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The Sleeper Awakes Chapter 18 - Graham Remembers · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eighteen of The Sleeper Awakes recording by Mark Nelson.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. The Sleeper Awakes by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter eighteen. Graham remembers she came upon him at last
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  Speaker 1: in a little gallery that ran from the wind vane
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  Speaker 1: offices toward his state apartments. The gallery was long and narrow,
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  Speaker 1: with a series of recesses, each with an arched fenestration
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  Speaker 1: that looked upon a court of palms. He came upon
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  Speaker 1: her suddenly. In one of these recesses. She was seated.
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  Speaker 1: She turned her head at the sound of his footsteps,
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  Speaker 1: and started at the sight of him. Every touch of
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  Speaker 1: color vanished from her face, she wrote. Instantly made a
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  Speaker 1: step toward him, as if to address him, and hesitated.
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  Speaker 1: He stopped and stood still, expectant. Then he perceived that
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  Speaker 1: a nervous tumult silenced her. Perceived too that she must
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  Speaker 1: have sought speech with him to be waiting for him
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  Speaker 1: in this place. He felt a regal impulse to assist her.
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  Speaker 1: I have wanted to see you, he said, a few
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  Speaker 1: days ago. You wanted to tell me something, You wanted
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  Speaker 1: to tell me of the people. What was it you
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  Speaker 1: had to tell me? She looked at him with troubled eyes.
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  Speaker 1: You said the people were unhappy for a moment, she
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  Speaker 1: was silent. Still, it must have seemed strange to you,
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  Speaker 1: she said abruptly. It did, and yet it was an impulse. Well,
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  Speaker 1: that is all. She looked at him with a face
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  Speaker 1: of hesitation. She spoke with an effort. You forget, she said,
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  Speaker 1: drawing a deep breath. What the people do you mean?
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  Speaker 1: You forget the people? He looked interrogative. Yes, I know
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  Speaker 1: you are surprised, for you do not understand what you are.
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  Speaker 1: You do not know the things that are happening. Well,
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  Speaker 1: you do not understand, not clearly perhaps, But tell me.
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  Speaker 1: She turned to him with sudden resolution. It is so
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  Speaker 1: hard to explain. I have meant to, I have wanted to,
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  Speaker 1: and now I cannot. I am not ready with words.
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  Speaker 1: But about you, there is something. It is wonder your sleep,
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  Speaker 1: your awakening, These things are miracles to me at least,
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  Speaker 1: and to all the common people. You who have lived
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  Speaker 1: and suffered and died, you who were a common citizen,
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  Speaker 1: wake again, live again, to find yourself master almost of
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  Speaker 1: the world, master of the earth, he said, so they
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  Speaker 1: tell me, But try and imagine how little I know
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  Speaker 1: of it. Cities, trusts, the labor department, principalities, powers, dominions,
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  Speaker 1: the power and the glory. Yes, I have heard them shout.
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  Speaker 1: I know I am master King. If you wish with
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  Speaker 1: ostrog the boss, he paused. She turned upon him and
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  Speaker 1: surveyed his face with a curious scrutiny. Well, he smiled.
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  Speaker 1: To take the responsibility. That is what we have begun
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  Speaker 1: to fear for a moment. She said, no more, No,
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  Speaker 1: she said slowly, You will take the responsibility. You will
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  Speaker 1: take the responsibility. The people look to you, she spoke softly. Listen,
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  Speaker 1: for at least half the years of your sleep. In
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  Speaker 1: every generation, multitudes of people, in every generation, greater multitudes
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  Speaker 1: of people have prayed that you might awake. Prayed. Graham
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  Speaker 1: moved to speak, and did not. She hesitated, and a
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  Speaker 1: faint color crept back to her cheek. Do you know
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  Speaker 1: that you have been to myriads King Arthur Barbarossa, the
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  Speaker 1: king who had come in his own good time and
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  Speaker 1: put the world right for them? I suppose the imagination
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  Speaker 1: of the people. Have you not heard our proverb when
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  Speaker 1: the sleeper wakes While you lay insensible and motionless, there
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  Speaker 1: thousands came thousands every first of the month. You lay
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  Speaker 1: in state, with a white robe upon you, and the
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  Speaker 1: people filed by you. When I was a little girl,
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  Speaker 1: I saw you like that, with your face white and calm.
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  Speaker 1: She turned her face from him and looked steadfastly at
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  Speaker 1: the painted wall before her. Her voice fell. When I
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  Speaker 1: was a little girl, I used to look at your face.
