The people of the ruins

by Edward Shanks

2

The way by which the servant led Jeremy grew darker and darker until he began to believe that he was being conducted into the recesses of a huge and gloomy castle. He had once or twice visited the Treasury, where one of his friends had been employed—nearly two hundred years ago!—on some minute section of the country’s business. He could not, however, recognize the corridors through which they passed; and he supposed that the inside of the building had been wholly remodeled. All sensation of fear left him as he walked after his guide. His case was, at all events, to be settled now, and the matter was out of his hands. He felt a complete unconcern when they halted outside a massive door on which the servant rapped sharply three times. There was a pause; and then the servant, apparently hearing some response which was inaudible to Jeremy, threw open the door, held it, and respectfully motioned him in.

Jeremy was startled for a moment, after the darkness of the passages, to find himself in a full blaze of morning light. While he blinked awkwardly, the door closed behind him; and it was a minute or two before he could clearly distinguish the person with whom he had been left alone. At last he became aware of a great, high-backed armchair of unpolished wood, which was placed near to the window and held the old man whom he had seen from a distance, indistinctly, the night before at dinner. This figure wore a dark robe of some thick cloth, which was drawn in loosely by a cord girdle at the waist and resembled a dressing-gown. His thick, wrinkled neck rising out of the many-folded collar supported a square, heavy head, which by its shape proclaimed power, as the face by every line proclaimed both power and age. The nose was large, hooked and fleshy, the lips thick but firm, the beard long and white; and under the heavy, raised lids the brown eyes were almost youthful, and shone with a surprising look of energy and domination. Jeremy stared without moving; and, as his eyes met those of the old man, a queer sensation invaded his spirit. He felt that here, in the owner of these eyes, this unmistakably Jewish countenance, this inert and bulky form, he had discovered a mind like his own, a mind with which he could exchange ideas, as he could never hope to do with Roger Vaile or Father Henry Dean.

The silence continued for a full minute after Jeremy had got back the use of his sight. At last the old man said in a thick, soft voice:

“Are you the young man of whom they tell me this peculiar story?” And before Jeremy could reply, he added: “Come over here and let me look at you.”

Jeremy advanced, as if in a dream, and stood by the arm of the chair. The Speaker rose with one slow but powerful movement, took him by the shoulder and drew him close against the window. He was nearly a head taller than Jeremy, but he bent only his neck, not his shoulders, to stare keenly into the younger man’s face. A feeling of hope and contentment rose in Jeremy’s heart; and he endured this inspection for several moments in silence and with a steady countenance. At last the old man let his hand fall, turned away and breathed, more inwardly, almost wistfully: “If only it were true!”

“It is true,” Jeremy said. There was neither expostulation nor argument in his voice.

The Speaker wheeled round on him with a movement astonishingly swift for his years and his bulk. “You will find me harder to persuade than the others,” he said warningly.

“I know.” And Jeremy bore the gaze of frowning enquiry with a curiously confident smile.

The Speaker’s reply was uttered in a much gentler tone. “Come and sit down by me,” he murmured, “and tell me your story.”

Jeremy took a deep breath and began. He told his story in much more detail than he had given to Roger, dwelling on the riots and their causes, and on Trehanoc’s experiment and his own interpretation of its effect. He did not spare particulars, both of the strikes, as well as he remembered them, and of the course of scientific investigation which had landed him in this position; and as he proceeded he warmed to the tale, and gave it as he would have done to a man of his own sort in his own time. The brown eyes continued to regard him with an unflickering expression of interest. When he paused and looked for some comment, some sign of belief or disbelief, the thick voice murmured only:

“I understand. Go on.”

Jeremy described his awakening, the terrors and doubts that had succeeded it and his eventual dismay when he was able at last to climb into the world again. He explained how he had gone back with Roger to the crevice, how they had seen the rat run out, and how he had found the vacuum-tube. When he had finished, the Speaker was silent for a moment or two. Then he rose and walked slowly to a desk, which stood in the further corner of the room. He returned with an ivory tablet and a pencil which he gave into Jeremy’s hands.

