When the Sleeper Wakes Read online

  CHAPTER XVII. THREE DAYS

  Lincoln awaited Graham in an apartment beneath the flying stages. Heseemed curious to learn all that had happened, pleased to hear of theextraordinary delight and interest which Graham took in flying Grahamwas in a mood of enthusiasm. "I must learn to fly," he cried. "Imust master that. I pity all poor souls who have died without thisopportunity. The sweet swift air! It is the most wonderful experience inthe world."

  "You will find our new times full of wonderful experiences," saidLincoln. "I do not know what you will care to do now. We have music thatmay seem novel."

  "For the present," said Graham, "flying holds me. Let me learn more ofthat. Your aeronaut was saying there is some trades union objection toone'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 aeronauttomorrow."

  Graham expressed his wishes vividly and talked of his sensations for awhile. "And as for affairs," he asked abruptly. "How are things goingon?"

  Lincoln waved affairs aside. "Ostrog will tell you that tomorrow," hesaid. "Everything is settling down. The Revolution accomplishes itselfall over the world. Friction is inevitable here and there, of course;but your rule is assured. You may rest secure with things in Ostrog'shands."

  "Would it be possible for me to be made a sworn aeronaut, as you callit, forthwith--before I sleep?" said Graham, pacing. "Then I could be atit the very first thing tomorrow again.

  "It would be possible," said Lincoln thoughtfully. "Quite possible.Indeed, it shall be done." He laughed. "I came prepared to suggestamusements, but you have found one for yourself. I will telephone to theaeronautical offices from here and we will return to your apartments inthe Wind-Vane Control. By the time you have dined the aeronauts willbe able to come. You don't think that after you have dined, you mightprefer--?" He paused.

  "Yes," said Graham.

  "We had prepared a show of dancers--they have been brought from theCapri 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 thematter 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 someexpert--about your machinery. I'm keen. I want no distractions."

  "You have the world to choose from," said Lincoln; "whatever you want isyours."

  Asano appeared, and under the escort of a strong guard they returnedthrough the city streets to Graham's apartments. Far larger crowds hadassembled to witness his return than his departure had gathered, andthe shouts and cheering of these masses of people sometimes drownedLincoln's answers to the endless questions Graham's aerial journey hadsuggested. At first Graham had acknowledged the cheering and criesof the crowd by bows and gestures, but Lincoln warned him that such arecognition would be considered incorrect behaviour. Graham, alreadya little wearied by rhythmic civilities, ignored his subjects for theremainder of his public progress.

  Directly they arrived at his apartments Asano departed in searchof kinematographic renderings of machinery in motion, and Lincolndespatched Graham's commands for models of machines and small machinesto illustrate the various mechanical advances of the last two centuries.The little group of appliances for telegraphic communication attractedthe Master so strongly that his delightfully prepared dinner, served bya number of charmingly dexterous girls, waited for a space. The habitof smoking had almost ceased from the face of the earth, but when heexpressed a wish for that indulgence, inquiries were made and someexcellent cigars were discovered in Florida, and sent to him bypneumatic dispatch while the dinner was still in progress. Afterwardscame the aeronauts, and a feast of ingenious wonders in the hands of alatter-day engineer. For the time, at any rate, the neat dexterity ofcounting and numbering machines, building machines, spinning engines,patent doorways, explosive motors, grain and water elevators,slaughter-house machines and harvesting appliances, was more fascinatingto Graham than any bayadere. "We were savages," was his refrain, "wewere savages. We were in the stone age--compared with this.... And whatelse have you?"