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  Speaker 1: It seemed to me fixed and waiting, like the patience
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  Speaker 1: of God. That is what we thought of you, she said,
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  Speaker 1: That is how you seem to us. She turned her
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  Speaker 1: shining eyes to him. Her voice was clear and strong.
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  Speaker 1: In the city, in the earth, a myriad, myriad men
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  Speaker 1: and women are waiting to see what you will do,
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  Speaker 1: full of strange, incredible expectations. Yes, ostrog no one can
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  Speaker 1: take that responsibility. Graham looked at her in surprise, at
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  Speaker 1: her face lit with emotion. She seemed at first to
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  Speaker 1: have spoken with an effort, and to have fired herself
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  Speaker 1: by speaking. Do you think she said, that you who
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  Speaker 1: have lived that little life so far away in the past,
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  Speaker 1: you who have fallen into and risen out of this
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  Speaker 1: miracle of sleep? Do you think that the wonder and
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  Speaker 1: reverence and hope of half the world has gathered about
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  Speaker 1: you only that you may live another little life, that
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  Speaker 1: you may shift the responsibility to any other man. I
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  Speaker 1: know how great this kingship of mine is, he said, haltingly.
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  Speaker 1: I know how great it seemes. But is it real?
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  Speaker 1: It is incredible dream like? Is it real? Or is
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  Speaker 1: it only a great delusion? It is real, she said,
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  Speaker 1: if you dare, after all, like all kingship, my kingship
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  Speaker 1: is belief. It is an illusion in the minds of men,
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  Speaker 1: if you dare, she said. But countless men, she said,
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  Speaker 1: And while it is in their minds, they will obey.
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  Speaker 1: But I know nothing, That is what I had in mind.
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  Speaker 1: I know nothing. And these others, the counselors, ostrog They
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  Speaker 1: are wiser, cooler, They know so much every detail. And indeed,
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  Speaker 1: what are these miseries of which you speak? What am
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  Speaker 1: I to know? Do you mean? He stopped blankly. I
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  Speaker 1: am still hardly more than a girl, she said. But
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  Speaker 1: to me the world seems full of wretchedness. The world
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  Speaker 1: has altered since your day, altered very strangely. I have
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  Speaker 1: prayed that I might see you and tell you these things.
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  Speaker 1: The world has changed, as if a canker had seized
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  Speaker 1: it and robbed life of everything worth having. She turned
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  Speaker 1: a flushed face upon him, moving suddenly, your days were
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  Speaker 1: the days of freedom. Yes, I have thought, I have
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  Speaker 1: been made to think, for my life has not been happy.
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  Speaker 1: Men are no longer free, no greater, no better than
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  Speaker 1: the men of your time. That is not all. This
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  Speaker 1: city is a prison. Every city is now a prison.
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  Speaker 1: Mammon grips the key in his hand. Myriads, countless, myriads
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  Speaker 1: toil from the cradle to the grave. Is that right?
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  Speaker 1: Is that? To be forever? Yes, far worse than in
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  Speaker 1: your time. All about us, beneath us sorrow and pain,
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  Speaker 1: all the shallow delight of such life as you find
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  Speaker 1: about you, is separated by just a little from a
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  Speaker 1: life of wretchedness beyond any telling. Yes, the poor know it,
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  Speaker 1: they know they suffer, these countless multitudes who face death
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  Speaker 1: for you two nights. Since you owe your life to them, yes,
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  Speaker 1: said Graham slowly, Yes, I owe my life to them.
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  Speaker 1: You come, she said, from the days when this new
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  Speaker 1: tyranny of the cities was scarcely beginning. It is a tyranny,
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  Speaker 1: a tyranny. In your days, the feudal war lords had gone,
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  Speaker 1: and the new lordship of wealth had still to come.
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  Speaker 1: Half the men in the world still lived out upon
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  Speaker 1: the free country side. The cities had still to devour them.
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  Speaker 1: I have heard the stories out of the old books.
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  Speaker 1: There was nobility, common men led lives of love and faithfulness.
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  Speaker 1: Then they did a thousand things. And you you come
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  Speaker 1: from that time? It was not But never mind, how
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  Speaker 1: is it now? Gain and the pleasure cities? Or slavery, unthanked, unhonored, slavery, slavery,
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  Speaker 1: he said, slavery. You don't mean to say that human
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  Speaker 1: beings are chattels. Worse. That is what I want you
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  Speaker 1: to know, what I want you to see. I know
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  Speaker 1: you do not know. They will keep things from you.
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  Speaker 1: They will take you presently to a pleasure city. But
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  Speaker 1: you have noticed men and women and children in pale
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  Speaker 1: blue canvas, with thin, yellow faces and dull eyes everywhere,
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  Speaker 1: speaking a horrible dialect, coarse and weak. I have heard it.
