongs to the buried fossils of economic theory. who can say what is a fair share? you might as well ask whether one musical composition is more just than another." "well, perhaps you can tell me this," i said. "considering the superiority of your methods of production, i should have expected to find a much higher standard of individual wealth, or comfort, or leisure--you know what i mean--among not only the lower classes, but all classes. i cannot help wondering what becomes of all the surplus." "we have all enough for our needs," he said, "and the requirements of the state are of far more importance than the gratification of the tastes of individuals." "may i put in a word?" said professor slimey the theologian. "in the modern world, the productive powers of man have outstripped his other powers. it is one of the mysteries of the ways of providence. the discipline of labour is necessary for the development of the soul, but the devil has sought to seduce mankind by teaching him how to produce more than is good for him, in the hope that he will become corrupted by luxury. in other countries that corruption has already taken place. the strenuous life is the only life consistent with moral health. under the divine guidance our ruling classes--i am old-fashioned enough to use that expression, for in the eyes of god there are no first or second classes--have preserved the sense of duty; they are a discipline unto themselves. god's blessings have been multiplied unto them, and they have not forgotten the divine injunctions. we cannot expect that the masses of mankind can discipline themselves, and for them the only safety lies in well-regulated and well-directed labour. there can be no greater curse for a people than idleness and luxury. fortunately, we have been able to preserve them from the evil effects of superabundant wealth." "i have sometimes wondered," i said, "whether the requirements of the state in regard to what is called national defence were so great as to account for the surplus product." "undoubtedly the demands of the army are very considerable," replied sauer. "you must remember that we have to protect ourselves against the whole world, so to speak." "but no estimate has been made, i suppose, of what is required for such things?" i said. "that is a matter of high policy," replied sauer. "it would be impossible to estimate for it as a separate item in national expenditure. there again you betray your lunilandish conceptions of national finance. no doubt they keep up this practice still in luniland, but such a notion belongs to a bygone age. the state must be able to mobilise all its resources; that is the only logical policy, if you mean to conduct the affairs of the nation successfully, not only in time of war but in time of peace. your asking how much national wealth is devoted to defence is like asking a man how much of his dinner is devoted to sustaining his religion." "but is it not important to be able to form some approximate idea, from the economic point of view?" i said. "for, in one sense, it represents so much waste." "so much waste?" exclaimed professor slimey indignantly; "to what nobler purpose could the energies of the people be directed than to the defence of their emperor, their god and their fatherland?" "i did not mean that it might not be necessary," i replied, "but it is like a man who has to build a dyke against floods. it may be necessary, but if he could be sure that the floods would not come, he could devote his energies to something more profitable." professor slimey shook his head solemnly. "no, no," he said, "that is another of the fallacies current among foreign peoples. we should sink to their level if our people had not ever before them the duty of serving god by upholding the power of meccania, his chosen nation. indeed, i often think what a dispensation of providence it is that it involves so much labour. imagine the state of the common people if they could maintain themselves by the aid of a few hours' work a day!" "would there not be so much more scope for the spread of your culture?" i said. "in fact, i had been given to understand that your culture had reached such a high level that you could easily dispense with the discipline of long hours of labour." "our culture," he replied, speaking with authority, "is not an individual culture at all. it must be understood as a unity. it includes this very discipline of which you seem to think so lightly. it includes the discipline of all classes. the monks of the middle ages knew that idleness would undermine even their ideal of life, for they knew that life is a discipline. our national culture is the nearest approach to the christian ideal that any nation has ever put into practice." "i cannot, of course, speak with confidence upon such a question," i replied, "but i thought the christian ideal was the development of the individual soul, whereas the meccanian ideal--i speak under correction--implies the elimination of the individual soul: everything must be sacrificed to the realisation of the glory of the super-state." "the super-state," answered slimey, "is itself the great soul of meccania; it includes all the individual souls. what you call the sacrifice of the individual soul is no real sacrifice; it is merely a losing oneself to find oneself in the larger soul of meccania. and just as the individual soul may inflict suffering on itself for the sake of higher self-realisation, so the super-soul of meccania may inflict suffering on the individual souls within itself for the sake of the higher self-realisation. the soul of meccania is as wonderful in the spiritual world as the material manifestation of meccania is in the material world." "i am sure you are right," i said, "although it never struck me in that light before. the soul of meccania is the most wonderful phenomenon in the history of the world." "no," replied professor slimey, with his solemn air, "it is not phenomenon: it is the thing in itself." here he paused to drink a liqueur. then he went on, "it is purely spiritual. it has existed from eternity and has become clothed and manifest through the outward and inward development of the super-state. you foreigners see only the outward forms, which are merely symbols. it is the super-soul of meccania that is destined to absorb the world of spirit, as the super-state is destined to conquer the material world." professor sikofantis-sauer gazed with his fishy eyes, as if he had heard all this before. "some day," i said, "i should like to hear more of the super-soul, but while i have the privilege of talking to both of you i should like to learn some things which probably only a professor of economics can tell me. you, as meccanians, will pardon me, i know, for seeking to acquire knowledge." they nodded assent. "i know something of the economic ideas of other nations in europe," i said, "but your conditions are so different that i am quite at sea with regard to the economic doctrines of meccania. what economic laws are there within the super-state?" "a very profound question," answered sauer, "and yet the answer is simple. what you have studied in other countries is merely the economics of free exchange, as carried on among peoples of a low culture. our economics have hardly anything in common. some of the laws of large-scale production are similar, but beyond that, our science rests upon other principles. our science is based upon meccanian ethics. the laws of demand have quite a different meaning with us. the state determines the whole character and volume of demand, and entirely upon ethical grounds." "and distribution too, i suppose?" "naturally. that is implied in the regulation of demand. the state determines what each class may spend, and in so doing determines both demand and distribution." "but i was under the impression that the well-to-do--the third and higher classes generally--had much more latitude than the lower classes in these respects," i said. "quite so. that again is part of our national ethical system. just as our economics are national economics, so our ethics are national ethics. the higher functions discharged by the higher classes demand a higher degree and quality of consumption. you will find some most interesting researches upon this subject in the reports of the sociological department. dr. greasey's monograph on the _sociological function of the third class_ is also a masterpiece in its way." "and the second class?" i said. "they will require still more latitude?" "the second class, like the first," replied sauer, "stands outside and above the purely economic aspect of society. their function is to determine what the national-social structure shall be. our business as economists is to provide ways and means. no doubt they are unconsciously guided, or shall i say inspired, by the workings of the meccanian spirit, of which they are the highest depositaries; and all the organs of the state are at their service, to give effect to their interpretation of the will of the super-state." "you do not find any tendency on their part, i suppose, to make large demands for themselves in the shape of what we non-meccanians persist in calling 'wealth'?" i said. "such a question," answered sauer, "does not admit of any answer, because it involves a conception of wealth which we have entirely discarded. the second class--and with them, of course, i include the first class, for they are indivisible in their functions and spirit--exists for the super-state. whatever they consume is consumed in the discharge of the highest duties of the state. whatever is required by them is simply part of the necessary expenditure of the state. but although no limit is set--and who would presume to set any limit?--it is remarkable how little of this expenditure assumes the form of personal consumption. for the sake of the dignity of the state, their life must be conducted--collectively--on a magnificent scale. but, as you know, a dignitary like the pope may live in the finest palace in europe and yet be a man of simple tastes and habits; so our noble class--and no nobler class has ever existed--may represent the glory of the super-state and yet be the embodiment of the purest virtues." "i would go further," said professor slimey at this point. "our noble second class--and of course i associate the first class with them, for in reality they are all one--are the true protectors of the state: they are the guardians of us all. have you not noticed throughout all history that, after a successful war, the people are ready to bestow all manner of honours and benefits upon those who have saved their country? well, i say those who have given us all the glory and honour, ay, and the spoils of victory too, without going to war, are as deserving of the rewards as if they had come back from a long campaign. we cannot honour them too much. besides, it is good for the people to feel that there is a class upon whom they can bestow the natural warmth of their affection and their admiration. the desire to bow down in reverent admiration, the desire to do honour to the worthiest of our race, is a god-given impulse, and should be encouraged, not checked. our people feel this. we do not bargain with them as to what share they shall have: we do not lay aside a tenth, or some such absurd proportion: we say, take our wealth, take whatever we can give, it is all yours, you are the fathers of the state, you are our saviours." "and you think this spirit prevails throughout meccania?" i said. "i am perfectly sure of it," replied slimey. "all our greatest artists offer their works freely to the members of the second class; all the most gifted scientists compete for places in the colleges for the training of the military; the services of our best writers are at their disposal: we withhold nothing from them." "then it is true, i gather, that the custom i have heard of, by which wives and daughters of other classes, if they are thought worthy by the eugenics board, are--shall i say--dedicated to the service of the second class, arouses no feeling of indignation?" "indignation!" exclaimed the professor of theology. "it is a duty and a privilege." "but is it not contrary to the principles of the christian religion? i confess i speak with some hesitation, as i do not belong to the christian communion; but i have been told by some of the strictest of the christian sects in other countries that such a practice is a violation of the christian code." professor slimey refreshed himself, and i could see another long speech was coming. "that is a sample of the uncharitable criticism which is constantly being aimed at us, by those who cloak their envy and spite under the name of christian doctrine. yet they are utterly inconsistent with themselves. they admit the doctrine of development, yet they deny its application, except to suit their own purposes. take usury, for example. christian doctrine, as expounded by the fathers, regarded usury as sinful. yet usury is practised in all so-called christian countries without protest. why? because their system of economics cannot work without it. i might give other illustrations, but that will suffice. now ethics must undergo development if there is to be progress in morals. the supreme well-being of the state gives the key to all progress in ethics. if the custom you refer to were due to private concupiscence, we--and i speak for all meccanian theologians--would be the first to denounce it. the sin of adultery is a spiritual sin, and exists only where carnal desire is the motive. every theologian knows that the same physical act may be performed in conformity with the behests of the mosaic law, or in direct disobedience of it. the one is a sacred duty, the other is sin. it is like the alleged obligation to speak the truth upon all occasions. there is no such obligation. we must look to the end in view. where the supreme needs of the state demand concealment or even deception, the private ethical impulse to speak the truth to an enemy is superseded by the greater obligation to the state. the virtue of chastity is not violated; it is raised, if i may say so, to its transcendent degree, by an act of sacrifice which implies the surrender of merely private virtue to the interests of the state; for you must remember that the state as developed by the meccanian spirit is the highest embodiment of the will of god upon earth." "we seem to have been carried rather a long way from meccanian economics," i remarked, turning to professor sauer by way of apology for having carried on the conversation for so long with professor slimey. "not at all," he answered. "meccanian ethics and meccanian economics cannot be separated." "it must make the science of economics much more difficult in one sense; but, on the other hand, what a relief it must be to have got rid of all those old troublesome theories of value!" i observed. "we have not got rid of theories of value," answered sauer; "they too have only been developed. the basis of our theory of value is to be found in meccanian ethics." "in other words," i said, laughing, "the value of a pair of boots in meccania is determined by the theologians!" "how do you mean?" asked sauer. "i mean that the remuneration of an artisan in the fifth class will purchase so many pairs of boots; and the remuneration of the artisan is determined by what the state thinks good for him; and what the state thinks good for him is determined by meccanian ethics; and i suppose the theologians determine the system of meccanian ethics." at that point our conversation was interrupted by an announcement that the toast of the evening would be drunk. this was the signal for the party to break up. we drank to the success of the meccanian empire and the confounding of all its enemies, and i went home to the hotel to find a message from kwang asking me to see him the following day. i spent the morning as usual with lickrod, who was initiating me into the method of using the catalogues in the great library of mecco. it was indeed a marvel of 'librarianship.' there was a bibliography upon every conceivable subject. there was a complete catalogue of every book according to author, and another according to subject. there was a complete catalogue of the books issued in each separate year for the last twenty-five years. there were courses of study with brief notes upon all the books. lickrod was in his element. as we came away, about lunch-time, i said to him, "suppose i want to take back with me, when i leave the country, a dozen books to read for pure pleasure, what would you recommend me to take?" "upon what subject?" he asked. "upon anything, no matter what. what i am thinking of are books which are just works of art in themselves, pieces of pure literature either in poetry or prose." "a book must be about something," he said; "it must fall into some category or other." "is there no imaginative literature?" i asked. "oh, certainly, we have scores of treatises on the imagination." "but i mean books that are the work of the imagination." "i see. you want them for your children, perhaps: they would be found in the juvenile departments; fables and parables, and that sort of thing." "no, i mean books without any serious purpose, but for grown-up people. i seem to remember such works in the old meccanian literature." "how very odd," answered lickrod, "that you should express a wish to see works of that kind." "why?" i asked, in some surprise. "because we find works of that kind in great demand in the asylums for the mentally afflicted. you see, we treat the inmates as humanely as possible, and our pathologists tell us that they cannot read the books by modern authors. we have to let them read for a few hours a day, and they beg, really rather piteously, for the old books. it is always old books they ask for. i suppose in a way they are cases of a kind of arrested development. at any rate, they have not been able to keep pace with the developments of our ideas. doctor barm reported only last year that the only books that seem to have a soothing effect on these patients are those written, oh, two hundred years ago, and of the very kind you probably have in mind." chapter xii the latest institution i went to see kwang in the afternoon, and found him in a state of suppressed excitement--at least i could not help having that impression. after a little time, when i had given him some brief account of my experience at the dinner-party, he said, "i told you the other day that i had some thoughts of returning home. i shall be off in a fortnight." "this is rather sudden," i said; "have you received bad news from home?" "no," he said; "i told you i had practically completed my work. the fact is, that things are beginning to develop rather fast here. i see signs of preparation for a 'forward move.'" "oh!" i said. "not another war?" "not necessarily," he replied. "light your cigar and i will tell you all you need know." i did so and waited. "the next war," he said, "will be a chemical war." "a chemical war? what on earth is that?" i said. "they have been experimenting for thirty years and more, and they think they have discovered what they want. it may take them several years to perfect their arrangements; it will certainly take them a year or two, and may take six or seven. but one never knows. i suppose you never heard of the three days' war, did you?" "no," i replied; "what was it?" "the state of lugrabia, with which the meccanians are in permanent alliance, refused to ratify a new treaty that seemed unfavourable to them in some respects, and feeling ran so high that there was some talk in lugrabia of putting an end to the alliance. without any declaration of war the meccanian government dispatched a small fleet of air-vessels, planted about a dozen chemical 'distributors,' as they are euphemistically called, and warned the lugrabian state that, unless their terms were complied with, the twelve chief cities would be wiped out. the war was over in three days. and to this day the outside world has never heard of the event." "how can it have been kept secret?" i said. "ask rather how could it leak out," replied kwang. "anyhow," he went on, "they think they have got something that will enable them to defeat any combination. there is no question in dispute with any foreign power. the political 'horizon' is perfectly clear. but it is time for me to go home." "do you think this idea of theirs is really dangerous?" i asked. "undoubtedly." "but can it not be counteracted in any way?" "if it can't it will be a bad look out for the rest of us," he said. "but do you see any means of meeting it?" "there is, if i can get the governments to act. but they are at a tremendous disadvantage." "why?" i said. "because everything they do will be proclaimed from the housetops. however, what i wanted to do immediately was to arrange with you about leaving the country. of course you will stay as long as you like, but i should advise you not to stay too long. i shall not announce that i am going away permanently, and i shall leave nearly all my things here to avoid suspicion; but within three months they will know that i am not likely to come back, and then they may want to look _you_ up if you are still here." "i shall go as soon as you think it is advisable for me to go," i said. "the only thing i wanted to make sure of was the thing you have apparently found out. once or twice since i came i have felt sceptical about the machiavellian designs attributed to the meccanian government by all these neighbours. naturally they see a robber in every bush. i have sometimes been inclined to think the meccanians like organising just for the love of it, but you are satisfied that there is more in it than that." "my dear child," said kwang, "there are some people who can't see a stone wall till they knock their heads against it, and who can't tell that a mad bull is dangerous till he tosses them in the air; and from what i learn you are almost as bad," he said, laughing. "you have been here, how long? four or five months at any rate. well, you have a very unsuspicious mind. but i am going to give you an interesting experience. i am going to take you to see a friend of mine who has been a prisoner in an asylum for the mentally afflicted for the last fifteen years. i enjoy the privilege of talking to him alone, and i have permission to take you. i won't stop to explain how i obtained the privilege, but it has been very useful." in another quarter of an hour we were rolling along in kwang's motor-car to a place about forty miles outside mecco. the roads were as smooth as glass and the car made no noise, so we could converse without raising our voices. kwang observed that if i wished to stay in meccania there was only one way of getting behind the screen, and that was to become a convert. the rôle of a convert, however, was becoming more difficult to play. he had lately begun to suspect that he was being watched, or at any rate that one or two people at the foreign office were jealous of his privileges. some years ago, the head of the foreign office had given him practically the free run of the country, and had utilised him as a sort of missionary of meccania. his books on the _triumphs of meccanian culture_ and on _meccania's world mission_ had been given the widest possible publicity, both in meccania and abroad. he still enjoyed all his privileges, for count krafft was a powerful friend at the foreign office. consequently the police department had orders not to interfere with him, and he had free passes for almost everything. but another under-secretary had lately begun to question the wisdom of his colleague, not openly but secretly, and was trying to get hold of evidence. "they lie so wonderfully and so systematically themselves," said kwang, "that they naturally suspect everybody else of lying too. but this suspicion very often defeats its own object. still, they can't expect to have a monopoly of lying. i have seen official pamphlets for circulation in the departments, on the methods of testing the _bona fides_ of foreigners; and elaborate rules for finding out whether foreign governments are trying to deceive them." "and you have satisfied all their tests?" i said. "absolutely," replied kwang, with a smile; "but i am not yet out of the country, and i don't propose to risk it much longer, or i may not be able to get out. however," he added, "there is not the slightest risk in taking you to visit the asylum for _znednettlapseiwz_. i have made a special study of these asylums, of which there are only about half a dozen in the whole country. i got permission some years ago. i had been discussing with count krafft the difficulty of dealing with a certain class of persons, to be found in every modern state, who act as a focus for all opposition. they cling obstinately to certain ethical and political doctrines quite out of harmony with those of the super-state, and profess to regard bureaucracy and militarism as inconsistent with liberty. he told me a good deal about the methods employed, and suggested that i should visit one of these asylums. i did so and asked permission to make a study of a few individual cases. eventually i wrote a monograph on the case of the very man we are going to see, and although it was never published count krafft was much pleased with it. the man we shall see, mr. stillman, represents a type that has almost entirely disappeared from meccania. he has had a remarkable history. at one time, for two or three years, he was the chief political opponent of the great prince mechow. he belongs to an older generation altogether, a generation older than his contemporaries, if you understand what i mean. nearly all his contemporaries are 'good meccanians,' but there are still the remnants of the opposition left. when stillman was a boy there were left alive only a handful of men who had stood up to prince bludiron. most of these former opponents had emigrated, some to transatlantica, some to luniland and elsewhere. the rest ultimately died out. stillman attempted to create a new opposition, but it was a hopeless task. if you want to understand the political history of meccania you cannot do better than get him to talk to you if he is in the mood." we approached the asylum, which stood upon a lonely moorland, far away from any village. the gates were guarded by a single sentinel. as we walked along the path, after leaving our car in a yard near the lodge, we passed little groups of men working upon patches of garden. they looked up eagerly as we passed, and then turned back to their tasks. i noticed they were dressed in ordinary black clothes. it struck me at once, because i had become so used to seeing everybody in the familiar colours of one of the classes. on my mentioning this to kwang, he said, "that is perfectly in accordance with the meccanian system. these men now belong to no class; they are shut off from the rest of the world, and their only chance of returning to it is for them to renounce, formally and absolutely, all the errors of which they have been guilty." "and do many of them 'recant'?" i asked. "very few. most of them do not want to return to the ordinary life of meccania, but occasionally the desire to be with some member of their family proves too strong for them. they are nearly all old people here now. none of the younger generation are attacked by the disease, and the authorities hope"--he smiled sardonically--"that in a few years the disease will have disappeared entirely." we first went to call upon hospital-governor canting. he was in his office, which was comfortably furnished in very characteristic meccanian taste. the chairs were all adjustable, and covered with 'art' tapestry. the large table had huge legs like swollen pillars--they were really made of thin cast-iron. there were the usual large portraits of the emperor and empress, and busts of prince mechow and prince bludiron. there was the usual large bookcase, full of volumes of reports bound in leather-substitute, and stamped with the arms of meccania. governor canting wore the green uniform of the fourth class, with various silver facings and buttons, and a collar of the special kind worn by all the clergy of the meccanian church. he was writing at his table when we were shown in. he greeted kwang almost effusively and bowed to me, with the usual meccanian attitudes, as i was introduced. "so you have brought your friend to see our system of treatment," he said, smiling. "it is very unusual for us to receive visits at all,"--here he turned to me,--"but mr. kwang is quite a privileged person in meccania. if only there were more people like mr. kwang we should not be so much misunderstood, and the victims of so much envy, malice and uncharitableness. still, it is a sad experience for you." "do many of the patients suffer acutely?" i asked, hardly knowing what was the right cue. "oh, i did not mean that. no, no, _they_ don't suffer much. but it is sad to think that men who might have been worthy citizens, some of them as writers, some as teachers, some even as doctors--men who might have served the state in a hundred ways--are wasting their talents and hindering the spread of our culture." "it must be a terrible affliction," i said. "do they not sometimes feel it themselves in their moments of clearness of mind?" he looked at me, a little in doubt as to my meaning, but my face must have reassured him. "the strange thing about this disease," he said, "is that the patients suffer no pain directly from it; and you must remember that in practically all cases--just as in alcoholism--it is self-induced. there may be some little hereditary tendency, but the disease itself is certainly not inherited, and can be counteracted in its early stages by prophylactic treatment, as we have now fully demonstrated. as i say, it is self-induced, and it is therefore very difficult, even for a christian minister who realises his duties to the state as well as to the church, always to feel charitably towards these patients. we cannot shut our eyes to the fact of moral responsibility, and when i think of the obstinacy of these men i am tempted to lose patience. and their conceit! to presume that they--a few hundreds of them at most--know better than all the wise and loyal statesmen of meccania, better than all the experts, better than all the millions of loyal citizens. but it is when i see what a poor miserable handful of men they are after all that i can find in my heart to pity them." "and how is my special case?" asked kwang, when he could get a word in. "just the same," said canting--"just the same. you will find him perhaps a little weaker. i will not go with you. you seem to succeed best with him by yourself; and no doubt you have instructed your friend as to the peculiar nature of his malady." "yes," said kwang; "my friend has read my little monograph, and he thought the case so remarkable that with the consent and approval of dr. narrowman i brought him to see patient stillman in the flesh. i shall get him to talk a little." "good," replied canting; "but you will never cure him. you were quite right in what you once said--prevention is the only cure. if we had developed our prophylactic system earlier it might have saved him, but he is too old now." after some preliminary formalities we were taken by one of the warders, who was evidently acquainted with kwang through his many previous visits, to a room at the end of a long corridor, where we found mr. stillman, who greeted us cordially but with old-fashioned dignity. his manner struck me as being very different from that of the modern meccanians. clearly he belonged to another generation. the room, which was about twenty feet by ten, was a bed-sitting-room, furnished with one of those contrivances which becomes a bed by night and a false cupboard by day. there was an easy chair with the usual mechanical adjustments, a table, two bedroom chairs, a small sideboard and cupboard, a few other articles of necessity and a shelf of books. there were no bolts or bars or chains--the room suggested a hospital rather than a prison. mr. stillman was a fine old man, and, although growing feeble in body, was still vigorous in mind. when seated he held his head erect, and looked us frankly in the face, but with a wistful expression. he had evidently been a good-looking man, but his face bore traces of long suffering. except that he did not pace about his cell, he reminded me of a caged lion. one of the orderlies brought in a tray of tea for the three of us. mr. stillman said what a pleasure it was to see a human being now and then, and, turning to me, explained that, except to mr. kwang and the officials and the doctors, he had not spoken to anyone for five years. "until five years ago," he said, "i was able to do a little work in the gardens, and could converse with my fellow-prisoners--patients, i mean--but only about our work, and in the presence of a warder. still, that was some relief. indeed, it was a great relief, for every one of the patients is a kind of brother--otherwise he would not be here. there are only a few hundreds of us left--perhaps a couple of thousands altogether--i don't know. we have about two hundred here, and this is one of the largest hospitals, or prisons, in the country--so at least i was told." "but why is conversation not permitted?" i said. "to be deprived of conversation must surely aggravate any tendency to mental instability." "the theory is that communication with our fellow-patients would hinder our recovery," he replied, with a significant smile. "but what are you supposed to be suffering from?" i said. "a mental disease known only to the government of meccania," he answered. "you must have heard of it. mr. kwang knows all about it. the real name for it is 'heresy,' but they call it _znednettlapseiwz_. i suffer very badly from it and am incurable--at least i hope so," he added bitterly. at this point kwang announced that he wished to visit another patient, and that he would leave us together so that i might have a long talk undisturbed. it was evident that he occupied a privileged position, or he would never have been able to have such access to these patients. when he had left the room i did my best to get mr. stillman to talk, but i hardly knew how to induce him to tell me his story. i said, "i suppose you are not treated badly, apart from this prohibition about conversing with your fellow-sufferers?" "we are fed with the exact amount of food we require," he replied; "we are clothed--and thank god we do not wear any of the seven uniforms; and we are decently warm, except sometimes in winter when, i suppose, something goes wrong with the apparatus." "what?" i said. "can any apparatus go wrong in meccania?" "well," he said, "perhaps the fact is that i want to be warmer than the experts think is necessary. yes; that is probably the explanation." "and for the rest," i said. "have you no occupation? how do you spend the time?" "in trying to preserve the last remains of my sanity," he answered. "and by what means?" i asked gently. "chiefly by prayer and meditation," he replied after a short pause. he used the old-fashioned expressions which i had not heard from the lips of any meccanian before. "but it is difficult," he went on, "to keep one's faith, cut off from one's fellow-believers." "but they allow you to attend religious services surely?" i said. "the meccanian state church keeps a chaplain here, and holds a service every day which is attended by all the officials and a few of the patients; but you have heard the maxim _cujus regio ejus religio_, have you not?" i nodded. "it has acquired a new significance during the last fifty years. i have not attended any of the services since they ceased to be compulsory about ten years ago." "that sounds very remarkable," i said. "what does?" "it is the first time i have heard of anything _ceasing_ to be compulsory in meccania," i said. "the fact was that they discovered it had a very bad effect upon the disease. my chief relief now is reading, which is permitted for three hours a day." "and you are allowed to choose your own books?" "as a concession to our mental infirmity," he said, "we have been granted the privilege of reading some of the old authors. it came about in this way. dr. weakling, who is in charge of this hospital, is the son of one of my oldest friends--a man who spent several years in this place as a patient. he came in about the same time as i did, but his health gave way and he 'recanted,' or, as they say, he 'recovered.' but while he was here he begged to have a few of the old books to save him from going mad. the authorities refused to let him have any books except those specially provided, and i believe it was this that made him give way. anyhow he used his influence with his son afterwards, for his son had become one of the leading medical specialists, to obtain for the older patients at any rate a number of the books of the old literature which nobody else wanted to read. he only got the concession through on the ground that it was a psychological experiment. he has had to write a report on the experiment every year since its introduction. that is our greatest positive privilege, but we have a few negative privileges." "what do you mean exactly?" i said. "we have no compulsory attendances; we have no forms to fill up; we are not required to keep a diary; we are not required to read the _monthly gazette of instructions_, nor play any part in state ceremonies. indeed, if i could talk to my friends who are here i should have little to complain of on the score of personal comfort." "then why do you speak of the difficulty of preserving your sanity?" i said, rather thoughtlessly, i am afraid. "why do you think i am here at all?" he replied, for the first time speaking fiercely. "i could have my liberty to-day if i chose, could i not?" then he went on, not angrily but more bitterly, "did i say i could have my liberty? no; that is not true. i could go out of here tomorrow, but i should not be at liberty. i stay here, because here i am only a prisoner--outside i should be a slave. how long have you been in meccania did you say?" "about five months," i said. "and you are free to go back to your own country?" "certainly," i said--"at least, i hope so." "then go as soon as you can. this is no fit place for human beings. it is a community of slaves, who do not even know they are slaves because they have never tasted liberty, ruled over by a caste of super-criminals who have turned crime into a science." "i have not heard the ruling classes called criminals before," i said. "i am not sure that i understand what you mean." "then you must have been woefully taken in by all this hocus-pocus of law and constitution and patriotism. the whole place is one gigantic prison, and either the people themselves are criminals, or those who put them there must be. there is such a thing as legalised crime. crime is not merely the breaking of a statute. murder and rape are crimes, statute or no statute." "but what are the crimes these rulers of meccania have committed?" i said. "in all civilised countries," he replied passionately, "if you steal from a man, if you violate his wife or his daughters, if you kidnap his children, you are a criminal and outlawed from all decent society. these rulers of ours have done worse than that. they have robbed us of everything; we have nothing of our own. they feed us, clothe us, house us--oh no, there is no poverty--every beast of burden in the country is provided with stall and fodder--ay, and harness too; they measure us, weigh us, doctor us, instruct us, drill us, breed from us, experiment on us, protect us, pension us and bury us. nay, that is not the end; they dissect us and analyse us and use our carcasses for the benefit of science and the super-state. i called them a nation. they are not a nation; they are an 'organism.' you have been here five months, you say. you have seen a lot of spectacles, no doubt. you have seen buildings, institutions, organisations, systems, machinery for this and machinery for that, but you have not seen a single human being--unless you have visited our prisons and asylums. you have not been allowed to talk to anybody except 'authorised persons.' you have been instructed by officials. you have read books selected by the super-state, and written by the super-state. you have seen plays selected by the super-state, and heard music selected by the super-state, and seen pictures selected by the super-state, and no doubt heard sermons preached by the super-state." "your friend tells me other nations are still free. what drives me to the verge of madness is to think that we, who once were free, are enslaved by bonds of our own making. can you wonder, after what you have seen--a whole nation consenting to be slaves if only they may make other nations slaves too--that i ask myself sometimes whether this is a real lunatic asylum; whether i am here because i have these terrible hallucinations; whether all that i think has happened this last fifty years is just a figment of my brain, and that really, if i could only see it, the world is just as it used to be when i was a boy?" presently he became calmer and began to tell me something of his life story. "until i was about twelve," he said, "i lived with my parents in one of the old-fashioned parts of meccania. my father was a well-to-do merchant who had travelled a good deal. he was something of a scholar too, and took interest in art and archæology, and as i, who was his youngest son, gave signs of similar tastes, he took me abroad with him several times. this made a break in my schooling, and although i probably learnt more from these travels, especially as i had the companionship of my father, it was not easy to fit me into the regular system again. so my father decided to send me to some relatives who had settled in luniland, and a few years after, when i was ready to go to the university of bridgeford, he and my mother came to live for a few years in luniland." "up to that time i had taken no interest in politics, but i can distinctly recall now how my father used to lament over the way things were tending. he said it was becoming almost impossible to remain a good citizen. he had always thought himself a sane and sober person, not given to quarrelling, but he found it impossible to attach himself to any of the political parties or cliques in meccania. he was not a follower of spotts, who, he said, was a kind of inverted bludiron, but he disliked still more the politicians and so-called statesmen who were preaching the meccanian spirit as a new gospel. i think it was his growing uneasiness with politics that caused him to drift gradually into the position of a voluntary exile. but we were very happy. every year or so i used to go over to meccania, and in spite of my cosmopolitan education i retained a strong affection for the land of my birth. i was full of its old traditions, and not even the peaceful charms of bridgeford--an island that seemed like a vision of utopia--could stifle my passion for the pine forests of bergerland, our old home in meccania. when i had finished my course at bridgeford i had to decide whether i would return to serve my two years in the army. it was a great worry to my mother that i had not, like my brothers, passed the meccanian examination which reduced the time of service to one year, but i made light of the matter; and although, after my life in luniland, it was very distasteful to me, i went through my two years as cheerfully as i could. i learnt a great deal from it. i was nicknamed 'the lunilander,' and was unpopular because i did not share the silly enthusiasm and boasting which at that time was prevalent. i had got out of touch with the youthful life of meccania, and these two years opened my eyes. but i will not dwell on that time. at the end of it i joined my father, who had remained in luniland when he was not travelling. it was time to choose a career. i had little taste for business and i was determined that i would not become an official of any kind, and when i proposed to devote some years to following up the work that my father had planned for himself, but had never been able to carry out, he gave his consent. we had just planned a long archæological tour in francaria when the great war broke out." "i shall never forget the state of agitation into which this catastrophe threw him. i was about to return to meccania in obedience to the instruction i had received, when he begged me not to go back at any cost. he had spent two sleepless nights, and his agony of mind was terrible. what he had feared for years had come to pass. he had thought it would be somehow avoided. he had been watching events very closely for the few weeks before the crisis. the day that war was declared between luniland and meccania, he declared his intention of going back to meccania; but not to join in the madness of his country. he could not do much; probably he would not be allowed to do anything, but at any rate he would fight for sanity and right. my mother was eager to go back, but for other reasons. she burst out into a frenzy of abuse of luniland. she repeated all the lies that i had heard in meccania about the country in which she had been perfectly happy for years. she called me a coward for not being with my brothers. she said she had always been against my having come to luniland. i knew she was hysterical, but i could hardly believe my ears. my father stood firm. he insisted on my staying. he said he should regard himself as a murderer if he consented to my going to fight for what he knew to be a monstrous crime. what my mother had said, although of course it pained me, did more to convince me that my father was right than anything he could have said. i had seen already the accounts of the meccanian crowds shouting for war in a frenzy of martial pride. i had seen also the streets of lunopolis, full of serious faces, awed by the thought of war and yet never wavering a moment. i had heard my own countrymen jeering at the craven spirit of the lunilanders. it was a cruel position to be in, and in the years that followed i was tempted sometimes to regret that i had not gone back and sought peace of mind in a soldier's grave. but in my heart i was so revolted by the thought that all this horror was the work of my countrymen that i grew ashamed of being a meccanian. for the first two years my father wrote to me constantly, and if i had had any doubts of the rightness of my conduct, what he said would have sustained me. "but that is a long story. all i need say is that it was in those years of suffering and horror that i discovered where my duty lay, and took a vow to follow it. when the war ended i would go back, and if i were the only man left in meccania i would fight for truth and liberty. it was a quixotic vow, but i was a young man of thirty." "well, i came back. i had to wait three years, even after the war was over, until there was an amnesty for such as i. and when i did set foot here again, the cause i had come to fight for was already lost. but i did not know it." "my father had already spent two years in prison, and was only released in time to die. but through him i knew that there were still some left who felt as we did. the idea of liberty had been lost. although the war had been over three years, everybody was still under martial law. the military professed that the country was in danger of a revolution. the newspapers preached the necessity for everybody to be organised to repair the ravages of the war. the socialists said the economic revolution, so long predicted, was accomplishing itself. for a few years we could make no headway. then things began to settle down a little. the fever seemed to be spending itself. that was the moment when prince mechow became chief minister of the interior. some semblance of constitutional government was restored, and we began to hope for better things. we started a newspaper, and established societies in all the big towns. what we were out for was, first and foremost, political liberty. we had three or four brilliant writers and speakers. but the only papers that would take our articles were a few of the socialist papers which wrote leaders criticising our ideas as 'unscientific,' and the only people who came to our meetings were socialists who used them to speechify about the economic revolution. then mechow's reforms began. all education was completely controlled. the press was bought up, and gradually suppressed. the right of public meeting was curtailed, till it disappeared altogether. the censorship of printing was made complete. new regulations accumulated year by year, and month by month. the seven classes were established. and all the time the socialists went on prating about the economic revolution. prince mechow was doing their work, they said. all they would have to do would be to step into his place when he had completed it. a few hundreds of us, scattered in various parts of the country, tried to keep up the struggle. we got into prison several times, but nobody cared a straw for our 'luniland' party, as they called it. i fell ill, and then i tried to go abroad for a rest. i was arrested for an alleged plot, and sentenced to a term of imprisonment and degradation to the fifth class! after that i was forbidden to communicate with my children, for fear of infecting them. as they grew up in their teens, even they grew to look on me as an eccentric. need i say more? the time came when i had either to recant from all my convictions, or be treated as a person of unsound mind. i came here determined to hold out to the last. what i feared--and i think i feared nothing else--was that some of their diabolical medical experiments would undermine my will. fortunately i was sent here, where after a time dr. weakling--who is at any rate not a scoundrel--has done his best to protect me. he represents a type we have in meccania--perhaps the most common type of all--a man who conforms to the system because he finds himself in it and part of it, but who is not actively wicked, and who has some good nature left. he regards me and those like me as simple-minded fanatics who are harmless so long as we are only few in number." "so you think your cause is lost?" i said. "no," he said quickly, "our cause is not lost. it is meccania that is lost." "but is there no hope even for meccania?" "there is no hope from within: hope can only come from without." "that is a hard saying. how can it come from without?" "fifty years ago our neighbours--not our enemies, our neighbours--fought for liberty: they set themselves free, but they did not set us free. they said they would make the world safe for democracy." "well, did they not do so?" i asked. he was quiet for a minute. "i wonder if they did," he said. "i wonder if either liberty or democracy can be safe so long as there is a super-state. if a tragedy like this can happen to one nation it can happen to the whole world. meccania will never become free whilst the meccanian spirit remains alive; and liberty will never be secure until the whole world is free." he sank back in his chair looking very tired after the excitement of our interview. at this moment a gong sounded. it was the signal for supper, and he got up mechanically to wash his hands in a bowl by the side of his bed-cupboard. kwang then knocked at the door and came to bid good-bye. we left our 'patient' preparing to cross the quadrangle. it was growing dark, and we could see the lights in the great hall of the hospital. we were just about to walk back to the lodge when kwang suddenly said, "come with me." i followed him through a long corridor, and he led the way to a door which opened into the great dining-hall. there we saw, seated at long tables, nearly two hundred old men. they had just begun their evening meal. there was a strange silence, oppressive and almost sinister. there were no servants to wait on them, but some of the more active men handed the dishes, while a couple of warders in green uniforms seemed to be patrolling the room for the purpose of checking all attempts at conversation. but there was not even a whisper. the men did not look sullen or rebellious. perhaps they had got past that. i could see them interchanging looks of friendly greeting across the room, and no doubt from long practice they had learnt to convey some simple messages by a glance or a smile; but there was an air of quiet courtesy about them, so different from what i had learnt to know as the typical meccanian manner. i looked at the faces of those nearest me. many of them might have sat for the portraits of senators, or have served as models for some of those old-fashioned paintings of assemblies of statesmen and ambassadors of bygone centuries. the surroundings were not altogether wanting in dignity. the hall was large and lofty, and although bare--save for the inevitable imperial portraits which greet one everywhere--was not unsightly. indeed, the absence of ornament was a relief from the perpetual reminders of the latest phases of meccanian art. governor canting had apparently been present at the beginning of the meal and was going off to his own dinner. he joined us for a moment. "do you notice," he said, "how ungracious their expression is? one would think they had never come under the influence of the meccanian spirit. their whole bearing is characteristic of their attitude of studied disloyalty. they never even give the salute. it has not been insisted upon because--you know ..." and he tapped his forehead. "they would not meet with such consideration in many countries, but we have respect for age and infirmity, no matter what provocation we receive." we left the hall and took our leave of hospital governor canting. as we started on our journey it was dark, and a cool wind was blowing. we could see before us the dull glow of light from the great city in the distance. the road was perfect, and we passed few vehicles of any kind; but we were stopped three times by the police, to whom kwang showed his pass. as we entered the outer ring we slowed down. although we were passing along the main roadway only a few persons were to be seen. here and there near the outer ring in the business quarter we passed a few groups of workmen marching in step on their way home. the trams were running, but there was no bustle and no excitement. no boisterous groups of young people filled the streets. no sound of laughter or merry-making fell on our ears. where were the people? where were those crowds that make the streets of all cities in the world a spectacle to move the heart of man? this might have been a plague-stricken town, a city of the dead. we passed the great station with its lofty dome, and the towering pile of the time department with the great clock above it. as we slowly swung through the great square, the colossal statue of prince mechow looked down on us like the grim and menacing image of this city of power. was he some evil genius that had slain the souls of men, leaving their bodies only to inhabit the vast prison-house he had built for them with their own labour? kwang put me down at the hotel and drove on to his rooms. i found a letter awaiting me. it was from my father, and contained painful news. my mother was seriously ill and he urged me to return at once. early next morning i hastened to visit kwang--first obtaining permission from the manager of the hotel--and found him busy with his preparations also. "don't be alarmed," he said, when i told him my news. "your mother is not ill. at any rate we do not know that she is. i thought it was time for you to be getting ready to leave this country and i had that letter sent. it will be a good reason in the eyes of the 'authorities.' i go the day after to-morrow. i have a secret mission for the government to the chinese embassy at prisa" (the capital of francaria). "i may not return. i may fall suddenly ill." i expressed some surprise that kwang, the most privileged stranger in meccania, the _persona grata_ with all the official world, should think it necessary to slip out of the country by a back door, and provide for my sudden departure as well. "you have been here five months," he said. "i have been here fifteen years. it is always best in this country to take as little risk as possible--consistent with your objectives. a word to the wise.... if you have anything that you wish to take out with you, you had better let me have it. you will be examined when you go out as you were when you came in. i do not propose to be examined when i leave. that is why i am going via prisa on a special mission." chapter xiii never again i did not see kwang again until we met some weeks after, in prisa. he had begun to suspect that one or two persons in the foreign department had guessed the nature of the rôle he had been playing. there was practically no evidence against him, because all the information he had obtained, and it was a great deal, had been furnished to him willingly by the meccanian government under the impression that he had become a sort of missionary of meccanian culture. all the same, as he observed to me, without arresting him as a spy (a course of procedure which for many reasons would have been inconvenient to the government) he might have been made the victim of an 'accident.' he could no longer play his part in safety. anyhow, he succeeded in making his exit in a manner that aroused no suspicion, and he managed to return to his own country a short time afterwards. consequently i need say no more about kwang. my own departure was also rather a tame affair. i had an interview, on the day i received my letter, with inspector of foreigners bulley. although i knew that the letter had been censored, and i was morally certain its contents had been made known to him, he betrayed no knowledge of the facts. i explained the circumstances and showed him the letter. i asked if the three days' notice could be dispensed with, as i wished to leave at the earliest moment. he said i might possibly leave the day after to-morrow, but not before, as it would be necessary to see that all my affairs were in order before issuing the certificate of absolution as it was called--a certificate which all foreigners must obtain before the issue of the ticket authorising them to be conveyed across the frontier. there would be a charge of £ for the extra trouble involved. one little difficulty had not occurred to me: there might not be a conveyance to graves, via bridgetown, for several days--perhaps not for a week. inspector bulley, who had all such matters at his finger-ends, told me there was no conveyance for five days by that route, but that he would arrange for me to travel by another route, via primburg and durven, which lay convenient for a journey to prisa. after that i could either return home direct or go first to lunopolis. he was sorry my visit had been cut short almost before my serious study had begun, and hoped i should find it possible to return. he arranged for me to undergo my necessary medical examination on the afternoon of the same day, and this turned out to be almost a formality. dr. pincher was much more polite, and much less exacting, than on a former occasion. clearly the influence of kwang--for i was now regarded as a sort of protégé of his--was evident in all this. altogether my exit was made quite pleasant, and i almost began to regret my precipitancy, but when i reflected on what i had to gain by staying longer i saw that kwang was right. i turned over in my mind what i had seen and learnt during five months. i had seen a provincial town (or some aspects of it), and the capital, under the close supervision of well-informed warders. i had talked to a score of officials and a few professors, and received a vast amount of instruction from them. i had seen a great public ceremony. i had visited a large number of institutions. but i had only got into contact with a single native meccanian who was free from the influence of the all-pervading super-state, and this person was in an asylum only accessible by a dangerous ruse. i knew little more of the people, perhaps less, than i could have got from reading a few books; but i had at any rate got an impression of the meccanian 'system' which no book could have given me. that impression was the most valuable result of my tour, but it seemed unlikely that a further stay would do anything more than deepen it. for unless i were prepared to play the rôle that kwang had played i was not likely to learn anything the meccanian government did not wish me to learn, and, however much i might be sustained by my curiosity, the actual experience of living in the atmosphere of the meccanian super-state was not pleasant. i said good-bye to my friends at the hotel, and, after an uneventful journey by express train, reached primburg. except that it bore a general resemblance to bridgetown, i can say nothing of it, for we were not permitted to go out of the station whilst waiting for the motor-van to take us across the frontier. i say 'us,' because there were about half a dozen other travellers. the fact that not more than half a dozen persons a week travelled from mecco to prisa--for this was the main route to the capital of francaria--was in itself astounding. even of these, three looked like persons on official business. at primburg i was spared the indignity of a further medical examination, as i had already obtained the necessary certificate from dr. pincher, but nothing could exempt me from the examination which all foreigners had to submit to in order to ensure that they carried nothing out of the country except by leave of the chief inspector of foreign observers. my journal had been entrusted to kwang, and i had nothing else of any importance. i was thoroughly searched, and my clothes and my baggage were closely examined by an official called the registrar of travellers. although i had spent a considerable time in francaria i had never before seen durven. there was now no reason for hurrying on to prisa, so i decided to spend a day there to look round. i had to report myself to the police, owing to the fact that i had arrived from meccania, but my credentials proving perfectly satisfactory i was at liberty to go where i liked. it was about four o'clock when i stepped out of the police station, and as it was a bright september afternoon there was still time to walk about for some hours before dark. at first, for about an hour, i could hardly help feeling that i was dreaming. here i was in the old familiar life of europe again. the streets of the town seemed full of people, some sauntering about and gossiping with their friends, others shop-gazing, others carrying parcels containing their purchases, some making their way home from business, others standing in groups near the theatres. there were tram-cars and omnibuses and all sorts of vehicles jostling in the central part of the town. a little later i saw people streaming out from a popular _matinée_. there were old men selling the first issues of the evening papers, and crying some sensational news which was not of the slightest importance but which somehow seemed good fun. i was delighted with everything i saw. it was a positive joy not to see any green uniforms, nor any grey uniforms, nor any yellow uniforms. green and grey and yellow are beautiful colours, but the plain black of the civilian dress of the men in the streets of durven seemed pleasanter, and the costumes of the women seemed positively beautiful. there were children walking with their mothers, and little urchins racing about in the side streets. i could have laughed with joy at the sight of them: i had seen no children for five months, only little future-meccanians. there were old women selling flowers. i wondered if they were poor; they looked fat and happy at any rate, and they were free to sell flowers or do anything else they liked. i turned into a café. a little band was playing some rollicking frivolous music that i recognised. i remembered some of my former friends making sarcastic remarks about this kind of music. it was not good music, yet it made me feel like laughing or dancing. there was such a babel of talk i could hardly hear the band. not that i wanted to! i was quite content to hear the happy voices round me, to watch the simple comedies of human intercourse, and to feel that i was out of prison. i strolled out again. this time i looked at the streets themselves, at the buildings and houses and shops. i dived down a side street or two and found myself by the river among little wharves and docks, all on the tiniest scale. the streets were rather untidy and not too clean; the houses were irregularly built. i was in the old town apparently. as i walked farther i noticed that by far the greater part of the town had been built during the last fifty years or so, yet the place looked as if it were trying to preserve the appearance of age. at another time i should probably have thought the town rather dull and uninteresting, for there was nothing noteworthy about it. if there had once been any genuine mediæval churches or guild halls or places of architectural interest they must have been destroyed, yet i discovered a strange joy and delight in everything i saw. after dark, when i had dined at the little hotel where i was to sleep that night, i went off at once to the nearest theatre, which happened to be a music hall. i laughed at the turns until people looked at me to see if i were drunk or demented. when they saw i was only a little excited they made good-humoured remarks. they were rather pleased that i should be so easily amused. "perhaps he has just come out of prison," said one; "no doubt it is rather dull there." "perhaps he is a friend of one of the actors," said another, "and wants to encourage him." "perhaps he has come from the land where jokes are prohibited," said a third. "perhaps he is a deaf man who has recovered his hearing," said another. "or a blind man who has recovered his sight." "anyhow, he knows how to enjoy himself." such were the remarks they made. when i came out i strolled about the streets until after midnight. it seemed so jolly to be able to go just where one pleased. in the morning i looked up the trains to prisa and found that i could reach it in a few hours. so i decided to spend the morning in durven and go on to prisa in the afternoon. i strolled into the open market-place. how strange it seemed! people in all sorts of simple costumes were going round to the various stalls picking up one thing here and another there. the usual little comedies of bargaining were going on. there were all sorts of trifles for sale, including toys for children--real toys, not disguised mathematical problems, or exercises in mechanical ingenuity. there were dolls and rattles and hoops and balls and whistles and fishing-rods and marbles and pegtops and dolls' houses and furniture and bricks and a hundred things besides. then there were gingerbread stalls, ice-cream stalls, cocoa-nut shies, swings and even a little merry-go-round. i felt i should like to ride on that merry-go-round, but as it was early in the forenoon there were only a few children--good heavens! what were children doing here? they ought to have been at school, or at any rate being instructed in the use of stage ii. b toys. i turned into the street where the best shops were. even the grocers' shops looked interesting. there were goods from all over the world. there were cheeses packed in dainty little cases, and dates in little boxes covered with pictures; tea in packets and canisters representing absurd chinamen and hindoo coolies. the clothing shops were full of the latest fashions, although this was a small provincial town; and very dainty and charming they looked. then there were antique shops and bric-à-brac shops, print shops and jewellers' shops. i could have spent days wandering about like a child at a fair. i had never realised before that the meanest european town--outside meccania--is a sort of perennial bazaar. i tore myself away, and after luncheon took train to prisa. the confusion and bustle at the stations was delightful; the chatter of the passengers was most entertaining. there were people in shabby clothes and people in smart costumes. there were ticket-collectors and guards in rather dirty-looking uniforms, and an occasional gendarme who looked as if he had come off the comic-opera stage. the villages on the route were like the villages i had seen before in europe--fragments of bygone ages mixed up with the latest devices in farm buildings and model cottages; churches built in the twelfth century and post offices built in the twentieth; mediæval barns and modern factories. at length we reached prisa, which needs no description from me. it looked like an old friend, and i lost no time in resuming the habits i had adopted during my previous stay. i looked up some of my old acquaintances, and we spent days in endless talk about everything under the sun. what a delight it was to read the newspapers, no matter how silly they were! how delightful to hear the latest gossip about the latest political crisis, the latest dramatic success, the latest social scandal, the latest literary quarrel! in a week or two i had almost forgotten the existence of meccania. i had seen nothing to remind me of it. i began to understand why the people in francaria and luniland were so ignorant of that country. why should they bother their heads about it? it seemed to me now like a bad dream, a nightmare. they were quite right to ignore it, to forget it. and yet, suppose meccania should startle europe again? and with a chemical war this time! would they be able to escape? or would the super-insects finally conquer the human race? i confess i felt some doubt. it seemed not impossible that the nightmare i had escaped from was a doom impending over the whole world. and it is because i could not dismiss this doubt that i have written a faithful account of what i saw and heard in meccania, the super-state. transcriber's note text in italics was surrounded by _underscores_, and text in all capitals changed to all capitals. the following corrections have been made, on page xvii "n" changed to "in" (in the manner of a mere spectator) "chocolate- coloured" changed to "chocolate-coloured" (with chocolate-coloured buttons) "t at" changed to "that" (but that the organising inspectors) "death sand" changed to "deaths and" (births, deaths and marriages) , added (unmeaning to a meccanian, the meccanians must have lost) " removed (and much more besides.) "pr fessions" changed to "professions" (all the functions of the independent professions) "he told" changed to "the old" (that is the old argument) "be" changed to "he" (clearly he belonged to another generation.) "this" changed to "these" (these two years opened my eyes). otherwise the original was preserved, including inconsistent spelling and hyphenation. the inner house by walter besant author of "the world went very well then" "for faith and freedom" "all sorts and conditions of men" "herr paulus" etc. new york harper & brothers, franklin square the inner house. prologue. at the royal institution. "professor!" cried the director, rushing to meet their guest and lecturer as the door was thrown open, and the great man appeared, calm and composed, as if there was nothing more in the wind than an ordinary scientific discourse. "you are always welcome, my friend, always welcome"--the two enthusiasts for science wrung hands--"and never more welcome than to-night. then the great mystery is to be solved at last. the theatre is crammed with people. what does it mean? you must tell me before you go in." the physicist smiled. "i came to a conviction that i was on the true line five years ago," he said. "it is only within the last six months that i have demonstrated the thing to a certainty. i will tell you, my friend," he whispered, "before we go in." then he advanced and shook hands with the president. "whatever the importance of your discovery, professor," said the president, "we are fully sensible of the honor you have done us in bringing it before an english audience first of all, and especially before an audience of the royal institution." "ja, ja, herr president. but i give my discovery to all the world at this same hour. as for myself, i announce it to my very good friends of the royal institution. why not to my other very good friends of the royal society? because it is a thing which belongs to the whole world, and not to scientific men only." it was in the library of the royal institution. the president and council of the institution were gathered together to receive their illustrious lecturer, and every face was touched with interrogation and anxiety. what was this great discovery? * * * * * for six months there had appeared, from time to time, mysterious telegrams in the papers, all connected with this industrious professor's laboratory. nothing definite, nothing certain: it was whispered that a new discovery, soon about to be announced, would entirely change the relations of man to man; of nation to nation. those who professed to be in the secret suggested that it might alter all governments and abolish all laws. why they said that i know not, because certainly nobody was admitted to the laboratory, and the professor had no confidant. this big-headed man, with the enormous bald forehead and the big glasses on his fat nose--it was long and broad as well as fat--kept his own counsel. yet, in some way, people were perfectly certain that something wonderful was coming. so, when roger bacon made his gunpowder, the monks might have whispered to each other, only from the smell which came through the key-hole, that now the devil would at last be met upon his own ground. the telegrams were continued with exasperating pertinacity, until over the whole civilized world the eyes of all who loved science were turned upon that modest laboratory in the little university of ganzweltweisst am rhein. what was coming from it? one does not go so far as to say that all interest in contemporary business, politics, art, and letters ceased; but it is quite certain that every morning and every evening, when everybody opened his paper, his first thought was to look for news from ganzweltweisst am rhein. but the days passed by, and no news came. this was especially hard on the leader-writers, who were one and all waiting, each man longing to have a cut in with the subject before anybody else got it. but it was good for the people who write letters to the papers, because they had so many opportunities of suggestion and surmise. and so the leader-writers got something to talk about after all. for some suggested that prof. schwarzbaum had found out a way to make food artificially, by chemically compounding nitrogens, phosphates, and so forth. and these philosophers built a magnificent palace of imagination, in which dwelt a glorified mankind no longer occupied in endless toil for the sake of providing meat and drink for themselves and their families, but all engaged in the pursuit of knowledge, and in art of all kinds, such as fiction, poetry, painting, music, acting, and so forth, getting out of life such a wealth of emotion, pleasure, and culture as the world had never before imagined. others there were who thought that the great discovery might be a method of instantaneous transmission of matter from place to place; so that, as by the electric wire one can send a message, so by some kind of electric method one could send a human body from any one part of the world to any other in a moment. this suggestion offered a fine field for the imagination; and there was a novel written on this subject which had a great success, until the discovery itself was announced. others, again, thought that the new discovery meant some great and wonderful development of the destructive art; so that the whole of an army might be blown into countless fragments by the touch of a button, the discharge of a spring, the fall of a hammer. this took the fancy hugely, and it was pleasant to read the imaginary developments of history as influenced by this discovery. but it seemed certain that the learned professor would keep it for the use of his own country. so that there was no longer any room to doubt that, if this was the nature of the discovery, the whole of the habitable world must inevitably fall under the teutonic yoke, and an empire of armed peace would set in, the like of which had never before been witnessed upon the globe. on the whole, the prospect was received everywhere, except in france and russia, with resignation. even the united states remembered that they had already many millions of germans among them; and that the new empire, though it would give certainly all the places to these germans, would also save them a great many elections, and therefore a good deal of trouble, and would relieve the national conscience--long grievously oppressed in this particular--of truckling to the irish vote. dynamiters and anarchists, however, were despondent, and socialists regarded each other with an ever-deepening gloom. this particular theory of the great discovery met, in fact, with universal credence over the whole civilized globe. from the great man himself there came no sign. enterprising interviewers failed to get speech with him. scientific men wrote to him, but got no real information in reply. and the minds of men grew more and more agitated. some great change was considered certain--but what? one morning--it was the morning of thursday, june , --there appeared an advertisement in the papers. by the telegrams it was discovered that a similar advertisement had been published in every great city all over the world. that of the london papers differed from others in one important respect--in this, namely: professor schwarzbaum would himself, without any delay, read before a london audience a paper which should reveal his new discovery. there was not, however, the least hint in the announcement of the nature of this discovery. * * * * * "yes," said the physicist, speaking slowly, "i have given the particulars to my friends over the whole earth; and, as london is still the centre of the world, i resolved that i would myself communicate it to the english." "but what is it?--what is it?" asked the president. "the discovery," the professor continued, "is to be announced at the same moment all over the world, so that none of the newspapers shall have an unfair start. it is now close upon nine o'clock by london time. in paris it is ten minutes past nine; in berlin it is six minutes before ten; at st. petersburg it is eleven o'clock; at new york it is four o'clock in the afternoon. very good. when the clock in your theatre points to nine exactly, at that moment everywhere the same paper will be read." in fact, at that moment the clock began to strike. the president led the way to the theatre, followed by the council. the director remained behind with the lecturer of the evening. "my friend," said professor schwarzbaum, "my subject is nothing less"--he laid his finger upon the director's arm--"nothing less than 'the prolongation of the vital energy.'" "what! the prolongation of the vital energy? do you know what that means?" the director turned pale. "are we to understand--" "come," said the professor, "we must not waste the time." then the director, startled and pale, took his german brother by the arm and led him into the theatre, murmuring, "prolongation ... prolongation ... prolongation ... of the vital--the vital--energy!" the theatre was crowded. there was not a vacant seat: there was no more standing room on the stairs; the very doors of the gallery were thronged: the great staircase was thronged with those who could not get in, but waited to get the first news. nay, outside the institution, albemarle street was crowded with people waiting to hear what this great thing might be which all the world had waited six months to hear. within the theatre, what an audience! for the first time in english history, no respect at all had been paid to rank: the people gathered in the theatre were all that the great city could boast that was distinguished in science, art, and letters. those present were the men who moved the world. among them, naturally, a sprinkling of the men who are born to the best things of the world, and are sometimes told that they help to move it. there were ladies among the company too--ladies well known in scientific and literary circles, with certain great ladies led by curiosity. on the left-hand side of the theatre, for instance, close to the door, sat two very great ladies, indeed--one of them the countess of thordisá, and the other her only daughter, the lady mildred carera. leaning against the pillar beside them stood a young man of singularly handsome appearance, tall and commanding of stature. "to you, dr. linister," said the countess, "i suppose everything that the professor has to tell us will be already well known?" "that," said dr. linister, "would be too much to expect." "for me," her ladyship went on delicately, "i love to catch science on the wing--on the wing--in her lighter moods, when she has something really popular to tell." dr. linister bowed. then his eyes met those of the beautiful girl sitting below him, and he leaned and whispered, "i looked for you everywhere last night. you had led me to understand--" "we went nowhere, after all. mamma fancied she had a bad cold." "then this evening. may i be quite--quite sure?" his voice dropped, and his fingers met hers beneath the fan. she drew them away quickly, with a blush. "yes," she whispered, "you may find me to-night at lady chatterton's or lady ingleby's." from which you can understand that this young dr. linister was quite a man in society. he was young, he had already a great reputation for biological research, he was the only son of a fashionable physician, and he would be very rich. therefore, in the season, harry linister was _of_ the season. on most of the faces present there sat an expression of anxiety, and even fear. what was this new thing? was the world really going to be turned upside down? and when the west end was so very comfortable and its position so very well assured! but there were a few present who rubbed their hands at the thought of a great upturn of everything. up with the scum first; when that had been ladled overboard, a new arrangement would be possible, to the advantage of those who rubbed their hands. when the clock struck nine, a dead silence fell upon the theatre; not a breath was heard; not a cough; not the rustle of a dress. their faces were pale with expectancy; their lips were parted; their very breathing seemed arrested. then the president and the council walked in and took their places. "ladies and gentlemen," said the president shortly, "the learned professor will himself communicate to you the subject and title of his paper, and we may be certain beforehand that this subject and matter will adorn the motto of the society--_illustrous commoda vitæ._" then dr. schwarzbaum stood at the table before them all, and looked round the room. lady mildred glanced at the young man, harry linister. he was staring at the german like the rest, speechless. she sighed. women did not in those days like love-making to be forgotten or interrupted by anything, certainly not by science. the learned german carried a small bundle of papers, which he laid on the table. he carefully and slowly adjusted his spectacles. then he drew from his pocket a small leather case. then he looked round the room and smiled. that is to say, his lips were covered with a full beard, so that the sweetness of the smile was mostly lost; but it was observed under and behind the beard. the mere ghost of a smile; yet a benevolent ghost. the lecturer began, somewhat in copy-book fashion, to remind his audience that everything in nature is born, grows slowly to maturity, enjoys a brief period of full force and strength, then decays, and finally dies. the tree of life is first a green sapling, and last a white and leafless trunk. he expatiated at some length on the growth of the young life. he pointed out that methods had been discovered to hinder that growth, turn it into unnatural forms, even to stop and destroy it altogether. he showed how the body is gradually strengthened in all its parts; he showed, for his unscientific hearers, how the various parts of the structure assume strength. all this was familiar to most of his audience. next he proceeded to dwell upon the period of full maturity of bodily and mental strength, which, in a man, should last from twenty-five to sixty, and even beyond that time. the decay of the bodily, and even of the mental organs, may have already set in, even when mind and body seem the most vigorous. at this period of the discussion most of the audience were beginning to flag in their attention. was such a gathering as this assembled only to hear a discussion on the growth and decay of the faculties? but the director, who knew what was coming, sat bolt upright, expectant. it was strange, the people said afterwards, that no one should have suspected what was coming. there was to be, everybody knew, a great announcement. that was certain. destruction, locomotion, food, transmission of thought, substitution of speech for writing--all these things, as has been seen, had been suggested. but no one even guessed the real nature of the discovery. and now, with the exception of the people who always pretend to have known all along, to have been favored with the great man's confidence, to have guessed the thing from the outset, no one had the least suspicion. therefore, when the professor suddenly stopped short, after a prolix description of wasting power and wearied organs, and held up an admonitory finger, everybody jumped, because now the secret was to be divulged. they had come to hear a great secret. "what is this decay?" he asked. "what is it? why does it begin? what laws regulate it? what check can we place upon it? how can we prevent it? how can we stay its progress? can science, which has done so much to make life happy--which has found out so many things by which man's brief span is crowded with delightful emotions--can science do no more? cannot science add to these gifts that more precious gift of all--the lengthening of that brief span?" here everybody gasped. "i ask," the speaker went on, "whether science cannot put off that day which closes the eyes and turns the body into a senseless lump? consider: we are no sooner arrived at the goal of our ambitions than we have to go away; we are no sooner at the plenitude of our wisdom and knowledge than we have to lay down all that we have learned and go away--nay, we cannot even transmit to others our accumulations of knowledge. they are lost. we are no sooner happy with those we love than we have to leave them. we collect, but cannot enjoy; we inherit--it is but for a day; we learn, but we have no time to use our learning; we love--it is but for an hour; we pass our youth in hope, our manhood in effort, and we die before we are old; we are strong, but our strength passes like a dream; we are beautiful, but our beauty perishes in a single day. cannot, i ask again--cannot science prolong the vital force, and stay the destroying hand of decay?" at this point a wonderful passion seized upon many of the people present; for some sprang to their feet and lifted hands and shouted, some wept aloud, some clasped each other by the hand; there were lovers among the crowd who fell openly into each other's arms; there were men of learning who hugged imaginary books and looked up with wild eyes; there were girls who smiled, thinking that their beauty might last longer than a day; there were women down whose cheeks rolled the tears of sorrow for their vanished beauty; there were old men who heard and trembled. one of them spoke--out of all this crowd only one found words. it was an old statesman; an old man eloquent. he rose with shaking limbs. "sir," he cried, his voice still sonorous, "give me back my manhood!" the professor continued, regardless: "suppose," he said, "that science had found out the way, not to restore what is lost, but to arrest further loss; not to give back what is gone--you might as well try to restore a leg that has been cut off--but to prevent further loss. consider this for a moment, i pray you. those who search into nature's secrets might, if this were done for them, carry on their investigations far beyond any point which had yet been reached; those who cultivate art might attain to a greater skill of hand and truth of sight than has ever yet been seen; those who study human nature might multiply their observations; those who love might have a longer time for their passion; men who are strong might remain strong; women who are beautiful might remain beautiful--" "sir," cried again the old man eloquent, "give me back my manhood!" the lecturer made no reply, but went on: "the rich might have a time--a sensible length of time--in which to enjoy their wealth; the young might remain young; the old might grow no older; the feeble might not become more feeble--all for a prolonged time. as for those whose lives could never become anything but a burden to themselves and to the rest of the world--the crippled, the criminal, the poor, the imbecile, the incompetent, the stupid, and the frivolous--they would live out their allotted lives and die. it would be for the salt of the earth, for the flower of mankind, for the men strong of intellect and endowed above the common herd, that science would reserve this precious gift." "give me back my manhood!" cried again the old man eloquent. but he was not alone, for they all sprang to their feet together and cried aloud, shrieking, weeping, stretching forth hands, "give--give--give!" but the director, who knew that what was asked for would be given, sat silent and self-possessed. the speaker motioned them all to sit down again. "i would not," he said, "limit this great gift to those alone whose intellect leads the world. i would extend it to all who help to make life beautiful and happy; to lovely women"--here the men heaved a sigh so deep, so simultaneous, that it fell upon the ear like the voice of thanksgiving from a cathedral choir--"to those who love only the empty show and pleasures and vainglories of life"--here many smiled, especially of the younger sort--"even to some of those who desire nothing of life but love and song and dalliance and laughter." again the younger sort smiled, and tried to look as if they had no connection at all with that band. "i would extend this gift, i repeat, to all who can themselves be happy in the sunshine and the light, and to all who can make the happiness of others. then, again, consider. when you have enjoyed those things for a while; when your life has been prolonged, so that you have enjoyed all that you desire in full measure and running over; when not two or three years have passed, but perhaps two or three centuries, you would then, of your own accord, put aside the aid of science and suffer your body to fall into the decay which awaits all living matter. contented and resigned, you would sink into the tomb, not satiated with the joys of life, but satisfied to have had your share. there would be no terror in death, since it would take none but those who could say, 'i have had enough.' that day would surely come to every one. there is nothing--not research and discovery, not the beauty of nature, not love and pleasure, not art, not flowers and sunshine and perpetual youth--of which we should not in time grow weary. science cannot alter the laws of nature. of all things there must be an end. but she can prolong; she can avert; she can--yes, my friends. this is my discovery; this is my gift to humanity; this is the fruit, the outcome of my life; for me this great thing has been reserved. science can arrest decay. she can make you live--live on--live for centuries--nay, i know not--why not?--she can, if you foolishly desire it, make you live forever." now, when these words were spoken there fell a deep silence upon the crowd. no one spoke; no one looked up; they were awed; they could not realize what it meant that would be given them; they were suddenly relieved of a great terror, the constant dread that lies in man's heart, ever present, though we conceal it--the dread of death; but they could not, in a moment, understand that it was given. but the director sprang to his feet, and grasped his brother physicist by the hand. "of all the sons of science," he said, solemnly, "thou shalt be proclaimed the first and best." the assembly heard these words, but made no sign. there was no applause--not a murmur, not a voice. they were stricken dumb with wonder and with awe. they were going to live--to live on--to live for centuries, nay, why not?--to live forever! "you all know," the professor continued, "how at a dinner a single glass of champagne revives the spirits, looses the tongue, and brings activity to the brain. the guests were weary; they were in decay; the champagne arrests that decay. my discovery is of another kind of champagne, which acts with a more lasting effect. it strengthens the nerves, hardens the muscles, quickens the blood, and brings activity to the digestion. with new strength of the body returns new strength to the mind; mind and body are one." he paused a moment. then he gave the leather case into the hands of the director. "this is my gift, i say. i give to my brother full particulars and the history of the invention. i seek no profit for myself. it is your own. this day a new epoch begins for humanity. we shall not die, but live. accident, fire, lightning, may kill us. against these things we cannot guard. but old age shall no more fall upon us; decay shall no more rob us of our life and strength; and death shall be voluntary. this is a great change. i know not if i have done aright. that is for you to determine. see that you use this gift aright." then, before the people had understood the last words, the speaker stepped out of the theatre and was gone. but the director of the royal institution stood in his place, and in his hand was the leather case containing the gift of life. * * * * * the countess of thordisá, who had been asleep throughout the lecture, woke up when it was finished. "how deeply interesting!" she sighed. "this it is, to catch science on the wing." then she looked round. "mildred, dear," she said, "has dr. linister gone to find the carriage? dear me! what a commotion! and at the royal institution, of all places in the world!" "i think, mamma," said lady mildred, coldly, "that we had better get some one else to find the carriage. dr. linister is over there. he is better engaged." he was; he was among his brother physicists; they were eagerly asking questions and crowding round the director. and the theatre seemed filled with mad people, who surged and crowded and pushed. "come, mamma," said lady mildred, pale, but with a red spot on either cheek, "we will leave them to fight it out." science had beaten love. she did not meet harry linister again that night. and when they met again, long years afterwards, he passed her by with eyes that showed he had clean forgotten her existence, unaltered though she was in face and form. chapter i. the supper-bell. when the big bell in the tower of the house of life struck the hour of seven, the other bells began to chime as they had done every day at this hour for i know not how many years. very likely in the library, where we still keep a great collection of perfectly useless books, there is preserved some history which may speak of these bells, and of the builders of the house. when these chimes began, the swifts and jackdaws which live in the tower began to fly about with a great show of hurry, as if there was barely time for supper, though, as it was yet only the month of july, the sun would not be setting for an hour or more. we have long since ceased to preach to the people, otherwise we might make them learn a great deal from the animal world. they live, for instance, from day to day; not only are their lives miserably short, but they are always hungry, always fighting, always quarrelling, always fierce in their loves and their jealousies. watching the swifts, for instance, which we may do nearly all day long, we ought to congratulate ourselves on our own leisurely order, the adequate provision for food made by the wisdom of the college, the assurance of preservation also established by that wisdom, and our freedom from haste and anxiety, as from the emotions of love, hatred, jealousy, and rivalry. but the time has gone by for that kind of exhortation. thus, our people, who at this hour crowded the great square, showed in their faces, their attitudes, and their movements, the calm that reigned in their souls. some were lying on the grass; some were sitting on the benches; some were strolling. they were for the most part alone; if not alone--because habit often survives when the original cause of the habit is gone--then in pairs. in the old unhappy days there would have been restless activity--a hurrying to and fro; there would have been laughter and talking--everybody would have been talking; there would have been young men eagerly courting the favors of young women, looking on them with longing eyes, ready to fight for them, each for the girl he loved; thinking each of the girl he loved as of a goddess or an angel--all perfection. the girls themselves ardently desired this foolish worship. again, formerly, there would have been old men and old women looking with melancholy eyes on the scenes they were about to quit, and lamenting the days of their strength and their youth. and formerly there would have been among the crowd beggars and paupers; there would have been some masters and some servants; some noble and some bourgeois; there would have been every conceivable difference in age, rank, strength, intellect, and distinction. again, formerly there would have been the most insolent differences in costume. some of the men used to wear broadcloth, sleek and smooth, with glossy hats and gloves, and flowers at their button-hole; while beside them crawled the wretched half-clad objects pretending to sell matches, but in reality begging for their bread. and some of the women used to flaunt in dainty and expensive stuffs, setting off their supposed charms (which were mostly made by the dress-maker's art) with the curves and colors of their drapery. and beside them would be crawling the wretched creatures to whom in the summer, when the days were hot and fine, the park was their only home, and rusty black their only wear. now, no activity at all; no hurrying, no laughing, not even any talking. that might have struck a visitor as one of the most remarkable results of our system. no foolish talking. as for their dress, it was all alike. the men wore blue flannel jackets and trousers, with a flannel shirt and a flat blue cap; for the working hours they had a rougher dress. the women wore a costume in gray, made of a stuff called beige. it is a useful stuff, because it wears well; it is soft and yet warm, and cannot be objected to by any of them on the score of ugliness. what mutinies, what secret conspiracies, what mad revolts had to be faced before the women could be made to understand that socialism--the only form of society which can now be accepted--must be logical and complete! what is one woman more than another that she should separate herself from her sisters by her dress? therefore, since their subjugation they all wear a gray beige frock, with a jacket of the same, and a flat gray cap, like the men's, under which they are made to gather up their hair. this scene, indeed--the gathering of the people before the supper-bell--is one of which i never tire. i look at all the eager, hurrying swifts in the air, i remember the past; and i think of the present when i gaze upon the great multitude, in which no one regardeth his neighbor, none speaks to none. there are no individual aims, but all is pure, unadulterated socialism, with--not far distant--the ultimate triumph of science! i desire to relate the exact circumstances connected with certain recent events. it is generally known that they caused one deplorable death--one of our own society, although not a physician of the house. i shall have to explain, before i begin the narrative, certain points in our internal management which may differ from the customs adopted elsewhere. we of the later era visit each other so seldom that differences may easily grow up. indeed, considering the terrible dangers of travel--how, if one walks, there are the perils of unfiltered water, damp beds, sprained ankles, byrsitis of the knee, chills from frosts and showers; or if one gets into a wheeled vehicle, the wheels may fall off, or the carriage may be overturned in a ditch.... but why pursue the subject? i repeat, therefore, that i must speak of the community and its order, but that as briefly as may be. the rebels have been driven forth from the pale of humanity to wander where they please. in a few years they will be released--if that has not already happened--by death from the diseases and sufferings which will fall upon them. then we shall remember them no more. the centuries will roll by, and they shall be forgotten; the very mounds of earth which once marked the place of their burial will be level with the ground around them. but the house and the glory of the house will continue. thus perish all the enemies of science! the city of canterbury, as it was rebuilt when socialism was finally established, has in its centre a great square, park, or garden, the central breathing-place and relaxation ground of the city. each side is exactly half a mile in length. the garden, thus occupying an area of a fourth of a square mile, is planted with every kind of ornamental tree, and laid out in flower-beds, winding walks, serpentine rivers, lakes, cascades, bridges, grottos, summer-houses, lawns, and everything that can help to make the place attractive. during the summer it is thronged every evening with the people. on its west side has been erected an enormous palace of glass, low in height, but stretching far away to the west, covering an immense area. here the heat is artificially maintained at temperatures varying with the season and the plants that are in cultivation. in winter, frost, bad weather, and in rain, it forms a place of recreation and rest. here grow all kinds of fruit-trees, with all kinds of vegetables, flowers, and plants. all the year round it furnishes, in quantities sufficient for all our wants, an endless supply of fruit; so that we have a supply of some during the whole year, as grapes, bananas, and oranges; others for at least half the year, as peaches, strawberries, and so forth; while of the commoner vegetables, as peas, beans, and the like, there is now no season, but they are grown continuously. in the old times we were dependent upon the changes and chances of a capricious and variable climate. now, not only has the erection of these vast houses made us independent of summer and winter, but the placing of much grass and corn land under glass has also assured our crops and secured us from the danger of famine. this is by no means one of the least advantages of modern civilization. on the south side of the square stands our public hall. the building has not, like the house of life, any architectural beauty--why should we aim at beauty, when efficiency is our sole object? the house of life was designed and erected when men thought perpetually of beauty, working from their admiration of beauty in woman and in nature to beauty in things which they made with their own hands, setting beauty above usefulness; even thinking it necessary, when usefulness had been attained, to add adornment, as when they added a tower to the house of life, yet did nothing with their tower and did not want it. the public hall is built of red brick; it resembles a row of houses each with a gable to the street. there is for each a broad plain door, with a simple porch, below; and above, a broad plain window twenty feet wide divided into four compartments or divisions, the whole set in a framework of wood. the appearance of the hall is, therefore, remarkably plain. there are thirty-one of these gables, each forty feet wide; so that the whole length of the hall is twelve hundred and forty feet, or nearly a quarter of a mile. within, the roof of each of these gables covers a hall separated from its neighbors by plain columns. they are all alike, except that the middle hall, set apart for the college, has a gallery originally intended for an orchestra, now never used. in the central hall one table alone is placed; in all the others there are four, every hall accommodating eight hundred people and every table two hundred. the length of each hall is the same--namely, two hundred and fifty feet. the hall is lit by one large window at each end. there are no carvings, sculptures, or other ornaments in the building. at the back is an extensive range of buildings, all of brick, built in small compartments, and fire-proof; they contain the kitchens, granaries, _abattoirs_, larders, cellars, dairies, still-rooms, pantries, curing-houses, ovens, breweries, and all the other offices and chambers required for the daily provisioning of a city with twenty-four thousand inhabitants. on the east side of the square there are two great groups of buildings. that nearest to the public hall contains, in a series of buildings which communicate with one another, the library, the museum, the armory, the model-room, and the picture gallery. the last is a building as old as the house. they were, when these events began, open to the whole community, though they were never visited by any even out of idle curiosity. the inquisitive spirit is dead. for myself, i am not anxious to see the people acquire, or revive, the habit of reading and inquiring. it might be argued that the study of history might make them contrast the present with the past, and shudder at the lot of their forefathers. but i am going to show that this study may produce quite the opposite effect. or, there is the study of science. how should this help the people? they have the college always studying and investigating for their benefit the secrets of medical science, which alone concerns their happiness. they might learn how to make machines; but machinery requires steam, explosives, electricity, and other uncontrolled and dangerous forces. many thousands of lives were formerly lost in the making and management of these machines, and we do very well without them. they might, it is true, read the books which tell of the people in former times. but why read works which are filled with the presence of death, the shortness of life, and the intensity of passions which we have almost forgotten? you shall see what comes of these studies which seem so innocent. i say, therefore, that i never had any wish to see the people flocking into the library. for the same reason--that a study and contemplation of things past might unsettle or disturb the tranquillity of their minds--i have never wished to see them in the museum, the armory, or any other part of our collections. and since the events of which i have to tell, we have enclosed these buildings and added them to the college, so that the people can no longer enter them even if they wished. the curator of the museum was an aged man, one of the few old men left--in the old days he had held a title of some kind. he was placed there because he was old and much broken, and could do no work. therefore he was told to keep the glass-cases free from dust and to sweep the floors every morning. at the time of the great discovery he had been an earl or viscount--i know not what--and by some accident he escaped the great slaughter, when it was resolved to kill all the old men and women in order to reduce the population to the number which the land would support. i believe that he hid himself, and was secretly fed by some man who had formerly been his groom, and still preserved some remains of what he called attachment and duty, until such time as the executions were over. then he ventured forth again, and so great was the horror of the recent massacre, with the recollection of the prayers and shrieks of the victims, that he was allowed to continue alive. the old man was troubled with an asthma which hardly permitted him an hour of repose and was incurable. this would have made his life intolerable, except that to live--only to live, in any pain and misery--is always better than to die. for the last few years the old man had a companion in the museum. this was a girl--the only girl in our community--who called him--i know not why (perhaps because the relationship really existed)--grandfather, and lived with him. she it was who dusted the cases and swept the floors. she found some means of relieving the old man's asthma, and all day long--would that i had discovered the fact, or suspected whither it would lead the wretched girl!