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| author | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-01-25 03:55:37 -0800 |
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| committer | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-01-25 03:55:37 -0800 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e5a51b --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #69410 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69410) diff --git a/old/69410-0.txt b/old/69410-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index e4decf0..0000000 --- a/old/69410-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,14129 +0,0 @@ -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69410 *** - -CHRISTINA ALBERTA’S FATHER - - - - -Mr. Wells has also written the following novels: - - - THE WHEELS OF CHANCE. - LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM. - KIPPS. - TONO-BUNGAY. - ANN VERONICA. - MR. POLLY. - THE NEW MACHIAVELLI. - MARRIAGE. - THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS. - THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN. - BEALBY. - THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT. - MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH. - THE SOUL OF A BISHOP. - JOAN AND PETER. - THE UNDYING FIRE. - THE SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART. - -The following Fantastic and Imaginative Romances: - - THE TIME MACHINE. - THE WONDERFUL VISIT. - THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU. - THE INVISIBLE MAN. - THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. - THE SLEEPER AWAKES. - THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON. - THE SEA LADY. - THE FOOD OF THE GODS. - IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET. - THE WAR IN THE AIR. - THE WORLD SET FREE. - MEN LIKE GODS. - THE DREAM. - -Numerous Short Stories collected under the following Titles: - - THE STOLEN BACILLUS. - THE PLATTNER STORY. - TALES OF SPACE AND TIME. - TWELVE STORIES AND A DREAM. - -The same Short Stories will also be found in three volumes: - - TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED. - TALES OF WONDER. - TALES OF LIFE AND ADVENTURE. - -A Series of Books on Social, Religious, and Political Questions: - - ANTICIPATIONS (1900). - A MODERN UTOPIA. - THE FUTURE IN AMERICA. - NEW WORLDS FOR OLD. - FIRST AND LAST THINGS. - GOD THE INVISIBLE KING. - THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY. - RUSSIA IN THE SHADOWS. - THE SALVAGING OF CIVILIZATION. - WASHINGTON AND THE RIDDLE OF PEACE. - A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD. - THE STORY OF A GREAT SCHOOLMASTER. - A YEAR OF PROPHESYING. - -And Two Little Books about Children’s Play, called: - - FLOOR GAMES AND LITTLE WARS. - - -_A uniform Atlantic Edition of Mr. Wells’ works is in course of -publication._ - - - - - CHRISTINA ALBERTA’S - FATHER - - BY - H. G. WELLS - - New York - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - 1925 - _All rights reserved_ - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1925, - BY H. G. WELLS. - - Set up and electrotyped. - Published September, 1925. - Reprinted September 22, 1925. - Reprinted November, 1925. - - - PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY - THE CORNWALL PRESS - - - - -_CONTENTS_ - - - BOOK THE FIRST - - _The Coming of Sargon, King of Kings_ - - PAGE - - CHAPTER THE FIRST - - THE EARLY LIFE OF MR. PREEMBY 11 - - - CHAPTER THE SECOND - - CHRISTINA ALBERTA 28 - - - CHAPTER THE THIRD - - IN LONSDALE MEWS 50 - - - CHAPTER THE FOURTH - - THE PETUNIA BOARDING HOUSE 85 - - - CHAPTER THE FIFTH - - THE SCALES FALL FROM MR. PREEMBY’S EYES 114 - - - CHAPTER THE SIXTH - - CHRISTINA ALBERTA CONSULTS A WISE MAN 132 - - - BOOK THE SECOND - - _The World Rejects Sargon, King of Kings_ - - - CHAPTER THE FIRST - - INCOGNITO 163 - - - CHAPTER THE SECOND - - THE CALLING OF THE DISCIPLES 195 - - - CHAPTER THE THIRD - - THE JOURNEY OF SARGON UNDERNEATH THE WORLD 218 - - - BOOK THE THIRD - - _The Resurrection of Sargon, King of Kings_ - - - CHAPTER THE FIRST - - CHRISTINA ALBERTA IN SEARCH OF A FATHER 245 - - - CHAPTER THE SECOND - - HOW BOBBY STOLE A LUNATIC 300 - - - CHAPTER THE THIRD - - THE LAST PHASE 343 - - - CHAPTER THE FOURTH - - MAY AT UDIMORE 369 - - - - - -CHRISTINA ALBERTA’S FATHER - - - - - _BOOK THE FIRST_ - - THE COMING OF SARGON, KING - OF KINGS - - - - -CHAPTER THE FIRST - -_The Early Life of Mr. Preemby_ - - -§ 1 - -This is the story of a certain Mr. Preemby, a retired laundryman -and widower, who abandoned his active interest in the Limpid Stream -Laundry, in the parish of Saint Simon Unawares, near Woodford -Wells, upon the death of his wife in the year of grace 1920. Some -very remarkable experiences came to him. The story is essentially a -contemporary story: it is a story of London in the age of Sir Arthur -Conan Doyle, broadcasting, and the first Labour peers. The historical -element in it is insignificant and partly erroneous, and the future, -though implicitly present, is substantially ignored. - -Since washing in London, like the milk trade and baking and the linen -drapery and various other branches of commerce, is something rather -specialized and hereditary and a little difficult towards outsiders, -it is necessary to explain that Mr. Preemby was not a laundryman born. -He had little of the spirit and go of a true London laundryman. He -married into laundrying. He met a Miss Hossett at Sheringham in 1899, -an heiress and a young lady of great decision of character; he wooed -and won her and married her, as you will be told, almost without -realizing what he was doing. The Hossetts are big people in the laundry -world, and the Limpid Stream concern, which presently fell into the -capable hands of Mrs. Preemby, was only one of a series of related -and sympathetic businesses in the north, north-east and south-west -districts of London. - -Mr. Preemby, as Miss Hossett’s family came to recognize quite frankly -and explicitly at a very early stage, derived from a less practical -strain than his wife. His father had been an artist of considerable -charm and unpunctuality, a photographic artist, who resided