“Mark on that,” he said, “the River Thames and the position of as many of the great railway stations of London as you can remember.”

Jeremy suffered a momentary bewilderment, and stared at the intent but expressionless face of the old man, with an exclamation on his lips. But instantly he understood, and, as he did so, the map of old London rose clearly before his eyes. He drew the line of the river and contrived to mark, with reasonable accuracy, on each side of it as many of the stations as he could think of. He forgot London Bridge; and he explained that there had been a station called Cannon Street, which he had, for some reason, never had occasion to use, and that he did not know quite where it had stood.

The Speaker nodded inscrutably, took back the tablet and studied it. “Do you remember London Bridge?” he asked. Jeremy bit his lip and owned that he did. “Then can you say,” the Speaker went on, “whether it was north of the river or south?”

Jeremy discovered, with a wild anger at his own idiocy, that he could not remember. It would be absurd, horribly absurd, if his credit were to be at the mercy of so unaccountable a freak of the brain. He thought at random, until suddenly there appeared before his mind a picture of the bridge, covered with ant-like crowds of people, walking in the early morning from the station beyond.

“It was on the south,” he cried eagerly. “I remember because—”

The Speaker held up a wrinkled but steady hand. “Your story is true,” he said slowly. “I know very well, as you know, that nothing can prove it to be true; but nevertheless I believe it. Do you know why I believe it?”

“I think so,” Jeremy began with hesitation. He felt that keen gaze closely upon him.

“It would be strange if you knew in any other way what only three or four men in the whole country have cared to learn. You could have learnt it, no doubt, from maps or books. Such exist, though none now look at them. Yet how should you have guessed what question I would ask you? Do you know that of those stations only two remain? I know where the rest were, because I have studied the railways, wishing to restore them. But now they are all gone and most of them even before my time. They were soon gone and forgotten. When I was a boy I walked among the ruins of Victoria, just before it was cleared by my grandfather to extend his gardens. Did you go there ever when the trains were running in and out?”

The question aroused in Jeremy vivid memories of departures for holidays in Sussex, of the return to France after leave.... He replied haltingly, at random, troubled by recollections.

The same trouble was in the old man’s eyes as he listened. “It is true,” he said, under his breath, almost to himself. “You are an older man than I am.” A long pause followed. Jeremy was the first to return from abstraction, and he was able, while the Speaker mused, to study that aged, powerful face, to read again a determination in the eyes and jaw, that might have been fanaticism had it not been corrected by the evidence of long and subduing experience in the lines round the mouth and eyes.

At last the Speaker broke the silence. “And in that life,” he said, “you were a scientist?” He pronounced the word with a sort of lingering reverence, as though it had meant, perhaps, magician or oracle.

Jeremy tried to explain what his learning was, and what his position had been.

“But do you know how to make things?”

“I know how to make some things,” Jeremy replied cautiously. Indeed, during the social disorders of his earlier existence he had considered whether there was not any useful trade to which he might turn his hand, and he had decided that he might without difficulty qualify as a plumber. The art of fixing washers on taps was no mystery to him; and he judged that in a week or two he might learn how to wipe a joint.

The Speaker regarded him with a growing interest, tempered by a caution like his own. It seemed as though it took him some time to decide upon his next remark. At last he said in a low and careful voice:

“Do you know anything about guns?”

Jeremy started and answered loudly and cheerfully: “Guns? Why, I was in the artillery!”

The effect of this reply on the Speaker was remarkable. For a moment it straightened his back, smoothed the wrinkles from his face, and threw an even more vivid light into his eyes. When he spoke again, he had recovered his self-possession.

“You were in the artillery?” he asked. “Do you mean in the great war against the Germans?”

“Yes—the great war that was over just before the Troubles began.”

“Of course ... of course.... I had not realized——” It seemed to Jeremy that, though the old man had regained control of himself, this discovery had filled him with an inexplicable vivacity and excitement. He pressed Jeremy eagerly for an account of his military experience. When the simple tale was done, he said impressively:

“If you wish me to be your friend, say not one word of this to any man you meet. Do you understand? There is to be no talk of guns. If you disobey me, I can have you put in a madhouse.”