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  Speaker 1: They are the slaves, your slaves. They are the slaves
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  Speaker 1: of the labor department. You own the labor department in
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  Speaker 1: some way, that is familiar. Ah, Now I remember I
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  Speaker 1: saw it when I was wandering about the city after
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  Speaker 1: the lights returned, great fronts of buildings colored pale blue.
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  Speaker 1: Do you really mean yes? How can I explain it
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  Speaker 1: to you? Of course the blue uniform struck you. Nearly
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  Speaker 1: a third of our people wear it. More assume it
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  Speaker 1: now every day this labor department has grown imperceptibly. What
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  Speaker 1: is this labor department? Asked Graham. In the old days,
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  Speaker 1: how did you manage with starving people? There was the workhouse,
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  Speaker 1: which the parishes maintained. Workhouse. Yes, there was something in
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  Speaker 1: our history lessons I remember now. The labor department ousted
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  Speaker 1: the workhouse. It grew partly out of something you perhaps
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  Speaker 1: may remember it an emotional religious organization called the Salvation
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  Speaker 1: Army that became a business company. In the first place,
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  Speaker 1: it was almost a charity to save people from workhouse rigors.
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  Speaker 1: There had been a great agitation against the workhouse. Now
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  Speaker 1: I come to think of it, it was one of
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  Speaker 1: the earliest properties your trustees acquired. They bought the Salvation
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  Speaker 1: Army and reconstructed it as this. The idea in the
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  Speaker 1: first place was to organize the labor of starving homeless people. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: nowadays there are no workhouses, no refuges and charities, nothing
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  Speaker 1: but that department. Its offices are everywhere. That blue is
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  Speaker 1: its color. And any man, woman or child who comes
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  Speaker 1: to be hungry and weary, and with neither home, nor
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  Speaker 1: friend nor resort, must go to the department in the end,
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  Speaker 1: or seek some way of death. The euthanasey is beyond
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  Speaker 1: their means. For the poor there is no easy death,
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  Speaker 1: And at any hour in the day or night there
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  Speaker 1: is food, shelter and a blue uniform for all comers.
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  Speaker 1: That is the first condition of the Department's in corporation.
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  Speaker 1: And in return for a day's shelter, the Department extracts
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  Speaker 1: a day's work, and then returns the visitor's proper clothing
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  Speaker 1: and sends him or her out again. Yes, perhaps that
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  Speaker 1: does not seem so terrible to you. In your time
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  Speaker 1: men starved in your streets. That was bad. But they
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  Speaker 1: dyed men, these people in blue. The proverb runs blue canvas.
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  Speaker 1: Once and ever the department trades in their labor, and
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  Speaker 1: it has taken care to assure itself of the supply.
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  Speaker 1: People come to it starving and helpless. They eat and
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  Speaker 1: sleep for a night and day, then work for a day,
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  Speaker 1: and at the end of the day they go out again.
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  Speaker 1: If they have worked well, they have a penny or so,
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  Speaker 1: enough for a theater or a cheap dancing place, or
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  Speaker 1: a kinematograph story, or a dinner or a bet. They
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  Speaker 1: wander about after that is spent. Begging is prevented by
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  Speaker 1: the police of the ways. Besides, no one gives the
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  Speaker 1: They come back again the next day or the day after,
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  Speaker 1: brought back by the same incapacity that brought them first.
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  Speaker 1: At last, their proper clothing wears out, or their rags
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  Speaker 1: get so shabby that they are ashamed. Then they must
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  Speaker 1: work for months to get fresh. If they want fresh.
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  Speaker 1: A great number of children are born under the Department's care.
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  Speaker 1: The mother owes them a month. Thereafter the children they
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  Speaker 1: cherish and educate until they are fourteen, and they pay
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  Speaker 1: two year service. You may be sure these children are
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  Speaker 1: educated for the Blue Canvas. And so it is. The
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  Speaker 1: department works, and none are destitute in the city. None
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  Speaker 1: they are either in blue canvas or in prison. We
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  Speaker 1: have abolished destitution. It is engraved on the Department's checks.
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  Speaker 1: If they will not most people will work at that pitch,
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  Speaker 1: and the department has powers. There are stages of unpleasantness
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  Speaker 1: in the work, stoppage of food, and a man or
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  Speaker 1: woman who has refused to work once is known by
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  Speaker 1: a thumb marking system in the Department's offices all over
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  Speaker 1: the world. Besides, who can leave the city poor to
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  Speaker 1: go to Paris cost two lions, And for insubordination there
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  Speaker 1: are the prisons, dark and miserable out of sight below.