at -Sheringham and made what were called in the eighteen-eighties, -“gem” photographs of the summer visitors to that place. In the -eighteen-eighties he was a well-known Sheringham figure, dark and -handsome and sometimes a little unkempt, wearing a brown velvet jacket -and a large grey soft felt hat. He would fall into conversation with -the visitors upon the beach, and a certain air of distinction about -him would bring a sufficient proportion to his studio to maintain him. -His wife, our Mr. Preemby’s mother, was a patient, underdeveloped -personality, the daughter of a farmer near Diss. When presently Mr. -Preemby senior passed out of his son’s life--he became romantically -entangled with a small variety entertainment in the summer of 1887 and -vanished away with it in the autumn with as little fuss as possible, -never to return to Sheringham--Mrs. Preemby senior became the working -partner in a small lodging-house and died in a year or so’s time, -leaving her furniture, her interest in the lodging-house and her only -son to her cousin and partner, Mrs. Witcherly. - -Young Albert Edward Preemby was then a good-looking, slender youth of -sixteen, with his father’s curliness and his mother’s fair hair and -eyes of horizon blue, dreamy and indisposed for regular employment. -Even as a child he had been given to reverie; at school he would -sit with sums or book neglected before him, looking beyond them at -unknown things; his early experiences in business were disappointing -by reason of this abstraction. After a number of unsuccessful attempts -to exploit his gifts at some favourable point in the complex machinery -of our civilization, he came to rest for several years in the office -of a house-agent and coal-merchant in Norwich to whom his mother was -distantly related. - -Some ancient, remembered, sentimental tie helped Albert Edward to this -appointment and shielded any imperfections in his performance from too -urgent a criticism. He did much better at it than anyone could have -expected. The calling of a house-agent differs from most other callings -in the fact that the necessary driving energy is supplied entirely -by the clientele, and there was something about the letting of the -larger houses that touched the dormant imagination of young Preemby. -He revealed a natural gift for attractive description and was duly -entrusted with the work of collecting particulars from prospective -lessors. He had a quite useful hopefulness. And even the coal proved -unexpectedly interesting so soon as he found that none of it had to be -carried about by him. He could never believe that all the golden scales -one finds in it were pyrites. He cherished a secret dream of a great -commercial enterprise to work cinder heaps for residual gold. He told -no one of this project, he took no steps to realize it, but it warmed -his daily routines with its promise of release and wealth. And when -things were slack in the office in the early afternoon and he was left -in charge, he would go and sit on the coal counter and pick out the -coal samples for the little trays and turn them over and over and view -them from various angles and weigh them in his hand and lapse into the -most splendid visions. - -And if inquirers after houses came in, he would receive them with a -manner almost regal. - -In Norwich he became a member of the Y.M.C.A., but he was interested -in its literary rather than its religious side, and he attended any -political debates available. He never spoke in these debates, but he -sat at the back reflecting that politicians are, after all, no more -than puppets in the hands of the silent rich men who sit behind the -scenes. It was in Norwich, too, that he was able to buy his first -tailor-made suit, of a most becoming grey. When he went to stay with -Mrs. Witcherly at Sheringham for his summer holiday of a fortnight, she -was delighted by the improvement in his appearance and much impressed -by the active hopefulness that had replaced his former lethargy. Upon -the sea front in the afternoon in his grey suit, to anyone who did not -know about him, he might have been almost any sort of prosperous summer -visitor. - -It seems a yesterday, and yet it seems ages ago, that our plump and -short Mr. Preemby was that small blonde young man twirling his stick -and glancing furtively but desirously at the lady bathers in their vast -petticoated bathing-dresses and oilskin caps, as he strolled along -the Sheringham front. That was in the days when motor cars were still -rather a joke, a smell, and a noise and wayside repairs, and flying was -understood to be impossible. Queen Victoria had had her Diamond Jubilee -and nobody thought Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, would ever survive -to be King. The War in South Africa was being arranged for that summer, -to last six months and employ forty thousand men. And it was on the -third day of his grey suit holiday at Sheringham that Mr. Preemby was -run into by his future wife, Miss Hossett, riding on a bicycle, and -thrown against and almost run over by her friend Miss Meeta Pinkey. - -Because, incredible as it may seem to the modern reader, people did -succeed in those distant nineties, before the coming of the more -suitable automobile, in knocking down and running over other people -with the sluggish apparatus, bicycles, horse-drawn vehicles and so -forth, then available. - - -§ 2 - -Miss Meeta Pinkey was an emotional blonde girl, and she fell off her -machine gracefully and naturally into Mr. Preemby’s arms as he was -hurled against her. It would seem to have been the original intention -of Destiny to have made this the beginning of a permanent relationship, -but in this matter Destiny had reckoned without Miss Hossett. Miss -Meeta Pinkey was as ripe for love just then as dry gunpowder is for -a bang, and she was already deeply in love with Mr. Preemby before -she had been replaced securely on her feet. She stood flushed and -round-eyed and breathless, and Mr. Preemby looked quite manly and -handsome after picking up her bicycle with an air of rescue. - -Miss Hossett, after butting against Mr. Preemby, had swerved, -dismounted and