Lord of the World | Page 6

partition,
going to right and left, noiselessly, except for the murmur of Esperanto talking that
sounded ceaselessly as they went. Through the clear, hardened glass of the public passage
showed a broad sleek black roadway, ribbed from side to side, and puckered in the centre,
significantly empty, but even as he stood there a note sounded far away from Old
Westminster, like the hum of a giant hive, rising as it came, and an instant later a
transparent thing shot past, flashing from every angle, and the note died to a hum again
and a silence as the great Government motor from the south whirled eastwards with the
mails. This was a privileged roadway; nothing but state-vehicles were allowed to use it,
and those at a speed not exceeding one hundred miles an hour.
Other noises were subdued in this city of rubber; the passenger-circles were a hundred
yards away, and the subterranean traffic lay too deep for anything but a vibration to make
itself felt. It was to remove this vibration, and silence the hum of the ordinary vehicles,
that the Government experts had been working for the last twenty years.
Once again before he moved there came a long cry from overhead, startlingly beautiful
and piercing, and, as he lifted his eyes from the glimpse of the steady river which alone
had refused to be transformed, he saw high above him against the heavy illuminated
clouds, a long slender object, glowing with soft light, slide northwards and vanish on
outstretched wings. That musical cry, he told himself, was the voice of one of the
European line of volors announcing its arrival in the capital of Great Britain.
"Until our Lord comes back," he thought to himself; and for an instant the old misery
stabbed at his heart. How difficult it was to hold the eyes focussed on that far horizon
when this world lay in the foreground so compelling in its splendour and its strength! Oh,
he had argued with Father Francis an hour ago that size was not the same as greatness,
and that an insistent external could not exclude a subtle internal; and he had believed
what he had then said; but the doubt yet remained till he silenced it by a fierce effort,
crying in his heart to the Poor Man of Nazareth to keep his heart as the heart of a little
child.
Then he set his lips, wondering how long Father Francis would bear the pressure, and
went down the steps.

BOOK I-THE ADVENT

CHAPTER I

I
Oliver Brand, the new member for Croydon (4), sat in his study, looking out of the
window over the top of his typewriter.
His house stood facing northwards at the extreme end of a spur of the Surrey Hills, now
cut and tunnelled out of all recognition; only to a Communist the view was an inspiriting
one. Immediately below the wide windows the embanked ground fell away rapidly for
perhaps a hundred feet, ending in a high wall, and beyond that the world and works of
men were triumphant as far as eye could see. Two vast tracks like streaked race-courses,
each not less than a quarter of a mile in width, and sunk twenty feet below the surface of
the ground, swept up to a meeting a mile ahead at the huge junction. Of those, that on his
left was the First Trunk road to Brighton, inscribed in capital letters in the Railroad Guide,
that to the right the Second Trunk to the Tunbridge and Hastings district. Each was
divided length-ways by a cement wall, on one side of which, on steel rails, ran the
electric trams, and on the other lay the motor-track itself again divided into three, on
which ran, first the Government coaches at a speed of one hundred and fifty miles an
hour, second the private motors at not more than sixty, third the cheap Government line
at thirty, with stations every five miles. This was further bordered by a road confined to
pedestrians, cyclists and ordinary cars on which no vehicle was allowed to move at more
than twelve miles an hour.
Beyond these great tracks lay an immense plain of house-roofs, with short towers here
and there marking public buildings, from the Caterham district on the left to Croydon in
front, all clear and bright in smokeless air; and far away to the west and north showed the
low suburban hills against the April sky.
There was surprisingly little sound, considering the pressure of the population; and, with
the exception of the buzz of the steel rails as a train fled north or south, and the
occasional sweet chord of the great motors as they neared or left the junction, there was
little to be heard in this