--she read the books of the library and studied the contents of the cases and talked to the old man, making him tell her everything that belonged to the past. all she cared for was the past; all that she studied was to understand more and more--how men lived then, and what they thought, and what they talked. she was about eighteen years of age; but, indeed, we thought her still a child. i know not how many years had elapsed since any in the city were children, because it is a vain thing to keep account of the years; if anything happens to distinguish them, it must be something disastrous, because we have now arrived almost at the last stage possible to man. it only remains for us to discover, not only how to prevent disease, but how to annihilate it. since, then, there is only one step left to take in advance, every other event which can happen must be in the nature of a calamity, and therefore may be forgotten. i have said that christine called the old man her grandfather. we have long, long since agreed to forget old ties of blood. how can father and son, mother and daughter, brother and sister continue for hundreds of years, and when all remain fixed at the same age, to keep up the old relationship? the maternal love dies out with us--it is now but seldom called into existence--when the child can run about. why not? the animals, from whom we learn so much, desert their offspring when they can feed themselves; our mothers cease to care for their children when they are old enough to be the charge of the community. therefore christine's mother cheerfully suffered the child to leave her as soon as she was old enough to sit in the public hall. her grandfather--if indeed he was her grandfather--obtained permission to have the child with him. so she remained in the quiet museum. we never imagined or suspected, however, that the old man, who was eighty at the time of the great discovery, remembered everything that took place when he was young, and talked with the girl all day long about the past. i do not know who was christine's father. it matters not now; and, indeed, he never claimed his daughter. one smiles to think of the importance formerly attached to fathers. we no longer work for their support. we are no longer dependent upon their assistance; the father does nothing for the son, nor the son for the father. five hundred years ago, say--or a thousand years ago--the father carried a baby in his arms. what then? my own father--i believe he is my own father, but on this point i may be mistaken--i saw yesterday taking his turn in the hay-field. he seemed distressed with the heat and fatigue of it. why not? it makes no difference to me. he is, though not so young, still as strong and as able-bodied as myself. christine was called into existence by the sanction of the college when one of the community was struck dead by lightning. it was my brother, i believe. the terrible event filled us all with consternation. however, the population having thus been diminished by one, it was resolved that the loss should be repaired. there was precedent. a great many years previously, owing to a man being killed by the fall of a hay-rick--all hay-ricks are now made low--another birth had been allowed. that was a boy. let us now return to our square. on the same side are the buildings of the college. here are the anatomical collections, the storehouse of materia medica, and the residences of the arch physician, the suffragan, the fellows of the college or associate physicians, and the assistants or experimenters. the buildings are plain and fire-proof. the college has its own private gardens, which are large and filled with trees. here the physicians walk and meditate, undisturbed by the outer world. here is also their library. on the north side of the square stands the great and venerable house of life, the glory of the city, the pride of the whole country. it is very ancient. formerly there were many such splendid monuments standing in the country; now this alone remains. it was built in the dim, distant ages, when men believed things now forgotten. it was designed for the celebration of certain ceremonies or functions; their nature and meaning may, i dare say, be ascertained by any who cares to waste time in an inquiry so useless. the edifice itself could not possibly be built in these times; first because we have no artificers capable of rearing such a pile, and next because we have not among us any one capable of conceiving it, or drawing the design of it; nay, we have none who could execute the carved stone-work. i do not say this with humility, but with satisfaction; for, if we contemplate the building, we must acknowledge that, though it is, as i have said, the glory of the city, and though it is vast in proportions, imposing by its grandeur, and splendid in its work, yet most of it is perfectly useless. what need of the tall columns to support a roof which might very well have been one-fourth the present height? why build the tower at all? what is the good of the carved work? we of the new era build in brick, which is fire-proof; we put up structures which are no larger than are wanted; we waste no labor, because we grudge the time which must be spent in necessary work, over things unnecessary. besides, we are no longer tortured by the feverish anxiety to do something--anything--by which we may be remembered when the short span of life is past. death to us is a thing which may happen by accident, but not from old age or by disease. why should men toil and trouble in order to be remembered? all things are equal: why should one man try to do something better than another--or what another cannot do--or what is useless when it is done? sculptures, pictures, art of any kind, will not add a single ear of corn to the general stock, or a single glass of wine, or a yard of flannel. therefore, we need not regret the decay of art. as everybody knows, however, the house is the chief laboratory of the whole country. it is here that the great secret is preserved; it is known to the arch physician and to his suffragan alone. no other man in the country knows by what process is compounded that potent liquid which arrests decay and prolongs life, apparently without any bound or limit. i say without any bound or limit. there certainly are croakers, who maintain that at some future time--it may be this very year, it may be a thousand years hence--the compound will lose its power, and so we--all of us, even the college--must then inevitably begin to decay, and after a few short years perish and sink into the silent grave. the very thought causes a horror too dreadful for words; the limbs tremble, the teeth chatter. but others declare that there is no fear whatever of this result, and that the only dread is lest the whole college should suddenly be struck by lightning, and so the secret be lost. for though none other than the arch physician and his suffragan know the secret, the whole society--the fellows or assistant physicians--know in what strong place the secret is kept in writing, just as it was communicated by the discoverer. the fellows of the college all assist in the production of this precious liquid, which is made only in the house of life. but none of them know whether they are working for the great arcanum itself, or on some of the many experiments conducted for the arch physician. even if one guessed, he would not dare to communicate his suspicions even to a brother-fellow, being forbidden, under the most awful of all penalties, that of death itself, to divulge the experiments and processes that he is ordered to carry out. it is needless to say that if we are proud of the house, we are equally proud of the city. there was formerly an old canterbury, of which pictures exist in the library. the streets of that town were narrow and winding; the houses were irregular in height, size, and style. there were close courts, not six feet broad, in which no air could circulate, and where fevers and other disorders were bred. some houses, again, stood in stately gardens, while others had none at all; and the owners of the gardens kept them closed. but we can easily understand what might have happened when private property was recognized, and laws protected the so-called rights of owners. now that there is no property, there are no laws. there are also no crimes, because there is no incentive to jealousy, rapine, or double-dealing. where there is no crime, there is that condition of innocence which our ancestors so eagerly desired, and sought by means which were perfectly certain to fail. how different is the canterbury of the present! first, like all modern towns, it is limited in size; there are in it twenty-four thousand inhabitants, neither more nor less. round its great central square or garden are the public buildings. the streets, which branch off at right angles, are all of the same width, the same length, and the same appearance. they are planted with trees. the houses are built of red brick, each house containing four rooms on the ground-floor--namely, two on either side the door--and four on the first floor, with a bath-room. the rooms are vaulted with brick, so that there is no fear of fire. every room has its own occupant; and as all the rooms are of the same size, and are all furnished in the same way, with the same regard to comfort and warmth, there is really no ground for complaint or jealousies. the occupants also, who have the same meals in the same hall every day, cannot complain of inequalities, any more than they can accuse each other of gluttonous living. in the matter of clothes, again, it was at first expected that the grave difficulties with the women as to uniformity of fashion and of material would continue to trouble us; but with the decay of those emotions which formerly caused so much trouble--since the men have ceased to court the women, and the women have ceased to desire men's admiration--there has been no opposition. all of them now are clad alike; gray is found the most convenient color, soft beige the most convenient material. the same beautiful equality rules the hours and methods of work. five hours a day are found ample, and everybody takes his time at every kind of work, the men's work being kept separate from that given to the women. i confess that the work is not performed with as much zeal as one could wish; but think of the old times, when one had to work eight, ten, and even eighteen hours a day in order to earn a poor and miserable subsistence! what zeal could they have put into their work? how different is this glorious equality in all things from the ancient anomalies and injustices of class and rank, wealth and poverty! why, formerly, the chief pursuit of man was the pursuit of money. and now there is no money at all, and our wealth lies in our barns and garners. i must be forgiven if i dwell upon these contrasts. the history which has to be told--how an attempt was actually made to destroy this eden, and to substitute in its place the old condition of things--fills me with such indignation that i am constrained to speak. consider, for one other thing, the former condition of the world. it was filled with diseases. people were not in any way protected. they were allowed to live as they pleased. consequently, they all committed excesses and all contracted disease. some drank too much, some ate too much, some took no exercise, some took too little, some lay in bed too long, some went to bed too late, some suffered themselves to fall into violent rages, into remorse, into despair; some loved inordinately; thousands worked too hard. all ran after jack-o'-lanterns continually; for, before one there was dangled the hope of promotion, before another that of glory, before another that of distinction, fame, or praise; before another that of wealth, before another the chance of retiring to rest and meditate during the brief remainder of his life--miserably short even in its whole length. then diseases fell upon them, and they died. we have now prevented all new diseases, though we cannot wholly cure those which have so long existed. rheumatism, gout, fevers, arise no more, though of gout and other maladies there are hereditary cases. and since there are no longer any old men among us, there are none of the maladies to which old age is liable. no more pain, no more suffering, no more anxiety, no more death (except by accident) in the world. yet some of them would return to the old miseries; and for what?--for what? you shall hear. * * * * * when the chimes began, the people turned their faces with one consent towards the public hall, and a smile of satisfaction spread over all their faces. they were going to supper--the principal event of the day. at the same moment a procession issued from the iron gates of the college. first marched our warder, or porter, john lax, bearing a halberd; next came an assistant, carrying a cushion, on which were the keys of gold, symbolical of the gate of life; then came another, bearing our banner, with the labarum or symbol of life: the assistants followed, in ancient garb of cap and gown; then came the twelve fellows or physicians of the college, in scarlet gowns and flat fur-lined caps; after them, i myself--samuel grout, m.d., suffragan--followed. last, there marched the first person in the realm--none other than the arch physician himself, dr. henry linister, in lawn sleeves, a black silk gown, and a scarlet hood. four beadles closed the procession; for, with us, the only deviation from equality absolute is made in the case of the college. we are a caste apart; we keep mankind alive and free from pain. this is our work; this occupies all our thoughts. we are, therefore, held in honor, and excused the ordinary work which the others must daily perform. and behold the difference between ancient and modern times! for, formerly, those who were held in honor and had high office in this always sacred house were aged and white-haired men who arrived at this distinction but a year or two before they had to die. but we of the holy college are as stalwart, as strong, and as young as any man in the hall. and so have we been for hundreds of years, and so we mean to continue. in the public hall, we take our meals apart in our own hall; yet the food is the same for all. life is the common possession; it is maintained for all by the same process--here must be no difference. let all, therefore, eat and drink alike. when i consider, i repeat, the universal happiness, i am carried away, first, with a burning indignation that any should be so mad as to mar this happiness. they have failed; but they cost us, as you shall hear, much trouble, and caused the lamentable death of a most zealous and able officer. among the last to enter the gates were the girl christine and her grandfather, who walked slowly, coughing all the way. "come, grandad," she said, as we passed her, "take my arm. you will be better after your dinner. lean on me." there was in her face so remarkable a light that i wonder now that no suspicion or distrust possessed us. i call it light, for i can compare it to nothing else. the easy, comfortable life our people led, and the absence of all exciting work, the decay of reading, and the abandonment of art, had left their faces placid to look upon, but dull. they were certainly dull. they moved heavily; if they lifted their eyes, they wanted the light that flashed from christine's. it was a childish face still--full of softness. no one would ever believe that a creature so slight in form, so gentle to look upon, whose eyes were so soft, whose cheeks were like the untouched bloom of a ripe peach, whose half-parted lips were so rosy, was already harboring thoughts so abominable and already conceiving an enterprise so wicked. we do not suspect, in this our new world. as we have no property to defend, no one is a thief; as everybody has as much of everything as he wants, no one tries to get more; we fear not death, and therefore need no religion; we have no private ambitions to gratify, and no private ends to attain; therefore we have long since ceased to be suspicious. least of all should we have been suspicious of christine. why, but a year or two ago she was a little newly born babe, whom the holy college crowded to see as a new thing. and yet, was it possible that one so young should be so corrupt? "suffragan," said the arch physician to me at supper, "i begin to think that your triumph of science must be really complete." "why, physician?" "because, day after day, that child leads the old man by the hand, places him in his seat, and ministers, after the old, forgotten fashion, to his slightest wants, and no one pays her the slightest heed." "why should they?" "a child--a beautiful child! a feeble old man! one who ministers to another. suffragan, the past is indeed far, far away; but i knew not until now that it was so utterly lost. childhood and age and the offices of love! and these things are wholly unheeded. grout, you are indeed a great man!" he spoke in the mocking tone which was usual with him, so that we never knew exactly whether he was in earnest or not; but i think that on this occasion he was in earnest. no one but a very great man--none smaller than samuel grout--myself--could have accomplished this miracle upon the minds of the people. they did not minister one to the other. why should they? everybody could eat his own ration without any help. offices of love? these to pass unheeded? what did the arch physician mean? chapter ii. grout, suffragan. it always pleases me, from my place at the college table, which is raised two feet above the rest, to contemplate the multitude whom it is our duty and our pleasure to keep in contentment and in health. it is a daily joy to watch them flocking, as you have seen them flock, to their meals. the heart glows to think of what we have done. i see the faces of all light up with satisfaction at the prospect of the food; it is the only thing that moves them. yes, we have reduced life to its simplest form. here is true happiness. nothing to hope, nothing to fear--except accident; a little work for the common preservation; a body of wise men always devising measures for the common good; food plentiful and varied; gardens for repose and recreation, both summer and winter; warmth, shelter, and the entire absence of all emotions. why, the very faces of the people are growing all alike--one face for the men, and another for the women; perhaps in the far-off future the face of the man will approach nearer and nearer to that of the woman, and so all will be at last exactly alike, and the individual will exist, indeed, no more. then there will be, from first to last, among the whole multitude neither distinction nor difference. it is a face which fills one with contentment, though it will be many centuries before it approaches completeness. it is a smooth face, there are no lines in it; it is a grave face, the lips seldom smile, and never laugh; the eyes are heavy, and move slowly; there has already been achieved, though the change has been very gradual, the complete banishment of that expression which has been preserved in every one of the ancient portraits, which may be usefully studied for purposes of contrast. whatever the emotion attempted to be portrayed, and even when the face was supposed to be at rest, there was always behind, visible to the eye, an expression of anxiety or eagerness. some kind of pain always lies upon those old faces, even upon the youngest. how could it be otherwise? on the morrow they would be dead. they had to crowd into a few days whatever they could grasp of life. as i sit there and watch our people at dinner, i see with satisfaction that the old pain has gone out of their faces. they have lived so long that they have forgotten death. they live so easily that they are contented with life: we have reduced existence to the simplest. they eat and drink--it is their only pleasure; they work--it is a necessity for health and existence--but their work takes them no longer than till noontide; they lie in the sun, they sit in the shade, they sleep. if they had once any knowledge, it is now forgotten; their old ambitions, their old desires, all are forgotten. they sleep and eat, they work and rest. to rest and to eat are pleasures which they never desire to end. to live forever, to eat and drink forever--this is now their only hope. and this has been accomplished for them by the holy college. science has justified herself--this is the outcome of man's long search for generations into the secrets of nature. we, who have carried on this search, have at length succeeded in stripping humanity of all those things which formerly made existence intolerable to him. he lives, he eats, he sleeps. perhaps--i know not, but of this we sometimes talk in the college--i say, perhaps--we may succeed in making some kind of artificial food, as we compound the great arcanum, with simple ingredients and without labor. we may also extend the duration of sleep; we may thus still further simplify existence. man in the end--as i propose to make and mould the people--will sleep until nature calls upon him to awake and eat. he will then eat, drink, and sleep again, while the years roll by. he will lie heedless of all; he will be heedless of the seasons, heedless of the centuries. time will have no meaning for him--a breathing, living, inarticulate mass will be all that is left of the active, eager, chattering man of the past. this may be done in the future, when yonder laboratory, which we call the house of life, shall yield the secrets of nature deeper and deeper still. at present we have arrived at this point--the chief pleasure of life is to eat and to drink. we have taught the people so much, of all the tastes which formerly gratified man this alone remains. we provide them daily with a sufficiency and variety of food; there are so many kinds of food, and the combinations are so endless, that practically the choice of our cooks is unlimited. good food, varied food, well-cooked food, with drink also varied and pure, and the best that can be made, make our public meals a daily joy. we have learned to make all kinds of wine from the grapes in our hot-houses. it is so abundant that every day, all the year round, the people may call for a ration of what they please. we make also beer of every kind, cider, perry, and mead. the gratification of the sense of taste helps to remove the incentive to restlessness or discontent. the minds of most are occupied by no other thought than that of the last feast and the next; if they were to revolt, where would they find their next meal? at the outset we had, i confess, grave difficulties. there was not in existence any holy college. we drifted without object or purpose. for a long time the old ambitions remained; the old passions were continued; the old ideas of private property prevailed; the old inequalities were kept up. presently there arose from those who had no property the demand for a more equal share. the cry was fiercely resisted; then there followed civil war for a space, till both sides were horrified by the bloodshed that followed. time also was on the side of them who rebelled. i was one, because at the time when the whole nation was admitted to a participation in the great arcanum, i was myself a young man of nineteen, employed as a washer of bottles in dr. linister's laboratory, and therefore, according to the ideas of the time, a very humble person. time helped us in an unexpected way. property was in the hands of single individuals. formerly they died and were succeeded by their sons; now the sons grew tired of waiting. how much longer were their fathers, who grew no older, to keep all the wealth to themselves? therefore, the civil war having come to an end, with no result except a barren peace, the revolutionary party was presently joined by all but the holders of property, and the state took over to itself the whole wealth--that is to say, the whole land; there is no other wealth. since that time there has been no private property; for since it was clearly unjust to take away from the father in order to give it to the son, with no limitation as to the time of enjoyment, everything followed the land--great houses, which were allowed to fall into ruin; pictures and works of art, libraries, jewels, which are in museums; and money, which, however, ceased to be of value as soon as there was nothing which could be bought. as for me, i was so fortunate as to perceive--dr. linister daily impressed it upon me--that of all occupations, that of physicist would very quickly become the most important. i therefore remained in my employment, worked, read, experimented, and learned all that my master had to teach me. the other professions, indeed, fell into decay more speedily than some of us expected. there could be no more lawyers when there was no more property. even libel, which was formerly the cause of many actions, became harmless when a man could not be injured; and, besides, it is impossible to libel any man when there are no longer any rules of conduct except the one duty of work, which is done in the eyes of all and cannot be shirked. and how could religion survive the removal of death to some possible remote future? they tried, it is true, to keep up the pretence of it, and many, especially women, clung to the old forms of faith for i know not how long. with the great mass, religion ceased to have any influence as soon as life was assured. as for art, learning, science--other than that of physics, biology, and medicine--all gradually decayed and died away. and the old foolish pursuit of literature, which once occupied so many, and was even held in a kind of honor--the writing of histories, poems, dramas, novels, essays on human life--this also decayed and died, because men ceased to be anxious about their past or their future, and were at last contented to dwell in the present. another and a most important change which may be noted was the gradual decline and disappearance of the passion called love. this was once a curious and inexplicable yearning--so much is certain--of two young people towards each other, so that they were never content unless they were together, and longed to live apart from the rest of the world, each trying to make the other happier. at least, this is as i read history. for my own part, as i was constantly occupied with science, i never felt this passion; or if i did, then i have quite forgotten it. now, at the outset people who were in love rejoiced beyond measure that their happiness would last so long. they began, so long as the words had any meaning, to call each other angels, goddesses, divinely fair, possessed of every perfect gift, with other extravagancies, at the mere recollection of which we should now blush. presently they grew tired of each other; they no longer lived apart from the rest of the world. they separated; or, if they continued to walk together, it was from force of habit. some still continue thus to sit side by side. no new connections were formed. people ceased desiring to make others happy, because the state began to provide for everybody's happiness. the whole essence of the old society was a fight. everybody fought for existence. everybody trampled on the weaker. if a man loved a woman, he fought for her as well as for himself. love? why, when the true principle of life is recognized--the right of every individual to his or her share--and that an equal share in everything--and when the continuance of life is assured--what room is there for love? the very fact of the public life--the constant companionship, the open mingling of women with men, and this for year after year--the same women with the same men--has destroyed the mystery which formerly hung about womanhood, and was in itself the principal cause of love. it is gone, therefore, and with it the most disturbing element of life. without love, without ambition, without suffering, without religion, without quarrelling, without private rights, without rank or class, life is calm, gentle, undisturbed. therefore, they all sit down to dinner in peace and contentment, every man's mind intent upon nothing but the bill of fare. this evening, directed by the observation of the arch physician, i turned my eyes upon the girl christine, who sat beside her grandfather. i observed, first--but the fact inspired me with no suspicion--that she was no longer a child, but a woman grown; and i began to wonder when she would come with the rest for the arcanum. most women, when births were common among us, used to come at about five-and-twenty; that is to say, in the first year or two of full womanhood, before their worst enemies--where there were two women, in the old days, there were two enemies--could say that they had begun to fall off. if you look round our table, you will see very few women older than twenty-four, and very few men older than thirty. there were many women at this table who might, perhaps, have been called beautiful in the old times; though now the men had ceased to think of beauty, and the women had ceased to desire admiration. yet, if regular features, large eyes, small mouths, a great quantity of hair, and a rounded figure are beautiful, then there were many at the table who might have been called beautiful. but the girl christine--i observed the fact with scientific interest--was so different from the other women that she seemed another kind of creature. her eyes were soft; there is no scientific term to express this softness of youth--one observes it especially in the young of the _cervus_ kind. there was also a curious softness on her cheek, as if something would be rubbed away if one touched it. and her voice differed from that of her elder sisters; it was curiously gentle, and full of that quality which may be remarked in the wood-dove when she pairs in spring. they used to call it tenderness; but, since the thing itself disappeared, the word has naturally fallen out of use. now, i might have observed with suspicion, whereas i only remarked it as something strange, that the company among which christine and the old man sat were curiously stirred and uneasy. they were disturbed out of their habitual tranquillity because the girl was discoursing to them. she was telling them what she had learned about the past. "oh," i heard her say, "it was a beautiful time! why did they ever suffer it to perish? do you mean that you actually remember nothing of it?" they looked at each other sheepishly. "there were soldiers--men were soldiers; they went out to fight, with bands of music and the shouts of the people. there were whole armies of soldiers--thousands of them. they dressed in beautiful glittering clothes. do you forget that?" one of the men murmured, hazily, that there were soldiers. "and there were sailors, who went upon the sea in great ships. jack carera"--she turned to one of them--"you are a sailor, too. you ought to remember." "i remember the sailors very well indeed," said this young man, readily. i always had my doubts about the wisdom of admitting our sailors among the people. we have a few ships for the carriage of those things which as yet we have not succeeded in growing for ourselves; these are manned by a few hundred sailors who long ago volunteered, and have gone on ever since. they are a brave race, ready to face the most terrible dangers of tempest and shipwreck; but they are also a dangerous, restless, talkative, questioning tribe. they have, in fact, preserved almost as much independence as the college itself. they are now confined to their own port of sheerness. then the girl began to tell some pestilent story of love and shipwreck and rescue; and at hearing it some of them looked puzzled and some pained; but the sailor listened with all his ears. "where did you get that from, christine?" "where i get everything--from the old library. come and read it in the book, jack." "i am not much hand at reading. but some day, perhaps after next voyage, christine." the girl poured out a glass of claret for the old man. then she went on telling them stories; but most of her neighbors seemed neither to hear nor to comprehend. only the sailor-man listened and nodded. then she laughed out loud. at this sound, so strange, so unexpected, everybody within hearing jumped. her table was in the hall next to our own, so that we heard the laugh quite plainly. the arch physician looked round approvingly. "how many years since we heard a good, honest _young_ laugh, suffragan? give us more children, and soften our hearts for us. but, no; the heart you want is the hard, crusted, selfish heart. see! no one asks why she laughed. they are all eating again now, just as if nothing had happened. happy, enviable people!" presently he turned to me and remarked, in his lofty manner, as if he was above all the world, "you cannot explain, suffragan, why, at an unexpected touch, a sound, a voice, a trifle, the memory may be suddenly awakened to things long, long past and forgotten. do you know what that laugh caused me to remember? i cannot explain why, nor can you. it recalled the evening of the great discovery--not the discovery itself, but quite another thing. i went there more to meet a girl than to hear what the german had to say. as to that i expected very little. to meet that girl seemed of far more importance. i meant to make love to her--love, suffragan--a thing which you can never understand--real, genuine love! i meant to marry her. well, i did meet her; and i arranged for a convenient place where we could meet again after the lecture. then came the discovery; and i was carried away, body and soul, and forgot the girl and love and everything in the stupefaction of this most wonderful discovery, of which we have made, between us, such admirable use." you never knew whether the arch physician was in earnest or not. truly, we had made a most beautiful use of the discovery; but it was not in the way that dr. linister would have chosen. "all this remembered just because a girl laughed! suffragan, science cannot explain all." i shall never pretend to deny that dr. linister's powers as a physicist were of the first order, nor that his discoveries warranted his election to the headship of the college. yet, something was due, perhaps, to his tall and commanding figure, and to the look of authority which reigned naturally on his face, and to the way in which he always stepped into the first rank. he was always the chief, long before the college of physicians assumed the whole authority, in everything that he joined. he opposed the extinction of property, and would have had everybody win what he could, and keep it as long as he would; he opposed the massacre of the old; he was opposed, in short, to the majority of the college. yet he was our chief. his voice was clear, and what he said always produced its effect, though it did not upset my solid majority, or thwart the grand advance of the triumph of science. as for me, my position has been won by sheer work and merit. my figure is not commanding; i am short-sighted and dark-visaged; my voice is rough; and as for manners, i have nothing to do with them. but in science there is but one second to linister--and that is grout. when the supper came to an end, we rose and marched back to the college in the same state and order with which we had arrived. as for the people, some of them went out into the garden; some remained in the hall. it was then nine o'clock, and twilight. some went straight to their own rooms, where they would smoke tobacco--an old habit allowed by the college on account of its soothing and sedative influence--before going to bed. by ten o'clock everybody would be in bed and asleep. what more beautiful proof of the advance of science than the fact that the whole of the twenty-four thousand people who formed the population of canterbury dropped off to sleep the moment they laid their heads upon the pillow? this it is to have learned the proper quantities and kinds of food; the proper amount of bodily exercise and work; and the complete subjugation of all the ancient forces of unrest and disquiet. to be sure, we were all, with one or two exceptions, in the very prime and flower of early manhood and womanhood. it would be hard, indeed, if a young man of thirty should not sleep well. i was presently joined in the garden of the college by the arch physician. "grout," he said, "let us sit and talk. my mind is disturbed. it is always disturbed when the memory of the past is forced upon me." "the evil past," i said. "if you please--the evil past. the question is, whether it was not infinitely more tolerable for mankind than the evil present?" we argued out the point; but it was one on which we could never agree, for he remained saturated with the old ideas of private property and individualism. he maintained that there are no rights of man at all, except his right to what he can get and what he can keep. he even went so far as to say that the true use of the great discovery should have been to cause the incompetent, the idle, the hereditarily corrupt, and the vicious to die painlessly. "as to those who were left," he said, "i would have taught them the selfishness of staying too long. when they had taken time for work and play and society and love, they should have been exhorted to go away of their own accord, and to make room for their children. then we should have had always the due succession of father and son, mother and daughter; always age and manhood and childhood; and always the world advancing by the efforts of those who would have time to work for an appreciable period. instead, we have"--he waved his hand. i was going to reply, when suddenly a voice light, clear, and sweet broke upon our astonished ears. 'twas the voice of a woman, and she was singing. at first i hardly listened, because i knew that it could be none other than the child christine, whom, indeed, i had often heard singing. it is natural, i believe, for children to sing. but the arch physician listened, first with wonder, and then with every sign of amazement. how could he be concerned by the voice of a child singing silly verses? then i heard the last lines of her song, which she sang, i admit, with great vigor: "oh, love is worth the whole broad earth; oh, love is worth the whole broad earth; give that, you give us all!" "grout," cried the arch physician, in tones of the deepest agitation, "i choke--i am stifled. listen! they are words that i wrote--i myself wrote--with my own hand--long, long ago in the past. i wrote them for a girl--the girl i told you of at dinner. i loved her. i thought never again to feel as i felt then. yet the memory of that feeling has come back to me. is it possible? can some things never die? can we administer no drug that will destroy memory? for the earth reeled beneath my feet again, and my senses reeled, and i would once more--yes, i would once more have given all the world--yes, life--even life--only to call that woman mine for a year--a month--a day--an hour!" the arch physician made this astonishing confession in a broken and agitated voice. then he rushed away, and left me alone in the summer-house. the singer could certainly have been none other than the girl christine. how should she get hold of dr. linister's love-song? strange! she had disturbed our peace at supper by laughing, and she had agitated the arch physician himself to such a degree as i should have believed impossible by singing a foolish old song. when i went to bed there came into my mind some of the old idle talk about witches, and i even dreamed that we were burning a witch who was filling our minds with disturbing thoughts. chapter iii. christine at home. when the girl christine walked through the loitering crowd outside the hall, some of the people looked after her with wondering eyes. "strange!" said a woman. "she laughed! she laughed!" "ay," said another, "we have forgotten how to laugh. but we used to laugh before"--she broke off with a sigh. "and she sings," said a third. "i have heard her sing like a lark in the museum." "once," said the first woman, "we used to sing as well as laugh. i remember, we used to sing. she makes us remember the old days." "the bad old days"--it was one of the assistant physicians who admonished her--"the times when nothing was certain, not even life, from day to day. it should bring you increased happiness to think sometimes of those old times." the first woman who had spoken was one whom men would have called beautiful in those old times, when their heads were turned by such a thing as a woman's face. she was pale of cheek and had black eyes, which, in those days of passion and jealousy, might have flashed like lightning. now they were dull. she was shapely of limb and figure too, with an ample cheek and a full mouth. formerly, in the days of love and rage, those limbs would have been lithe and active; now they were heavy and slow. heaviness of movement and of eyes sensibly grows upon our people. i welcome every indication of advance towards the perfect type of humanity which will do nothing but lie down, breathe, eat, and sleep. "yes," she replied with a deep sigh. "nothing was certain. the bad old times, when people died. but there was love, and we danced and sung and laughed." she sighed again, and walked away alone, slowly, hanging her head. the girl passed through them, leading the old man by the hand. i know very well, now, that we ought to have been suspicious. what meant the gleam and sparkle of her eyes, when all other eyes were dull? what meant the parting of her lips and the smile which always lay upon them, when no one else smiled at all? why did she carry her head erect, when the rest walked with hanging heads? why, again, did she sing, when no one else sang? why did she move as if her limbs were on springs, when all the rest went slowly and heavily? these signs meant mischief. i took them for the natural accompaniments of youth. they meant more than youth: they meant dangerous curiosity; they meant--presently--purpose. how should one of the people dare to have a purpose unknown to the sacred college? you shall hear. all that followed was, in fact, due to our own blindness. we should long before have shut up every avenue which might lead the curious to the study of the past; we should have closed the museum and the library altogether. we did not, because we lived in the supposition that the more the old times were investigated, the more the people would be satisfied with the present. when, indeed, one looks at the pictures of battle, murder, cruelty, and all kinds of passion; when one reads the old books, full of foolishness which can only be excused on the plea of a life too short to have a right comprehension of anything, it is amazing that the scene does not strike the observer with a kind of horror. when, which is seldom, i carry my own memory back to the old times and see myself before i went to the laboratory, boy-of-all-work to a brewery, ordered here and there, working all day long with no other prospect than to be a servant for a short span of life and then to die; when i remember the people among whom i lived, poor, starving, dependent from day to day on the chance of work, or, at best, from week to week; when i think of the misery from which these poor people have been rescued, i cannot find within me a spark of sympathy for the misguided wretches who voluntarily exchanged their calm and happy present for the tumult and anxiety of the past. however, we are not all reasonable, as you shall hear. it was already twilight outside, and in the museum there was only light enough to see that a few persons were assembled in the great hall. christine placed her grandfather in a high-backed wooden chair, in which he spent most of his time, clutching at the arms and fighting with his asthma. then she turned up the electric light. it showed a large, rather lofty room, oblong in shape. old arms were arranged round the walls; great glass-cases stood about, filled with a collection of all kinds of things preserved from the old times. there were illustrations of their arts, now entirely useless: such as the jewels they wore, set in bracelets and necklaces; their gloves, fans, rings, umbrellas, pictures, and statuary. then there were cases filled with the old implements of writing--paper, inkstands, pens, and so forth--the people have long since left off writing; there were boxes full of coins with which they bought things, and for which they sold their freedom; there were things with which they played games--many of them dangerous ones--and whiled away the tedium of their short lives; there were models of the ships in which they went to sea, also models of all kinds of engines and machines which slaves--they were nearly all slaves--made for the purpose of getting more money for their masters; there were also crowns, coronets, and mitres, which formerly belonged to people who possessed what they called rank; there were the praying-books which were formerly used every day in great buildings like the house of life; there were specimens of legal documents on parchment, by the drawing up of which, when law existed, a great many people procured a contemptible existence; there were also models, with figures of the people in them, of parliament houses, churches, and courts of justice; there were life-size models of soldiers in uniform, when men were of understanding so contemptible as to be tempted to risk life--even life--in exchange for a gold-laced coat! but then our ancestors were indescribably foolish. there were musical instruments of all kinds--i have always been glad that music fell so soon into disuse. it is impossible to cultivate contentment while music is practised. besides the ordinary weapons--sword, pike, and javelin--there were all kinds of horrible inventions, such as vast cannons, torpedo boats, dynamite shells, and so forth, for the destruction of towns, ships, and armor. it is a great and splendid collection, but it ought to have been long, long before transferred to the custody of the holy college. the girl looked inquiringly at her visitors, counting them all. there were ten--namely, five men and five women. like all the people, they were young--the men about thirty, the women about twenty-two or twenty-three. the men were dressed in their blue flannels, with a flat cap of the same material; the women in their gray beige, short frock, the flat gray cap under which their hair was gathered, gray stockings, and heavy shoes. the dress was, in fact, invented by myself for both sexes. it has many advantages. first, there is always plenty of the stuff to be had; next, both flannel and beige are soft, warm, and healthy textures--with such a dress there is no possibility of distinction or of superiority; and, lastly, with such a dress the women have lost all power of setting forth their attractions so as to charm the men with new fashions, crafty subtleties of dress, provocations of the troublesome passion of love in the shape of jewels, ribbons, gloves, and the like. no one wears gloves: all the women's hands are hard; and although they are still young and their faces are unchanged, their eyes are dull and hard. i am pleased to think that there is no more foolishness of love among us. the people were standing or sitting about, not together, but separately--each by himself or herself. this tendency to solitary habits is a most healthy indication of the advance of humanity. self-preservation is the first law--separate and solitary existence is the last condition--of mankind. they were silent and regardless of each other. their attitude showed the listlessness of their minds. "i am glad you are here," said christine. "you promised you would not fail me. and yet, though you promised, i feared that at the last moment you might change your mind. i was afraid that you would rather not be disturbed in the even current of your thoughts." "why disturb our minds?" asked one, a woman. "we were at peace before you began to talk of the past. we had almost forgotten it. and it is so long ago"--her voice sank to a murmur--"so long ago." they all echoed, "it is so long ago--so long ago!" "oh," cried the girl, "you call this to be at peace! why, if you were so many stones in the garden you could not be more truly at peace. to work, to rest, to eat, to sleep--you call that life! and yet you can remember--if you please--the time when you were full of activity and hope." "if to remember is to regret, why should we invite the pain of regret? we cannot have the old life except with the old conditions; the short life and the--" "if i could remember--if i had ever belonged to the past," the girl interrupted, quickly; "oh, i would remember every moment--i would live every day of the old life over and over again. but i can do nothing--nothing--but read of the splendid past and look forward to such a future as your own. alas! why was i born at all, since i was born into such a world as this? why was i called into existence when all the things of which i read every day have passed away? and what remains in their place?" "we have life," said one of the men, but not confidently. "life! yes--and what a life! oh, what a life! well, we waste time. listen now--and if you can, for once forget the present and recall the past. do not stay to think how great a gulf lies between; do not count the years--indeed, you cannot. whether they are one hundred or five hundred they do not know, even at the holy college itself. i am sure it will make you happier--'twill console and comfort you--in this our life of desperate monotony, only to remember--to recall--how you used to live." they answered with a look of blank bewilderment. "it is so long ago--so long ago," said one of them again. "look around you. here are all the things that used to be your own. let them help you to remember. here are the arms that the men carried when they went out to fight; here are the jewels that the women wore. think of your dress in the days when you were allowed to dress, and we did not all wear frocks of gray beige, as if all women were exactly alike. will that not help?" they looked about them helplessly. no, they did not yet remember; their dull eyes were filled with a kind of anxious wonder, as might be seen in one rudely awakened out of sleep. they looked at the things in the great room, but that seemed to bring nothing back to their minds. the present was round them like a net which they could neither cut through nor see through; it was a veil around them through which they could not pass. it had been so long with them; it was so unchanging; for so long they had had nothing to expect; for so long, therefore, they had not cared to look back. the holy college had produced, in fact, what it had proposed and designed. the minds of the people had become quiescent. and to think that so beautiful a state of things should be destroyed by a girl--the only child in the community! "will it help," said the girl, "if we turn down the light a little? so. now we are almost in darkness, but for the moonlight through the window. in the old times, when you were children, i have read that you loved to sit together and to tell stories. let us tell each other stories." nobody replied; but the young man called jack took christine's hand and held it. "let us try," said the girl again. "i will tell you a story. long ago there were people called gentlefolk. grandad here was a gentleman. i have read about them in the old books. i wonder if any of you remember those people. they were exempt from work; the lower sort worked for them; they led a life of ease; they made their own work for themselves. some of the men fought for their country--it was in the old time, you know, when men still fought; some worked for their country; some worked for the welfare of those who worked for bread; some only amused themselves; some were profligates, and did wicked things--" she paused--no one responded. "the women had no work to do at all. they only occupied themselves in making everybody happy; they were treated with the greatest respect; they were not allowed to do anything at all that could be done for them; they played and sang; they painted and embroidered; they knew foreign languages; they constantly inspired the men to do great things, even if they should be killed." here all shuddered and trembled. christine made haste to change the subject. "they wore beautiful dresses--think--dresses of silk and satin, embroidered with gold, trimmed with lace; they had necklaces, bracelets, and rings; their hands were white, and they wore long gloves to their elbows; they dressed their hair as they pleased. some wore it long, like this." she pulled off her flat cap, and threw back her long tresses, and quickly turned up the light. she was transformed! the women started and gasped. "take off your caps!" she ordered. they obeyed, and at sight of the flowing locks that fell upon their shoulders, curling, rippling, flowing, their eyes brightened, but only for a moment. "yes," said the girl, "they wore their beautiful hair as they pleased. oh!"--she gathered in her hands the flowing tresses of one--"you have such long and beautiful hair! it is a shame--it is a shame to hide it. think of the lovely dresses to match this beauty of the hair!" "oh," cried the women, "we remember the dresses. we remember them now. why make us remember them? it is so long ago--so long ago--and we can never wear them any more." "nay; but you have the same beauty," said christine. "that at least remains. you have preserved your youth and your beauty." "of what good are our faces to us," said another woman, "with such a dress as this? men no longer look upon our beauty." "let us be," said the woman who had spoken first. "there can be no change for us. why disturb our minds? the present is horrible. but we have ceased to care much for anything: we do our day's work every day--all the same hours of work; we wear the same dress--to every woman the same dress; we eat and drink the same food--to every one the same; we are happy because we have got all we can get, and we expect no more; we never talk--why should we talk? when you laughed to-day it was like an earthquake." her words were strong, but her manner of speech was a monotone. this way of speaking grows upon us; it is the easiest. i watch the indications with interest. from rapid talk to slow talk; from animated talk to monotony; the next step will be to silence absolute. "there is no change for us," she repeated, "neither in summer nor in winter. we have preserved our youth, but we have lost all the things which the youthful used to desire. we thought to preserve our beauty; what is the good of beauty with such a dress and such a life? why should we make ourselves miserable in remembering any of the things we used to desire?" "oh," cried the girl, clasping her hands, "to me there is no pleasure possible but in learning all about the past. i read the old books, i look at the old pictures, i play the old music, i sing the old songs; but it is not enough. i know how you were dressed--not all alike in gray beige frocks, but in lovely silk and beautiful embroidered stuffs. i will show you presently how you dressed. i know how you danced and played games and acted most beautiful plays, and i have read stories about you; i know that you were always dissatisfied, and wanting something or other. the stories are full of discontent; nobody ever sits down satisfied except one pair. there is always one pair, and they fall in love--in love," she repeated. "what is that, i wonder?" then she went on again: "they only want one thing then, and the story-books are all about how they got it after wonderful adventures. there are no adventures now. the books tell us all this, but i want more. i want to know more: i want to see the old stories with my own eyes; i want to see you in your old dresses, talking in your own old way. the books cannot tell me how you talked and how you looked. i am sure it was not as you talk now--because you never talk." "there is no reason why we should talk. all the old desires have ceased to be. we no longer want anything or expect anything." "come. i shall do my best to bring the past back to you. first, i have learned who you were. that is why i have called you together. in the old times you all belonged to gentlefolk." this announcement produced no effect at all. they listened with lack-lustre looks. they had entirely forgotten that there were ever such distinctions as gentle and simple. "you will remember presently," said christine, not discouraged. "i have found out in the ancient rolls your names and your families." "names and families," said one of the men, "are gone long ago. christine, what is the good of reviving the memory of things that can never be restored?" but the man named jack carera, the sailor of whom i have already spoken, stepped forward. i have said that the sailors were a dangerous class, on account of their independence and their good meaning. "tell us," he said, "about our families. why, i, for one, have never forgotten that i was once a gentleman. it is hard to tell now, because they have made us all alike; but for many, many years--i know not how many--we who had been gentlemen consorted together." "you shall again," said christine, "if you please. listen, then. first, my grandfather. he was called sir arthur farrance, and he was called a baronet. to be a baronet was, in those days, something greatly desired by many people. a man, in the old books, was said to enjoy the title of baronet. but i know not why one man was so raised above another." "heugh! heugh! heugh!" coughed the old man. "i remember that. why, what is there to remember except the old times? i was a baronet--the fifth baronet. my country place was in sussex, and my town address was white's and the travellers'." "yes," christine nodded. "my grandfather's memory is tenacious; he forgets nothing of the things that happened when he was young. i have learned a great deal from him. he seems to have known all your grandmothers, for instance, and speaks of them as if he had loved them all." "i did--i did," said the old man. "i loved them every one." the girl turned to the women before her--the dull-eyed, heavy-headed women, all in the gray dresses exactly alike; but their gray flat caps had been thrown off, and they looked disturbed, moved out of the common languor. "now i will tell you who you were formerly. you"--she pointed to the nearest--"were the lady mildred carera, only daughter of the earl of thordisá. your father and mother survived the discovery, but were killed in the great massacre year, when nearly all the old were put to death. you were a great beauty in your time, and when the discovery was announced you were in your second season. people wondered who would win you. but those who pretended to know talked of a young scientific professor." the woman heard as if she was trying to understand a foreign language. this was, in fact, a language without meaning to her. as yet she caught nothing. "you," said christine, turning to the next, "were dorothy oliphant; you were also young, beautiful, and an heiress; you, like lady mildred, had all the men at your feet. i don't know what that means, but the books say so. then the discovery came, and love-making, whatever that was, seems to have gone out of fashion." the second woman heard this information with lack-lustre eyes. what did it matter? "you"--christine turned to a third and to a fourth and fifth--"you were rosie lorrayne; you, adela dupré; you, susie campbell. you were all in society; you were all young and beautiful and happy. now for the men." she turned to them. the sailor named jack gazed upon her with eyes of admiration. the other men, startled at first by the apparition of the tresses, had relapsed into listlessness. they hardly looked up as she addressed them. first she pointed to the sailor. "your name--" "i remember my name," he said. "i have not forgotten so much as our friends. sailors talk more with each other, and remember. i am named john carera, and i was formerly first-cousin to lady mildred. cousin"--he held out his hand--"have you forgotten your cousin? we used to play together in the old times. you promised to marry me when you should grow up." lady mildred gave him her hand. "it is so long ago--so long ago," she murmured; but her eyes were troubled. she had begun to remember the things put away and forgotten for so long. "you"--christine turned to another--"were geoffrey heron. you were captain in a cavalry regiment. you will remember that presently, and a great deal more. you"--she turned to another--"were laurence de heyn, and you were a young lawyer, intending to be a judge. you will remember that, in time. you"--she turned to another--"were jack culliford; and you were a private secretary, intending to go into parliament, and to rise perhaps to be prime minister. and you"--she turned to the last--"were arnold buckland, already a poet of society. you will all remember these things before long. lastly, you all belonged to the people who were born rich, and never used to have any care or anxiety about their daily bread. nor did you ever do any work, unless you chose." "it is so long ago," said lady mildred--her face was brighter now--"that we have forgotten even that there ever were gentlefolk." "it is not strange," said christine, "that you should have forgotten it. why should you remember anything? we are only a herd, one with another; one not greater, and one not less, than another. now that you know your names again and remember clearly, because i have told you"--she repeated the information for fear they should again forget--"who and what you were, each of you--you will go on to remember more." "oh, what good? what good?" asked lady mildred. "because it will rouse you from your lethargy," said the girl, impetuously. "oh, you sit in silence day after day; you walk alone; you ought to be together as you used to be, talking, playing. see! i have read the books; your lives were full of excitement. it makes my heart beat only to read how the men went out to fight, daring everything, for the sake of the women they loved." "the men love us no longer," said lady mildred. "if the brave men fell--" but here all faces, except the sailor's, turned pale, and they shuddered. christine did not finish the sentence. she, too, shuddered. in the old times i remember how, being then errand-boy in the brewery, i used to listen, in the whitechapel road, to the men who, every sunday morning and evening, used to tell us that religion was a mockery and a snare, invented by the so-called priests for their own selfish ends, so that they might be kept in sloth and at their ease. there was no need now for these orators. the old religion was clean dead and forgotten. when men ceased to expect death, what need was there to keep up any interest in the future world, if there should be any? but the bare mention of the dreadful thing is still enough to make all cheeks turn pale. every year, the farther off death recedes, the more terrible he looks. therefore they all shuddered. among the musical instruments in the museum there stands one, a square wooden box on legs, with wires inside it. there are many other musical instruments, the use of all (as i thought) forgotten. very soon after the great discovery people ceased to care for music. for my own part, i have never been able to understand how the touching of chords and the striking of hammers on wires can produce any effect at all upon the mind except that of irritation. we preserve trumpets for the processions of the college because mere noise awes people, and because trumpets make more noise with less trouble than the human voice. but with music, such as it used to be, we have now nothing to do at all. i have been told that people were formerly greatly moved by music, so that every kind of emotion was produced in their minds merely by listening to a man or woman playing some instrument. it must have been so, because christine, merely by playing the old music to the company, was able to bring back their minds to the long-forgotten past. but it must be remembered that she had disturbed their minds first. she sat down, then, before this box, and she began to play upon it, watching the people meanwhile. she played the music of their own time--indeed, there has been none written since. it was a kind of witchery. first the sailor named jack sprang to his feet and began to walk up and down the room with wild gestures and strange looks. then the rest, one by one, grew restless; they looked about them; they left their chairs and began to look at each other, and at the things in the cases. the past was coming slowly into sight. i have heard how men at sea perceive an island far away, but like a cloud on the horizon; how the cloud grows larger and assumes outline; how this grows clearer and larger still, until, before the ship reaches the harbor and drops her anchor, the cliffs and the woods, and even the single trees on the hill-sides, are clearly visible. thus the listeners gradually began to see the past again. now, to feel these old times again, one must go back to them and become once more part of them. it is possible, because we are still of the age when we left them. therefore, this little company, who had left the old time when they were still young, began to look again as they had then looked. their eyes brightened, their cheeks flushed; their limbs became elastic; their heads were thrown back; the faces of the women grew soft, and those of the men strong; on all alike there fell once more the look of restless expectancy and of unsatisfied yearning which belonged to all ages in the old time. presently they began to murmur, i know not what, and then to whisper to each other with gentle sighs. then the girls--they were really girls again--caught each other by the hand, and panted and sighed again; and at last they fell upon each other's necks and kissed. as for the men, they now stood erect and firm, but for the most part they gazed upon the girls with wonder and admiration unspeakable, so great was the power of witchery possessed by this insignificant girl. christine looked on and laughed gently. then she suddenly changed her music, and began to play a march loud and triumphant. and as she played she spoke: "when the brave soldiers came home from battle and from victory, it was right that the people should all go forth to meet them. the music played for them; the children strewed roses under their feet; the bells were set ringing; the crowds cheered them; the women wept and laughed at the same time, and waved them welcome. nothing could be too good for the men who fought for their country. listen! i found the song of the victors' return in an old book. i wonder if you remember it. i think it is a very simple little thing." then she sang. she had a strong, clear voice--they had heard her singing before--no one sang in the whole city except this child, and already it had been observed that her singing made men restless. i do not deny the fulness and richness of her voice; but the words she sang--dr. linister's words, they were--are mere foolishness: "with flying flag, with beat of drum, oh, brave and gallant show! in rags and tatters home they come-- we love them better so. with sunburnt cheeks and wounds and scars; yet still their swords are bright. oh, welcome, welcome from the wars, brave lads who fought the fight! "the girls they laugh, the girls they cry, 'what shall their guerdon be?-- alas! that some must fall and die!-- bring forth our gauds to see. 'twere all too slight, give what we might,' up spoke a soldier tall: 'oh, love is worth the whole broad earth; oh, love is worth the whole broad earth; give that, you give us all!'" "do you remember the song?" christine asked. they shook their heads. yet it seemed familiar. they remembered some such songs. "geoffrey heron," said the girl, turning to one of the men, "you were captain heron in the old days. you remember that you were in the army." "was i?" he started. "no; yes. i remember. i was captain heron. we rode out of portsmouth dockyard gates when we came home--all that were left of us. the women were waiting on the hard outside, and they laughed and cried, and caught our hands, and ran beside the horses. our ranks were thin, for we had been pretty well knocked about. i remember now. yes--yes, i was--i was captain heron." "go into that room. you will find your old uniform. take off the blue flannels, and show us how you looked when you were in uniform." as if it was nothing at all unusual, the man rose and obeyed. it was observed that he now carried himself differently. he stood erect, with shoulders squared, head up, and limbs straight. they all obeyed whatever this girl ordered them to do. christine began to play again. she played another march, but always loud and triumphant. when the soldier came back he was dressed in the uniform which he had worn in the time of the great discovery, when they left off taking account of time. "oh!" cried christine, springing to her feet. "see! see! here is a soldier! here is a man who has fought!" he stood before them dressed in a scarlet tunic and a white helmet; a red sash hung across him, and on his breast were medals. at sight of him the girl called dorothy oliphant changed countenance; all caught their breath. the aspect of the man carried them, indeed, back to the old, old time. "welcome home, captain heron," said christine. "we have followed your campaign day by day." "we are home again," the soldier replied, gravely. "unfortunately, we have left a good many of our regiment behind." "behind? you mean--they--are--dead." christine shuddered. the others shuddered. even captain heron himself for a moment turned pale. but he was again in the past, and the honor of his regiment was in his hands. "you have fought with other men," said christine. "let me look in your face. yes--it is changed. you have the look of the fighting man in the old pictures. you look as if you mean to have something, whatever it is, whether other men want it or not. oh, you have fought with men! it is wonderful! perhaps you have even killed men. were you dreadfully afraid?" captain heron started and flushed. "afraid?" he asked. "afraid?" "oh!" christine clapped her hands. "i wanted to see that look. it is the look of a man in sudden wrath. forgive me! it is terrible to see a man thus moved. no, captain heron, no! i understand. an officer in your regiment could be afraid of nothing." she sat down, still looking at him. "i have seen a soldier," she said. then she sprang to her feet. "now," she cried, "it is our turn. come with me, you ladies; and you, gentlemen, go into that room. for one night we will put on the dresses you used to wear. come!" they obeyed. there was nothing that they would not have done, so completely had she bewitched them. how long since they had been addressed as ladies and gentlemen! "come," she said, in the room whither she led the women, "look about, and choose what you please. but we must make haste." there was a great pile of dainty dresses laid out for them to choose--dresses in silk and all kinds of delicate stuffs, with embroidery, lace, ribbons, jewels, chains, rings, bracelets, gloves, fans, shoes--everything that the folly of the past time required to make rich women seem as if they were not the same as their poorer sisters. they turned over the dresses, and cried out with admiration. then they hastened to tear off their ugly gray frocks, and began to dress. but the girl called dorothy oliphant sank into a chair. "oh, he has forgotten me! he has forgotten me! who am i that he should remember me after all these years?" "why," said christine, "how should he remember? what matters that you have the same face? think of your dull look and your heavy eyes; think of the dowdy dress and the ugly cap. wait till you have put on a pretty frock and have dressed your hair; here is a chain of pearls which will look pretty in your hair; here is a sweet colored silk. i am sure it will fit you. oh, it is a shame--it is a shame that we have to dress so! never mind. now i have found out the old dresses, we will have many evenings together. we will go back to the past. he will remember you, dorothy dear. oh, how could you give them up? how _could_ you give up your lovely dresses?" "we were made to give them up because there were not enough beautiful dresses to go round. they said that no woman must be dressed better than another. so they invented--it was dr. grout, the suffragan, who did it--the gray dress for the women and the blue flannel for the men. and i had almost forgotten that there were such things. christine, my head is swimming. my heart is beating. i have not felt my heart beating for i know not how long. oh, will geoffrey remember me when i am dressed?" "quick! of course he will. let me dress you. oh, i often come here in the daytime and dress up, and pretend that it is the past again. you shall come with me. but i want to hear you talk as you used to talk, and to see you dance as you used to dance. then i shall understand it all." when they returned, the men were waiting for them. their blue flannels were exchanged for black cloth clothes, which it had been the custom of those who called themselves gentlemen to wear in the evening. in ancient times this was their absurd custom, kept up in order to mark the difference between a gentleman and one of the lower class. if you had no dress-coat, you were not a gentleman. how could men ever tolerate, for a single day, the existence of such a social difference? as for me, in the part of london where i lived, called whitechapel, there were no dress-coats. the change, however, seemed to have transformed them. their faces had an eager look, as if they wanted something. of course, in the old times everybody always wanted something. you can see it in the pictures--the faces are never at rest; in the portraits, the eyes are always seeking for something; nowhere is there visible the least sign of contentment. these unfortunate men had acquired, with their old clothes, something of the old restlessness. christine laughed aloud and clapped her hands. the women did not laugh. they saluted the men, who bowed with a certain coldness. the manners of the past were coming back to them swiftly, but the old ease was not recovered for the first quarter of an hour. then captain heron, who had changed his uniform for civilian dress, suddenly flushed and stepped forward, whispering, "dorothy, you have forgotten me?" dorothy smiled softly, and gave him her hand with a quick sigh. no, she had not forgotten him. "dance!" said christine. "i want to see you dance. i will play for you." she played a piece of music called a waltz. when this kind of music used to be played--i mean in the houses of (so-called) ladies, not those of the people--the young men and women caught each other round the waist and twirled round. they had many foolish customs, but none more foolish, i should suppose, than this. i have never seen the thing done, because all this foolishness was forgotten as soon as we settled down to the enjoyment of the great discovery. when, therefore, christine began this music, they looked at each other for a few moments, and then, inspired by memory, they fell into each other's arms and began their dance. she played for them for a quarter of an hour. while the rest danced, the young man jack stood beside the piano, as if he was chained to the spot. she had bewitched them all, but none so much as this man. he therefore gazed upon the girl with an admiration which certainly belonged to the old time. indeed, i have never been able to understand how the past could be so suddenly assumed. to admire--actually to admire--a woman, knowing all the time--it is impossible to conceal the fact--that she is your inferior, that she is inferior in strength and intellect! well, i have already called them unfortunate men; i can say no more. how can people admire things below themselves? when she had played for a quarter of an hour or so, this young man called upon her to stop. the dancers stopped too, panting, their eyes full of light, their cheeks flushed and their lips parted. "oh," dorothy sighed, "i never thought to feel such happiness again. i could dance on forever." "with me?" murmured geoffrey. "i was praying that the last round might never stop. with me?" "with you," she whispered. "come!" cried the young man jack. "it is too bad. christine must dance. play for us, cousin mildred, and i will give her a lesson." mildred laughed. then she started at the unwonted sound. the others laughed to hear it, and the walls of the museum echoed with the laughter of girls. the old man sat up in his chair and looked around. "i thought i was at philippe's, in paris," he said. "i thought we were having a supper after the theatre. there was ninette, and there was madeleine--and--and--" he looked about him bewildered. then he dropped his head and went to sleep again. when he was neither eating nor battling for his breath, he was always sleeping. "i am your cousin, jack," said mildred; "but i had long forgotten it. and as for playing--but i will try. perhaps the old touch will return." it did. she played with far greater skill and power than the self-taught christine, but not (as they have said since) with greater sweetness. then jack took christine and gave her a first lesson. it lasted nearly half an hour. "oh," cried the girl, when lady mildred stopped, "i feel as if i had been floating round in a dream. was i a stupid pupil, jack?" "you were the aptest pupil that dancing-master ever had." "i know now," she said, with panting breath and flushed cheeks, "what dancing means. it is wonderful that the feet should answer to the music. surely you must have loved dancing?" "we did," the girls replied; "we did. there was no greater pleasure in the world." "why did you give it up?" they looked at each other. "after the great discovery," said dorothy oliphant, "we were so happy to get rid of the terrors of old age, and the loss of our beauty, and everything, that at first we thought of nothing else. when we tried to dance again, something had gone out of it. the men were not the same. perhaps we were not the same. everything languished after that. there was no longer any enjoyment. we ceased to dance because we found no pleasure in dancing." "but now you do?" said christine. "to-night we do, because you have filled our hearts with the old thoughts. to get out of the dull, dull round--why is it that we never felt it dull till to-night? oh, so long as we can remember the old thoughts, let us continue to dance and to play and to sing. if the old thoughts cease to come back to us"--she looked at geoffrey--"let us fall back into our dulness, like the men and women round us." "it was to please me first," said christine. "you were so very kind as to come here to please me, because i can have no recollection at all of the past, and i was curious to understand what i read. come again--to please yourselves. oh, i have learned so much--so very much more than i ever expected! there are so many, many things that i did not dream of. but let us always dance," she said--"let us always dance--let me always feel every time you come as if there was nothing in the world but sweet music calling me, and i was spinning round and round, but always in some place far better and sweeter than this." "yes," lady mildred said, gravely. "thus it was we used to feel." "and i have seen you as you were--gentlemen and gentlewomen together. oh, it is beautiful! come every night. let us never cease to change the dismal present for the sunny past. but there is one thing--one thing that i cannot understand." "what is that?" asked lady mildred. "in the old books there is always, as i said before, a young man in love with a girl. what is it--love?" the girls sighed and cast down their eyes. "was it possible for a man so to love a girl as to desire nothing in the world but to have her love, and even to throw away his life--actually his very life--his very life--for her sake?" "dorothy," said geoffrey, taking both her hands, "was it possible? oh, was it possible?" dorothy burst into tears. "it _was_ possible!" she cried; "but oh, it is not possible any longer." "let us pretend," said geoffrey, "let us dream that it is possible." "even to throw away your life--to die--actually your life?" asked christine. "to die? to exist no longer? to abandon life--for the sake of another person?" a sudden change passed over all their faces. the light died out of their eyes; the smile died on their lips; the softness vanished from the ladies' faces; the men hung their heads. all their gallantry left them. and geoffrey let mildred's hands slip from his holding. the thought of death brought them all back to the present. "no," said lady mildred, sadly, and with changed voice, "such things are no longer possible. formerly, men despised death because it was certain to come, in a few years at best; and why not, therefore, to-morrow? but we cannot brave death any more. we live, each for himself. that is the only safety; there is only the law of self-preservation. all are alike; we cannot love each other any more, because we are all alike. no woman is better than another in any man's eyes, because we are all dressed the same, and we are all the same. what more do we want?" she said, harshly. "there is no change for us; we go from bed to work, from work to rest and food, and so to bed again. what more can we want? we are all equals; we are all the same; there are no more gentlewomen. let us put on our gray frocks and our flat caps again, and hide our hair and go home to bed." "yes, yes," cried christine, "but you will come again. you will come again, and we will make every night a play and pretence of the beautiful--the lovely past. when we lay aside the gray frocks, and let down our hair, we shall go back to the old time--the dear old time." the young man named jack remained behind when the others were gone. "if it were possible," he said, "for a man to give up everything--even his life--for a woman, in the old times, when life was a rich and glorious possession--how much more ought he not to be willing to lay it down, now that it has been made a worthless weed?" "i have never felt so happy"--the girl was thinking of something else. "i have never dreamed that i could feel so happy. now i know what i have always longed for--to dance round and round forever, forgetting all but the joy of the music and the dance. but oh, jack"--her face turned pale again--"how could they ever have been happy, even while they waltzed, knowing that every minute brought them nearer and nearer to the dreadful end?" "i don't know. christine, if i were you, i would never mention that ugly topic again, except when we are not dressed up and acting. how lovely they looked--all of them--but none of them to compare with the sweetest rose-bud of the garden?" he took her hand and kissed it, and then left her alone with the old man in the great museum. chapter iv. what is love? it would be idle to dwell upon the repetition of such scenes as those described in the last chapter. these unhappy persons continued to meet day after day in the museum; after changing their lawful garments for the fantastic habits worn before the great discovery, they lost themselves nightly in the imagination of the past. they presently found others among the people, who had also been gentlewomen and gentlemen in the old days, and brought them also into the company; so that there were now, every evening, some thirty gathered together. nay, they even procured food and made suppers for themselves, contrary to the practice of common meals enjoined by the holy college; they gloried in being a company apart from the rest; and because they remembered the past, they had the audacity to give themselves, but only among themselves, airs of superiority. in the daytime they wore the common dress, and were like the rest of the people. the thing grew, however. every evening they recalled more of the long-vanished customs and modes of thought--one remembering this and the other that little detail--until almost every particular of the ancient life had returned to them. then a strange thing happened. for though the present offered still--and this they never denied--its calm, unchanging face, with no disasters to trouble and no certain and miserable end to dread; with no anxieties, cares, and miseries; with no ambitions and no struggles; they fell to yearning after the old things; they grew to loathe the present; they could hardly sit with patience in the public hall; they went to their day's work with ill-concealed disgust. yet, so apathetic had the people grown that nothing of this was observed; so careless and so unsuspicious were we ourselves that though the singing and playing grew louder and continued longer every evening, none of us suspected anything. singing, in my ears, was no more than an unmeaning noise; that the girl in the museum should sing and play seemed foolish, but then children are foolish--they like to make a great noise. one afternoon--it was some weeks since this dangerous fooling began--the cause of the whole, the girl christine, was in the museum alone. she had a book in her hand, and was reading in it. first she read a few lines, and then paused and meditated a while. then she read again, and laughed gently to herself. and then she read, and changed color. and again she read, and knitted her brows as one who considers but cannot understand. the place was quite deserted, save for her grandfather, who sat in his great chair, propped up with pillows and fast asleep. he had passed a bad night with his miserable asthma; in the morning, as often happens with this disease, he found himself able to breathe again, and was now therefore taking a good spell of sleep. his long white hair fell down upon his shoulders, his wrinkled old cheek showed a thousand crows' feet and lines innumerable; he looked a very, very old man. yet he was no more than seventy-five or so, in the language of the past. he belonged formerly to those who lived upon the labor of others, and devoured their substance. now, but for his asthma, which even the college cannot cure, he should have been as perfectly happy as the rest of the people. the sunshine which warmed his old limbs fell full upon his chair; so that he seemed, of all the rare and curious objects in that collection, the rarest and most curious. the old armor on the wall, the trophies of arms, the glass vases containing all the things of the past, were not so rare and curious as this old man--the only old man left among us. i daily, for my own part, contemplated the old man with a singular satisfaction. he was, i thought, a standing lesson to the people, one daily set before their eyes. here was the sole surviving specimen of what in the past was the best that the men and women could expect--namely, to be spared until the age of seventy-five, and then to linger on afflicted with miserable diseases and, slowly or swiftly, to be tortured to death. beholding that spectacle, i argued, all the people ought to rub their hands in complacency and gratitude. but our people had long ceased to reason or reflect. the lesson was consequently thrown away upon them. nay, when this girl began her destructive career, those whom she dragged into her toils only considered this old man because he would still be talking, as all old men used to talk, about the days of his youth, for the purpose of increasing their knowledge of the past, and filling their foolish souls with yearning after the bad old times. while christine read and pondered, the door of the museum opened. the young man called jack stood there gazing upon her. she had thrown off her cap, and her long brown curls lay over her shoulders. she had a red rose in the bosom of her gray dress, and she had tied a crimson scarf round her waist. jack (suffer me to use the foolishness of their language--of course his name was john)--closed the door silently. "christine," he whispered. she started, and let her book fall. then she gave him her hand, which he raised to his lips. (again i must ask leave to report a great deal of foolishness.) "it is the sweet old fashion," he said. "it is my homage to my lady." they were now so far gone in folly that she accepted this act as if it was one natural and becoming. "i have been reading," she said, "a book full of extracts--all about love. i have never understood what love is. if i ask dorothy, she looks at geoffrey heron and sighs. if i ask him, he tells me that he cannot be my servant to teach me, because he is already sworn to another. what does this mean? have the old times come back again, so that men once more call themselves slaves of love? yet what does it mean?" "tell me," said jack, "what you have been reading." "listen, then. oh, it is the strangest extravagance! what did men mean when they could gravely write down, and expect to be read, such things as-- "'i do love you more than words can wield the matter-- dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty; beyond what can be valued, rich or rare?' 