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  Speaker 1: There are prisons now for many things, and a third
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  Speaker 1: of the people wear this blue canvas, more than a
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  Speaker 1: third toilers living without pride or delight or hope, with
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  Speaker 1: the stories of the pleasure cities ringing in their ears,
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  Speaker 1: mocking their shameful lives, their privations and hardships too poor
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  Speaker 1: even for the euthanasy, the rich man's refuge from life,
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  Speaker 1: dumb crippled millions, countless millions all the world about, ignorant
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  Speaker 1: of anything but limitations and unsatisfied desires. They are born,
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  Speaker 1: they are thwarted, and they die. That is the state
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  Speaker 1: to which we have come. For a space. Graham sat downcast,
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  Speaker 1: But there has been a revolution, He said, all these
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  Speaker 1: things will be changed ostrog That is our hope. That
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  Speaker 1: is the hope of the world. But Ostrog will not
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  Speaker 1: do it. He is a politician. To him, it seems
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  Speaker 1: things must be like this. He does not mind. He
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  Speaker 1: takes it for granted. All the rich, all the influential,
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  Speaker 1: all who are happy, come at last to take these
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  Speaker 1: miseries for granted. They use the people in their politics.
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  Speaker 1: They live in ease by their days gradation. But you, you,
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  Speaker 1: who come from a happier age. It is to you
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  Speaker 1: the people look to you. He looked at her face.
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  Speaker 1: Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. He felt a
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  Speaker 1: rush of emotion. For a moment, he forgot this city,
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  Speaker 1: he forgot the race, and all those vague, remote voices
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  Speaker 1: in the immediate humanity of her beauty. But what am
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  Speaker 1: I to do? He said, with his eyes upon her rule?
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  Speaker 1: She answered, bending towards him and speaking in a low tone.
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  Speaker 1: Rule the world as it has never been ruled, for
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  Speaker 1: the good and happiness of men. For you might rule it.
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  Speaker 1: You could rule it. The people are stirring all over
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  Speaker 1: the world. The people are stirring. It wants but a word,
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  Speaker 1: but a word from you, to bring them all altogether.
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  Speaker 1: Even the middle sort of people are restless, unhappy. They
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  Speaker 1: are not telling you the things that are happening. The
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  Speaker 1: people will not go back to their drudgery. They refuse
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  Speaker 1: to be disarmed. Ostrog has awakened something greater than he
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  Speaker 1: dreamt of. He has awakened hopes. His heart was beating fast.
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  Speaker 1: He tried to seem judicial, to weigh considerations. They they
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  Speaker 1: only want their leader, she said, and then you could
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  Speaker 1: do what you would. The world is yours. He sat
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  Speaker 1: no longer regarding her. Presently he spoke, the old dreams
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  Speaker 1: and the thing I have dreamt, liberty, happiness? Are they dreams?
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  Speaker 1: Could one man one man? His voice sank and ceased.
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  Speaker 1: Not one man, but all men. Give them only a
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  Speaker 1: leader to speak the desire of their hearts. He shook
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  Speaker 1: his head, and for a time there was silence. He
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  Speaker 1: looked up suddenly, and their eyes met. I have not
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  Speaker 1: your faith, he said, I have not your youth. I
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  Speaker 1: am here with power that mocks me. No let me speak.
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  Speaker 1: I want to do not right. I have not the
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  Speaker 1: strength for that, but something rather right than wrong. It
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  Speaker 1: will bring no millennium. But I am resolved now that
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  Speaker 1: I will rule. What you have said has awakened me.
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  Speaker 1: You are right, Ostrog must know his place, and I
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  Speaker 1: will learn one thing. I promise you this labor slavery
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  Speaker 1: shall end, and will you rule? Yes, provided there is
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  Speaker 1: one thing, yes, that you will help me. I a girl. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: does it not occur to you? I am absolutely alone,
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  Speaker 1: she started, and for an instant her eyes had pity.
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  Speaker 1: Need you ask whether I will help you? She said.
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  Speaker 1: There came a tense silence, and then the beating of
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  Speaker 1: a clock striking the hour. Graham rose even now, he said,
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  Speaker 1: Ostrog will be waiting. He hesitated, facing her. When I
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  Speaker 1: have asked him certain questions. There is much I do
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  Speaker 1: not know. It may be that I will go to
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  Speaker 1: sea with my own eyes the things of which you
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  Speaker 1: have spoken, and when I return I shall know of
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  Speaker 1: your going and coming. I will wait for you here again.
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  Speaker 1: They regarded one another steadfastly, questioningly, and then he turned
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  Speaker 1: from her towards the wind vane office. End of chapter
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  Speaker 1: eighteen