stood now prepared for a dispute. The collision -had further loosened the already loose handlebar of the entirely -untrustworthy hired machine she had been riding. It was this looseness -had caused the accident. Her attention seemed divided equally between -this and the possible grievance of Mr. Preemby. “I rang my bell,” she -said. - -She was flushed and erect. She was a round-faced girl with a long, thin -neck, a good bright complexion, glasses on her thin nose and a resolute -thin-lipped mouth. - -“I did all I could to avoid you,” she said. - -“Awkward of me,” said Mr. Preemby disarmingly. “I was lost in a -day-dream.” - -“You aren’t hurt--?” asked Meeta. - -“Startled,” said Mr. Preemby, “especially where the wheel got me. This -place is full of corners.” - -“I’d’ve been over,” said Meeta, “if you hadn’t caught me.” - -Miss Hossett was reassured about any possible conflict with Mr. -Preemby. Evidently he was going to be quite nice about the accident. -“This handlebar was as loose as could be,” she said. “Look at it! You -can twist it about like on a swivel. They ought to be punished for -letting out such machines. Some of these days one of ’em’ll get let in -for Damages. Then they’ll be a bit more careful. Scandalous I call it.” - -“You can’t ride it at all now,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“No,” she agreed. “Have to take it back to them.” - -It seemed only right and proper for Mr. Preemby to wheel the machine -for her back through the town to the hiring place, where Miss Hossett -reproved the hirer, refused to pay anything, and secured the return -of her deposit in a few well-chosen words. Miss Pinkey paid the hire -of her bicycle for a First Hour. It seemed natural after that for -the little party of three to keep together. They kept together with -a faint sense of adventure, and Mr. Preemby behaved as nothing less -than a normal lodger at Miss Witcherly’s establishment and summer -visitor to the seaside. His new-found friends were Londoners, and he -referred himself to Norwich and the management of house property. He -was quite amusing about Sheringham. He said it was “a dear little -backward-forward place,” that it was a real treat to come to for a -breath of sea air. - -“I don’t like regular smart places,” said Mr. Preemby. “I’m too -absent-minded.” - - -§ 3 - -In after years Mr. Preemby would often try to recall the various stages -that led to his marrying Miss Hossett, but there was always a vague -sense that he missed out something, though he knew not what it was nor -where it ought to have come in. - -At first things did not look in the least like his marrying Miss -Hossett. Indeed they did not look like his marrying anyone, and if -the word marriage had been whispered in his ears as the possible -consequence of this encounter he would have been terrified. He -perceived that he was acceptable company to these girls, but it seemed -to him that it was Meeta who formed the link between them and himself. -A fourth person presently joined their company who answered to the -name of Wilfred, and it seemed to Mr. Preemby that the air of mutual -proprietorship between Wilfred and Miss Hossett was unchallengeable. - -The young people wandered in a little party along the sea front until -the sea front came to an end, and there they found a sheltered and -comparatively secluded niche in the brow of the low cliffs and gave -themselves up to the delights of Spooning; and it was Meeta who Spooned -with Mr. Preemby that afternoon and Wilfred who Spooned with Miss -Hossett. Across the gulf of a quarter of a century the memory of Mr. -Preemby was still certain that this was so. - -The fashions of life change from age to age. Knowledge has spread -and refinement increased; and a generation of young people, more -restrained, more sophisticated, or more decisive than their -predecessors has taken possession of the world. This Spooning was an -artless, clumsy dalliance in great favour in those vanished days, a -dalliance that was kept within the bounds of strict decorum--if ever -that became necessary--by cries of “Starp it” or “Starpit, I tell you,” -on the part of the lady. They embraced, they kissed, and put their -silly young heads together and so whiled away the long waiting-time -before love had its way with them. The summer resorts of England were -littered with young people indulging in these poor, silly, undignified -anticipations of love. Mr. Preemby, it became manifest, was a natural -born Spooner. - -“It’s lovely,” said Miss Meeta, “the way you squeeze me.” - -Mr. Preemby squeezed some more and ventured to kiss a hot ear. - -“Go On with you!” said Miss Meeta, in a voice thick with delight. “That -little moustache of yours--it _tickles_.” - -Flushed with encouragement and preoccupied with ideas for further -enterprises, Mr. Preemby did not remark that the affairs of Miss -Hossett and her Wilfred followed a more troubled and less satisfactory -course. Wilfred was not a type that appealed to Mr. Preemby. In -spite of the fact that he was much less neat in his dress than Mr. -Preemby--he had grey flannel trousers, an old fancy vest, a tweed -Norfolk jacket, and low brown shoes with light-coloured socks--he -impressed Mr. Preemby as being consciously a social superior. He was -young--the youngest of the party--and yet dominant. He had large red -hands and big feet, much untidy hair, ill-regulated features that -might later be handsome, and a hoarse guffaw. He viewed Mr. Preemby as -though he knew all about him and thought the worse of him for it, but -did not intend to make any positive trouble for the present about his -existence. He was, Meeta whispered, a medical student at Cambridge, and -his father was a Harley Street physician who had been knighted. He did -not Spoon with any abandonment; he seemed weary of Spooning, he had -perhaps been Spooning for some days, and his conversation with Miss -Hossett went on in subdued contentious tones. He sat a little apart -from her amidst the sand and coarse bluish grass, and her face was -flushed. What they said was inaudible to our intertwined couple. - -“Chris and Wilfred don’t get on together as we do,” Meeta said in a low -voice. “They’re sillies.” - -“He’s like all the men,” said Meeta, “’Sept one perhaps. Want -everything they do and give nothing. - -“He won’t even say they’re engaged,” she said. “Dodged seeing her -father.” - -There was a pause for reflection and then a renewal of endearments. - -“I’m gorne on you,” said Meeta. “I _am_ fair gorne on you. You’ve got -the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. China blue they are.” - - -§ 4 - -So detachedly it was that Mr. Preemby and his future wife passed their -first afternoon together. He remembered it, as he remembered most -actual things, indistinctly, in a setting of hot sand and sunshine, -blue-grey grass and a line of poppies nodding against an intense blue -sky. And then across these opening memories Chris Hossett seemed to -leap at him with flushed cheeks and glowing eyes, magnified by her -glasses. - -Two or three days intervened before that passionate pounce. Mr. -Preemby, in his character of an incidental visitor to Sheringham, was -under no obligation to produce a social background, but Miss Pinkey -introduced him to two large, kindly aunts of a sedentary sort, as a -young man related to Miss Hossett who had saved her from a nasty fall -off a bicycle, and he and she both went to tea with Chris Hossett’s -“people.” Old Mr. Hossett was a very ailing man, excessively fat and -irritable; he had never been the same, whatever the same was, after his -only son had died; and Mrs. Hossett, an energetic lean threat of what -her daughter might become, had to wait on Mr. Hossett hand and foot. -She had spectacles instead of Chris’s glasses, her eyes were careworn -and her complexion was leaden and her neck lean. There were also a -married cousin and his wife, a Mr. and Mrs. Widgery, who seemed to be -under the impression that Mr. Preemby was a relation of Miss Pinkey’s. -Mr. Widgery had a long pock-marked face and the dullest brown eyes -Mr. Preemby had ever seen. There was nothing difficult to eat at tea -and Mr. Preemby got on very well listening to an explanation of the -precariousness of Mr. Hossett’s existence, due to heart trouble, from -Mrs. Hossett and of just how unsatisfactory and distressing it was to -come away and leave the laundry in the hands of a manager. Wilfred did -not come to the tea. He had been asked but he did not come. - -The next day Mr. Preemby met Wilfred on the sea front watching the -girls bathing from a bathing machine. Afterwards all four went for a -walk in search of privacy, and it became evident that Miss Hossett -declined to Spoon further with Wilfred. It was evident that there was -profound trouble between Chris and Wilfred. They scarcely spoke as they -returned towards the town; and before the sea front was reached Wilfred -said “So long” quite suddenly, and turned away and vanished up a road -running inland. Thereupon Wilfred passed out of Mr. Preemby’s world; -Mr. Preemby never knew what became of him and never wanted to know; -and the next day he became aware for the first time of Miss Hossett’s -magnified eyes, regarding him with an interest and a challenge that -made him feel almost uncomfortable. - -Miss Hossett became a serious obstacle to the Spooning of Meeta. The -quartette was now reduced to a trio; and Mr. Preemby found himself -the apex, so to speak, of a triangle, the eternal triangle in an -exceptionally acute form. Whenever Meeta was on the one hand, Chris was -on the other. She called him “Our Teddy”; she pressed upon him; she -went so far as to stroke his hair. Meeta’s endearments faded to some -extent in the presence of this competition, but she made no explicit -objection. - -Deep in the nature of the human male is a fount of polygamous pride. -Mr. Preemby in these novel circumstances was proud and disingenuous. -He believed himself “carrying on” with two girls at once, and it -seemed to him to be a very splendid situation. But indeed it was not -so much a case of carrying on as of being carried off. In the American -world of emotional imaginations there is an ideal called the Cave Man, -much cherished by quiet, unaggressive women because its realization -would involve so little trouble on their own part. The Cave Man is -supposed to seize and grip and carry off and adore. In this simple -love story of Mr. Preemby’s Miss Hossett played the Cave Man’s rôle, -up to the carrying-off point at any rate. On the first occasion of -their being alone together she drew him to her and kissed him on the -mouth with a warmth and an intensity and thoroughness that astonished -and overwhelmed Mr. Preemby. It was quite different from Meeta’s coy -achievements, or anything he had ever met around Norwich. He had not -known that there was such kissing. - -And in the warm summer twilight Mr. Preemby found himself being carried -off to a lonely piece of beach to Spoon with Chris Hossett. The light -of a rising full moon mingled with the afterglow; pebbles shone -out like gems and stars. He carried himself bravely but he was all -atremble. He knew that this time the enterprises would not come from -him. And the Spooning of Chris Hossett was no more like the Spooning of -Meeta than a furnace glow is like the light of the moon. - -“I love you,” said Chris as though that justified anything, and as they -stumbled homeward at an hour that Mr. Preemby called “feefully late,” -she said: “You’re going to marry me aren’t you? You’ve _got_ to marry -me now. And then we can _really_ make love. ’Soften as we like.” - -“I can’t rightly say that I’m exactly in a position to keep a wife just -at present,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“I don’t see that there’s any necessity for me to ask a man to keep -me,” said Miss Hossett. “You’re a wonder, Teddy, anyhow, and I’m going -to marry you. It’s got to be, and there you are.” - -“But _’ow_ can I marry you?” asked Mr. Preemby almost peevishly--for he -was really very tired. - -“One would think to hear you that no one had ever married before,” said -Chris Hossett. “And besides--after this--you _must_.” - -“Mind you I’ve got to go back to Norwich next Tuesday,” said Mr. -Preemby. - -“You ought to have thought of that before,” she said. - -“But I’ll lose