'dearer than eyesight, space, and liberty.' did they really mean that?" "they meant more; they meant dearer than life itself!" said jack, slowly. "only it was stupid always to say the same thing." "well, then, listen to this: "'had i no eyes but ears, my ears would love that inward beauty and invisible; or, were i deaf, thy outward parts would move each part in me that were but sensible. though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see, yet should i be in love, by touching thee.' now, jack, what can that mean? was anything more absurd?" "read another extract, christine." "here is a passage more difficult than any other: "'love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is wing'd cupid painted blind. nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste; wings and no eyes, figure unheedy haste. and therefore is love said to be a child, because in choice he is so oft beguiled.' tell me, if you can, what this means. but perhaps you were never in love, jack, in the old times." "romeo was in love before he met juliet," said jack. "i, too, have been reading the old books, you see, child. i remember--but how can i tell you? i cannot speak like the poet. yet i remember--i remember." he looked round the room. "it is only here," he murmured, "that one can clearly remember. here are the very things which used to surround our daily life. and here are youth and age. they were always with us in the old time--youth and age. youth with love before, and age with love behind. always we knew that as that old man, so should we become. the chief joys of life belonged to youth; we knew very well that unless we snatched them then we should never have them. to age we gave respect, because age, we thought, had wisdom; but to us--to us--who were young, age cried unceasingly-- "'gather ye rose-buds while ye may.' if i could tell only you! christine, come with me into the picture gallery. my words are weak, but the poets and the painters speak for us. come! we shall find something there that will speak for me what i have not words to say for myself." nothing in the whole world--i have maintained this in the college over and over again--has done so much harm to humanity as art. in a world of common-sense which deals with nothing but fact and actuality, art can have no place. why imitate what we see around us? artists cheated the world; they pretended to imitate, and they distorted or they exaggerated. they put a light into the sky that never was there; they filled the human face with yearning after things impossible; they put thoughts into the heart which had no business there; they made woman into a goddess, and made love--simple love--a form of worship; they exaggerated every joy; they created a heaven which could not exist. i have seen their pictures, and i know it. why--why did we not destroy all works of art long ago--or, at least, why did we not enclose the gallery, with the museum, within the college wall? the picture gallery is a long room with ancient stone walls; statuary is arranged along the central line, and the pictures line the walls. the young man led the girl into the gallery and looked around him. presently he stopped at a figure in white marble. it represented a woman, hands clasped, gazing upward. anatomically, i must say, the figure is fairly correct. "see," he said, "when in the olden times our sculptors desired to depict the higher life--which we have lost or thrown away for a while--they carved the marble image of a woman. her form represented perfect beauty; her face represented perfect purity; the perfect soul must be wedded to the perfect body, otherwise there can be no perfection of humanity. this is the ideal woman. look in her face, look at the curves of her form, look at the carriage of her head; such a woman it was whom men used to love." "but were women once like this? could they look so? had they such sweet and tender faces? this figure makes me ashamed." "when men were in love, christine, the woman that each man loved became in his mind such as this. he worshipped in his mistress the highest form of life that he could conceive. some men were gross, their ideals were low; some were noble, then their ideals were high. always there were among mankind some men who were continually trying to raise the ideal; always the mass of men were keeping the ideal low." "were the women ashamed to receive such worship? because they must have known what they were in cold reality." "perhaps to the nobler sort," said the young man, "to be thought so good lifted up their hearts and kept them at that high level. but indeed i know not. remember that when men wrote the words that you think extravagant, they were filled and wholly possessed with the image of the perfect woman. nay, the nobler and stronger their nature, the more they were filled with that vision. the deeper their love for any woman, the higher they placed her on the altar of their worship." "and if another man should try to take that woman from them--" "they would kill that other man," said jack, with a fierce gleam in his eye, which made the girl shudder. yet she respected him for it. "if another man should come between us now, christine, i would--nay, dear, forgive my rude words. what has jealousy to do with you?" she dropped her eyes and blushed, and in all her limbs she trembled. this young man made her afraid. and yet--she knew not why--it made her happy, only to be afraid of him. "let us see some of the pictures," said jack. there were many hundreds of them. they represented i know not what; scenes of the old life in the old time. i dare say everything was there, with all the exaggerations which pleased the painters and cheated the senses of those who looked on. fair women were painted fairer than women could ever be; their eyes were larger, softer, fuller of thought; their cheeks more tender, their limbs more comely. there were battle scenes; the young man led the girl past them. there were scenes from history--kings laying down crowns, traitors receiving sentence, and so forth; he passed them by. there were groups of nymphs, portraits of fair women, groups of girls dancing, girls at play, girls laughing, girls bathing; he passed them by. presently he stopped before three panels side by side, representing a simple allegory of the old time. in the first picture, two, a young man and a girl, walked hand-in-hand beside a stream. the water danced and rippled in the sunlight; behind them was an orchard full of blossom; flowers sprang up at their feet--the flowers of spring. and they walked hand-in-hand, gazing in each other's eyes. the second picture showed a man in middle-age returning home from work; beside him walked his boys; in the porch the mother sat with her daughters spinning at the wheel. the stream was now a full majestic river; the trees were loaded with fruit not yet ripe; the fields were covered with corn, green still, but waving with light and shade under the summer sky; in the distance, passing away, was a heavy thunder-cloud. in the third panel an old pair stood beside a great river, looking out upon the ocean. again they were hand-in-hand. the sun was setting in great splendor across the sea; the reapers were carrying their harvest home with songs and dances. and the old people still gazed in each other's face, just as they had done fifty years ago. "see, christine!" said jack. "in the first panel, this pair think of nothing but of each other. presently they will have other thoughts. the stream beside which they wander is the stream of life. it widens as it goes. while they walk along its banks, the river grows broader and deeper. this means that as they grow older they grow wiser and learn more. so they go on continually, until they come to the mouth of the river, where it loses itself in the ocean of--what our friends tremble so much as to name. tell me, is there terror, or doubt, or anxiety on their faces now that they have come to the end?" "no; their faces are entirely happy." "this you do not understand. christine, if you were sure that in the end you would be as happy as that old woman at the end, would you be content to begin with the beginning? would you play the part of that girl, and walk--with me--along the stream of life?" he took her hand, but she made no reply, save that her eyes filled with tears. presently she murmured, "they are always happy--at the beginning and at the end. did they know at the beginning that there would be an end?" "they knew; everybody knew; the very children knew almost from infancy the great law of nature, that for everything there is the allotted end. they knew it." "and yet they were always happy. i cannot understand it." "we have destroyed that happiness," said the young man. "love cannot exist when there is no longer end, or change, or anything to hope or fear--no mystery, nothing to hope or fear. what is a woman outside the museum in the eyes of the college? she is only the half of humanity, subject to disease and requiring food at intervals. she no longer attracts men by the sacred mystery of her beauty. she is not even permitted any longer to make herself beautiful by her dress; nor is she allowed to create the feeling of mystery and the unknown by seclusion. she lives in the open, like the rest. we all live together; we know what each one says and thinks and does; nay, most of us have left off thinking and talking altogether." but christine was hardly listening; she could not understand this talk. she was looking at the pictures. "oh," she said, "they look so happy! there is such a beautiful contentment in their eyes! they love each other so, that they think of nothing but their love. they have forgotten the end." "nay, but look at the end." "they are happy still, although the river flows into the ocean. how can they be happy?" "you shall learn more, christine. you have seen enough to understand that the talk of the physicians about the miseries of the old time is mischievous nonsense, with which they have fooled us into slavery." "oh, if they heard you--" "let them hear," he replied, sternly. "i hope, before long, we may make them hear. christine, you can restore the old love by your own example. you alone have nothing to remember and nothing to unlearn. as for the rest of us, we have old habits to forget and prejudices to overcome before we can get back to the past." then he led her to another picture. the scene was a green village church-yard, standing amid trees--yews and oaks--and round a gray old church. six strong men bore a bier piled with flowers towards an open grave, newly dug. beside the grave stood one in a white robe, carrying a book. behind the bier followed, hand-in-hand, a weeping company of men, women, and children. but he who walked first wept not. "oh," cried christine, "he is dead! he is dead!" she burst into tears. "nay," said jack; "it is the wife who is dead. the husband lives still. see, he follows with tottering step. his grandchild leads him as you lead your grandfather. and they are all weeping except him. why does he alone not weep? he has been married for fifty years and more; all his life has been shared by the love and sympathy of the woman--the dead woman. she is dead, my dear"--he repeated these words, taking the girl's hands--"she is dead, and he sheds no tears. why not? look at his face. is it unhappy? tell me, christine, do you read the sorrow of hopelessness in that old man's face?" "no, no," she said. "he is grave, but he is not unhappy. yet here is death, with all the terrible things that we read of in the books--the deep pit, the body to be lowered in the grave--oh!" she shuddered and turned her head. "as i read his face," said jack, "i see hope and consolation." "why is there a man in white?" "i will tell you some time. meanwhile, observe that the old man is happy, though his wife is dead, and though he knows that to-morrow his turn will come, and a grave will be dug for him beside his wife, and he also will be laid among the cold clay-clods, as cold, as senseless as them, there to lie while the great world rolls round and round. he knows this, i say, and yet he is not unhappy." "what does it mean, jack?" "i will tell you--soon." "we who are sailors," this young man continued, "are not like the rest of the world. we are always exposed to danger; we are not afraid to speak of death; and though we have taken advantage (as we thought) of the great discovery, we have never forgotten the past or the old ideas. we have to think for ourselves, which makes us independent. there is no holy college on board ship, and no sacred physician ventures his precious life upon a rolling deck. when we come ashore, we look round and see things. then we go on board again and talk, in the night watches below the stars. i think the holy college would be pleased if they could sometimes hear our talk. christine, there is no happiness left in the world except among those whom the great discovery cannot save from the dangers of a storm. when you spoke to me my heart leaped up, because i saw what as yet you do not see. the others were too sluggish to remember, until you had dragged their thoughts into the old channels; but there was no need to drag me; for i remember always, and i only pretended until the others should come with me." christine heard only half of this, for she was looking at the picture of the village funeral again. "oh, how could men be happy with such an end before them?" she cried. "i cannot understand it. to be torn away, to be laid in a box, to be put away deep underground, there to lie forever--oh!" she trembled again. "and not to be unhappy!" "look round the room, christine. read the faces. here are portraits of men and women. some of them are eager, some are calm, more are unhappy for thinking of the end. here is a battle-field; the dead and wounded are lying about the ground. look at this troop of horsemen charging. is there any terror in their faces? what do they care about the men who have fallen? their duty is to fight. see here again. it is a dying girl. what do you read in her face? i see no fear, but a sweet joy of resignation. here is a man led forth to execution. there is no fear in his face." "i could never bear to be alone in this room, because death is everywhere, and no one seems to regard it." "christine, did you never hear, by any chance, from your grandfather why people were not afraid?" "no; he cannot bear to speak of such a thing. he trembles and shakes if it is even mentioned. they all do, except you." "what does he tell you?" "he talks of the time when he was young. it was long before the great discovery. oh, he is very old. he was always going to feasts and dances. he had a great many friends, and some of them used to sing and dance in theatres. they were all very fond of suppers after the theatre, and there was a great deal of singing and laughing. they used to drive about in carriages, and they went to races. i do not understand, very well, the pleasure of his life." "ah," said jack, "he has forgotten the really important part of it." they were at a part of the gallery where there was a door of strong oak, studded with big square nails, under an arch of carved stone. "have you ever been into this place?" he asked. "once i went in. but there is a dreadful tomb in it, with carved skulls and the figure of a dead man. so i ran away." "come in with me. you shall not be frightened." he turned the great iron handle, and pushed open the heavy door. the room was lofty, with a pointed roof. it was lit by long narrow windows, filled with painted glass. there were seats of carved wood, with carved canopies on either side; there was the figure of a brass eagle, with a great book upon it; and under the three lights of the window at the end was a table covered with a cloth which hung in rags and tatters, and was covered with dust. it was, in fact, an ancient chapel, shut up and suffered to fall into decay. "this," said the young man, "is the chapel where, in the old time, they came to worship. they also worshipped in the great place that is now the house of life. but here some of them worshipped also, though with less splendor." "did they," asked the girl, "worship the beautiful woman of their dreams?" "no, not the beautiful woman. they worshipped her outside. in this chapel they worshipped the maker of perfect man and perfect woman. come in with me, and i will tell you something of what it meant." * * * * * it was two hours and more before they came out of the chapel. the girl's eyes were full of tears, and tears lay upon his cheeks. "my dear, my love," said jack, "i have tried to show you how the old true love was nourished and sustained. it would not have lived but for the short duration of its life; it was the heritage of each generation, to be passed on unto the next. only on one condition was it possible. it is a condition which you have been taught to believe horrible beyond the power of words. i have tried to show you that it was not horrible. my love, my sweet--fresh as the maidens who in the old time blossomed and flowered, and presently fulfilled that condition--the only woman among us who is young in heart, let us agree to love--we two--after the old fashion, under the old conditions. do not shiver, dear. there is the old faith to sustain us. you shall go to sea with me. perhaps we shall be cast away and drowned; perhaps we shall contract some unknown disease and die. we shall presently lie down to sleep, and awake again in each other's arms once more in a new life which we cannot now comprehend. everything must have an end. human life must have an end, or it becomes horrible, monstrous, selfish. the life beyond will be glorified beyond all our hopes, and beyond all our imagination. my dear, are you afraid?" she laid her head upon his shoulder. "oh, jack, with you i am afraid of nothing. i should not be afraid to die this very moment, if we died together. is it really true? can we love now as men loved women long ago? oh, can you love me so? i am so weak and small a creature--so weak and foolish! i would die with you, jack--both together, taking each other by the hand; and oh, if you were to die first, i could not live after. i must, then, die too. my head is swimming--my heart is beating--lay your arm about me. oh, love, my love; i have never lived before. oh, welcome life, and welcome death, so that we may never, never more be parted!" chapter v. the open door. it was in this way that the whole trouble began. there was an inquisitive girl foolishly allowed to grow up in this ancient museum and among the old books, who developed a morbid curiosity for the past, of which the books and pictures and collections taught her something; yet not all she wished to learn. she was unconsciously aided by the old man, who had been approaching his second childhood even at the time of the great discovery, and whose memory now continually carried him backward to the days of his youth, without the least recollection of the great intervals between. lastly, there had come to the town, in the pursuit of his business, a sailor, restless and discontented, as is the case with all his class, questioning and independent; impatient of authority, and curiously unable to forget the old times. the sailor and the girl, between them, at first instigated and pushed on the whole business; they were joined, no doubt, by many others; but these two were the first leaders. the chief culprit of all, the nominal leader--but you shall presently hear what kind of excuse could be made for him by himself. as for those whom they dragged reluctantly out of the tranquillity of oblivion, they were at first wholly drawn from the class which, at the outset, gave us so much trouble--the so-called gentle class--who desired nothing so much as to continue to live under the old conditions--namely, by the labor of others. it wanted, for these people, only the revival of memory to produce the revival of discontent. when their minds were once more filled with the thought of the things they had lost--the leadership, the land, the wealth, and with the memory of the arts which they had formerly loved--music, painting, letters--and with the actual sight, once more restored to them, of their old amusements--their dancing, their society, their singing, their games; and when the foolish old idol, love, was once more trotted out, like an old-fashioned guy fawkes, decked in his silly old rainbow tints; when, night after night, they actually began to play, act, and to pretend these things, what could possibly follow but revolt, with subsequent punishment and expulsion? you shall hear. of course, they would have been punished with expulsion had not--but everything in its place. five or six weeks after the first evening, which i have described at full length, the museum was again occupied by the same company, increased by a good many more. the women came in more readily, being sooner caught with the bait of fine dress, which had such an attraction for them that the mere sight of it caused them to forget everything that had been done for them--their present tranquillity, their freedom from agitation and anxiety--and carried them back to the old time, when they wore, indeed, those dainty dresses. what they endured, besides, they do not so readily remember; but the dresses carried back their minds to the society which once filled up the whole worthless lives of these poor creatures. i say, therefore, that it was easier to attract the women than the men; for the latter, no bait at all corresponding in power could be discovered. the company assembled were engaged in much the same sort of make-believe and play-acting as on the first evening. they were dressed in the old fashion; they danced, they sang, they talked and laughed--actually they talked and laughed--though what there is, from any view of life to laugh about, i never could understand. laughing, however, belonged to the old manners; and they had now completely recovered the old manners--anything, however foolish, which belonged to that time would have been welcomed by them. so they laughed; for the same reason, they were full of animation; and the old, old unhappy emotion which i had thought blotted out forever--restlessness--had either broken out among them or was well simulated. they were all young, save for the old man who sat in his chair coughing, and sometimes talking. christine had dressed him in a velvet coat, which gave him great dignity, and made him look as if he was taking part in the play. i say not that the acting was not very good--of the kind. acting of any kind could never have served any useful purpose, even in the past. perhaps a company of beautiful women, beautifully dressed, and of gallant men--i talk their own foolish language--amusing themselves in this way, may have given pleasure to some, but not to those among whom i was born. in the days when these things were done every night at one part of the town, in another part the men were drinking, if they had any money, and the women and children were starving. and much they concerned themselves about dancing and laughing! laughing, indeed! my part of the town was where they starved. there was mighty little laughing among us, i can promise you. in their masquerading they had naturally, as if it was a part of the life they represented, assumed, as i have said, the old expression of eagerness, as if there was always something wanting. and yet, i say, they laughed with each other. in the unreasonable, illogical way of the past, although everybody always wanted everything for himself, and tried to overreach his neighbor, it was the custom to pretend that nobody wanted anything, but that everybody trusted his friend, and that everybody lived for the sole purpose of helping other people. therefore, they shook hands continually, and grinned at each other when they met, as if they were pleased to meet and--. well, the hypocrisies of the past were as ridiculous as its selfishness was base. but three of the party sat apart in the picture gallery. they were christine and the two cousins, mildred and jack carera. they were talking seriously and gravely. "it comes, then," said jack, "to this: that to all of us the present has grown to be utterly hateful, and to one or two of us intolerable." "intolerable!" the other two repeated. "we are resolved, for our own selves at least, that we will have no more of it, if we can help it. are we not? but, cousin mildred, let us remember that we are only three. perhaps, among our friends in the museum, there may be half a dozen more who have learned to feel as strongly as ourselves. is half a dozen a party large enough to effect a revolution? remember, it is useless to think of remonstrance or petition with the college. no king, council, or parliament in the past was ever half so autocratic as the college of physicians. "i used to read," he went on, "ages ago, about the domination of priests. i don't think any rule of priests was ever half so intolerant or so thorough as the rule of the physicians. they have not only deprived us of the right of thought, but also of the power of thought. the poor people cannot think. it is a truly desperate state of things. a few years more and we, too, shall sink into the same awful slough--" "some of us were in it already, but christine pulled us out," said mildred. "shall we ever get another chance of getting out?" jack asked. "i think not." "well, jack, go on." "as for these evening meetings of ours, you may be very sure that they will be found out before long, and that they will be stopped. do you think that grout--grout!--will suffer his beloved invention of the common dress to be trampled on? do you imagine that grout will suffer the revival of the old forms of society?" "oh," christine replied, "if we could convert dr. grout!" "another danger," said jack, "is, that we may all get tired of these meetings. you see, they are not the real thing. formerly, the evening followed the day; it was the feast after the fight. where is now the fight? and all the dancing, courting, pretty speeches, and tender looks, meant only the fore-words of love in earnest. now, are we ready again for love in earnest? can the men once more worship the women upon whom they have gazed so long unmoved? if so, we must brave the college and face the consequences. i know of two people only who are at present so much in earnest as to brave the college. they are christine and myself." he took the girl's hand and kissed it. "you may add one more, jack," said mildred. "if you go away with christine, take me with you; for the present is more intolerable than any possible future." "that makes three, then. there may be more. geoffrey and dorothy are never tired of whispering and billing. perhaps they, too, are strong enough to throw off the old terrors and to join us. but we shall see." "i think," said mildred, "it might depend partly on how the case is put before them. if you made them see very clearly the miseries of their present life, and made them yearn ardently for the things which they have only just remembered, some of them might follow, at all costs. but for most the college and what it holds would prove too much." "yet you yourself--and christine--" "as for me, it seems as if i remember more than anybody because i think of the sorrows of the past. i cannot tell now how i ever came to forget those sorrows. and they are now grown so dear to me, that for the very fear of losing them again, i would give up the gift of the college and go with you. as for christine, she has never known at all the dread which they now pretend used to fill all our minds and poisoned all our lives. how, then, should she hesitate? besides, she loves you, jack--and that is enough." "quite enough," said christine, smiling. "if you remember everything," jack went on, gravely, "you remember, mildred, that there was something in life besides play and society. in a corner of your father's park, for instance, there was an old gray building, with a small tower and a peal of bells. the place stood in a square enclosure, in which were an old broken cross, an ancient yew-tree, two or three head-stones, and the graves of buried villagers. you remember that place, mildred? you and i have often played in that ground; on weekdays we have prowled about the old building and read the monuments on the walls; on sundays we used to sit there with all the people. do you remember?" mildred clasped her hands. "how could i ever forget?" she cried. "how could any of us forget?" "because grout robbed you of your memory, my cousin. he could not rob mine." "alas!" she lamented, "how can we ever get that back again?" "by memory, mildred. it will come back presently. think of that, and you will be less afraid to come with us. if that was able to comfort the world formerly when the world was full of life and joy and needed so little comfort, what should it not do for you now, when the world is so dull and dismal, and the awful present is so long that it seems never to have had a beginning, just as it promises never to have an end. courage, cousin mildred. "and now," he went on, after a pause, "for my plan. my ship is bound for any port to which the college may despatch her. she must sail in about four or five weeks. i shall take you both on board. christine will be my wife--you shall be our companion. perhaps one or two more may go with us. we shall take certain things that we shall want. i can procure all these without the least suspicion, and we shall sail to an island of which i know, where the air is always warm and the soil is fruitful. there the sailors shall land us and shall sail away, unless they please to join us. and there we will live out our allotted lives, without asking anything of the college. the revival of that lost part of your memory, mildred, will serve you in place of what they could have given you. you agree? well, that is settled, then. let us go back." * * * * * but, as you shall see, this plan was never carried out. when all went away that evening, mildred remained behind. "christine," she said, "i have something to tell you. take me somewhere--to some dark place--where we can whisper." one might as well have talked at the top of his voice, just where they were, for any chance of being heard; but guilt made the woman tremble. "come into the picture gallery," said christine, leading the way. "no one can hear what we say there. my dear, in the old days when people were going to conspire they always began by going to dark galleries, vaults, and secret places. this is quite delightful. i feel like a conspirator." "don't laugh at me, dear," said mildred; "for, indeed, when you have heard what i have to say, you will feel very much more like a conspirator." the room was in darkness, but for the moonlight which poured in through the windows of one side, and made queer work with the pictures on which it fell. at the end the moonlight shone through the door, hardly ever used, which led from the gallery into the garden of the college beyond. "what is that?" mildred caught christine by the hand. "it is the door leading into the college gardens. how came it open?" "have you a key?" "i suppose there is a key on the old rusty bunch hanging up in the museum, but i do not know--i have never tried the keys. who could have opened it?" christine walked down the gallery hastily, mildred following. the door was standing wide open. "who has done this?" asked christine, again. "i cannot tell who could have opened the door, or why. it has never been opened before." mildred shuddered. "it is thrown open for some mischief," she said; "we shall find out soon enough by whom." then they looked out through the door into the garden of the college. the door faced a semicircular lawn run wild with rank grass never shorn; behind the lawn were trees; and the moonlight lay on all. suddenly the girls caught hands and shrank back into the door-way, for a tall form emerged from the trees and appeared upon the lawn, where he walked with hanging head and hands clasped behind his back. "it is the arch physician!" christine whispered. "it is harry linister," mildred murmured. then they retreated within and shut the door noiselessly; but they could not lock or fasten it. "i can see that part of the garden from a window in the library," said christine. "he walks there every morning and every evening. he is always alone. he always hangs his head, and he always looks fit to cry for trouble. what is the good of being arch physician, if you cannot have things done as you want?" "my dear," said mildred, "i am afraid you do not quite understand. in the old days--i mean not quite the dear old days, but in the time when people still discussed things and we had not been robbed of memory and of understanding--it was very well known that the arch physician was out-voted in the college by grout and his party." "by doctor grout?" "my dear, grout was never a doctor. he only calls himself doctor. i remember when grout was an ignorant man taken into professor linister's laboratory to wash up the pots and bottles. he was thin, just as he is now--a short, dark, and sour-faced man, with bright eyes. oh, a clever man, i dare say, but ignorant, and full of hatred for the class of culture and refinement. it was grout who led the party which took away land and wealth from individuals and transferred all to the state. it was grout who ordered the massacre of the old. it was grout who invented the horrible cruelty of the common dress. it was grout who made the college what it is--not what it was meant to be. it was originally the guardian of life and health. it has become the tyrant of the people. it has destroyed everything--everything that makes life possible--and it tells the people to be happy because they live. it is grout--grout!--who has done this. not the arch physician. not harry linister." "why do you say 'harry linister,' mildred?" "my dear, i think that of all women living i have the greatest cause to hate the great discovery, because it robbed me of my lover." "tell me how, dear." "i told you, christine, that the revival of the past was the revival of sorrows that i would never again forget. listen, then, and i will tell you what they were. when the great discovery was announced, harry linister was already a man well known in science, christine; but he was also well known in society as well. science did not prevent him from falling in love. and he fell in love with--me. yes--with me. we met that fatal evening at the royal institution, and we arranged, before the lecture, where we should meet after the lecture. my dear, i knew very well what he was going to say; and--oh, my poor heart!--how happy i was to think of it! there was nobody in london more clever, more handsome, and more promising than harry. he was rich, if that mattered anything to me; he was already a fellow of the royal society, for some great discoveries he had made; everybody said that a splendid career was before him--and he loved me, christine." "well?" "well, the news of the great discovery carried him out of himself. he forgot his love--and me--and everything. when his eyes fell upon me again, i know not how long after, i was in the hideous common dress, and he no more recognized me than a stranger would recognize one out of a herd of sheep." "how could he forget? do you think that jack could ever forget me?" "i am sure he will not, at any rate. now, christine, i am going to try something serious. i am going to try to convert the arch physician himself!" "mildred!" "why not? he is still a man, i suppose. nobody ever thought that grout was a man; but harry linister was once a man, and should be still. and if he have a memory as well as eyes, why--then--" she sighed. "but that would be too much, indeed, to hope." "what if you win him, mildred?" "why, child, he used to love me. is not that enough? besides, he _knows the great secret_. if we have him with us, we have also with us all the people whom we can shake, push, or prick out of their present miserable apathy. why did we ever agree to the stupid work day by day? we began by fighting for the wealth, and those who survived enjoyed it. why did we not go on fighting? why did we consent to wear this hideous dress? why did we consent to be robbed of our intelligence, and to be reduced to the condition of sheep? all because the college had the great secret, and they made the people think that to forego that one advantage was worse than all other evils that could happen to them. it was grout--the villany of grout--that did it. now, if we can by any persuasion draw the arch physician over to ourselves, we win the cause for all those who join us, because they will lose nothing." "how will you win him, mildred?" "child, you are young; you do not know the history of delilah, of the sirens, of circe, of cleopatra, of vivien, of a thousand fair ladies who have witched away the senses of great men, so that they have become as wax in the hands of their conquerors. poor harry! his heart was not always as hard as stone, nor was it always as heavy as lead. i would witch him, if i could, for his own happiness, poor lad!--and for mine as well. let him only come with us, bringing the precious secret, and we are safe!" * * * * * it has been observed that many hard things were said concerning me--grout--and that i have, nevertheless, written them down. first the things are all true, and i rejoice to think of the part that i have always played in the conduct of the people since the great discovery enabled me to obtain a share in that conduct. next, it may be asked how i became possessed of this information. that you shall presently understand. all that i have done in my public capacity--as for private life, i never had any, except that one goes into a private room for sleep--has been for the advancement of humanity. in order to effect this advance with the greater ease, i found it necessary to get rid of useless hands--therefore the old were sacrificed; to adopt one common standard in everything, so that there should be the same hours of work for all, the same food both in quantity and quality, the same dress, and the same housing. as by far the greater number belong to what were formerly known as the lower classes, everything has been a gain for them. now, a gain for the majority is a gain for humanity. as for the abolition of disturbing emotions, such as love, jealousy, ambition, study, learning, and the like, the loss of them is, of course, pure gain. in short, i willingly set down all that may be or has been said against myself, being quite satisfied to let the truth speak for itself. i have now to tell of the daring attempt made upon the fidelity of the chief--the arch physician himself. chapter vi. the arch physician. the arch physician generally walked in the college gardens for an hour or so every forenoon. they are very large and spacious gardens, including plantations of trees, orchards, ferneries, lawns, flower-beds, and shrubberies. in one corner is a certain portion which, having been left entirely alone by the gardeners, has long since become like a tangled coppice, rather than a garden, covered with oaks and elms and all kinds of trees, and overgrown with thick underwoods. it was in this wild and secluded part that dr. linister daily walked. it lay conveniently at the back of his own residence, and adjoining the museum and picture gallery. no one came here except himself, and but for the beaten path which his footsteps had made in their daily walk, the place would have become entirely overgrown. as it was, there were thick growths of holly and of yew; tall hawthorn-trees, wild roses spreading about among brambles; ferns grew tall in the shade, and under the great trees there was a deep shadow even on the brightest day. in this neglected wood there were creatures of all kinds--rabbits, squirrels, snakes, moles, badgers, weasels, and stoats. there were also birds of all kinds in the wood, and in the stream that ran through the place there were otters. in this solitary place dr. linister walked every day and meditated. the wildness and the solitude pleased and soothed him. i have already explained that he had always, from the outset, been most strongly opposed to the policy of the majority, and that he was never free from a certain melancholy. perhaps he meditated on the world as he would have made it, had he been able to have his own way. * * * * * i have heard that much was said among the rebels about my conduct during these events, as wanting in gratitude. in the first place, if it is at all necessary for me to defend my conduct, let me point out that my duty to the authority of the house must come before everything--certainly before the claims of private gratitude. in the second place, i owe no gratitude at all to dr. linister, or to anybody. i have made myself. whatever i have done, alone i have done it, and unaided. dr. linister, it is very true, received me into his laboratory as bottle-washer and servant. very good. he paid me my wages, and i did his work for him. much room for gratitude there. he looked for the proper discharge of the work, and i looked for the regular payment of the wages. where does the gratitude come in? he next taught me the elements of science. to be sure, he wanted the simpler part of his experiments conducted by a skilled, not an ignorant, hand. therefore he taught me those elements. the better skilled the hand, the more he could depend upon the successful conduct of his research. therefore, when he found that he could depend upon my eye and hand, he taught me more, and encouraged me to work on my own account, and gave me the best books to read. very good. all for his own purposes. what happened next? presently, grout the bottle-washer became so important in the laboratory that he became grout the assistant, or demonstrator; and another bottle-washer was appointed--a worthy creature who still performs that useful function, and desires nothing more than to wash the bottles truly and thoroughly. next, grout became known outside the laboratory; many interesting and important discoveries were made by grout; then grout became too big a man to be any longer dr. linister's assistant; he had his own laboratory; grout entered upon his own field of research. this was a practical field, and one in which he quickly surpassed all others. remember that dr. linister never claimed, or looked for, gratitude. he was much too wise a man. on all occasions, when it was becoming in him, he spoke in the highest terms of his former assistant's scientific achievements. there was, in fact, no question of gratitude at all. as for personal friendship, the association of years, the bond of union, or work in common--these are mere phrases, the worn-out old phrases of the vanished past. besides, there never was any personal friendship. quite the contrary. dr. linister was never able to forget that in the old time i had been the servant and he the master. where equality has been so long established, the continual reminder of former inequality is galling. dr. linister, indeed, was always antipathetic from the beginning. except over a research, we could have nothing in common. in the old days he was what they called a gentleman; he was also a scholar; he used to play music and write verses; he would act and dance and sing, and do all kinds of things; he was one of those men who always wanted to do everything that other men can do, and to do it as well as other men could do it. so that, though he was a great scientific worker, he spent half his day at his club, or at his sports, or in society; that is to say, with the women--and mostly, i think, among the games and amusements of the women. there was every day, i remember, a great running to and fro of page-boys with notes from them; and he was always ready to leave any, even the most important work, just to run after a woman's caprice. as for me, i never had any school education at all; i never had anything to do with society; the sight of a woman always filled me with contempt for the man who could waste time in running after a creature who knew no science, never cared for any, and was so wont to disfigure her natural figure by the way she crowded on her misshapen clothes that no one could guess what it was like beneath them. as for music, art, and the rest of it, i never asked so much as what they meant; after i began to make my way, i had the laboratory for work, play, and all. when, again, it came to the time when the property question became acute, and we attempted to solve it by a civil war, although dr. linister adhered to his determination not to leave his laboratory, his sympathies were always with individualism. nay, he never disguised his opinion, but was accustomed regularly to set it forth at our council meetings in the house of life--that the abolition of property and the establishment of the perfect socialism were the greatest blows ever inflicted upon civilization. it is not, however, civilization which the college advances, but science--which is a very different thing--and the scientific end of humanity. the gradual extinction of all the emotions--love, jealousy, ambition, rivalry--dr. linister maintained, made life so poor a thing that painless extinction would be the very best thing possible for the whole race. it is useless to point out, to one so prejudiced, the enormous advantage gained in securing constant tranquillity of mind. he was even, sometimes, an advocate for the revival of fighting--fighting, the old barbarous way of settling disputes, in which lives were thrown away by thousands on a single field. nor would he ever agree with the majority of the house that the only end of humanity is mere existence, at which science should always aim, prolonged without exertion, thought, care, or emotion of any kind. in fact, according to the contention of my followers and myself, the triumph of science is as follows: the philosopher finds a creature, extremely short-lived at the best, liable to every kind of disease and suffering from external causes, torn to pieces from within by all kinds of conflicting emotions; a creature most eager and insatiate of appetite, fiery and impetuous, quarrelsome and murderous, most difficult to drive or lead, guided only by its own selfish desires, tormented by intellectual doubts and questions which can never be answered. the philosopher works upon this creature until he has moulded it into another so different that no one would perceive any likeness to the original creature. the new creature is immortal; it is free from disease or the possibility of disease; it has no emotions, no desires, and no intellectual restlessness. it breathes, eats, sleeps. such is my idea of science triumphant. it was never dr. linister's. in manners, the arch physician preserved the old manners of courtesy and deference which were the fashion when he was brought up. his special work had been for many years the study of the so-called incurable diseases, such as asthma, gout, rheumatism, and so forth. for my own part, my mind, since i became suffragan, has always been occupied with administration, having steadily in view the triumph of science. i have, with this intention, made the social equality real and complete from every point; i have also endeavored to simplify labor, to enlarge the production and the distribution of food by mechanical means, and thus to decrease the necessity for thought, contrivance, and the exercise of ingenuity. most of our work is so subdivided that no one understands more than the little part of it which occupies him for four hours every day. workmen who know the whole process are impossible. they ask, they inquire, they want to improve; when their daily task is but a bit of mechanical drudgery, they do it without thought and they come away. since labor is necessary, let it be as mechanical as possible, so that the head may not be in the least concerned with the work of the hand. in this--my view of things--the arch physician could never be brought to acquiesce. had he been able to have his own way, the whole of my magnificent scheme would have been long ago destroyed and rendered impossible. i suppose it was this impossibility of having his own way which afflicted him with so profound a melancholy. his face was always sad, because he could never reconcile himself to the doctrine of human equality, without which the perfection of man is impossible. it will be seen, in short, that the arch physician and myself held hardly a single view in common. but he had been elected to his post, and i to mine. we shared between us the great secret; and if my views prevailed in our council, it was due either to my own power of impressing my views upon my colleagues, or to the truth and justice of those views. but as to gratitude, there was no room or cause for any. * * * * * as, then, dr. linister walked to and fro upon the open space outside the picture gallery, his hands behind him, his head hanging, and his thoughts i know not where, he became conscious of something that was out of the usual order. when one lives as we live, one day following another, each like the one which went before, little departures from the accustomed order disturb the mind. for many, many years the doctor had not given a thought to the picture gallery or to the door. yet, because it stood open, and he had been accustomed to see it closed, he was disturbed, and presently lifted his head and discovered the cause. the door stood open. why? what was the door? then he remembered what it was, and whither it led. it opened into the ancient picture gallery, the very existence of which he had forgotten, though every day he saw the door and the building itself. the picture gallery! it was full of the pictures painted in the last few years before the great discovery; that is to say, it was full of the life which he had long ago lived--nay, he lived it still. as he stood hesitating without the door, that life came back to him with a strange yearning and sinking of the heart. he had never, you see, ceased to regret it, nor had he ever forgotten it. and now he was tempted to look upon it again. as well might a monk in the old times look upon a picture of fair women years after he had forsworn love. he hesitated, his knees trembling, for merely thinking what was within. then he yielded to the temptation, and went into the gallery. the morning sun streamed through the window and lay upon the floor; the motes danced in the sunshine; the gallery was quite empty; but on the walls hung, one above the other, five or six in each row, the pictures of the past. in some the pigments were faded; crimson was pale-pink; green was gray; red was brown; but the figures were there, and the life which he had lost once more flashed upon his brain. he saw the women whom once he had loved so much; they were lying on soft couches, gazing upon him with eyes which made his heart to beat and his whole frame to tremble; they were dancing; they were in boats, dressed in dainty summer costume; they were playing lawn-tennis; they were in drawing-rooms, on horseback, on lawns, in gardens; they were being wooed by their lovers. what more? they were painted in fancy costumes, ancient costumes, and even with no costume at all. and the more he looked, the more his cheek glowed and his heart beat. where had they gone--the women of his youth? suddenly he heard the tinkling of a musical instrument. it was a thing they used to call a zither. he started, as one awakened out of a dream. then he heard a voice singing; and it sang the same song he had heard that night five or six weeks ago--his own song: "the girls they laugh, the girls they cry, 'what shall their guerdon be?-- alas! that some must fall and die!-- bring forth our gauds to see. 'twere all too slight, give what we might.' up spoke a soldier tall: 'oh! love is worth the whole broad earth; oh! love is worth the whole broad earth; give that, you give us all!'" this time, however, it was another voice--a fuller and richer voice--which sang those words. dr. linister started again when the voice began. he changed color, and his cheek grew pale. "heavens!" he murmured. "are there phantoms in the air? what does it mean? this is the second time--my own song--the foolish old song--my own air--the foolish, tinkling air that they used to like! and the voice--i remember the voice--whose voice is it? i remember the voice--whose voice is it?" he looked round him again, at the pictures, as if to find among them the face he sought. the pictures showed all the life of the past; the ball-room with the dancers; the sports of the field; the drive in the afternoon, the ride in the morning; the bevy of girls; the soldiers and the sailors; the streets crowded with people; the vile slums and the picturesque blackguardism of the city--but not the face he wanted. then he left off looking for the singer, and began to think of the faces before him. "on every face," he said, "there is unsatisfied desire. yet they are the happier for that very dissatisfaction. yes--they are the happier." he paused before a painted group of street children; some were playing over the gutter; some were sitting on door-steps, carrying babies as big as themselves; one was sucking a piece of orange-peel picked up on the pavement; one was gnawing a crust. they were all ragged and half starved. "yet," said the arch physician, "they are happy. but we have no children now. in those days they could paint and draw--and we have lost the art. great heavens!" he cried, impatiently, "we have lost every art. cruel! cruel!" then from within there broke upon his ears a strain of music. it was so long since he had heard any music that at first it took away his breath. wonderful that a mere sound such as that of music should produce such an effect upon a man of science! "oh," he sighed, heavily, "we have even thrown away that! yet--where--where does the music come from? who plays it?" while he listened, carried away by the pictures and by the music and by his own thoughts to the past, his mind full of the past, it did not surprise him in the least that there came out from the door between the gallery and the museum a young lady belonging absolutely to the past. there was no touch of the present about her at all. she did not wear the regulation dress; she did not wear the flat cap. "it is," said dr. linister, "the face that belongs to the voice. i know it now. where did i see it last? to whom does it belong?" she stood for a few moments in the sunshine. behind her was a great picture all crimson and purple, a mass of flaming color, before which her tall and slight figure, dressed in a delicate stuff of soft creamy color, stood clearly outlined. the front of the dress--at least that part which covered the throat to the waist--was of some warmer color; there were flowers at her left shoulder; her hair was braided tightly round her head; round her neck was a ribbon with something hanging from it; she wore brown gloves, and carried a straw hat dangling in her hand. it was, perhaps, the sunshine which made her eyes so bright, her cheek so glowing, her rosy lips so quivering. she stood there, looking straight down the hall, as if she saw no one. dr. linister gazed and turned pale; his cheeks were so white that you might have thought him about to faint; he reeled and trembled. "good god!" he murmured, falling back upon the interjection of the past, "we have lost the beauty of women! oh, fools! fools! we have thrown all away--all--and for what?" then the girl came swiftly down the hall towards him. a smile of welcome was on her lips; a blush upon her cheek; her eyes looked up and dropped again, and again looked up and once more dropped. then she stopped before him and held out both her hands. "harry linister!" she cried, as if surprised, and with a little laugh, "how long is it since last we met?" chapter vii. the fidelity of john lax. that morning, while i was in my private laboratory, idly turning over certain notes on experiments conducted for the artificial manufacture of food, i was interrupted by a knock at the door. my visitor was the porter of the house of life, our most trusted servant, john lax. his duty it was to sleep in the house--his chamber being that ancient room over the south porch--to inspect the furnaces and laboratories after the work of the day was closed, and at all times to keep an eye upon the fabric itself, so that it should in no way fall out of repair. his orders were also to kill any strangers who might try to force their way into the house on any pretence whatever. he was a stout, sturdy fellow, vigorous and strong, though the great discovery had found him nearly forty years of age; his hair, though it had gone bald on the top, was still thick on the sides, and gave him a terrifying appearance under his cap of scarlet and gold. he carried a great halberd as a wand of office, and his coat and cap matched each other for color and for gold embroidery. save as representing the authority of the house and college, i would never have allowed such a splendid appearance to any one. "what have you come to tell me, john?" i asked. i may explain that i had always found john lax useful in keeping me informed as to the internal condition of the college and its assistants--what was said and debated--what opinions were advanced, by what men, and so forth. "in the college itself, suffragan," he said, "and in the house, things are mighty dull and quiet. blessed if a little discontent or a mutiny, or something, wouldn't be worth having, just to shake up the lot. there's not even a grumbler left. a little rising and a few heads broken, and we should settle down again, quiet and contented again." "don't talk like a fool, john." "well, suffragan, you like to hear all that goes on. i wonder what you'll say to what i'm going to tell you now?" "go on, john. what is it?" "it's irregular, suffragan, but your honor is above the law; and, before beginning a long story--mind you, a most important story it is--" "what is it about? who's in it?" "lots of the people are in it. they don't count. he's in it now--come!" "he?" john lax had pointed over his shoulder so clearly in the direction of the arch physician's residence that i could not but understand. yet i pretended. "he, john? who is he?" "the arch physician is in it. there! now, suffragan, bring out that bottle and a glass, and i can then tell you the story, without fear of ill consequences to my throat that was once delicate." i gave him the bottle and a glass, and, after drinking a tumblerful of whiskey (forbidden to the people) he began. certain reasons, he said, had made him suspicious as to what went on at night in the museum during the last few weeks. the lights were up until late at night. once he tried the doors, and found that they were locked. he heard the playing of music within, and the sound of many voices. now, there is, as i told john lax at this point, no law against the assemblage of the people, nor against their sitting up, or singing and playing together. i had, to be sure, hoped that they had long ceased to desire to meet together, and had quite forgotten how to make music. he remembered, john lax went on to say, that there was a door leading into the picture gallery from the college garden--a door of which he held the key. he opened this door quietly, and then, night after night, he crept into the picture gallery, and watched what went on through the door, which opened upon the museum. he had found, in fact, a place close by the door, where, hidden behind a group of statuary, he could watch and listen in almost perfect security. i then heard, to my amazement, how a small company of the people were every night carrying on a revival of the past; not with the laudable intention of disgusting themselves with the horrors of that time, but exactly the contrary. it was only the pleasant side of that time--the evening life of the rich and careless--which these foolish persons reproduced. they had, in fact, gone so far, john lax told me, as to fall in love with that time, to deride the present, and to pour abuse upon my name--mine--as the supposed chief author of the social equality. this was very well for a beginning. this was a startling awakener out of a fool's paradise. true, the company was small; they might be easily dispersed or isolated; means might be found to terrify them into submission. yet it gave me a rude shock. "i've had my suspicions," john lax continued, "ever since one morning when i looked into the museum and see that young gal dressed up and carrying on before the looking-glass, more like--well, more like an actress at the pav, as they used to make 'em, than like a decent woman. but now there's more." he stopped and whispered, hoarsely, "suffragan, i've just come from a little turn about the garden. outside the picture gallery, where there's a bit o' turf and a lot of trees all standin' around, there's a very curious sight to see this minute; and if you'll get up and go along o' me, suffragan, you'll be pleased--you will, indeed--astonished and pleased you will be." i obeyed. i arose and followed this zealous servant. he led me to a part of the garden which i did not know; it was the place of which i have spoken. here, amid a great thick growth of underwood, he took me into the ruins of an old garden or tool-house, built of wood, but the planks were decaying and were starting apart. "stand there, and look and listen," whispered john lax, grinning. the open planks commanded a view of a semicircular lawn, where the neglected grass had grown thick and rank. almost under my eyes there was sitting upon a fallen trunk a woman, fantastically dressed--against the rules--and at her feet lay none other than the arch physician himself! then, indeed, i pricked up my ears and listened with all my might. "are we dreaming, mildred?" he murmured. "are we dreaming?" "no, harry; we have all been dreaming for a long, long time--never mind how long. just now we are not dreaming, we are truly awake. you are my old playfellow, and i am your old sweetheart," she said, with a little blush. "tell me what you are doing--always in your laboratory. i suppose, always finding some new secrets. does it make you any happier, harry, to be always finding something new?" "it is the only thing that makes life endurable--to discover the secrets of nature. for what other purpose do we live?" "then, harry, for what purpose do the rest of us live, who do not investigate those secrets? can women be happy in no other way? we do not prosecute any kind of research, you know." "happy? are we in the present or the past, mildred?" he looked about him, as if expecting to see the figures of the pictures in the gallery walking about upon the grass. "just now, harry, we are in the past. we are back--we two together--in the glorious and beautiful past, where everything was delightful. outside this place there is the horrible present. you have made the present for us, and therefore you ought to know what it is. let me look at you, harry. why, the old look is coming back to your eyes. take off that black gown, harry, and throw it away, while you are with me. so. you are now my old friend again, and we can talk. you are no longer the president of the holy college, the terrible and venerable arch physician, the guardian of the house of life. you are plain harry linister again. tell me, then, harry, are you happy in this beautiful present that you have made?" "no, mildred; i am never happy." "then why not unmake the present? why not return to the past?" "it is impossible. we might go back to the past for a little; but it would become intolerable again, as it did before. formerly there was no time for any of the fleeting things of life to lose their rapture. all things were enjoyed for a moment, and then vanished. now"--he sighed wearily--"they last--they last. so that there is nothing left for us but the finding of new secrets. and for you, mildred?" "i have been in a dream," she replied. "oh, a long, long nightmare, that has never left me, day or night. i don't know how long it has lasted. but it has lifted at last, thank god!" the arch physician started and looked astonished. "it seems a long time," he said, "since i heard those words. i thought we had forgotten--" "it was a dream of no change, day after day. nothing happened. in the morning we worked; in the afternoon we rested; in the evening we took food; at night we slept. and the mind was dead. there were no books to read; there was nothing to talk about; there was nothing to hope. always the same work--a piece of work that nobody cared to do--a mechanical piece of work. always the same dress--the same hideous, horrible dress. we were all alike; there was nothing at all to distinguish us. the past seemed forgotten." "nothing can be ever forgotten," said dr. linister; "but it may be put away for a time." "oh, when i think of all that we had forgotten, it seems terrible! yet we lived--how could we live?--it was not life. no thought, no care, about anything. every one centred in himself, careless of his neighbor. why, i did not know so much as the occupants of the rooms next to my own. men looked on women, and women on men, without thought or emotion. love was dead--life was death? harry, it was a most dreadful dream. and in the night there used to come a terrible nightmare of nothingness! it was as if i floated alone in ether, far from the world or life, and could find nothing--nothing--for the mind to grasp or think of. and i woke at the point of madness. a dreadful dream! and yet we lived. rather than go back to that most terrible dream, i would--i would--" she clasped her forehead with her hand and looked about her with haggard eyes. "yes, yes," said dr. linister; "i ought to have guessed your sufferings--by my own. yet i have had my laboratory." "then i was shaken out of the dream by a girl--by christine. and now we are resolved--some of us--at all costs and hazards--yes, even if we are debarred from the great discovery--to--live--again--to live--again!" she repeated, slowly. "do you know, harry, what that means? to go back--to live again! only think what that means." he was silent. "have you forgotten, harry," she asked, softly, "what that means?" "no," he said. "i remember everything; but i am trying to understand. the accursed present is around and above me, like a horrible black fog. how can we lift it? how can we live again?" "some of us have found out a way. in the morning we put on the odious uniform, and do our allotted task among the poor wretches who are still in that bad dream of never-ending monotony. we sit among them, silent ourselves, trying to disguise the new light that has come back to our eyes, in the public hall. in the evening we come here, put on the old dresses, and live the old life." "it is wonderful," he said. "i knew all along that human nature would one day assert itself again. i told grout so. he has always been quite wrong!" "grout! what does grout know of civilized life? grout! why, he was your own bottle-washer--a common servant. he thought it was justice to reduce everybody to his own level, and happiness for them to remain there! grout! why, he has only one idea--to make us mere machines. oh, harry!" she said, reproach in her eyes, "you are arch physician, and you cannot alter things!" "no; i have the majority of the college against me." "am i looking well, harry, after all these years?" she suddenly changed her voice and manner and laughed, and turned her face to meet his. witch! abominable witch! "well, mildred, was it yesterday that i loved you? was the great discovery made only yesterday? oh, you look lovelier than ever!" "lovely means worthy of love, harry. but you have killed love." "no, no. love died. we did not kill love. why did the men cease to love the women? was it that they saw them every day, and so grew tired of them?" "perhaps it was because you took from us the things that might have kept love alive; music, art, literature, grace, culture, society--everything." "we did not take them. they died." "and then you dressed us all alike, in the most hideous costume ever invented." "it was grout's dress." "what is the good of being arch physician if one cannot have his own way?" harry sighed. "my place is in the laboratory," he said. "i experiment, and i discover. the suffragan administers. it has always been the rule. yet you live again, mildred. tell me more. i do not understand how you contrive to live again." "we have a little company of twenty or thirty, who meet together in the evening after the dinner is over. no one else ever comes to the museum. as soon as it is dark, you know very well, the people all creep home and go to bed; but my friends come here. it was christine who began it. she found or made the dresses for us; she beguiled us into forgetting the present and going back to the past. now we have succeeded in caring nothing at all about the present. we began by pretending. it is no longer pretence. the past lives again, and we hate the present. oh, we hate and loathe it!" "yes, yes. but how do you revive the past?" "we have dances. you used to dance very well formerly, my dear harry. that was before you walked every day in a grand procession, and took the highest place in the public hall. i wonder if you could dance again? nature's secrets are not so heavy that they would clog your feet, are they? we sing and play: the old music has been found, and we are beginning to play it properly again. we talk; we act little drawing-room plays; sometimes we draw or paint; and--oh, harry!--the men have begun again to make love--real, ardent love! all the dear old passions are reviving. we are always finding other poor creatures like ourselves, who were once ladies and gentlemen, and now are aimless and soulless; and we recruit them." "what will grout say when he finds it out?" "he can never make us go back to the present again. so far, i defy grout, harry." the arch physician sighed. "the old life!" he said; "the old life! i will confess, mildred, that i have never forgotten it--not for a day; and i have never ceased to regret that it was not continued." "grout pulled it to pieces; but we will revive it." "if it could be revived; but that is impossible." "nothing is impossible to you--nothing--to you. consider, harry," she whispered. "you have the secret." he started and changed color. "yes, yes," he said; "but what then?" "come and see the old life revived. come this evening; come, dear harry." she laid a hand upon his arm. "come, for auld lang syne. can the old emotions revive again, even in the breast of the arch physician?" his eyes met hers. he trembled--a sure sign that the old spirit was reviving in him. then he spoke in a kind of murmur: "i have been living alone so long--so long--that i thought there was nothing left but solitude forever. grout likes it. he will have it that loneliness belongs to the higher life." "come to us," she replied, her hand still on his arm, her eyes turned so as to look into his. ah, shameless witch! "we are not lonely; we talk; we exchange looks and smiles. we have begun again to practise the old arts; we have begun to read in each other's souls. old thoughts that we had long forgotten are pouring back into our minds; it is strange to find them there again. come, harry; forget the laboratory for a while, and come with us; but come without grout. the mere aspect of grout would cause all our innocent joys to take flight and vanish. come! be no more the sacred head of the holy college, but my dear old friend and companion, harry linister, who might have been but for the great discovery--but that is foolish. come, harry; come this evening." chapter viii. the arch traitor. i dismissed john lax, charging him with the most profound secrecy. i knew, and had known for a long time, that this man, formerly the avowed enemy of aristocrats, nourished an extraordinary hatred for the arch physician, and therefore i was certain that he would keep silence. i resolved that i would myself keep a watch, and, if possible, be present at the meeting of this evening. what would happen i knew not, nor could i tell what to do; there are no laws in our community to prevent such meetings. if the arch physician chooses to attend such a play-acting, how is he to be prevented? but i would myself watch. you shall hear how i was rewarded. dr. linister was, as usual, melancholy and preoccupied at supper. he said nothing of what he intended. as for me, i looked about the hall to see if there were any whom i could detect, from any unnatural restlessness, as members of this dangerous company; but i could see none, except the girl christine, whose vivacity might be allowed on the score of youth. the face of john lax, it is true, as he sat at the lowest place of our table, betokened an ill-suppressed joy and an eagerness quite interesting to one who understood the meaning of these emotions. poor john lax! never again shall we find one like unto him for zeal and strength and courage. i waited until half-past nine o'clock; then i sallied forth. it was a dark night and still. there was no moon; the sky was cloudy; no wind was in the air, and from time to time there were low rumblings of distant thunder. i made my way cautiously and noiselessly through the dark garden to the entrance of the picture gallery, which the faithful john lax had left open for me. i ventured, with every precaution, into the gallery. it seemed quite empty, but at the end there was a door opening into the museum, which poured a narrow stream of light straight down the middle of the gallery. i crept along the dark wall, and presently found myself at the end close to this door. and here i came upon the group of statuary of which john lax had told me where i could crouch and hide in perfect safety, unseen myself, yet able to see everything that went on within. i confess that even the revelations of john lax had not prepared me for the scene which met my eyes. there were thirty or forty men and women present; the room was lit up; there were flowers in vases set about; there was a musical instrument, at which one sat down and sang. when she had finished, everybody began to laugh and talk. then another sat down and began to play, and then they went out upon the floor two by two, in pairs, and began to twirl round like teetotums. as for their dresses, i never saw the like; for the women were dressed in frocks of silk--white, pink, cream-colored, trimmed with lace; with jewels on their arms and necks, and long white gloves, and flowers in their hair. in their hands they carried fans, and their dresses were low, exposing their necks, and so much of their arms as was not covered up with gloves. and they looked excited and eager. the expression which i had striven so long to impart to their faces, that of tranquillity, was gone. the old unhappy eagerness, with flashing eyes, flushed cheeks, and panting breath, was come back to them again. heavens! what could be done? as for the men, they wore a black-cloth dress--all alike--why, then, did they dislike the regulation blue flannel?--with a large white shirt-front and white ties and white gloves. and they, too, were full of the restless eagerness and excitement. so different were they all from the men and women whom i had observed day after day in the public hall, that i could remember not one except the girl christine, and--and--yes, among them there was none other than the arch physician himself, laughing, talking, dancing among the rest. i could see perfectly well through the open door, and i was quite certain that no one could see me; but i crouched lower behind the marble group when they began to come out two by two, and to talk together in the dark gallery. first came the girl christine and the sailor, jack carera. him at all events i remembered. they took each other's hands and began to kiss each other, and to talk the greatest nonsense imaginable. no one would ever believe that sane people could possibly talk such nonsense. then they went back and another pair came out, and went on in the same ridiculous fashion. one has been to a theatre in the old time and heard a couple of lovers talking nonsense on the stage; but never on any stage did i ever hear such false, extravagant, absurd stuff talked as i did when i lay hidden behind that group in marble. presently i listened with interest renewed, because the pair which came into the gallery was none other than the pair i had that morning watched in the garden--the arch physician and the woman he called mildred, though now i should hardly have known her, because she was so dressed up and disguised. she looked, indeed, a very splendid creature; not in the least like a plain woman. and this, i take it, was what these would-be great ladies desired--not to be taken as plain women. yet they were, in spite of their fine clothes, plain and simple women just as much as any wench of whitechapel in the old time. "harry," she said, "i thank you from my very heart for coming. now we shall have hope." "what hope?" he replied, "what hope? what can i do for you while the majority of the college continue to side with grout? what hope can i bring you?" "never mind the majority. consider, harry. you have the great secret. let us all go away together and found a new colony, where we will have no grout; and we will live our own lives. do you love me, harry?" "love you, mildred? oh"--he sighed deeply--"it is a stream that has been dammed up all these years!" "what keeps us here?" asked the girl. "it is that in your hands lies the great secret. our people would be afraid to go without it. if we have it, jack will take us to some island that he knows of across the seas. but we cannot go without the secret. you shall bring it with you." "when could we go?" he asked, whispering. "we could go at any time--in a day--in a week--when you please. oh, harry, will you indeed rescue us? will you come with us? some of us are resolved to go--secret or not. i am one of those. will you let me go--alone?" "is it impossible," he said, "that you should go without the secret?" "yes," she said; "the people would be afraid. but oh, to think of a new life, where we shall no longer be all the same, but different! every one shall have his own possessions again--whatever he can win; every one his own profession; the women shall dress as they please; we shall have art--and music--and poetry again. and--oh, harry!"--she leaned her head upon his shoulder--"we shall have love again. oh, to think of it! oh, to think of it! love once more! and with love, think of all the other things that will come back. _they must_ come back, harry--the old faith which formerly made us happy--" her voice choked, and she burst into tears. i crouched behind the statues, listening. what did she cry about? the old faith? she could have that if she wanted, i suppose, without crying over it. no law whatever against it. dr. linister said nothing, but i saw that he was shaking--actually shaking--and trembling all over. a most remarkable person! who would have believed that weakness so lamentable could lie behind so much science? "i yield," he said--"i yield, mildred. the present is so horrible that it absolves me even from the most solemn oath. love has been killed--we will revive it again. all the sweet and precious things that made life happy have been killed; art and learning and music, all have been killed--we will revive them. yes, i will go with you, my dear; and--since you cannot go without--i will bring the secret with me." "oh, harry! harry!" she flung herself into his arms. "you have made me more happy than words can tell. oh, you are mine--you are mine, and i am yours!" "as for the secret," he went on, "it belongs, if it is to be used at all, to all mankind. why did the college of physicians guard it in their own jealous keeping, save to make themselves into a mysterious and separate caste? must men always appoint sacred guardians of so-called mysteries which belong to all? my dear, since the great discovery, man has been sinking lower and lower. he can go very little lower now. you have been rescued from the appalling fate which grout calls the triumph of science. yes--yes--" he repeated, as if uncertain, "the secret belongs to all or none. let all have it and work out their destiny in freedom, or let none have it, and so let us go back to the old times, when such great things were done against the fearful odds of so short and uncertain a span. which would be the better?" "only come with us, my lover. oh, can a simple woman make you happy? come with us; but let our friends know--else they will not come with us--that whenever we go, we have the secret." "it belongs to all," he repeated. "come with me, then, mildred, to the house of life. you shall be the first to whom the secret shall be revealed. and you, if you please, shall tell it to all our friends. it is the secret, and that alone, which keeps up the authority of the college. come. it is dark; but i have a key to the north postern. come with me. in the beginning of this new life which lies before us, i will, if you wish, give the secret to all who share it. come, my love, my bride." he led her by the hand quickly down the picture gallery and out into the garden. i looked round. the silly folk in the museum were going on with their masquerade--laughing, singing, dancing. the girl christine ran in and out among them with bright eyes and eager looks. and the eyes of the sailor, jack carera, followed her everywhere. oh yes. i knew what those eyes meant--the old selfishness--the subjection of the woman. she was to be his property. and yet she seemed to like it. forever and anon she made some excuse to pass him, and touched his hand as she passed and smiled sweetly. i dare say that she was a beautiful girl--but beauty has nothing at all to do with the administration of the people. however, there was no time to be lost. the arch physician was going to betray the great secret. happily he would have to go all the way round to the north postern. there was time, if i was quick, to call witnesses, and to seize him in the very act. and then--the penalty. death! death! death! chapter ix. in the inner house. the house of life, you have already learned, is a great and venerable building. we build no such houses now. no one but those who belong to the holy college--viz., the arch physician, the suffragan, the fellows or physicians, and the assistants--are permitted to enter its doors or to witness the work that is carried on within these walls. it is, however, very well understood that this work concerns the prolongation of the vital forces first, the preservation of health next, and the enlargement of scientific truth generally. the house is, in fact, the great laboratory in which the fellows conduct those researches of which it is not permitted to speak outside. the prevention of disease, the cure of hereditary and hitherto incurable diseases, the continual lowering of the hours of labor, by new discoveries in chemistry and physics, are now the principal objects of these researches. when, in fact, we have discovered how to provide food chemically out of simple matter, and thereby abolish the necessity for cultivation, no more labor will be required, and humanity will have taken the last and greatest step of all--freedom from the necessity of toil. after that, there will be no more need for labor, none for thought, none for anxiety. at stated intervals food, chemically prepared, will be served out; between those intervals man will lie at rest--asleep, or in the torpor of unthinking rest. this will be, as i have said before, the triumph of science. the house, within, is as magnificent as it is without; that is to say, it is spacious even beyond our requirements, and lofty even beyond the wants of a laboratory. all day long the fellows and the assistants work at their tables. here is everything that science wants--furnaces, electric batteries, retorts, instruments of all kinds, and collections of everything that may be wanted. here--behind the inner house--is a great workshop where our glass vessels are made, where our instruments are manufactured and repaired. the college contains two or three hundred of assistants working in their various departments. these men, owing to the restlessness of their intellect, sometimes give trouble, either because they want to learn more than the fellows think sufficient for them, or because they invent something unexpected, or because they become dissatisfied with the tranquil conditions of their life. some of them from time to time have gone mad. some, who threatened more trouble, have been painlessly extinguished. within the house itself is the inner house, to enter which is forbidden, save to the arch physician, the suffragan, and the fellows. this place is a kind of house within a house. those who enter from the south porch see before them, more than half-way up the immense building, steps, upon which stands a high screen of wood-work. this screen, which is very ancient, protects the inner house from entrance or observation. it runs round the whole enclosure, and is most profusely adorned with carved-work representing all kinds of things. for my own part, i have never examined into the work, and i hardly know what it is that is here figured. what does it advance science to carve bunches of grapes (which everybody understands not to be grapes) in wood? all these things in the house of life--the carved wood, the carved stone, the carved marble, the lofty pillars, the painted windows--irritate and offend me. yet the arch physician, who loved to sit alone in the inner house, would contemplate these works of art with a kind of rapture. nay, he would wellnigh weep at thinking that now there are no longer any who can work in that useless fashion. as for what is within the inner house, i must needs speak with caution. suffice it, therefore, to say that round the sides of the screen are ancient carved seats under carved canopies, which are the seats of the fellows; and that on a raised stone platform, approached by several steps, is placed the coffer which contains the secret of the great discovery. the arch physician alone had the key of the coffer; he and his suffragan alone possessed the secret; the fellows were only called into the inner house when a council was held on some new discovery or some new adaptation of science to the wants of mankind. now, after overhearing the intended treason of the arch physician, and witnessing his degradation and fall, i made haste to act; for i plainly perceived that if the miraculous prolongation of the vital force should be allowed to pass out of our own hands, and to become public property, an end would at once be put to the order and discipline now so firmly established; the authority of the college would be trampled under foot; everybody would begin to live as they pleased; the old social conditions might be revived; and the old social inequalities would certainly begin again, because the strong would trample on the weak. this was, perhaps, what dr. linister designed. i remembered, now, how long it was before he could forget the old distinctions; nay, how impossible it was for him ever to bring himself to regard me, though his suffragan--whom he had formerly made his serving-man--as his equal. thinking of that time, and of those distinctions, strengthened my purpose. what i did and how i prevented the treachery will approve itself to all who have the best interests of mankind at heart. * * * * * the house of life after nightfall is very dark; the windows are high, for the most part narrow, and, though there are a great many of them, most are painted, so that even on a clear and bright day there is not more light than enough to carry on experiments, and, if i had my way, i would clear out all the painted glass. it is, of course, provided with the electric light; but this is seldom used except in the short and dark days of winter, when work is carried on after nightfall. in the evening the place is absolutely empty. john lax, the porter, occupies the south porch and keeps the keys. but there is another and smaller door in the north transept. it leads to a court of cloisters, the ancient use of which has long been forgotten, the key of which is kept by the arch physician himself. it was with this key--at this entrance--that he came into the house. he opened the door and closed it behind him. his footstep was not the only one; a lighter step was heard on the stones as well. in the silence of the place and time the closing of the door rumbled in the roof overhead like distant thunder, and the falling of the footsteps echoed along the walls of the great building. the two companions did not speak. a great many years ago, in the old times, there was a murder done here--a foul murder by a band of soldiers, who fell upon a bishop or saint or angel--i know not whom. the memory of the murder has survived the name of the victim and the very religion which he professed--it was, perhaps, that which was still maintained among the aristocracy when i was a boy. not only is the memory of the murder preserved, but john lax--who, soon after the great discovery, when we took over the building from the priests of the old religion, was appointed its porter and heard the old stories--would tell all those who chose to listen how the murderers came in at that small door and how the murder was committed on such a spot, the stones of which are to this day red with the blood of the murdered man. on the spot, however, stands now a great electrical battery. the arch physician, now about to betray his trust, led his companion, the woman mildred carera, by the hand past this place to the steps which lead to the inner house. they ascended those steps. standing there, still outside the inner house, dr. linister bade the woman turn round and look upon the great house of life. the clouds had dispersed, and the moonlight was now shining through the windows of the south, lighting up the colored glass, painting bright pictures and patterns upon the floor, and pouring white light through those windows, which are not painted, upon the clustered pillars and old monuments of the place. those who were now gathered in the inner house listened, holding their breath in silence. "mildred," said dr. linister, "long, long years ago we stood together upon this spot. it was after a service of praise and prayer to the god whom then the world worshipped. we came from town with a party to see this cathedral. when service was over, i scoffed at it in the light manner of the time, which questioned everything and scoffed at everything." "i remember, harry; and all through the service my mind was filled with--you." "i scoff no more, mildred. we have seen to what a depth men can sink when the hope of the future is taken from them. the memory of that service comes back to me, and seems to consecrate the place and the time. mildred," he said, after a pause--oh, the house was very silent--"this is a solemn and a sacred moment for us both. here, side by side, on the spot once sacred to the service of the god whom we have long forgotten, let us renew the vows which were interrupted so long ago. mildred, with all my heart, with all my strength, i love thee." "harry," she murmured, "i am thine--even to death itself." "even to death itself," he replied. "yes, if it comes to that. if the great discovery itself must be abandoned; if we find that only at that price can we regain the things we have lost." "it was grout who destroyed religion--not the great discovery," said the girl. we kept silence in the house, but we heard every word. and this was true, and my heart glowed to think how true it was. "nay, not grout, nor a thousand grouts. without the certainty of parting, religion droops and dies. there must be something not understood, something unknown, beyond our power of discovery, or the dependence which is the ground of religion dies away in man's heart. he who is immortal and commands the secrets of nature, so that he shall neither die, nor grow old, nor become feeble, nor fall into any disease, feels no necessity for any religion. this house, mildred, is the expression of religion at the time of man's greatest dependence. to the god in whom, short-lived, ignorant, full of disease, he trusted he built this splendid place, and put into it all the beauty that he could command of sculpture and of form. but it speaks no longer to the people for whom it was built. when the great discovery was made, it would surely have been better to have found out whither it was going to lead us before we consented to receive it." "surely--" said mildred, but the other interrupted her. "we did not understand; we were blind--we were blind." "yet--we live." "and you have just now told me how. remember the things that men said when the discovery was made. we were to advance continually; we were to scale heights hitherto unapproached; we were to achieve things hitherto unknown in art as well as in science. was it for the common meal, the common dress, the common toil, the vacant face, the lips that never smile, the eyes that never brighten, the tongue that never speaks, the heart that beats only for itself, that we gave up the things we had?" "we did not expect such an end, harry." "no; we had not the wit to expect it. come, mildred, i will give you the secret, and you may give it, if you please, to all the world. oh, i feel as if the centuries had fallen away! i am full of hope again. i am full of the old life once more; and, mildred--oh, my sweet!--i am full of love!" he stooped and kissed her on the lips. then he led her into the inner house. * * * * * now, just before dr. linister turned the key of the postern, the door of the south porch was softly closed, and a company of twenty men walked lightly and noiselessly, in slippers, up the nave of the house. arrived at the inner house, they ascended the steps and entered that dark chapel, every man making straight for his own seat and taking it without a word or a breath. this was the college of physicians hastily called by me, and gathered together to witness the great treachery of the chief. they sat there silent and breathless listening to their talk. * * * * * the secret was kept in a cipher, intelligible only to the two who then guarded it, in a fire-proof chest upon the stone table which was once the altar of the old faith. dr. linister stood before the chest, his key in his hand. "it would be better," he said, "if the new departure could be made without the secret. it would be far, far better if we could start again under the old conditions; but if they are afraid to go without the secret, why--" he unlocked the chest. then he paused again. "how many years have i been the guardian of this secret? mildred, when i think of the magnificent vistas which opened up before our eyes when this great discovery was made; when i think of the culture without bound or limit; the art in which the hand was always to grow more and more dexterous; the science which was to advance with gigantic strides--my child, i feel inclined to sink into the earth with shame, only to compare that dream with the awful, the terrible, the disgraceful reality! let us all go away. let us leave this place, and let us make a new beginning, with sadder minds, yet with this experience of the present to guide us and to keep us from committing worse follies. see, dear--here is the secret. the cipher in which it is written has a key which is in this paper. i place all in your hands. if accident should destroy me, you have the secret still for yourself and friends. use it well--use it better than we have used it. kiss me, mildred. oh, my dear!" then, as they lay in each other's arms, i turned on the electric light and discovered them. the chest stood open; the papers, cipher, key and all, were in the girl's hands; the arch physician was caught in the very act of his supreme treachery! and lo! the fellows of the holy college were in the inner house; every man in his place, every man looking on, and every man standing upright with eyes and gestures of scorn. "traitor!" they cried, one and all. john lax appeared at the door, halberd in hand. chapter x. the council in the house. "brothers of the holy college!" i cried, "you have beheld the crime--you are witnesses of the fact--you have actually seen the arch physician himself revealing the great secret, which none of yourselves, even of the college, hath been permitted to learn--the secret confined by the wisdom of the college to himself and to his suffragan." "we are witnesses," they cried, with one consent. to my great satisfaction, even those who were of dr. linister's party, and who voted with him against the administration and policy of the college, spoke, on this occasion, for the plain and undeniable truth. "what," i asked, "is the penalty when one of the least among us, even an assistant only, betrays to the people any of the secrets--even the least secret--of the work carried on in this house?" "it is death," they replied, with one voice. "it is death," i repeated, pointing to the arch physician. at such a moment, when nothing short of annihilation appeared in view, one would have expected from the guilty pair an appearance of the greatest consternation and dismay. on the contrary, the arch physician, with an insensibility--or a bravado--which one would not have expected of him, stood before us all, his arms folded, his eyes steady, his lips even smiling. beside him stood the girl, dressed in the ridiculous mummery of the nineteenth century, bowed down, her face in her hands. "it is i," she murmured--"it is i, harry, who have brought you to this. oh, forgive me! let us die together. since i have awakened out of the stupid torpor of the present--since we remembered the past--and love--let us die together; for i could not live without you." she knelt at his feet, and laid her head upon his arm. "my love," she said, "my lord and love! let me die with you." at this extraordinary spectacle i laughed aloud. love? i thought the old wives' tales of love and lordship were long, long since dead and forgotten. yet here was a man for the sake of a woman--actually because she wanted to go away and begin again the old pernicious life--breaking his most sacred vows; and here was a woman--for the sake of this man--actually and truly for his sake--asking for death--death with him! since, when they were both dead, there could be no more any feeling one for the other, why ask for death? what good could that do for either? "your wish," i said to this foolish woman, "shall be gratified, in case the judges of your case decide that your crime can be expiated by no less a penalty. fellows of the college, let this guilty pair be confined for the night, and to-morrow we will try them solemnly in the college court according to ancient custom." i know not how many years had elapsed since that court was held. the offences of the old time were for the most part against property--since there had been no property, there had been no crimes of this kind. another class of old offences consisted of violence rising out of quarrels; since almost all these quarrels originated in disputes about property--every man in the old time who had property was either a thief or the son of a thief, so that disputes were naturally incessant--there could be no longer any such quarrels or any such violence. a third class of crimes were caused by love, jealousy, and the like; these two had happily, as we believed, disappeared forever. the last class of crimes to vanish were those of mutiny. when the people grew gradually to understand that the welfare of all was the only rule of the governing body, and that selfishness, individualism, property, privilege, would no longer be permitted, they left off murmuring, and mutiny ceased. you have seen how orderly, how docile, how tranquil, is the life of the people as it has been ordered by the sacred college. alas! i thought that this order, this sheep-like freedom from thought, was going to be henceforth universal and undisturbed. our prisoners made no opposition. john lax, the porter, bearing his halberd of office, marched beside them. we closed in behind them, and in this order we led them to the strong room over the south porch, which is provided with bars and a lock. it is the sleeping-chamber of john lax, but for this night he was to remain on the watch below. then, as suffragan, i called a council of emergency in the inner house, taking the presidency in the absence of the arch physician. i told my brethren briefly what had happened; how my attention had been called to the fact that a company of the people, headed by the young girl called christine, had begun to assemble every night in the museum, there to put on clothes which belonged to the old time, and to masquerade in the manners, language, and amusements (so called) of that time; that this assemblage, which might have been innocent and even laudable if it led, as it should have done, to a detestation of the old times, had proved mischievous, because, strangely enough, it had exactly the opposite effect; that, in fact, everybody in the company had fallen into an ardent yearning after the past, and that all the bad features of that bad time--the social inequality, the poverty, the injustice--were carefully ignored. upon this, one of dr. linister's party arose, and begged permission to interrupt the suffragan. he wished to point out that memory was indestructible; that even if we succeeded in reducing mankind, as the suffragan wished, to be a mere breathing and feeding machine--the ultimate triumph of science--any one of these machines might be at any time electrified into a full and exact memory of the past; that, to the average man, the emotion of the past would always be incomparably preferable to the tranquillity of the present. what had just been done would be done again. i went on, after this interruption, to narrate how i set myself to watch, and presently saw the arch physician himself enter the museum; how he exchanged his gown for the costume in which the men disfigured themselves, play-acted, pretended, and masqueraded with them; danced with them, no external respect whatever being paid to his rank; and afterwards had certain love passages--actually love passages between the arch physician and a woman of the people!--which i overheard, and repeated as far as i could remember them. the rest my brethren of the college knew already; how i hastily summoned them, and led them into the inner house just before the arrival of the criminals. thereupon, without any attempt of dr. linister's friends to the contrary, it was resolved that the trial of the arch physician and his accomplices should be held in the morning. i next invited their attention to the behavior of the girl christine. she it was, i told them, who had instigated the whole of the business. a culpable curiosity it was, no doubt, that first led her to consider and study the ways of the ancient world; what should be the ways of the past to an honest and loyal person, satisfied with the wisdom which ruled the present? she read the old books, looked at the old pictures, and lived all day long in the old museum. there were many things which she could not understand; she wanted to understand these things; and she conceived a violent, unreasoning admiration for the old time, which appeared to this foolish girl to be a continual round of pleasure and excitement. therefore she gathered together a company of those who had belonged to the richer class in the days when property was permitted. she artfully awakened them out of their contentment, sowed the seeds of dissatisfaction among them, caused them to remember the past with a vehement longing to reproduce the worst part of it--namely, the manners and customs of the richer class--the people for whom the bulk of mankind toiled, so that the privileged few might have nothing to do but to feast, dance, sing, and make love. i asked the college, therefore, what should be done with such a girl, warning them that one penalty, and one only, would meet the case and render for the future such outbreaks impossible. again the physician who had spoken before rose up and remarked that such outbreaks were inevitable, because the memory is indestructible. "you have here," he said, "a return to the past, because a young girl, by reading the old books, has been able to stimulate the memory of those who were born in the past. other things may bring about the same result; a dream, the talking together of two former friends. let the girl alone. she has acted as we might have expected a young girl--the only young girl among us--to have acted. she has found that the past, which some of us have represented as full of woe and horror, had its pleasant side; she asks why that pleasant side could not be reproduced. i, myself, or any of us, might ask the same question. nay, it is well known that i protest--and always shall protest, my friends and i--against the theory of the suffragan. his triumph of science we consider horrible to the last degree. i, for one, shall never be satisfied until the present is wholly abolished, and until we have gone back to the good old system of individualism, and begun to encourage the people once more to cultivate the old happiness by the old methods of their own exertion." i replied that my own recollection of the old time was perfectly clear, and that there was nothing but unhappiness in it. as a child i lived in the street; i never had enough to eat; i was cuffed and kicked; i could never go to bed at night until my father, who always came home drunk, was asleep; the streets were full of miserable children like myself. where was the happiness described by my learned brother? where was the pleasant side? more i said, but it suffices to record that by a clear majority it was resolved to arrest the girl christine in the morning, and to try all three prisoners, as soon as the court could be prepared for them, according to ancient usage. early in the morning i sought an interview with the arch physician. i found him, with the woman mildred, sitting in the chamber over the porch. there was no look of terror, or even of dejection, on the face of either. rather there was an expression as of exaltation. yet they were actually going to die--to cease breathing--to lose consciousness! i told the prisoner that i desired to represent my own conduct in its true light. i reminded him that, with him, i was guardian of the holy secret. the power and authority of the college, i pointed out, were wholly dependent upon the preservation of that secret in its own hands. by divulging it to the people he would make them as independent of the physician as the great discovery itself had made them independent of the priest. the latter had, as he pretended, the keys of the after life. the former did actually hold those of the actual life. the authority of the physician gone, the people would proceed to divide among themselves, to split up into factions, to fight and quarrel, to hold private property, and in fact would speedily return to the old times, and all the work that we had accomplished would be destroyed. every man would have the knowledge of the secret for himself and his family. they would all begin to fight again--first for the family, next for the commune, and then for the tribe or nation. all this would have been brought about by his treachery had not i prevented it. "yes," he said, "doubtless you are quite right, grout." he spoke quite in the old manner, as if i had been still his servant in the old laboratory. it was not till afterwards that i remembered this, and became enraged to think of his arrogance. "we will not argue the matter. it is not worth while. you acted after your kind, and as i might have expected." again it was not until afterwards that i considered what he meant and was enraged. "when we allowed gentlehood to be destroyed, gentle manners, honor, dignity, and such old virtues went too. you acted--for yourself--very well, grout. have you anything more to say? as for us, we have gone back to the old times, this young lady and i--quite to the old, old times." he took her hand and kissed it, while his eyes met hers, and they were filled with a tenderness which amazed me. "this lady, grout," he said, "has done me the honor of accepting my hand. you will understand that no greater happiness could have befallen me. the rest that follows is of no importance--none--not the least. my dear, this is grout, formerly employed in my laboratory. unfortunately he has no experience of love, or of any of the arts or culture of the good old time; but a man of great intelligence. you can go, grout." chapter xi. the trial and sentence. i was greatly pleased with the honest zeal shown by john lax, the porter, on this occasion. when, after snatching three or four hours' sleep, i repaired to the house, i found that worthy creature polishing at a grindstone nothing less than a great, heavy execution axe, which had done service many times in the old, old days on tower hill, and had since peacefully reposed in the museum. "suffragan," he said, "i am making ready." his feet turned the treadle, and the wheel flew round, and the sparks showered from the blunt old weapon. he tried the edge with his finger. "'tis not so sharp as a razor," he said, "but 'twill serve." "john lax, methinks you anticipate the sentence of the court." "suffragan, with submission, it is death to divulge any secret of this house. it is death even for me, porter of the house, to tell them outside of any researches or experiments that i may observe in my service about the house. and if so great a penalty is pronounced against one who would reveal such trifles as i could divulge, what of the great secret itself?" "lax, you are a worthy man. know, therefore, that this secret once divulged, the authority of the college would vanish; and we, even the physicians themselves--to say nothing of the assistants, the bedells, and you yourself--would become no better than the common people. you do well to be zealous." john lax nodded his head. he was a taciturn man habitually; but now he became loquacious. he stopped the grindstone, laid down the axe, and rammed his hands into his pockets. "when i see them women dressed up like swells--" he began, grinning. "john, this kind of language belongs to the old days, when even speech was unequal." "no matter; you understand it. lord! sammy grout, the brewer's boy--we were both whitechapel pets; but i was an old 'un of five and thirty, while you were on'y beginning to walk the waste with a gal on your arm--p'r'aps--and a ha'penny fag in your mouth. hold on, now. it's like this--" what with the insolence of dr. linister, and the sight of the old dresses, and the sound of the old language, i myself was carried away. yes, i was once more sam grout; again i walked upon the pavement of the whitechapel road; again i was a boy in the great brewery of mile end road. "go on, john lax," i said, with condescension. "revive, if it is possible, something of the past. i give you full leave. but when you come to the present, forget not the reverence due to the suffragan." "right, guv'nor. well, then, it's like this. i see them men and women dressed up in the old fallals, and goin' on like i've seen 'em goin' on long ago with their insolence and their haw-haws--damn 'em--and all the old feelings came back to me, and i thought i was spoutin' again on a sunday mornin', and askin' my fellow-countrymen if they always meant to sit down and be slaves. and the memory came back to me--ah! proper it did--of a speech i made 'em one mornin' all about this french revolution. 