The Sleeper Awakes - H. G. Wells (best fiction novels to read .TXT) 📗

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 cloisonni 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 cloisonni 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!”