my situation.” - -“Naturally father will find you something better. We aren’t poor -people, Teddy. There’s no need to be scared about it....” - -In such terms was Chris Hossett wooed and won by Mr. Preemby. He was -scared, dreadfully scared, but also he was tremendously roused. It -impressed him as being a wildly romantic affair and very terrifying and -a little hard on Meeta Pinkey. But he was bustled along too fast to -think very much about Meeta Pinkey. He was introduced over again to the -Hossett parents next day as their daughter’s affianced husband, and in -secret she gave him three golden sovereigns to buy her an engagement -ring as a surprise. Mrs. Hossett behaved at first as though she -approved of Mr. Preemby and disapproved of the marriage, and then after -what was clearly a stormy scene upstairs with her daughter, she behaved -as though she approved highly of the marriage and thought Mr. Preemby a -very objectionable person. Mr. Hossett would not speak to Mr. Preemby -directly, but he spoke of him to his wife and to imaginary auditors in -Mr. Preemby’s presence as a “scoundrel” who had “got hold” of his girl. -Yet he, too, seemed to regard the marriage as desirable, and no one -made any reply to his _obiter dicta_. - -It was all very puzzling and exalting to Mr. Preemby. He did little -except what he was told to do. He was carried over his marriage as -a man might be carried over a weir. He left any explanation to Mrs. -Witcherly of what was happening for some more favourable occasion. He -went off on Tuesday with his little valise as though he was going back -to Norwich. He wrote a simple letter of regret to the house-agent and -coal-merchant. Private affairs, he said, of an urgent nature prevented -his return to his duties. Mrs. and Miss Hossett went up to London with -him. They all took rooms at a temperance hotel in Bloomsbury, and Mr. -Preemby was married by special licence at St. Martin’s by Trafalgar -Square. - -Then he went down to the Limpid Stream Laundry to live with his -parents-in-law and master the duties of assistant manager, canvasser -and publicity agent. Mr. Hossett never spoke to him and sometimes -talked rather unpleasantly about him when he was in the room, making -accusations that were better ignored, but Mrs. Hossett gradually became -cordial again. And presently Mr. Hossett had a heart seizure and died, -and in the course of a few months Mr. Preemby found himself a father. -When he was first confronted with his daughter and, as it proved, his -only child, he thought her an extremely ugly little red object. He had -never seen a baby at so early a stage before. She had a lot of very -fine moist dark hair which subsequently gave place to a later crop; she -had large indeterminate features and remarkably large feet and hands. -Mr. Preemby had an absurd impression that he had seen her somewhere -before and hadn’t liked her. Then in a day or so she became a quite -ordinary pink baby and wonder gave place to affection. - -She was christened Christina Alberta after her mother and Mr. Preemby. - - -§ 5 - -In time all these experiences mellowed in Mr. Preemby’s memory into a -vague, glorious, romantic, adventurous past. He continued to be rather -dreamy and distraught, but on the whole he made a dutiful, faithful -husband, and he got on very well with his masterful and capable wife. - -She was, he had discovered on his marriage, three years his senior, -and she continued to be in every respect his senior to the day of her -death. But she treated him with proprietary affection; she chose all -his clothes for him, she cultivated his manners and bearing and upheld -him against all other people. She dressed him rather more like a golf -champion than he would have done himself if he had had any say in the -matter. She would not let him have a bicycle for many years, she was -a little exacting about his ways of keeping the laundry accounts, she -fixed his pocket-money at ten shillings a week, and she was disposed -to restrict his opportunities for conversation with feminine members -of the laundry staff. But he made no marked protest against these -slight deviations from the customary obedience of a wife. A tendency -to plumpness manifested itself, and he grew considerable quantities of -blonde moustache without apparent effort. - -Their home was an agreeable one, the more so after Mrs. Hossett had -followed her husband to his resting-place, under a marble crucifix -with a dove and olive branch in relievo at the intersection of the -arms, at Woodford Wells. Mr. Preemby became a great reader, reading -not only romantic novels--he had a great distaste for “realism” in any -form--but ancient history, astronomy, astrology and mystical works. -He became deeply interested in the problem of the pyramids and in the -probable history of the lost continent of Atlantis. Mental science -also attracted him, and the possibility of increasing will-power -very greatly. He would sometimes practise will-power before the -looking-glass in his bedroom when Mrs. Preemby was not about. At -nights he would sometimes will himself to sleep instead of going to -sleep in the usual fashion. He gave a considerable amount of attention -to prophecy and eschatology. He developed views of his own about the -Day of Judgment that might have led to a breach with the Established -Church if Mrs. Preemby had not thought that such a breach would react -unfavourably upon the Laundry. As time went on he accumulated a library -of upwards of a thousand volumes and a very considerable vocabulary. - -His wife viewed these intellectual preoccupations with friendly -sympathy, at times even with pride, but she took little part in them -herself. The Laundry was good enough for her. She loved the Laundry -more and more; loved its piled clean and starched shirts and collars -and its folded and stacked sheets, loved the creak of its machinery and -the suddy bustle of the washing room. She loved to have it all going -on, orderly and right; to feel everything going through the tubs and -washers and wringers, sure and safe; nothing astray, nothing missing -at the end. When she walked about the place voices were hushed and -scrubbing became respectfully assiduous. And she liked making things -pay. - -On Sunday afternoons and on days when the laundry had no need of his -services, Mr. Preemby took long walks. In fine weather he would walk -into Epping Forest or to Ongar or even into the rustic peace of the -Roothings, but in dull weather he would go Londonward. After a while -the trams were extended as far as the present terminus at Woodford and -it became possible to ride very pleasantly right into the heart of -London by way of Seven Sisters Road and Camden Town or, with a little -bit of extra walking, by the Lea Bridge Road and the Angel and Holborn. - -The greatness and multitudinous activities of London stirred slumbering -strands of Mr. Preemby’s imagination. He would go in and lunch at an -Aërated Bread Shop on a scone and butter, with a cup of cocoa and -perhaps a jam-puff, and he would spend hours looking into shop windows -and sometimes even making small purchases. He loved Charing Cross Road -with its book-shops, Tottenham Court Road, Holborn, Clerkenwell, and -the Whitechapel Road, but Piccadilly and Bond Street and Regent Street -seemed costly and lacking in true intellectual interest, and he felt -his baggy tweed knickerbockers and cap a little out of tune in these -smart places. Sometimes he would go to the British Museum and look -very hard at objects connected with the pyramids. Great public events -always drew him to London. If there was a great murder or a great fire -or a Royal Wedding or a Royal Funeral, Mr. Preemby would be sure to be -looking at it where the crowd was thickest, often with a neat packet -of provisions, a sandwich, an orange, or so forth, that Mrs. Preemby -had provided. But he never saw illuminations and fireworks because Mrs. -Preemby liked to have him at home when the day’s work was over. He -enjoyed the Great War of 1914-18 gravely and profoundly. Once he passed -a man who he thought afterwards was almost certainly a German spy. The -thought thrilled him for days. He had given him a good look anyhow. He -attended air raids in plenty, and he saw the Potters Bar Zeppelin shot -down. He was a good four years too old for compulsory military service -when the time came, and Mrs. Preemby would not let him be a special -constable because she thought he might catch cold. - -Mr. Preemby’s work in the counting house was not very onerous, but -he also gave thought and attention to the extension of the business -outside. He invented several attractive circulars. His experience -as a house-agent had trained him to note the existence of large -comfortable-looking houses that might otherwise have escaped his -observation and to ascertain whether they were occupied; he would then -find out whether the Limpid Stream Laundry got the washing from such -establishments, and if not he would send a circular and even follow -it up with a personal letter. He was vaguely observant about the -premises. He would go sometimes and look for quite a long time at the -furnaces or the delivery vans or any new piece of machinery like the -new calendering machine until he got used to it. But if he stood about -where there were girls working, Mrs. Preemby would make some excuse to -get him back into the office because, as she explained, she thought -a man standing about affected the girls’ work unfavourably. He took -in and sometimes read the _British Laundryman_ and the _Dyers’ and -Cleaners’ Gazette_. - -Occasionally he had happy ideas. It was his idea to paint the delivery -vans bright blue and decorate them with a swastika, and to paint -exactly the same colour and design on the front of the laundry and -put it on the bills. But when he wanted to put the van drivers into -swastika caps and blue the clothes baskets, Mrs. Preemby said she -thought the thing had gone far enough. It was also Mr. Preemby who -suggested Ford cars instead of horse vans as early as 1913. This change -was made in 1915. - -And at home with her peaceful interested father and her busy, -occasionally, rather astringent, mother, Christina Alberta grew to -girlhood and womanhood. - - - - -CHAPTER THE SECOND - -_Christina Alberta_ - - -§ 1 - -This story, it was clearly explained in the first paragraph of the -first section of the first chapter, is a story about Mr. Preemby in the -later years, the widower years, of his life. That statement has all the -value of an ordinary commercial guarantee, and on no account shall we -ever wander far from Mr. Preemby. But the life of his daughter was so -closely interwoven with his own during that time that it is necessary -to tell many things about her distinctly and explicitly before we get -our real story properly begun. And even after it has begun, and while -it goes on, and right up to the end, Christina Alberta will continue to -intrude. - -Intrusion was in her nature. She was never what is called an engaging -child. But she always had a great liking for her Daddy and he had the -greatest affection and respect for her. - -She had little or no tact, and there was always something remote -and detached, something of the fairy changeling about her. Even her -personal appearance was tactless. She had a prominent nose which tended -to grow larger, whereas Mrs. Preemby’s nose was small and bright and -pinched between her glasses, and her father’s delicately chiselled and -like some brave little boat shooting a great cascade of moustache; she -was dark and both her parents were fair. As she grew up the magic -forces of adolescence assembled her features into a handsome effect, -but she was never really pretty. Her eyes were brown and bright and -hard. She had her mother’s thin-lipped, resolute mouth and modestly -determined chin. And she had her mother’s clear firm skin and bright -colour. She was a humming, shouting, throwing, punching child with a -tendency not to hear admonitions and an almost instinctive dexterity -in avoiding sudden slaps. She flitted about. She might be up the -drying-ground or she might be under your bed. The only thing to do was -to down and look. - -She danced. Neither Mr. Preemby nor Mrs. Preemby danced, and this -continual jiggeting about perplexed and worried them. A