'less 'ave our own revolution,' i sez, sez i. 'less bring out all the bloomin' kings and queens,' i sez, 'the dukes and markisses, the fat bishops and the lazy parsons. less do what the french did. less make 'em shorter by the 'ed,' i sez. that's what i said that mornin'. some of the people laughed, and some of 'em went away. there never was a lot more difficult to move than them whitechappellers. they'd listen--and then they'd go away. they'd too much fine speeches give 'em--that was the matter with 'em--too much. nothing never came of it. that night i was in the public havin' a drop, and we began to talk. there was a row, and a bit of a fight. but before we was fired out i up and said plain, for everybody to hear, that when it came to choppin' off their noble 'eds i'd be the man to do it--and joyful, i said. well now, sammy grout, you were in that public bar among that crowd--maybe you've forgotten it. but i remember you very well. you was standin' there, and you laughed about the choppin'. you've forgotten, sammy. think. it was a fine summer evenin': you weren't in church. come now--you can't say you ever went to church, sammy grout." "i never did. but go on, john lax. recall as much of the past as you wish, if it makes you love the present more. i would not say aught to diminish an honest zeal." "right, guv'nor. well, i never got that chance. there was no choppin' of 'eds at all. when we had to murder the old people, your honor would have it done scientifically; and there was as many old working-men killed off as swells, which was a thousand pities, an' made a cove's heart bleed. what i say is this. here we've got a return to the old times. quite unexpected it is. now we've got such a chance, which will never come again, let 'em just see how the old times worked. have a procession, with the executioner goin' before the criminals, his axe on his shoulder ready to begin. if you could only be sammy grout again--but that can't be, i'm afraid--what a day's outing you would have had to be sure! suffragan, let us show 'em how the old times worked. and let me be the executioner. i'll do it, i promise you, proper. i've got the old spirit upon me--ah! and the old strength, too--just as i had then. oh! it's too much!" he sat down and hugged the axe. i thought he would have kissed it. "it's too much! to think that the time would ever come when i should execute a swell--and that swell the arch physician himself. damn him! he's always looked as if everybody else was dirt beneath his feet." "i know not," i told him gently, "what may be the decision of the court. but, john lax, continue to grind your axe. i would not throw cold water on honest zeal. your strength, you say, is equal to your spirit. you will not flinch at the last moment. ah! we have some honest men left." the court was held that morning in the nave of the house itself. the judges, who were the whole college of physicians, sat in a semicircle; whereas the three prisoners stood in a row--the arch physician carrying himself with a haughty insolence which did not assist his chances: clinging to his arm, still in her silk dress, with her bracelets and chains, and her hair artfully arranged, was the woman called mildred. she looked once, hurriedly, at the row of judges, and then turned with a shudder--she found small comfort in those faces--to her lover, and laid her head upon his shoulder, while he supported her with his arm. the degradation and folly of the arch physician, apart from the question of his guilt, as shown in this behavior, were complete. beside mildred stood the girl christine. her face was flushed; her eyes were bright: she stood with clasped hands, looking steadily at the judges: she wore, instead of the regulation dress, a frock of white stuff, which she had found, i suppose, in the museum--as if open disobedience of our laws would prove a passport to favor. she had let her long hair fall upon her shoulders and down her back. perhaps she hoped to conquer her judges by her beauty--old time phrase! woman's beauty, indeed, to judges who know every bone and every muscle in woman's body, and can appreciate the nature of her intellect, as well as of her structure! woman's beauty! as if that could ever again move the world! behind the president's chair--i was the president--stood john lax, bearing his halberd of office. the doors of the house were closed: the usual sounds of laboratory work were silent: the assistants, who usually at this hour would have been engaged in research and experiment, were crowded outside the court. i have been told, since, that there were omitted at the trial many formalities which should have been observed at such a trial. for instance, there should have been a clerk or two to make notes of the proceedings: there should have been a formal indictment: and there should have been witnesses. but these are idle forms. the guilt of the prisoners was proved: we had seen it with our own eyes. we were both judges and witnesses. i was once, however, in the old days, charged (and fined) before a magistrate in bow street for assaulting a constable, and therefore i know something of how a criminal court should proceed. so, without any unnecessary formalities, i conducted the trial according to common sense. "what is your name?" i asked the arch physician. "harry linister--once m.d. of cambridge, and fellow of the royal society." "what are you by trade?" "physicist and arch physician of the holy college of the inner house." "we shall see how long you will be able to describe yourself by those titles. female prisoner--you in the middle--what is your name?" "i am the lady mildred carera, daughter of the earl of thordisá." "come--come--none of your ladyships and earls here. we are now all equal. you are plain mildred. and yours--you girl in the white frock? how dare you, either of you, appear before us in open violation of the rules?" "i am named christine," she replied. "i have put on the white frock because it is becoming." at this point i was interrupted by a whisper from john lax. "christine's friends," he said, "are gathering in the museum, and they are very noisy. they threaten to give trouble." "when the trial and execution are over," i told him, "arrest them every one. let them all be confined in the museum. to-morrow, or perhaps this afternoon, we will try them as well." the man grinned with satisfaction. had he known what a fatal mistake i was making, he would not have grinned. rather would his face have expressed the most dreadful horror. then the trial proceeded. "dr. linister," i said, "it is a very singular point in this case that we have not to ask you whether you plead 'guilty' or 'not guilty,' because we have all seen you with our own eyes engaged in the very act with which you are charged. you _are_ guilty." "i am," he replied, calmly. "your companion is also guilty. i saw her practising upon you those blandishments, or silly arts, by which women formerly lured men. we also saw her on the point of receiving from you the great secret, which must never be suffered to leave this building." "yes," she said, "if he is guilty, i am guilty as well." "as for you" (i turned to christine), "you have been so short a time in the world--only nineteen years or so--that to leave it will cause little pain to you. it is not as if you had taken root with all the years of life which the others have enjoyed. yet the court would fail in its duty did it not point out the enormity of your offence. you were allowed to grow up undisturbed in the old museum: you spent your time in developing a morbid curiosity into the past. you were so curious to see with your own eyes what it was to outward show, that you cast about to find among the tranquil and contented people some whose minds you might disturb and lead back to the restless old times. this was a most guilty breach of confidence. have you anything to say? do you confess?" "yes, i confess." "next, you, with this woman and a company who will also be brought to justice before long, began to assemble together, and to revive, with the assistance of books, pictures, dress, and music, a portion of the past. but what portion? was it the portion of the vast majority, full of disease, injustice, and starvation? did you show how the old times filled the houses with struggling needlewomen and men who refused to struggle any longer? did you show the poor and the unemployed? not at all. you showed the life of the rich and the idle. and so you revived a longing for what shall never--never--be permitted to return--the period of property and the reign of individualism. it was your crime to misrepresent the past, and to set forth the exception as the rule. this must be made impossible for the future. what have you to say, christine?" "nothing. i told you before. nothing. i have confessed. why keep on asking me?" she looked round the court with no apparent fear. i suppose it was because she was so young, and had not yet felt any apprehension of the fate which was now so near unto her. "dr. linister," i said, "before considering its sentence, the court will hear what you may have to say." "i have but little to say," he replied. "everybody in the college knows that i have always been opposed to the methods adopted by the suffragan and the college. during the last few days, however, i have been enabled to go back once more to the half-forgotten past, and have experienced once more the emotions of which you have robbed life. i have seen once more, after many, many years, the fighting passion, the passion of private rights, and"--his voice dropped to a whisper--"i have experienced once more the passion of love." he stooped and kissed the woman mildred on the forehead. "i regret that we did not succeed. had we not been caught, we should by this time have been beyond your power--the secret with us, to use or not, as we pleased--with a company strong enough to defy you, and with the old life again before us, such as we enjoyed before you robbed us of it. we should have welcomed the old life, even under the old conditions: we welcome, instead of it, the thing which, only to think of, makes your hearts almost to stop beating with fear and horror." he stopped. that was a speech likely to win indulgence from the court, was it not? i turned to the woman mildred. "and you?" i asked. "what have i to say? the present i loathe--i loathe--i loathe. i would not go back to it if you offered me instant release with that condition. i have found love. let me die--let me die--let me die!" she clung to her lover passionately, weeping and sobbing. he soothed her and caressed her. john lax, behind me, snorted. then i asked the girl christine what she wished to say. she laughed--she actually laughed. "oh!" she said, "in return for the past weeks, there is no punishment which i would not cheerfully endure. we have had--oh! the most delightful time. it has been like a dream. oh! cruel, horrid, wicked men! you found such a life in the old time, and you destroyed it; and what have you given us in return? you have made us all equal who were born unequal. go, look at the sad and heavy faces of the people. you have taken away everything, deliberately. you have destroyed all--all. you have left nothing worth living for. why, i am like mildred. i would not go back to the present again if i could! yes, for one thing i would--to try and raise a company of men--not sheep--and hound them on to storm this place, and to kill--yes, to kill"--the girl looked so dangerous that any thought of mercy was impossible--"every one who belongs to this accursed house of life!" here was a pretty outcome of study in the museum! here was a firebrand let loose among us straight from the bad old nineteenth century! and we had allowed this girl actually to grow up in our very midst. well, she finished, and stood trembling with rage, cheeks burning, eyes flashing--a very fury. i invited the court to retire to the inner house, and took their opinions one by one. they were unanimous on several points--first, that the position of things was most dangerous to the authority of the college and the safety of the people; next, that the punishment of death alone would meet the case; thirdly, that, in future, the museum, with the library and picture galleries, must be incorporated with the college itself, so that this danger of the possible awakening of memory should be removed. here, however, our unanimity ceased. for the fellow, of whom i have already spoken as having always followed the arch physician, arose and again insisted that what had happened to-day might very well happen again: that nothing was more uncertain in its action, or more indestructible, than human memory: so that, from time to time, we must look for the arising of some leader or prophet who would shake up the people and bring them out of their torpor to a state of discontent and yearning after the lost. wherefore he exhorted us to reconsider our administration, and to provide some safety-valve for the active spirits. as to the death of the three criminals, he would not, he could not, oppose it. he proposed, however, that the mode of death should be optional. so great a light of science as the arch physician had many secrets, and could doubtless procure himself sudden and painless death if he chose. let him have that choice for himself and his companions; and, as regards the girl, let her be cast into a deep sleep, and then painlessly smothered by gas, without a sentence being pronounced upon her at all. this leniency, he said, was demanded by her youth and her inexperience. in reply, i pointed out that, as regards our administration, we were not then considering it at all: that as for the mode of punishment, he had not only to consider the criminals, but also the people, and the effect of the punishment upon them: we were not only to punish, but also to deter. i therefore begged the court to go back to one of the former methods, and to one of the really horrible and barbarous, yet comparatively painless, methods. i showed that a mere report or announcement, made in the public hall, that the arch physician had been executed for treason, would produce little or no effect upon the public mind, even if it were added that the two women, mildred and christine, had suffered with him: that our people needed to see the thing itself, in order to feel its true horror and to remember it. if death alone were wanted, i argued, there were dozens of ways in which life might be painlessly extinguished. but it was not death alone that we desired; it was terror that we wished to establish, in order to prevent another such attempt. "let them," i concluded, "be taken forth in solemn procession to the open space before the public hall; we ourselves will form part of that procession. let them in that place, in the sight of all the people, be publicly decapitated by the porter of the house, john lax." there was a good deal of opposition, at first, to this proposition, because it seemed barbarous and cruel; but the danger which had threatened the authority--nay, the very existence--of the college, caused the opposition to give way. why, if i had not been on the watch, the secret would have been gone: the college would have been ruined. it was due to me that my proposals should be accepted. the sentence was agreed upon. i am bound to confess that, on being brought back to receive the sentence of the court, the prisoners behaved with unexpected fortitude. the male criminal turned pale, but only for a moment, and the two women caught each other by the hand. but they offered no prayer for mercy. they were led back to their prison in the south porch, until the necessary preparations could be made. chapter xii. the rebels. it is useless to regret a thing that is done and over; otherwise one might very bitterly regret two or three steps in these proceedings. at the same time, it may be argued that what happened was the exact opposite of what we had every reason to expect, and therefore we could not blame ourselves with the event. after uncounted years of blind obedience, respect for authority, and unquestioning submission, had we not a full right to expect a continuance of the same spirit? what we did not know or suspect was the violence of the reaction that had set in. not only had these revolutionaries gone back to the past, but to the very worst traditions of the past. they had not only become anxious to restore these old traditions; they had actually become men of violence, and were ready to back up their new convictions by an appeal to arms. we ought to have arrested the conspirators as soon as they assembled; we ought to have locked them up in the museum and starved them into submission; we ought to have executed our criminals in private; in short, we ought to have done just exactly what we did not do. while the trial was proceeding, the new party of disorder were, as john lax reported, gathered together in the museum, considering what was best to be done. they now knew all. when john lax, in the morning, arrested the girl christine, by my orders, he told her in plain language what had already happened. "the arch physician is a prisoner," he said. "he has been locked up all night in my room, over the south porch. i watched below. ha! if he had tried to escape, my instructions were to knock him on the head, arch physician or not. the woman mildred is a prisoner, as well. she was locked up with him. they may hold each other's hands and look into each other's eyes, in my room, as much as they please. and now, young woman, it is your turn." "mine?" "yours, my gal. so march along o' me." "why, what have i done that i should be arrested?" "that you shall hear. march, i say. you are my prisoner. you will stand your trial--ah!" he smacked his lips to show his satisfaction, and wagged his head. he was a true child of the people, and could not conceal his gratification at the discomfiture of traitors. "you will hear what the court has to say--ah!" again he repeated this sign of satisfaction. "you will be tried, and you will hear the sentence of the court--ah, ah! do you know what it will be? death!" he whispered. "death for all! i see the sentence in the suffragan's face. oh! he means it." the girl heard without reply; but her cheeks turned pale. "you won't mind much," he went on. "you hardly know what it is to live. you haven't been alive long enough to feel what it means. you're only a chit of a girl. if it wasn't for the example, i dare say they would let you off. but they won't--they won't. don't try it on. don't think of going on your knees, or anything else. don't go weeping or crying. the court is as hard as nails." the honest fellow said this in his zeal for justice, and in the hope that nothing should be said or done which might avert just punishment. otherwise, had this girl, who was, after all, young and ignorant, thrown herself fully and frankly upon our mercy, perhaps--i do not say--some of us might have been disposed to spare her. as it was--but you have seen. "we waste time," he said. "march!" she was dressed, as i have already related, in a masquerade white dress of the old time, with i know not what of ribbon round her waist, and wore her hair floating down her back. the old man--her grandfather, as she called him--sat in his arm-chair, looking on and coughing. john lax paid no attention to him at all. "good-by, grandad," she said, kissing him. "you will not see me any more, because they are going to kill me. you will find your inhaler in its place; but i am afraid you will have to manage for the future without any help. no one helps anybody in this beautiful present. they are going to kill me. do you understand? poor old man! good-by!" she kissed him again and walked away with john lax through the picture gallery, and so into the college gardens, and by the north postern into the house of life. * * * * * when she was gone the old man looked about him feebly. then he began to understand what had happened. his grandchild, the nurse and stay of his feebleness, was gone from him. she was going to be killed. he was reckoned a very stupid old man always. to keep the cases in the museum free from dust was all that he could do. but the revival of the past acted upon him as it had acted upon the others: it took him out of his torpor and quickened his perceptions. "killed?" he cried. "my grandchild to be killed?" he was not so stupid as not to know that there were possible protectors for her, if he could find them in time. then he seized his stick and hurried as fast as his tottering limbs would carry him to the nearest field, where he knew the sailor, named john, or jack, carera, was employed for the time among the peas and beans. "jack carera!" he cried, looking wildly about him and flourishing with his stick. "jack! they are going to kill her! jack--jack carera!--i say," he repeated. "where is jack carera? call him, somebody. they are going to kill her! they have taken my child a prisoner to the house of life. i say jack--jack! where is he? where is he?" the men were working in gangs. nobody paid the least heed to the old man. they looked up, saw an old man--his hat blown off, his long white hair waving in the wind--brandishing wildly his stick, and shrieking for jack. then they went on with their work; it was no business of theirs. docile, meek, and unquestioning are the people. by accident, however, jack was within hearing, and presently ran across the field. "what is it?" he cried. "what has happened?" "they have taken prisoner," the old man gasped, "the--the--arch physician--and--lady mildred--they are going to try them to-day before the college of physicians. and now they have taken my girl--my christine--and they will try her too. they will try them all, and they will kill them all." "that shall be seen," said jack, a fierce look in his eyes. "go back to the museum, old man, and wait for me. keep quiet, if you can: wait for me." in half an hour he had collected together the whole of the company, men and women, which formed their party. they were thirty in number, and they came in from work in the regulation dress. the sailor briefly related what had happened. "now," he said, "before we do anything more, let us put on the dress of the nineteenth century. that will help us to remember that our future depends upon ourselves, and will put heart in us." this done, he made them a speech. first, he reminded them how, by the help of one girl alone, the memory of the past had been restored to them; next, he bade them keep in their minds the whole of that past--every portion of it--and to brace up their courage with the thought of it--how delightful and desirable it was. and then he exhorted them to think of the present, which he called loathsome, shameful, vile, and other bad names. "we are in the gravest crisis of our fortunes," he concluded. "on our action this day depends our whole future. either we emerge from this crisis free men and women, or we sink back into the present, dull and dismal, without hope and without thought. nay, there is more. if we do not rescue ourselves, we shall be very speedily finished off by the college. do you think they will ever forgive us? not so. as they deal with the arch physician and these two ladies, so they will deal with us. better so. better a thousand times to suffer death at once, than to fall back into that wretched condition to which we were reduced. what! you, who have learned once more what is meant by love, will you give that up? will you give up these secret assemblies where we revive the glorious past, and feel again the old thoughts and the old ambitions? never--swear with me--never! never! never!" they shouted together; they waved their hands; they were resolved. the men's eyes were alive again; in short, they were back again to the past of their young days. "first," said jack, "let us arm." he led them to a part of the museum where certain old weapons stood stacked. thanks to the curator and to christine, they had been kept bright and clear from rust by the application of oil. "here are swords, lances, rifles--but we have no ammunition--bayonets. let us take the rifles and bayonets. so. to every man one. now, the time presses. the trial is going on. it may be too late in a few minutes to save the prisoners. let us resolve." two plans suggested themselves at once. the first of these was to rush before the house of life, break open the gates, and tear the prisoners from the hands of the judges. the next was to ascertain, somehow, what was being done. the former counsel prevailed, and the men were already making ready for the attack when the great bell of the house began to toll solemnly. "what is that?" cried the women, shuddering. it went on tolling, at regular intervals of a quarter of a minute. it was the knell for three persons about to die. then the doors of the south porch flew open, and one of the bedells came forth. "what does that mean?" they asked. the bedell walked across the great garden and began to ring the bell of the public hall--the dinner bell. instantly the people began to flock in from the workshops and the fields, from all quarters, in obedience to a summons rarely issued. they flocked in slowly, and without the least animation, showing not the faintest interest in the proceedings. no doubt there was something or other--it mattered not what--ordered by the college. "go, somebody," cried jack--"go, hilda," he turned to one of the girls; "slip on your working dress; run and find out what is being done. oh! if we are too late, they shall pay--they shall pay! courage, men! here are fifteen of us, well-armed and stout. we are equal to the whole of that coward mob. run, hilda, run!" hilda pushed her way through the crowd. "what is it?" she asked the bedell, eagerly. "what has happened?" "you shall hear," he replied. "the most dreadful thing that can happen--a thing that has not happened since--.... but you will hear." he waited a little longer, until all seemed to be assembled. then he stood upon a garden-bench and lifted up his voice: "listen! listen! listen!" he cried. "by order of the holy college, listen! know ye all that, for his crimes and treacheries, the arch physician has been deposed from his sacred office. know ye all that he is condemned to die." there was here a slight movement--a shiver--as of a wood, on a still autumn day, at the first breath of the wind. "he is condemned to die. he will be brought out without delay, and will be executed in the sight of the whole people." here they trembled. "there are also condemned with him, as accomplices in his guilt, two women--named respectively mildred, or mildred carera in the old style, and the girl christine. listen! listen! listen! it is forbidden to any either to leave the place during the time of punishment, or to interfere in order to stay punishment, or in any way to move or meddle in the matter. listen! listen! long live the holy college!" with that he descended and made his way back to the house. but hilda ran to the museum with the news. "why," said jack, "what could happen better? in the house, no one knows what devilry of electricity and stuff they may have ready to hand. here, in the open, we can defy them. nothing remains but to wait until the prisoners are brought out, and then--then," he gasped, "remember what we were. geoffrey, you wear the old uniform. let the spirit of your old regiment fire your heart again. ay, ay, you will do. now, let us a drill a little and practice fighting together, shoulder to shoulder. why, we are invincible." said i not that we might, if we ever regretted anything, regret that we did not lock these conspirators in the museum before we brought out our prisoners to their death? the great bell of the house tolled; the people stood about in their quiet way, looking on, apparently unmoved, while the carpenters quickly hammered together a scaffold some six feet high. well. i confess it. the whole business was a mistake: the people were gone lower down than i had ever hoped: save for the shudder which naturally seized them on mention of the word death, they showed no sign of concern. if, even then, i had gone forth to see how they took it, i might have reversed the order, and carried out the execution within. they wanted no lesson. their past, if it were once revived, would for the most part be a past of such struggling for life, and so much misery, that it was not likely they would care to revive it. better the daily course, unchanged, unchangeable. yet we know not. as my colleague in the house said, the memory is perhaps a thing indestructible. at a touch, at a flash of light, the whole of their minds might be lit up again; and the emotions, remembered and restored, might again seem what once they seemed, worth living for. still the great bell tolled, and the carpenters hammered, and the scaffold, strong and high, stood waiting for the criminals; and on the scaffold a block, brought from the butcher's shop. but the people said not a single word to each other, waiting, like sheep--only, unlike sheep, they did not huddle together. in the chamber over the porch the prisoners awaited the completion of the preparations; and in the museum the fifteen conspirators stood waiting, armed and ready for their deed of violence. chapter xiii. the execution. as the clock struck two, a messenger brought the news that the preparations were complete. the college was still sitting in council. one of the physicians proposed that before the execution the arch physician should be brought before us to be subjected to a last examination. i saw no use for this measure, but i did not oppose it; and presently john lax, armed with his sharpened axe, brought the prisoners before the conclave of his late brethren. "dr. linister," i said, "before we start upon that procession from which you will not return, have you any communication to make to the college? your researches--" "they are all in order, properly drawn up, arranged in columns, and indexed," he replied. "i trust they will prove to advance the cause of science--true science--not the degradation of humanity." "such as they are, we shall use them," i replied, "according to the wisdom of the college. is there anything else you wish to communicate? are there ideas in your brain which you would wish to write down before you die? remember, in a few minutes you will be a senseless lump of clay, rolling round and round the world forever, like all the other lumps which form the crust of the earth." "i have nothing more to communicate. perhaps, suffragan, you are wrong about the senseless lumps of clay. and now, if you please, do not delay the end longer, for the sake of those poor girls waiting in suspense." i could have wished more outward show of horror--prayers for forgiveness. no: dr. linister was always, in his own mind, an aristocrat. the aristocratic spirit! how it survives even after the whole of the past might have been supposed to be forgotten. well: he was a tall and manly man, and he looked a born leader--a good many of them in the old days used to have that look. for my own part, i am short and black of face. no one would call me a leader born. but i deposed the aristocrat. and as for him--what has become of him? "what would you have done for the people?" i asked him, "that would have been better for them than forgetfulness and freedom from pain and anxiety? you have always opposed the majority. tell us, at this supreme moment, what you would have done for them." "i know not now," he replied. "a month ago i should have told you that i would have revived the ancient order; i would have given the good things of the world to them who were strong enough to win them in the struggle: hard work, bad food, low condition should have been, as it used to be, the lot of the incompetent. i would have recognized in women their instinct for fine dress; i would have encouraged the revival of love: i would have restored the arts. but now--now--" "now," i said, "that you have begun to make the attempt, you recognize at last that there is nothing better for them all than forgetfulness and freedom from anxiety, struggle, and thought." "not so," he replied. "not at all. i understand that unless the spirit of man mounts higher continually, the earthly things must grow stale and tedious, and so must perish. yea: all the things which once we thought so beautiful--music, art, letters, philosophy, love, society--they must all wither and perish, if life be prolonged, unless the spirit is borne continually upward. and this we have not tried to effect." "the spirit of man? i thought that old superstition was cleared away and done with long ago. i have never found the spirit in my laboratory. have you?" "no, i have not. that is not the place to find it." "well. since you have changed your mind--" "with us, the spirit of man has been sinking lower and lower, till it is clean forgotten. man now lives for himself alone. the triumph of science, suffragan, is yours. no more death; no more pain; no more ambition: equality absolute and the ultimate lump of human flesh, incorruptible, breathing, sleeping, absorbing food, living. science can do no more." "i am glad, even at this last moment, to receive this submission of your opinions." "but," he said, his eye flashing, "remember. the spirit of man only sleeps: it doth not die. such an awakening as you have witnessed among a few of us will some day--by an accident, by a trick of memory--how do i know? by a dream! fly through the heads of these poor helpless sheep and turn them again into men and women, who will rend you. now take me away." it is pleasant to my self-esteem, i say, to record that one who was so great an inquirer into the secrets of nature should at such a moment give way and confess that i was right in my administration of the people. pity that he should talk the old nonsense. why, i learned to despise it in the old days when i was a boy and listened to the fiery orators of the whitechapel road. the procession was formed. it was like that of the daily march to the public hall, with certain changes. one of them was that the arch physician now walked in the middle instead of at the end; he was no more clothed in the robes of office, but in the strange and unbecoming garb in which he was arrested. before him walked the two women. they held a book between them, brought out of the library by christine, and one of them read aloud. it was, i believe, part of the incantation or fetish worship of the old time: and as they read, the tears rolled down their cheeks; yet they did not seem to be afraid. before the prisoners marched john lax, bearing the dreadful axe, which he had now polished until it was like a mirror or a laboratory tool for brightness. and on his face there still shone the honest satisfaction of one whose heart is joyed to execute punishment upon traitors. he showed this joy in a manner perhaps unseemly to the gravity of the occasion, grinning as he walked and feeling the edge of the axe with his fingers. the way seemed long. i, for one, was anxious to get the business over and done with. i was oppressed by certain fears--or doubts--as if something would happen. along the way on either side stood the people, ranged in order, silent, dutiful, stupid. i scanned their faces narrowly as i walked. in most there was not a gleam of intelligence. they understood nothing. here and there a face which showed a spark of uneasiness or terror. for the most part, nothing. i began to understand that we had made a blunder in holding a public execution. if it was meant to impress the people, it failed to do so. that was certain, so far. what happened immediately afterwards did, however, impress them as much as they could be impressed. immediately in front of the public hall stood the newly-erected scaffold. it was about six feet high, with a low hand-rail round it, and it was draped in black. the block stood in the middle. it was arranged that the executioner should first mount the scaffold alone, there to await the criminals. the college of physicians were to sit in a semicircle of seats arranged for them on one side of it, the bedells standing behind them; the assistants of the college were arranged on the opposite side of the scaffold. the first to suffer was to be the girl christine. the second, the woman mildred. last, the greatest criminal of the three, the arch physician himself. the first part of the programme was perfectly carried out. john lax, clothed in red, big and burly, his red face glowing, stood on the scaffold beside the block, leaning on the dreadful axe. the sacred college were seated in their places; the bedells stood behind them; the assistants sat on the other side. the prisoners stood before the college. so far all went well. then i rose and read in a loud voice the crimes which had been committed and the sentence of the court. when i concluded i looked around. there was a vast sea of heads before me. in the midst i observed some kind of commotion as of people who were pushing to the front. it was in the direction of the museum. but this i hardly noticed, my mind being full of the example which was about to be made. as for the immobility of the people's faces, it was something truly wonderful. "let the woman christine," i cried, "mount the scaffold and meet her doom!" the girl threw herself into the arms of the other woman, and they kissed each other. then she tore herself away, and the next moment she would have mounted the steps and knelt before the block, but.... the confusion which had sprung up in the direction of the museum increased suddenly to a tumult. right and left the people parted, flying and shrieking. and there came running through the lane thus formed a company of men, dressed in fantastic garments of various colors, armed with ancient weapons, and crying aloud, "to the rescue! to the rescue!" then i sprang to my feet, amazed. was it possible--could it be possible--that the holy college of physicians should be actually defied? it was possible; more, it was exactly what these wretched persons proposed to dare and to do. as for what followed, it took but a moment. the men burst into the circle thus armed and thus determined. we all sprang to our feet and recoiled. but there was one who met them with equal courage and defiance. had there been--but how could there be?--any more, we should have made a wholesome example of the rebels. john lax was this one. he leaped from the scaffold with a roar like a lion, and threw himself upon the men who advanced, swinging his heavy axe around him as if it had been a walking-stick. no wild beast deprived of its prey could have presented such a terrible appearance. baffled revenge--rage--the thirst for battle--all showed themselves in this giant as he turned a fearless front to his enemies and swung his terrible axe. i thought the rebels would have run. they wavered; they fell back; then at a word from their leader--it was none other than the dangerous man, the sailor called jack, or john, carera--they closed in and stood shoulder to shoulder, every man holding his weapon in readiness. they were armed with the ancient weapon called the rifle, with a bayonet thrust in at the end of it. "close in, my men; stand firm!" shouted the sailor. "leave john lax to me. ho! ho! john lax, you and i will fight this out. i know you. you were the spy who did the mischief. come on. stand firm, my men; and if i fall, make a speedy end of this spy and rescue the prisoners." he sprang to the front, and for a moment the two men confronted each other. then john lax, with another roar, swung his axe. had it descended upon the sailor's head, there would have been an end of him. but--i know little of fighting; but it is certain that the fellow was a coward. for he actually leaped lightly back and dodged the blow. then, when the axe had swung round so as to leave his adversary's side in a defenceless position, this disgraceful coward leaped forward and took a shameful advantage of this accident, and drove his bayonet up to the hilt in the unfortunate executioner's body! john lax dropped his axe, threw up his arms, and fell heavily backwards. he was dead. he was killed instantaneously. anything more terrible, more murderous, more cowardly, i never witnessed. i know, i say, little of fighting and war. but this, i must always maintain, was a foul blow. john lax had aimed his stroke and missed, it is true, owing to the cowardly leap of his enemy out of the way. but in the name of common fairness his adversary should have permitted him to resume his fighting position. as it was, he only waited, cowardly, till the heavy axe swinging round exposed john's side, and then stepped in and took his advantage. this i call murder, and not war. john lax was quite dead. our brave and zealous servant was dead. he lay on his back; there was a little pool of blood on the ground: his clothes were stained with blood: his face was already white. was it possible? our servant--the sacred servant of the holy house--was dead! he had been killed! a servant of the holy college had been killed! what next? what dreadful thing would follow? and the criminals were rescued! by this time we were all standing bewildered, horrified, in an undignified crowd, fellows and assistants together. then i spoke, but i fear in a trembling voice. "men!" i said. "know you what you do? go back to the place whence you came, and await the punishment due to your crime. back, i say!" "form in square," ordered the murderer, paying no heed at all to my commands. the rebels arranged themselves--as if they had rehearsed the thing for weeks--every man with his weapon ready: five on a side, forming three sides of a square, of which the scaffold formed the fourth. within the square stood the three prisoners. "o jack!" cried christine. "we never dreamed of this." "o harry!" murmured mildred, falling into the arms of the rescued dr. linister. at such a moment, the first thing they thought of was this new-found love. and yet there are some who have maintained that human nature could have been continued by science on the old lines! folly at the bottom of everything! folly and vanity! "sir," the sailor man addressed dr. linister, "you are now our chief. take this sword and the command." he threw a crimson sash over the shoulders of him who but a minute before was waiting to be executed, and placed in his hands a drawn sword. then the chief--i am bound to say that he looked as if he were born to command--mounted the scaffold and looked round with eyes of authority. "let the poor people be dismissed," he said. "bid them disperse--go home--go to walk, and to rest or sleep, or anything that is left in the unhappy blank that we call their mind." then he turned to the college. "there were some among you, my former brethren," he said, "who in times past were friends of my own. you voted with me against the degradation of the people, but in vain. we have often communed together on the insufficiency of science and the unwisdom of the modern methods. come out from the college, my friends, and join us. we have the great secret, and we have all the knowledge of science that there is. cast in your lot with mine." five or six of the fellows stepped forth--they were those who had always voted for the arch physician--among them was the man who had spoken on the uncertainty of memory. these were admitted within the line of armed men. nay, their gowns of office were taken from them and they presently received weapons. about twenty or thirty of the assistants also fell out and were admitted to the ranks of the rebels. "there come no more?" asked the chief. "well, choose for yourselves. captain heron, make the crowd stand back--clear them away with the butt ends of your rifles, if they will not go when they are told. so. now let the rest of the college return to the house. captain carera, take ten men and drive them back. let the first who stops, or endeavors to make the others stop, or attempts to address the people, be run through, as you despatched the man john lax. fellows and assistants of the college--back to the place whence you came. back, as quickly as may be, or it will be the worse for you." the ten men stepped out with lowered bayonets. we saw them approaching with murder in their eyes, and we turned and fled. it was not a retreat: it was a helter-skelter run--one over the other. if one fell, the savage rebels prodded him in fleshy parts and roared with laughter. fellows, assistants, and bedells alike--we fell over each other, elbowing and fighting, until we found ourselves at last--some with bleeding noses, some with black eyes, some with broken ribs, all with torn gowns--within the house of life. the rebels stood outside the south porch, laughing at our discomfiture. "wardens of the great secret," said captain carera, "you have no longer any secret to guard. meantime, until the pleasure of the chief, and the sentence of the court is pronounced, remember. he who endeavors to escape from the house will assuredly meet his death. think of john lax, and do not dare to resist the authority of the army." then he shut the door upon us and locked it, and we heard the footsteps of the men as they marched away in order. this, then, was the result of my most fatal error. had we, as we might so easily have done, executed our prisoners in the house itself, and locked up the rebels in the museum, these evils would not have happened. it is futile to regret the past, which can never be undone. but it is impossible not to regret a blunder which produced such fatal results. chapter xiv. prisoners. thus, then, were the tables turned upon us. we were locked up, prisoners--actually the sacred college, prisoners--in the house of life itself, and the great secret was probably by this time in the hands of the rebels, to whom the arch traitor had no doubt given it, as he had proposed to do when we arrested him. lost to us forever! what would become of the college when the great mystery was lost to it? where would be its dignity? where its authority? the first question--we read it in each other's eyes without asking it--was, however, not what would become of our authority, but of ourselves. what were they going to do with us? they had killed the unfortunate john lax solely because he stood up manfully for the college. what could we expect? besides, we had fully intended to kill the rebels. now we were penned up like fowls in a coop, altogether at their mercy. could one have believed that the holy college, the source of health, the maintainer of life, would ever have been driven to its house, as to a prison, like a herd of swine to their sty; made to run head over heels, tumbling over one another, without dignity or self-respect; shoved, bundled, cuffed, and kicked into the house of life, and locked up, with the promise of instant death to any who should endeavor to escape? but did they mean to kill us? that was the question before us. why should they not? we should have killed the arch physician, had they suffered it; and now they had all the power. i confess that the thought of this probability filled my mind with so great a terror that the more i thought of it the more my teeth chattered and my knees knocked together. nay, the very tears--the first since i was a little boy--came into my eyes in thinking that i must abandon my laboratory and all my researches, almost at the very moment when the triumph of science was well within my grasp, and i was ready--nearly--to present mankind at his last and best. but at this juncture the assistants showed by their behavior and their carriage--now greatly wanting in respect--that they looked to us for aid, and i hastily called together the remaining fellows in the inner house. we took our places and looked at each other in dismay which could not be concealed. "brothers," i said, because they looked to me for speech, "it cannot be denied that the situation is full of danger. never before has the college been in danger so imminent. at this very instant they may be sending armed soldiers to murder us." at this moment there happened to be a movement of many feet in the nave, and it seemed as if the thing was actually upon us. i sat down, pale and trembling. the others did the same. it was several minutes before confidence was so far restored that we could speak coherently. "we have lived so long," i said, "and we have known so long the pleasure of scientific research, that the mere thought of death fills us with apprehensions that the common people cannot guess. our superior nature makes us doubly sensitive. perhaps--let us hope--they may not kill us--perhaps they may make demands upon us to which we can yield. they will certainly turn us out of the college and house of life and install themselves, unless we find a way to turn the tables. but we may buy our lives: we may even become their assistants. our knowledge may be placed at their disposal--" "yes, yes," they all agreed. "life before everything. we will yield to any conditions." "the great secret has gone out of our keeping," i went on. "dr. linister has probably communicated it to all alike. there goes the whole authority, the whole mystery, of the college." "we are ruined!" echoed the fellows in dismay. "half a dozen of our fellows have gone over, too. there is not now a secret, or a scientific discovery, or a process, concerning life, food, health, or disease, that they do not know as well as ourselves. and they have all the power. what will they do with it? what can we do to get it out of their hands?" then began a babel of suggestions and ideas. unfortunately every plan proposed involved the necessity of some one risking or losing his life. in the old times, when there were always men risking and losing their lives for some cause or other, i suppose there would have been no difficulty at all. i had been accustomed to laugh at this foolish sacrifice of one's self--since there is but one life--for pay, or for the good of others. now, however, i confess that we should have found it most convenient if we could have persuaded some to risk--very likely they would not actually have lost--their lives for the sake of the holy college. for instance, the first plan that occurred to us was this. we numbered, even after the late defections, two hundred strong in the college. this so-called "army" of the rebels could not be more than seventy, counting the deserters from the college. why should we not break open the doors and sally forth, a hundred--two hundred--strong, armed with weapons from the laboratory, provided with bottles of nitric and sulphuric acid, and fall upon the rebel army suddenly while they were unprepared for us? this plan so far carried me away that i called together the whole of the college--assistants, bedells, and all--and laid it before them. i pointed out that the overwhelming nature of the force we could hurl upon the enemy would cause so great a terror to fall upon them that they would instantly drop their arms and fly as fast as they could run, when our men would have nothing more to do but to run after and kill them. the men looked at one another with doubtful eyes. finally, one impudent rascal said that as the physicians themselves had most to lose, they should themselves lead the assault. "we will follow the suffragan and the fellows," he said. i endeavored to make them understand that the most valuable lives should always be preserved until the last. but in this i failed. the idea, therefore, of a sortie in force had to be abandoned. it was next proposed that we should dig a tunnel under the public hall and blow up the rebels with some of the old explosives. but to dig a tunnel takes time, and then who would risk his life with the explosive? it was further proposed to send out a deputation of two or three, who should preach to the rebels and point out the terrible consequences of their continued mutiny. but this appeared impracticable, for the simple reason that no one could be found to brave the threat of captain carera of death to any who ventured out. besides, it was pointed out, with some reason, that if our messengers were suffered to reach the rebels, no one would be moved by the threats of helpless prisoners unable to effect their own release. as for what was proposed to be done with electricity, hand-grenades, dynamite, and so forth, i pass all that over. in a word, we found that we could do nothing. we were prisoners. then an idea occurred to me. i remembered how, many years before, dr. linister, who had always a mind full of resource and ingenuity, made a discovery by means of which one man, armed with a single weapon easy to carry, could annihilate a whole army. if war had continued in the world, this weapon would have put an immediate stop to it. but war ceased, and it was never used. now, i thought, if i could find that weapon or any account or drawing of its manufacture, i should be able from the commanding height of the tower, with my own hand, to annihilate dr. linister and all his following. i proceeded, with the assistance of the whole college, to hunt among the volumes of researches and experiments. there were thousands of them. we spent many days in the search. but we found it not. when we were tired of the search we would climb up into the tower and look out upon the scene below, which was full of activity and bustle. oh! if we could only by simply pointing the weapon, only by pressing a knob, see our enemies swiftly and suddenly overwhelmed by death! but we could not find that discovery anywhere. there were whole rows of volumes which consisted of nothing but indexes. but we could not find it in any of them. and so this hope failed. they did not kill us. every day they opened the doors and called for men to come forth and fetch food. but they did not kill us. yet the danger was ever present in our minds. after a week the college resolved that, since one alone of the body knew the great secret, that one being the most likely to be selected for execution if there were any such step taken, it was expedient that the secret should be revealed to the whole college. i protested, but had to obey. to part with that secret was like parting with all my power. i was no longer invested with the sanctity of one who held that secret: the suffragan became a simple fellow of the college: he was henceforth only one of those who conducted researches into health and food and the like. this suspense and imprisonment lasted for three weeks. then the rebels, as you shall hear, did the most wonderful and most unexpected thing in the world. why they did it, when they had the house of life, the college, and all in their own hands, and could have established themselves there and done whatever they pleased with the people, i have never been able to understand. chapter xv. the recruiting sergeant. when the college had thus ignominiously been driven into the house and the key turned upon us, the rebels looked at each other with the greatest satisfaction. "so far," said jack, "we have succeeded beyond our greatest hopes. the prisoners are rescued; the only man with any fight in him has been put out of the temptation to fight any more; the holy college are made prisoners; ourselves are masters of the field, and certain to remain so; and the people are like lambs--nothing to be feared from them--nothing, apparently, to be hoped." they had been reduced to terror by the violence of the rebels in pushing through them; they had rushed away, screaming: those of them who witnessed the horrible murder of john lax were also seized with panic, and fled. but when no more terrifying things befell, they speedily relapsed into their habitual indifference, and crept back again, as if nothing had happened at all, to dawdle away their time in the sunshine and upon the garden benches--every man alone, as usual. that the holy college were prisoners--that rebels had usurped the authority--affected them not a whit, even if they understood it. my administration had been even too successful. one could no longer look to the people for anything. they were now, even more rapidly than i had thought possible, passing into the last stages of human existence. "ye gods!" cried dr. linister, swearing in the language of the past and by the shadows long forgotten. "ye gods! how stupid they have become! i knew not that they were so far gone. can nothing move them? they have seen a victorious rebellion--a revolution, not without bloodshed. but they pay no heed. will nothing move them? will words? call some of them together, jack. drive them here. let us try to speak to them. it may be that i shall touch some chord which will recall the past. it was thus that you--we--were all awakened from that deadly torpor." being thus summoned, the people--men and women--flocked about the scaffold, now stripped of its black draperies, and listened while dr. linister harangued them. they were told to stand and listen, and they obeyed, without a gleam in their patient, sheep-like faces to show that they understood. * * * * * "i can do no more!" cried dr. linister, after three-quarters of an hour. he had drawn a skilful and moving picture of the past; he had depicted its glories and its joys, compared with the dismal realities of the present. he dwelt upon their loveless and passionless existence; he showed them how they were gradually sinking lower and lower--that they would soon lose the intelligence necessary even for the daily task. then he asked them if they would join his friends and himself in the new life which they were about to begin: it should be full of all the old things--endeavor, struggle, ambition, and love. they should be alive, not half dead. more he said--a great deal more--but to no purpose. if they showed any intelligence at all, it was terror at the thought of change. dr. linister descended. "it is no use," he said. "will you try, jack?" "not by speaking. but i will try another plan." he disappeared, and presently came back again, having visited the cellars behind the public halls. after him came servants, rolling barrels and casks at his direction. "i am going to try the effect of a good drink," said jack. "in the old days they were always getting drunk, and the trades had each their favorite liquor. it is now no one knows how long since these poor fellows have had to become sober, because they could no longer exceed their ration. let us encourage them to get drunk. i am sure that ought to touch a chord." this disgraceful idea was actually carried out. drink of all kinds--spirits, beer, and every sort of intoxicating liquor--were brought forth, and the men were invited to sit down and drink freely, after the manner of the old time. when they saw the casks brought out and placed on stands, each ready with its spigot, and, beside the casks, the tables and benches, spread for them--on the benches, pipes and tobacco--gleams of intelligence seemed to steal into their eyes. "come," said jack, "sit down, my friends; sit down, all of you. now then, what will you drink? what shall it be? call for what you like best. here is a barrel of beer; here is stout; here are gin, whiskey, rum, hollands, and brandy. what will you have? call for what you please. take your pipes. why, it is the old time over again." they looked at each other stupidly. the very names of these drinks had been long forgotten by them. but they presently accepted the invitation, and began to drink greedily. at seven o'clock, when the supper bell rang, there were at least three hundred men lying about, in various stages of drunkenness. some were fast asleep, stretched at their full length on the ground; some lay with their heads on the table; some sat, clutching at the pewter mugs; some were vacuously laughing or noisily singing. "what do you make of your experiment?" asked dr. linister. "have you struck your chord?" "well, they have done once more what they used to do," said jack, despondently; "and they have done it in the same old way. i don't think there could ever have been any real jolliness about the dogs, who got drunk as fast as ever they could. i expected a more gradual business. i thought the drink would first unloose their tongues, and set them talking. then i hoped that they would, in this way, be led to remember the past; and i thought that directly they began to show any recollection at all, i would knock off the supply and carry on the memory. but the experiment has failed, unless"--here a gleam of hope shone in his face--"to-morrow's hot coppers prove a sensation so unusual as to revive the memory of their last experience in the same direction--never mind how many years ago. hot coppers _may_ produce that result." he ordered the casks to be rolled back to the cellars. that evening the rebels, headed by dr. linister--all dressed in scarlet and gold, with swords--and with them the ladies--(they were called ladies now, nothing less--not women of the people any more)--came to the public hall, dressed for the evening in strange garments, with bracelets, necklaces, jewels, gloves, and things which most of the people had never seen. but they seemed to take no heed of these things. "they are hopeless," said jack. "nothing moves them. we shall have to begin our new life with our own company of thirty." "leave them to us," said mildred. "remember, it was by dress that christine aroused us from our stagnant condition; and it was by us that you men were first awakened. leave them to us." after the evening meal the ladies went about from table to table, talking to the women. many of these, who had belonged to the working classes in the old time, and had no recollection at all of fine dress, looked stupidly at the ladies' dainty attire. but there were others whose faces seemed to show possibilities of other things. and to these the ladies addressed themselves. first, they asked them to look at their fine frocks and bangles and things; and next, if any admiration was awakened, they begged them to take off their flat caps and to let down their hair. some of them consented, and laughed with new-born pride in showing off their long-forgotten beauty. then the ladies tied ribbons round their necks and waists, put flowers into their hair, and made them look in the glass. not one of those who laughed and looked in the glass but followed the ladies that evening to the museum. they came--a company of recruits fifty strong, all girls. and then the whole evening was devoted to bringing back the past. it came quickly enough to most. to some, a sad past, full of hard, underpaid work; to some, a past of enforced idleness; to some, a past of work and pay and contentment. they were shopgirls, work-girls, ballet-girls, barmaids--all kinds of girls. to every one was given a pretty and becoming dress; not one but was rejoiced at the prospect of changing the calm and quiet present for the emotions and the struggles of the past. but they were not allowed to rest idle. next day these girls again, with the ladies, went out and tried the effect of their new dress and their newly-restored beauty upon other women first, and the men afterwards. as they went about, lightly and gracefully, singing, laughing, daintily dressed, many of the men began to lift up their sleepy eyes, and to look after them. and when the girls saw these symptoms, they laid siege to such a man, two or three together; or perhaps one alone would undertake the task, if he was more than commonly susceptible. as for those on whom bright eyes, smiles, laughter, and pretty dresses produced no effect, they let them alone altogether. but still recruits came in fast. every night they did all in their power to make the past live again. they played the old comedies, melodramas, and farces in the public hall; they sang the old songs; they encouraged the recruits to sing; they gave the men tobacco and beer; they had dances and music. every morning the original company of rebels sat in council. every afternoon the recruits, dressed like soldiers of the past, were drawn up, drilled, and put through all kinds of bodily exercise. * * * * * we were prisoners, i said, for three weeks. one morning, at the end of that time, a message came to us from the "headquarters of the army." this was now their official style and title. the chief ordered the immediate attendance of the suffragan and two fellows of the college of physicians. at this terrifying order, i confess that i fell into so violent a trembling--for, indeed, my last hour seemed now at hand--that i could no longer stand upright; and, in this condition of mind, i was carried--being unable to walk, and more dead than alive--out of the house of life to the headquarters of the rebel army. chapter xvi. a most unexpected conclusion. i confess, i say, that i was borne in a half-fainting condition from the house of life. "farewell, suffragan, farewell!" said my brethren of the college, gathered within the south porch, where a guard of armed rebels waited for us. "your turn to-day, ours to-morrow! farewell! yet if any concessions can be made--" yes--yes--if any concessions could be made, only to save life, they might be certain that i should make them. the two fellows of the college upon whom the lot--they drew lots--had fallen, accompanied me, with cheeks as pallid and hearts as full of terror as my own. a company of twenty men, armed, escorted us. i looked on the way for lines of people to witness the downfall of the college and the execution of its heads. i looked for the scaffold which we had erected, and for the executioner whom we had provided. i listened for the great bell which we had caused to be rung. strange! there were no people at all; the way from the house was quite clear; the people were engaged as usual at their work. i saw no scaffold, and no executioner. i heard no great bell. yet the absence of these things did not reassure me in the least. but everything, even in these short three weeks, was changed. nearly the whole of the open space before the public hall was now covered with rows of gay-colored tents, over which flew bright little flags. they were quite small tents, meant, i learned afterwards, for sleeping. besides these there were great tents open at the sides, and spread, within, with tables and benches, at which sat men smoking tobacco and drinking beer, though it was as yet only the forenoon. some of them were playing cards, some were reading books, and some--a great many--were eagerly talking. they were all dressed in tunics of scarlet, green, and gray, and wore leathern belts with helmets--the costume seemed familiar to me. then i remembered; it was the old dress of a soldier. wonderful! after science had lavished all her resources in order to suppress and destroy among the people the old passions--at the very first opportunity the rebels had succeeded in awakening them again in their worst and most odious form! there were also large open spaces upon which, regardless of the flower-beds, some of the men were marching up and down in line, carrying arms, and performing evolutions to the command of an officer. some of the men, again, lay sprawling about on benches, merely looking on and doing nothing--yet with a lively satisfaction in their faces. they ought to have been in the fields or the workshops. and everywhere among the men, looking on at the drill, sitting in the tents, walking beside them, sitting with them on the benches, were the girls, dressed and adorned after the bad old false style, in which the women pretended to heighten and set off what they are pleased to call their charms by garments fantastically cut, the immodest display of an arm or a neck, hair curiously dressed and adorned, colored ribbons, flowers stuck in their hats, and ornaments tied on wherever it was possible. and such joy and pride in these silly decorations! no one would believe how these girls looked at each other and themselves. but to think that the poor silly men should have fallen into the nets thus clumsily spread for them! and this, after all our demonstrations to show that woman bears in every limb the mark of inferiority, so that contempt, or at least pity, and not admiration at all, to say nothing of the extraordinary foolish passion of love, should be the feeling of man for woman! however, at this moment i was naturally too much occupied with my own danger to think of these things. one thing, however, one could not avoid remarking. the rebellion must have spread with astonishing rapidity. it was no longer a company of fifteen or sixteen men--it was a great army that we saw. and there was no longer any doubt possible as to the movement. the past was restored. in the faces of the young men and the girls, as we passed through them, i remarked, sick with terror as i was, the old, old expression which i hoped we had abolished forever--the eagerness, the unsatisfied desire, and the individualism. yes--the individualism. i saw on their faces, plain to read, the newly-restored rights of property. why, as i walked through one of the groups, composed of men and women, one of the men suddenly rushed forward and struck another in the face with his fist. "she's my girl!" he cried, hoarsely. "touch her if you dare." they closed round the pair and led them off. "going to fight it out," said one of our guards. to fight it out! what a fall! to fight it out!--to call a woman--or anything else--your own after all our teaching. and to fight it out! and all this arrived at in three weeks! these things i observed, i say, as one observes things in a dream, and remembers afterwards. my heart failed me altogether, and i nearly fainted, when we stopped at a long tent before which floated a flag on a flagstaff. they carried me within and placed me in a chair. as soon as my eyes recovered the power of sight i saw, sitting at the head of the table, dr. linister, dressed in some sort of scarlet coat, with a sash and gold lace. then, indeed, i gave myself up for lost. it was the court, and we were called before it to receive sentence. at his side sat half a dozen officers bravely dressed. the tent was filled with others, including many women richly dressed--i observed the woman mildred, clad in crimson velvet, and the girl christine, in white, and i thought they regarded me with vindictive eyes. when we were seated, dr. linister looked up--his face was always grave, but it was no longer melancholy. there was in it, now, something of hope or triumph or resolution--i know not what. "brothers," he said, gravely, "once my brothers of the college, i have called you before us in order to make a communication of the greatest importance, and one which will doubtless cause you considerable surprise. what is the matter, suffragan? hold him up, somebody. we desire that you should hear from our own lips what we propose to do. "first, will somebody give dr. grout a glass of wine or brandy, or something? pray be reassured, gentlemen. no harm, i promise, shall happen to any of you. first, in a day or two the doors of the house will be thrown open, and you shall be free again to renew your old life--if you still feel disposed to do so. i repeat that no violence is intended towards you. grout, pull yourself together, man. sit up, and leave off shaking. you will be able without opposition, i say, to carry on again your administration of the people on the old lines. i trust, however, that you will consider the situation, and the condition to which you have reduced unfortunate humanity, very seriously. "in short, though we are absolute masters of the situation, and now command a force against which it would be absurd for you to contend, we are going to abandon the field, and leave everything to you." were we dreaming? "the present is so odious to our people; the surroundings of this place are so full of the horrible and loathsome present, that we have resolved to leave it altogether. we find, in fact, that it will be impossible to begin the new life until all traces of your administration are removed or lost. and we shall be so much clogged by your public halls, your houses, your system, and the miserable lives to which you have reduced most of the men and women, that we must either send them--and you--away, or go away ourselves. on the whole, it will give us less trouble to go away ourselves. therefore, as soon as our preparations are ready, we shall go. "we shall carry with us from the common stores all that we shall be likely to want in starting our new community. we shall leave you to work out, undisturbed, the triumph of science, as you understand it, upon these poor wretches, already more than half stupefied by your treatment. "we shall take with us all those whom by any means--by the beauty of women, the splendor of arms, the ancient dresses, the ancient music, the ancient dances--we have been able to awaken from their torpor. they amount in all to no more than a thousand or so of young men and as many maidens. as for the rest, they are sunk in a lethargy so deep that we have been unable to rouse them. they are already very near to the condition which you desire. "yet i know not. these poor dull brains may be swiftly and suddenly fired with some contagion which may at any time ruin your calculations and destroy the boasted triumph. do not rely too much upon the torpor of this apparently helpless herd. you had at the beginning a grand weapon with which to enslave them. you could keep them alive, and you could save them from disease--if only they were obedient. if they once get beyond the recollection or the fear of either, what will you do? "we go"--he paused, and looked round the room, filled with the eager faces which brought the past back to me--futile eagerness! ever pressing on, gaining nothing, sinking into the grave before there was time to gain anything! that had come back--that! "we go," he repeated--his face had long been so melancholy that one hardly knew him for the same man, so triumphant was it now--"we go to repair the mistakes of many, many years. we go to lead mankind back into the ancient paths. it was not altogether you, my friends, who destroyed humanity; it was mainly the unfortunate discovery of the german professor. we were working admirably in the right direction; we were making life longer, which was then far too short; we were gradually preventing diseases, which had been beyond the control of our wisest men; we were, by slow degrees, in the only true way--through the revelation of nature--feeling our way to health and prolongation of life. yet, whatever happened, whatever we might discover, the first law of life--which we did not understand--was that to all things earthly there must come an end. "then happened the event by which that end was indefinitely postponed. "again, i say, i blame not you so much as the current of events which bore you along. it seemed logical that everybody, able or imbecile, weak or strong, healthy or sickly, skilled or incompetent, should alike reap the fruits of the great discovery. if he did so, he was also entitled to his equal share in the world's goods. this was the right of man, put forward as if there could be no question at all about it. every child was to inherit an equal share of everything. it was a false and a mischievous claim. what every child inherited was the right of fighting for his share, without danger of injustice or oppression. and the next step, after the slaughter of the old, was the forbidding of more births. what that has done for the world, look round and see for yourselves in the torpor of the women and the apathy of the men. "the people by this time had learned the great lesson that you wished to teach them--that death and disease were the only two evils. then the college of physicians took the place of the former priesthood, with its own mysteries to guard and its gifts to distribute. i do not deny that you--we--have done the work well. the prevention of the old diseases is nearly perfect. yet, at any moment, a new class of disease may spring up and baffle all your science." he had often talked in this way before, but never with so much authority. yet he was going to abandon the whole--all that he and his friends had gained! were we dreaming? his talk about my administration affected me not one whit. i knew all his arguments. but the thought that he was going away, that he would actually leave us in power and possession, filled me with amazement. the others looked and listened as if he were speaking for them. "the right of man to an equal share in everything has been carried out. look around you, and ask yourselves if the result is satisfactory. i have often asked you that question. you have replied that the present is only a stage in the triumph of science. what is the next stage? to that question also you have a reply. "well, we give it back to you--the whole of your present; your people, so stupid, so docile, so sluggish; your house; your college; your secrecy; your mystery; your authority. take them. you shall have them again, to do with them as seems fit to you." at these words my heart welled over with joy. would he really--but on what conditions?--would he really give us back the whole? there were no conditions. he meant exactly what he said. he would give everything back to us. were we dreaming? were we dreaming? "as for me and my friends," he said, "we shall sally forth to found a new settlement, and to govern it by the ideas of the past. no one in our settlement will be obliged to work; but if he does not, he shall certainly starve. nobody will inherit any share to anything except what he may win by struggle. there will be no equality at all, but every man shall have what he can honestly get for himself. no women shall be compelled to work; but they may work if they please, and at such things as they please. many old and long-forgotten things have been already revived; such as love: we are in love again--we, who actually forgot what love was like for all the years which we have ceased to number or to chronicle. it is impossible to describe to you, my former brother suffragan, who never even in the old days felt the passion--the intense joy, the ecstasy--of love." the other men murmured approval. "but love is a plant which, while it is hardy to endure many things, withers and dies under certain conditions. it was found to flourish in the old time, through all the changes of life: it survived the time of youth and beauty; it lasted through middle age; flourished through the scenes of old age; it lasted beyond the grave. it endured changes of fortune, decay of health, poverty, sickness, and even helplessness. but one thing kills love. it cannot endure the dull monotony which has followed the great discovery: it cannot live long while the face and form know no change; while the voice never changes; while the dress, the hours of work, the work itself, the food, know no change. these are things which kill the flower of love. now, all things desirable--this is a saying too hard for you, suffragan--depend upon love. with love, they have revived: the courtesy of man to woman; the deference of the stronger to the weaker; the stimulus of work; hope and ambition; self-sacrifice; unselfishness; devotion; the sweet illusions of imagination--all these things have been born again within the last three weeks. they have been born again, and, with them, the necessity of an end. all things earthly most have an end." the chief looked round him: the men murmured approval, and tears stood in the eyes of the women. "we cannot let them die. and since the first law of love is change--and the certain end--we have resolved, suffragan, on forgetting the grand discovery." could this be our late arch physician? were we dreaming? "we shall forego any share in it. only the chiefs here gathered together know as yet what has been resolved. little by little the truth will get possession of our people that an end is ordained." we made no reply to this extraordinary announcement. what could we say? we only gasped with wonder. "you cannot understand this, grout. i do not expect that you should. for long years past i have understood that the great discovery was the greatest misfortune that ever happened to mankind. for all things must have an end: else all that is worth preserving will wither and die. "i have nearly done. you can go back to your house, and you can carry on your administration as you please. but there is a warning which we have first to pronounce before we let you go. your ultimate triumph of science is too great a degradation of humanity to be endured. in years to come when our successors rule in our place, they shall send an army here to inquire into the conduct of your trust. if we find the people more brutish, deeper sunk in apathy and torpor, that army will seize the house of life and the college of physicians, and will destroy your laboratories, and will suffer all--men and women of the people and fellows of the sacred college alike--to die. never forget this warning. you shall surely die. "one more point, and i have done. i mention it with diffidence, grout, because i cannot hope for your sympathy. your own convictions on the subject were arrived at--you have often told us--when you were a boy, and were based upon the arguments of a sunday-morning spouter in the whitechapel road. i believe that john lax, deceased, was the learned authority who convinced you. therefore, you will not understand me, grout, when i tell you that we have found the soul again--the long-lost soul. all earthly things must have an end. but there are things beyond that end. most astonishing things are likely to follow from this discovery. long thoughts and great hopes have already begun to spring up in our minds. our people are reading again--the old literature is full of the soul: they are reading the great poets of old, and are beginning to understand what they mean. i cannot make this intelligible to you, grout. you will not understand all that this discovery brings with it. you will never, never understand that it is a discovery ten times--a million times--greater and better for mankind than the great discovery itself, of which you and i alone held the secret. "i take that secret with me because i cannot forget it. but, i repeat, we shall never use it. soon, very soon, the new active life will make men once more familiar with the old figure who carried a scythe. there will be accidents; new diseases will arise; age will creep slowly on--the great discovery will be quietly forgotten in minds which you had made so dull that they could not understand when we rescued them what it meant. but we, the leaders, shall know well that their happiness must have an end. all earthly things," he repeated, for the fifth time, "must have an end. that is all, grout; but when you hear from me again, unless the administration is changed indeed, the people--the college--and you, my suffragan--shall all die together. you shall die, grout! you and your friends shall die! and so, farewell. guard. take them back to the house." we returned to the house relieved of our terror, but much amazed. i had heard, in the old days, how men would be so blockishly possessed by the thought of a woman--a creature inferior to man--that they would throw away everything in the world for her sake. and now dr. linister himself--with all those who followed after him--had given up everything; because if life goes, what is there left? and for the sake of a woman? what could it mean? how to explain this madness on any scientific theory? we told our colleagues, and they marvelled; and some suspected a trick. but dr. linister was not a man to play tricks. as for the soul and all that rubbish, if dr. linister was so mad as to give up everything for a woman, he might just as well adopt all the old creeds together. that was no concern of ours. and as for this precious discovery about things earthly coming to an end, what had that to do with the calm and tranquil state of pure existence which we were providing for mankind? why should that ever have an end? * * * * * that threatened army has never come. for some time the thought of it gave us considerable uneasiness. but it has never come; and i believe, for my own part, that now it never will come. as for the people, there has been no such outbreak of memory as was prophesied. on the contrary, they have approached more and more, in docility, meekness, mindlessness, and absence of purpose, to the magnificent ideal which i cherish for them. i know not when it will arrive; but the time is as certain to come as the morrow's sun is to dawn, when the last stage of humanity will be reached--an inert mass of breathing, feeding, sleeping flesh, kept by the holy college--the triumph of science--free from decay and death. they went away in the afternoon, three or four days later. they took with them everything from the public stores which they thought would be useful: provisions of all kinds; wine, beer, and cider in casks; stuff for clothing; furniture; everything that they could think of. they took the pictures out of the gallery, the books from the library, and nearly everything that was in the museum. from the laboratory in the house they took a great number of volumes and a quantity of instruments. at the last moment, nearly all the assistants and the workmen agreed to join them; so that we were left with numbers greatly reduced. it is impossible to enumerate the vast quantities of things which they took with them. the wagons in which they were packed covered a couple of miles of road: the drivers were taken from the people, and ordered to discharge their duty; and, as they never came back, these poor wretches probably perished with the rebels. they went forth in perfect order: first, an advance guard of mounted men; then a portion of the main body, among whom rode the chief with his staff. after them came the women, some riding on horseback, among whom were the woman mildred and the girl christine, showing in their faces that foolish and excited happiness which is so different from the sweet tranquillity which we have introduced. indeed, all the women were beyond themselves with this silly happiness. they sang, they laughed, they talked. some sat in carriages of all kinds, some in wagons; some walked; and, what with their chatter and their dresses, one would have thought them a company of monkeys dressed up. after the women came the wagons, and, lastly, the rest of the men. i forgot to say that they had bands of music with them--drums, fifes, cornets, and all kinds of musical instruments--and that they carried flags, and that the men sang as they marched. whither they went, or what became of them--whether they carried out the desperate resolve of giving up the great discovery--i know not. they marched away, and we returned to our former life. * * * * * one thing more i must relate. we--that is, the college--were seated, reassured as to our safety, watching this great departure. five minutes or so after the women had passed, i observed two of my own friends--learned fellows of the college, who had always followed my lead and voted with me--eagerly whispering each other, and plucking one another by the sleeve. then they suddenly rose and pulled off their black gowns, and fled swiftly in the direction of the wagons and carriages where the women sat. we have never seen or heard from any of these unfortunate men since. * * * * * i am now myself the arch physician. the end. by walter besant. all in a garden fair. to, paper, cents. all sorts and conditions of men. illustrated. to, paper, cents; mo, cloth, $ . dorothy forster. to, paper, cts. fifty years ago. vo, cloth, $ . for faith and freedom. illustrated. mo, cloth; also, vo, paper. (_in press._) herr paulus. vo, paper, cents. katherine regina. to, paper, cents. life of coligny. mo, paper, cents; cloth, cents. self or bearer. to, paper, cts. "so they were married." illustrated. to, paper, cents. the captain's room. to, paper, cents. the children of gibeon. to, paper, cents. the holy rose. to, paper, cents. the inner house. vo, paper. (_just ready._) the world went very well then. illustrated. to, paper, cents; mo, cloth, $ . to call her mine. illustrated. to, paper, cents. uncle jack and other stories. mo, paper, cents. published by harper & brothers, new york. _any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the united states or canada, on receipt of the price._ the victor by bryce walton illustrated by kelly freas [transcriber note: this etext was produced from if worlds of science fiction march . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] [sidenote: _under the new system of the managerials, the fight was not for life but for death! and great was the ingenuity of--the victor._] charles marquis had a fraction of a minute in which to die. he dropped through the tubular beams of alloydem steel and hung there, five thousand feet above the tiers and walkways below. at either end of the walkway crossing between the two power-hung buildings, he saw the plainclothes security officers running in toward him. he grinned and started to release his grip. he would think about them on the way down. his fingers wouldn't work. he kicked and strained and tore at himself with his own weight, but his hands weren't his own any more. he might have anticipated that. some paralysis beam freezing his hands into the metal. he sagged to limpness. his chin dropped. for an instant, then, the fire in his heart almost went out, but not quite. it survived that one terrible moment of defeat, then burned higher. and perhaps something in that desperate resistance was the factor that kept it burning where it was thought no flame could burn. he felt the rigidity of paralysis leaving his arms as he was lifted, helped along the walkway to a security car. the car looked like any other car. the officers appeared like all the other people in the clockwork culture of the mechanized new system. marquis sought the protection of personal darkness behind closed eyelids as the monorail car moved faster and faster through the high clean air. well--he'd worked with the underground against the system for a long time. he had known that eventually he would be caught. there were rumors of what happened to men then, and even the vaguest, unsubstantiated rumors were enough to indicate that death was preferable. that was the underground's philosophy--better to die standing up as a man with some degree of personal integrity and freedom than to go on living as a conditioned slave of the state. he'd missed--but he wasn't through yet though. in a hollow tooth was a capsule containing a very high-potency poison. a little of that would do the trick too. but he would have to wait for the right time.... * * * * * the manager was thin, his face angular, and he matched up with the harsh steel angles of the desk and the big room somewhere in the security building. his face had a kind of emotion--cold, detached, cynically superior. "we don't get many of your kind," he said. "political prisoners are becoming more scarce all the time. as your number indicates. from now on, you'll be no. ." he looked at some papers, then up at marquis. "you evidently found out a great deal. however, none of it will do you or what remains of your underground fools any good." the manager studied marquis with detached curiosity. "you learned things concerning the managerials that have so far remained secret." it was partly a question. marquis' lean and darkly inscrutable face smiled slightly. "you're good at understatement. yes--i found out what we've suspected for some time. that the managerial class has found some way to stay young. either a remarkable longevity, or immortality. of all the social evils that's the worst of all. to deny the people knowledge of such a secret." the manager nodded. "then you did find that out? the underground knows? well, it will do no good." "it will, eventually. they'll go on and someday they'll learn the secret." marquis thought of marden. marden was as old as the new system of statism and inhumanity that had started off disguised as social-democracy. three-hundred and three years old to be exact. the manager said, "no. --you will be sent to the work colony on the moon. you won't be back. we've tried re-conditioning rebels, but it doesn't work. a rebel has certain basic deviant characteristics and we can't overcome them sufficiently to make happy, well-adjusted workers out of you. however on the moon--you will conform. it's a kind of social experiment there in associative reflex culture, you might say. you'll conform all right." he was taken to a small, naked, gray-steel room. he thought about taking the capsule from his tooth now, but decided he might be observed. they would rush in an antidote and make him live. and he might not get a chance to take his life in any other way. he would try of course, but his knowledge of his future situation was vague--except that in it he would conform. there would be extreme conditioned-reflex therapeutic techniques. and it would be pretty horrible. that was all he knew. he didn't see the pellet fall. he heard the slight sound it made and then saw the almost colorless gas hissing softly, clouding the room. he tasted nothing, smelled or felt nothing. he passed out quickly and painlessly. * * * * * he was marched into another office, and he knew he was on the moon. the far wall was spherical and was made up of the outer shell of the pressure dome which kept out the frigid cold nights and furnace-hot days. it was opaque and marquis could see the harsh black and white shadows out there--the metallic edges of the far crater wall. this manager was somewhat fat, with a round pink face and cold blue eyes. he sat behind a chrome shelf of odd shape suspended from the ceiling with silver wires. the manager said, "no. , here there is only work. at first, of course, you will rebel. later you will work, and finally there will be nothing else. things here are rigidly scheduled, and you will learn the routines as the conditioning bells acquaint you with them. we are completely self-sufficient here. we are developing the perfect scientifically-controlled society. it is a kind of experiment. a closed system to test to what extremes we can carry our mastery of associative reflex to bring man security and happiness and freedom from responsibility." marquis didn't say anything. there was nothing to say. he knew he couldn't get away with trying to kill this particular managerial specimen. but one man, alone, a rebel, with something left in him that still burned, could beat the system. _he had to!_ "our work here is specialized. during the indoctrination period you will do a very simple routine job in coordination with the cybernetics machines. there, the machines and the nervous system of the workers become slowly cooperative. machine and man learn to work very intimately together. later, after the indoctrination--because of your specialized knowledge of food-concentrate preparation--we will transfer you to the food-mart. the period of indoctrination varies in length with the individuals. you will be screened now and taken to the indoctrination ward. we probably won't be seeing one another again. the bells take care of everything here. the bells and the machines. there is never an error--never any mistakes. machines do not make mistakes." he was marched out of there and through a series of rooms. he was taken in by generators, huge oscilloscopes. spun like a living tube through curtains of vacuum tube voltimeters, electronic power panels. twisted and squeezed through rolls of skeins of hook-up wire. bent through shieldings of every color, size and shape. rolled over panel plates, huge racks of glowing tubes, elaborate transceivers. tumbled down long surfaces of gleaming bakelite. plunged through color-indexed files of resistors and capacitances.... _... here machine and man learn to work very intimately together._ as he drifted through the machine tooled nightmare, marquis knew _what_ he had been fighting all his life, what he would continue to fight with every grain of ingenuity. mechanization--the horror of losing one's identity and becoming part of an assembly line. he could hear a clicking sound as tubes sharpened and faded in intensity. the clicking--rhythm, a hypnotic rhythm like the beating of his own heart--the throbbing and thrumming, the contracting and expanding, the pulsing and pounding.... _... the machines and the nervous system of the workers become slowly cooperative._ * * * * * beds were spaced ten feet apart down both sides of a long gray metal hall. there were no cells, no privacy, nothing but beds and the gray metalene suits with numbers printed across the chest. his bed, with his number printed above it, was indicated to him, and the guard disappeared. he was alone. it was absolutely silent. on his right a woman lay on a bed. no. . she had been here a long time. she appeared dead. her breasts rose and fell with a peculiarly steady rhythm, and seemed to be coordinated with the silent, invisible throbbing of the metal walls. she might have been attractive once. here it didn't make any difference. her face was gray, like metal. her hair was cropped short. her uniform was the same as the man's on marquis' left. the man was no. . he hadn't been here so long. his face was thin and gray. his hair was dark, and he was about the same size and build as marquis. his mouth hung slightly open and his eyes were closed and there was a slight quivering at the ends of the fingers which were laced across his stomach. [illustration: _when the bells rang they would arise...._] "hello," marquis said. the man shivered, then opened dull eyes and looked up at marquis. "i just got in. name's charles marquis." the man blinked. "i'm--i'm--no. ." he looked down at his chest, repeated the number. his fingers shook a little as he touched his lips. marquis said. "what's this indoctrination?" "you--learn. the bells ring--you forget--and learn--" "there's absolutely no chance of escaping?" marquis whispered, more to himself than to . "only by dying," shivered. his eyes rolled crazily, then he turned over and buried his face in his arms. the situation had twisted all the old accepted values squarely around. preferring death over life. but not because of any anti-life attitude, or pessimism, or defeatism. none of those negative attitudes that would have made the will-to-die abnormal under conditions in which there would have been hope and some faint chance of a bearable future. here to keep on living was a final form of de-humanized indignity, of humiliation, of ignominy, of the worst thing of all--loss of one's-self--of one's individuality. to die as a human being was much more preferable over continuing to live as something else--something neither human or machine, but something of both, with none of the dignity of either. * * * * * the screening process hadn't detected the capsule of poison in marquis' tooth. the capsule contained ten grains of poison, only one of which was enough to bring a painless death within sixteen hours or so. that was his ace in the hole, and he waited only for the best time to use it. bells rang. the prisoners jumped from their beds and went through a few minutes of calisthenics. other bells rang and a tray of small tins of food-concentrates appeared out of a slit in the wall by each bed. more bells rang, different kinds of bells, some deep and brazen, others high and shrill. and the prisoners marched off to specialized jobs co-operating with various machines. you slept eight hours. calisthenics five minutes. eating ten minutes. relaxation to the tune of musical bells, ten minutes. work period eight hours. repeat. that was all of life, and after a while marquis knew, a man would not be aware of time, nor of his name, nor that he had once been human. marquis felt deep lancing pain as he tried to resist the bells. each time the bells rang and a prisoner didn't respond properly, invisible rays of needle pain punched and kept punching until he reacted properly. and finally he did as the bells told him to do. finally he forgot that things had ever been any other way. marquis sat on his bed, eating, while the bells of eating rang across the bowed heads in the gray uniforms. he stared at the girl, then at the man, . there were many opportunities to take one's own life here. that had perplexed him from the start--_why hasn't the girl, and this man, succeeded in dying?