  There came also practical psychologists with some very interestingdevelopments in the art of hypnotism. The names of Milne Bramwell,Fechner, Liebault, William James, Myers and Gurney, he found, borea value now that would have astonished their contemporaries. Severalpractical applications of psychology were now in general use; it hadlargely superseded drugs, antiseptics and anaesthetics in medicine; wasemployed by almost all who had any need of mental concentration. Areal enlargement of human faculty seemed to have been effected in thisdirection. The feats of "calculating boys," the wonders, as Graham hadbeen wont to regard them, of mesmerisers, were now within the range ofanyone who could afford the services of a skilled hypnotist. Long agothe old examination methods in education had been destroyed by theseexpedients. Instead of years of study, candidates had substituted a fewweeks of trances, and during the trances expert coaches had simplyto repeat all the points necessary for adequate answering, adding asuggestion of the post hypnotic recollection of these points. In processmathematics particularly, this aid had been of singular service, and itwas now invariably invoked by such players of chess and games of manualdexterity as were still to be found. In fact, all operations conductedunder finite rules, of a quasi-mechanical sort that is, were nowsystematically relieved from the wanderings of imagination and emotion,and brought to an unexampled pitch of accuracy. Little children ofthe labouring classes, so soon as they were of sufficient age tobe hypnotised, were thus converted into beautifully punctual andtrustworthy machine minders, and released forthwith from the long, longthoughts of youth. Aeronautical pupils, who gave way to giddiness,could be relieved from their imaginary terrors. In every street werehypnotists ready to print permanent memories upon the mind. If anyonedesired to remember a name, a series of numbers, a song or a speech, itcould 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 thusforgotten, amorous 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 transferencewere yet unsystematised. The psychologists illustrated their expositionswith some astounding experiments in mnemonics made through the agency ofa troupe of pale-faced children in blue.

  Graham, like most of the people of his former time, distrusted thehypnotist, or he might then and there have eased his mind of manypainful preoccupations. But in spite of Lincoln's assurances he held tothe old theory that to be hypnotised was in some way the surrender ofhis personality, the abdication of his will. At the banquet of wonderfulexperiences that was beginning, he wanted very keenly to remainabsolutely himself.

  The next day, and another day, and yet another day passed in suchinterests as these. Each day Graham spent many hours in the gloriousentertainment of flying. On the third day he soared across middleFrance, and within sight of the snow-clad Alps. These vigorous exercisesgave him restful sleep, and each day saw a great stride in his healthfrom the spiritless anaemia of his first awakening. And whenever he wasnot in the air, and awake, Lincoln was assiduous in the cause of hisamusement; all that was novel and curious in contemporary invention wasbrought to him, until at last his appetite for novelty was well-nighglutted. One might fill a dozen inconsecutive volumes with the strangethings they exhibited. Each afternoon he held his court for an houror so. He speedily found his interest in his contemporaries becomingpersonal and intimate. At first he had been alert chiefly forunfamiliarity and peculiarity; any foppishness in their dress, anydiscordance with his preconceptions of nobility in their status andmanners had jarred upon him, and it was remarkable to him how soon thatstrangeness and the faint hostility that arose from it, disappeared; hows
oon he came to appreciate the true perspective of his position, and seethe old Victorian days remote and quaint. He found himself particularlyamused by the red-haired daughter of the Manager of the EuropeanPiggeries. On the second day after dinner he made the acquaintance of alatter-day dancing girl, and found her an astonishing artist. And afterthat, more hypnotic wonders. On the third day Lincoln was moved tosuggest that the Master should repair to a Pleasure City, but thisGraham declined, nor would he accept the services of the hypnotists inhis aeronautical experiments. The link of locality held him to London;he found a perpetual wonder in topographical identifications that hewould have missed abroad. "Here--or a hundred feet below here," he couldsay, "I used to eat my midday cutlets during my London Universitydays. Underneath here was Waterloo and the perpetual hunt for confusingtrains. Often have I stood waiting down there, bag in hand, and staredup into the sky above the forest of signals, little thinking I shouldwalk some day a hundred yards in the air. And now in that very sky thatwas once a grey smoke canopy, I circle in an aeropile."

  During those three days Graham was so occupied with such distractionsthat the vast political movements in progress outside his quarters hadbut 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 littletrouble" soon to be settled in this city, "a slight disturbance" inthat. The song of the social revolt came to him no more; he neverlearned that it had been forbidden in the municipal limits; and all thegreat emotions of the crow's nest slumbered in his mind.

  But on the second and third of the three days he found himself, in spiteof his interest in the daughter of the Pig Manager, or it may be by,reason of the thoughts her conversation suggested, remembering the girlHelen Wotton, who had spoken to him so oddly at the Wind-Vane Keeper'sgathering. The impression she had made was a deep one, albeit theincessant surprise of novel circumstances had kept him from broodingupon it for a space. But now her memory was coming to its own. Hewondered what she had meant by those broken half-forgotten sentences;the picture of her eyes and the earnest passion of her face became morevivid as his mechanical interests faded. Her beauty came compellinglybetween him and certain immediate temptations of ignoble passion. But hedid not see her again until three full days were past.