The complete works, p.99
The Complete Works, page 99
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 millenium, 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.
She stood before him, beautiful, worshipful, and her enthusiasm and the greatness of their theme was like a great gulf fixed between them. To touch her, to
clasp her hand, was a thing beyond hope. "Then
I will rule indeed," he said slowly. "I will rule-"
He paused. "With you."
There came a tense silence, and then the beating
a clock striking the hour. She made him no answer.
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."
He stood for a moment regarding her.
"I knew," she said, and stopped.
He waited, but she said no more. 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 Company?"
"You are learning," said Ostrog with a touch of surprise. "Yes. It is chiefly the discontent with the Labour Company. 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 busy bodies 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 Crecy, 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.... 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
mall 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 came 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 you 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, "not realism."
"There are difficulties," said Ostrog, and thought.
"On the whole perhaps--
"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