_ and all the others? they were comparatively new here, all these in this indoctrination ward. why weren't they trying to leave in the only dignified way of escape left? no. tried to talk, he tried hard to remember things. sometimes memory would break through and bring him pictures of other times, of happenings on earth, of a girl he had known, of times when he was a child. but only the mildest and softest kind of recollections.... marquis said, "i don't think there's a prisoner here who doesn't want to escape, and death is the only way out for us. we know that." for an instant, no. stopped eating. a spoonful of food concentrate hung suspended between his mouth and the shelf. then the food moved again to the urging of the bells. invisible pain needles gouged marquis' neck, and he ate again too, automatically, talking between tasteless bites. "a man's life at least is his own," marquis said. "they can take everything else. but a man certainly has a right and a duty to take that life if by so doing he can retain his integrity as a human being. suicide--" no. bent forward. he groaned, mumbled "don't--don't--" several times, then curled forward and lay on the floor knotted up into a twitching ball. the eating period was over. the lights went off. bells sounded for relaxation. then the sleep bells began ringing, filling up the absolute darkness. marquis lay there in the dark and he was afraid. he had the poison. he had the will. but he couldn't be unique in that respect. what was the matter with the others? all right, the devil with them. maybe they'd been broken too soon to act. he could act. tomorrow, during the work period, he would take a grain of the poison. put the capsule back in the tooth. the poison would work slowly, painlessly, paralyzing the nervous system, finally the heart. sometime during the beginning of the next sleep period he would be dead. that would leave six or seven hours of darkness and isolation for him to remain dead, so they couldn't get to him in time to bring him back. he mentioned suicide to the girl during the next work period. she moaned a little and curled up like a fetus on the floor. after an hour, she got up and began inserting punch cards into the big machine again. she avoided marquis. marquis looked around, went into a corner with his back to the room, slipped the capsule out and let one of the tiny, almost invisible grains, melt on his tongue. he replaced the capsule and returned to the machine. a quiet but exciting triumph made the remainder of the work period more bearable. back on his bed, he drifted into sleep, into what he knew was the final sleep. he was more fortunate than the others. within an hour he would be dead. * * * * * somewhere, someone was screaming. the sounds rose higher and higher. a human body, somewhere ... pain unimaginable twisting up through clouds of belching steam ... muscles quivering, nerves twitching ... and somewhere a body floating and bobbing and crying ... sheets of agony sweeping and returning in waves and the horror of unescapable pain expanding like a volcano of madness.... somewhere was someone alive who should be dead. and then in the dark, in absolute silence, marquis moved a little. he realized, vaguely, that the screaming voice was his own. he stared into the steamy darkness and slowly, carefully, wet his lips. he moved. he felt his lips moving and the whisper sounding loud in the dark. _i'm alive!_ he managed to struggle up out of the bed. he could scarcely remain erect. every muscle in his body seemed to quiver. he longed to slip down into the darkness and escape into endless sleep. but he'd tried that. and he was still alive. he didn't know how much time had passed. he was sure of the poison's effects, but he wasn't dead. they had gotten to him in time. sweat exploded from his body. he tried to remember more. pain. he lay down again. he writhed and perspired on the bed as his tortured mind built grotesque fantasies out of fragments of broken memory. the routine of the unceasing bells went on. bells, leap up. bells, calisthenics. bells, eat. bells, march. bells, work. he tried to shut out the bells. he tried to talk to . covered up his ears and wouldn't listen. the girl wouldn't listen to him. there were other ways. and he kept the poison hidden in the capsule in his hollow tooth. he had been counting the steps covering the length of the hall, then the twenty steps to the left, then to the right to where the narrow corridor led again to the left where he had seen the air-lock. after the bells stopped ringing and the darkness was all around him, he got up. he counted off the steps. no guards, no alarms, nothing to stop him. they depended on the conditioners to take care of everything. this time he would do it. this time they wouldn't bring him back. no one else could even talk with him about it, even though he knew they all wanted to escape. some part of them still wanted to, but they couldn't. so it was up to him. he stopped against the smooth, opaque, up-curving glasite dome. it had a brittle bright shine that reflected from the moon's surface. it was night out there, with an odd metallic reflection of earthlight against the naked crags. he hesitated. he could feel the intense and terrible cold, the airlessness out there fingering hungrily, reaching and whispering and waiting. he turned the wheel. the door opened. he entered the air-lock and shut the first door when the air-pressure was right. he turned the other wheel and the outer lock door swung outward. the out-rushing air spun him outward like a balloon into the awful airless cold and naked silence. his body sank down into the thick pumice dust that drifted up around him in a fine powdery blanket of concealment. he felt no pain. the cold airlessness dissolved around him in deepening darkening pleasantness. this time he was dead, thoroughly and finally and gloriously dead, even buried, and they couldn't find him. and even if they did finally find him, what good would it do them? some transcendental part of him seemed to remain to observe and triumph over his victory. this time he was dead to stay. * * * * * this time he knew at once that the twisting body in the steaming pain, the distorted face, the screams rising and rising were all charles marquis. maybe a dream though, he thought. so much pain, so much screaming pain, is not real. in some fraction of a fraction of that interim between life and death, one could dream of so much because dreams are timeless. yet he found himself anticipating, even through the shredded, dissociated, nameless kind of pain, a repetition of that other time. the awful bitterness of defeat. * * * * * he opened his eyes slowly. it was dark, the same darkness. he was on the same bed. and the old familiar dark around and the familiar soundlessness that was now heavier than the most thunderous sound. everything around him then seemed to whirl up and go down in a crash. he rolled over to the floor and lay there, his hot face cooled by the cold metal. as before, some undeterminable interim of time had passed. and he knew he was alive. his body was stiff. he ached. there was a drumming in his head, and then a ringing in his ears as he tried to get up, managed to drag himself to an unsteady stance against the wall. he felt now an icy surety of horror that carried him out to a pin-point in space. a terrible fatigue hit him. he fell back onto the bed. he lay there trying to figure out how he could be alive. he finally slept pushed into it by sheer and utter exhaustion. the bells called him awake. the bells started him off again. he tried to talk again to . they avoided him, all of them. but they weren't really alive any more. how long could he maintain some part of himself that he knew definitely was charles marquis? he began a ritual, a routine divorced from that to which all those being indoctrinated were subjected. it was a little private routine of his own. dying, and then finding that he was not dead. he tried it many ways. he took more grains of the poison. but he was always alive again. "you-- ! damn you--talk to me! you know what's been happening to me?" the man nodded quickly over his little canisters of food-concentrate. "this indoctrination--you, the girl--you went crazy when i talked about dying--what--?" the man yelled hoarsely. "don't ... don't say it! all this--what you've been going through, can't you understand? all that is part of indoctrination. you're no different than the rest of us! we've all had it! all of us. all of us! some more maybe than others. it had to end. you'll have to give in. oh god, i wish you didn't. i wish you could win. but you're no smarter than the rest of us. _you'll have to give in!_" it was 's longest and most coherent speech. maybe i can get somewhere with him, marquis thought. i can find out something. but wouldn't say any more. marquis kept on trying. no one, he knew, would ever realize what that meant--to keep on trying to die when no one would let you, when you kept dying, and then kept waking up again, and you weren't dead. no one could ever understand the pain that went between the dying and the living. and even marquis couldn't remember it afterward. he only knew how painful it had been. and knowing that made each attempt a little harder for marquis. he tried the poison again. there was the big stamping machine that had crushed him beyond any semblance of a human being, but he had awakened, alive again, whole again. there was the time he grabbed the power cable and felt himself, in one blinding flash, conquer life in a burst of flame. he slashed his wrists at the beginning of a number of sleep periods. when he awakened, he was whole again. there wasn't even a scar. he suffered the pain of resisting the eating bells until he was so weak he couldn't respond, and he knew that he died that time too--from pure starvation. _but i can't stay dead!_ "_... you'll have to give in!_" * * * * * he didn't know when it was. he had no idea now how long he had been here. but a guard appeared, a cold-faced man who guided marquis back to the office where the fat, pink-faced little manager waited for him behind the shelf suspended by silver wires from the ceiling. the manager said. "you are the most remarkable prisoner we've ever had here. there probably will not be another like you here again." marquis' features hung slack, his mouth slightly open, his lower lip drooping. he knew how he looked. he knew how near he was to cracking completely, becoming a senseless puppet of the bells. "why is that?" he whispered. "you've tried repeatedly to--you know what i mean of course. you have kept on attempting this impossible thing, attempted it more times than anyone else here ever has! frankly, we didn't think any human psyche had the stuff to try it that many times--to resist that long." the manager made a curious lengthened survey of marquis' face. "soon you'll be thoroughly indoctrinated. you are, for all practical purposes, now. you'll work automatically then, to the bells, and think very little about it at all, except in a few stereotyped ways to keep your brain and nervous system active enough to carry out simple specialized work duties. or while the new system lasts. and i imagine that will be forever." "forever...." "yes, yes. you're immortal now," the manager smiled. "surely, after all this harrowing indoctrination experience, you realize _that_!" _immortal. i might have guessed. i might laugh now, but i can't. we who pretend to live in a hell that is worse than death, and you, the managerials who live in paradise._ we two are immortal. "that is, you're immortal as long as we desire you to be. you'll never grow any older than we want you to, never so senile as to threaten efficiency. that was what you were so interested in finding out on earth, wasn't it? the mystery behind the managerials? why they never seemed to grow old. why we have all the advantage, no senility, no weakening, the advantage of accumulative experience without the necessity of re-learning?" "yes," marquis whispered. the manager leaned back. he lit a paraette and let the soothing nerve-tonic seep into his lungs. he explained. "every one of you political prisoners we bring here want, above everything else, to die. it was a challenge to our experimental social order here. we have no objection to your killing yourself. we have learned that even the will to die can be conditioned out of the most determined rebel. as it has been conditioned out of you. you try to die enough times, and you do die, but the pain of resurrection is so great that finally it is impossible not only to kill yourself, but even to think of attempting it." marquis couldn't say anything. the memory called up by the mention of self-destruction rasped along his spine like chalk on a blackboard. he could feel the total-recall of sensation, the threatening bursts of pain. "no...." he whispered over and over. "no--please--no--" the manager said. "we won't mention it anymore. you'll never be able to try any overt act of self-destruction again." the bright light from the ceiling lanced like splinters into the tender flesh of marquis' eyeballs, danced about the base of his brain in reddened choleric circles. his face had drawn back so that his cheekbones stood out and his nose was beak-like. his irises became a bright painful blue in the reddened ovals of his eyes. the manager yawned as he finished explaining. "each prisoner entering here has an identification punch-plate made of his unique electro-magnetic vibratory field. that's the secret of our immortality and yours. like all matter, human difference is in the electro-magnetic, vibratory rates. we have these punch-plates on file for every prisoner. we have one of you. any dead human body we merely put in a tank which dissolves it into separate cells, a mass of stasis with potentiality to be reformed into any type of human being of which we have an identification punch-plate, you see? this tank of dissociated cells is surrounded by an electro-magnetic field induced from a machine by one of the identification punch-plates. that particular human being lives again, the body, its mind, its life pattern identical to that from which the original punch-plate was made. each time you have died, we reduced your body, regardless of its condition, to dissociated cells in the tank. the identification punch-plate was put in the machine. your unique electro-magnetic field reformed the cells into you. it could only be you, as you are now. from those cells we can resurrect any one of whom we have an identification plate. "that is all, no. . now that you're indoctrinated, you will work from now on in the food-mart, because of your experience." * * * * * for an undeterminable length of time, he followed the routines of the bells. in the big food-mart, among the hydroponic beds, and the canning machines; among the food-grinders and little belts that dropped cans of food-concentrate into racks and sent them off into the walls. he managed to talk more and more coherently with no. . he stopped referring to suicide, but if anyone had the idea that marquis had given up the idea of dying, they were wrong. marquis was stubborn. somewhere in him the flame still burned. he wouldn't let it go out. the bells couldn't put it out. the throbbing machines couldn't put it out. and now he had at last figured out a way to beat the game. during an eating period, marquis said to . "you want to die. wait a minute--i'm talking about something we can both talk and think about. a murder agreement. you understand? we haven't been conditioned against killing each other. it's only an overt act of selfdes--all right, we don't think about that. but we can plan a way to kill each other." looked up. he stopped eating momentarily. he was interested. "what's the use though?" pain shadowed his face. "we only go through it--come back again--" "i have a plan. the way i have it worked out, they'll never bring either one of us back." that wasn't exactly true. _one_ of them would have to come back. marquis hoped that wouldn't catch on to the fact that he would have to be resurrected, but that marquis never would. he hoped that 's mind was too foggy and dull to see through the complex plan. and that was the way it worked. marquis explained. listened and smiled. it was the first time marquis had ever seen a prisoner smile. he left what remained of the capsule of poison where could get it. during one of the next four eating periods, was to slip the poison into marquis' food can. marquis wouldn't know what meal, or what can. he had to eat. the bells had conditioned him that much. and not to eat would be an overt act of self-destruction. he wasn't conditioned not to accept death administered by another. and then, after an eating period, whispered to him. "you're poisoned. it was in one of the cans you just ate." "great!" almost shouted marquis. "all right. now i'll die by the end of the next work period. that gives us this sleep period and all the next work period. during that time i'll dispose of you as i've said." went to his bed and the bells rang and the dark came and both of them slept. * * * * * number resisted the conditioners enough to follow marquis past his regular work room into the food-mart. as planned, marched on and stood in the steaming shadows behind the hydroponic beds. marquis worked for a while at the canning machines, at the big grinding vats. then he went over to and said. "turn around now." smiled. he turned around. "good luck," he said. "good luck--to you!" marquis hit across the back of the neck with an alloy bar and killed him instantly. he changed clothes with the dead man. he put his own clothes in a refuse incinerator. quickly, he dragged the body over and tossed it into one of the food-grinding vats. his head bobbed up above the gray swirling liquid once, then the body disappeared entirely, was ground finely and mixed with the other foodstuff. within eight hours the cells of would be distributed minutely throughout the contents of thousands of cans of food-concentrate. within that time much of it would have been consumed by the inmates and managers. at the end of that work period, marquis returned to his cell. he went past his own bed and stopped in front of 's bed. the sleep bells sounded and the dark came again. this would be the final dark, marquis knew. this time he had beat the game. the delayed-action poison would kill him. he had on 's clothes with his identification number. he was on 's bed. he would die--as . the guards would finally check on the missing man in the food-mart. but they would never find him. they would find dead, a suicide. and they would put the body labeled in the tank, dissolve it into dissociated cells and they would subject those cells to the electro-magnetic field of . and they would resurrect-- . not only have i managed to die, marquis thought, but i've managed the ultimate suicide. there won't even be a body, no sign anywhere that i have ever been at all. even my cells will have been resurrected as someone else. as a number . * * * * * "and that's the way it was," no. would tell new prisoners coming in. sometimes they listened to him and seemed interested, but the interest always died during indoctrination. but no. 's interest in the story never died. he knew that now he could never let himself die as a human being either, that he could never let himself become completely controlled by the bells. he'd been nearly dead as an individual, but no. had saved him from that dead-alive anonymity. he could keep alive, and maintain hope now by remembering what had done. he clung to that memory. as long as he retained that memory of hope--of triumph--at least some part of him would keep burning, as something had kept on burning within the heart of . so every night before the sleep bells sounded, he would go over the whole thing in minute detail, remembering 's every word and gesture, the details of his appearance. he told the plan over to himself every night, and told everyone about it who came in to the indoctrination ward. swimming up through the pain of resurrection, he had been a little mad at at first, and then he had realized that at least the plan had enabled one man to beat the game. "he will always be alive to me. maybe, in a way, he's part of me. nobody knows. but his memory will live. he succeeded in a kind of ultimate dying--no trace of him anywhere. but the memory of him and what he did will be alive when the new system and the managers are dead. that spirit will assure the underground of victory--someday. and meanwhile, i'll keep alive. "he even knew the psychology of these managers and their system. that they can't afford to make an error. he knew they'd still have that identification punch-plate of him. that they would have one more plate than they had prisoners. but he anticipated what they would do there too. to admit there was one more identification plate than there were prisoners would be to admit a gross error. of course they could dissolve one of the other prisoners and use 's plate and resurrect . but they'd gain nothing. there would still be an extra plate. you see? "so they destroyed the plate. he knew they would. and they also had to go back through the records, to earth, through the security files there, through the birth records, everything. and they destroyed every trace, every shred of evidence that no. ever existed." so he kept the memory alive and that kept alive while the other prisoners become automatons, hearing, feeling, sensing nothing except the bells. remembering nothing, anticipating nothing. but could remember something magnificent, and so he could anticipate, and that was hope, and faith. he found that no one really believed him but he kept on telling it anyway, the story of the plan. "maybe this number didn't exist," someone would say. "if there's no record anywhere--" would smile. "in my head, there's where the record is. _i_ know. _i_ remember." and so it was that was the only one who still remembered and who could still smile when sometime after that--no one in the prison colony knew how long--the underground was victorious, and the managerial system crumbled. https://www.pgdp.net (this book was produced from images made available by the hathitrust digital library.) eugene zamiatin we authorized translation from the russian by gregory zilboorg new york e. p. dutton & company fifth avenue copyright, by e. p. dutton & company _all rights reserved_ printed in the united states of america foreword in submitting this book to the american public the translator has this to say. the artistic and psychological sides of the novel are hardly to be discussed in a preface. great as the art of a writer may be and profound as his psychology may seem to one, the impression is largely a matter of individual variations, and this side must naturally be left to each individual's judgment and sensibilities. there is, however, one side of the matter which deserves particular mention and motivated emphasis. it is perhaps for the first time in the history of the last few decades that a russian book, inspired by russian life, written in russia and in the russian language, should see its first light not in russia but abroad, and not in the language it was originally written but translated into a foreign tongue. during the darkest years of russian history, in the 'forties, 'sixties, 'eighties and 'nineties of the last century, many russian writers were forced by oppression and reaction to live abroad and to write abroad, yet their writings would reach russia, as they were intended primarily for the russian reader and russian life. most of turgeniev's novels were written while he was in france, and with the exception of his last short story which he dictated on his deathbed, all his novels and stories were written in russian. hertzen, kropotkin, and at one time dostoyevski, were similarly obliged to write while away from their native land. here is a book written by an artist who lived and still lives in russia, and whose intimate love for russia and her suffering is so great that he finds it impossible to leave russia even in these days of stress and sorrow. but his book may not appear in the country where it was written. it is a great tragedy--this spiritual loneliness of the artist who cannot speak to his own people. in bringing out this book in english, the author tries to address himself to the world without having the opportunity of being heard by his own people. this situation, however, is to a great extent symbolic of the spiritual mission of zamiatin, for no matter what the language in which he originally writes, and no matter how typically national his artistic perception and intuition, he is essentially universal and his vision transcends the boundaries of a purely national art. moreover, is it not true that the more genuinely national a man's art, and the more sincerely national his personality, the more is he universal? abraham lincoln is more than an american national figure, and i doubt if the appeal lincoln's personality makes would be universal as it is if he were not so typically american. it is difficult to find personalities more national than tolstoi or dostoyevski, and this is perhaps the reason why they stand out as two of the most typically universal minds with a universal appeal that the nineteenth century gave us. zamiatin is not so great as the men referred to above, but despite his youth, he already proves to be the bearer of that quality of greatness which characterizes a personality with a universal appeal. _we_ is, as zamiatin himself calls it, the most jocular and the most earnest thing he has thus far written. it is a novel that puts most poignantly and earnestly before every thoughtful reader the most difficult problem that exists today in the civilized world,--the problem of preservation of the independent original creative personality. our civilization today depends upon the energetic movement of great masses of people. wars, revolutions, general strikes--all these phenomena involve great masses, large groups, enormous mobs. despite the fact that there is hardly a corner in the world today where the average man does not make the trite complaint, "what we need is leadership," the world today seems for a time at least to have lost its capacity for producing real leaders. for our great successes in mechanical civilization, our exceptional efforts in efficiency, tend to bring into play large numbers rather than great individualities. what under these conditions is the lot of a creative individuality? what the tragedy of an independent spirit under present conditions is, is pointed out in an unique way in _we_. the problem of creative individuality versus mob is today not a mere russian problem. it is as poignant under bolshevist dictatorship as it is in ford's factory. of course the sincere, honest and frank treatment of this problem seems offensive to anyone who prefers to be a member of a mob or keep this or that part of humanity in the state of a mob. that is why _we_ could not see light in russia, and will probably be disliked by those whose spiritual activities are reduced to the mechanical standards of a mechanical civilization which is devoid of original creative effort. a few words about the method by which zamiatin tries to drive home to the reader his main ideas. it is the method of "laughter through tears," to use an old expression of gogol. it is the form which is dictated by profound love for humanity, mixed with pity and hatred of those factors which are the cause of the disindividualization of man today. it is the old emotion of the ancient catul: "odi et amo." zamiatin laughs in order to hide his tears, hence amusing as _we_ may seem and really is, it barely conceals a profound human tragedy which is universal today. the reader may be interested in knowing something about zamiatin himself. zamiatin does not like to tell about himself and the translator does not think he has the right to tell more than to quote zamiatin's own answer to a request addressed to him a couple of years ago to write his autobiography: "i see you want my autobiography by all means, but i assure you that you will have to limit yourself only to an outside inspection and get but a glimpse, perhaps, into the dark windows. i seldom ask anybody to enter. "as to the outside, you will see a lonely child without playmates, lying on a turkish divan, hind-side up, reading a book, or under the grand piano while his mother plays chopin. two steps away from chopin, just outside the window with the geraniums, in the middle of the street, there is a small pig tied to a stake and hens fluttering in the dust. "if you are interested in the geography, here it is--lebedyan, in the most russian tambov province about which tolstoi and turgeniev wrote so much. chronology?--the end of the 'eighties and early 'nineties, then voronesh, the _gymnasium pension_, boredom and rabid dogs on main street. one of these dogs got me by the leg. at that time i loved to make different experiments on myself, and i decided to wait and see whether i would or would not get the rabies and what is most important, i was very curious: what would i feel when the time would come for the rabies (about two weeks after the bite)? i felt a great many things, but two weeks later i did not get the rabies, therefore i announced to the inspector in the school that i got the rabies and must go at once to moscow for vaccination. "in the _gymnasium_ i would get _a plus_ for composition and was not always on good terms with mathematics. perhaps because of that (sheer stubbornness) i chose the most mathematical career--the ship-building department of the petrograd polytech. "thirteen years ago in the month of may--and that may was remarkable in that the snow covered the flowers--i simultaneously finished my work for my diploma and my first short story. the short story was published in the old _obrazovanye_. "well, what else do you want? that meant that i was going to write short stories and was going to publish them. therefore for the following three years i wrote about nothing but ice cutters, steam engines, refillers and 'the theoretical exploration of the works of floating steam shovels.' i couldn't help myself. i was attached to the chair of ship architecture and busied myself with teaching in the ship-building faculty, where i teach until now. "if i mean anything in russian literature, i owe this completely to the petrograd secret service. in this service exiled me from petrograd and i was forced to spend two years in a non-populated place in lachta. there, in the midst of the white winter silence and the green summer silence, i wrote my _provincial_. after that the late ismaylov expressed in print his belief that i wore very high boots and was a long-haired provincial type, carrying a heavy stick, and he was later very much surprised that i 'didn't look a bit like that.' incidentally, 'not a bit like that' i became in england where, during the war, i spent about two years, building ships and visiting the ruins of ancient castles. i listened to the banging of the german zeppelin bombs and wrote a short novel _the islanders_. "i regret immensely that i did not witness the russian revolution in february and know only the october revolution, because it was in october, a life preserver around my body and all the lights out, passing german submarines, that i returned to petrograd. because of this i felt like one who never having been in love gets up one morning and finds himself married about ten years. "now i write little, perhaps because my requirements towards myself become greater. three new volumes are in the hands of the publisher and begin to be published only now. the fourth will be my novel _we_, the funniest and most earnest thing i have written. however, the most serious and most interesting novels i never wrote. they happened to me in my life." * * * zamiatin continues to live in russia and continues to live with russia, but such is the sarcasm of fate that the first russian novel giving a real synthesis of the russian revolution and its greater universal meaning, this novel written by zamiatin, should remain unknown to the russians in russia. gregory zilboorg. _new york_, . contents page foreword gregory zilboorg v record . an announcement--the wisest of lines--a poem . ballet--square harmony--x . a coat--a wall--the tables . the wild man with the barometer--epilepsy--if . the square--the rulers of the world--an agreeable and useful function . an accident--the cursed "it's clear"--twenty-four hours . an eyelash--taylor--henbane and lily of the valley . an irrational root--r- --the triangle . liturgy--iambus--the cast-iron hand . a letter--a membrane--hairy i . no, i can't; let it be without headings! . the delimitation of the infinite--angel--meditations on poetry . fog--thou--a decidedly absurd adventure . "mine"--impossible--a cold floor . the bell--the mirror-like sea--i am to burn eternally . yellow--a two-dimensional shadow--an incurable soul . through glass--i died--the corridor . logical debris--wounds and plaster--never again . the infinitesimal of the third order--from under the forehead--over the railing . discharge--the material of an idea--the zero rock . the duty of an author--the ice-swells--the most difficult love . the benumbed waves--everything is improving--i am a microbe . flowers--the dissolution of a crystal--if only (?) . the limit of the function--easter--to cross out everything . the descent from heaven--the greatest catastrophe in history--the known--is ended . the world does exist--rash--forty-one degrees centigrade . no headings. it is impossible . both of them--entropy and energy--the opaque part of the body . threads of the face--sprouts--an unnatural compression . the last number--galileo's mistake--would it not be better . the great operation--i forgave everything--the collision of trains . i do not believe--tractors--a little human splinter . this without a synopsis, hastily, the last . the forgiven ones--a sunny night--a radio-walkryie . in a ring--a carrot--a murder . empty pages--the christian god--about my mother . infusorian--doomsday--her room . i don't know what title--perhaps the whole synopsis may be called a cast-off cigarette-butt . the end . facts--the bell--i am certain we record one an announcement the wisest of lines a poem this is merely a copy, word by word, of what was published this morning in the state newspaper: "in another hundred and twenty days the building of the _integral_ will be completed. the great historic hour is near, when the first _integral_ will rise into the limitless space of the universe. a thousand years ago your heroic ancestors subjected the whole earth to the power of the united state. a still more glorious task is before you,--the integration of the indefinite equation of the cosmos by the use of the glass, electric, fire-breathing _integral_. your mission is to subjugate to the grateful yoke of reason the unknown beings who live on other planets, and who are perhaps still in the primitive state of freedom. if they will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically faultless happiness, our duty will be to force them to be happy. but before we take up arms, we shall try the power of words. "in the name of the well-doer, the following is announced herewith to all numbers of the united state: "whoever feels capable must consider it his duty to write treatises, poems, manifestoes, odes and other compositions on the greatness and the beauty of the united state. "this will be the first load which the _integral_ will carry. "long live the united state! long live the numbers!! long live the well-doer!!!" i feel my cheeks are burning as i write this. to integrate the colossal, universal equation! to unbend the wild curve, to straighten it out to a tangent--to a straight line! for the united state is a straight line, a great, divine, precise, wise line, the wisest of lines! i, d- , the builder of the _integral_, i am only one of the many mathematicians of the united state. my pen, which is accustomed to figures, is unable to express the march and rhythm of consonance; therefore i shall try to record only the things i see, the things i think, or to be more exact, the things _we_ think. yes, we; that is exactly what i mean, and "we" shall, therefore, be the title of my records. but this will only be a derivative of our life,--of our mathematical, perfect life in the united state. if this be so, will not this derivative be a poem in itself, despite my limitations? it will. i believe, i know it. i feel my cheeks are burning as i write this. i feel something similar to what a woman probably feels when for the first time she senses within herself the pulse of a tiny, blind, human being. it is i, and at the same time it is not i. and for many long months it will be necessary to feed it with my life, with my blood, and then with a pain at my heart, to tear it from myself and lay it at the feet of the united state. yet i am ready, as everyone, or nearly everyone of us, is. i am ready. record two ballet square harmony x spring. from behind the green wall from some unknown plains the wind brings to us the yellow honeyed pollen of flowers. one's lips are dry from this sweet dust. every moment one passes one's tongue over them. probably, all women whom i meet in the street (and men certainly also), have today sweet lips. this disturbs somewhat my logical thinking. but the sky! the sky is blue. its limpidness is not marred by a single cloud. (how primitive was the taste of the ancients, since their poets were always inspired by these senseless, formless, stupidly rushing accumulations of steam!) i love, i am sure it will not be an error if i say we love, only such a sky--a sterile, faultless sky. on such days the whole universe seems to be moulded of the same eternal glass, like the green wall, and like all our buildings. on such days one sees into the very blue depth of things. one sees their wonderful equations, hitherto unknown. one sees them in everything, even in the most ordinary everyday things. here is an example: this morning i was on the dock where the _integral_ is being built, and i saw the lathes; blindly, with abandon, the balls of the regulators were rotating; the cranks were swinging from side to side with a glimmer; the working-beam proudly swung its shoulder; and the mechanical chisels were dancing to the melody of an unheard tarantella. i suddenly perceived all the music, all the beauty, of this colossal, of this mechanical ballet, illumined by light blue rays of sunshine. then the thought came: why beautiful? why is a dance beautiful? answer: because it is an _unfree_ movement. because the deep meaning of the dance is contained in its absolute, ecstatic submission, in the ideal _non-freedom_. if it is true that our ancestors would abandon themselves in dancing at the most inspired moments of their lives (religious mysteries, military parades) then it means only one thing: the instinct of non-freedom has been characteristic of human nature from ancient times, and we in our life of today, we are only consciously-- i was interrupted. the switchboard clicked. i raised my eyes,--o- , of course! in half a minute she herself will be here to take me for the walk. dear o--! she always seems to me to look like her name, o--. she is approximately ten centimeters shorter than the required maternal norm. therefore she appears all round; the rose-colored o of her lips is open to meet every word of mine. she has a round soft dimple on her wrist. children have such dimples. as she came in, the logical fly-wheel was still buzzing in my head, and following its inertia, i began to tell her about my new formula which embraced the machines and the dancers and all of us. "wonderful, isn't it!" i asked. "yes, wonderful ... spring!" she replied, with a rosy smile. you see? spring! she talks about spring! females!... i became silent. we were down in the street. the avenue was crowded. on days when the weather is so beautiful the afternoon personal hour is usually the hour of the supplementary walk. as always the big musical tower was playing with all its pipes, the march of the united state. the numbers, hundreds, thousands of numbers in light blue unifs (probably a derivative of the ancient _uniform_) with golden badges on the chest,--the state number of each one, male or female,--the numbers were walking slowly, four abreast, exaltedly keeping the step. i, we four, were but one of the innumerable waves of a powerful torrent. to my left, o- (if one of my long-haired ancestors were writing this a thousand years ago, he would probably call her by that funny word, _mine_), to my right, two unknown numbers, a she-number and a he-number. blue sky, tiny baby suns in each one of our badges; our faces are unclouded by the insanity of thoughts. rays.... do you picture it? everything seems to be made of a kind of smiling, a ray-like matter. and the brass measures: tra-ta-ta-tam.... tra-ta-ta-tam ... stamping on the brassy steps which sparkle in the sun; with every step you rise higher and higher into the dizzy blue heights.... then, as this morning on the dock, again i saw as if for the first time in my life, the impeccably straight streets, the glistening glass of the pavement, the divine parallelopipeds of the transparent dwellings, the square harmony of the grayish-blue rows of numbers. and it seemed to me that not past generations, but i myself, had won a victory over the old god and the old life, that i myself had created all this. i felt like a tower: i was afraid to move my elbow, lest the walls, the cupola and the machines should fall to pieces. then without warning--a jump through centuries: i remembered (apparently through an association by contrast) a picture in the museum, a picture of an avenue of the twentieth century, a thundering many-colored confusion of men, wheels, animals, bill-boards, trees, colors, and birds.... they say all this once actually existed! it seemed to me so incredible, so absurd, that i lost control of myself and laughed aloud. a laugh, as if an echo of mine, reached my ear from the right. i turned. i saw white, very white, sharp teeth, and an unfamiliar female face. "i beg your pardon," she said, "but you looked about you like an inspired mythological god on the seventh day of creation. you look as though you are sure that i, too, was created by you, by no one but you. it is very flattering." all this without a smile, even with a certain degree of respect--(she may know that i am the builder of the _integral_). in her eyes nevertheless, in her brows, there was a strange irritating x, and i was unable to grasp it, to find an arithmetical expression for it. somehow i was confused; with a somewhat hazy mind, i tried logically to motivate my laughter. "it was absolutely clear that this contrast, this impassable abyss, between the things of today and of years ago--" "but why impassable?" (what bright, sharp teeth!) "one might throw a bridge over that abyss. please imagine: a drum battalion, rows,--all this existed before and consequently--" "oh, yes, it is clear," i exclaimed. it was a remarkable intersection of thoughts. she said almost in the same words the things i wrote down before the walk! do you understand? even the thoughts! it is because nobody is _one_, but _one of_. we are all so much alike-- "are you sure?" i noticed her brows which rose to the temples in an acute angle,--like the sharp corners of an x. again i was confused, casting a glance to the right, then to the left. to my right--she, slender, abrupt, resistantly flexible like a whip, i- (i saw her number now). to my left, o-, totally different, made all of circles with a child-like dimple on her wrist; and at the very end of our row, an unknown he-number, double-curved like the letter s. we were all so different from one another.... the one to my right, i- , apparently caught my confused eye, for she said with a sigh, "yes, alas!" i don't deny that this exclamation was quite in place, but again there was something in her face or in her voice.... with an abruptness unusual for me, i said, "why 'alas'? science is developing and if not now, then within fifty or one hundred years--" "even the noses will--" "yes, noses!" this time i almost shouted, "since there is still a reason, no matter what, for envy.... since my nose is button-like and someone else's is--" "well your nose is rather classic, as they would say in the ancient days, although your hands--no, no, show me your hands!" i hate to have anyone look at my hands; they are covered with long hair,--a stupid atavism. i stretched out my hand and said as indifferently as i could, "ape-like." she glanced at my hand, then at my face. "no, a very curious harmony." she weighed me with her eyes as though with scales. the little horns again appeared at the corners of her brows. "he is registered in my name," exclaimed o- with a rosy smile. i made a grimace. strictly speaking, she was out of order. this dear o-, how shall i say it? the speed of her tongue is not correctly calculated; the speed per second of her tongue should be slightly less than the speed per second of her thoughts,--at any rate not the reverse. at the end of the avenue the big bell of the accumulating tower resounded seventeen. the personal hour was at an end. i- was leaving us with that s-like he-number. he has such a respectable, and i noticed then, such a familiar face. i must have met him somewhere, but where i could not remember. upon leaving me i- said with the same x-like smile: "drop in day after tomorrow at auditorium ." i shrugged my shoulders: "if i am assigned to the auditorium you just named--" she, with a peculiar, incomprehensible certainty: "you will." the woman had upon me a disagreeable effect, like an irrational component of an equation which you cannot eliminate. i was glad to remain alone with dear o-, at least for a short while. hand in hand with her, i passed four lines of avenues; at the next corner she went to the right, i to the left. o- timidly raised her round blue crystalline eyes: "i would like so much to come to you today and pull down the curtains, especially today, right now...." how funny she is. but what could i say to her? she was with me only yesterday and she knows as well as i that our next sexual day is day-after-tomorrow. it is merely another case in which her thoughts are too far ahead. it sometimes happens that the spark comes too early to the motor. at parting i kissed her twice--no, i shall be exact, three times, on her wonderful blue eyes, such clear, unclouded eyes. record three a coat a wall the tables i looked over all that i wrote down yesterday and i find that my descriptions are not sufficiently clear. that is, everything would undoubtedly be clear to one of us but who knows to whom my _integral_ will some day bring these records? perhaps you, like our ancestors, have read the great book of civilization only up to the page of nine hundred years ago. perhaps you don't know even such elementary things as the hour tables, personal hours, maternal norm, green wall, well-doer. it seems droll to me and at the same time very difficult, to explain these things. it is as though, let us say, a writer of the twentieth century should start to explain in his novel such words as coat, apartment, wife. yet if his novel had been translated for primitive races, how could he have avoided explaining what a coat meant? i am sure that the primitive man would look at a coat and think, "what is this for? it is only a burden, an unnecessary burden." i am sure that you will feel the same, if i tell you that not one of us has ever stepped beyond the green wall since the two hundred years' war. but, dear readers, you must think, at least a little. it helps. it is clear that the history of mankind as far as our knowledge goes, is a history of the transition from nomadic forms to more sedentary ones. does it not follow that the most sedentary form of life (ours) is at the same time, the most perfect one? there was a time when people were rushing from one end of the earth to another, but this was the prehistoric time when such things as nations, wars, commerce, different discoveries of different americas still existed. who has need of these things now? i admit humanity acquired this habit of a sedentary form of life not without difficulty and not at once. when the two hundred years' war had destroyed all the roads which later were overgrown with grass, it was probably very difficult at first. it seemed uncomfortable to live in cities which were cut off from each other by green debris. but what of it? man soon after he lost his tail probably did not learn at once how to chase away flies without its help. i am almost sure that at first he was even lonesome without his tail, but now, can you imagine yourself with a tail? or can you imagine yourself walking in the street naked, without clothes? (it is possible you go without clothes still.) here we have the same case. i cannot imagine a city which is not clad with a green wall; i cannot imagine a life which is not clad with the figures of our tables. tables.... now even, purple figures look at me austerely yet kindly from the golden background of the wall. involuntarily i am reminded of the thing which was called by the ancients, "sainted image," and i feel a desire to compose verses, or prayers which are the same. oh, why am not i a poet, so as to be able properly to glorify the tables, the heart and pulse of the united state! all of us and perhaps all of you read in childhood while in school, that greatest of all monuments of ancient literature, the official railroad guide. but if you compare this with the tables, you will see side by side graphite and diamonds. both are the same, carbon. but how eternal, transparent, how shining the diamond! who does not lose his breath when he runs through the pages of the guide? the tables transformed each one of us, actually, into a six-wheeled steel hero of a great poem. every morning with six-wheeled precision, at the same hour, at the same minute, we wake up, millions of us at once. at the very same hour millions like one we begin our work, and millions like one, we finish it. united into a single body with a million hands, at the very same second, designated by the tables, we carry the spoons to our mouths; at the same second we all go out to walk, go to the auditorium, to the halls for the taylor exercises and then to bed. i shall be quite frank: even we have not attained the absolute, exact solution of the problem of happiness. twice a day, from sixteen to seventeen o'clock and from twenty-one to twenty-two, our united powerful organism dissolves into separate cells; these are the personal hours designated by the tables. during these hours you would see the curtains discreetly drawn in the rooms of some; others march slowly over the pavement of the main avenue or sit at their desks as i sit now. but i firmly believe, let them call me an idealist and a dreamer, i believe that sooner or later we shall somehow find even for these hours, a place in the general formula. somehow, all of the , seconds will be incorporated in the tables of hours. i have had opportunity to read and hear many improbable things about those times when human beings still lived in the state of freedom, that is, an unorganized primitive state. one thing has always seemed to me the most improbable: how could a government, even a primitive government, permit people to live without anything like our tables,--without compulsory walks, without precise regulation of the time to eat, for instance? they would get up and go to bed whenever they liked. some historians even say that in those days the streets were lighted all night; and all night people went about the streets. that i cannot understand; true, their minds were rather limited in those days. yet they should have understood, should they not, that such a life was actually wholesale murder, although slow murder, day after day? the state (humanitarianism) forbade in those days the murder of one person, but it did not forbid the killing of millions slowly and by half. to kill one, that is, to reduce the general sum of human life by fifty years, was considered criminal, but to reduce the general sum of human life by fifty million years was not considered criminal! is it not droll? today this simple mathematical moral problem could easily be solved in half a minute's time by any ten-year-old number, yet _they_ couldn't do it! all their immanuel kants together couldn't do it! it didn't enter the heads of all their kants to build a system of scientific ethics, that is, ethics based on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. further, is it not absurd that their state (they called it state!) left sexual life absolutely without control? however, whenever and as much as they wanted.... absolutely unscientific like beasts; and like beasts they blindly gave birth to children! is it not strange to understand gardening, chicken-farming, fishery (we have definite knowledge that they were familiar with all these things), and not to be able to reach the last step in this logical scale, namely, production of children,--not to be able to discover such things as maternal and paternal norms? it is so droll, so improbable, that while i write this i am afraid lest you, my unknown future readers, should think i am merely a bad jester. i feel almost as though you may think i simply want to mock you and with a most serious appearance try to relate to you absolute nonsense. but first, i am incapable of jesting, for in every joke a lie has its hidden function. and second, the science of the united state contends that the life of the ancients was exactly what i am describing, and the science of the united state cannot make a mistake! yet how could they have state logic, since they lived in a condition of freedom like beasts, like apes, like herds? what could one expect of them, since even in our day one hears from time to time, coming from the bottom, the primitive depths, the echo of the apes? fortunately it happens only from time to time, very seldom. happily it is only a case of small parts breaking; these may easily be repaired without stopping the eternal great march of the whole machine. and in order to eliminate a broken peg we have the skillful heavy hand of the well-doer, we have the experienced eyes of the guardians.... by the way, i just thought of that number whom i met yesterday, the double-curved one like the letter s; i think i have seen him several times coming out of the bureau of the guardians. now i understand why i felt such an instinctive respect for him and a kind of awkwardness when that strange i- at his side.... i must confess that, that i-- ... they ring the bell, time to sleep, it is twenty-two-thirty. till tomorrow, then. record four the wild man with a barometer epilepsy if until today everything in life seemed to me clear (that is why, i think, i always had a sort of partiality toward the word "clear"), but today ... i don't understand. first, i really was assigned to auditorium as she said, although the probability was as : , , or : , . ( is the number of auditoriums and there are , , numbers.) and second ... but let me relate things in successive order. the auditorium: an enormous half-globe of glass with the sun piercing through. the circular rows of noble, globe-like, closely-shaven heads. with joy in my heart i looked around. i believe i was looking in the hope of seeing the rose-colored scythe, the dear lips of o-, somewhere among the blue waves of the unifs. then i saw extraordinarily white, sharp teeth like the.... but no! tonight at twenty-one o'clock o- was to come to me; therefore my desire to see her was quite natural. the bell. we stood up, sang the hymn of the united state, and our clever phono-lecturer appeared on the platform with a sparkling golden megaphone. "respected numbers, not so long ago our archaeologists dug up a book written in the twentieth century. in this book the ironical author tells about a wild man and a barometer. the wild man noticed that every time the barometer's hand stopped on the word 'rain,' it actually rained. and as the wild man craved rain, he let out as much mercury as was necessary to put it at the level of the word 'rain' (on the screen a wild man with feathers, letting out the mercury. laughter). "you are laughing at him, but don't you think the 'european' of that age deserves more to be laughed at? he, like the wild man, wanted rain,--rain with a little r, an algebraic rain; but he remained standing before the barometer like a wet hen. the wild man at least had more courage and energy and logic, although primitive logic. the wild man showed the ability to establish a connection between cause and effect: by letting out the mercury he made the first step on the path which...." here (i repeat, i am not concealing anything, i am setting down everything) i suddenly became impermeable to the quickening currents coming from the megaphone. i suddenly felt i had come here in vain (why in vain and how could i not have come here, where i was assigned?). everything seemed to me empty like a shell. i succeeded with difficulty in switching my attention in again when the phono-lecturer came to the main theme of the evening,--to our music as a mathematical composition (mathematics is the cause, music the effect). the phono-lecturer began the description of the recently invented musicometer. "... by merely rotating this handle any one is enabled to produce about three sonatas per hour. what difficulties our predecessors had in making music! they were able to compose only by bringing themselves to strokes of inspiration,--an extinct form of epilepsy. here you have an amusing illustration of their achievements: the music of scriabin, twentieth century. this black box," (a curtain parted on the platform, and we saw an ancient instrument) "this box they called the 'royal grand.' they attached to this the idea of _regality_, which also goes to prove how their music...." and i don't remember anything further. very possibly because ... i'll tell you frankly, because she, i- , came to the "royal" box. probably i was simply startled by her unexpected appearance on the platform. she was dressed in a fantastic dress of the ancient time, a black dress closely fitting the body, sharply delimiting the white of her shoulders and breast and that warm shadow waving with her breath between.... and the dazzling, almost angry teeth. a smile, a bite, directed downward. she took her seat; she began to play something wild, convulsive, loud like all their life then,--not a shadow of rational mechanism. of course all those around me were right; they were laughing. only a few ... but why is it that i too, i...? yes, epilepsy, a mental disease, a pain. a slow, sweet pain, bite, and it goes deeper and becomes sharper. and then, slowly, sunshine,--not our sunshine, not crystalline, bluish and soft, coming through the glass bricks. no, a wild sunshine, rushing and burning, tearing everything into small bits.... the number at my left glanced at me and chuckled. i don't know why but i remember exactly how a microscopic saliva bubble appeared on his lips and burst. that bubble brought me back to myself. i was again i. like all the other numbers i heard now only the senseless, disorderly cracking of the chords. i laughed; i felt so light and simple. the gifted phono-lecturer represented to us only too well that wild epoch. and that was all. with what a joy i listened afterward to our contemporary music. it was demonstrated to us at the end of the lecture for the sake of contrast. crystalline, chromatic scales converging and diverging into endless series; and synthetic harmony of the formulae of taylor and mclauren, wholesome, square and massive like the "trousers of pythagoras." sad melodies dying away in waving movements. the beautiful texture of the spectrum of planets, dissected by frauenhofer lines ... what magnificent, what perfect regularity! how pitiful the wilful music of the ancients, not limited except by the scope of their wild imaginations! as usual in good order, four abreast, all of us left the auditorium. the familiar double-curved figure passed swiftly by. i respectfully bowed. dear o- was to come in an hour. i felt agitated,--agreeably and usefully. home at last! i rushed to the house-office, handed over to the controller on duty my pink ticket and received a certificate permitting the use of the curtains. this right exists in our state only for the sexual days. normally we live surrounded by transparent walls which seem to be knitted of sparkling air; we live beneath the eye of everyone, always bathed in light. we have nothing to conceal from one another; besides, this mode of living makes the difficult and exalted task of the guardians much easier. without it many bad things might happen. it is possible that the strange opaque dwellings of the ancients were responsible for their pitiful cellish psychology. "my (_sic!_) home is my fortress!" how did they manage to think of such things? at twenty-two o'clock i lowered the curtain and at the same second o- came in smiling, slightly out of breath. she extended to me her rosy lips and her pink ticket. i tore off the stub but i could not tear myself away from the rosy lips up to the last moment,--twenty-two-fifteen. then i showed her my diary and i talked; i think i talked very well on the beauty of a square, a cube, a straight line. at first she listened so charmingly, she was so rosy, when suddenly a tear appeared in her blue eyes, then another, and a third fell straight on the open page (page ). the ink blurred; well, i shall have to copy it again. "my dear o-, if only you, if...." "what if? if what?" again the old lament about a child or perhaps something new regarding, regarding ... the other one? although it seems as though some ... but that would be too absurd! record five the square the rulers of the world an agreeable and useful function again with you, my unknown reader; i talk to you as though you were, let us say, my old comrade, r- , the poet with the lips of a negro,--well, everyone knows him. yet you are somewhere on the moon, or on venus, or on mars. who knows you? where and who are you? imagine a square, a living, beautiful square. imagine that this square is obliged to tell you about itself, about its life. you realize that this square would hardly think it necessary to mention the fact that all its four angles are equal. it knows this too well. this is such an ordinary, obvious thing. i am in exactly the same square position. take the pink checks for instance, and all that goes with them: for me they are as natural as the equality of the four angles of the square. but for you they are perhaps more mysterious and hard to understand than the binom of newton. let me explain: an ancient sage once said a clever thing (accidentally, beyond doubt). he said, "love and hunger rule the world." consequently, to dominate the world, man had to win a victory over hunger after paying a very high price. i refer to the great two hundred years' war, the war between the city and the land. probably on account of religious prejudices, the primitive peasants stubbornly held on to their "bread."[ ] in the th year before the foundation of the united state, our contemporary petroleum food was invented. true, only about two-tenths of the population of the globe did not die out. but how beautifully shining the face of the earth became when it was cleared of its impurities! [ ] this word came down to us for use only as a poetic form, for the chemical constitution of this substance is unknown to us. accordingly the . which survived, have enjoyed the greatest happiness in the bosom of the united state. but is it not clear that supreme bliss and envy are only the numerator and the denominator respectively, of the same fraction, happiness? what sense would the innumerable sacrifices of the two hundred years' war have for us if a reason were left in our life for jealousy? yet such a reason persisted because there remained button-like noses and classical noses (_cf_: our conversation during the promenade). for there were some whose love was sought by everyone and others whose love was sought by no one. naturally, having conquered hunger (that is, algebraically speaking, having achieved the total of bodily welfare), the united state directed its attack against the second ruler of the world, against love. at last this element also was conquered, that is, organized and put into a mathematical formula. it is already three hundred years since our great historic lex sexualis was promulgated: "a number may obtain a license to use any other number as a sexual product." the rest is only a matter of technique. you are carefully examined in the laboratory of the sexual department where they find the content of the sexual hormones in your blood, and they make out for you accordingly a table of sexual days. then you file an application to enjoy the services of number so and so, or numbers so and so. you get for that purpose a check-book (pink). that is all. it is clear that under such circumstances there is no more reason for envy or jealousy. the denominator of the fraction of happiness is reduced to zero and the whole fraction is thus converted into a magnificent infiniteness. the thing which was for the ancients the source of innumerable stupid tragedies has been converted in our time into an harmonious, agreeable and useful function of the organism, a function like sleep, like physical labor, the taking of food, digestion, etc., etc. hence you see how the great power of logic purifies everything it happens to touch. oh, if only you unknown readers can conceive this divine power! if you will only learn to follow it to the end! it is very strange: while i was writing today of the loftiest summit of human history, all the while i breathed the purest mountain air of thought, but within me it was and remains cloudy, cobwebby, and there is a kind of cross-like, four-pawed x. or perhaps it is my paws and i feel like that only because they are always before my eyes, my hairy paws. i don't like to talk about them. i dislike them. they are a trace of a primitive epoch. is it possible that there is in me...? i wanted to strike out all this because it trespasses on the limits of my synopsis. but then i decided: no, i shall not! let this diary give the curve of the most imperceptible vibrations of my brain, like a precise seismograph, for at times such vibrations serve as forewarnings.... certainly this is absurd! this certainly should be stricken out; we have conquered all the elements; catastrophes are not possible any more. now everything is clear to me. the peculiar feeling inside is a result of that very same square situation of which i spoke in the beginning. there is no x in me. there can be none. i am simply afraid lest some x will be left in you, my unknown readers. i believe you will understand that it is harder for me to write than it ever was for any author throughout human history. some of them wrote for contemporaries, some for the future generations but none of them ever wrote for their ancestors, or beings like their primitive, distant ancestors. record six an accident the cursed "it's clear" twenty-four hours i must repeat, i made it my duty to write concealing nothing. therefore i must point out now that sad as it may be, the process of hardening and crystallization of life has evidently not been completed even here in our state. a few steps remain to be made before we reach the ideal. the ideal (it's clear), is to be found where nothing _happens_, but here.... i will give you an example: in the state paper i read that in two days the holiday of justice will be celebrated on the plaza of the cube. this means that again some number has impeded the smooth run of the great state machine. again something that was not foreseen, or forecalculated _happened_. besides, something _happened_ to me. true, it occurred during the personal hour, that is during the time specifically assigned to unforeseen circumstances, yet.... at about sixteen (to be exact, ten minutes to sixteen), i was at home. suddenly the telephone: "d- ?"--a woman's voice. "yes." "are you free?" "yes." "it is i, i- . i shall run over to you immediately. we shall go together to the ancient house. agreed?" i- !... this i- irritates me, repels me. she almost frightens me; but just because of that i answered, "yes." in five minutes we were in an aero. blue sky of may. the light sun in its golden aero buzzed behind us without catching up and without lagging behind. ahead of us a white cataract of a cloud. yes, a white cataract of a cloud nonsensically fluffy like the cheeks of an ancient cupid. that cloud was disturbing. the front window was open; it was windy; lips were dry. against one's will one passed the tongue constantly over them and thought about lips. already we saw in the distance the hazy green spots on the other side of the wall. then a slight involuntary sinking of the heart, down--down--down, as if from a steep mountain, and we were at the ancient house. that strange, delicate, blind establishment is covered all around with a glass shell, otherwise it would undoubtedly have fallen to pieces long ago. at the glass door we found an old woman all wrinkles, especially her mouth which was all made up of folds and pleats. her lips had disappeared, having folded inward; her mouth seemed grown together. it seemed incredible that she should be able to talk and yet she did: "well, dear, come again to see my little house?" her wrinkles shone, that is, her wrinkles diverged like rays, which created the impression of shining. "yes, grandmother," answered i- . the wrinkles continued to shine. "and the sun, eh,--do you see it, you rogue, you! i know, i know. it's all right. go all by yourselves,--i shall remain here in the sunshine." hmm.... apparently my companion was a frequent guest here. something disturbed me; probably that unpleasant optical impression,--the cloud on the smooth blue surface of the sky. while we were ascending the wide, dark stairs, i- said, "i love her, that old woman." "why?" "i don't know. perhaps for her mouth,--or perhaps for nothing, just so." i shrugged my shoulders. she continued walking upstairs with a faint smile or perhaps without a smile at all. i felt very guilty. it is clear that there must not be "love, just so," but "love because of." for all elements of nature should be.... "it's clear ..." i began, but i stopped at that word and cast a furtive look at i- . did she notice it or not? she looked somewhere, down; her eyes were closed like curtains. it struck me suddenly: evening about twenty-two; you walk on the avenue and among the brightly lighted, transparent, cubic cells, are dark spaces, lowered curtains, and there behind the curtains.... what has she behind her curtains? why did she phone me today? why did she bring me here? and all this.... she opened a heavy, squeaking, opaque door and we found ourselves in a sombre disorderly space (they called it an "apartment"). the same strange "royal" musical instrument and a wild, unorganized, crazy loudness of colors and forms like their ancient music. a white plane above, dark blue walls, red, green, orange bindings of ancient books, yellow bronze candelabras, a statue of buddha, furniture with lines distorted by epilepsy, impossible to reduce to any clear equation. i could hardly bear that chaos. but my companion apparently possessed a stronger constitution. "this is my most beloved--" she suddenly caught herself (again a smile,--bite, and white sharp teeth), "to be more exact, the most nonsensical of all 'apartments'." "or to be most exact, of all the states. thousands of microscopic states, fighting eternal wars, pitiless like--" "oh yes, it's clear," said i- with apparent sincerity. we passed through a room where we found a few small children's beds (children in those days were also private property). then more rooms, glimmering mirrors, sombre closets, unbearably loud-colored divans, an enormous "fireplace," a large mahogany bed. our contemporary beautiful, transparent, eternal glass was represented here only by pitiful, delicate, tiny squares of windows. "and to think; here there was love 'just so'; they burned and tortured themselves" (again the curtain of the eyes was lowered), "what a stupid, uneconomical spending of human energy. am i not right?" she spoke as though reading my thoughts but in her smile there remained always that irritating x. there behind the curtains something was going on, i don't know what, but something that made me lose my patience. i wanted to quarrel with her, to scream at her (exactly, to scream), but i had to agree. it was impossible not to agree. we stopped in front of a mirror. at that moment i saw only her eyes. an idea came to me: human beings are built as nonsensically as these stupid "apartments," human heads are opaque, and there are only two very small windows that lead inside,--the eyes. she seemed to have guessed my thoughts; she turned around: "well, here they are, my eyes,--well" (this suddenly, then silence). there were in front of me two gloomy dark windows and behind them inside, such strange hidden life. i saw there only fire, burning like a peculiar "fireplace" and unknown figures resembling.... all this was certainly very natural; i saw in her eyes the reflection of my own face. but my feelings were unnatural and not like me. evidently the depressing influence of the surroundings was beginning to tell on me. i felt definitely fear. i felt as if i were trapped and caged in a strange cage. i felt that i was caught in the wild hurricane of ancient life. "do you know ..." said i- , "step out for a moment into the next room." her voice came from there,--from inside, from behind the dark window-eyes,--where the fireplace was blazing. i went out, sat down. from a shelf on the wall there looked straight into my face, somewhat smiling, a snub-nosed, asymmetrical physiognomy of one of the ancient poets; i think it was pushkin. "why do i sit here enduring this smile with such resignation and what is this all about? why am i here? and why all these strange sensations, this irritating, repellent female, this strange game?" the door of the closet slammed; there was the rustle of silk. i felt it difficult to restrain myself from getting up and, and.... i don't remember exactly; probably i wanted to tell her a number of disagreeable things. but she had already appeared. she was dressed in a short bright-yellowish dress, black hat, black stockings. the dress was of light silk,--i saw clearly very long black stockings above the knees, an uncovered neck and the shadow between.... "it's clear that you want to seem original. but is it possible that you--?" "it is clear," interrupted i- , "that to be original means to stand out among others; consequently to be original means to violate the law of equality. what was called in the language of the ancients 'to be common' is with us only the fulfilling of one's duty. for--" "yes, yes, exactly," i interrupted impatiently, "and there is no use, no use...." she came near the bust of the snub-nosed poet, lowered the curtains on the wild fire of her eyes and said, this time i think she was really in earnest, or perhaps she merely wanted to soften my impatience with her, but she said a very reasonable thing: "don't you think it surprising that once people could stand types like this? not only stand them but worship them. what a slavish spirit, don't you think so?" "it's clear ... that is...!" i wanted ... (damn that cursed "it's clear!"). "oh, yes, i understand. but in fact these were rulers stronger than the crowned ones. why were they not isolated and exterminated? in our state--" "oh, yes, in our state--" i began. suddenly she laughed. i saw the laughter in her eyes. i saw the resounding sharp curve of that laughter, flexible, tense like a whip. i remember my whole body shivered. i thought of grasping her ... and i don't know what.... i had to do something, mattered little what; automatically i looked at my golden badge, glanced at my watch,--ten minutes to seventeen! "don't you think it is time to go?" i said in as polite a tone as possible. "and if i should ask you to stay here with me?" "what? do you realize what you are saying? in ten minutes i must be in the auditorium." "and 'all the numbers must take the prescribed courses in art and science'," said i- with my voice. then she lifted the curtain, opened her eyes,--through the dark windows the fire was blazing. "i have a physician in the medical bureau; he is registered to me; if i ask him, he will give you a certificate declaring that you are ill. all right?" understood! at last i understood where this game was leading. "ah, so! but you know that every honest number as a matter of course must immediately go to the office of the guardians and--" "and as a matter not of course?" (sharp smile-bite) "i am very curious to know; will you or will you not go to the guardians?" "are you going to remain here?" i grasped the knob of the door. it was a brass knob, a cold, brass knob and i heard, cold like brass, her voice: "just a minute, may i?" she went to the telephone, called a number,--i was so upset it escaped me,--and spoke loudly: "i shall be waiting for you in the ancient house. yes, yes, alone." i turned the cold brass knob. "may i take the aero?" "oh yes, certainly, please!" in the sunshine at the gate the old woman was dozing like a plant. again i was surprised to see her grown-together mouth open, and to hear her say: "and your lady, did she remain alone?" "alone." the mouth of the old woman grew together again; she shook her head; apparently even her weakening brain understood the stupidity and the danger of the behaviour of that woman. at seventeen o'clock exactly, i was at the lecture. there i suddenly realized that i did not tell the whole truth to the old woman. i- was not there alone _now_. possibly this fact, that i involuntarily told the old woman a lie, was torturing me now and distracting my attention. yes, not alone,--that was the point. after twenty-one-thirty o'clock i had a free hour. i could therefore have gone to the office of the guardians to make my report; but after that stupid adventure i was so tired--besides, the law provides two days. i shall have time tomorrow; i have another twenty-four hours. record seven an eyelash taylor henbane and lily of the valley night. green, orange, blue. the red royal instrument. the yellow dress. then a brass buddha. suddenly it lifted the brass eyelids and sap began to flow from it, from buddha. sap also from the yellow dress. even in the mirror,--drops of sap, and from the large bed and from the children's bed and soon from myself.... it is horror, mortally sweet horror!... i woke up. soft blue light, the glass of the walls, of the chairs, of the table was glimmering. this calmed me. my heart stopped palpitating. sap! buddha! how absurd! i am sick, it is clear; i never saw dreams before. they say that to see dreams was a common normal thing with the ancients. yes, after all, their life was a whirling carousel: green, orange, buddha, sap,--but we, people of today, we know all too well that dreaming is a serious mental disease. i.... is it possible that _my_ brain, this precise, clean, glittering mechanism, like a chronometer without a speck of dust on it, is...? yes it is, now. i really feel there in the brain some foreign body like an eyelash in the eye. one does not feel one's whole body but this eye with a hair in it, one cannot forget it for a second.... the cheerful, crystalline sound of the bell at my head. seven o'clock. time to get up. to the right and to the left as in mirrors, to the right and to the left through the glass walls i see others like myself, other rooms like my own, other clothes like my own, movements like mine, duplicated thousands of times. this invigorates me; i see myself as a part of an enormous, vigorous, united body; and what precise beauty! not a single superfluous gesture, or bow, or turn. yes, this taylor was undoubtedly the greatest genius of the ancients. true, he did not come to the idea of applying his method to the whole life, to every step throughout the twenty-four hours of the day; he was unable to integrate his system from one o'clock to twenty-four. i cannot understand the ancients. how could they write whole libraries about some kant and take notice only slightly of taylor, of this prophet who saw ten centuries ahead? breakfast was over. the hymn of the united state had been harmoniously sung; rhythmically, four abreast we walked to the elevators, the motors buzzed faintly and swiftly we went down--down--down, the heart sinking slightly. again that stupid dream or some unknown function of that dream. oh, yes! yesterday in the aero, then down--down! well, it is all over, anyhow. period. it is very fortunate that i was so firm and brusque with her. the car of the underground railway carried me swiftly to the place where the motionless, beautiful body of the _integral_, not yet spiritualized by fire, was glittering in the docks in the sunshine. with closed eyes i dreamed in formulae. again i calculated in my mind what was the initial velocity required to tear away the _integral_ from the earth. every second the mass of the _integral_ would change because of the expenditure of the explosive fuel. the equation was very complex with transcendant figures. as in a dream i felt, right here in the firm calculated world, how someone sat down at my side, barely touching me and saying, "pardon." i opened my eyes. at first, apparently because of an association with the _integral_, i saw something impetuously flying into the distance: a head; i saw pink wing-ears sticking out on the sides of it, then the curve of the overhanging back of the head, the double-curved letter s. through the glass walls of my algebraic world, again i felt the eyelash in my eye. i felt something disagreeable, i felt that today i must.... "certainly, please,"--i smiled at my neighbor and bowed. number s- i saw glittering on his golden badge (that is why i associated him with the letter s from the very first moment: an optical impression which remained unregistered by consciousness). his eyes sparkled, two sharp little drills; they were revolving swiftly, drilling in deeper and deeper. it seemed that in a moment they would drill in to the bottom and would see something that i do not even dare to confess to myself.... that bothersome eyelash became wholly clear to me. s- was one of them, one of the guardians, and it would be the simplest thing immediately, without deferring to tell him everything! "i went yesterday to the ancient house ..." my voice was strange, husky, flat,--i tried to cough. "that is good. it must have given you material for some instructive deductions." "yes ... but ... you see, i was not alone; i was in the company of i- , and then...." "i- ? you are fortunate. she is a very interesting, gifted woman; she has a host of admirers." but he too--then during the promenade.... perhaps he is even assigned as her he-number! no, it is impossible to tell him, unthinkable. this was perfectly clear. "yes, yes, certainly, very," i smiled, broader and broader, more stupidly, and felt as if my smile made me look foolish, naked. the drills reached the bottom; revolving continually they screwed themselves back into his eyes. s- smiled double-curvedly, nodded and slid to the exit. i covered my face with the newspaper (i felt as if everybody were looking at me), and soon i forgot about the eyelash, about the little drills, about everything, i was so upset by what i read in the paper: "according to authentic information, traces of an organization which still remains out of reach, have again been discovered. this organization aims at liberation from the beneficial yoke of the state." liberation! it is remarkable how persistent human criminal instincts are! i use deliberately the word "criminal," for freedom and crime are as closely related as--well, as the movement of an aero and its speed: if the speed of an aero equals zero, the aero is motionless; if human liberty is equal to zero, man does not commit any crime. that is clear. the way to rid man of criminality is to rid him of freedom. no sooner did we rid ourselves of freedom (in the cosmic sense centuries are only a "no sooner"), than suddenly some unknown pitiful degenerates.... no, i cannot understand why i did not go immediately yesterday to the bureau of the guardians. today, after sixteen o'clock, i shall go there without fail. at sixteen-ten i was in the street; at once i noticed o- at the corner; she was all rosy with delight at the encounter. she has a simple, round mind. a timely meeting; she would understand and lend me support. or, ... no, i did not need any support; my decision was firm. the pipes of the musical tower thundered out harmoniously the march--the same daily march. how wonderful the charm of this dailiness, of this constant repetition and mirror-like smoothness! "out for a walk?" her round blue eyes opened toward me widely, blue windows leading inside; i penetrate there unhindered; there is nothing in there, i mean nothing foreign, nothing superfluous. "no, not for a walk. i must go." i told her where. and to my astonishment i saw her rosy round mouth form a crescent with the horns downward as if she tasted something sour. this angered me. "you she-numbers seem to be incurably eaten up by prejudices. you are absolutely unable to think abstractly. forgive me the word but this i call bluntness of mind." "you? ... to the spies? how ugly! and i went to the botanical garden and brought you a branch of lily-of-the-valley...." "why, 'and i'? why this 'and'? just like a woman!" angrily (this i must confess), i snatched the flowers. "here they are, your lilies-of-the-valley. well, smell them! good? yes? why not use a little bit of logic? the lilies-of-the-valley smell good; all right! but you cannot say about an odor, about the conception of an odor, that it _is_ good or bad, can you? you can't, can you? there is the smell of lilies-of-the-valley and there is the disagreeable smell of henbane. both are odors. the ancient states had their spies; we have ours ... yes, spies! i am not afraid of words. but is it not clear to you that there the spies were henbane; here they are lilies-of-the-valley? yes, lilies-of-the-valley, yes!" the rosy crescent quivered. now i understand that it was only my impression but at that moment i was certain she was going to laugh. i shouted still louder: "yes, lilies-of-the-valley! and there is nothing funny about it, nothing funny!" the smooth round globes of heads passing by were turning towards us. o- gently took my hand. "you are so strange today ... are you ill?" my dream.... yellow color.... buddha.... it was at once born clearly upon me that i must go to the medical bureau. "yes, you are right, i am sick," i said with joy (that seems to me an inexplicable contradiction; there was nothing to be joyful about). "you must go at once to the doctor. you understand that; you are obliged to be healthy; it seems strange to have to prove it to you." "my dear o-, of course you are right. absolutely right." i did not go to the bureau of the guardians; i could not; i had to go to the medical bureau; they kept me there until seventeen o'clock. in the evening (incidentally, the bureau of guardians is closed evenings)--in the evening o- came to see me. the curtains were not lowered. we busied ourselves with the arithmetical problems of an ancient text-book. this occupation always calms and purifies our thoughts. o- sat over her note book, her head slightly inclined to the left; she was so assiduous that she poked out her left cheek with the tongue from within. she looked so child-like, so charming.... i felt everything in me was pleasant, precise and simple. she left. i remained alone. i breathed deeply two times (it is very good exercise before retiring for the night). suddenly,--an unexpected odor reminiscent of something very disagreeable! i soon found out what was the matter: a branch of lily-of-the-valley was hidden in my bed. immediately everything was aroused again, came up from the bottom. decidedly, it was tactless on her part surreptitiously to put these lilies-of-the-valley there. well, true i did not go; i didn't, but was it my fault that i felt indisposed? record eight an irrational root r- the triangle it was long ago during my school-days, when i first encountered the square-root of minus one. i remember it all very clearly; a bright globe-like class hall, about a hundred round heads of children and plappa--our mathematician. we nicknamed him plappa; it was a very much used-up mathematician, loosely screwed together; as the member of the class who was on duty that day would be putting the plug into the socket behind we would hear at first from the megaphone, "plap-plap-plap-plap--tshshsh...." only then the lesson would follow. one day plappa told us about irrational numbers, and i remember i wept and banged the table with my fist and cried, "i do not want that square-root of minus one; take that square-root of minus one away!" this irrational root grew into me as something strange, foreign, terrible; it tortured me; it could not be thought out. it could not be defeated because it was beyond reason. now that square-root of minus one is here again. i read over what i have written and i clearly see that i was insincere with myself, that i lied to myself in order to avoid seeing that square-root of minus one. my sickness, etc., is all nonsense; _i could go there_. i feel sure that if such a thing had happened a week ago i should have gone without hesitating. why then am i unable to go now?... why? today, for instance, at exactly sixteen-ten i stood before the glittering glass wall. above was the shining, golden, sun-like sign: "bureau of guardians." inside, a long queue of bluish-gray unifs awaiting their turns, faces shining like the oil lamps in an ancient temple. they came to accomplish a great thing: they came to put on the altar of the united state their beloved ones, their friends, their own selves. my whole being craved to join them, yet ... i could not; my feet were as though melted into the glass plates of the sidewalk. i simply stood there looking foolish. "heh, mathematician! dreaming?" i shivered. black eyes varnished with laughter looked at me,--thick negro lips! it was my old friend the poet, r- , and with him rosy o-. i turned around angrily (i still believe that if they had not appeared i should have entered the bureau and have torn the square-root of minus one out of my flesh). "not dreaming at all; if you will, 'standing in adoration'," i retorted quite brusquely. "oh, certainly, certainly! you, my friend, should never have become a mathematician; you should have become a poet, a great poet! yes, come over to our trade, to the poets. heh? if you will, i can arrange it in a jiffy. heh?" r- usually talks very fast: his words run in torrents, his thick lips sprinkle. every p is a fountain, every "poets" a fountain. "so far i have served knowledge, and i shall continue to serve knowledge." i frowned. i do not like, i do not understand jokes, and r- has the bad habit of joking. "heh, to the deuce with knowledge. your much-heralded knowledge is but a form of cowardice. it is a fact! yes, you want to encircle the infinite with a wall and you fear to cast a glance behind the wall. yes, sir! and if ever you should glance beyond the wall you would be dazzled and close your eyes,--yes,--" "walls are the foundation of every human--" i began. r- sprinkled his fountain. o- laughed rosily and roundly. i waved my hand: "well, you may laugh, i don't care." i was busy with something else. i had to find a way of eating up, of crushing down, that square-root of minus one. "suppose," i offered, "we go to my place and do some arithmetical problems." (the quiet hour of yesterday afternoon came to my memory; perhaps today also....) o- glanced at r-, then serenely and roundly at me; the soft, endearing color of our pink checks came to her cheeks. "but today i am.... i have a check to him today." (a glance at r-.) "and tonight he is busy, so that--" the moist varnished lips whispered good-naturedly: "half an hour is plenty for us, is it not, o-? i am not a great lover of your problems; let us simply go over to my place and chat." i was afraid to remain alone with myself, or to be more correct, with that new strange self, who by some curious coincidence bore my number, d- . so i went with r-. true, he is not precise, not rhythmic, his logic is jocular and turned inside out, yet we are.... three years ago we both chose our dear, rosy o-. this tied our friendship more firmly together than our school-days did. in r-'s room everything seems like mine; the tables, the glass of the chairs, the table, the closet, the bed. but as we entered, r- moved one chair out of place, then another,--the room became confused, everything lost the established order and seemed to violate every rule of euclid's geometry. r- remained the same as before; in taylor and in mathematics he always lagged at the tail of the class. we recalled plappa, how we boys used to paste the whole surface of his glass legs with paper notes expressing our thanks (we all loved plappa). we recalled our priest (it goes without saying that we were taught not the "law" of ancient religion but the law of the united state). our priest had a very powerful voice; a real hurricane would come out of the megaphone. and we children would yell the prescribed texts after him with all our lung-power. we recalled how our scapegrace, r- , used to stuff the priest with chewed paper; every word was thus accompanied by a paper wad shot out. naturally, r- was punished, for what he did was undoubtedly wrong, but now we laughed heartily;--by we i mean our triangle, r-, o-, and i, i must confess, i too. "and what if he had been a living one? like the ancient ones, heh?" we'd have b... b..., a fountain running from the fat bubbling lips. the sun was shining through the ceiling, the sun above, the sun from the sides, its reflection from below. o- on r- 's lap and minute drops of sunlight in o-'s blue eyes. somehow my heart warmed up. the square-root of minus one became silent and motionless.... "well, how is your _integral_? will you soon hop off to enlighten the inhabitants of the planets? you'd better hurry up, my boy, or we poets will have produced such a devilish lot that even your _integral_ will be unable to lift the cargo. 'every day from eight to eleven' ..." r- wagged his head and scratched the back of it. the back of his head is square; it looks like a little valise (i recalled for some reason an ancient painting "in the cab"). i felt more lively. "you too are writing for the _integral_? tell me about it. what are you writing about? what did you write today, for instance?" "today i did not write; today i was busy with something else." "b-b-busy" sprinkled straight into my face. "what else?" r- frowned. "what? what? well, if you insist i'll tell you. i was busy with the death sentence. i was putting the death sentence into verse. an idiot--and to be frank, one of our poets.... for two years we all lived side by side with him and nothing seemed wrong. suddenly he went crazy. 'i,' said he, 'am a genius! and i am above the law.' all that sort of nonsense.... but it is not a thing to talk about." the fat lips hung down. the varnish disappeared from the eyes. he jumped up, turned around and stared through the wall. i looked at his tightly closed little "valise" and thought, "what is he handling in his little valise now?" a moment of awkward asymmetric silence. i could not see clearly what was the matter but i was certain there was something.... "fortunately the antediluvian time of those shakespeares and dostoyevskis (or what were their names?) is past," i said in a voice deliberately loud. r- turned his face to me. words sprinkled and bubbled out of him as before, but i thought i noticed there was no more joyful varnish to his eyes. "yes, dear mathematician, fortunately, fortunately. we are the happy arithmetical mean. as you would put it, the integration from zero to infinity, from imbeciles to shakespeare. do i put it right?" i do not know why (it seemed to me absolutely uncalled for) i recalled suddenly the other one, _her_ tone. a thin invisible thread stretched between her and r- (what thread?). the square-root of minus one began to bother me again. i glanced at my badge; sixteen-twenty-five o'clock! they had only thirty-five minutes for the use of the pink check. "well, i must go." i kissed o-, shook hands with r- and went to the elevator. as i crossed the avenue i turned around. here and there in the huge mass of glass penetrated by sunshine there were grayish-blue squares, the opaque squares of lowered curtains,--the squares of rhythmic, taylorized happiness. on the seventh floor i found r- 's square. the curtains were already lowered. dear o-.... dear r-.... he also has (i do not know why i write this "also," but i write as it comes from my pen), he too has something which is not entirely clear in him. yet i, he and o-, we are a triangle; i confess, not an isosceles triangle but a triangle nevertheless. we, to speak in the language of our ancestors (perhaps to you, my planetary readers, this is the more comprehensible language) we are a family. and one feels so good at times, when one is able for a short while, at least, to close oneself within a firm triangle, to close oneself away from anything that.... record nine liturgy iambus the cast-iron hand a solemn bright day. on such days one forgets one's weaknesses, inexactitudes, illnesses, and everything is crystalline and imperturbable like our new glass.... the plaza of the cube. sixty-six imposing concentric circles--stands. sixty-six rows of quiet serene faces. eyes reflecting the shining of the sky,--or perhaps it is the shining of the united state. red like blood, are the flowers--the lips of the women. like soft garlands the faces of the children in the first rows, nearest the place of action. profound, austere, gothic silence. to judge by the descriptions which reach us from the ancients, they felt somewhat like this during their "church services," but they served their nonsensical unknown god; we serve our rational god, whom we most thoroughly know. their god gave them nothing but eternal, torturing seeking; our god gives us absolute truth, that is, he has rid us of any kind of doubt. their god did not invent anything cleverer than sacrificing oneself, nobody knows what for; we bring to our god, the united state, a quiet, rational, carefully thought-out sacrifice. yes, it was a solemn liturgy for the united state, a reminiscence of the great days, years, of the two hundred years' war,--a magnificent celebration of the victory of _all_ over _one_, of the _sum_ over the individual! that _one_ stood on the steps of the cube which was filled with sunlight. a white, no not even white, but already colorless glass face, lips of glass. and only the eyes--thirsty, swallowing, black holes leading into that dreadful world from which he was only a few minutes away. the golden badge with the number already had been taken off. his hands were tied with a red ribbon. (a symbol of ancient custom. the explanation of it is that in the old times when this sort of thing was not done in the name of the united state, the convicted naturally considered that they had the right to resist, hence their hands were usually bound with chains.) on the top of the cube, next to the machine, the motionless, metallic figure of him whom we call the well-doer. one could not see his face from below. all one could see was that it was bounded by austere, magnificent, square lines. and his hands.... did you ever notice how sometimes in a photograph the hands, if they were too near the camera, come out enormous? they then compel your attention, overshadow everything else. those hands of his, heavy hands, quiet for the time being, were stony hands,--it seemed the knees on which they rested must have had pains to bear their weight. suddenly one of those hands rose slowly. a slow cast-iron gesture; obeying the will of the lifted hand, a number came out on the platform. it was one of the state poets, whose fortunate lot it was to crown our celebration with his verses. divine iambic brass verses thundered over the many stands. they dealt with the man, who, his reason lost and lips like glass, stood on the steps and waited for the logical consequences of his own insane deeds. ... a blaze.... buildings were swaying in those iambic lines, and sprinkling upward their liquified golden substance, they broke and fell. the green trees were scorched, their sap slowly ran out and they remained standing like black crosses, like skeletons. then appeared prometheus (that meant _us_). "... he harnessed fire with machines and steel and fettered chaos with law...." the world was renovated; it became like steel,--a sun of steel, trees of steel, men of steel. suddenly an insane man, "unchained the fire and set it free," and again the world had perished.... unfortunately i have a bad memory for poetry, but one thing i am sure of: one could not choose more instructive or more beautiful parables. another slow, heavy gesture of the cast-iron hand and another poet appeared on the steps of the cube. i stood up! impossible! but ... thick negro lips,--it _was_ he. why did he not tell me that he was to be invested with such high.... his lips trembled; they were gray. oh, i certainly understood; to be face to face with the well-doer, face to face with the hosts of guardians! yet one should not allow oneself to be so upset. swift sharp verses like an axe.... they told about an unheard-of crime, about sacrilegious poems in which the well-doer was called.... but no, i do not dare to repeat.... r- was pale when he finished, and looking at no one (i did not expect such bashfulness of him) he descended and sat down. for an infinitesimal fraction of a second i saw right beside him somebody's face--a sharp, black triangle--and instantly i lost it; my eyes, thousands of eyes, were directed upward toward the machine. then--again the superhuman, cast-iron, gesture of the hand. swayed by an unknown wind the criminal moved; one step ... one more, ... then the last step in his life. his face was turned to the sky, his head thrown backward--he was on his last.