Jeremy lifted his head in momentary anger at the threat. But there was an earnestness of feeling in the old man’s face which silenced him. This, he still queerly felt, was his like, his brother, marooned with him in a strange age. He could not understand, but instinctively he acquiesced.

“I promise,” he said.

“I will tell you more another day,” the Speaker assured him. And then, with an abrupt transition, he went on, “Do you understand these times?”

“Father Henry Dean——” Jeremy began.

“Ah, that old man!” the Speaker cried impatiently. “He lives in the past. And was it not his nephew, Roger Vaile, that brought you here?” Jeremy made a gesture of assent. “Like all his kind, he lives in the present. What must they not have told you between them? Understand, young man, that you are my man, that you must listen to none, take advice from none, obey none but me!” He had risen from his chair and was parading his great body about the room, as though he had been galvanized by excitement into an unnatural youth. His soft, thick voice had become hoarse and raucous: his heavy eyelids seemed lightened and transfigured by the blazing of his eyes.

Jeremy, straight from a century in which display of the passions was deprecated, shrank from this exhibition while he sought to understand it.

“If I can help you——” he murmured feebly.

“You can help me,” the Speaker said, “but you shall learn how another day. You shall understand how it is that you seem to have been sent by Heaven just at this moment. But now, tell me what do you think of these times?”

“I don’t know,” Jeremy began uncertainly. “I know so little. You seem to have lost almost all that we had gained——”

“And yet?” the Speaker interrupted harshly.

Jeremy sought to order in his mind the confused and contradictory thoughts. “And yet perhaps you have lost much that is better gone. This world seems to me simpler, more peaceful, safer.... We used to feel that we were living on the edge of a precipice—every man by himself, and all men together, lived in anxiety....”

“And you think that now we are happy?” the old man asked with a certain irony, pausing close to Jeremy’s chair, so that he towered over him. “Perhaps you are right—perhaps you are right.... But if we are it is the happiness of a race of fools. We, too, are living on the edge of a precipice as terrible as any you ever knew. Do you believe that any people can come down one step from the apex and fall no further?” He contemplated Jeremy with eyes suddenly grown cold and calculating. “You were not, I think, one of the great men, one of the rulers of your time. You were one of the little people.” He turned away and resumed his agitated pacing up and down, speaking as though to himself. “And yet what does it matter? The smallest creature of those days might be a great man to-day.”

A profound and dreadful silence fell upon the room. Jeremy, feeling himself plunged again in a nightmare, straightened himself in his chair and waited events. The Speaker struggled with his agitation, striding up and down the room. Gradually his step grew more tranquil and his gestures less violent; his eyes ceased to blaze, the lids drooped over them, the lines round his mouth softened and lost their look of cruel purpose.

“I am an old man,” he murmured indistinctly. His voice was again thick and soft, the voice of an elderly Jew, begging for help but determined, even in extremity, not to betray himself. “I am an old man and I have no son. These people, the people of my time, do not understand me. When my father died, I promised myself that I would raise this country again to what it was, but year after year they have defeated me with their carelessness, their indolence.... If you can help me, if you understand guns ... if you can help me, I shall be grateful, I shall not forget you.”

Jeremy, perplexed almost out of his wits, muttered an inarticulate reply.

“You must be my guest and my companion,” the Speaker went on. “I will give orders for a room near my own apartments to be prepared for you, and you shall eat at my table. And you must learn. You must listen, listen, listen always and never speak. I will teach you myself; but you must learn from every man that comes near you. Can you keep your tongue still?”

“I suppose so,” said Jeremy, a little wearily. He was beginning to think that this old man was possibly mad and certainly as incomprehensible as the rest. He was oppressed by these hints and mysteries and enigmatic injunctions. He thought that the Speaker was absurdly, unreasonably, melodramatically, making a scene.

A change of expression flickered over the Speaker’s face. “I have no son,” he breathed, as though to himself, but with eyes, in which there was a look of cunning, fixed on Jeremy. And then he said aloud, “Well, then, you are my friend and you shall be well treated here. Now you must come with me and I will present you to my wife ... and ... my daughter.”