The complete works, p.90
The Complete Works, page 90
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
crossway. 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 pallid 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
facade 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 shifting
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 more than half the world. As a result of that you are practically King. 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 opportunity." 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--quarreled. 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. Tonight, in five swift
hours. Suddenly we struck everywhere. The windvane
people, the Labour Company and its millions,
burst the bonds. We got the pull of the aeropiles."
He paused. "Yes," said Graham, guessing that aeropile meant flying machine.
"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 tonight 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 windwheels 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