-- ... heavy, stony like fate, the well-doer went around the machine, put his enormous hand on the lever.... not a whisper, not a breath around; all eyes were upon that hand.... what crushing, scorching power one must feel to be the tool, to be the resultant of hundreds of thousands of wills! how great his lot! another second. the hand moved down, switching in the current. the lightning-sharp blade of the electric ray.... a faint crack like a shiver, in the tubes of the machine.... the prone body, covered with a light phosphorescent smoke; then suddenly, under the eyes of all, it began to melt,--to melt, to dissolve with terrible speed. and then nothing; just a pool of chemically pure water which only a moment ago was so red and pulsated in his heart.... all this was simple; all of us were familiar with the phenomenon, dissociation of matter,--yes, the splitting of the atoms of the human body! yet every time we witnessed it, it seemed a miracle; it was a symbol of the superhuman power of the well-doer. above, in front of him, the burning faces of the female numbers, mouths half open from emotion, flowers swaying in the wind.[ ] according to custom, ten women were covering with flowers the unif of the well-doer, which was still wet with spray. with the magnificent step of a supreme priest he slowly descended, slowly passed between the rows of stands; and like tender white branches there rose toward him the arms of the women; and, millions like one, our tempestuous cheers! then cheers in honor of the guardians, who all unseen, were present among us.... who knows, perhaps the fancy of the ancient man foresaw them centuries ahead, when he created the gentle and formidable "guardian-angels" assigned to each one from the day of his birth? [ ] these flowers naturally were brought from the botanical museum. i, personally, am unable to see anything beautiful in flowers, or in anything else that belongs to the lower kingdom which now exists only beyond the green wall. only rational and useful things are beautiful: machines, boots, formulae, food, etc. yes, there was in our celebration something of the ancient religions, something purifying like a storm.... you whose lot it may be to read this, are you familiar with such emotions? i am sorry for you if you are not. record ten a letter a manhunt hairy i yesterday was for me a kind of filter-paper which chemists use for filtering their solutions (all suspended and superfluous particles remain on the paper). this morning i went downstairs all purified and distilled, transparent. downstairs in the hall the controller sat at a small table, constantly looking at her watch and recording the numbers who were leaving. her name is u- ... well, i prefer not to give her number, for i fear i may not write kindly about her. although, as a matter of fact, she is a very respectable, mature woman. the only thing i do not like in her is that her cheeks fold down a little like gills of a fish (although i do not see anything wrong in this appearance). she scratched with her pen and i saw on the page "d- "--and suddenly, splash! an ink-blot. no sooner did i open my mouth to call her attention to that, than she raised her head and blotted me with an inky smile. "there is a letter for you. you will receive it, dear. yes, yes, you will." i knew a letter, after she had read it, must go through the bureau of the guardians (i think it is unnecessary to explain in detail this natural order of things); i would receive it not later than twelve o'clock. but that tiny smile confused me; the drop of ink clouded the transparency of the distilled solution. at the dock of the _integral_ i could not concentrate; i even made a mistake in my calculations,--that never happened to me before. at twelve o'clock, again the rosy-brown fish-gills' smile, and at last the letter was in my hands. i cannot say why i did not read it right there, but i put it in my pocket and ran into my room. i opened it and glanced it over and ... and sat down. it was the official notification advising me that number i- had had me assigned to her and that today at twenty-one o'clock, i was to go to her. her address was given. "no! after all that happened! after i showed her frankly my attitude toward her! besides, how could she know that i did not go to the bureau of the guardians? she had no way of knowing that i was ill and could not.... and despite all this...." a dynamo was whirling and buzzing in my head. buddha ... yellow ... lilies-of-the-valley ... rosy crescent.... besides,--besides, o- wanted to come to see me today! i am sure she would not believe (how could one believe), that i had absolutely nothing to do with the matter, that ... i am sure also that we (o- and i) will have a difficult, foolish and absolutely illogical conversation. no, anything but that! let the situation solve itself mechanically; i shall send her a copy of this official communication. while i was hastily putting the paper in my pocket, i noticed my terrible ape-like hand. i remembered how that day during our walk, she took my hand and looked at it. is it possible that she really ... that she.... a quarter to twenty-one. a white northern night. everything was glass,--greenish. but it was a different kind of glass, not like ours, not genuine but very breakable,--a thin glass shell and within that shell things were flying, whirling, buzzing. i should not have been surprised if suddenly the cupola of the auditorium had risen in slow, rolling clouds of smoke; or if the ripe moon had sent an inky smile,--like that one at the little table this morning; or if in all the houses suddenly all the curtains had been lowered and behind the curtains.... i felt something peculiar; my ribs were like iron bars that interfered, decidedly interfered, with my heart, giving it too little space. i stood at a glass door on which were the golden letters _i- _; i- sat at the table with her back to me; she was writing something. i stepped in. "here...." i held out the pink check, "... i received the notification this noon and here i am!" "how punctual you are! just a minute please, may i? sit down. i shall finish in a minute." she lowered her eyes to the letter. what had she there, behind her lowered curtains? what would she say? what would she do in a second? how to learn it? how to calculate it, since she comes from beyond, from the wild ancient land of dreams? i looked at her in silence. my ribs were iron bars. the space for the heart was too small.... when she speaks her face is like a swiftly revolving, glittering wheel; you cannot see the separate bars. but at that moment the wheel was motionless. i saw a strange combination: dark eyebrows running right to the temples--a sharp, mocking triangle; and still another dark triangle with its apex upward--two deep wrinkles from the nose to the angles of the mouth. and these two triangles somehow contradicted each other. they gave the whole face that disagreeable, irritating x, or cross; a face obliquely marked by a cross. the wheel started to turn; its bars blurred. "so you did not go to the bureau of guardians after all?" "i did ... i did not feel well ... i could not." "yes? i thought so; something _must_ have prevented you, matters little what (sharp teeth--a smile). but now you are in my hands. you remember: 'any number who within forty-eight hours fails to report to the bureau is considered....'" my heart banged so forcibly that the iron bars bent. if i were not sitting ... like a little boy, how stupid! i was caught like a little boy and stupidly i kept silent. i felt i was in a net; neither my legs nor my arms.... she stood up and stretched herself lazily. she pressed the button and the curtains on all four walls fell with a slight rustle. i was cut off from the rest of the world, alone with her. she was somewhere behind me, near the closet door. the unif was rustling, falling. i was listening, _all_ listening. i remembered,--no, it glistened in my mind for one hundredth of a second,--i once had to calculate the curve of a street membrane of a new type. (these membranes are handsomely decorated and are placed on all the avenues, registering all street conversations for the bureau of guardians.) i remembered a rosy concave, trembling membrane,--a strange being consisting of one organ only, an ear. i was at that moment such a membrane. now the "click" of the snap-button at her collar, at her breast, and ... lower. the glassy silk rustled over her shoulders and knees, over the floor. i heard--and this was clearer than actual seeing--i heard how one foot stepped out of the grayish-blue heap of silk, then the other.... soon i'd hear the creak of the bed and ... the tensely stretched membrane trembled and registered the silence,--no, the sharp hammer-like blows of the heart against the iron bars and endless pauses between beats. and i heard, saw, how she, behind me hesitated for a second, thinking. the door of the closet.... it slammed; again silk ... silk.... "well, all right." i turned around. she was dressed in a saffron-yellow dress of an ancient style. this was a thousand times worse than if she had not been dressed at all. two sharp points, through the thin tissue glowing with rosiness, two burning embers piercing through ashes; two tender, round knees.... she was sitting in a low armchair. in front of her on a small square table, i noticed a bottle filled with something poisonously green and two small glasses on thin legs. in the corner of her mouth she had a very thin paper tube; she was ejecting smoke formed by the burning of that ancient smoking substance whose name i do not now remember. the membrane was still vibrating. within the sledge-hammer was pounding the red-hot iron bars of my chest. i heard distinctly every blow of the hammer, and ... what if she too heard it? but she continued to produce smoke very calmly; calmly she looked at me; and nonchalantly she flicked ashes on the pink check! with as much self-control as possible i asked, "if you still feel that way, why did you have me assigned to you? and why did you make me come here?" as if she had not heard at all, she poured some of the green liquid from the bottle into a small glass and sipped it. "wonderful liqueur! want some?" then i understood; alcohol! like lightning there came to memory what i saw yesterday: the stony hand of the well-doer, the unbearable blade of the electric ray; there on the cube, the head thrown backward, the stretched-out body! i shivered. "please listen," i said, "you know, do you not, that any one who poisons himself with nicotine, more particularly with alcohol, is severely treated by the united state?" dark brows raised high to the temples, the sharp mocking triangle. "'it is more reasonable to annihilate a few than to allow many to poison themselves.... and degeneration,' ... etc.... this is true to the point of indecency." "indecency?" "yes. to let out into the street such a group of bald-headed naked little truths. only imagine please. imagine, say, that persistent admirer of mine, s-, well, you know him. then imagine: if he should discard the deception of clothes and appear in public in his true form ... oh!" she laughed. but i clearly saw her lower, sorrowful triangle; two deep grooves from the nose to the mouth. and for some reason these grooves made me think: that double-curved being, half-hunched, with wing-like ears,--he embraced her? her, such ... oh! naturally, i try now merely to express my abnormal feelings of that moment. now, as i write, i understand perfectly that all this is as it should be; that he, s- , like any other honest number has a perfect right to the joys of life and that it would be unjust.... but i think the point is quite clear. i- laughed a long, strange laugh. then she cast a look at me, into me. "the most curious thing is that i am not in the least afraid of you. you are such a dear, i am sure of it! you would never think of going to the bureau and reporting that i drink liqueurs and smoke. you will be sick or busy, or i don't know what.... furthermore, i am sure you will drink this charming poison with me." what an impertinent, mocking tone! i felt definitely that in a moment i should hate her. (why in a moment? in fact i hated her all the time.) i- turned over the little glass of green poison straight into her mouth. then she stood up, and all rosy through the translucent saffron-yellow tissue, she made a few steps and stopped behind my chair.... suddenly her arms were about my neck ... her lips grew into mine, no, even somewhere much deeper, much more terribly.... i swear all this was very unexpected for me. that is why perhaps ... for i could not (at this moment i see clearly) i could not myself have the desire to.... unbearably sweet lips. (i suppose it was the taste of the liqueur.) it was as though burning poison were being poured into me, and more and more.... i tore away from the earth and began revolving as an independent planet,--down--down--following an uncalculable curve.... what happened next i am able to describe only in an approximate way, only by way of more or less corresponding analogies. it never occurred to me before but it is true: we who live on the earth, we are always walking over a seething red sea of fire which is hidden in the womb of the earth. we never think of it. but imagine the ground under our feet suddenly transformed into a thin glass shell; suddenly we should behold...! i became glass-like and saw within myself. there were two selves in me. one, the former d- , number d- ; and the other.... before, that other used only to show his hairy paws from time to time, but now the whole other self left his shell. that shell was breaking, and in a moment.... grasping with all my strength the last straw (the arms of the chair), i asked loudly (so as to hear my first self), "where, where did you get this poison?" "oh, this? a physician, one of my...." "'one of my! one of my' what?" and my other self jumped up suddenly and yelled: "i won't allow it! i want no one but me.... i shall kill any one who.... because i.... you." ... i saw my other self grasp her rudely with his hairy paws, tear the silk, and put his teeth in her flesh!... i remember exactly, his teeth!... i do not remember how, but i- slipped away and i saw her straightened, her head raised high, her eyes overlain by that cursed impenetrable curtain. she stood leaning with her back against the closet door and listening to me. i remember i was on the floor; i embraced her limbs, kissed her knees and cried supplicatingly, "at once, right away, right away." sharp teeth.... the sharp mocking triangle of the brows.... she bent over and in silence unbuttoned my badge. "yes, yes, dear--dear." i began hastily to remove my unif. but i- , silent as before, lifted my badge to my eyes, showing me the clock upon it. it was twenty-two-twenty-five. i became cold. i knew what it meant to be out in the street after twenty-two-thirty. my insanity disappeared at once. i was again i. i saw clearly one thing: i hated her, hated her, hated-- ... without saying good-bye, without looking back, i ran out of the room. hurriedly trying to fasten the badge back in its place, i ran down the stairs (i was afraid lest some one notice me in the elevator), and jumped out into a deserted street. everything was in its place; life so simple, ordinary, orderly. glittering glass houses, pale glass sky, a greenish, motionless night. but under that cool glass something wild, something red and hairy, was silently seething. i was gasping for breath but i continued to run, so as not to be late. suddenly i felt that my badge which i had hurriedly pinned on, was detaching itself; it came off and fell to the sidewalk. i bent over to pick it up and in the momentary silence i heard somebody's steps. i turned. someone small and hunched was disappearing around the corner. at least so it seemed. i started to run as fast as i could. the wind whistled in my ears. at the entrance of my house i stopped and looked at the clock; one minute to twenty-two-thirty! i listened; nobody behind. it was my foolish imagination, the effect of the poison. the night was full of torture. my bed seemed to lift itself under me, then to fall again, then up again! i used autosuggestion: "at night all the numbers must sleep; sleeping at night is a duty just like working during the day. to sleep at night is necessary for the next day's work. not to sleep at night is criminal." yet i could not sleep--i could not. i was perishing! i was unable to fulfill my duties to the united state! i.... record eleven no, i can't; let it be without headings! evening. it is somewhat foggy. the sky is covered with a milky-golden tissue, and one cannot see what is there, beyond, on the heights. the ancients "knew" that the greatest, bored skeptic--their god, lived there. we know that crystalline, blue, naked, indecent nothing is there. _i_ do not know any more what _is_ there. i have learned too many things of late. knowledge, self-confident knowledge which is sure that it is faultless, is faith. i had firm faith in myself; i believed that i knew all about myself. but then.... i look in the mirror. and for the first time in my life, yes, _for the first time in my life_, i see clearly, precisely, consciously and with surprise, i see myself as some "him!" i am "he." frowning, black, straight brows; between them like a scar, there is a vertical wrinkle. (was there that wrinkle before?) steel gray eyes encircled by the shadow of a sleepless night. and behind that steel ... i understand; i never before knew what there was behind that steel. from there (this "there" is at once so near and so infinitely distant!) i look at myself--at "him." and i know surely that "he" with his straight brows is a stranger, that i meet him here for the first time in my life. the real i is _not_ he. no. period. all this is nonsense. and all these foolish emotions are only delirium, the result of last night's poisoning.... poisoning with what? with a sip of that green poison or with her? it matters little. i write all this merely in order to demonstrate how strangely the precise and sharp human reason may become confused. this reason, strong enough to make infinity which the ancients feared so much, understandable by means of.... the switch buzzes, "number r- ." well, i am even glad; alone i should.... _twenty minutes later_: on the plane of this paper, in a world of two dimensions, these lines follow each other, but in another world they.... i am losing the sense for figures.... twenty minutes! perhaps two hundred or two hundred thousand!... it seems so strange, quietly, deliberately, measuring every word, to write down my adventure with r-. imagine yourself sitting down at your own bed, crossing your legs, watching curiously how you yourself shrivel in the very same bed. my mental state is similar to that. when r- came in i was perfectly quiet and normal. i began with sincere admiration to tell him how wonderfully he succeeded in versifying the death sentence of that insane man, and that his poem more than anything else had smothered and annihilated the transgressor of the law. "more than that," i said, "if i were ordered to prepare a mathematical draught of the machine of the well-doer, i should undoubtedly,--undoubtedly, put on that draught some of your verses!"--suddenly i saw r-'s eyes becoming more and more opaque, his lips acquiring a gray tint. "what is the matter?" "what?--well.... merely that i am dead sick of it; everybody keeps on: 'the death-sentence, the death-sentence!' i want to hear no more of it! you understand? i do not want...." he became serious, rubbing his neck--that little valise filled with luggage which i cannot understand. a silence. there! he found something in that little valise of his, removed it, unwrapped it, spread it out; his eyes became covered with the varnish of laughter. he began: "i am writing something for your _integral_. yes.... i am!" he was himself again; bubbling, sprinkling lips; words splashing like a fountain. "you see, it is the ancient legend of paradise." ("p" like a fountain.) "that legend referred to us of today, did it not? yes. only think of it, think of it a moment! there were two in paradise and the choice was offered to them: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. no other choice. _tertium non datur_. they, fools that they were, chose freedom. naturally, they longed for centuries afterwards for fetters, for the fetters of yore. this was the meaning of their world-weariness, _weltschmerz_. for centuries! and only we found a way to regain happiness.... no, listen, follow me! the ancient god and we, side by side at the same table! yes, we helped god definitely and finally to defeat the devil. it was he, the devil, who lead people to transgression, to taste pernicious freedom, he the cunning serpent? and we came along, planted a boot on his head and ... squash! done with him! paradise again! we returned to the simple-mindedness and innocence of adam and eve. no more meddling with good and evil and all that; everything is simple again, heavenly, childishly simple! the well-doer, the machine, the cube, the giant gas bell, the guardians,--all these are good. all this is magnificent, beautiful, noble, lofty, crystalline, pure. for all this preserves our non-freedom, that is, our happiness. in our place those ancients would indulge in discussions, deliberations, etc. they would break their heads trying to make out what was moral or unmoral. but we.... well, in short, these are the highlights of my little paradise poem. what do you think of it? and above all the style is most solemn, pious. understand me? nice little idea, is it not? do you understand?" of course i understood. i remember my thoughts at that moment: "his appearance is nonsensical and lacking in symmetry, yet what an orderly-working mind he has!" this made him dear to me, that is to the real _me_. (i still insist that _i_ of before is the real one; my i of late is, certainly, only an illness.) apparently r- read my thought in my face; he put his hand on my shoulders and laughed: "oh you!... adam! by the way, about eve...." he searched for something in his pockets, took out a little book, turned over a few leaves and said, "for the day-after-tomorrow,--oh, no, two days from now,--o- has a pink check on you. how about it?... as before?... you want her to?" "of course, of course!" "all right then, i'll tell her. you see she herself is very bashful.... what a funny story! you see, for me she has only a pink-check affection, but for you!... and you, you did not even come to tell us how a fourth member sneaked into our triangle! who is it? repent, sinner! come on!" a curtain rose inside me; rustle of silk, green bottle, lips.... without any reason whatever i exclaimed (oh, why didn't i restrain myself at that moment?), "tell me, r-, did you ever have the opportunity to try nicotine or alcohol?" r- sucked in his lips, looked at me from under his brows. i distinctly heard his thoughts: "friend though he is, yet...." and he answered: "what shall i say? strictly speaking, no. but i know a woman...." "i- ?" i cried. "what! you? you too?" r- was full of laughter; he chuckled, ready to splash over. my mirror was hanging in such a way that in order to see r- clearly i had to turn and look across the table. from my armchair i could see now only my own forehead and eyebrows. then i, the real i, suddenly saw in the mirror a broken, quivering line of brow; i, the real i, heard suddenly a wild disgusting cry: "what? what does that 'also' mean? what does that 'also' mean? i demand...." widely parted negro lips.... eyes bulging. i (the real i) grasped my other wild, hairy, heavily breathing self forcibly. i (the real i) said to him, to r-, "in the name of the well-doer, please forgive me. i am very sick; i don't sleep; i do not know what is the matter with me." a swiftly passing smile appeared on the thick lips. "yes, yes, i understand, i understand. i am familiar with all this, theoretically, of course. good-bye." at the door he turned around like a little black ball, came back to the table and put a book upon it. "this is my latest book. i came to bring it to you. almost forgot. good-bye." ("b" like a splash.) the little ball rolled out. i am alone. or, to be more exact, i am _tête-à-tête_ with that other self. i sit in the armchair and having crossed my legs, i watch curiously from some indefinite "there," how i (myself) am shrivelling in my bed! why, oh, why is it, that for three years r-, o-, and i were so friendly together and now suddenly--one word only about that other female, about i- , and.... is it possible that that insanity called love and jealousy does exist not only in the idiotic books of the ancients? what seems most strange is that i, i!... equations, formulae, figures, and suddenly this! i can't understand it, i can't! tomorrow i shall go to r- and tell him.... no, it isn't true; i shall not go; neither tomorrow nor day after tomorrow, nor ever.... i can't, i do not want to see him. this is the end. our triangle is broken up. i am alone. it is evening. there is a light fog. the sky is covered by a thin milky-golden tissue. if i only knew what is there--higher. if i only knew who i am. which i am i? record twelve the delimitation of the infinite angel meditations on poetry i continue to believe that i shall recover, that i may recover. i slept very well. no dreams or any other symptoms of disease. dear o- will come tomorrow. everything will again be simple, regular and limited like a circle. i am not afraid of this word "limited." the work of the highest faculty of man, judgment, is always directed toward the constant limiting of the infinite, toward the breaking up of the infinite into comfortably digestible portions,--differentials. this is what gives divine beauty to my element, mathematics. and it is exactly this beauty that that other female lacks. but this last thought of mine is only an accidental mental association. these thoughts swarmed in my mind while i was listening to the regular, rhythmic sounds of the underground railway. silently i followed the rhythm of its wheels and recited to myself r-'s verses (from the book which he gave me yesterday), and i felt that behind me some one was leaning over my shoulder and looking at the open pages. i did not turn around but with the corner of my eye i noticed pink ears, spread like wings, the double-curved ... like the letter.... it was he, but i did not want to disturb him. i feigned not to have noticed him. how he came in, i do not know. i did not see him when i got into the car. this incident, insignificant in itself, had an especially good effect upon me; it invigorated me, i should say. it is pleasant to feel that somebody's penetrating eye is watching you from behind your shoulder, lovingly guarding you from making the most minute mistake, from the most minute incorrect step. it may seem to you too sentimental but i see in all this the materialization of the dream of the ancients about a guardian-angel. how many things about which the ancients had only dreams, are materialized in our life! at the moment when i became aware of the presence of the guardian-angel behind me i was enjoying a poem entitled "happiness." i think i am not mistaken when i say that it is a piece of rare beauty and depth of thought. here are the first four lines: "two times two--eternal lovers; inseparable in passion four ... most flaming lovers in the world, eternally welded, two times two." and the rest is in the same vein: on the wisdom and the eternal happiness of the multiplication table. every poet is inevitably a columbus. america existed before columbus for ages, but only columbus found it. the multiplication table existed before r- for ages, but only r- could find in the virginal forest of figures a new eldorado. is it not true? is there any happiness more wise and cloudless in this wonderful world? steel may rust. the ancient god created the ancient man, i.e., the man capable of mistakes, _ergo_ the ancient god himself made a mistake. the multiplication table is more wise and more absolute than the ancient god, for the multiplication table never (do you understand--_never_) makes mistakes! there are no more fortunate and happy people than those who live according to the correct, eternal laws of the multiplication table. no hesitation! no errors! there is but one truth, and there is but one path to it; and that truth is: four, and that path is: two times two. would it not seem preposterous for these happily multiplied twos suddenly to begin thinking of some foolish kind of freedom? i.e. (is it not clear?) of a mistake? it seems undeniable, axiomatic, that r- knows how to grasp the most fundamental, the most.... at that moment again i felt (first near the back of my head, then on my left ear) the warm, tender breath of the guardian-angel. he apparently noticed that the book on my lap had long been closed and that my thoughts were somewhere very far.... well, i am ready this minute to spread before him the pages of my brain. this gives one such a feeling of tranquility and joy. i remember i even turned around and gazed long and questioningly into his eyes; but either he did not understand, or he did not want to understand me. he did not ask me anything.... the only thing left for me is to relate everything to you, my unknown readers. you are to me now as dear and as near and as far out of reach as he was at that moment. this was my way of thinking: from the part to the whole,--r- is the part; the whole is our institution of state poets and authors. i thought: how was it that the ancients did not notice the utter absurdity of their prose and poetry? the gigantic, magnificent power of the artistic word was spent by them in vain. it is really droll; anybody wrote whatever happened to come into his head! it was as foolish as the fact that in the days of the ancients the ocean blindly splashed at the shore for twenty-four hours without interruption or use. the millions of kilogram-meters of energy which were hidden in the waves were used only for the stimulation of sweethearts! we obtained electricity from the amorous whisper of the waves! we made a domestic animal out of that sparkling, foaming, rabid one! and in the same manner we domesticated and harnessed the wild element of poetry. now poetry is no longer the unpardonable whistling of nightingales but a state service! poetry is a commodity. our famous "mathematical norms"! without them in our schools, how could we love so sincerely and dearly our four rules of arithmetic? and "thorns!" this is a classical image: the guardians are thorns about a rose; thorns that guard our tender state-flower from coarse hands. whose heart could resist, could remain indifferent to see and hear the lips of our children recite like a prayer: "a bad boy caught the rose with his hand but the thorn of steel pricked him like a needle; the bad boy cried and ran home," etc., etc. and the "daily odes to the well-doer!" who, having read them, will not bow piously before the unselfish service of that number of all numbers? and the dreadful red "flowers of court sentences!" and the immortal tragedy, "those who come late to work!" and the popular book, "stanzas on sex-hygiene!" our whole life in all its complexity and beauty is thus stamped forever in the gold of words. our poets do not soar any longer in the unknown; they have descended to earth and they march with us, keeping step to the accompaniment of our austere and mechanical march of the musical state tower. their lyre is the morning rubbing-sound of the electric tooth-brushes, and the threatening crack of the electric sparks coming from the machine of the well-doer, and the magnificent echo of the hymn of the united state, and the intimate ringing of the crystalline, shining wash-basins, and the stimulating rustle of the falling curtains, and the joyous voices of the newest cook-books, and the almost imperceptible whisper of the street membranes.... our gods are here, below. they are with us in the bureau, in the kitchen, in the shops, in the rest-rooms. the gods have become like us, _ergo_ we have become like gods. and we shall come to you, my unknown readers on another planet, we shall come to you to make your life as god-like, as rational and as correct as ours.... record thirteen fog thou a decidedly absurd adventure i awoke at dawn. the rose-colored firmament looked into my eyes. everything was beautiful, round. "o- is to come tonight. surely i am healthy again." i smiled and fell asleep. the morning bell! i got up; everything looked different. through the glass of the ceiling, through the walls, nothing could be seen but fog,--fog everywhere, strange clouds, becoming heavier and nearer; the boundary between earth and sky disappeared. everything seemed to be floating and thawing and falling.... not a thing to hold to. no houses to be seen; they all were dissolved in the fog like crystals of salt in water. on the sidewalks and inside the houses dark figures like suspended particles in a strange milky solution, were hanging, below, above,--up to the tenth floor. everything seemed to be covered with smoke, as though a fire were somewhere raging noiselessly. at eleven-forty-five exactly (i looked at the clock particularly at that time to catch the figures, to save at least the figures) at eleven-forty-five, just before leaving, according to our table of hours, to go and occupy myself with physical labor, i dropped into my room for a moment. suddenly the telephone rang. a voice,--a long needle slowly penetrating my heart: "oh, you are at home? i am very glad! wait for me at the corner. we shall go together.... where? well, you'll see." "you know perfectly well that i am going to work now." "you know perfectly well that you'll do as i say! _au-revoir._ in two minutes!..." i stood at the corner. i had to wait to try to make clear to her that only the united state directs me, not she. "you'll do as i say!" how sure she is! one hears it in her voice. and what if...? unifs, dull gray as if woven of damp fog would appear for a second at my side and then soundlessly redissolve. i was unable to turn my eyes away from the clock.... i seemed myself to have become that sharp, quivering hand which marked the seconds. ten, eight minutes ... three ... two minutes to twelve.... of course! i was late! oh, how i hated her, yet i had to wait to prove that i.... a red line in the milky whiteness of the fog--like blood, like a wound made by a sharp knife--her lips. "i made you wait, i think? and now you are late for your work anyway?" "how...? well, yes, it is too late now." i glanced at her lips in silence. all women are lips, lips only. some are rosy lips, tense and round, a ring, a tender fence separating one from the world. but these! a second ago they were not here, and suddenly ... the slash of a knife! i seemed to see even the dripping sweet blood.... she came nearer. she leaned gently against my shoulder; we became one. something streamed from her into me. i felt, i knew, it _should_ be so. every fibre of my nervous system told me this, every hair on my head, every painfully sweet heartbeat. and what a joy it was to submit to what _should_ be. a fragment of iron-ore probably feels the same joy of submission to precise, inevitable law, when it clings to a loadstone. the same joy is in a stone which thrown aloft, hesitates a little at the height of its flight and then rushes down to the ground. it is the same with a man when in his final convulsion he takes a last deep breath and dies. i remember i smiled vaguely and said for no reason at all, "fog ... very." "thou lovest fog, dost thou?" this ancient, long-forgotten _thou_--the thou of a master to his slave--penetrated me slowly, sharply.... yes, i was a slave.... this too was inevitable, was good. "yes, good ..." i said aloud to myself, and then to her, "i hate fog. i am afraid of fog." "then you love it. for if you fear it because it is stronger than you, hate it because you fear it, you love it. for you cannot subject it to yourself. one loves only the things one cannot conquer." "yes, that is so. that is why ... that is precisely why i...." we were walking--as one. somewhere beyond the fog the sun was singing in a faint tone, gradually swelling, filling the air with tension and with pearl and gold and rose and red.... the whole world seemed to be one unembraceable woman, and we who were in her body were not yet born; we were ripening in joy. it was clear to me, absolutely clear, that everything existed only for me: the sun, the fog, the gold--for me. i did not ask where we were going; what did it matter? it was pleasure to walk, to ripen, to become stronger and more tense.... "here ..." i- stopped at a door. "it so happens that today there is some one on duty who ... i told you about him in the ancient house." carefully guarding the forces ripening within me, i read the sign: "medical bureau." automatically only i understood. ... a glass room, filled with golden fog; shelves of glass, colored bottles, jars, electric wires, bluish sparks in tubes; and a male number--a very thinly flattened man. he might have been cut out of a sheet of paper. wherever he was, whichever way he turned, he showed only a profile, a sharply pointed, glittering blade of a nose and lips like scissors. i could not hear what i- told him; i merely saw her lips when she was talking; and i felt that i was smiling, irrepressibly, blissfully. the scissors-like lips glittered and the doctor said, "yes, yes, i see. a most dangerous disease. i know of nothing more dangerous." and he laughed. with his thin, flat, papery hand he wrote something on a piece of paper and gave it to i- ; he wrote on another piece of paper and handed it over to me. he had given us certificates, testifying that we were ill, that we were unable to go to work. thus i stole my work from the united state; i was a thief; i deserved to be put beneath the machine of the well-doer. yet i was indifferent to this thought; it was as distant from me as though it were written in a novel. i took the certificate without an instant's hesitation. i, all my being, my eyes, my lips, my hands ... knew it was as it should be. at the corner, from a half empty garage we took an aero. i- took the wheel as she had done before, pressed the starter and we tore away from the earth. we soared. behind us the golden haze; the sun. the thin, blade-like profile of the doctor seemed to me suddenly so dear, so beloved. formerly i knew everything was revolving around the sun. now i knew everything was revolving around me. slowly, blissfully, with half-closed eyes.... at the gate of the ancient house we found the same old woman. what a dear mouth, with lips grown together and ray-like wrinkles around it! probably those lips have remained grown together all these days; but now they parted and smiled: "ah! you mischievous girl, you! work is too much for you? well, all right, all right. if anything happens i'll run up and warn you." a heavy, squeaky, opaque door. it closed behind us, and at once my heart opened painfully, widely, still wider.... my lips ... hers.... i drank and drank from them. i tore myself away; in silence i looked into her widely open eyes, and then again.... the room in half dusk.... blue and saffron-yellow lights, dark green morocco leather, the golden smile of buddha, a wide mahogany bed, a glimmer of mirrors.... and my dream of a few days before became so comprehensible, so clear to me; everything seemed saturated with the golden prime-juice of life, and it seemed that i was overflowing with it,--one second more and it would splash out.... like iron-ore to a loadstone, in sweet submission to the precise and unchangeable law, inevitably, i clung to her.... there was no pink check, no counting, no united state; i myself was no more. only, drawn together, the tenderly-sharp teeth were there, only her golden, widely open eyes, and through them i saw deeper, within.... and silence.... only somewhere in a corner, thousands of miles away it seemed, drops of water were dripping from the faucet of the washstand. i was the universe! ... and between drops whole epochs, eras, were elapsing.... i put on my unif and bent over i- to draw her into me with my eyes--for the last time. "i knew it.... i knew you," said i- in a very low voice. she passed her hand over her face as though brushing something away; then she arose brusquely, put on her unif and her usual sharp, bite-like smile. "well, my fallen angel ... you perished just now, do you know that? no? you are not afraid? well, _au-revoir_. you shall go home alone. well?" she opened the mirror-door of the cupboard and looking at me over her shoulder, she waited. i left the room obediently. yet no sooner had i left the room than i felt it was urgent that she touch me with her shoulder--only for one second with her shoulder, nothing more. i ran back into the room, where (i presumed) she was standing before the mirror, busy buttoning up her unif; i rushed in and stopped abruptly. i saw (i remember it clearly), i saw the key in the keyhole of the closet and the ancient ring upon it was still swinging but i- was not there. she could not have left the room as there was but one exit.... yet i- was not there! i looked around everywhere. i even opened the cupboard and felt of the different ancient dresses; nobody.... i feel somewhat ridiculous, my dear planetary readers, relating to you this most improbable adventure. but what else can i do since it all happened exactly as i relate it? was not the whole day from early morning, full of improbable adventures? does it not all resemble the ancient disease of dream-seeing? if this be so, what does it matter if i relate one absurdity more, or one less? moreover, i am convinced that sooner or later i shall be able to include all these absurdities in some kind of a logical sequence. this thought comforts me as i hope it will comfort you. ... how overwhelmed i am! if only you knew how overwhelmed! record fourteen "mine" impossible a cold floor i shall continue to relate my adventures of yesterday. i was busy during the personal hour before retiring to bed, and thus i was unable to record everything last night. but everything is graven in me; especially, for some reason, and apparently forever, i shall remember that unbearably cold floor.... i was expecting o- last evening as it was her regular day. i went downstairs to the controller on duty to get a permit for the lowering of my curtains. "what is the matter with you?" asked the controller. "you seem so peculiar tonight." "i ... i am sick." strictly speaking, i told her the truth. i certainly am sick. all this _is_ an illness. presently i remembered; of course, my certificate! i touched it in my pocket. yes, there it was, rustling. then all this did happen! it did actually happen! i held out the paper to the controller. as i did so, i felt the blood rushing to my cheeks. without looking directly at her, i noticed with what an expression of surprise she gazed at me. then at twenty-one-thirty o'clock.... in the room to the left the curtains were lowered, and in the room to the right my neighbor was sitting over a book. his head is bald and covered with bulging lumps. his forehead is enormous--a yellow parabola. i was walking up and down the room--suffering. how could i meet her, after all that happened! o- , i mean. i felt plainly to my right, how the eyes of my neighbor were staring at me. i clearly saw the wrinkles on his forehead like a row of yellow, illegible lines; and for some reason i was certain that those lines dealt with me. a quarter of an hour before twenty-two, the cheerful, rosy whirlwind was in my room; the firm ring of her rosy arms closed about my neck. then i felt how that ring grew weaker and weaker, and then it broke and her arms dropped.... "you are not the same, not the same man! you are no longer mine!" "what curious terminology: 'mine.' i never belonged--" i faltered. it suddenly occurred to me: true, i belonged to no one before, but now--is it not clear that now i do not live any more in our rational world but in the ancient delirious world, in a world of square-root of minus one? the curtains fell. there to my right my neighbor let his book drop at that moment from the table to the floor. and through the last narrow space between the curtain and the floor i saw a yellow hand pick up the book. within i felt: "only to seize that hand with all my power." "i thought ... i wanted to meet you during the hour for the walk. i wanted ... i must talk to you about so many things, so many...." poor, dear, o- . her rosy mouth was a crescent with its horns downward. but i could not tell her everything, could i, if for no other reason than that it would make her an accomplice of my crimes? i knew that she would not have the courage to report me to the bureau of guardians, consequently.... "my dear o-, i am sick, i am exhausted. i went again today to the medical bureau; but it is nothing, it will pass. but let us not talk about it;--let us forget it." o- was lying down. i kissed her gently. i kissed that childish, fluffy fold at her wrist. her blue eyes were closed. the pink crescent of her lips was slowly blooming, more and more like a flower. i kissed her.... suddenly i clearly realized how empty i was, how i had given away.... no, i could not--impossible! i knew i must ... but no--impossible! i ought ... but no--impossible! my lips cooled at once. the rosy crescent trembled, darkened, drew together. o- covered herself with the bedspread, her face hidden in the pillow. i was sitting near the bed, on the floor. what a desperately cold floor! i sat there in silence. the terrible cold from the floor rose higher and higher. there in the blue, silent space among the planets, there probably it is as cold. "please understand, dear; i did not mean..." i muttered, "with all my heart, i ..." it was the truth. i, my real self did not mean.-- ... yet how could i express it in words? how could i explain to her that the piece of iron did not want to.... but that the law is precise, inevitable! o- lifted her face from the pillow and without opening her eyes she said, "go away." but because she was crying she pronounced it "oo aaa-ay." for some reason this absurd detail will not leave my memory. penetrated by the cold and torpid, i went out into the hall. i pressed my forehead against the cold glass. outside a thin, almost imperceptible film of haze was spread. "towards night," i thought, "it will descend again and drown the world. how sad a night it will be!" o- passed swiftly by, going toward the elevator. the door slammed. "wait a minute!" i screamed. i was frightened. but the elevator was already groaning, going down--down--down.... "she robbed me of r-, she robbed me of o- , yet, yet ... nevertheless...." record fifteen the bell the mirror-like sea i am to burn eternally i was walking upon the dock where the _integral_ is being built, when the second builder came to meet me. his face as usual was round and white,--a porcelain plate. when he speaks it seems as though he serves you a plate of something unbearably tasty. "you chose to be ill, and without the chief we had an accident, as it were, yesterday." "an accident?" "yes, sir. we finished the bell and started to let it down, and imagine! the men caught a male without a number. how he got in, i cannot make out. they took him to the operation department. oh, they'll draw the mystery out of the fellow there; 'why' and 'how,' etc...." he smiled delightedly. our best and most experienced physicians work in the operation department under the direct supervision of the well-doer himself. they have all kinds of instruments, but the best of all is the gas bell. the procedure is taken from an ancient experiment of elementary physics: they used to put a rat under a gas bell and gradually pump out the air; the air becomes more and more rarified, and ... you know the rest. but our gas bell is certainly a more perfect apparatus and it is used in combination with different gasses. furthermore, we don't torture a defenseless animal as the ancients did; we use it for a higher purpose: to guard the security of the united state, in other words, the happiness of millions. about five centuries ago when the work of the operation department was only beginning, there were yet to be found some fools who compared our operation department with the ancient inquisition. but this is as absurd as to compare a surgeon performing a tracheotomy with a highway cut-throat. both use a knife, perhaps the same kind of a knife, both do the same thing, viz., cut the throat of a living man, yet one is a well-doer, the other is a murderer; one is marked plus, the other minus.... all this becomes perfectly clear in one second, in one turn of our logical wheel, the teeth of which engage that _minus_, turn it upward and thus change its aspect. that other matter is somewhat different; the ring in the door was still oscillating, apparently the door had just closed, yet she, i- , had disappeared; she was not there! the logical wheel could not turn this fact. a dream? but even now i feel still in my right shoulder that incomprehensible sweet pain of i- near me in the fog, pressing herself against me. "thou lovest fog?" yes, i love the fog too. i love everything and everything appears to me wonderful, new, tense; everything is so good!... "so good," i said aloud. "good?" the porcelain eyes bulged out. "what good do you find in that? if that man without a number contrived to sneak in, it means that there are others around here, everywhere, all the time, here around the _integral_, they--" "whom do you mean by 'they'?" "how do i know who? but i sense them, all the time." "have you heard about the new operation which has been invented? i mean the surgical removal of fancy?" (there really were rumors of late about something of the sort.) "no, i haven't. what has that to do with it?" "merely this: if i were you, i should go and ask to have this operation performed upon me." the plate expressed distinctly something lemon-like, sour. poor fellow! he took offence if one even hinted that he might possess imagination. well, a week ago i too should have taken offence at such a hint. not so now, for i know that i have imagination, that is what my illness consists in, and more than that: i know that it is a wonderful illness,--one does not want to be cured, simply does not want to! we ascended the glass steps; the world spread itself below us like the palm of a hand. you, readers of these records, whoever you be, you have the sun above you. and if you ever were ill, as i am now, then you know what kind of a sun there is or may be in the morning; you know that pinkish, lucid, warm gold; the air itself looks a little pinkish; everything seems permeated by the tender blood of the sun; everything is alive; the stones seem soft and living; iron living and warm; people all full of life and smiles. it may be that in a short while all this will disappear, that in an hour the pinkish blood of the sun will be drained out, but in the meantime everything is alive. and i see how something flows and pulsates in the sides of the _integral_; i see the _integral_ _think_ of its great and lofty future, of the heavy load of inevitable happiness which it is to carry up there into the heights, to you, unseen ones, to you who seek eternally and who never find. you shall find! you shall be happy! you must be happy, and you have now not very long to wait! the body of the _integral_ is almost ready; it is an exquisite, oblong ellipsoid, made of our glass, which is everlasting like gold and flexible like steel. i watched them within, fixing its transverse ribs and its longitudinal stringers; in the stern they were erecting the base of the gigantic motor. every three seconds the powerful tail of the _integral_ will eject flame and gasses into the universal space, and the _integral_ will soar forward and higher,--like a flaming tamerlane of happiness! i watched how the workers, true to the taylor system, would bend down, then unbend and turn around swiftly and rhythmically like levers of an enormous engine. in their hands they held glittering glass pipes which emitted bluish streaks of flame; the glass walls were being cut into with flame; with flame there were being welded the angles, the ribs, the bars. i watched the monstrous glass cranes easily rolling over the glass rails; like the workers themselves they would obediently turn, bend down and bring their loads inward into the bowels of the _integral_. all seemed one, humanized machine and mechanized humans. it was the most magnificent, the most stirring beauty, harmony, music! quick! down! to them, and with them! and i descended and mingled with them, fused with their mass, caught in the rhythm of steel and glass. their movements were measured, tense and round. their cheeks were colored with health, their mirror-like foreheads not clouded by the insanity of thinking. i was floating upon a mirror-like sea. i was reposing.... suddenly one of them turned toward me his care-free face. "well, better today?" "what better?" "you were not here yesterday. and we thought something serious...." his forehead was shining; a childish and innocent smile. my blood rushed to my face. no, i could not lie, facing those eyes. i remained silent; i was drowning.... above, the shiny round white porcelain face appeared in the hatchway. "eh! d- ! come up here! something is wrong with a frame and brackets here, and ..." not waiting until he had finished, i rushed to him, upstairs; i was shamefully saving myself by flight. i had not the power to raise my eyes. i was dazed by the sparkling glass steps under my feet, and with every step i made i felt more and more hopeless. i, a corrupted man, a criminal, was out of place here. no, i shall probably never again be able to fuse myself into this mechanical rhythm, nor to float over this mirror-like, untroubled sea. i am to burn eternally from now on, running from place to place, seeking a nook where i may hide my eyes, eternally, until i.... a spark cold as ice pierced me: "i myself, i matter little, but is it necessary that _she_ also...? i must see that she ..." i crawled through the hatchway to the deck and stood there; where was i to go now? i did not know what i had come for! i looked aloft. the midday sun exhausted by its march, was fuming dimly. below was the _integral_, a gray mass of glass,--dead. the pink blood was drained out! it was clear to me that all this was my imagination and that everything remained as before, yet it was also clear to me that ... "what is the matter with you, d- ? are you deaf? i call you and call.... what is the matter with you?" it was the second builder yelling directly into my ear; he must have been yelling that way for quite a while. what was the matter with me? i had lost my rudder, the motor was groaning as before, the aero was quivering and rushing on but it had no rudder. i did not even know where i was rushing, down to the earth or up to the sun, to its flame.... record sixteen yellow a two-dimensional shadow an incurable soul i have not written for several days, for i don't know how many. all my days are alike. all are of one color,--yellow like dry, overheated sand. not a patch of shade, not a drop of water, only an infinity of yellow sand. i cannot live without her, but she, since she disappeared that day so mysteriously in the ancient house.... since that time i have seen her only once, during the hour for the walk, two, three, four days ago, i do not remember exactly. all my days are alike. she only passed swiftly by and for a second filled up the yellow, empty world. with her, arm in arm, reaching not higher than her shoulder, were the double-curved s- and the thin papery doctor, and a fourth person whose fingers only i remember well; they streamed out, those fingers, from the sleeve of the unif like a bundle of rays, uncommonly thin, white, long. i- raised her hand and waved to me, then she bent toward the one with the ray-like fingers, over the head of s-. i overheard the word _integral_. all four turned around to look at me,--and then they disappeared in the bluish-gray sea and my road was once more dry and yellow. that same evening she had a pink check on me. i stood before the switchboard and with hatred and tenderness i implored it to click and soon to show the number i- . i would jump out into the hall at every sound of the elevator. the door of the latter would open heavily. pale, tall, blonde and dark they would come out of the elevator, and here and there curtains were falling.... but she was not there. she did not come. and it is quite possible that now, at this minute, as i write these lines, at twenty-two o'clock exactly, with her eyes closed, she is pressing her shoulder against somebody else _in the same way_ and _in the same way_ she may be asking someone: "do you love me?" whom? who is he? that one with ray-like fingers or that thick-lipped, sprinkling r-? or s-? s-! why is it that i have heard his steps splashing behind me as though in a ditch all these days? why has he been following me all these days like a shadow? ahead of me, to my side, behind me, a grayish-blue, two-dimensional shadow; people cross it, people step on it but it remains nearby, attached to me by unseen ties. perhaps that tie is i- . i do not know. or perhaps they, the guardians i mean, already know that i ... if some one should tell you your shadow sees you, sees you all the time, would you understand? all at once peculiar sensations arise in you; your arms seem to belong to someone else, they are in the way. that is how i feel; very frequently now i notice how absurdly i wave my hands without any rhythm. i have an irresistible desire to glance behind me but i am unable to do so, my neck might as well be forged of iron. i flee, i run faster and faster, and even with my back i feel that shadow following me as fast as i can run, and there is no place to hide myself, no place! at length i reach my room. alone at last! but here i find another thing, the telephone. i pick up the receiver. "yes, i- please." and again i hear a light noise through the receiver; some one's step in the hall there, passing the door of her room, and--silence.... i drop the receiver. i cannot, cannot bear it any longer, and i run to see her! this happened yesterday. i ran there and for a whole hour from sixteen to seventeen i wandered near the house in which she lives. numbers were passing by in rows. thousands of feet were beating the time like a behemoth with a million legs passing by. i was alone, thrown out by a storm on an uninhabited island, and my eyes were seeking and seeking among the grayish-blue waves. "there soon," i thought, "will appear from somewhere the sharp mocking angles of the brows lifted to the temples, and the dark window-eyes, and there behind them a flaming fireplace and someone's shadow.... and i will rush straight in behind those windows and say to her, 'thou' (yes, 'thou' without fail), 'thou knowest i cannot live without thee any longer, then why-- ...?'" but silence reigned. suddenly i heard the silence; suddenly i heard the musical tower silenced, and i understood! it was after seventeen already; every one had already left. i was alone. it was too late to return home. around me,--a desert made of glass and bathed with yellow sunshine. i saw, as if in water, the reflection of the walls in the glass smoothness of the street, sparkling walls, hanging upside down. myself also upside down, hanging absurdly in the glass. "i must go at once, this very second, to the medical bureau or else ... or perhaps _this_ would be best: to remain here, to wait quietly until they see me and come and take me into the operation department and put an end to everything at once, redeem everything...." a slight rustle! and the double-curved s- was before me. without looking i felt his two gray steel-drill eyes bore quickly into me. i plucked up all my strength to show a smile and to say (i had to say something), "i, i must go to the medical bureau." "who is detaining you? what are you standing here for?" i was silent, absurdly hanging upside down. "follow me," said s- austerely. i followed obediently, waving my unnecessary, foreign arms. i could not raise my eyes. i walked through a strange world turned upside down, where people had their feet pasted to the ceilings, and where engines stood with their bases upward, and where, still lower, the sky merged in the heavy glass of the pavement. i remember what pained me most was the fact that looking at the world for the last time in my life, i should see it upside down rather than in its natural state; but i could not raise my eyes. we stopped. steps. one step ... and i should see the figures of the doctors in their white aprons and the enormous dumb bell. with force, with some sort of an inner screw, at length i succeeded in tearing my eyes away from the glass beneath my feet, and i noticed the golden letters, "medical bureau." why did he bring me here rather than to the operation department? why did he spare me?--about this i did not even think at that moment. i made one jump over all the steps, firmly closed the door behind me and took a very deep breath, as if i had not breathed since morning and as if my heart had not beaten for the same length of time, as if only now i started to breathe and only now there opened a sluice in my chest.... inside there were two of them, one a short specimen with heavy legs, his eyes like the horns of a bull tossing the patients up, the other extremely thin with lips like sparkling scissors, a nose like a blade--it was the same man who ... i ran to him as to a dear friend, straight over close to the blade, and muttered something about insomnia, dreams, shadows, yellow sand. the scissors-lips sparkled and smiled. "yes, it _is_ too bad. apparently a soul has formed in you." a soul?--that strange ancient word that was forgotten long ago.... "is it ... v-very dangerous?" i stuttered. "incurable," was the cut of the scissors. "but more specifically, what is it? somehow i cannot imagine--" "you see ... how shall i put it? are you a mathematician?" "yes." "then you see ... imagine a plane, let us say this mirror. you and i are on its surface. you see? there we are, squinting our eyes to protect ourselves from the sunlight, or here is the bluish electric spark in that tube, there the shadow of that aero that just passed. all this is on the surface, is momentary only. now imagine this very same surface softened by a flame so that nothing can any longer glide over it, so everything instead will penetrate into that mirror world which excites such curiosity in children. i assure you, children are not so foolish as we think they are! the surface becomes a volume, a body, a world; and inside the mirror,--within you, there is the sunshine, and the whirlwind caused by the aero propeller, and your trembling lips and someone else's lips also. you see, the cold mirror reflects, throws out, while this one absorbs; it keeps forever a trace of everything that touches it. once you saw an imperceptible wrinkle on some one's face, and this wrinkle is forever preserved within you; you may happen to hear in the silence a drop of water falling,--and you will hear it forever!" "yes, yes, that is it!" i grasped his hand. i could hear drops of water dripping in the silence from the faucet of a washstand and at once i knew it was forever. "but tell me please, why suddenly ... suddenly a soul? there was none, yet suddenly.... why is it that no one has it, yet i...." i pressed the thin hand; i was afraid to loosen the safety belt. "why? well, why don't we grow feathers or wings, but only shoulder blades, bases for wings? we have aeros; wings would only be in the way. wings are needed in order to fly, but we don't need to fly anywhere. we have arrived at the terminus. we have found what we wanted. is that not so?" i nodded vaguely. he glanced at me and laughed a scalpel-like metallic laugh. the other doctor overheard us and stamped out of his room on his heavy legs. he picked up the thin doctor with his horn-eyes, then picked me up. "what is the matter, a soul? you say a soul? oh, damn it! we may soon retrogress even to the cholera epidemics. i told you," he tossed the thin one on the horns, "i told you the only thing to do is to operate on them all, wholesale! simply extirpate the centre for fancy. only surgery can help here, only surgery." he put on a pair of enormous x-ray spectacles and remained thus for a long while, looking into my skull, through the bones into my brain and making notes. "very, very curious! listen." he looked firmly into my eyes. "would you not consent to have me perform an extirpation on you? it would be invaluable to the united state; it might help us to prevent an epidemic. if you have no special reasons, of course...." some time ago i should probably have said without hesitation, "i am willing," but now,--i was silent. i caught the profile of the thin doctor; i implored him! "you see," he said at last, "number d- is building the _integral_ and i am sure the operation would interfere...." "ah-h!" grumbled the other and stamped back into his room. we remained alone. the paper-like hand was put lightly and caressingly upon mine, the profile-like face came nearer and he said in a very low voice: "i shall tell you a secret. you are not the only one. my colleague is right when he speaks of an epidemic. try to remember, have you not noticed yourself, some one with something similar, very similar, identical?" he looked at me closely. what was he alluding to? to whom?... is it possible?... "listen," i jumped up from my seat. but he had already changed the subject. in a loud metallic tone: "... as to the insomnia and for the dreams you complain of, i advise you to walk a great deal. tomorrow morning you must begin taking long walks ... say as far as the ancient house." again he pierced me with his eyes and he smiled thinly. it seemed to me that i saw enveloped in the tender tissue of that smile a word, a letter, a name, the only name.... or was it only my imagination? i waited impatiently while he wrote a certificate of illness for today and tomorrow. once more i gently and firmly pressed his hand, then i ran out. my heart now feels light and swift like an aero; it carries me higher and higher.... i know joy will come tomorrow. what joy?... record seventeen through glass i died the corridor i am puzzled. yesterday, at the very moment when i thought everything was untangled, and that all the x's were at last found, new unknowns appeared in my equation. the origin of the coordinates of the whole story is of course the ancient home. from this centre the axes of all the x's, y's, and z's radiate, and recently they have entered into the formation of my whole life. i walked along the x-axis (avenue ) towards the centre. the whirlwind of yesterday still raged within me; houses and people upside down; my own hands torturingly foreign to me; glimmering scissors; the sharp sound of drops dripping from the faucet;--all this existed, all this _existed_ once! all these things were revolving wildly, tearing my flesh, rotating wildly beneath the molten surface, there where the "soul" is located. in order to follow the instructions of the doctor i chose the road which followed not the hypotenuse but the two legs of a triangle. soon i reached the road running along the green wall. from beyond the wall, from the infinite ocean of green there rose toward me an immense wave of roots, branches, flowers, leaves. it rose higher and higher; it seemed as though it would splash over me and that from a man, from the finest and most precise mechanism which i am, i would be transformed into.... but fortunately there was the green wall between me and that wild green sea. oh, how great and divinely limiting is the wisdom of walls and bars! this green wall is i think the greatest invention ever conceived. man ceased to be a wild animal the day he built the first wall; man ceased to be a wild man only on the day when the green wall was completed, when by this wall we isolated our machine-like, perfect world from the irrational, ugly world of trees, birds and beasts.... the blunt snout of some unknown beast was to be seen dimly through the glass of the wall; its yellow eyes kept repeating the same thought which remained incomprehensible to me. we looked into each other's eyes for a long while. eyes are shafts which lead from the superficial world into a world which is beneath the surface. a thought awoke in me: "what if that yellow-eyed one, sitting there on that absurd dirty heap of leaves, is happier than i, in his life which cannot be calculated in figures!" i waved my hand. the yellow eyes twinkled, moved back and disappeared in the foliage. what a pitiful being! how absurd the idea that he might be happier! happier than _i_ he may be, but i am an exception, am i not? i am sick. i noticed that i was approaching the dark red walls of the ancient house and i saw the grown-together lips of the old woman. i ran to her with all speed. "is she here?" the grown-together lips opened slowly: "who is 'she'?" "who? i- , of course. you remember we came together, she and i, in an aero the other day." "oh, yes, yes, yes,--yes." ray-wrinkles around the lips, artful rays radiating from the eyes. they were making their way deeper and deeper into me. "well, she is here, all right. came in a while ago." "here!" i noticed at the feet of the old woman a bush of silver,--bitter wormwood. (the court of the ancient house, being a part of the museum is carefully kept in its prehistoric state.) a branch of the bush touched the old woman, she caressed that branch; upon her knees lay stripes of sunshine. for a second i myself, the sun, the old woman, the wormwood, those yellow eyes, all seemed to be one; we were firmly united by common veins and one common blood, boisterous, magnificent blood, was running through those veins. i am ashamed now to write down all this, but i promised to be frank to the end of these records: yes, i bent over and kissed that soft, grown-together mouth of the old woman. she wiped it with her hand and laughed. running, i passed through familiar, half-dark, echoing rooms, and for some reason i ran straight to the bedroom. when i had reached the door, a thought flashed: "and if she is there ... not alone?" i stopped and listened. but all i heard was the tick-tock of my heart, not within me, but somewhere near, outside me. i entered. the large bed,--untouched. a mirror ... another mirror in the door of the cupboard, and in the keyhole an ancient key upon an ancient ring. no one was there. i called softly: "i- , are you here?"--and then in a still lower voice with closed eyes, holding my breath,--in a voice as though i were kneeling before her, "i-, dear." silence. only the water was dripping fast into the white basin of the washstand. i cannot now explain why, but i disliked that sound. i turned the faucet hard and went out. she was not there, so much was clear. she must be in another "apartment." i ran down a wide, sombre stairway, pulled one door, another, a third,--locked. every room was locked save that of "our" apartment. and she was not there. i went back again to the same apartment without knowing why. i walked slowly, with difficulty; my shoe-soles suddenly became as heavy as cast-iron. i remember distinctly my thought, "it is a mistake that the force of gravity is a constant; consequently all my formulae...." suddenly--an explosion! a door slammed down below; some one stamped quickly over the flagstones. i again became lightfooted, extremely light! i dashed to the railing to bend over, and in one word, one exclamation, expressed everything: "you!" i became cold. below in the square shadow of the window-frame, flapping its pink wing-ears, the head of s- passed by! like lightning i saw only the naked conclusion. without any premises (i don't recall any premises even now) the conclusion: he must not see me here! and on the tips of my toes, pressing myself against the wall, i sneaked upstairs into the unlocked apartment. i stopped for a second at the door. he was stamping upward, here. if only the door.... i prayed to the door but it was a wooden one,--it squeaked, it squealed. like a wind something red passed my eyes, something green, and the yellow buddha. in front of the mirror-door of the cupboard, my pale face; my ears still following those steps, my lips.... now _he_ was already passing the green and yellow, now he was passing buddha, now at the doorsill of the bedroom.... i grasped the key of the cupboard; the ring oscillated. this oscillation reminded me of something. again a conclusion, a naked conclusion without premises; a conclusion, or to be more exact, a fragment of one: "now i- is...." i brusquely opened the cupboard and when inside in the darkness shut the door firmly. one step! the floor shook under my feet. slowly and softly i floated somewhere downward; my eyes were dimmed,--i died! later when i sat down to describe all these adventures, i sought in my memory and consulted some books; and now i understand, of course! i was in a state of temporary death. this state was known to the ancients, but as far as i am informed it is unknown to us. i have no conception of how long i was dead, probably not longer than five or ten seconds, but after awhile i arose from the dead and opened my eyes. it was dark. but i felt i was falling down--down--down. i stretched out my hand to attach myself to something but the rough wall scratched my fingers; it was running away from me, upward. i felt blood on my fingers. it was clear that all this was not merely a play of my sick imagination. but what was it? what? i heard my own frequent, trembling breaths. (i am not ashamed to confess this, it was all unexpected and incomprehensible.) a minute, two, three passed; i was still going down. then a soft bump. the thing that had been falling away from under my feet was motionless. i found in the darkness a knob, and turned it; a door opened; there was a dim light. i now noticed behind me a square platform, travelling upward. i tried to run back to it but it was too late. "i am cut off here," i thought. where "here" might be, i did not know. a corridor. a heavy silence. the small lamps on the vaulted ceiling resembled an endless, twinkling, dotted line. the corridor was similar to the "tube" of our underground railways but it was much narrower, and made not of our glass but of some other, very ancient material. for a moment i thought of the underground caves where they say many tried to save themselves during the two hundred years' war. there was nothing to do but to walk ahead. i walked, i think, for about twenty minutes. a turn to the right, the corridor became wider, the small lamps brighter. there was a dim droning somewhere.... was it a machine or voices? i did not know. i stood before a heavy, opaque door, from behind which came the noise. i knocked. then i knocked again, louder. now there was silence behind the door. something clanked; the door opened slowly and heavily. i don't know which of us was the more dumbfounded; the thin blade-like doctor stood before me! "you here!" his scissors opened and remained open. and i, as if i did not know a human word, stood silent, merely stared, without comprehending that he was talking to me. he must have told me to leave, for with his thin paper stomach he slowly pressed me to the side, to the more brightly lighted end of the corridor and poked me in the back. "beg your pardon ... i wanted ... i thought that she, i- ... but behind me...." "stay where you are," said the doctor brusquely, and he disappeared. at last! at last she was nearby, here, and what did it matter where "here" was? i saw the familiar saffron-yellow silk, the smile-bite, the eyes with their curtains drawn.... my lips quivered, so did my hands and knees, and i had a most stupid thought: "vibrations make sounds. shivering must make a sound. why then don't i hear it?" her eyes opened for me widely. i entered into them. "i could not ... any longer!... where have you been?... why?..." i was unable to tear my eyes away from her for a second, and i talked as if in a delirium, fast and incoherently, or perhaps i only thought without speaking out: "a shadow ... behind me. i died. and from the cupboard.... because that doctor of yours ... speaks with his scissors.... i have a soul ... incurable ... and i must walk...." "an incurable soul? my poor boy!" i- laughed. she covered me with the sparkles of her laughter; my delirium left me. everywhere around her little laughs were sparkling! how good it was! the doctor reappeared from around the turn, the wonderful, magnificent, thinnest doctor. "well?" he was already beside her. "oh, nothing, nothing. i shall tell you later. he got here by accident. tell them that i shall be back in about a quarter of an hour." the doctor slid around the corner. she lingered. the door closed with a heavy thud. then slowly, very slowly, piercing my heart with a sharp sweet needle, i- pressed against me with her shoulder and then with her arm, with her whole body, and we walked away as if fused into one. i do not remember now where we turned into darkness; in the darkness we walked up some endless stairway in silence. i did not see but i knew, i knew that she walked as i did, with closed eyes, blind, her head thrown a little backward, biting her lips and listening to the music, that is to say, to my almost audible tremor. i returned to consciousness in one of the innumerable nooks in the courtyard of the ancient house. there was a fence of earth with naked stone ribs and yellow teeth of walls half fallen to pieces. she opened her eyes and said, "day-after-tomorrow at sixteen." she was gone. did all this really happen? i do not know. i shall learn day-after-tomorrow. one real sign remains: on my right hand the skin has been rubbed from the tips of three fingers. but today, on the _integral_ the second builder assured me that he saw me touch the polishing wheel with those very same fingers. perhaps i did. it is quite probable. i don't know. i don't know anything. record eighteen logical debris wounds and plaster never again last night as soon as i had gone to bed, i fell momentarily to the bottom of the ocean of sleep like an overloaded ship which has been wrecked. the heavy thicket of wavy green water enveloped me. then slowly i floated from the bottom upward, and somewhere in the middle of that course, i opened my eyes,--my room! the morning was still green and motionless. a fragment of sunshine coming from the mirror on my closet door shone into my eyes. this fragment does not permit me to sleep, being thus an obstacle in the way of exactly fulfilling the rules of the tables which prescribe so many hours of sleep. i should have opened the closet but i felt as though i were in a spider web, and cobweb covered my eyes; i had no power to sit up. yet i got up and opened the closet door; suddenly, there behind that door, making her way through the mass of garments which hung there, was i- ! i have become so accustomed of late to most improbable things, that as far as i remember i was not even surprised; i did not even ask a question. i jumped into the closet, slammed the mirror-door behind me and breathlessly, brusquely, blindly, avidly i clung to her. i remember clearly even now:--through the narrow crack of the door a sharp sun-ray like lightning broke into the darkness and played on the floor and walls of the closet, and a little higher the cruel ray-blade fell upon the naked neck of i- , and this for some reason seemed to me so terrible that i could not bear it, and i screamed;--and again i opened my eyes. my room! the morning was still green and motionless. on the door of my closet was a fragment of the sunshine. i was in bed. a dream? yet my heart was still wildly beating, quivering and twitching; there was a dull pain in the tips of my fingers and in my knees. _this_ undoubtedly _did_ happen! and now i am unable any more to distinguish what is dream from what is actuality; irrational numbers grow through my solid, habitual, tri-dimensional life; and instead of firm, polished surfaces--there is something shaggy and rough.... i waited long for the bell to ring. i was lying thinking, untangling a very strange logical chain. in our superficial life, every formula, every equation, corresponds to a curve or a solid. we have never seen any curve or solid corresponding to my square-root of minus one. the horrifying part of the situation is that there exist such curves or solids; unseen by us they do exist, they must, inevitably; for in mathematics as on a screen, strange sharp shadows appear before us. one must remember that mathematics like death, never makes mistakes, never plays tricks. if we are unable to see those irrational curves or solids, it only means that they inevitably possess a whole immense world somewhere beneath the surface of our life.... i jumped up without waiting for the waking bell and began to pace up and down the room. my mathematics, the only firm and immovable island of my shaken life, this too was torn from its anchor and was floating, whirling. then it means that that absurd thing, the "soul," is as real as my unif, as my boots, although i do not see them since they are behind the door of the closet. if boots are not a sickness, why should the "soul" be one? i sought, but i could not find, a way out of the logical confusion. it looked to me like that strange and sad debris beyond the green wall; my logical debris too, is filled with extraordinary, incomprehensible, wordless but speaking beings. it occurred to me for a moment that through some strange, thick glass i saw _it_; i saw it at once infinitely large and infinitely small, scorpion-like with hidden but ever perceptible sting; i _saw_ the square-root of minus one. perhaps it was nothing else but my "soul," which like the legendary scorpion of the ancients, was voluntarily stinging itself with.... the bell! the day began. all i saw and felt neither died, nor disappeared, it merely became covered with daylight, as our visible world does not die or disappear at the end of the day but merely becomes covered with the darkness of night. my head was filled by a light, thin haze. through that haze i perceived the long glass tables and the globe-like heads busy chewing, slowly, silently, in unison. at a distance, through the haze, the metronome was slowly beating its tick-tock, and to the accompaniment of this customary and caressing music i joined with the others in counting automatically to fifty: fifty is the number of chewing movements required by the law of the state for every piece of food. and automatically then, keeping time, i went downstairs and put my name down in the book for the outgoing numbers,--as everyone did. but i felt i _lived_ separately from everybody; i lived by myself separated by a soft wall which absorbs noises; beyond that wall there was my world. here a thought occurred to me. if that world is only my own, why should i tell about it in these records? why should i recount all these absurd "dreams" about closets, endless corridors? with great sorrow i notice that instead of a correct and strictly mathematical poem in honor of the united state, i am writing a fantastic novel. oh! if only it were a novel and not my actual life, full of x's, square-roots of minus one and down-fallings! yet all may be for the best. probably you, my unknown readers, are children still as compared with us. we are brought up by the united state; consequently we have reached the highest summits attainable by man. and you, being children, may swallow without crying all the bitter things i am to give you only if they be coated with the syrup of adventures. * * * * * _the same evening_ are you familiar with the following sensation? you are in an aero and you dash upward along a blue spiral line; the window is open and the wind rushes past your face, whistling. there is no earth. the earth is forgotten. the earth is as far from you as venus, saturn or jupiter. that is how i live now. a hurricane wind beats into my face; i forget the earth, forget rosy, dear o- . yet the earth does exist and sooner or later i must plane down to that earth; only i close my eyes to avoid seeing the date at which there is the name o- written on my tables. this evening the distant earth reminded me of itself. in order to fulfill the recommendation of the doctor (i desire sincerely, most sincerely i desire to be cured), i wandered for two hours and eight minutes over the straight lines of the deserted avenues. everybody was in the auditoriums, in accordance with the table. only i, cut off from the rest, i was alone. strictly speaking, it was a very unnatural situation. imagine a finger cut off from the whole, from the hand; a separate human finger, somewhat hunched, running over the glass sidewalk. i was such a finger. what seemed most strange and unnatural was that the finger had no desire to be with its hand, with its fellows. i want either to be alone or with _her_; to transfuse my whole being into hers through a contact with her shoulder or through our interwoven fingers. i came home as the sun was setting. the pink dust of evening was covering the glass of the walls, the golden peak of the accumulating tower, the voices and smiles of the numbers. is it not strange: the passing rays of the evening sun fall to the earth at the same angle as the awakening rays of the morning, yet they make everything seem so different; the pink tinge is different. at sunset it is so quiet, somewhat melancholy; at sunrise it is resounding, boisterous. in the hall downstairs when i entered, i saw u-, the controller. she took a letter from the heaps of envelopes covered with pink dust and handed it to me. i repeat: she is a very respectable woman and i am sure she has only the very best feelings towards me.... yet, every time i see those cheeks hanging down, which look like the gills of a fish, i.... holding out her dry hand with the letter, u- sighed. but that sigh only very slightly moved in me the curtains which separate me from the rest of the world. i was completely projected upon the envelope which trembled in my hand. i had no doubt but that it was a letter from i- . at that moment i heard another sigh, such a deliberate one, underscored with two lines, that i raised my eyes from the envelope and saw a tender, cloudy smile coming from between the gills, through the bashful jalousies of lowered eyes. and then: "you poor, poor, dear!..." a sigh underscored with three lines, and a glance at the letter, an imperceptible glance. (what was in the letter she naturally knew, _ex officio_.) "no, really?... why?" "no, no, dear, i know better than you. for a long time i have watched you and i see that you need some one with years of experience of life to accompany you." i felt all pasted around by her smile. it was like a plaster upon the wounds which were to be inflicted upon me by the letter i held in my hand. finally, through the bashful jalousies of her eyes, she said in a very low voice: "i shall think about it, dear. i shall think it over. and be sure that if i feel myself strong enough ..." "great well-doer! is it possible that my lot is?... is it possible that she means to say, that she?..." my eyes were dimmed and filled with thousands of sinusoids; the letter was trembling. i went near the light, to the wall. there the light of the sun was going out; from the sun was falling thicker and thicker the dark, sad, pink dust, covering the floor, my hands, the letter. i opened the envelope and found the signature as fast as i could,--the first wound! it was not i- ; it was o- ! and another wound: in the right-hand corner a slovenly splash,--a blot! i cannot bear blots. it matters little whether they are made by ink or by ... well, it matters not by what. heretofore, such a blot would have had only a disagreeable effect, disagreeable to the eyes; but now--why did that small gray blot seem to be like a cloud and seem to spread about me a leaden, bluish darkness? or was it again the "soul" at work? here is a transcript of the letter: "you know, or perhaps you don't ... i cannot write well. little it matters! now you know that without you there is for me not a single day, a single morning, a single spring, for r- is only ... well, that is of no importance to you. at any rate, i am very grateful to him, for without him, alone all these days, i don't know what would.... during these last few days and nights i have lived through ten years, or perhaps twenty years. my room seemed to me not square but round; i walk around without end, round after round, always the same thing, not a door to escape through. i cannot live without you because i love you; and i should not, i cannot be with you any more,--because i love you! because i see and i understand that you need no one now, no one in the world save that other, and you must realize that it is precisely because i love you i must ... "i need another two or three days in order to paste together the fragments of myself and thus restore at least something similar to the o- of old. then i shall go myself, and myself i shall state that i take your name from my list, and this will be better for you; you must feel happy now. i shall never again...." "good-bye, o-." never again. yes, that is better. she is right. but, why then?... why then?... record nineteen the infinitesimal of the third order from under the forehead over the railing there in the strange corridor lighted by the dotted line of dim little electric lamps ... or no, no, later, when we had already reached one of the nooks in the courtyard of the ancient house, she said, "day-after-tomorrow." that "day-after-tomorrow" is today. and everything seems to have wings and to fly; the day flies; and our _integral_ too already has wings. we finished placing the motor and tried it out today, without switching it in. what magnificent, powerful salvos! each of them sounded for me like a salute in honor of _her_, the only one,--in honor of today! at the time of the first explosion about a dozen loafing numbers from the docks stood near the main tube--and nothing was left of them save a few crumbs and a little soot. with pride i write down now that this occurrence did not disturb the rhythm of our work even for a second. not a man shrank. we and our lathes continued our rectilinear or curved motions with the same sparkling and polished precision as before, as if nothing had happened. as a matter of fact, what did happen? a dozen numbers represent hardly one hundred millionth part of the united state. for practical consideration, that is but an infinitesimal of the third order. that _pity_, a result of arithmetical ignorance, was known to the ancients; to us it seems absurd. it seems droll to me also, that yesterday i was thinking, even relating in these pages about a gray blot! all that was only the "softening of the surface" which is normally as hard as diamond, like our walls. (there is an ancient saying: "shooting beans at a stone wall--") sixteen o'clock. i did not go for the supplementary walk; who knows, she might come now, when the sun is so noisily bright. i am almost the only one in his room. through the walls full of sunshine i see for a distance to the right and to the left and below strings of other rooms, repeating each other as if in a mirror, hanging in the air and empty. only on the bluish stairway, striped by the golden ink of the sun, is seen rising a thin, gray shadow. already i hear steps, and i see through the door and i feel a smile pasted to my face like a plaster. but it passed to another stairway and down. the click of the switchboard! i threw myself to that little white slit and ... an unfamiliar male number! (a consonant means a male number.) the elevator groaned and stopped. a big, slovenly, slanting forehead stood before me, and the eyes ... they impressed me strangely; it seemed as if the man talked with his eyes which were deep under the forehead. "here is a letter from her, for you." (from under the awning of that forehead.) "she asked that everything ... as requested in the letter ... without fail." this too, from under the forehead, from under the awning, and he turned, looked about. "no, there is nobody, nobody. quickly! the letter!" he put the letter in my hand and went out without a word. a pink check fell out of the envelope. it was hers, _her_ check! her tender perfume! i felt like running to catch up with that wonderful under-the-forehead one. a tiny note followed the check from the envelope; three lines: "the check ... lower the curtains without fail, as if i were actually with you. it is necessary that they should think that i ... i am very, very sorry." i tore the note into small bits. a glance at the mirror revealed my distorted, broken eyebrows. i took the check and was ready to do with it as i had done with the note. "she asked that everything ... as requested in the letter ... without fail." my arms weakened and the hands loosened. the check was back on the table. she _is_ stronger than i, stronger than i. it seemed as though i were going to act as she wished. besides ... however, it is a long time before evening. the check remained on the table. in the mirror--my distorted, broken eyebrows. oh, why did i not have a doctor's certificate for today? i should like to go and walk, walk without end around the green wall and then to fall on my bed ... to the bottom of.... yet i had to go to auditorium no. , and i should have to grip myself, so as to bear up for two hours! two hours without motion, at a time when i wanted to scream and stamp my feet! the lecture was on. it was very strange to hear from the sparkling tube of the phono-lecturer not the usual metallic voice but a soft, velvety, mossy one. it was a woman's voice and i seemed to have a vision of the woman: a little hook-like old woman, like the one of the ancient house. the ancient house! suddenly from within me a powerful fountain of.... i had to use all my strength to control myself, so as not to fill the auditorium with screams. the soft mossy words were piercing me, yet only empty words about children and child-production reached my ear. i was like a photographic plate: everything was making its imprint with a strange, senseless precision on me; the golden scythe which was nothing more than the reflection of light from the megaphone of the lecture apparatus, under the megaphone a child, a living illustration. it was leaning toward the megaphone, the angle of its infinitesimal unif in its mouth, its little fist clenched firmly, its thumb squeezed into the fist, a light fluffy pleat of skin at the wrist. like a photographic plate i was taking the impression of all this. now i saw how its naked leg hung over the edge of the platform, the pink fan of its finger waved in the air.... one minute more, one second and the child would be on the floor! a female's scream, a wave of translucent wings, her unif on the platform! she caught the child, her lips clung to the fluffy pleat of the baby's wrist; she moved the child to the middle of the table and left the platform. the imprints were registering in me: a pink crescent of a mouth, the horns downward! eyes like small blue saucers filled with liquid! it was o- . and as if reading a consequential formula, i suddenly felt the necessity, the naturalness of that insignificant occurrence. she sat down behind me, somewhat to my left. i looked back. she quietly removed her gaze from the table and the child and looked straight into me. within again: she, i, the table on the platform,--three points: and through those three points lines were drawn, a projection of some as yet unforeseen events! then i went home through the green dusky street which seemed many-eyed because of the electric lights. i heard myself tick-tocking like a clock. and the hands of that clock seemed to be about to pass a figure: i was going to do something, something that would cut off every way of retreat. she wants somebody, whom i do not know, to think she is with me. i want her; what do i care what _she_ wants? i do not want to be alone behind the curtains and that is all there is to it! from behind came sounds of a familiar gait, like splashing in a ditch. i did not need to look back, i knew it was s-. he would follow me to the very door, probably. then he would stay below on the sidewalk, and he would try to drill upward into my room with his boring eyes, until the curtains would fall, concealing something criminal. was he my guardian-angel? no! my decision was made. when i came into my room and turned on the light, i could not believe my eyes! o- stood at my table, or to be more exact, she was hanging like a creased empty dress. she seemed to have no tensity, no spring beneath the dress; her arms and legs were springless, her voice was hanging and springless. "about my letter, did you receive it? yes? i must know your answer, i must--today." i shrugged my shoulders. i enjoyed looking into her blue eyes which were filled with tears as if she were the guilty one. i lingered over my answer. with pleasure i pricked her: "answer? well.... you are right. undoubtedly. in everything." "then ..." (she tried to cover the minute tremor with a smile but it did not escape me.) "well, all right. i shall ... i shall leave you at once." yet she remained drooping over the table. drooping eyelids, drooping arms and legs. the pink check of the other was still on the table. i quickly opened this manuscript, "we," and with its pages i covered the check, trying to hide it from myself, rather than from o-. "see, here, i am still busy writing. already pages! something quite unexpected comes out in this writing." in a voice, in a shadow of a voice, "and do you remember ... how the other day i ... on the _seventh_ page ... and it dropped...." the tiny blue saucers filled to the borders; silently and rapidly the tears ran down her cheeks. and suddenly, like the dropping of the tears,--rushing forth,--words: "i cannot ... i shall leave you in a moment. i shall never again ... and i don't care.... only i want, i must have a child! from you! give me a child and i will leave. i will!" i saw she was trembling all over beneath her unif, and i felt ... i too, would soon ... would.... i put my hands behind my back and smiled. "what? you desire to go under the machine of the well-doer?" like a stream her words ran over the dam. "i don't care. i shall feel it for a while within me. i want to see, to see only once the little fold of skin here at the wrist, like that one on the table in the auditorium. only for one day!" three points: she, i and a little fist with a fluffy fold of skin there on the table! i remember how once when i was a child they took me up on the accumulating tower. at the very top i bent over the glass railing of an opening in the tower. below people seemed like dots; my heart contracted sweetly. "what if...." on that occasion i only clenched my hands around the railing; now i jumped over. "so you desire ... being perfectly aware that ..." her eyes were closed as if the sun were beating straight into her face. a wet, shining smile! "yes, yes! i want it!" quickly i took out the pink check of the other from under the manuscript and down i went to the controller on duty. o- caught my hand, screamed out something, but what it was i understood only later, when i returned. she was sitting on the edge of the bed, hands firmly clasped about the knees. "is it, is it her check?" "what does it matter? well, it is hers, yes." something cracked. it must have been the springs of the bed, for o- made a slight motion only. she remained sitting, her hands upon her knees. "well, quick...." i roughly pressed her hand. a red spot was left on her wrist (tomorrow it would become purple), where the fluffy, infantile fold.... it was the last.... i turned the switch, my thoughts went out with the light. darkness, a spark! and i had jumped over the railing, down.... record twenty discharge the material of a idea the zero rock _discharge_ is the best word for it. now i see that it was actually like an electric discharge. the pulse of my last few days had been becoming dryer and dryer, more and more frequent, more intense. the opposite poles had been drawing nearer and nearer and already i could hear the dry crackling; one millimeter more, and--an explosion! then silence. within me there is quiet now and emptiness like that of a house after everybody has left, when one lies ill, all alone and hears so clearly the distinct, metallic, tick-tock of thoughts. perhaps that "discharge" cured me at last of my torturing "soul." again i am like all of us. at least at this moment as i write, i can see as it were, without any pain in my mental eye, how o- is brought to the steps of the cube; or i see her in the gas bell. and if there in the operation department she should give my name,--i do not care. piously and gratefully i should kiss the punishing hand of the well-doer at the last moment. i have this right in regard to the united state: to receive my punishment. and i shall not give up this right. no number ought, or dares, to refuse this only personal, and therefore, most precious, privilege. ... quickly, metallically, distinctly, do the thoughts rap in the head. an invisible aero carries me into the blue height of my beloved abstractions. and i see how there in the height, in the purest rarified air, my judgment about the only "right" bursts with a crack, like a pneumatic tire. i see clearly that only an atavism, the absurd superstition of the ancients, gives me this idea of "right." there are ideas of clay and ideas moulded of gold, or of our precious glass. in order to know the material of which an idea is made, one needs only to let fall upon it a drop of strong acid. one of these acids was known to the ancients under the name of _reductio ad absurdum_. this was the name of it, i think. but they were afraid of this poison; they preferred to believe that they saw _heaven_, even though it was a toy made of clay, rather than confess to themselves that it was only a blue nothing. we on the other hand (glory to the well-doer!), we are adults and we have no need of toys. now if we put a drop of acid on the idea of "right".... even the ancients (the most mature of them) knew that the source of right was--might! right is a function of might. here we have our scale: on the one side an ounce, on the other a ton. on one side "i," on the other "we," the united state. is it not clear? to assume that i may have any "right" as far as the state is concerned, is like assuming that an ounce may equilibrate a ton in a scale! hence the natural distribution: tons--rights, grams--duties. and the natural road from nothingness to greatness, is to forget that one is a gram and to feel that one is one-millionth of a ton! you ripe-bodied, bright venerians; you sooty, blacksmith-like uranians, i almost hear your protests in this silence. but only think, everything that is great is simple. remember, only the four rules of arithmetic are unshakeable and eternal! and only that mortality will be unshakeable and eternal which is built upon those four rules. this is the superior wisdom, this is the summit of that pyramid around which people red with sweat, fought and battled for centuries trying to crawl up! looking from this summit down to the bottom, where something is still left swarming like worms, from this summit all that is left over in us from the ancients seems alike. alike are the unlawful coming motherhood of o- , a murder, and the insanity of that number who dared to throw verses into the face of the united state; and alike is the judgment for them--premature death. this is that divine justice of which those stone-housed ancients dreamed, lit by the naive pink rays of the dawn of history. their "god" punished sacrilege as a capital crime. you uranians, morose and as black as the ancient spaniards, who were wise in knowing so well how to burn at the stake, you are silent; i think you agree with me. but i hear you, pink venerians, saying something about "tortures, executions, return to barbarism." my dear venerians, i pity you! you are incapable of philosophical, mathematical thinking. human history moves upward in circles, like an aero. the circles are at times golden, sometimes they are bloody, but all have degrees. they go from ° to °, °, °, °,--and then again °. yes, we have returned to zero. but for a mathematically working mind it is clear that this zero is different; it is a perfectly new zero. we started from zero to the right and came to zero on the left. hence instead of plus zero, we are at minus zero. do you understand? this zero appears to me now as a silent, immense, narrow rock, sharp as a blade. in cruel darkness, holding our breath, we set sail from the black night-side of the zero rock. for centuries we, columbuses, floated and floated; we made the circuit of the whole world and at last! hurrah! salute! we climbed up the masts; before us now was a new side of the zero rock, hitherto unknown, bathed in the polar light of the united state; a blue mass covered with rainbow sparkles! suns!