piano or a -distant band would set her dancing or she would dance to her own -humming; she danced to hymn-tunes and on a Sunday. There was a standing -offer from Mr. Preemby of sixpence if ever she sat quiet for five -minutes, but it was never taken up. - -At her first school, a mixed day-school in Buckhurst Hill, she was -first of all extremely unpopular and then extremely popular and then -she was expelled. Afterwards she did fairly well at the Taverners’ -Girls’ School at Woodford, where she was recognized from the first as -a humorist. There was always a difficulty in calling her any other -name than Christina Alberta. People tried all sorts of names but none -of them stuck but “Christina Alberta.” “Babs” and “Baby” and “Bertie” -and “Buss” she was called at home and “Ally” and “Tina,” and at school -they tried “Nosey” and “Suds” and “Feet” and “Preemy” and “Prim.” Also -“Golliwog” because of her hair at hockey. These all came off again, and -left the original name exposed. - -She was quick at her lessons and particularly at history, geography and -drawing, but disrespectful to her teachers; at school hockey she played -forward right with marked success. She could run like the wind, and she -never seemed blown. Her pinch was simply frightful. She could make -sudden grimaces with her nose that gave the weaker sort hysterics. She -was particularly disposed to do this at school prayers. - -Between her mother and herself there was a streak of animosity. It -was not a very broad streak, but it was there. Her mother seemed to -cherish some incommunicable grievance against her. It didn’t prevent -Mrs. Preemby from doing her duty by the child, but it restrained any -real warmth of affection between them. From an early age it was Daddy -got the kisses and got climbed over and pulled about. He returned this -affection. He called her “my own little girl” and would even say at -times that she was a Wonder. He took her for walks with him and told -her many secret things that were in his mind, about the Lost Atlantis -and the Lamas of Tibet and the fundamentals of Astrology preserved -indecipherably in the proportions of the pyramids. He’d often wished, -he said, to have a good look at the pyramids. Sometimes one man saw -things that others didn’t. She would listen intently, although not -always in quite the right spirit. - -He would tell her of the virtue and science of Atlantis. “They walked -about in long white robes,” he said. “More like Bible Characters than -human beings.” - -“Good for the laundries, Daddy,” said Christina Alberta. - -“All we know of astrology is just fragments of what they knew. They -knew the past and future.” - -“Pity they were all drowned,” she remarked without apparent irony. - -“Maybe they weren’t all drowned,” he said darkly. - -“You don’t mean there’s Atlantics about nowadays.” - -“Some may have escaped. Descendants may be nearer than you suppose. Why -you and me, Christina, we may have Atlantic blood!” - -His manner conveyed his conviction. - -“It doesn’t seem to help much,” she said. - -“Helps more than you think. Hidden gifts. Insight. Things like that. -_We_ aren’t common persons, Christina Alberta.” - -For some moments the two of them pursued independent reveries. - -“Still we don’t _know_ we’re Atlantics,” said Christina Alberta. - - -§ 2 - -After she had fought her way to the sixth form in the Taverners’ -School the educational outlook of Christina Alberta was troubled by -dissensions both within the school and without. The staff was divided -about her, her discipline was bad, her class-work rank or vile, but -she passed examinations, and particularly external examinations by -independent examiners, with conspicuous success. There was a general -desire to get her out of the school; but whether that was to be done by -a university scholarship or a simple request to her parents to take her -away, was a question under dispute. The games-mistress was inclined to -regard murder as a third possible course because of the girl’s utter -disregard for style in games, her unsportsmanlike trick of winning -them in irregular and unexpected ways, and her tendency to make drill -and gymnastics an occasion for a low facetiousness far more suitable -for the ordinary class-room. The English and Literature mistress -concurred--although Christina Alberta would spend hours over her essays -working in sentences and paragraphs from Pater and Ruskin and Hazlitt -so that they might pass as her own original constructions. It was not -Christina Alberta’s fault if ever and again these threads of literary -gold were marked in red ink, “Clumsy” or “Might be better expressed” -or “Too flowery.” Only the head-mistress had a really good word for -Christina Alberta. But then the head-mistress, as became her position, -made a specialty of understanding difficult cases. - -And Christina Alberta was always quietly respectful to the -head-mistress, and could produce a better side to her nature with the -most disconcerting alacrity whenever the head-mistress was called in. - -Christina Alberta, as soon as the issue became clear to her, decided -for the scholarship. She reformed almost obtrusively, she became -tidy, she ceased to be humorous, she lost sets of tennis to the -games-mistress like a little sports-woman, and she stopped arguing -and became the sedulous ape of Stevenson for the estranged English -mistress. But it was up-hill work even in the school. There was a -little too much elegant surrender in her reformed tennis and a little -too much parody about her English in velveteen. The possibility that -she would ever join that happy class of girls who go in from the -suburbs to classes in London and lead the higher life beyond parental -inspection and sometimes until quite late in the evening in studios, -laboratories and college lecture-rooms, seemed a very insecure one, -even without reckoning with the quiet but determined opposition of her -mother. - -For Mrs. Preemby was not the woman to like a daughter educated above -her parentage and station. She came to lament her weakness in not -bringing Christina Alberta into the laundry as she herself had been -brought in at the age of fourteen. Then