When the Sleeper Wakes, H. G. Wells [interesting novels in english .TXT] 📗

“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 suntanned 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 made 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 manly 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 School Trust. 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. The Surveyor-General mentioned the names of Pestalozzi and Froebel with profound respect, although he displayed no intimacy with their epoch-making works. 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 have abolished Cram,” he said, a phrase Graham was beginning to interpret as the abolition of all sustained work. The Surveyor-General became sentimental. “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 of the European Food Trust 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 times,” 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 old times, 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