--a hundred suns! a million rainbows! what does it matter if we are separated from the other, black side of the zero rock only by the thickness of a blade? a knife is the most solid, the most immortal, the most inspired invention of man. the knife served on the guillotine. the knife is the universal tool for cutting knots. the way of paradoxes follows its sharp edge, the only way becoming to a fearless mind.... record twenty-one the duty of an author the ice-swells the most difficult love yesterday was her day and again she did not come. again there came her incoherent note, explaining nothing. but i am tranquil, perfectly tranquil. if i do act as i am told to in the note, if i do go to the controller on duty, produce the pink check and then, having lowered the curtains if i do sit alone in my room, i do all this of course not because i have no power to act contrary to her desire. it seems funny? decidedly not! it is quite simple: separated from all curative, plaster-like smiles i am enabled quietly to write these very lines. this first. and second: i am afraid to lose in her, in i- , perhaps the only clue i shall ever have to the understanding of all the unknowns, like the story of the cupboard, or my temporary death, for instance. to understand, to discover these unknowns as the author of these records, i feel it simply my duty. moreover, the unknown is naturally the enemy of man. and _homo sapiens_ only then becomes man in the complete sense of the word, when his punctuation includes no question marks, only exclamation points, commas and periods. thus, guided by what seems to me simply my duty as an author, i took an aero today at sixteen o'clock and went to the ancient house. a strong wind was blowing against me. the aero advanced with difficulty through the thicket of air, its transparent branches whistling and whipping. the city below seemed a heap of blue blocks of ice. suddenly--a cloud, a swift, oblique shadow. the ice became leaden; it swelled. as in springtime when you happen to stand at the shore and wait; in one more minute everything will move and pull and crack! but the minute passes and the ice remains motionless; you feel as though you yourself are swelling, your heart beats more restlessly, more frequently.... but why do i write about all this? and whence all these strange sensations? for is there such an iceberg as could ever break the most lucid, solid crystal of our life? at the entrance of the ancient house i found no one. i went around it and found the old janitress near the green wall. she held her hand above her eyes, looking upward. beyond the wall, sharp black triangles of some birds; they would rush, cawing, in onslaught on the invisible fence of electric waves, and as they felt the electricity against their breasts, they would recoil and soar once more beyond the wall. i noticed oblique, swift shadows on the dark, wrinkled face, a quick glance at me. "nobody here, nobody, nobody! no! and no use coming here...." in what respect is it "no use" and what a strange idea, to consider me somebody's shadow. perhaps all of you are only my shadows. did i not populate these pages which only recently were white quadrangular deserts, with you? without me would they whom i shall guide over the narrow paths of my lines, could they ever see you? of course i did not say all this to the old woman. from experience i know that the most torturing thing is to inoculate someone with a doubt as to the fact that he or she is a three-dimensional reality and not some other reality. i remarked only, quite drily, that her business was to open the gate, and she let me into the courtyard. it was empty. quiet. the wind remained beyond the walls, distant as on that day, when shoulder to shoulder, two like one, we came out from beneath, from the corridors,--if it ever really happened. i walked under stone arches, my steps resounded against the damp vaults and fell behind me, sounding as though someone were continually following me. the yellow walls with patches of red brick were watching me through their square spectacles, windows,--watching me open the squeaky doors of a barn, look into corners, nooks and hidden places.... a gate in the fence and a lonely spot. the monument of the two hundred years' war. from the ground naked, stone ribs were sticking out. the yellow jaws of the wall. an ancient oven with a chimney like a ship petrified forever among red-brick waves. it seemed to me that i had seen those yellow teeth once before. i saw them still dimly in my mind, as at the bottom of a barrel, through water. and i began to search. i fell into caves occasionally; i stumbled over stones; rusty jaws caught my unif a few times; salt drops of sweat ran from my forehead into my eyes. nowhere! i could find that exit from below, from the corridors, nowhere! there was none. well, perhaps it was better that it happened so. probably that _all_ was only one of my absurd "dreams." tired out, covered with cobweb and dust, i opened the gate to return to the main yard, when suddenly ... a rustle behind me, splashing steps, and there before me were the pink wing-like ears and the double-curved smile of s-. half closing his eyes, he bored his little drills into me and asked: "taking a walk?" i was silent. my arms were heavy. "well, do you feel better now?" "yes, thank you. i think i am getting normal again." he let me go. he lifted his eyes, looked upward, and i noticed his adam's apple for the first time; it resembles a broken spring, sticking out from beneath the upholstery of a divan. above us, not very high (about meters) aeros were buzzing. by their low, slow flight and by the observation tubes which hung down, i recognized them. they were the aeros of the guardians. but there were not two or three, as usual, there were about ten or twelve (i regret to have to confine myself to an approximate figure). "why are there so many today?" i dared to ask s-. "why? hm.... a real physician begins to treat a patient when he is still well but on the way to becoming sick tomorrow, day-after-tomorrow or within a week. prophylaxis! yes!" he nodded and went splashing over the stones of the yard. then he turned his head and said over his shoulder, "be careful!" again i was alone. silence. emptiness. far beyond the green wall the birds and the wind. what did he mean? my aero ran very fast with the wind. light and heavy shadows from the clouds. below blue cupolas, cubes of glass-ice were becoming leaden and swelling.... _the same evening_ i took up my pen just now in order to write upon these pages a few thoughts which, it seems to me, will prove useful for you, my readers. these thoughts are concerned with the great day of unanimity which is now not far away. but as i sat down, i discovered that i cannot write at present; instead i sit and listen to the wind beating the glass with its dark wings; all the while i am busy looking about and i am waiting, expecting.... what? i do not know. so i was very glad when i saw the brownish-pink gills enter my room, heartily glad i may say. she sat down and innocently smoothed a fold of her unif that fell between her knees, and very soon she pasted upon me, all over me, a host of smiles,--a bit of a smile on each crack of my face and this gave me pleasant sensations, as if i were tightly bound like an infant of the ancients in a swaddling-cloth. "imagine! today, when i entered the classroom" (she works in the child-educational refinery), "i suddenly noticed a caricature upon the blackboard. indeed! i assure you! they had pictured me in the form of a fish! perhaps i really--" "no, no! why do you say that?" i hastily exclaimed. when one was near her, it was clear indeed that she had nothing resembling gills. no. when i referred to gills in these pages i was certainly irreverent. "oh, after all it does not matter. but the act as such, think of it! of course i called the guardians at once. i love children very much and i think that the most difficult and the most exalted love is--cruelty. you understand me, of course." "certainly!" her sentence so closely resembled my thoughts! i could not refrain from reading to her a passage from my record no. , beginning "quietly, metallically, distinctly, do the thoughts" ... etc. i felt her brownish-pink cheeks twitching and coming closer and closer to me. suddenly i felt in my hands her firm, dry, even slightly prickling fingers. "give, give this to me please. i shall have it phonographed and make the children learn it by heart. not only your venerians need all this, but we ourselves right now, tomorrow, day-after-tomorrow." she glanced around and said in a very low voice: "have you heard, they say that on the day of unanimity--" i sprang to my feet. "what? what do they say? what--on the day of unanimity?" the coziness of my room, its very walls, seemed to have vanished. i felt myself thrown outside, where the tremendous, shaggy wind was tossing about and where the slanting clouds of dusk were descending lower and lower.... u- boldly and firmly grasped me by the shoulders. i even noticed how her fingers, responding to my emotion, trembled slightly. "sit down, dear, and don't be upset. they say many things; must we believe them all? moreover, if only you need me, i shall be near you on that day. i shall leave the school-children with someone else and i shall stay with you, for you, dear, you too are a child and you need...." "no, no!" (i raised my hands in protest). "not for anything! you really think then that i am a child and that i cannot do without a.... oh, no! not for anything in the world." (i must confess i had other plans for that day!) she smiled. the wording of that smile apparently was: "oh, what a stubborn, what a stubborn boy!" she sat down, eyelids lowered. her hands modestly busied themselves with fixing the fold of the unif which fell again between her knees, and suddenly, about something entirely different, she said: "i think i must decide ... for your sake.... but i implore you, do not hurry me. i must think it over." i did not hurry her, although i realized that i ought to have been delighted, as there is no greater honor than to crown someone's evening years. ... all night strange wings were about. i walked and protected my head with my hands from those wings. and a chair, not like ours, but an ancient chair, came in with a horse-like gait: first the right fore- and left hind-leg, then the left fore- and right hind-leg. it rushed to my bed and crawled into it, and i liked that wooden chair, although it made me uncomfortable and caused me some pain. it is very strange; is it really impossible to find any cure for this dream-sickness, or to make it rational, perhaps even useful? record twenty-two the benumbed waves everything is improving i am a microbe please imagine that you stand at the seashore. the waves go rhythmically up, down, up.... suddenly when they have risen they remain in that position, benumbed, torpid! it was just as weird and unnatural when everything became confused and our regular walk which is prescribed by the tables, suddenly came to an end. the last time such a thing happened was years ago, when according to our historians a meteorite fell hissing and fuming into the very midst of the marchers. we were walking yesterday as usual, that is like warriors on the assyrian monuments, a thousand heads and two composite, integrated legs and two swinging integrated arms. at the end of the avenue where the accumulating tower was formidably resounding, a quadrangle appeared: on the sides, in front and behind--guards; in the centre three numbers. their unifs were already stripped of the golden state badges; everything was painfully clear. the enormous dial on the top of the tower looked like a face; it bent down from the clouds and spitting down its seconds, it waited with indifference. it showed six minutes past thirteen exactly. there was some confusion in the quadrangle. i was very close and i saw the most minute details. i clearly remember a thin, long neck and on the temple a confused net of small blue veins like rivers on the map of a small unfamiliar world, and that unknown world was apparently still a very young man. he evidently noticed someone in our ranks; he stopped, rose upon his tip-toes and stretched his neck. one of the guards snapped his back with the bluish spark of the electric whip--he squealed in a thin voice like a puppy. the distinct snaps followed each other at intervals of approximately two seconds; a snap and a squeal, a snap and a squeal.... we continued to walk as usual, rhythmically, in our assyrian manner. i watched the graceful zigzags of the electric sparks and thought: "human society is constantly improving, as it should. how ugly a tool was the ancient whip and how much beauty there is--" at that moment, like a nut flying from a wheel revolving at full speed, a female number, thin, flexible and tense, tore herself from our rows, and with a cry, "enough! don't you dare!" she threw herself straight into the quadrangle. it was like the meteorite of years ago; our march came to a standstill and our rows appeared like the gray crests of waves frozen by sudden cold. for a second i looked at that woman's figure with the eye of a stranger as all the others did. she was no number any longer; she was only a human being and she existed for us only as a substantiation of the insult which she cast upon the united state. but a motion of hers, her bending while twisting to the left upon her hips, revealed to me clearly who she was. i knew, i knew that body, flexible as a whip! my eyes, my lips, my hands knew it; at that moment i was absolutely certain.... two of the guards dashed to catch her. one more moment and that limpid mirror-like point on the pavement would have become the point of meeting of their trajectories, and she would have been caught! my heart fell, stopped. without thinking whether it was permissible or not, whether it was reasonable or absurd, i threw myself straight to that point. i felt thousands of eyes bulging with horror fixed upon me but that only added a sort of desperately joyful power to that wild being with hairy paws which arose in me and ran faster and faster. two more steps--she turned around-- i saw a quivering face covered with freckles, red eyebrows.... it was not she! not i- ! a rabid, quivering joy took hold of me. i wanted to shout something like: "catch her! get her, that--" but i heard only my whisper. a heavy hand was already upon my shoulder; i was caught and led away. i tried to explain to them: "but listen, you must understand that i thought that...." but could i explain even to myself all the sickness which i have described in these pages? my light went out; i waited obediently. as a leaf that is torn from its branch by a sudden gust of wind falls humbly, but on its way down turns and tries to catch every little branch, every fork, every knot; so i tried to catch every one of the silent, globe-like heads, or the transparent ice of the walls, or the blue needle of the accumulating tower which seemed to pierce the clouds. at that moment, when a heavy curtain was about to separate from me this beautiful world, i noticed not far away a familiar, enormous head gliding over the mirror surface of the pavement and wagging its wing-like ears. i heard a familiar, flat voice: "i deem it my duty to testify that number d- is ill and is unable to regulate his emotions. moreover, i am sure that he was led by natural indignation--" "yes! yes!" i exclaimed, "i even shouted 'catch her!'" from behind me: "you did not shout anything." "no, but i wanted to. i swear by the well-doer, i wanted to!" for a second i was bored through by the gray, cold, drill-eyes. i don't know whether he believed that what i said was the truth (almost!), or whether he had some secret reason for sparing me for a while, but he wrote a short note, handed it to one of those who had held me and again i was free. that is, i was again included in the orderly, endless, assyrian rows of numbers. the quadrangle, the freckled face and the temple with the map of blue veinlets disappeared forever around the corner. we walked again--a million-headed body; and in each one of us resided that humble joyfulness with which in all probability molecules, atoms and phagocytes live. in the ancient days the christians understood this feeling; they are our only (though very imperfect) direct forerunners. the greatness of the "church of the united flock" was known to them. they knew that resignation is virtue, and pride--a vice; that "we" is from god, "i" from the devil. i was walking, keeping step with the others yet separated from them. i was still trembling from the emotion just felt, like a bridge over which a thundering ancient steel train has passed a moment before. i _felt_ myself. to feel one's self, to be conscious of one's personality, is the lot of an eye inflamed by a cinder, or an infected finger, or a bad tooth. a healthy eye, or finger, or tooth is not felt; it is non-existent as it were. is it not clear then, that consciousness of oneself is a sickness? apparently i am no longer a phagocyte which quietly, in a business-like way devours microbes (microbes with freckled faces and blue temples); apparently i am myself a microbe, and she too, i- , is a microbe, a wonderful, diabolic microbe! it is quite possible that there are already thousands of such microbes among us, still pretending to be phagocytes, as i pretend. what if today's accident, although in itself not important, is only a beginning, only the first meteorite of a shower of burning and thundering stones which the infinite may have poured out upon our glass paradise? record twenty-three flowers the dissolution of a crystal if only (?) they say there are flowers that bloom only once in a hundred years. why not suppose the existence of flowers that bloom only once a thousand years? we may have known nothing about them until now only because today is the "once in a thousand years"? happy and dizzy i walked downstairs to the controller on duty and quickly under my gaze all around me and silently the thousand-year-old buds burst, and everything was blooming: armchairs, shoes, golden badges, electric bulbs, someone's dark heavy eyes, the polished columns of the banisters, the handkerchief which someone lost on the stairs, the small, ink-blotted desk of the controller and the tender brown, somewhat freckled cheeks of u-. everything seemed not ordinary, new, tender, rosy, moist. u- took the pink stub from me while the blue, aromatic moon, hanging from an unseen branch, shone through the glass of the wall and over the head of u-. with a solemn gesture i pointed my finger and said: "the moon. you see?" u- glanced at me, then at the number of the stub and again made that familiar, charmingly innocent movement with which she fixes the fold of the unif between her knees. "you look abnormal and ill, dear. abnormality and illness are the same thing. you are killing yourself. and no one would tell you that, no one!" that "no one" was certainly equivalent to the number on the stub,--i- . this thought was confirmed by an ink-blot which fell close to the figure . dear, wonderful u-! you are right, of course. i am not reasonable. i am sick. i have a soul. i am a microbe. but is blooming--not a sickness? is it not painful when the buds are bursting? and don't you think that spermatozoa are the most terrible of all microbes? back upstairs to my room. in the widely open cup of the armchair was i- . i, on the floor, embracing her limbs, my head on her lap. we were silent. everything was silent. only the pulse was audible. like a crystal i was _dissolving_ in her, in i- . i felt most distinctly how the polished facets which limited me in space were slowly thawing, melting away. i was dissolving in her lap, in her, and i became at once smaller and larger and larger, unembraceable. for she was not she but the whole universe. for a second i and that armchair near the bed, transfixed with joy, we were one. and the wonderfully smiling old woman at the gate of the ancient house, and the wild debris beyond the green wall, and some strange silver wreckage on a black background, dozing like the old woman and the slam of a door in the distance,--all this was within me, was listening to my pulse and soaring through the happiest of seconds. in absurd, confused, overflowing words i attempted to tell her that i was a crystal and that there was a door in me, and that i felt how happy the armchair was. but something nonsensical came out of the attempt and i stopped. i was ashamed. and suddenly: "dear i-! forgive me! i understand nothing. i talk so foolishly!" "and why should you think that foolishness is not fine? if we had taken pains to educate human foolishness through centuries, as we have done with our intelligence, it might perhaps have been transformed into something very precious." yes, i think she is right! how could she be wrong at that moment? "... and for this foolishness of yours and for what you did yesterday during the walk, i love you the more, much more." "then why did you torture me? why would you not come? why did you send me the pink check and make me--?" "perhaps i wanted to test you. perhaps i must be sure that you will do anything i wish, that you are completely mine." "yes, completely." she took my face, my whole self, between her palms, lifted my head: "and how about 'it is the duty of every honest number'? eh?" sweet, sharp, white teeth,--a smile. in the open cup of the armchair she was like a bee,--sting and honey combined. yes, duty.... i turned over in my mind the pages of my records; indeed there is not a thought about the fact that strictly speaking i should.... i was silent. exaltedly (and probably stupidly) i smiled, looking into the pupils of her eyes. i followed first one eye and then the other and in each of them i saw myself, a millimetric self imprisoned in those tiny rainbow cells. then again the lips and the sweet pain of blooming. in each number of the united state there is an unseen metronome which tick-tocks silently; without looking at the clock we know exactly the time of day within five minutes. but now my metronome had stopped and i did not know how much time had passed. in fright i grasped my badge with its clock from under the pillow. glory be to the well-doer! i had twenty minutes more! but those minutes were such tiny, short ones! they ran! and i wanted to tell her so many things. i wanted to tell her all about myself; about the letter from o- and about that terrible evening when i gave her a child; and for some reason also about my childhood, about our mathematician plappa and about the square-root of minus one; and how, when i attended the glorification on the day of unanimity for the first time in my life, i wept bitterly because there was an ink-stain on my unif--on such a holy day! i- lifted her head. she leaned on her elbow. in the corners of her lips two long, sharp lines and the dark angle of lifted eyebrows--a cross. "perhaps on that day ..." her brow grew darker; she took my hand and pressed it hard. "tell me, will you ever forget me? will you always remember me?" "but why such talk? what is it, i-, dear?" she was silent. and her eyes were already sliding past me, through me, away into the distance. i suddenly heard the wind beating the glass with its enormous wings. of course it had been blowing all the while but i had not noticed it until then. and for some reason those cawing birds over the green wall came to my mind. i- shook her head with a gesture of throwing something off. once more she touched me for a second with her whole body, as an aero before landing touches the ground for a second with all the tension of a recoiling spring. "well, give me my stockings, quick!" the stockings were on the desk, on the open manuscript, on page . being in haste i caught some of the pages and they were scattered over the floor so that it was hard to put them back in the proper order. moreover, even if i put them in that order there will be no real order; there are obstacles to that anyway, some undiscoverable unknowns. "i can't bear it," i said, "you are here, near me, yet you seem to be behind an opaque ancient wall; through that wall i hear a rustle and voices; i cannot make out the words, i don't know what is there. i cannot bear it. you seem always to withhold something from me; you have never told me what kind of a place it was where i found myself that day beneath the ancient house. where did those corridors lead? why was the doctor there,--or perhaps all that never happened?" i- put her hands on my shoulders and slowly entered deeply into my eyes. "you want to know all?" "yes, i do." "and you would not be afraid to follow me anywhere? wherever i should lead you?" "anywhere!" "all right then. i promise you, after the holiday, if only.... oh yes, there is your _integral_. i always forget to ask; will it soon be completed?" "no. 'if only' what? again! 'if only' what?" she, already at the door: "you shall see." i was again alone. all that she left behind her was a barely perceptible scent, similar to that of a sweet, dry, yellow dust of flowers from behind the green wall; also, sunk deeply within me, question marks like small hooks similar to those the ancients used for fishing (_vide_ the prehistoric museum). ... why did she suddenly ask about the _integral_? record twenty-four the limit of the function easter to cross out everything i am like a motor set in motion at a speed of too many revolutions per second, the bearings have become too hot and in one more minute the molten metal will begin to drip and everything will go to the devil. cold water! quick! some logic! i pour pailfuls of it, but my logic merely sizzles on the hot metal and disappears in the air in the form of vapor. of course it is clear that in order to establish the true meaning of a function, one must establish its limit. it is also clear that yesterday's "dissolution in the universe" taken to its limit is death. for death is exactly the most complete dissolution of the self in the universe. hence: l=f(d), love is the function of death. yes, exactly, exactly! that is why i am afraid of i- ; i struggle against her, i don't want.... but why is it that within me "i don't want to" and "i want to" stand side by side? that is the chief horror of the matter; i continue to long for that happy death of yesterday. the horror of it is that even now, when i have integrated the logical function, when it becomes evident that the latter contains death hidden in it, nevertheless i long for it with my lips, arms, breast, with every millimeter.... tomorrow is the day of unanimity. she will certainly be there and i shall see her, though from a distance. that distance will be painful to me, for i must be, i am inevitably drawn, close to her, so that her hands, her shoulder, her hair.... i long for even that pain.... let it come.... great well-doer! how absurd to desire pain! who is ignorant of the simple fact that pains are negative items which reduce that sum total we call happiness? consequently ... well, no "consequently" ... emptiness.... nakedness! _the same evening._ through the glass wall of the house i see a disquieting, windy, feverishly pink, sunset. i move my armchair to avoid that pinkness and turn over these pages, and i find i am forgetting that i write this not for myself but for you unknown people whom i love and pity, for you who still lag centuries behind, below. let me tell you about the day of unanimity, about that great day. i think that day for us is what easter was for the ancients. i remember i used to prepare an hour-calendar the eve of that day; solemnly i would cross out every time the figure of the hour elapsed; nearer by one hour! one hour less to wait!... if i were certain that nobody would discover it, i assure you i should now too, make out such a calendar and carry it with me, and i should watch how many hours remain until tomorrow, when i shall see, at least from a distance.... (i was interrupted. they brought me a new unif from the shop. as is customary, new unifs are given to us for tomorrow's celebration. steps in the hall, exclamations of joy, noises.) i shall continue; tomorrow i shall see the same spectacle which we see year after year and which always awakes in us fresh emotions, as though we saw it for the first time: an impressive throng of piously lifted arms. tomorrow is the day of the yearly election of the well-doer. tomorrow we shall again hand over to our well-doer the keys to the impregnable fortress of our happiness. certainly this in no way resembles the disorderly, unorganized election-days of the ancients, on which (it seems so funny!) they did not even know in advance the result of the election. to build a state on some non-discountable contingencies, to build blindly,--what could be more nonsensical? yet centuries were required to pass before this was understood! needless to say, we in this respect as in all others have no place for contingencies; nothing unexpected can happen. the elections themselves have rather a symbolic meaning. they remind us that we are a united, powerful organism of millions of cells, that--, to use the language of the "gospel" of the ancients, we are a united church. the history of the united state knows not a single case in which upon this solemn day even a solitary voice has dared to violate the magnificent unison. they say that the ancients used to conduct their elections secretly, stealthily like thieves. some of our historians assert even that they would come to the electoral celebrations completely masked. imagine the weird, fantastic spectacle! night. a plaza. along the walls the stealthily creeping figures covered with mantles. the red flame of torches dancing in the wind.... why was such secrecy necessary? it has never been satisfactorily explained. probably it resulted from the fact that elections were associated with some mystic and superstitious, perhaps even criminal ceremonies. we have nothing to conceal or to be ashamed of; we celebrate our election openly, honestly, in daylight. i see them all vote for the well-doer and everybody sees me vote for the well-doer. how could it be otherwise, since "all" and "i" are one "we"? how ennobling, sincere, lofty, is this compared with the cowardly, thievish "secrecy" of the ancients! moreover, how much more expedient! for even admitting for a moment the impossible, that is the outbreak of some dissonance in our customary unity, in that case our unseen guardians are always right there among us, are they not, to register the numbers who would fall into error and save them from any further false steps? the united state is theirs, the numbers'! and besides.... through the wall to my left a she-number before the mirror-door of the closet; she is hastily unbuttoning her unif. for a second, swiftly--eyes, lips, two sharp, pink ... the curtains fell. within me instantly awoke all that happened yesterday and now i no longer know what i meant to say by "besides...." i no longer wish to;--i cannot. i want one thing. i want i- . i want her every minute, every second, to be with me, with no one else. all that i wrote about unanimity is of no value; it is not what i want; i have a desire to cross it out, to tear it to pieces and throw it away. for i know (be it a sacrilege, yet it is the truth), that a glorious day is possible only with her and only then when we are side by side, shoulder to shoulder. without her the sun of tomorrow will appear to me only as a little circle cut out of a tin sheet, and the sky a sheet of tin painted blue, and i myself ... i snatched the telephone receiver. "i- , are you there?" "yes, it is i. why so late?" "perhaps not too late yet. i want to ask you ... i want you to be with me tomorrow--dear!" "dear" i said in a very low voice. and for some reason a thing i saw this morning at the docks flashed through my mind: just for fun someone put a watch under the hundred-ton sledge-hammer.... a swing, a breath of wind in the face and the silent hundred-ton, knife-like weight on the breakable watch.... a silence. i thought i heard someone's whisper in i- 's room. then her voice: "no, i cannot. of course you understand that i myself.... no, i cannot. 'why?' you shall see tomorrow." night. record twenty-five the descent from heaven the greatest catastrophe in history the known--is ended at the beginning all arose, and the hymn, like a solemn mantle, slowly waved above our heads. hundreds of tubes of the musical tower and millions of human voices. for a second i forgot everything; i forgot that alarming something at which i- hinted in connection with today's celebration; i think i even forgot about her. at that moment i was the very same little boy who once wept because of a tiny ink-stain on his unif, which no one else could see. even if it be so, if nobody sees that i am covered with black, ineffaceable stains, i know it, do i not? i know that there should be no place for a criminal like me among these frank open faces. what if i should rush forward and shout out all at once everything about myself! the end might follow. let it! at least for a second i would feel myself clear and clean and senseless like that innocent blue sky.... all eyes were directed upward; in the pure morning blue, still moist with the tears of night, a small dark spot appeared. now it was dark, now bathed in the rays of the sun. it was he, descending to us from the sky, he--the new jehovah--in an aero, he, as wise and as lovingly cruel as the jehovah of the ancients. nearer and nearer, and higher toward him were drawn millions of hearts. already he saw us. and in my mind with him i looked over everything from the heights: concentric circles of stands marked with dotted blue lines of unifs,--like circles of a spider-web strewn with microscopic suns (the shining of the badges). and in the centre there soon the wise white spider would occupy his place--the well-doer clad in white, the well-doer who wisely tangled our hands and feet in the salutary net of happiness. his magnificent descent from the sky was accomplished. the brassy hymn came to silence; all sat down. at once i perceived that everything was really a very thin spider-web, the threads of which were stretched tense and trembling, and it seemed that in a moment those threads might break and something improbable.... i half rose and looked around, and i met many lovingly-worried eyes which passed from one face to another. i saw someone lifting his hand and almost imperceptibly waving his fingers--he was making signs to another. the latter replied with a similar finger-sign. and a third.... i understood; they were the guardians. i understood; they were alarmed by something--the spider-web was stretched and trembling. and within me as if tuned to the same wave-length of a radio, within me there was a corresponding quiver. on the platform a poet was reciting his pre-electoral ode. i could not hear a single word; i only felt the rhythmic swing of the hexametric pendulum, and with its every motion i felt how nearer and nearer there was approaching some hour set for.... i continued to turn over face after face like pages but i could not find the one, the only one, i was seeking, the one i needed to find at once, as soon as possible, for one more swing of the pendulum and.... it was he, certainly it was he! below, past the main platform, gliding over the sparkling glass, the ear-wings flapped by, the running body gave a reflection of a double-curved s-, like a noose which was rolling toward some of the intricate passages among the stands. s-, i- ,--there is some thread between them. i have always felt some thread between them. i don't know yet what that thread is but some day i shall untangle it. i planted my gaze on him; he was rushing farther away, behind him that invisible thread.... there he stopped ... there.... i was pierced, twisted together into a knot as if by a lightning-like, many-volted electric discharge; in my row, not more than ° from me, s- stopped and bowed. i saw i- and beside her the smiling, repellent, negro-lipped r- . my first thought was to rush to her and cry, "why with him? why did you not want...?" but the salutary invisible spider-web bound fast my hands and feet; so, gritting my teeth together i sat stiff as iron, my gaze fixed upon them. a sharp _physical_ pain at my heart. i remember my thought: "if non-physical causes effect physical pain, then it is clear that...." i regret that i did not come to any conclusion. i remember only that something about "soul" flashed through my mind, a purely nonsensical ancient expression, "his soul fell into his boots" passed through my head. my heart sank. the hexameter came to an end. it was about to start. what "it"? the five minute pre-election recess established by custom. the custom-established pre-electional silence. but now it was not that pious, really prayer-like silence that it usually was. now it was as in the ancient days when there were no accumulating towers, when the sky, still untamed in those days, would roar from time to time with its "storms." it was like the "lull before the storm" of the ancient days. the air seemed to be made of transparent, vaporized cast-iron. one wanted to breathe with one's mouth wide open. my hearing, intense to painfulness, registered from behind a mouse-like, gnawing, worried whisper. without lifting my eyes i saw those two, i- and r- , side by side, shoulder to shoulder,--and on my knees my trembling, foreign, hateful, hairy hands.... everybody was holding a badge with a clock in his hands. one.... two.... three.... five minutes. from the main platform a cast-iron, slow voice: "those in favor shall lift their hands." if only i dared to look straight into his eyes as formerly! straight and devotedly, and think: "here i am, my whole self! take me!" but now i did not dare. i had to make an effort to raise my hand, as if my joints were rusty. a whisper of millions of hands. someone's subdued "ah!" and i felt something was coming, falling heavily, but i could not understand what it was, and i did not have the strength or courage to take a look.... "those opposed?"... this was always the most magnificent moment of our celebration: all would remain sitting motionless, joyfully bowing their heads under the salutary yoke of that number of numbers. but now, to my horror again i heard a rustle; light as a sigh, yet it was more distinct even than the brass tube of the hymn. thus the last sigh in a man's life, around him people with their faces pale and with drops of cold sweat upon their foreheads.... i lifted my eyes and.... it took one hundredth of a second only; i saw thousands of hands arise "opposed" and fall back. i saw the pale cross-marked face of i- and her lifted hand. darkness came upon my eyes. another hundredth of a second, silence. quiet. the pulse. then, as if at the sign of some mad conductor, from all the stands rattling, shouting, a whirlwind of unifs lifted by the rush, the perplexed figures of the guardians running to and fro. someone's heels in the air near my eyes and close to those heels someone's wide-open mouth tearing itself by an inaudible scream. for some reason this picture remains particularly distinct in my memory: thousands of mouths noiselessly yelling as if on the screen of a monstrous cinema. also as if on a screen, somewhere below at a distance, for a second--o- , pressed against the wall in a passage, her lips white, defending her abdomen with her crossed arms. she disappeared as if washed away by a wave, or else i simply forgot her because.... this not on the screen any more but within me, within my compressed heart, within the rapidly pulsating temples; over my head, somewhat to the left, r- suddenly jumped upon a bench, all sprinkling, red, rabid. in his arms was i- , pale, her unif torn from shoulder to breast, red blood on white. she firmly held him round the neck, and he with huge leaps from bench to bench, repellent and agile, like a gorilla, was carrying her away upward. as if it were in a fire of ancient days, everything became red around me. only one thing in my head: to jump after them, to catch them. at this moment i cannot explain to myself the source of that strength within me, but like a battering-ram i broke through the crowd, over somebody's shoulders, over a bench and i was there in a moment and caught r- by the collar: "don't you dare! don't you dare, i say! immediately--" fortunately no one could hear my voice, as everyone was shouting and running. "who is it? what is the matter? what--" r- turned around; his sprinkling lips were trembling. he apparently thought it was one of the guardians. "what? i do not want--i won't allow--put her down at once!" but he only sprinkled angrily with his lips, shook his head and ran on. then i ... i am terribly ashamed to write all this down but i believe i must, so that you, my unknown readers, may make a complete study of my disease.... then i hit him over the head with all my might. you understand? i hit him. this i remember distinctly. i remember also a feeling of liberation that followed my action, a feeling of lightness in my whole body. i- slid quickly out of his arms. "go away!" she shouted to r-, "don't you see that he--? go!" r- showed his white negro teeth, sprinkled into my face some word, dived down and disappeared. and i picked up i- , pressed her firmly to myself and carried her away. my heart was beating forcibly. it seemed enormous. and with every beat it would splash out such a thundering, such a hot, such a joyful wave! a flash: "let them, below there, let them toss and rush and yell and fall; what matter if something has fallen, if something has been shattered to dust?-- little matter! only to remain this way and carry her, carry and carry...." _the same evening, twenty-two o'clock._ i hold my pen with great difficulty. such an extraordinary fatigue after all the dizzying events of this morning. is it possible that the strong, salutary, centuries-old walls of the united state have fallen? is it possible that we are again without a roof over our heads, back in the wild state of freedom like our remote ancestors? is it possible that we have lost our well-doer? "opposed!" on the day of unanimity--opposed! i am ashamed of _them_, painfully, fearfully ashamed.... but who are "they"? and who am i? "they," "we"...? do i know? i shall continue. she was sitting where i had brought her on the uppermost glass bench which was hot from the sun. her right shoulder and the beginning of the wonderful and incalculable curve were uncovered,--an exceedingly thin serpent of blood. she seemed not to be aware of the blood, or that her breast was uncovered. no, i will say rather: she seemed to see all that and seemed to feel that it was essential to her, that if her unif were buttoned she would have torn it, she would have.... "and tomorrow!" she breathed the words through sparkling white clenched teeth, "tomorrow, nobody knows what ... do you understand? neither i nor anyone else knows; it is unknown! do you realize what a joy it is? do you realize that all that was certain has come to an end? now ... things will be new, improbable, unforeseen!" below the human waves were still foaming, tossing, roaring, but they seemed to be very far away, and to be growing more and more distant. for she was looking at me. she slowly drew me into herself through the narrow, golden windows of her pupils. we thus remained silent for a long while. and for some reason i recalled how once i watched some queer yellow pupils through the green wall, while above the wall birds were soaring (or was this another time?). "listen, if nothing particular happens tomorrow, i shall take you there; do you understand?" no, i did not understand but i nodded in silence. i was dissolved, i became infinitesimal, a geometrical point.... after all, there is some logic,--a peculiar logic of today, in this state of being a point. a point has more unknowns than any other entity. if a point should start to move, it might become thousands of curves, or hundreds of solids. i was afraid to budge. what might i have become if i had moved? it seemed to me that everybody like myself was afraid now of even the most minute of motions. at this moment, for instance, as i sit and write, everyone is sitting hidden in his glass cell, expecting something. i do not hear the buzzing of the elevators, usual at this hour, or laughter or steps, from time to time numbers pass in couples through the hall, whispering, on tip-toe.... what will happen tomorrow? what will become of me tomorrow? record twenty-six the world does exist rash forty-one degrees centigrade morning. through the ceiling the sky is as usual firm, round, red-cheeked. i think i should have been less surprised had i found above some extraordinary quadrangular sun, or people clad in many-colored dresses made of the skins of animals, or opaque walls of stone. then the world, _our world_, does still exist? or is it only inertia? is the generator already switched out, while the armature is still roaring and revolving;--two more revolutions, or three, and at the fourth will it die away? are you familiar with that strange state in which you wake up in the middle of the night, open your eyes into the darkness and then suddenly feel you are lost in the dark; you quickly, quickly begin to feel around, to seek something familiar and solid, a wall, a lamp, a chair? in exactly the same way i felt around, seeking in the journal of the united state; quickly, quickly--i found this: "the celebration of the day of unanimity, long awaited by all, took place yesterday. the same well-doer who so often proved his unshakeable wisdom, was unanimously re-elected for the forty-eighth time. the celebration was clouded by a little confusion, created by the enemies of happiness, who by their action naturally lost the right to be the bricks for the foundation of the renovated united state. it is clear to everybody that to take into consideration their votes would mean to consider as a part of a magnificent, heroic symphony the accidental cough of a sick person who happened to be in a concert hall." oh, great sage! is it really true that despite everything we are saved? what objection indeed can one find to this most crystalline syllogism? and further on a few more lines: "today at twelve o'clock a joint meeting of the administrative bureau, medical bureau, and bureau of guardians will take place. an important state decree is to be expected shortly." no, the walls still stand erect. here they are! i can feel them. and that strange feeling of being lost somewhere, of not knowing where i am--that feeling is gone. i am not surprised any longer to see the sky blue and the sun round and all the numbers going to work as usual.... i walked along the avenue with a particularly firm resounding step. it seemed to me that everyone else walked exactly like me. but at the crossing, on turning the corner, i noticed people strangely shying away, going around the corner of a building sidewise, as if a pipe had burst in the wall, as if cold water were spurting like a fountain on the sidewalk and it was impossible to cross it. another five or ten steps and i too felt a spurt of cold water that struck me and threw me from the sidewalk; at a height of approximately two meters a quadrangular piece of paper was pasted to the wall and on that sheet of paper,--unintelligible, poisonously green letters: _mephi_ and under the paper,--an s-like curved back and wing-ears shaking with anger or emotion. his right arm lifted as high as possible, his left arm hopelessly stretched out backward like a hurt wing, he was trying to jump high enough to reach the paper and tear it off but he was unable to do so. he was a fraction of an inch too short. probably every one of the passers-by had the same thought: "if i go to help him, i, only one of the many, will he not think that i am guilty of something and that i am therefore anxious to...." i must confess, i had that thought. but remembering how many times he had proved my real guardian-angel and how often he had saved me, i stepped towards him and with courage and warm assurance i stretched out my hand and tore off the sheet. s- turned around. the little drills sank quickly into me to the bottom and found something there. then he lifted his left brow, winked toward the wall where "mephi" had been hanging a minute ago. the tail of his little smile twinkled even with a certain pleasure which greatly surprised me. but why should i be surprised? a doctor always prefers a temperature of °c. and a rash to the slow, languid rise of the temperature during the period of incubation of a disease; it enables him to determine the character of the disease. _mephi_ broke out today on the walls like a rash. i understood his smile. in the passage to the underground railway, under our feet on the clean glass of the steps again a white sheet: _mephi_. and also on the walls of the tunnel and on the benches and on the mirror of the car. (apparently pasted on in haste as some were hanging on a slant.) everywhere the same white gruesome rash. i must confess that the exact meaning of that smile became clear to me only after many days which were overfilled with the strangest and most unexpected events. the roaring of the wheels, distinct in the general silence, seemed to be the noise of infected streams of blood. some number was inadvertently touched on the shoulder and he started so that a package of papers fell out of his hands. to my left another number was reading a paper, his eyes fixed always on the same line; the paper perceptibly trembled in his hands. i felt that everywhere, in the wheels, in the hands, in the newspapers, even in the eyelashes, the pulse was becoming more and more rapid and i thought it probable that today when i- and i should find ourselves _there_, the temperature would rise to °, °, perhaps ° and.... at the docks--the same silence filled with the buzzing of an invisible propeller. the lathes were silent as if brooding. only the cranes were moving almost inaudibly as if on tip-toe, gliding, bending over, picking up with their tentacles the lumps of frozen air and loading the tanks of the _integral_. we are already preparing the _integral_ for a trial flight. "well, shall we have her up in a week?" this was my question addressed to the second builder. his face is like porcelain, painted with sweet blue and tender pink little flowers (eyes and lips), but today those little flowers looked faded and washed-out. we were counting aloud when suddenly i broke off in the midst of a word and stopped, my mouth wide open; above the cupola, above the blue lump lifted by the crane, there was a scarcely noticeable small white square. i felt my whole body trembling--perhaps with laughter. yes! _i myself heard_ my own laughter. (did you ever hear your own laughter?) "no, listen," i said. "imagine you are in an ancient aeroplane. the altimeter shows meters. a wing breaks; you are dashing down like.... and on the way you calculate: 'tomorrow from twelve to two ... from two to six ... and dinner at five!' would it not be absurd?" the little blue flowers began to move and bulge out. what if i were made of glass and he could have seen what was going on within me at that moment? if he knew that some three or four hours later.... record twenty-seven no headings. it is impossible! i was alone in the endless corridors. in those same corridors.... a mute, concrete sky. water was dripping somewhere upon a stone. the familiar heavy opaque door,--and the subdued noise from behind it. she said she would come out at sixteen sharp. it was already five minutes, then ten, then fifteen past sixteen. no one appeared. for a second i was my former self, horrified at the thought that the door might open. "five minutes more, and if she does not come out...." water was dripping somewhere upon a stone. no one about. with melancholy pleasure i felt: "saved," and slowly i turned and walked back along the corridor. the trembling dots of the small lamps on the ceiling became dimmer and dimmer. suddenly a quick rattle of a door behind me. quick steps, softly echoing from the ceiling and the walls. it was she, light as a bird, panting somewhat from running. "i knew you would be here, you would come! i knew you,--you...." the spears of her eyelashes moved apart to let me in and ... how can i describe what effect that ancient, absurd and wonderful rite has upon me when her lips touch mine? can i find a formula to express that whirlwind which sweeps out of my soul everything, everything save her? yes, yes from my _soul_. you may laugh at me if you will. she made an effort to raise her eyelids and her slow words too came with an effort: "no. now we must go." the door opened. old, worn steps. an unbearably multicolored noise, whistling and light.... * * * * * twenty-four hours have passed since then and everything seems to have settled in me, yet it is most difficult for me to find words for even an approximate description.... it is as though a bomb had exploded in my head.... open mouths, wings, shouts, leaves, words, stones, all these one after another in a heap.... i remember my first thought was: "fast--back!" for it was clear to me that while i was waiting there in the corridors, _they_ somehow had blasted and destroyed the green wall, and from behind it everything rushed in and splashed over our city which until then had been kept clean of that lower world. i must have said something of this sort to i- . she laughed. "no, we have simply come out _beyond the green wall_." then i opened my eyes, and close to me, actually, i saw those very things which until then not a single living number had ever seen otherwise than depreciated a thousand times, dimmed and hazy through the cloudy glass of the wall. the sun,--it was no longer our light, evenly diffused over the mirror surface of the pavements; it seemed an accumulation of living fragments, of incessantly oscillating, dizzy spots which blinded the eyes. and the trees! like candles rising into the very sky, or like spiders which squatted upon the earth, supported by their clumsy paws, or like mute green fountains. and all this was moving, jumping, rustling. under my feet some strange little ball was crawling.... i stood as though rooted to the ground. i was unable to take a step because under my foot there was not an even plane, but (imagine!), something disgustingly soft, yielding, living, springy, green!... i was dazed; i was strangled,--yes, strangled; it is the best word to express my state. i stood holding fast with both hands to a swinging branch. "it is nothing. it is all right. it is natural,--for the first time. it will pass. courage!" at i- 's side bouncing dizzily on a green net,--someone's thinnest profile, cut out of paper. no, not "someone's." i recognized him. i remembered. it was the doctor. i understood everything very clearly. i realized that they both caught me beneath the arms and laughingly dragged me forward. my legs twisted and glided.... terrible noise, cawing, stumps, yelling, branches, tree-trunks, wings, leaves, whistling.... the trees ran apart. a bright clearing. in the clearing, people, or perhaps to be more exact, _beings_. now comes the most difficult part to describe for _this_ was beyond any bounds of probability. it is clear to me now why i- was stubbornly silent about it before; i should not have believed it, should not have believed even her. it is even possible that tomorrow i shall not believe myself, shall not believe my own description in these pages. in the clearing, around a naked, skull-like rock,--a noisy crowd of three or four hundred ... people. well, let's call them people. i find it difficult to coin new words. just as on the stands you recognize in the general accumulation of faces only those which are familiar to you, so at first i recognized only our grayish-blue unifs. but one second later and i saw distinctly and clearly among the unifs dark, red, golden, black, brown and white humans--apparently they were humans. none of them had any clothes on, and their bodies were covered with short, glistening hair, like that which may be seen on the stuffed horse in the prehistoric museum. but their females had faces exactly, yes exactly, like the faces of our women: tender, rosy and not overgrown with hair. also their breasts were free of hair, firm breasts of wonderful geometrical form. as to the males, only a part of their faces were free from hair, like our ancestors', and the organs of reproduction, similar to ours. all this was so unbelievable, so unexpected, that i stood there quietly (i assert positively that i stood quietly), and looked around. like a scale: overload one side sufficiently and then you may gently put on the other as much as you will; the arrow will not move. suddenly i felt alone. i- was no longer with me. i don't know how nor where she disappeared. around me were only _those_, with their hair glistening like silk in the sunlight. i caught someone's warm, strong, dark shoulder. "listen, please, in the name of the well-doer, could you tell me where she went? a while, a minute ago she...." long-haired, austere eyebrows turned to me. "sh ... sh ... silence!" he made a sign with his head towards the centre where there stood the yellow, skull-like stone. there above the heads of all i saw her. the sun beat straight into my eyes, and because of that she seemed coal-black, standing out on the blue cloth of the sky,--a coal-black silhouette on a blue background. a little higher the clouds were floating. and it seemed that not the clouds but the rock itself, and she herself upon that rock, and the crowd and the clearing,--all were silently floating like a ship, and the earth was light and glided away from under the feet.... "brothers!" (it was she.) "brothers, you all know that there inside the wall, in the city, they are building the _integral_. and you know also that the day has come for us to destroy that wall and all other walls, so that the green wind may blow all over the earth, from end to end. but the _integral_ is going to take these walls up into the heights to the thousands of other worlds which every evening whisper to us with their lights through the black leaves of night...." waves and foam and wind were beating the rock: "down with the _integral!_ down!" "no, brothers, not 'down'. the _integral_ must be ours. and it _shall_ be ours. on the day when it first sets sail into the sky, _we_ shall be on board. for the builder of the _integral_ is with us. he left the walls, he came with me here in order to be with us. long live the builder!" a second--and i was somewhere above everything. under me: heads, heads, heads, wide open yelling mouths, arms rising and falling.... there was something strange and intoxicating in it all. i felt myself _above everybody_; i was,--i,--a separate world; i ceased to be the usual item; i became unity.... again i was below, near the rock, my body happy, shaken and rumpled, as after an embrace of love. sunlight, voices, and from above--the smile of i- . a golden-haired woman, her whole body silky-golden and diffusing an odor of different herbs, was near by. she held a cup, apparently made of wood. she drank a little from it with her red lips and then offered the cup to me. i closed my eyes and with avidity i drank the sweet cold prickly sparks, pouring them down on the fire which burned within me. soon afterward my blood and the whole world began to circulate a thousand times faster; the earth seemed to be flying, light as down. and within me everything was simple, light and clear. only then i noticed on the rock the familiar, enormous letters: m e p h i, and for some reason the inscription seemed to me _necessary_. it seemed to be a simple thread binding everything together. a rather rough picture hewn in the rock; this too, seemed comprehensible; it represented a youth with wings and with a transparent body, and in the place ordinarily occupied by the heart,--a blinding, red, blazing coal. again, i understood that coal, or no, i _felt_ it as i felt without hearing every word of i- (she continued to speak from above, from the rock), and i felt that all of them breathed one breath and that they were all ready to fly somewhere like the birds over the wall. from behind, from the confusion of breathing bodies,--a loud voice: "but this is folly!" it seems to me it was i, yes, i am certain it was i, who then jumped on the rock; from there i saw the sun, heads, a green sea on a blue background, and i cried: "yes, yes, precisely. all must become insane; we must become insane as soon as possible! we must; i know it." i- was at my side. her smile--two dark lines from the angles of her mouth directed upward.... and within me a blazing coal. it was momentary, light, a little painful, beautiful.... and later,--only stray fragments that remained sticking in me.... ... very low and slowly a bird was moving. i saw it was living, like me. it was turning its head now to the right and then to the left like a human being, and its round black eyes screwed themselves into me.... ... then: a human back glistening with fur the color of ancient ivory;--a mosquito crawling on that back, a mosquito with tiny transparent wings. the back twitched to chase the mosquito away; it twitched again.... ... and yet another thing: a shadow from the leaves, a woven, net-like shadow. some lay in that shadow, chewing something, something similar to the legendary food of the ancients, a long yellow fruit and a piece of something dark. they put some of it in my hand, and it seemed droll to me for i did not know whether i might eat it or not.... ... and again: a crowd, heads, legs, arms, mouths, faces appearing for a second and disappearing like bursting bubbles. for a second appeared (or perhaps it was only an hallucination?) the transparent, flying wing-ears.... with all my might i pressed the hand of i- . she turned to me. "what is the matter?" "he is here! i thought, i--" "who?" "s-, a second ago, in the crowd." the ends of the thin coal-black, brows moved to the temples--a smile like a sharp triangle. i could not see clearly why she smiled. how could she smile? "but you understand, i- , don't you, you understand what it means if he, or one of them is here?" "you are funny! how could it ever enter the heads of those within the wall that we are here? remember; take yourself. did you ever think it was possible? they are busy hunting us _there_,--let them! you are delirious!" her smile was light and cheerful and i too, was smiling; the earth was drunken, cheerful, light, floating.... record twenty-eight both of them entropy and energy the opaque part of the body if your world is similar to the world of the ancients, then you may easily imagine that one day you suddenly come upon a sixth or a seventh continent, upon some atlantis, and you find there unheard of cities, labyrinths, people flying through the air without the aid of wings or aeros, stones lifted into the air by the power of a gaze,--in brief, imagine that you see things that cannot come to your mind even if you suffer from dream-sickness. that is how i feel now. for you must understand that no one has ever gone beyond the green wall since the two hundred years' war, as i already have told you. i know that it is my duty to you, my unknown friends, to give more details about that unsuspected strange world which opened to me yesterday. but for the time being i am unable to return to that subject. everything is so novel, so novel it is like a rainstorm, and i am not big enough to collect it all. i spread out the folds of my unif, my palms,--and yet pailfuls splash past me and only drops can reach these pages.... at first i heard behind me, behind the door, a loud voice. i recognized her voice, the voice of i- , tense, metallic--and another one, almost inflexible, like a wooden ruler, the voice of u-. then the door came open with a crack and both of them shot into the room. _shot_ is the right word. i- put her hand on the back of my armchair and smiled over her shoulder but only with her teeth, at u-. i should not care to stand before such a smile. "listen," she said to me, "this woman seems to have made it her business to guard you from me like a little child. is it with your permission?" "but he _is_ a child. yes! that is why he does not notice that you ... that it is only in order.... that all this is only a foul game! yes! and it is my duty...." for a second (in the mirror) the broken, trembling line of brows. i leaped, controlling with difficulty the other self within me, the one with the hairy fists; with difficulty, pushing every word through my teeth, i cried straight into her face, into her very gills: "get out of here at once! out! at once!" the gills swelled at first into brick-red lumps, then fell and became gray. she opened her mouth to say something but without a word she slammed it shut and went out. i threw myself towards i- . "never, never will i forgive myself! she dared! you ... but you don't think, do you, that you, that she.... this is all because she wants to register on me but i...." "fortunately she will not have time for that now. besides, even a thousand like her.... i don't care.... i know you will not believe that thousand but only me. for after all that happened yesterday, i am all yours, all, to the very end, as you wanted it. i am in your hands; you can now at any moment...." "what, 'at any moment?'" (but at once i understood what. my blood rushed to my ears and cheeks.) "don't speak about that, you must never speak about that! the _other_ i, my former self ... but now...." "how do i know? man is like a novel: up to the last page one does not know what the end will be. it would not be worth reading otherwise." she was stroking my head. i could not see her face but i could tell by her voice that she was looking somewhere very far into the distance; she hooked herself to that cloud which was floating silently, slowly, no one knows where to. suddenly she pushed me away with her hand, firmly but tenderly. "listen. i came to tell you that perhaps we are now ... our last days.... you know, don't you, that all auditoriums are to be closed after tonight?" "closed?" "yes. i passed by and saw that in all auditoriums preparations are going on: tables; medics all in white...." "but what does it all mean?" "i don't know. nobody knows as yet. that is the worst of it. i only feel the current is on, the spark is jumping, and if not today, then tomorrow.... yet perhaps they will not have time...." for a long while i have ceased to understand who are _they_ and who _we_. i do not understand what i want; do i want them to have or not to have enough time? one thing is clear to me: i- is now on the very edge, on the very edge, and in one second more.... "but it is folly," i said. "you, versus the united state! it is the same as if you should cover the muzzle of a gun with your hands and expect that way to prevent the shot.... it is absolute folly!" a smile. "'we must all go insane,--as soon as possible go insane.' it was yesterday, do you remember?" yes, she was right; i had even written it down. consequently it really took place. in silence i looked into her face. at that moment the dark cross was especially distinct. "i-, dear, before it is too late.... if you want ... i'll leave everything, i'll forget everything, and we'll go there beyond the wall, to _them_.... i do not even know who they are...." she shook her head. through the dark windows of her eyes i saw within her a flaming oven, sparks, tongues of flame and above them a heap of dry, tarry wood. it was clear to me that it was too late, my words could be of no avail. she stood up. she would soon leave. perhaps these were the last days, or the last minutes.... i grasped her hand. "no, stay a little while longer ... for the sake ... for the sake...." she slowly lifted my hand towards the light, my hairy paw which i detest. i wanted to withdraw it but she held it tightly. "your hand.... you undoubtedly don't know and very few do know, that women from here occasionally used to fall in love with _them_. probably there are in you a few drops of that blood of the sun and the woods. perhaps that is why i...." silence. it was so strange that because of that silence, because of an emptiness, of nothing, my heart should beat so wildly. i cried. "ah, you shall not go yet! you shall not go until you tell me about _them_ ... for you love ... them, and i do not know even who they are, nor where they come from." "who are they? the half we have lost. h and o, two halves; but in order to get water, h o, creeks, seas, waterfalls, storms, it is necessary that those two halves be united." i distinctly remember every movement of hers. i remember she picked up a glass triangle from my table and while talking she pressed its sharp edge against her cheek; a white scar would appear; then it would fill again and become pink and disappear. and it is strange that i cannot remember her words, especially the beginning of the story. i remember only different images and colors. at first, i remember, she told me about the two hundred years' war. red color.... on the green of the grass, on the dark clay, on the pale blue of the snow,--everywhere red ditches that would not become dry. then yellow; yellow grass burned by the sun, yellow naked wild-men and wild dogs side by side near swollen cadavers of dogs or perhaps of men. all this, certainly beyond the walls, for the city was already the victor and it possessed already our present-day petroleum food. and at night ... down from the sky ... heavy black folds. the folds would swing over the woods, the villages,--blackish-red slow columns of smoke. a dull moaning; endless strings of people driven into the city to be saved by force and to be whipped into happiness. "... you knew almost all this." "yes, almost." "but you did not know and only a few did, that a small part of them remained together and stayed to live beyond the wall. being naked, they went into the woods. they learned there from the trees, beasts, birds, flowers and sun. hair soon grew over their bodies, but under that hair they preserved their warm red blood. with you it was worse; numbers covered your bodies; numbers crawled over you like lice. one ought to strip you of everything, and naked you ought to be driven into the woods. you ought to learn how to tremble with fear, with joy, with wild anger, with cold; you should pray to fire! and we mephi, we want...." "oh, wait a minute! 'mephi,' what does it mean!" "mephi? it is from mephisto. you remember, there on the rock, the figure of the youth? or, no. i shall explain it to you in your own language and you will understand better: there are two forces in the world, entropy and energy. one leads into blessed quietude, to happy equilibrium, the other to the destruction of equilibrium, to torturingly perpetual motion. our, or rather your ancestors, the christians, worshipped entropy like a god. but we are not christians, we...." at that moment a slight whisper was suddenly heard, a knock at the door, and in rushed that flattened man with the forehead low over his eyes, who several times had brought me notes from i- . he ran straight to us, stopped, panting like an air-pump, and could say not a word, as he must have been running at top speed. "but tell me! what has happened?" i- grasped him by the hand. "they are coming here,--" panted the air-pump, "with guards.... and with them that what's-his-name, the hunchback...." "s-?" "yes. they are in the house by this time. they'll soon be here. quick, quick!" "nonsense, we have time!" i- was laughing, cheerful sparks in her eyes. it was either absurd, senseless courage, or else there was something i did not yet understand. "i-, dear, for the sake of the well-doer! you must understand that this...." "for the sake of the well-doer!" the sharp, triangle-smile. "well ... well, for my sake, i implore you!" "oh, yes, i wanted to talk to you about some other matters.... well, never mind.... we'll talk about them tomorrow." and cheerfully (yes cheerfully) she nodded to me; the other came out for a second from under his forehead's awning and nodded also. i was alone. quick! to my desk! i opened this manuscript, took the pen so that they should find me at this work which is for the benefit of the united state. suddenly i felt every hair on my head living, separated, moving: "what if they should read, even one page of these most recently written?" motionless i sat at the table but everything around me seemed to be moving, as if the less than microscopic movements of the atoms suddenly were magnified millions of times, and i saw the walls trembling, my pen trembling and the letters swinging and fusing together. "to hide them! but where?" glass all around. "to burn them?" but they would notice the fire through the corridor and in the neighboring room. besides i felt unable, i felt too weak, to destroy this torturing and perhaps dearest piece of my own self.... voices from a distance (from the corridor) and steps. i had only time to snatch a handful of pages and put them under me, and then as if soldered to the armchair, every atom of which was quivering, i remained sitting, while the floor under my feet rolled like the deck of a ship, up and down.... all shrunk together and hidden under the awning of my own forehead like that messenger, i watched them stealthily; they were going from room to room, beginning at the right end of the corridor. nearer ... nearer.... i saw that some sat in their rooms, torpid like me; others would jump up and open their doors wide,--lucky ones! if only i too, could.... "the well-doer is the most perfect fumigation humanity needs, consequently no peristalsis in the organism of the united state could...." i was writing this nonsense, pressing my trembling pen hard, and lower and lower my head bent over the table, and within me some sort of crazy forge.... with my back i was listening ... and i heard the click of the door-knob.... a current of fresh air.... my armchair was dancing a mad dance.... only then, and even then with difficulty, i tore myself away from the page, turned my head in the direction of the newcomers (how difficult it is to play a foul game!). in front of all was s-, morose, silent, swiftly drilling with his eyes deep shafts within me, within my armchair and within the pages which were twitching in my hands. then for a second--familiar, everyday faces at the door; one of them separated itself from the rest with its bulging, pinkish-brown gills.... at once i recalled everything that happened in the same room half an hour ago and it was clear to me that they would presently.... all my being was shriveling and pulsating in that fortunately opaque part of my body with which i was covering the manuscript. u- came up to s-, gently plucked his sleeve and said in a low voice: "this is d- , the builder of the _integral_. you have probably heard of him. he is always like that, at his desk; does not spare himself at all!" ... and i thought!... what a dear, wonderful woman!... s- slid up to me, bent over my shoulder toward the table. i covered the lines i had written with my elbow but he shouted severely: "show us at once what you have there, please!" dying with shame, i held out the sheet of paper. he read it over, and i noticed a tiny smile jump out of his eyes, jump down his face and slightly wagging its tail, perch upon the right angle of his mouth.... "somewhat ambiguous, yet.... well, you may continue; we shall not disturb you any more." he went splashing towards the door as if in a ditch of water. and with every step of his i felt coming back to me my legs, my arms, my fingers,--my soul again distributed itself evenly over my whole body; i breathed.... the last thing: u- lingered in my room to come back to me and say in my very ear in a whisper: "it is lucky for you that i...." i did not understand. what did she mean by that? the same evening i learned that they led away three numbers, although nobody speaks out loud about that, or about anything that happened. this ostensible silence is due to the educational influence of the guardians who are ever present among us. conversations deal chiefly with the quick fall of the barometer and the forthcoming change in the weather. record twenty-nine threads on the face sprouts an unnatural compression it is strange: the barometer continues to fall yet there is no wind. there is quiet. above, the storm which we do not yet hear has begun. the clouds are rushing with a terrific speed. there are few of them as yet; separate fragments; it is as if there above us an unknown city were being destroyed and pieces of walls and towers were rushing down, coming nearer and nearer with terrific speed, but it will take some days of rushing through the blue infinite before they reach the bottom, that is us, below. and below there is silence. there are thin, incomprehensible, almost invisible threads in the air; every autumn they are brought here from beyond the wall. they float slowly, and suddenly you feel something foreign and invisible on your face; you want to brush it off, but no, you cannot rid yourself of it. you feel it especially near the green wall, where i was this morning. i- made an appointment with me to meet her in the ancient house in that "apartment" of ours. i was not far from the rust-red, opaque mass of the ancient house, when i heard behind me short hasty steps and rapid breathing. i turned around and saw o- trying to catch up to me. she seemed strangely and perfectly rounded. her arms and breast, her whole body, so familiar to me, was rounded out, stretching her unif. it seemed as though it would soon tear the thin cloth and come out into the sun, into the light. i think that there in the green debris, in springtime, the unseen sprouts try thus to tear their way through the ground in order to emit their branches and leaves and to bloom. for a few seconds she shone into my face with her blue eyes in silence. "i saw you on the day of unanimity." "i saw you, too." i at once remembered; below, in a narrow passage she had stood, pressing herself to the wall, protecting her abdomen with her arms, and automatically i glanced now at her abdomen which rounded the unif. she must have noticed, for she became pink, and with a rosy smile: "i am so happy ... so happy! i am so full of ... you understand, i am ... i walk and i hear nothing around me.... and all the while i listen within, within me...." i was silent. something foreign was shadowing my face and i was unable to rid myself of it. suddenly, all shining, light blue, she caught my hand; i felt her lips upon it.... it was for the first time in my life.... it was some ancient caress as yet unknown to me.... and i was so ashamed and it pained me so much that i swiftly, i think even roughly, pulled my hand away. "listen, you are crazy, it seems.... and anyway you ... what are you happy about? is it possible that you forget what is ahead of you? if not now, then within a month or two...." her light went out, her roundness sagged and shrank. and in my heart an unpleasant, even a painful compression, mixed with pity. our heart is nothing else than an ideal pump: a compression, i.e., a shrinking at the moment of pumping, is a technical absurdity. hence it is clear how essentially absurd, unnatural and pathological are all these "loves" and "pities," etc., etc., which create that compression.... silence. to the left the cloudy green glass of the wall. and just ahead the dark red mass. those two colors combined, gave me as a resultant what i thought was a splendid idea. "wait! i know how to save you! i shall save you from.... to see one's own child for a few moments only and then be sent to death! no! you shall be able to bring it up! you shall watch it and see it grow in your arms, and ripen like a fruit...." her body quivered and she seemed to have chained herself to me. "do you remember that woman, i- ? that ... of ... of long ago?... who during that walk?... well, she is now right here, in the ancient house. let us go to her and i assure you that i shall arrange matters at once." i already pictured us, i- and i, leading o- through the corridors ... then how she would be brought amidst flowers, grass, and leaves.... but o- stepped back, the little horns of her rosy crescent trembling and bending downward. "is she _that same one_?" she asked. "that is...." i was confused for some reason. "yes, of course ... that very same...." "and you want me to go to _her_, to ask her ... to.... don't you ever dare to say another word about it!" leaning over, she walked away.... then as if she remembered something, she turned around and cried: "i shall die; be it so! and it is none of your business ... what do you care?" silence. from above pieces of blue towers and walls were falling downward with terrific speed ... they will have perhaps hours or days to fly through the infinite.... unseen threads were slowly floating through the air, planting themselves upon my face, and it was impossible to brush them off, impossible to rid myself of them. i walked slowly toward the ancient house and in my heart i felt that absurd, tormenting compression.... record thirty the last number galileo's mistake would it not be better? here is my conversation with i- , which took place in the ancient house yesterday in the midst of loud noise, among colors which stifled the logical course of my thoughts, red, green, bronze, saffron-yellow, orange colors.... and all the while under the motionless marble smile of that snub-nosed ancient poet. i shall reproduce the conversation word by word, for it seems to me that it may have an enormous and decisive importance for the fate of the united state,--more than that, for the fate of the universe. besides, reading it, you my unknown readers, may find some justification for me. i- , without preliminaries, at once threw everything upon my head: "i know that the day after tomorrow the first trial trip of the _integral_ is to take place. on that day we shall take possession of it." "what! day after tomorrow?" "yes. sit down and don't be upset. we cannot afford to lose a minute. among the hundreds who were arrested yesterday there are twenty mephis. to let pass two or three days means that they will perish." i was silent. "as observers on the trial trip they will send electricians, mechanicians, physicians, meteorologists, etc.... at twelve sharp, you must remember this, when the bell rings for dinner we shall remain in the passage, lock them all up in the dining hall, and the _integral_ will be ours. you realize that it is most necessary, happen what may! the _integral_ in our hands will be a tool that will help to put an end to everything at once without pain.... their aeros?... bah! they would be insignificant mosquitos against a buzzard. and then, if it proves inevitable, we may direct the tubes of the motors downward and by their work alone...." i jumped up. "it is inconceivable! it is absurd! is it not clear to you that what you are contriving is a revolution?" "yes, a revolution. why is it absurd?" "absurd? because a revolution is impossible! because _our_ (i speak for myself and for you), our revolution was the last one. no other revolutions may occur. everybody knows that." a mocking, sharp triangle of brows. "my dear, you are a mathematician, are you not? more than that, a philosopher-mathematician? well then, name the last number!" "what is ... i ... i cannot understand, which _last_?" "the last one, the highest, the largest." "but i- , it is absurd! since the number of numbers is infinite, how can there be a last one?" "and why then do you think there is a _last_ revolution? there is no last revolution, their number is infinite.... the 'last one' is a children's story. children are afraid of the infinite, and it is necessary that children should not be frightened, so that they may sleep through the night." "but what is the use, what is the use of it all? for the sake of the well-doer! what is the use since all are happy already?" "all right! even suppose that is so. what further?" "how funny! a purely childish question. you tell something to children, come to the very end, yet they will invariably ask you, 'what further?' and 'what for?'" "children are the only courageous philosophers. and courageous philosophers are invariably children. one ought always to ask like children, 'what further'?" "nothing further! period. in the whole world evenly, everywhere, there is distributed...." "ah, 'evenly!' 'everywhere!' that is the point, entropy! psychological entropy. don't you as a mathematician know that only differences (only differences!), in temperature, only thermic contrasts make for life? and if all over the world there are evenly warm or evenly cold bodies, they must be pushed off! ... in order to get flame, explosions! and we shall push!..." "but i- , please realize that our ancestors during the two hundred years' war did exactly that!" "oh, they were right! a thousand times right! they did one wrong thing, however; later they began to believe that they were the _last number_, a number that does not exist in nature. their mistake was the mistake of galileo; he was right in that the earth revolves about the sun but he did not know that our whole solar system revolves about some other centre, he did not know that the real (not relative) orbit of the earth is not a naive circle." "and you, the mephi?" "we? for the time being we know that there is no _last_ number. we may forget that some day. of course, we shall certainly forget it when we grow old, as everything inevitably grows old. then we shall inevitably fall like autumn leaves from the trees, like you the day-after-tomorrow.... no, no dear, not you personally. you are with us, are you not? you are with us?" flaming, stormy, sparkling! i never before had seen her in such a state. she embraced me with her whole self; i disappeared. her last word, looking steadily, deeply into my eyes: "then, do not forget: at twelve o'clock sharp." and i answered: "yes, i remember." she left. i was alone amidst a rebellious, multi-voiced commotion of blue, red, green, saffron-yellow and orange.... yes, at twelve!... suddenly a feeling of something foreign on my face, of something implanted, that could not be brushed off. suddenly, yesterday morning, and u- and all she shouted into the face of i- ! why, how absurd! i hastened to get out of the house and home, home! somewhere behind me i heard the chattering of birds beyond the wall. and ahead of me in the setting sun the balls of cupolas made of red, crystallized fire, enormous flaming cubes--houses, and the sharp point of the accumulating tower high in the sky like a paralyzed streak of lightning. and all this, all this impeccable, most geometric beauty, shall i, i myself, with my hands...? is there no way out? no path? no trail? i passed by an auditorium (i do not recall its number). inside, the benches were stacked along the walls. in the middle, tables covered with snow-white glass sheets, with pink stains of sunny blood on the white.... there was foreshadowed in all that some unknown and therefore alarming tomorrow. it is unnatural for a thinking and seeing human being to live among irregularities, unknowns, x's. if suddenly your eyes were covered with a bandage and you were let go to feel around, to stumble, ever aware that somewhere very close to you there is the border-line, one step only and nothing but a compressed, smothered piece of flesh will be left of you.... i now feel somewhat like that. ... and what if without waiting for anything i should ... just head down.... would it not be the only right thing to do? to disentangle everything at once? record thirty-one the great operation i forgave everything the collision of trains saved! at the very last moment, when it seemed that there was nothing to hold to, that it was the end!... it was as if you already ascended the steps towards the threatening machine of the well-doer, or as if the great glass bell with a heavy thud already covered you, and for the last time in life you looked at the blue sky to swallow it with your eyes ... when suddenly, it was only a dream! the sun is pink and cheerful and the wall ... what happiness to be able to touch the cold wall! and the pillow! to delight endlessly in the little cavity formed by your own head in the white pillow!... this is approximately what i felt, when i read the state journal this morning. it has been all a terrible dream and this dream is over. and i was so feeble, so unfaithful, that i thought of selfish, voluntary death! i am ashamed now to reread the last lines of yesterday. but let them remain as a memory of that incredible might-have-happened, which will not happen! on the front page of the state journal the following gleamed: "rejoice! "for from now on we are _perfect!_ "before today your own creation, engines, were more perfect than you. "why? "for every spark from a dynamo--is a spark of pure reason; each motion of a piston--a pure syllogism. is it not true that the same faultless reason is within you? "the philosophy of the cranes, presses, and pumps is finished and clear like a circle. but is your philosophy less circular? the beauty of a mechanism lies in its immutable, precise rhythm, like that of a pendulum. but have you not become as precise as a pendulum, you who are brought up on the system of taylor? "yes, but there is one difference: "mechanisms have no fancy "did you ever notice a pump cylinder during its work show upon its face a wide, distant, sensuously-dreaming smile? did you ever hear cranes restlessly toss about and sigh at night, during the hours designed for rest? "no! "yet on your faces (you may well blush with shame!), the guardians have seen more and more frequently those smiles and they have heard your sighs. and (you should hide your eyes for shame!) the historians of the united state all tendered their resignations so as to be relieved from having to record such shameful occurrences. "it is not your fault; you are ill. and the name of your illness is "fancy "it is a worm that gnaws black wrinkles on one's forehead. it is a fever that drives one to run farther and farther, albeit 'farther' may begin where happiness ends. it is the last barricade on our road to happiness. "_rejoice! this barricade has been blasted at last! the road is open!_ "the latest discovery of our state science is that there is a centre for fancy,--a miserable little nervous knot in the lower region of the frontal lobe of the brain. a triple treatment of this knot with x-rays will cure you of fancy-- "_forever!_ "you are perfect; you are mechanized; the road to hundred per-cent happiness is open! hasten then all of you, young and old, hasten to undergo the great operation! hasten to the auditoriums where the great operation is being performed! long live the great operation! long live the united state! long live the well-doer." you, had you read all this not in my records which look like an ancient strange novel, had you like me held in your trembling hands the newspaper, smelling of typographic ink ... if you knew as i do, that all this is most certain reality, if not the reality of today, then that of tomorrow,--would you not feel the very things i feel? would not your head whirl as mine does? would there not run over your back and arms those strange, sweet, icy needles? would you not feel that you were a giant, an atlas?--that if only you stood up and straightened out you would reach the ceiling with your head? i snatched the telephone receiver. "i- . yes.... yes. yes ... !" and then, swallowing my own words i shouted, "are you at home? yes? have you read? you are reading now? is it not, is it not stupendous?" "yes...." a long, dark silence. the wires buzzed almost imperceptibly. she was thinking. "i must see you today without fail. yes, in my room, after sixteen, without fail!" dear ... she is such a dear!... "without fail!" i was smiling and i could not stop, i felt i should carry that smile with me into the street like a light above my head. outside the wind ran over me, whirling, whistling, whipping, but i felt even more cheerful. "all right, go on, go on moaning and groaning! the walls cannot be torn down." flying leaden clouds broke over my head ... well let them! they could not eclipse the sun! we chained it to the zenith like so many joshuas, sons of nuns! at the corner a group of joshuas, sons of nuns, were standing with their foreheads pasted to the glass of the wall. inside, on a dazzling white table already a number lay. one could see two naked soles diverging from under the sheet in a yellow angle.... white medics bent over his head,--a white hand, a stretched-out hand holding a syringe filled with something.... "and you, what are you waiting for?" i asked nobody in particular, or rather all of them. "and you?" someone's round head turned to me. "i? oh, afterward! i must first...." somewhat confused, i left the place. i really had to see i- first. but why first? i could not explain to myself.... the docks. the _integral_, bluish like ice, was glistening and sparkling. the engine was caressingly grumbling, repeating some one word, as if it were my word, a familiar one. i bent down and stroked the long, cold tube of the motor. "dear! what a dear tube! tomorrow it will come to life, tomorrow for the first time it will tremble with burning, flaming streams in its bowels." with what eyes would i have looked at the glass monster had everything remained as it was yesterday? if i knew that tomorrow at twelve i should betray it, yes, betray.... someone behind cautiously touched my elbow. i turned around. the plate-like, flat face of the second builder. "do you know already?" he asked. "what? about the operation? yes. how everything, everything ... suddenly...." "no, not that. the trial flight is put off until day-after-tomorrow,--on account of that operation. they rushed us for nothing; we hurried...." "on account of that operation!" funny, limited man. he could see no farther than his own platter! if only he knew that but for the operation tomorrow at twelve he would be locked-up in a glass cage, would be tossing about, trying to climb the walls! at twelve-thirty when i came into my room i saw u-. she was sitting at my table, firm, straight, bone-like, resting her right cheek on her hand. she must have waited for a long while because when she brusquely rose to meet me there remained on her cheek five white imprints of her fingers. for a second that terrible morning came back to me; she beside i- , indignant. but for a second only. all was at once washed off by the sun of today, as it happens sometimes when you enter your room on a bright day and absent-mindedly turn on the light, the bulb shines but it is out of place, droll, unnecessary. without hesitation i held out my hand to her; i forgave her everything. she firmly grasped both my hands and pressed them till they hurt. her cheeks quivering and hanging down like ancient precious ornaments, she said with emotion: "i was waiting.... i want only one moment.... i only wanted to say ... how happy, how joyous i am for you! you realize of course, that tomorrow or day-after-tomorrow you will be healthy again, as if born anew." i noticed my papers on the table; the last two pages of my record of yesterday; they were in the place where i left them the night before. if only she knew what i wrote there! although i did not care after all. now it was only history; it was the ridiculously far off distance like an image through a reversed opera-glass. "yes," i said, "a while ago, while passing through the avenue, i saw a man walking ahead of me. his shadow stretched along the pavement and think of it! his shadow was luminous! i think, more than that, i am absolutely certain that tomorrow all shadows will disappear. not a shadow from any person or any thing! the sun will be shining through everything." she, gently and earnestly: "you are a dreamer! i should not allow my children in school to talk that way." she told me something about the children; that they were all led in one herd to the operation; that it was necessary to bind them afterward with ropes; and that one must love pitilessly, "yes, pitilessly," and that she thought she might finally decide to.... she smoothed out the grayish-blue fold of the unif that fell between her knees, swiftly pasted her smiles all over me and went out. fortunately the sun did not stop today. the sun was running. it was already sixteen o'clock.... i was knocking at the door, my heart was knocking.... "come in!" i threw myself upon the floor near her chair, to embrace her limbs, to lift my head upward and look into her eyes, first into one then into the other, and in each of them to see the reflection of myself in wonderful captivity.... there beyond the wall it looked stormy, there the clouds were leaden,--let them be! my head was overcrowded with impetuous words, and i was speaking aloud, and flying with the sun i knew not where.... no, now we know where we are flying; planets were following me, planets sparkling with flame and populated with fiery, singing flowers and mute planets, blue ones where rational stones were unified into one organized society, and planets which like our own earth had reached already the apex of one hundred per-cent happiness. suddenly from above: "and don't you think that at the apex are, precisely, _stones_ unified into an organized society?" the triangle grew sharper and sharper, darker and darker. "happiness ... well?... desires are tortures, are they not? it is clear therefore, that happiness is where there are no longer any desires, not a single desire any more. what an error, what an absurd prejudice it was, that formerly we would mark happiness with the sign 'plus'! no, absolute happiness must be marked 'minus,'--divine minus!" i remember i stammered unintelligibly: "absolute zero!--minus °c." "minus °--exactly! a somewhat cool temperature. but does it not prove that we are at the summit?" as before she seemed somehow to speak for me and through me, developing to the end my own thoughts. but there was something so morbid in her tone that i could not refrain ... with an effort i drew out a "no." "no," i said, "you, you are mocking...." she burst out laughing loudly, too loudly. swiftly, in a second, she laughed herself to some unseen edge, stumbled and fell over.... silence. she stood up, put her hands upon my shoulders and looked into me for a long while. then she pulled me toward her and everything seemed to have disappeared save her sharp, hot lips.... "good-bye." the words came from afar, from above, and reached me not at once, only after a minute, perhaps two minutes later. "why ... why 'good-bye'?" "you have been ill, have you not? because of me you have committed crimes. has not all this tormented you? and now you have the operation to look forward to. you will be cured of me. and that means--good-bye." "no!" i cried. a pitilessly sharp black triangle on a white background. "what? do you mean that you don't want happiness?" my head was breaking into pieces; two logical trains collided and crawled upon each other, rattling and smothering.... "well, i am waiting. you must choose; the operation and hundred per-cent happiness, or...." "i cannot ... without you.... i must not ... without you...." i said, or perhaps i only thought, i am not sure which, but i- heard. "yes, i know," she said. then, her hands still on my shoulders and her eyes not letting my eyes go, "then ... until tomorrow. tomorrow at twelve. you remember?" "no, it was postponed for a day. day-after-tomorrow!" "so much the better for us. at twelve, day-after-tomorrow!" i walked alone in the dusky street. the wind was whirling, carrying, driving me like a piece of paper; fragments of the leaden sky were soaring, soaring--they had to soar through the infinite for another day or two.... unifs of numbers were brushing my sides,--yet i was walking alone. it was clear to me that all were saved but that there was no salvation for me. for i _do not want_ salvation.... record thirty-two i do not believe tractors a little human splinter do you believe that _you will die_? oh, yes, "man is mortal. i am a man, consequently...." no, not that; i know that; you know it. but i ask: has it ever happened that you _actually believed_ it? believed definitely, believed not with your reason but with your _body_, that you actually felt that some day those fingers which now hold this page, will become yellow, icy?... no, of course you cannot believe this. that is why you have not jumped from the tenth floor to the pavement before now, that is why you eat, turn over these pages, shave, smile, write. this very thing, yes, exactly this is alive in me today. i know that that small black hand on the clock will slide down here towards midnight, then again it will start to ascend, and it will cross some last border and the improbable tomorrow will have arrived. i _know_ it, but somehow i do not _believe_ it, or perhaps i think that twenty-four hours are twenty-four years. therefore i am still able to act, to hurry, to answer questions, to climb the rope-ladder to the _integral_. i am still able to feel how the latter is shaking the surface of the water, and i still understand that i must grasp the railing, and i am still able to feel the cold glass in my hand. i see the transparent, living cranes, bending their long necks, carefully feeding the _integral_ with the terrible explosive food which the motors need. i still see below on the river the blue veins and knots of water swollen by the wind.... yet all this seems very distant from me, foreign, flat,--like a draught on a sheet of paper. and it seems to me strange, when the flat, draught-like face of the second builder, suddenly asks: "well, then. how much fuel for the motors shall we load on? if we count on three, or say three and a half hours...." i see before me, over a draught, my hand with the counter and the logarithmic dial at the figure . "fifteen tons. but you'd better take ... yes, better take a thousand." i said that because i _know_ that tomorrow.... i noticed that my hands and the dial began to tremble. "a thousand! what do you need such a lot for? that would last a week! no, more than a week!" "well, nobody knows...." i do know.... the wind whistled, the air seemed to be stuffed to the limit with something invisible. i had difficulty in breathing, difficulty in walking, and with difficulty, slowly but without stopping for a second the hand of the accumulating tower was crawling, at the end of the avenue. the peak of the tower reached into the very clouds;--dull, blue, groaning in a subdued way, sucking electricity from the clouds. the tubes of the musical tower resounded. as always--four abreast. but the rows did not seem as firm as usual; they were swinging, bending more and more, perhaps because of the wind. there! they seemed to have stumbled upon something at the corner, and they drew back and stopped, congealed, a close mass, a clot, breathing rapidly; at once all had stretched their necks like geese. "look! no look, look--there, quick!" "_they?_ are those _they_?" "ah, never! never! i'd rather put my head straight into the machine...." "silence! are you crazy?" on the corner the doors of the auditorium were ajar, a heavy column of about fifty people--. the word "people" is not the right one. these were heavy-wheeled automatons bound in iron and moved by an invisible mechanism. not people but a sort of human-like tractor. over their heads, floating in the air--a white banner with a golden sun embroidered on it, and the rays of the sun: "we are the first! we have already been operated upon! follow us, all of you!" they slowly, unhesitatingly mowed through the crowd, and it was clear that if they had had in their way a wall, a tree, a house, they would have moved on with no more hesitation through wall, tree or house. in the middle of the avenue they fused and stretched out into a chain, arm in arm, their faces turned towards us. and we, a human clot, tense, the hair pricking our heads, we waited. our necks were stretched out goose-fashion. clouds. the wind whistled. suddenly the wings of the chain from right and left bent quickly around us, and faster, faster, like a heavy engine descending a hill, they closed the ring and pulled us toward the yawning doors and inside.... somebody's piercing cry: "they are driving us in! run!" all ran. close to the wall there still was an open living gate of human beings. everybody dashed through it, heads forward. their heads became sharp wedges, so with their ribs, shoulders, hips.... like a stream of water compressed in a firehose they spurted out in the form of a fan,--and all around me stamping feet, raised arms, unifs.... the double-curved s- with his transparent wing-ears appeared for a moment close before my eyes; he disappeared as suddenly; i was alone among arms and legs appearing for a second and disappearing. i was running.... i dashed to the entrance of a house to stop for a breath, my back close to the door,--and immediately, like a splinter borne by the wind, a human being was thrown towards me. "all the while i ... i have been following you. i do not want ... do you see? i do not want ... i am ready to...." small round hands on my sleeves, round dark blue eyes--it was o- . she just slipped along my body like a unif which, its hanger broken, slips along the wall to fall upon the floor. like a little bundle she crumpled below me on the cold door-step, and i stood over her, stroking her head, her face,--my hands were wet. i felt as if i were very big and she very small, a small part of myself. i felt something quite different from what i feel towards i- . i think that the ancients must have had similar feelings towards their private children. below, passing through her hands with which she was covering her face, a voice came to me: "every night i ... i cannot! if they cure me.... every night i sit in the darkness alone and think of _him_, and of what he will look like when i.... if cured i should have nothing to live with--do you understand me? you must ... you must...." an absurd feeling yet it was there; i really must! absurd, because this "duty" of mine was nothing but another crime. absurd, because white and black cannot be one, duty and crime cannot coincide. or perhaps there is no black and white in life, but everything depends upon the first logical premise? if the premise is that i unlawfully gave her a child.... "it is all right, but don't, only don't ..." i said. "of course i understand.... i must take you to i- , as i once offered to, so that she...." "yes." (this in a low voice, without uncovering her face.) i helped her rise. silently we went along the darkening street, each busy with his own thoughts, or perhaps with the same thought.... we walked between silent leaden houses, through the tense, whipping branches of the wind.... through the whistling of the wind all at once i heard, as if splashing through ditches, the familiar footsteps coming from some unseen point. at the corner i turned around, and among the clouds, flying upside-down reflected in the dim glass of the pavement i saw s-. instantly my arms became foreign, swinging out of time, and i began to tell o- in a low voice that tomorrow, yes tomorrow, was the day of the first flight of the _integral_, and that it was to be something that never happened before in all history, great, miraculous. "think of it! for the first time in life to find myself outside the limits of our city and see--who knows what is beyond the green wall?" o- looked at me extremely surprised, her blue eyes trying to penetrate mine; she looked at my senselessly swinging arms. but i did not let her say a word,--i kept talking, talking.... and within me, apart from what i was saying and audible only to myself a thought was feverishly buzzing and knocking. "impossible! you must somehow ... you must not lead _him_ to i- !" instead of turning to the right i turned to the left. the bridge submissively bent its back in a slavish way to all three of us, to me, to o-, to him behind. lights were falling from the houses across the water, falling and breaking into thousands of sparks which danced feverishly, sprayed with the mad white foam of the water. the wind was moaning like a tensely stretched string of a double-basso somewhere not far away. through this basso, behind, all the while.... the house where i live. at the entrance o- stopped and began: "no! you promised, did you not, that...." i did not let her finish. hastily i pushed her through the entrance and we found ourselves in the lobby. at the controller's desk--the familiar, hanging, excitedly quivering cheeks, a group of numbers around. they were quarreling about something, heads bending over the banisters on the second floor; they were running downstairs one by one. but about that later. i at once drew o- into the opposite, unoccupied corner and sat down with my back to the wall. i saw a dark large-headed shadow gliding back and forth over the sidewalk. i took out my notebook. o- in her chair was slowly sinking as if she were evaporating from under her unif, as if her body were thawing, as if only her empty unif were left, and empty eyes taking one into the blue emptiness. in a tired voice: "why did you bring me here? you lied to me?" "no, not so loud! look here! do you see? through the wall?" "yes, i see a shadow." "he is always following me.... i cannot.... do you understand? i cannot therefore ... i am going to write a few words to i- . you take the note and go alone. i know he will remain here." her body began again to take form and to move beneath the unif; on her face a faint sunrise, dawn. i put the note between her cold fingers, pressed her hand firmly and for the last time looked into her blue eyes. "good-bye. perhaps some day...." she freed her hand. slightly bending over she slowly moved away, made two steps, turned around quickly and again we were side by side. her lips were moving; with her lips and with her eyes she repeated some inaudible word. what an unbearable smile! what suffering! then the bent-over human splinter went to the door; a bent-over little shadow beyond the wall; without turning around she went on faster, still faster.... i went to u-'s desk. with emotion filling up her indignant gills she said to me: "they have all gone crazy! he, for instance, is trying to assure me that he himself saw a naked man covered with hair near the ancient house...." a voice from the group of empty raised heads; "yes. i repeat it, yes." "well, what do you think of that? oh, what a delirium!" the word "delirium" came out of her mouth so full of conviction, so unbending, that i asked myself: "perhaps it really was nothing but delirium, all that has been going on around me of late?" i glanced at my hairy hand and i remembered: "there are, undoubtedly, some drops of that blood of the sun and woods in you. that is why perhaps you...." no, fortunately it was not delirium; or no, _un_fortunately it was not delirium. record thirty-three this without a synopsis, hastily, the last _the day._ quick, to the newspaper! perhaps there.... i read the paper with my eyes (exactly; my eyes now are like a pen, or like a counting machine which you hold and feel in your hands like a tool, something foreign, an instrument). in the newspaper on the first page, in large print: "the enemies of happiness are awake! hold to your happiness with both hands. tomorrow all work will stop and all the numbers are to come to be operated upon. those who fail to come will be submitted to the machine of the well-doer." tomorrow! how can there be, how can there be any tomorrow? following my daily habit, i stretched out my arm (instrument!) to the bookshelf to put today's paper with the rest in a cover ornamented with gold. while doing this: "what for? what does it matter? never again shall i.... in this cover, never...." and out of my hands, down to the floor it fell. i stood looking all around, over all my room; hastily i was taking away, feverishly putting into some unseen valise everything i regretted leaving here: my desk, my books, my chair. upon that chair sat i- that day; i was below on the floor.... my bed.... then for a minute or two i stood and waited for some miracle to happen; perhaps the telephone would ring, perhaps she would say that.... but no, no miracle.... i am leaving, going into the unknown. these are my last lines. farewell you, my unknown beloved ones, with whom i have lived through so many pages, before whom i have bared my diseased soul, my whole self to the last broken little screw, to the last cracked spring.... i am going.... record thirty-four the forgiven ones a sunny night a radio-walkyrie oh, if only i actually had broken myself to pieces! if only i actually had found myself with her in some place beyond the wall, among beasts showing their yellow tusks; if only i actually had never returned here! it would be a thousand, a million times easier! but now--what? now to go and choke that--! but would it help? no, no, no! take yourself in hand, d- ! set into yourself the firm logical hub; at least for a short while weigh heavily with all your might on the lever, and like the ancient slave, turn the millstones of syllogisms until you have written down and understood everything that happened.... when i boarded the _integral_, everybody was already there and everybody occupied his place; all the cells of the gigantic hive were filled. through the glass of the decks,--tiny, ant-like people below, at the telegraph, dynamo, transformers, altimeters, ventilators, indicators, motor, pumps, tubes.... in the saloon people sitting over tables and instruments, probably those commissioned by the scientific bureau. near them the second builder and his two aides. all three had their heads down between their shoulders like turtles, their faces gray, autumnal, rayless. "well?" i asked. "well, somewhat uncanny," replied one of them smiling a gray rayless smile, "perhaps we shall have to land in some unknown place. and, generally speaking, nobody knows...." i hardly could bear to look at them, when in an hour or so i was to throw them out with my own hands, to cast them out from the cozy figures of our tables of hours, forever to tear them away from the mother's breast of the united state. they reminded me of the tragic figures of "the three forgiven ones"--a story known to all of our school-children. it tells about three numbers, who by way of experiment were exempted for a whole month from any work.[ ] "go wherever you will, do what you will," they were told. the unhappy three wandered the whole time about the place of their usual work and gazed within with hungry eyes. they would stop on the plazas and for hours busy themselves repeating the motions which they were used to making during certain hours of the day; it became a bodily necessity for them to do so. they would saw and plane the air; with unseen sledge-hammers they would bang upon unseen stakes. finally, on the tenth day they could bear it no longer; they took one another by the hand, entered the river, and to the accompaniment of the march they waded deeper and deeper until the water forever ended their sufferings. [ ] it happened long ago, in the third century a. t. (after the tables). i repeat, it was hard for me to look at them, and i was anxious to leave them. "i just want to take a glance into the engine-room, and then off!" i said. they were asking me questions: what voltage should be used for the initial spark, how much ballast water was needed in the tank aft. as if a phonograph were somewhere within me, i was giving quick and precise answers but _i_, my inner self, was busy with its own thoughts. in the narrow passage gray unifs were passing, gray faces and for a second, one face with its hair low over the forehead, eyes gazing from deep beneath it--it was _that same man_. i understood: _they_ had come and there was no escape from it for me; only minutes remained, a few dozens of minutes.... an infinitesimal, molecular quiver of my whole body. this did not cease to the very end,--it was as if an enormous motor were placed under the very foundation of my body which was so light that the walls, partitions, cables, beams, lights--everything was quivering.... i did not yet know whether _she_ was there. but i had no time.... they were calling me: quick! to the commander's bridge; time to go ... where? gray, rayless faces. below in the water--tense blue veins. heavy, cast-iron patches of sky. it was so difficult to lift my cast-iron hand and take up the receiver of the commander's telephone!... "up! forty-five degrees!" a heavy explosion--a jerk--a rabid greenish-white mountain of water aft--the deck beneath my feet began to move, soft as rubber; and everything below, the whole life, forever.... for a second, falling deeper and deeper into a sort of funnel, becoming more and more compressed--the icy-blue relief-map of the city, the round bubbles of cupolas, the lonely leaden finger of the accumulating tower.... then instantaneously a cotton curtain of cloud.... we pierced it, and there was the sun and the blue sky! seconds, minutes, miles--the blue was hardening, fast filling with darkness; like drops of cold silver sweat appeared the stars.... a sad, unbearably bright, black, starry, sunny night.... as if one had become deaf, one still saw that the pipes were roaring, but one only saw, dead silence all about. the sun was mute. it was natural, of course. one might have expected it; we were beyond the terrestrial atmosphere. the transition was so quick, so sudden that everyone became timid and silent. yet i ... i thought i felt even easier under that fantastic, mute sun. i had bounded over the inevitable border, having left my body somewhere there below, and i was soaring bodiless to a new world, where everything was to be different, upside down. "keep the same course!" i shouted into the engine-room, or perhaps it was not i but a phonograph in me, and the same machine with a mechanical, hinge-like movement handed the commander's trumpet to the second builder. all permeated by that most delicate, molecular quiver known only to me, i ran down the companionway, to seek.... the door of the saloon.... an hour later it was to latch and lock itself.... at the door stood an unfamiliar number. he was small, with a face like a hundred or a thousand others which are usually lost in a crowd, but his arms were exceptionally long,--they reached down to the knees as though by mistake they had been taken from another set of human organs and fastened to his shoulders. the long arm stretched out and barred the way. "where do you want to go?" it was clear that he was not aware i knew everything. all right! perhaps it was necessary that it should be so. from above him, in a deliberately significant tone i said: "i am the builder of the _integral_ and i am directing the test flight. do you understand?" the arm drew away. the saloon. heads covered with bristles, gray iron bristles, and yellow heads, and bald, ripe heads were bent over the instruments and maps. swiftly, with a glance, i gathered them in with my eyes, off i ran, back along the long passage, then through the hatch into the engine-room. there it was hot from the red tubes, overheated by the explosions; a constant roar,--the levers were dancing their desperate drunken dance, quivering ceaselessly with a barely noticeable quiver; the arrows on the dials.... there! at last! near the tachometer, a notebook in his hand, was that man with the low forehead. "listen," i shouted straight into his ear (because of the roar), "is she here? where is she?" "she? there at the radio." i dashed over there. there were three of them, all with receiving helmets on. and she seemed a head taller than usual, wingy, sparkling, flying like an ancient walkyrie, and those bluish sparks from the radio seemed to emanate from her,--from her also that ethereal, lightning-like odor of ozone. "someone--well, you for instance," i said to her, panting from having run, "i must send a message down to earth, to the docks. come, i shall dictate it to you." close to the apparatus there was a small box-like cabin. we sat at the table side by side. i found her hand and pressed it hard. "well, what is going to happen?" "i don't know. do you realize how wonderful it is? to fly without knowing where ... no matter where? it will soon be twelve o'clock and nobody knows what.... and when night.... where shall you and i be tonight? perhaps somewhere on the grass, on dry leaves...." blue sparks emanated from her and the odor of lightning, and the vibration became more and more frequent within me. "write down," i said loudly, panting (from having run), "time: eleven-twenty; speed ...." "last night she came to me with your note. i know ... i know everything; don't talk.... but the child is yours. i sent her over; she is already beyond the wall. she will live...." i was back on the commander's bridge, back in the delirious night with its black, starry sky and its dazzling sun. the hands of the clock on the table were slowly moving from minute to minute. everything was permeated by a thin, hardly perceptible quivering (only i noticed it). for some reason a thought passed through my head: it would be better if all this took place not here but somewhere below, nearer to earth. "stop!" i commanded. we kept moving by inertia, but more and more slowly. now the _integral_ was caught for a second by an imperceptible little hair--for a second it hung motionless, then the little hair broke and the _integral_ like a stone dashed downward with increasing speed. that way in silence, minutes, tens of minutes passed. my pulse was audible; the hand of the clock before my eyes came closer and closer to twelve. it was clear to me i was a stone; i- the earth; and the stone was under irresistible compulsion to fall downward, to strike the earth and break into small particles. what if...? already the hard blue smoke of the clouds appeared below.... what if...? but the phonograph within me with a hinge-like motion and precision took the telephone and commanded: "low speed!" the stone ceased falling. only the four lower tubes were growling, two ahead and two aft, only enough to hold the _integral_ motionless, and the _integral_, only slightly trembling, stopped in the air as if anchored, about one kilometer from the earth. everybody came out on deck, (it was shortly before twelve, before the sounding of the dinner-gong) and leaned over the glass railing; hastily, in huge gulps, they swallowed the unknown world which lay below, beyond the green wall. amber, blue, green, the autumnal woods, prairies, a lake. at the edge of a little blue saucer, some lone yellow debris, a threatening, dried-out yellow finger,--it must have been the tower of an ancient "church" saved by a miracle.... "look, there! look! there to the right!" there (over the green desert) a brown blot was rapidly moving. i held a telescope in my hands and automatically i brought it to my eyes: the grass reaching their chests, a herd of brown horses was galloping, and on their back--_they_, black, white, and dark.... behind me: "i assure you, i saw a face!" "go away! tell it to someone else!" "well, look for yourself! here is the telescope." they had already disappeared. endless green desert, and in that desert, dominating it completely and dominating me, and everybody--the piercing vibrations of the gong; dinner time, one minute to twelve. for a second the little world around me became incoherent, dispersed. someone's brass badge fell to the floor. it mattered little. soon it was under my heel. a voice: "and i tell you, it was a face!" a black square, the open door of the main saloon. white teeth pressed together, smiling.... and at that moment, when the clock began slowly, holding its breath between beats, to strike, and when the front rows began to move towards the dining saloon, the rectangle of the door was suddenly crossed by the two familiar, unnaturally long arms: "stop!" someone's fingers sank piercing into my palm. it was i- . she was beside me. "who is it, do you know him?" "is he not ... is he not?..." he was already lifted upon somebody's shoulders. above a hundred other faces, his face like hundreds, like thousands of other faces yet unique among the rest.... "in the name of the guardians! you, to whom i talk, _they_ hear me, every one of them hears me,--i talk to you: _we know_! we don't know your numbers yet but we know everything else. the _integral_ shall not be yours! the test flight will be carried out to the end and you yourselves, you will not dare to make another move! you with your own hands will help to go on with the test and afterward ... well, i have finished!" silence. the glass plates under my feet seemed soft, cotton-like. my feet too,--soft, cotton-like. beside me--she with a dead-white smile, angry blue sparks. through her teeth to me: "ah! it is your work! you did your 'duty'! well...." she tore her hand from mine; the walkyrie helmet with indignant wings was soon to be seen some distance in front of me. i was alone, torpid, silent. like everyone else i followed into the dining saloon. but it was not i, not i! i told nobody, save these white, mute pages.... i cried this to her within me, inaudibly, desperately, loudly. she was across the table, directly opposite me and not once did she even touch me with her gaze. beside her, someone's ripe, yellow, bald head. i heard (it was i- 's voice): "'nobility' of character! but my dear professor, even a superficial etymological analysis of the word shows that it is a superstition, a remnant of the ancient feudal epoch. we...." i felt i was growing pale,--and that they would soon notice it. but the phonograph within me performed the prescribed fifty chewing movements for every bite. i locked myself into myself as though into an opaque house; i threw up a heap of rocks before my door and lowered the window-blinds.... afterward, again the telephone of the commander was in my hands and again we made the flight with icy, supreme anxiety through the clouds into the icy, starry, sunny night. minutes, hours passed.... apparently all that time the logical motor within me was working feverishly at full speed. for suddenly somewhere at a distant point of the dark blue space i saw my desk, and the gill-like cheeks of u- over it and the forgotten pages of my records! it became clear to me; nobody but she ... everything was clear to me! if only i could reach the radio-room soon ... wing-like helmets, the odor of blue lightnings ... i remember telling her something in a low voice and i remember how she looked _through_ me and how her voice seemed to come from a distance: "i am busy. i am receiving a message from below. you may dictate yours to her." the small, box-like little cabin.... i thought for a second and then dictated in a firm voice: "time : . going down. motors stopped. the end of all." the commander's bridge. the machine-heart of the _integral_ stopped; we were falling; my heart could not catch up and would remain behind and rise higher and higher into my throat.... clouds.... and then a distant green spot--everything green, more and more distinct, running like a storm towards us. "soon the end." the porcelain-like white distorted face of the second builder! it was he who struck me with all his strength; i hurt my head on something; and through the approaching darkness while falling i heard: "full speed--aft!" a brusque jolt upward.... record thirty-five in a ring a carrot a murder i did not sleep all night. the whole night but one thought.... as a result of yesterday's mishap my head is tightly bandaged,--it seems to me not a bandage but a ring, a pitiless ring of glass-iron, riveted about my head. and i am busy with the same thought, always the same thought in my riveted circle: to kill u-. to kill u- and then go to her and say: "now do you believe?" what is most disquieting is that to kill is dirty, primitive. to break her head with something--the thought of it gives me a peculiar sensation of something disgustingly sweet in my mouth, and i am unable to swallow my saliva; i am always spitting into my handkerchief, yet my mouth feels dry. i had in my closet a heavy piston-rod which cracked during the casting and which i brought home in order to find out the cause of the cracking with a microscope. i made my manuscript into a tube (let her read me to the last letter!), pushed the broken piston into that tube and went downstairs. the stairway seemed endless, the steps disgustingly slippery, liquid. i had to wipe off moisture from my mouth very frequently. downstairs ... my heart dropped. i took out the piston and went to the controller's table, but she was not there; instead an empty, icy desk with ink-blots. i remembered that today all work was stopped; everybody was to go to be operated upon. hence there was no need for her to stay here. there was nobody to be registered.... the street. it was windy. the sky seemed to be composed of soaring panels of cast-iron. and exactly as it seemed for one moment yesterday, the whole world was broken up into separate, sharp, independent fragments, and each of these fragments was falling at full speed; each would stop for a second, hang before me in the air and disappear without trace. it was as if the black, precise letters on this page should suddenly move apart and begin to jump hither and thither in fright, so that there was not a word on the page, only nonsensical "ap," "jum," "wor." the crowd seemed just as nonsensical, dispersed (not in rows), going forward, backward, diagonally, transversely.... then nobody. for a second while i was dashing at full speed, suddenly stopping, i saw on the second floor in the glass cage hanging in the air,--a man and a woman--a kiss; she standing with her whole body bent backward brokenly: "this is for the last time, forever...." at a corner a thorny, moving bush of heads. above the heads, separate, floating in the air, a banner: "down with the machines! down with the operation!" and (distinct from my own self) i thought: "is it possible that each one of us bears such a pain, that it can be removed only with his heart.... that something must be done to each one, before he...." for a second everything disappeared for me from the world, except my beast-like hand with the heavy cast-iron package it held.... a boy appeared. he was running, a shadow under his lower lip. the lower lip turned out like the cuff of a rolled-up sleeve. his face was distorted; he wept loudly; he was running away from somebody. stamping of feet was heard behind him.... the boy reminded me: "u- must be in school. i must hurry!" i ran to the nearest opening of the underground railway. at the entrance someone passed me and said, "not running. no trains today ... there!" i descended. a sort of general delirium was reigning. the glitter of cut-crystal suns; the platform packed closely with heads. an empty, torpid train. in the silence--a voice. i could not see her but i knew, i knew that intense, living, flexible, whip-like, flogging voice! i felt there that sharp triangle of brows drawn to the temples.... "let me! let me reach her! i must!..." someone's tentacles caught my arm, my shoulders. i was nailed. in the silence i heard: "no. go up to them. there they will cure you; there they will overfeed you with that leavened happiness. satiated, you will slumber peacefully, organized, keeping time and snoring sweetly. is it possible that you do not yet hear that great symphony of snoring? foolish people! don't you realize that they want to liberate you from these gnawing, worm-like, torturing question marks? and you remain standing here and listening to me? quick! up! to the great operation! what is your concern, if i remain here alone? what does it matter to you if i want to struggle, hopelessly struggle? so much the better! what does it matter to you that i do not want others to desire for me? i want to desire for myself. if i desire the impossible...." another voice, slow, heavy: "ah, the impossible! which means to run after your stupid fancies; those fancies would whirl from under your very noses like a tail. no, we shall catch that tail, and then...." "and then--swallow it and fall snoring; a new tail will become necessary. they say the ancients had a certain animal which they called 'ass.' in order to make it go forward they would attach a carrot to a bow held in front of its nose, so that it could not reach it.... if it had caught and swallowed it...." the tentacles suddenly let me go; i threw myself towards the place she was speaking from; but at that very moment everything was brought to confusion. shouts from behind: "they are coming here! coming here!" the lights twinkled and went out,--someone cut the cable,--and everything was like a lava of cries, groaning, heads, fingers.... i do not know how long we were rolled about that way in the underground tube. i only remember that steps were felt, dusk appeared, becoming brighter and brighter, and again we were in the street, dispersing fan-wise in different directions. again i was alone. wind. gray, low twilight crawling over my head. in the damp glass of the sidewalk, somewhere very deep, there were light topsy-turvy walls and figures moving along, feet upward. and that terribly heavy package in my hands pulled me down into that depth to the bottom. at the desk again. u- was not yet there; her room was dark and empty. i went up to my room and turned on the light. my temples tightly bound by the iron ring were pulsating. i paced and paced, always in the same circle: my table, the white package on the table, the bed, my table, the white package on the table.... in the room to my left the curtains were lowered. to my right: the knotty bald head over a book, the enormous parabolic forehead. wrinkles on the forehead like a series of yellow, illegible lines. at times our eyes met and then i felt that those lines were about me. ... it happened at twenty-one o'clock exactly. u- came in on her own initiative. i remember that my breathing was so loud that i could hear it and that i wanted to breathe less noisily but was unable to. she sat down and arranged the fold of her unif on her knees. the pinkish-brown gills were waving. "oh, dear, is it true that you are wounded? i just learned about it, and at once i ran...." the piston was before me on the table. i jumped up, breathing even louder. she heard, and stopped half-way through a word and rose. already i had located the place on her head; something disgustingly sweet was in my mouth.... my handkerchief! i could not find it. i spat on the floor. the fellow with the yellow fixed wrinkles which think of me! it was necessary that he should not see. it would be even more disgusting if he could.... i pressed the button. (i had no right to do that, but who cared about rights then?) the curtains fell. evidently she felt and understood what was coming for she rushed to the door. but i was quicker than she and i locked the door with the key, breathing loudly and not taking my eyes for a second away from that place on her head.... "you ... you are mad! how dare you...." she moved backward towards the bed, put her trembling hands between her knees.... like a tense spring, holding her firmly with my gaze, i slowly stretched out my arm towards the table (only one arm could move), and i snatched the piston. "i implore you! one day--only one day! tomorrow i shall go and attend to the formalities...." what was she talking about? i swung my arm.... and i consider i killed her. yes, you my unknown readers, you have the right to call me murderer. i know that i should have dealt the blow on her head had she not screamed: "for ... for the sake ... i agree.... i ... one moment...." with trembling hands she tore off her unif;--a large, yellow, drooping body, she fell upon the bed.... then i understood; she thought that i pulled the curtains ... in order to ... that i wanted.... this was so unexpected and so stupid that i burst out laughing. immediately the tense spring within me broke and my hand weakened and the piston fell to the floor. here i learned from personal experience that laughter is the most terrible of weapons; you can kill anything with laughter, even murder. i sat at my table and laughed desperately; i saw no way out of that absurd situation. i don't know what would have been the end if things had run their natural course, for suddenly a new factor in the arithmetical chain: the telephone rang. i hurried, grasped the receiver. perhaps she ... i heard an unfamiliar voice: "wait a minute." annoying, infinite buzzing. heavy steps from afar, nearer and louder like cast-iron, and.... "d- ? the well-doer speaking. come at once to me." ding! he hung up the receiver. ding! like a key in a keyhole. u- was still in bed, eyes closed, gills apart in the form of a smile. i picked up her clothes, threw them on her and said through clenched teeth: "well. quick! quick!" she raised her body on her elbow, her breasts hanging down to one side, eyes round. she became a figure of wax. "what?" "get dressed, that is what!" face distorted, she firmly snatched her clothes and said in a flat voice, "turn away...." i turned away, pressed my forehead against the glass. light, figures, sparks, were trembling in the black, wet mirror.... no, all this was i, myself,--within me.... what did he call me for? is it possible that he knows already about her, about me, about everything? u-, already dressed, was at the door. i made a step toward her and pressed her hand as hard as though i hoped to squeeze out of it drop by drop what i needed. "listen.... her name, you know whom i am talking of,--did you report her name? no? tell the truth, i must.... i care not what happens, but tell the truth!" "no." "no? but why not, since you...." her lower lip turned out like the lip of that boy and her face ... tears were running down her cheeks. "because i ... i was afraid that if i did you might ... you would stop lov-- oh, i cannot, i could not!" i understood. it was the truth. absurd, ridiculous, human truth. i opened the door. record thirty-six empty pages the christian god about my mother it is very strange that a kind of empty white page should be left in my head. how i walked there, how i waited (i remember i had to wait), i know nothing about it; i remember not a sound, not a face, not a gesture, as if all communicating wires between me and the world were cut. when i came to, i found myself standing before him; i feared to raise my eyes,--i saw only his enormous cast-iron hands upon his knees. those hands weighed upon him, bending his knees with their weight. he was slowly moving his fingers. his face was somewhere above as if in fog. and, only because his voice came to my ear from such a height, it did not roar like thunder, it did not deafen me but appeared to be an ordinary human voice. "then you too, you the builder of the _integral_! you, whose lot it was to become the greatest of all _conquistadores_! you whose name was to have been at the head of a glorious, new chapter of the history of the united state! you...." blood ran to my head, to my cheeks,--and here again a white page; only the pulsation in my temples and the heavy voice from above; but i remember not a word. only when he became silent i came to and noticed how his hand moved heavily like a thousand pounds, and crawled slowly,--a finger threatened me. "well! why are you silent? is it true, or not? executioner? so!" "so," i repeated submissively. and then i clearly heard every word of his. "well then? do you think i am afraid of the word! did you ever try to take off its shell and look into its inner meaning? i shall tell you.... remember a blue hill, a crowd, a cross? some up on the hill, sprinkled with blood, are busy nailing a body to the cross; others below, sprinkled with tears, are gazing upward. does it not seem to you that the part which those above must play is the more difficult, the most important part? if it were not for them, how could that magnificent tragedy ever have been staged? true, they were hissed by the dark crowd but for that the author of the tragedy, god, should have remunerated them the more liberally, should he not? and the christian, most clement god himself, who burnt on a slow fire all the infidels, is he not an executioner? was the number of those burned by the christians less than the number of burned christians? yet (you must understand this!), yet this god was for centuries glorified as the god of love! absurd? oh, no. just the contrary. it is rather a patent for the imperishable wisdom of man, written in blood. even at the time when he still was wild and hairy man knew that real, algebraic love for humanity must inevitably be inhuman, and that the inevitable mark of truth is cruelty, just as the inevitable mark of fire is its property of causing the sensation of burning. could you show me a fire that would not hurt? well, prove now your point! proceed! argue!" how could i argue? how could i argue when those thoughts were once mine, though i was never able to dress them in such a splendid, tempered armor. i remained silent. "if your silence is intended to mean that you agree with me, then let us talk as adults do after the children have gone to bed; let us talk to the logical end. i ask: what was it that man from his diaper age dreamed of, tormented himself for, prayed for? he longed for that day when someone would tell him what happiness is and then would chain him to it. what else are we doing now? the ancient dream about a paradise.... remember: there in paradise they know no desires any more, no pity, no love; there they are all--blessed. an operation has been performed upon their centre of fancy; that is why they are blessed, angels, servants of god.... and now, at the very moment when we have caught up with that dream, when we hold it like this": (he clenched his hand so, that if he had held a stone in it sap would have run out!) "at the moment when all that was left for us was to adorn our prize and distribute it amongst all in equal pieces, at that very moment you, you...." the cast-iron roar was suddenly broken off. i was as red as a piece of iron on an anvil, under the moulding sledge-hammer. this seemed to have stopped for a second, hanging in air, and i waited, waited ... until suddenly: "how old are you?" "thirty-two." "just double the age, and as simple as at sixteen! listen. is it possible that it really never occurred to you that _they_ (we do not yet know their names but i am certain you will disclose them to us), that _they_ were interested in you only as the builder of the _integral?_ only in order to be able through the use of you--" "don't! don't!" i cried. but it was like protecting yourself with your hands and crying to a bullet: you may still be hearing your own "don't" but the bullet meanwhile has burned you through, and writhing with pain, you are prostrated on the ground. yes, yes; the builder of the _integral_.... yes, yes.... at once there came back to me the angry face of u- with twitching, brick-red gills, on that morning when both of them.... i remember now, clearly, how i raised my eyes and laughed. a socrates-like, bald-headed man was sitting before me; and small drops of sweat dotted the bald surface of his cranium. how simple, how magnificently trivial everything was! how simple! almost to the point of being ridiculous. laughter was choking me and bursting forth in puffs; i covered my mouth with my hand and rushed wildly out.... steps. wind. damp, leaping fragments of lights and faces.... and while running: "no! only to see her! to see her once more!" here again, an empty white page. all i remember is feet; not people, just feet; hundreds of feet, confusedly stamping feet, falling from somewhere on the pavement; a heavy rain of feet.... and some cheerful, daring voice, and a shout that was probably for me: "hey, hey! come here! come along with us!" afterward--a deserted square heavily overloaded with tense wind. in the middle of the square a dim, heavy threatening mass--the machine of the well-doer; and a seemingly unexpected image arose within me in response to the sight of the machine: a snow-white pillow and on the pillow a head thrown back, and half-closed eyes and a sharp, sweet line of teeth.... all this seemed so absurdly, so terribly connected with the machine. i know _how_ this connection has come about but i do not yet want to see it nor to say it aloud--i don't want to! i do not! i closed my eyes, sat down on the steps which lead upwards to the machine. i must have been running for my face was wet. from somewhere very far away cries were coming. but nobody heard them; nobody heard me crying: "save me from it--save me!" if only i had a mother as the ancients had,--my mother, _mine_, for whom i should be not the builder of the _integral_ and not d- , not a molecule of the united state but merely a living human piece, a piece of herself, a trampled, smothered, a cast-off piece.... and though i were driving the nails into the cross or being nailed to it (perhaps it is the same), she would hear what no one else could hear; her old grown-together wrinkled lips.... record thirty-seven infusorian doomsday her room this morning while we were in the refectory, my neighbor to my left whispered to me in a frightened tone: "but why don't you eat? don't you see, they are looking at you!" i had to pluck up all my strength to show a smile. i felt it--like a crack in my face; i smiled and the borders of the crack drew apart wider and wider; it was quite painful. what followed was this: no sooner had i lifted the small cube of paste upon my fork, than my fork jerked from my hand and tinkled against the plate, and at once the tables, the walls, the plates, the air even, trembled and rang; and outside too, an enormous, iron, round roar reaching the sky--floating over heads and houses it died away in the distance in small, hardly perceptible circles like those upon water. i saw faces instantaneously grow faded and bleached; i saw mouths filled with food suddenly motionless and forks hanging in air. then everything became confused, jumped off the centuries-old tracks, everybody jumped up from his place (without singing the hymn!) and confusedly, in disorder, hastily finishing chewing, choking, grasping one another.... they were asking: "what? what happened? what?..." and the disorderly fragments of the machine which was once perfect and great, fell down in all directions,--down the elevators, down the stairs.... stamping of feet.... pieces of words like pieces of torn letters carried by the wind.... the same outpour from the neighboring houses. a minute later the avenue seemed like a drop of water under a microscope: the infusoria locked up in the transparent, glass-like drop of water were tossing around, to the sides, up and down. "ah!" some one's triumphant voice. i saw the back of a neck and a finger pointing to the sky. i remember very distinctly a yellow-pinkish nail and under the nail a crescent crawling out as if from under the horizon. the finger was like a compass; all eyes were raised to the sky. there, running away from an invisible pursuit, masses of cloud were rushing upon each other; and colored by the clouds the aeros of the guardians, with their tubes like antennae, were floating. and farther to the west--something like.... at first nobody could understand what it was, even i, who knew (unfortunately) more than the others. it was like a great hive of black aeros swarming somewhere at an extraordinary height--they looked like hardly noticeable, swiftly moving points.... nearer and nearer.... hoarse, guttural sounds began to reach the earth and finally we saw _birds_ just over our heads! they filled the sky with their sharp, black, descending triangles. the stormy wind drove them down and they began to land on the cupolas, on the roofs, poles and balconies. "ah--ah!" and the triumphant back of the neck turned, and i saw that man with the protruding forehead but it seemed that the title, so to speak, was all that was left of him: he seemed to have crawled out from under his forehead and on his face, around the eyes and lips, bunches of rays were growing. through the noise of the wind and wings and cawing, he cried to me: "do you realize? do you realize! they have blown up the wall! the wall has been blown up! do you _understand_?" somewhere in the background, figures with their heads drawn in were hastily rushing by, and into the houses. in the middle of the pavement a mass of those who had been already operated upon; they moved towards the west.... ... hairy bunches of rays around the lips and eyes.... i grasped his hands: "tell me. where is she? where is i- ? there? beyond the wall or...? i must.... do you hear me? at once.... i cannot...." "here!" he shouted in a happy, drunken voice, showing strong yellow teeth, "here in town, and she is acting! oh, we are doing great work!" who are those "we"? who am i? there were about fifty around him. like him, they seemed to have crawled out from under their foreheads. they were loud, cheerful, strong-toothed, swallowing the stormy wind. with their simple, not at all terrible-looking electrocutors (where did they get them?) they started to the west, towards the operated ones, encircling them, keeping parallel to forty-eighth avenue.... stumbling against the tightly-drawn ropes woven by the wind, i was running to her. what for? i did not know. i was stumbling.... empty streets.... the city seemed foreign, wild, filled with the ceaseless, triumphant, hubbub of birds. it seemed like the end of the world, _doomsday_. through the glass of the walls in quite a few houses (this cut into my mind) i saw male and female numbers in shameless embraces--without curtains lowered, without pink checks, in the middle of the day!... the house--her house; the door ajar. the lobby, the control desk, all was empty. the elevator had stopped in the middle of its shaft. i ran panting up the endless stairs. the corridor. like the spokes of a wheel figures on the doors dashed past my eyes; , , ,--i- ! through the glass wall everything in her room was seen to be upside down, confused, creased. the table overturned, its legs in the air like a beast. the bed was absurdly placed away from the wall, obliquely. strewn over the floor--fallen, trodden petals of the pink checks. i bent over and picked up one, two, three of them; all bore the name d- . i was on all of them, drops of myself, of my molten, poured-out self. and that was all--that was left.... somehow i felt they should not lie there on the floor and be trodden upon. i gathered a handful of them, put them on the table and carefully smoothed them out, glanced at them and ... laughed aloud! i never knew it before but now i know, and you too, know, that laughter may be of different colors. it is but a distant echo of an explosion within us; it may be the echo of a holiday, red, blue and golden fireworks, or at times it may represent pieces of human flesh exploded into the air.... i noticed an unfamiliar name on some of the pink checks. i do not remember the figures but i do remember the letter--f. i brushed the stubs from the table to the floor, stepped on them, on myself, stamped on them with my heels,--and went out.... i sat in the corridor on the window-sill in front of her door and waited long and stupidly. an old man appeared. his face was like a pierced, empty bladder with folds; from beneath the puncture something transparent was still slowly dripping. slowly, vaguely i realized--tears. and only when the old man was quite far off i came to and exclaimed: "please ... listen.... do you know ... number i- ?" the old man turned around, waved his hand in despair and stumbled farther away.... i returned home at dusk. on the west side the sky was twitching every second in a pale blue electric convulsion:--a subdued, heavy roar was proceeding from that direction. the roofs were covered with black charred sticks,--birds. i lay down; and instantly like a heavy beast sleep came and stifled me.... record thirty-eight i don't know what title--perhaps the whole synopsis may be called a cast-off cigarette-butt. i awoke. a bright glare painful to look at. i half closed my eyes. my head seemed filled with some caustic blue smoke. everything was enveloped in fog and through the fog: "but i did not turn on the light ... then how is it...." i jumped up. at the table, leaning her chin on her hand and smiling, was i- , looking at me. she was at the very table at which i am now writing. those ten or fifteen minutes are already behind me, cruelly twisted into a very firm spring. yet it seems to me that the door closed after her only a second ago and that i could still overtake her and grasp her hand,--and that she might laugh out and say.... i- was at the table. i rushed towards her. "you? you! i have been.... i saw your room.... i thought you...." but midway i hurt myself upon the sharp, motionless spears of her eyelashes and i stopped. i remembered: she looked at me in the same way before,--in the _integral_. it was urgent to tell her everything in one second and in such a way that she should believe--or she would never.... "listen, i- , i must.... i must ... everything! no, no, one moment--let me have a glass of water first." my mouth was as dry as though it were lined with blotting paper. i poured a glass of water but i could not.... i put the glass back upon the table, and with both hands firmly grasped the carafe. now i noticed that the blue smoke was from a cigarette. she brought the cigarette to her lips and with avidity she drew in and swallowed the smoke as i did water; then she said: "don't. be silent. don't you see it matters little? i came anyway. they are waiting for me below.... do you want these minutes which are our last...?" abruptly she threw the cigarette on the floor and bent backwards over the side of the chair to reach the button in the wall (it was quite difficult to do so), and i remember how the chair swayed slightly, how two of its legs were lifted. then the curtains fell. she came close to me and embraced me. her knees, through her dress, were like a slow, gentle, warm, enveloping and permeating poison.... suddenly (it happens at times) you plunge into sweet, warm sleep--when all at once, as if something pricks you, you tremble and your eyes are again widely open. so it was now; there on the floor in her room were the pink checks stamped with traces of footsteps, one of them bore the letter f. and some figures.... plus and minus fused within my mind into one lump.... i could not say even now what sort of a feeling it was but i crushed her so that she cried out with pain.... one more minute out of these ten or fifteen; her head thrown back, lying on the bright white pillow, her eyes half closed, a sharp, sweet line of teeth.... and all this reminded me in an irresistible, absurd, torturing way about something forbidden, something not permissible at that moment. more tenderly, more cruelly, i pressed her to myself, more bright grew the blue traces of my fingers.... she said, without opening her eyes (i noticed this), "they say you went to see the well-doer yesterday, is it true?" "yes." then her eyes opened widely and with delight i looked at her and saw that her face grew quickly paler and paler, that it effaced itself, disappearing,--only the eyes remained. i told her everything. only for some reason, what i don't know--(no, it is not true, i know the reason) i was silent about one thing: his assertion at the end that they needed me only in order.... like the image on a photographic plate in a developing fluid, her face gradually reappeared; the cheeks, the white line of teeth, the lips. she stood up and went to the mirror-door of the closet. my mouth was dry again. i poured water but it was revolting to drink it; i put the glass back on the table and asked: "did you come to see me because you wanted to inquire...?" a sharp, mocking triangle of brows drawn to the temples looked at me from the mirror. she turned around to say something but said nothing. it was not necessary; i knew. to bid her good-bye, i moved my foreign limbs, struck the chair with them. it fell upside down, dead, like the table in her room. her lips were cold ... just as cold was once the floor, here, near my bed.... when she left i sat down on the floor, bent over the cigarette-butt.... i cannot write any more--i no longer want to! record thirty-nine the end all this was like the last crystal of salt thrown into a saturated solution; quickly, needle-like crystals began to appear, to grow more substantial and solid. it was clear to me; the decision was made and tomorrow morning _i shall do it_! it amounts to suicide but perhaps then i shall be re-born. for only what is killed can be re-born. every second the sky twitched in convulsion there in the west. my head was burning and pulsating inside; i was up all night and i fell asleep only at about seven o'clock in the morning when the darkness of the night was already dispelled and becoming gray and when the roofs crowded with birds became visible.... i woke up; ten o'clock. evidently the bell did not ring today. on the table--left from yesterday--there stood the glass of water. i gulped the water down with avidity and i ran; i had to do it quickly, as quickly as possible. the sky was deserted, blue, all eaten up by the storm. sharp corners of shadows.... everything seemed to be cut out of blue autumnal air--thin, dangerous to touch; it seemed so brittle, ready to disperse into glass dust. within me something similar; i ought not to think; it was dangerous to think, for.... and i did not think, perhaps i did not even see properly; i only registered impressions. there on the pavement, thrown from somewhere, branches were strewn; their leaves were green, amber and cherry-red. above, crossing each other, birds and aeros were tossing about. here below heads, open mouths, hands waving branches.... all this must have been shouting, buzzing, chirping.... then--streets empty as if swept by a plague. i remember i stumbled over something disgustingly soft, yielding yet motionless. i bent down--a corpse. it was lying flat, the legs apart. the face.... i recognized the thick negro lips which even now seemed to sprinkle with laughter. his eyes, firmly screwed in, laughed into my face. one second.... i stepped over him and ran. i could no longer.... i had to have everything done as soon as possible, or else i felt i would break, i would break in two like an overloaded sail.... luckily it was not more than twenty steps away; i already saw the sign with the golden letters: "the bureau of guardians." at the door i stopped for a moment to gulp down as much air as i could and stepped in. inside, in the corridor stood an endless chain of numbers, holding small sheets of paper and heavy note-books. they moved slowly, advancing a step or two and stopping again. i began to be tossed about along the chain, my head was breaking to pieces; i pulled them by the sleeves, i implored them as a sick man implores to be given something that would even at the price of sharpest pain end everything, forever. a woman with a belt tightly clasped around her waist over the unif and with two distinctly protruding squatty hemispheres tossing about as if she had eyes on them, chuckled at me: "he has a belly-ache! show him to the room second door to the right!" everybody laughed, and because of that laughter something rose in my throat; i felt i should either scream or ... or.... suddenly from behind some one touched my elbow. i turned around. transparent wing-ears! but they were not pink as usual; they were purplish red; his adam's apple was tossing about as though ready to tear the covering.... quickly boring into me: "what are you here for?" i seized him. "quickly! please! quickly! ... into your office.... i must tell everything ... right away.... i am glad that you.... it may be terrible that it should be you to whom.... but it is well, it is well...." he too, knew _her_; this made it even more tormenting for me. but perhaps he too, would tremble when he should hear.... and we would both be killing.... and i would not be alone at that, my supreme second.... the door closed with a slam. i remember a piece of paper was caught beneath the door and it rustled on the floor when the door closed. and then a strange airless silence covered us as if a glass bell were put over us. if only he had uttered a single, most insignificant word, no matter what, i should have told him everything at once. but he was silent. so keyed up that i heard a noise in my ears, i said without looking at him: "i think i always hated her from the very beginning.... i struggled.... or, no, no, don't believe me; i could have but i did not want to save myself; i wanted to perish; this was dearer to me than anything else ... and even now, even this minute, when i know already everything.... do you know that i was summoned to the well-doer?" "yes, i do." "but what he told me! please realize that it was equivalent to ... it was as if some one should remove the floor from under you this minute, and you and all here on the desk, the papers, the ink ... the ink would splash out and cover everything with blots...." "what else? what further? hurry up, others are waiting!" then stumbling, muttering, i told him everything that is recorded in these pages.... about my real self, and about my hairy self, and about my hands ... yes ... exactly that was the beginning. and how i would not do my duty then, and how i lied to myself, and how she obtained false certificates for me, and how i grew worse and worse, every day, and about the long corridors underground, and there beyond the wall.... all this i threw out in formless pieces and lumps. i would stutter and fail to find words. the lips double-curved in a smile would prompt me with the word i needed and i would nod gratefully: "yes, yes!".... suddenly, what was it? he was talking for me and i only listened and nodded: "yes, yes," and then, "yes, exactly so, ... yes, yes...." i felt cold around my mouth as though it were wet with ether, and i asked with difficulty: "but how is it.... you could not learn anywhere...." he smiled a smile growing more and more curved; then: "but i see that you do want to conceal from me something. for example, you enumerated everything you saw beyond the wall but you failed to mention one thing. you deny it? but don't you remember that once, just in passing, just for a second you saw me there? yes, yes _me_!" silence. suddenly, like a flash of lightning, it became shamelessly clear to me: he--he too--. and all myself, my torment, all that i brought here, crushed by the burden, plucking up my last strength as if performing a great feat, all appeared to me only funny,--like the ancient anecdote about abraham and isaac; abraham all in a cold sweat, with the knife already raised over his son, over himself--and suddenly a voice from above: "never mind.... i was only joking." without taking my eyes from the smile which grew more and more curved, i put my hands on the edge of the desk and slowly, very slowly pushed myself with my chair away from him. then instantly gathering myself into my own hands, i dashed madly out, past loud voices, past steps and mouths.... i do not remember how i got into one of the public rest-rooms at a station of the underground railway. above, everything was perishing; the greatest civilization, the most rational in human history was crumbling,--but here, by some irony everything remained as before, beautiful. the walls shone; water murmured cosily and like the water,--the unseen, transparent music.... only think of it! all this is doomed; all this will be covered with grass, some day; only myths will remain.... i moaned aloud. at the same instant i felt someone gently patting my knee. it was from the left; it was my neighbor who occupied a seat on my left,--an enormous forehead, a bald parabola, yellow unintelligible lines of wrinkles on his forehead, those lines about me. "i understand you. i understand completely," he said. "yet you must calm yourself. you must. it will return. it will inevitably return. it is only important that everybody should learn of my discovery. you are the first to whom i talk about it. i have calculated that there is no _infinity_! no!" i looked at him wildly. "yes, yes, i tell you so. there is no infinity. if the universe is infinite, then the average density of matter must equal zero, but as it is not zero, we know, consequently the universe is finite; it is spherical in form and the square of its radius--r --is equal to the average density multiplied by.... the only thing left is to calculate the numerical coefficient and then.... do you realize what it means? it means that everything is final, everything is simple.... but you, my honored sir, you disturb me, you prevent my finishing my calculations by your yelling!" i do not know which shattered me more, his discovery, or his positiveness at that apocalyptic hour. i only then noticed that he had a notebook in his hands and a logarithmic dial. i understood then that even if everything was perishing it was my duty (before you, my unknown and beloved) to leave these records in a finished form. i asked him to give me some paper, and here in the rest-room to the accompaniment of the quiet music, transparent like water, i wrote down these last lines. i was about to put down a period as the ancients would put a cross over the caves into which they used to throw their dead, when all of a sudden my pencil trembled and fell from between my fingers.... "listen!" (i pulled my neighbor). "yes, listen, i say. there where your finite universe ends, what is there? what?" he had no time to answer. from above, down the steps, stamping.... record forty facts the bell i am certain daylight. it is clear. the barometer-- mm. it is possible that i, d- , really wrote these--pages? is it possible that i ever felt, or imagined i felt all this? the handwriting is mine. and what follows is all in my handwriting. fortunately only the handwriting. no more delirium, no absurd metaphors, no feelings,--only facts. for i am healthy, perfectly, absolutely healthy.... i am smiling; i cannot help smiling; a splinter has been taken out of my head and i feel so light, so empty! to be more exact, not empty, but there is nothing foreign, nothing that prevents me from smiling. (smiling is the normal state for a normal human being). the facts are as follows: that evening my neighbor who discovered the finiteness of the universe, and i, and all others who did not have a certificate showing that we had been operated on, all of us were taken to the nearest auditorium. (for some reason the number of the auditorium, , seemed familiar to me). there they tied us to the tables and performed the great operation. next day, i, d- , appeared before the well-doer and told him everything known to me about the enemies of happiness. why before it seemed hard for me to go, i cannot understand. the only explanation seems to be my illness,--my soul. the same evening, sitting at the same table with him, with the well-doer, i saw for the first time in my life the famous gas chamber. they brought in that woman. she was to testify in my presence. that woman remained stubbornly silent and smiling. i noticed that she had sharp and very white teeth which were very pretty. then she was brought under the bell. her face became very white and as her eyes were large and dark,--all was very pretty. when they began pumping the air from under the bell she threw her head back and half closed her eyes; her lips were pressed together. this reminded me of something. she looked at me, holding the arms of the chair firmly. she continued to look until her eyes closed. then she was taken out and brought to by means of electrodes and again put under the bell. the procedure was repeated three times, yet she did not utter a word. the others who were brought in with that woman, proved to be more honest; many of them began to speak after the first trial. tomorrow they will all ascend the steps to the machine of the well-doer. no postponement is possible for there still is chaos, groaning, cadavers, beasts in the western section, and to our regret there are still quantities of numbers who betrayed reason. but on the transverse avenue forty, we succeeded in establishing a temporary wall of high voltage waves. and i hope we win. more than that; i am certain we shall win. for reason must win. the end transcriber's note: many hyphenation inconsistencies have been regularized. punctuation misprints and misplaced quote marks have been silently corrected. minor spelling corrections and original page boundaries have been recorded in html comments. perchance to dream by richard stockham illustrated by kelly freas [transcriber note: this etext was produced from if worlds of science fiction may . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] [sidenote: _if you wish to escape, if you would go to faraway places, then go to sleep and dream. for sometimes that is the only way...._] all along the line of machines, the men's hands and arms worked like the legs of spiders spinning a web. they wound wire and hammered bolts, tied knots and welded pieces of steel and fitted gears. they did not look at each other or sing or whistle or talk or laugh. and then--he made a mistake. instantly he stepped back and a trouble shooter moved into his place. the trouble shooter's hands flew over the controls. the trouble shooter finished and the workman took his place. his arms moved ceaselessly again. he was a tall man, slim and wiry, his dress identical to that of the others--grey coveralls that fit like tights. suddenly a red light flashed in his eyes and he began to tremble. he took two steps backward. the trouble shooter moved into the empty space. the man stood for a moment, like a soldier at attention, turned and walked smartly toward the mouth of a corridor. the silence was like a motion picture with a dead sound track. there was only motion--and him walking down the line of machines where the hands reached out, working, working. in the corridor now, he looked straight ahead, marching. the walls glowed like water beneath a shallow sea. he raised his arm, felt the door strike and the heel of his hand; felt it swing open; saw the desk suspended from the ceiling by luminous, silver chains. a man with a massive, white-maned head and a pink, smiling face rose from behind the desk. his suit was like that of a general. "well, twenty-three." the superfather stared down at the dossier on his desk. "two mistakes in three months. too bad. just when you were on your way to the head of the machine room." "i don't know what's the matter with me," said twenty-three. "i'm afraid we'll have to drop you back to a less responsible position." "of course." the superfather looked up quickly. "you accept this? no depression? no threat of suicide?... you _are_ in bad shape." he handed a packet of cards to twenty-three. "put these in your dream machine tonight. go to your new job tomorrow." twenty-three stood motionless, staring over the other man's shoulder. the superfather sat down. "tell me about the dreams you have when you don't use the machine." twenty-three made a quick decision. he couldn't tell him he didn't use the standard dream cards anymore. and he certainly couldn't tell about the _other_ dream cards he'd been getting from the little man he'd met on the street. he'd simply answer the factual truth to the question that had been asked. "well," he said, as though he were confessing a crime. "i dream i'm walking in the city. it's dark. i feel like i've got to find something. i don't know what. but the feeling's very strong. all of a sudden i notice the city's empty. there're just buildings and streets and a faint glow of light. and it comes to me that everybody's dead and buried. then i know what i'm looking for. i've got to find something alive or i'll die too. so i start running around, in and out buildings, up and down streets. but there's nothing. i'm breathing so hard i think my heart's going to burst. finally i fall down. i feel myself beginning to die. i try to get up but i can't! i try to yell! i've got no voice! i'm so afraid, i can't stand it! then i wake up." the superfather frowned. "incredible. several other cases like yours have turned up in the last month. we're working on them. but yours is the worst yet. you had such high capabilities. your tests showed, when you first began to work, ten years ago, that you were capable of going to the head of your production line. but you're not doing it. also your normal dreams should correspond to the ones on the cards. and they don't.... are you using the standard cards every other night?" twenty-three lied. "yes." "and the nights you don't use them, you have a dream like the one you just told me." "that's right." "incredible." the superfather shook his head. "it just doesn't add up. as you know, you get the prescribed dreams every other night and that's supposed to condition your mind to dreaming those same dreams, by itself, on the nights you don't use the machine. the prescribed dreams merely show you the true way of life. and when you're on your own you're supposed to follow that way of life whether you're asleep or awake. that's what the dream machine is for. i'm sure you're aware of all this?" "yes," said twenty-three. "yes." "now we superfathers _never_ have to use the dream machines. we're so filled with the way of life they advocate and it's become such an integral part of us, we simply _are_ what our prescribed dreams are. and the more successful a person is in the city, the less he has to use the dream machine. now you have to use it every other night. that's entirely too much for a man of your potential. you realize this, of course. "oh i do," said twenty-three shaking his head sadly. "well now," said the superfather, "that means something's wrong. _very_ wrong." he rubbed his chin, thinking. "your prescribed dreams show you working faster and faster on the machines, going on month after month year after year, with one hundred percent accuracy. they show you happy in your work, driven by ambition on up to the end of your capabilities. they show you contented there to the end of your working life." he paused. "and you're _doing_ just the opposite ... i suppose your wife is--concerned?" twenty-three nodded. "after all, the marriage center assured her your index was right for her. _her_ sleep cards were coordinated with yours. the normal dreams of both of you, without the machine, should be identical.... yet you come up with this horror--running through the city, alone, falling, dying." twenty-three's mouth twitched. "well." the superfather stood. "if you can't adjust to normal, we'll simply have to send you to the pre-frontal lobotomy men. you wouldn't want that." "oh no!" "good!" the superfather held out another packet of cards. "use these _tomorrow_ night. it's a concentration pattern which should be dense enough to make you dream of being, well--perhaps even president, eh?" "yes." twenty-three hesitated. "well?" said the superfather. "i'd--like to ask a question." the superfather nodded. "what--what use," went on twenty-three, "is all this--work being put to--that we do--along the machine lines--every day? we don't, seem to really be _making_ anything. just working." the superfather's eyes narrowed. "you're kept busy. you get paid. you live. the city is here. that's all. that's enough." "yes, sir. thank you, sir." twenty-three turned abruptly, marched to the door and stepped into the empty, silent corridor. * * * * * twenty-three looked up at the glowing dome of the city that curved away to the horizon. he wondered if there really was a white ball beyond it sometimes and tiny dots of light, set in blue black. and at other times did a ball of fire flame up there, giving light and heat and life? and if there was this life and light up there, _why_ the great dome over the city? _why_ the factories and machine lines replacing it section after section, generation after generation? the slabs that the workers fused together this year and the next and the next, pushing back this life and light and heat. why not let it pour down into the city and warm all the people? why not go to the space out there and the depth and freedom? why this great shell that closed them away? for the sake of the superfathers maybe? and the superfathers-plus? for the sake of the ones, like himself maybe who worked and built? for the sake of them, so they wouldn't become dangerous maybe and tear the great wall down and rush out into whatever was beyond? why else? but it could be all a farce. they could all be working in the great dome because they didn't know what was beyond. who could know if they'd never been beyond? and so they were held under the domes with the buildings and the machines that carried them all around in the city; held with the plumbing and the theatres and all the intricate mechanisms that spoke to them and fed them, that washed them and poured thoughts into their minds, that healed them when they were sick and rested them when they were tired. the same as they were held with the great dome. held and shackeled with the replacing of parts that didn't need replacing; the making over and over again of the tiny and large pieces of the mechanisms and the taking of the old mechanisms and the melting of them or smashing of them to powder so that this dust or molten metal could be fashioned again and again into the same pieces that they had been for so many thousands of years. all this to keep them busy? all this to keep something outside that was supposed to be destructive because once it had been so five thousand years ago or ten or fifty? all this because that was the way it had been for as long as the hundreds and the thousands of years that history had been recorded? he walked on through the silence, dimly aware now of the people moving about him, of the automobiles rolling past, as though moved by some invisible force. he passed row upon row of movie theatres that called to him with invisible vibrations. he turned away. where was the little man? he stopped, moving only his eyes. after a moment, he saw the little man step out of a shop-front and stand waiting. twenty-three, a cigarette in his mouth, walked over and asked for a light. the little man touched a lighter to the cigarette, at the same time dropping a packet of cards into twenty-three's pocket. twenty-three moved on. he felt the pounding of his heart. if only his wife were asleep so he would not have to wait to look at these new cards. as he walked, his thoughts cried out against the silence. he glanced suspiciously from side to side. if only he could hear the sounds of the city. but except for human voices and music, the city had always been silent. the human voices spoke only words written by the superfathers, and the music came from records that had been composed by them--all this back when the city had first come into being. other than these sounds there could be only the quiet all around. no chugging motors or scraping footsteps. no crashing engines in the sky, or pounding of steel on stone. no shrieking of factory whistles or clanging steeple bells or honking automobile horns. none of this to pluck and pound at nerves, to suggest that this place was not the most soothing and gentle of all places to be in. there were no winds to swirl and moan away into the distance. the chirp of birds had long since been stilled, and so had the patter of rain and the crash of thunder. there must not be any of these sounds either to lure the imagination into some distance where danger and excitement might be waiting. now he was walking toward the door of his apartment house. it swung open. thirty seconds later he stopped before another door. it too swung open. his wife stood in the middle of the room, between two traveling bags. he moved slowly toward her and stopped just out of arm's reach. "what's this?" he gestured toward the bags. "where're you going?" she stared at him for a long moment, her face set. she was of his height and build and wore a suit the same light grey as his. their hair cuts were identical, their faces sharp featured and pale. they might have been brother and sister--or two brothers, or two sisters. "i'm going to the marriage center." "what for?" he had tried to inject surprise into his voice. but the tone was listless. "the superfather called about your dream." twenty-three turned away, lighted a cigarette. he should beg her to stay, should promise to change. but the silence was in him, like a sickness. "a terrible thing's happening to you. i don't want any part of it." she picked up the bags. "when you come to your senses, you know where to reach me.... _if_ i haven't already made another contract, i _might_ come back to you." she hesitated at the door. "there's one thing i don't understand. you haven't begged me to stay. you haven't broken down. you haven't threatened suicide." she paused. "it's standard procedure, you know. it might even make me decide to wait awhile." "i don't want you to stay," he said. he felt a shock of surprise. it was as though a voice had spoken from behind him. he watched the door shut between them. * * * * * dressed in his pajamas, he stood beside the metal tube, in which for so many years he had slept his regulation sleep and dreamed his regulation dreams. there was something of the finely made casket about this tube--the six foot length and three foot diameter; the lid along its top and the dull shine of the metal and the quiet of it, as though it were asleep and lying in wait for a tired body to bring it awake so that it could put the body to sleep and live in the dreams it would give to the sleeper. beside his own tube stood its twin, where his wife had also slept and dreamed through the years. leaning slightly forward, he felt the press of metal against his hip bones, felt the tube roll an inch with his weight. he rested one hand on the metal top, felt its warmth and smoothness, was aware of its cleanness, like that of a surgical instrument. now he glanced at the glistening black panel that stood two feet high at the tube's head; quickly checked its four illuminated dials and three gleaming arrows and at the same time raised his hand to drop the cards into the softly glowing slot at the panel's top. suddenly his hand stopped. he bent forward. what was this? a feeling of strangeness. vague. like sensing some subtle change in a picture that has hung for twenty years above the fireplace in one's home. he drew closer, squinting. the dials and meters seemed to be the same as they had yesterday and the day before and the year before. and yet? the dials. larger? by a fraction? and the tiny gleaming arrows of the meters. barely longer? and the marks on the dials and meters? one extra each, very faintly, like a piece of hair. he was very still for a long moment. then he moved around the foot of his own sleeping tube, pushed between the two and stood at the head of the other one. he checked its dials and meters. they were as they had been for many years. he stepped back to the panel of his own and pressed a button. as the glistening metal top rose, silently, he ran his hand around the yawning interior, felt the downy softness and the body-like warmth. then his hand touched a pliable metal plate. that should not be there. he stood back, remembering the workmen who had come into the house that morning for the routine checkup of the tubes. his wife had already left for work and he had just stepped through the door when they had met him in the corridor. they had gone on into the rooms and he had sensed vaguely that something was wrong. then he had put the feeling out of his mind and gone to his work. now suddenly, he turned to the illuminated four inch square panel above the door, read april , . the workmen had checked a day early. he frowned. either the superfather had ordered the machine changed, which was highly improbable, because every object in the city was standardized and any change would upset the established order, or the workmen were tied up with the man who had given him the different dream cards.... in any event he had to sleep in the tube that night and he definitely wanted to dream the dreams on the cards he had just gotten from the man on the corner. he dropped the cards into the slot at the top of the panel, climbed into the tube and pressed a button. the top closed over him, like a hand. he lay still, feeling the warm clasp wash over his body. there was darkness and silence and a cool motion of antiseptic air. he could try the first dream. if it wasn't right, he could shut it off and sleep without dreams. he pressed another button. silence. the sound of his regular breathing. then a sighing came into his mind, and a green haze. the sighing became a soft breeze; the green, tree-covered hills rolling off to the horizon. he relaxed, aware in a fading, sinking part of his consciousness that the machine worked as usual. he would dream and wait and hope.... and so the wind was breathing across the land from off a vast stretch of blue water, which broke along a sandy beach in foamy white breakers. the surf thundered all through his body. the wind brushed against him like a great, purring cat. he looked up at the blue sky and seemed to feel himself rising and sinking, both at the same time, up into its depths. as his sight touched the sun there was an explosion of brightness which blinded him. he turned away then to the rolling green sea of hills, saw the trees bending from the surge of wind and heard the rustling of leaves. and then a deep voice moved through his mind. "outside the city," it said, "all this exists. during the terrible burning of the earth back in the wars of its antiquity, the city was built as a place of life for those who yet lived. but those people were not aware that the earth would come alive again and they made the city so that no death could enter it from without and no life could escape from within. and they turned away from the earth and lived only with the city so that it became their universe--to all but a very few of us. we still held a faint awareness of what the earth had been--this passed down to us for many generations, in whisperings, by the wise ones of our people, back in the beginning of the city. and in those times, we had been in the city too long, for thousands of years. we knew that there must be freedom beyond the walls, if we could get through. but the walls were thick and high and without a flaw, making a sky over us. we worked for five hundred years on a machine to get us through the wall. now a few of us have succeeded and more will follow us to the freedom out here in the good land. there is room for everyone here, there are no boundaries and no ceilings and no walls anywhere. and you may join us some time in the near future, if you wish." twenty-three sighed in his sleep. now a great city faded into his mind. there were long, tree lined streets and buildings, some built in rising spirals, some in spreading squares, others in ovals, domes and curved half circles. the wind wandered among the buildings and the bursts of green. people, dressed in white, flowing robes or black tights, walked the streets. he could hear their footsteps on the stone or grassy walk, could hear the hum of vehicles rolling along the streets or flying through the air. they were long and streamlined or short and round, or they were curved like gondolas or squat like saucers. and they were moving at many speeds. yet there was order. and the air was sweet and clean. a black line of clouds was rising across the horizon. soon there would be lightning and thunder and cool rain. the deep voice touched him again. "this is the city that can be. a city of life, open to the sky and the earth, a city in which people can find and follow their own lives. after the wars, the cities were built to shut out the death of earth. but the earth has come to life again. and so can the cities." the silence came while the picture changed and twenty-three stirred, waiting. a figure grew in his mind, wavered, and became a woman. twenty-three saw the long body and the softness; saw the flowing hair and the smile as she watched him. he saw the gentleness in her face; saw a strength under the softness, like the storm that lies below the charged quiet of a summer evening. her lips moved. "paul. dream your dreams for _us_." the words seemed to fall on him. he trembled and cried out. and he felt a violent stirring in his body and a breaking away as though he had flung himself through the walls of a tomb. the picture blew away while the voice continued: "she is a woman, not a woman who half resembles a man." a pause. "when you wish to leave the city, ask for the final card. you are welcome." there was silence and darkness. twenty-three stirred. he opened his eyes. the glow from the city outside filtered into the room through the translucent walls. he lay motionless. paul. he was paul. not twenty-three. a man with a name. wonder came into him, and a sense of strength, and a willingness to remember without fear. his mind ran back to the first mistake, almost a year past. he remembered the horror of failure then and the terror at his being subjected to a mistake. he remembered the inference from the superfather that there might be a bad strain in his blood line. he remembered taking the dream cards that were to have set him straight, that were to have shown him working over the machines with super speed, moving up along the production line to its pinnacle and on up to the position of superfather and on up to superfather-plus and on up to the place of father of the city. but the cards had been sabotaged, so that from them into his mind had come the dreams of the trees and the oceans and the green earth spreading off to the horizon and the expanse of blue sky. and then the words had directed him to the little man who had given him the cards on the street corner. they had known him, the words had said, through what was called telepathetic screening, for ones suitable to leave the city. he was one of those chosen, because he, like a few others, had been unable to adjust completely to the demands of the city. he was one of those in whom a rebellious nature had been passed down from generation to generation, by attitudes and acts of his ancestors, by a word spoken here and one there, by an intangible reaching out toward the sky and the green growing things and the need to understand who and what he was. but in him now this feeling was weak and close to death and would die in him if it were not brought out into life of the earth. now the memories receded; he lay motionless, listening to his breathing and his heartbeat, feeling his body press against the softness that held him. * * * * * suddenly a shaft of light fell on him through the transparent square. opening his eyes, he saw his wife's face staring down at him. she moved her hand. the lid of the tube raised. he lay watching her, feeling naked and, for a moment, helpless. "i talked for a long while with your superfather," she said. "i feel better. he told me you'd promised to take the prescribed dreams tonight." twenty-three turned his face away from her. she began to undress. "i'm going out for a walk." he stepped from the machine. she watched him dress, her look a mixture of curiosity and fright. when he left it was as though he were leaving an empty room and she watched him as though he were not quite human. the glow of the city was all around him as he walked toward the corner where the little man stood. the telepathic advertisers reached out from the places of entertainment, pulling at him. the voices enveloped him for a moment so that he almost turned back to them. but then he saw, in his mind, his arms working over the machines, saw them make a wrong motion that smashed a gear, saw the flashing red light and the heavy, expressionless face of the superfather. he was aware that his memory would be erased and the skies, and the ocean, and the green hills. his name would be gone. paul would die. and the city would be his tomb. quickly he turned down a side street, saw the small figure leaning against the corner of the building. walking rapidly toward him, as though he were being chased, he saw the lean, ruddy face smile and the deep, blue eyes look at him; heard the voice gently say: "welcome, paul." "the last card," said twenty-three. the little man handed it to him, quickly. "good luck. turn the dials one extra point on the control panel. our men have made the machine ready. it's time now." twenty-three thrust the card into the inner pocket of his jacket. so that _was_ it. they _had_ changed the machine. "one extra point," he repeated, glancing up and down the street. "and remember," said the little man. "destroy all the cards you've used before. they were designed particularly for you. if you don't make it across to us, the superfathers will use the cards against you." twenty-three whirled around. the little man had gone. twenty-three suddenly felt weak. my god! the other cards! left in the machine! if his wife--! he stood very still for a long moment, then he ran! the door to his apartment swung open. the room beyond was empty. a light shown faintly. he stood for a moment, listening. silence. he stepped to the bedroom. the top of his wife's sleeping tube was closed. he could see her face through the transparent square, could hear her quiet breathing. in one quick, silent motion, he stepped to the side of his own tube, pulling the last card from his pocket, and dropped it into the glowing slot at the top of the black control panel. then he turned the dials to the extra point. several minutes later he pressed the button at the bottom of the control panel. the top opened. at the same moment, he heard a step behind him. he whirled around. the superfather stood in the doorway. at his back hovered the dark bulks of two other men. twenty-three felt his muscles lock. he saw the superfather's dead smile and then his wife stepping down to the floor and hurrying to the side of the superfather. "those pictures," she said, shuddering. "they were so--strange." the superfather held his eyes on twenty-three but spoke to the woman. "thank god you were strong. it was commendable of you to call us." "i don't know what made me look at his dreams," she cried. "maybe it was when i asked him if he'd taken the prescribed dreams and he didn't answer.... anyway, i tested his machine. it was insane!" "dreams made by some twisted mind," the superfather said. "remember. they've no real existence. nothing lives or moves outside the city. there were old myths but they've been dead for countless generations." he paused. "where _are_ the pictures?" "i burned them." "good." he motioned to the men behind him. they came forward and stood on each side of twenty-three. "twenty-three," said the superfather, "we may have to erase your memories and your present individuality." he cleared his throat. "our records show that some two thousand people have disappeared in the last five years. your case has much to do with it.... where'd you get the new cards?" twenty-three was silent. the superfather pulled out a pack of cards. "before we leave this room, you'll be a different man. if you tell us,"--he waggled the cards in his right hand--"this'll be your new life. you'll have dreams of outdoing every man on the machine lines and fix your body so you'll have the capacity to do it. you _will_ do it. you'll become a superfather. you'll burn to excel them. you'll push on up, become a superfather-plus. you'll work with ideas, ways of increasing efficiency, pushing the workmen faster and faster. and you'll find ways of conditioning them to meet the greater and greater demands for speed. the city and people'll be at your fingertips. there'll be rooms of marble and gold for you. soft carpets and buttons to push that'll give you any desire instantly. you'll _have_ everything and _be_ everything!" he paused and took a deep breath. "all this'll be yours if you'll tell us where you got the cards, without forcing us to probe your mind with the electric-scalpel...." with an effort, twenty-three raised his eyes to the superfather's face. "and if i don't tell you?" "moving a lever back and forth twice a minute hour after hour, year after year. living in a bare cubicle. no entertainment. no desires." he paused. "and no _memories_." twenty-three looked over the superfather's shoulder. the last card, he thought, is in the machine. escape from the city. they said that, from outside. i've got to know. no matter what they put in the machine, that card will show first. even if it's only for ten seconds or thirty or sixty, or however long--i'll know. "no," he said, "i won't tell you...." the woman gasped and hid her face. the superfather, scowling, made a motion. the two dark men took hold of twenty-three. they lifted him into the tube. the superfather dropped the second pack of cards into the panel and pressed the button. the top closed silently, like a mouth. twenty-three's eyes closed; his body waited. * * * * * for an instant--blackness, and silence, like a moment after death, or a moment before birth. then twilight, or dusk, over an ocean. a sky of pale blue. a shine on the gently surging waters. a scent of clean air. sea spray. the cool sound of wind. then a man's voice, deep and flowing: "you know that there is no entrance or exit to this city. it is sealed off and will always be so. but the dream machine in which you lie has been changed by our agents inside the city. the last card you dropped into it is different from the others. these changes have been made so your dream will become a reality. your mind will be transmitted to us here among the hills and under the trees and by the ocean. and a new body, that we have grown, artificially, from all the elements, a body like the one you will leave behind, will be waiting for you. you need not be afraid." twenty-three felt himself moving forward. sight and hearing and sensation, without a body. time dropping away, like a forgetting of yesterday and tomorrow. there was only this moment. and then he felt the great humming surging power of the machine, like an ocean rushing him toward some unseen shore. he was caught in a gigantic tingling shock wave, and felt like a tremendously outsized torch, lit and flaming, and carried, still burning, in the green tide of sizzling electricity. the machine screamed. the machine chanted. the machine raved. dimly, he heard his wife cry, and above him felt the superfather scrabbling at the machine, the guards shouting. the machine shrieked and the great tidal wave of power jolted and flung him, white-hot kindling, through air, through sky, up and down! down upon a white shore, upon creaming sands, leaving him to quiet, to silence, to a pulling away of the tide.... now the scent of sea came strong into him. he heard the crash and roar of surf and the rustling of leaves and the sweep of wind. there were bird songs and the cries of animals. he saw the spread of rolling hills, saw a stream searching its way among great rocks and swelling and rolling full into a river and the river flowing and sinking into the sea. he felt the earth upon his feet and the touch of grass. breezes, heavy with green from the land eddied all around him and filled his body and washed him. he heard his name--saw people coming toward him saying, "welcome." he felt their arms, embracing him. he saw an open city growing among the hills. its buildings rolled away with the hills of the earth and became a part of the earth. the people took him by the hand and led him toward it speaking to him of no one hurting the other, and no one locked in a cell and all the walls of this world outside, tumbled down.... he was happy and repeated the name they spoke to him. "paul." * * * * * back in the city, in the room, the wife cried out. the superfather, too, seeing the strange look on the face of the man inside the chrysalis of the dream-maker, quickly touched the button that raised the lid. he bent down and took the wrist of the cold man lying there. "dead." "are you sure?" the superfather bent still further down and listened to the chest, and the wife came close, and they both stood there, half-bent. the mouth of the dead man was open and the superfather listened for any faint whisper of breath. the wife listened. they both looked at each other for a long time. because, from the open mouth of the cold man lying there, faintly, far away, and fading slowly into silence, they heard quiet laughter, and the sound of many birds and voices, and trees rustling in the late afternoon. then it was gone and no matter how the two people bending there waited and listened, it was like putting their ear to a white stone.