she would have learnt the -business from the ground up, and have qualified herself to help and at -last succeed her mother, even as Mrs. Preemby had helped and succeeded -Mrs. Hossett. But the school with its tennis and music and French and -so forth had turned the girl against this clean and cleansing life. She -was rising seventeen now, and the sooner she abandoned these things -which lead straight to school-teaching, spinsterhood, Italian holidays, -“art” clothes and stuck-up incapacity, the better for her and every one. - -She made a campaign against Christina Alberta’s habit of sitting -about in unladylike attitudes and reading; and when Mr. Preemby took -the unusual and daring course of saying that it was a bit hard on -the girl, and that he didn’t see any harm in a book or so now and -then, Mrs. Preemby took him up to Christina Alberta’s own little room -to see what came of it, and more particularly to see the sort of -pictures she’d stuck up there. Even when he was confronted with a large -photographic reproduction of Michael Angelo’s creation of Adam as the -master had painted that event on the roof of the Sistine Chapel in -Rome, he still made a feeble show of resistance, and said that it was -“Art.” - -“You’d stand anything she did, I believe,” said Mrs. Preemby. “Look at -it. Art! Look at these books! Darwin’s _Origin of Species_! That’s a -nice book for a girl to be prying into.” - -“Very likely she doesn’t see the harm of it,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“_Her!_” said Mrs. Preemby compactly. “And look at this!” - -“This” was Howe’s _Atlas of Biology_. She opened it to display its -large pages crowded with pictures of the detailed dissection of a frog. - -“Reely, my dear!” said Mr. Preemby. “It’s one of her schoolbooks. -There reely isn’t nothing what I should call _improper_ in that. It’s -Science. And, after all, it’s only a frog.” - -“Pretty things they teach at school nowadays. What with your Art and -your Science. Doesn’t leave much to the imagination. Why, when I was a -girl if I’d asked Ma what was inside _any_ animal, she’d have slapped -me and slapped me hard. And rightly. There’s things rightly hid from -us--and hid they ought to be. God shows us as much as is good for us. -More. No need to _open_ animals. And here--here’s a book _in French_!” - -“H’m,” said Mr. Preemby, yielding a little. He took up the lemon-yellow -volume and turned it over in his hand. - -“All this reading!” said Mrs. Preemby and indicated three shelves of -books. - -Mr. Preemby assembled his courage. “You mustn’t expect me to go against -reading, Chris,” he said. “It’s a pleasure and a light. There’s things -in books.... Reely, Chris, I believe you’d be happier if you read a -bit. Christina Alberta is a born reader, whether you like it or not. -She gets it from me, I suppose.” - -Mrs. Preemby started and regarded his flushed opposition; the anger -in her eyes was magnified through her glasses. “It’s wonderful,” she -said after a little pause; “it’s truly wonderful how Christina Alberta -manages to get everything she wants.” - - -§ 3 - -Miss Maltby-Neverson, the head-mistress of the Taverners’ School, -called upon Mrs. Preemby and shook her resolution a good deal. She was -obviously a lady, and the school washing ran in term-time to twenty -pounds a week. She was taken to see the scandalous picture and she -said: “Very beautiful, I’m sure. One of the really Great Paintings in -the world. Pro-foundly religious. It’s the very words of the Bible made -into a picture. What do you find in it to object to, Mrs. Preemby?” - -Whereupon, as if by a trick, the picture ceased to be scandalous and -Mrs. Preemby was ashamed of herself. She saw now there never had been -anything wrong about that picture. - -Miss Maltby-Neverson said that Christina Alberta was a difficult type -but a thoroughly interesting personality, a _real_ personality. She had -a great capacity for affection. - -“I haven’t found that,” said Mrs. Preemby. - -“It is a type I have studied,” said Miss Maltby-Neverson, simply but -conclusively. - -She explained that Christina Alberta was an _active_ type. Left to -herself without employment to _stretch_ her faculties she might -easily get into almost any sort of mischief. Almost any sort. Not -that there was anything wrong in her essentially. It was just energy. -Given good hard work and a scope for ambition, she might become a very -satisfactory woman indeed--possibly even a distinguished woman. - -“I’ve no use for distinguished women,” said Mrs. Preemby shortly. - -“The world has,” said Miss Maltby-Neverson gently. - -“I’m afraid I’m one of the old-fashioned sort,” said Mrs. Preemby. - -“Christina Alberta isn’t.” - -“Let the man be distinguished abroad and the woman distinguished -at home,” said Mrs. Preemby. “I’m sorry to differ from you, Miss -Maltby-Neverson, but one cannot help one’s opinions.” - -“It depends upon ourselves,” said Miss Maltby-Neverson. - -“I’m afraid I like men to rule,” said Mrs. Preemby. “Woman has her -place in the world, and it isn’t man’s.” - -“But I thought Mr. Preemby rather favoured the scholarship idea.” - -Mrs. Preemby was baffled. “He _did_,” she said as though she did not -see clearly what that had to do with the matter. “Give the thing a -trial,” said Miss Maltby-Neverson. “After all, she may not win this -scholarship.” - -But Christina Alberta won it with marks to spare. She took no risks. It -was a biennial scholarship which had been established by a benefactor -of advanced views. It was tenable at the London School of Economics. -As soon as Christina Alberta knew she had secured it she went, without -consulting her mother or anyone, to a hairdresser’s and had her -hair bobbed. To Mrs. Preemby this was almost a worse blow than the -scholarship. She surveyed her shock-headed, handsome-nosed daughter in -her short gymnastic skirts with a qualm of sincere hatred. - -She wished she could make her daughter feel about herself as she -felt about her. “I wish you could only see yourself,” she said with -concentrated bitterness. - -“Oh, _I_ know,” said Christina Alberta. - -“I suppose you’re a judgment on me,” said Mrs. Preemby. - - -§ 4 - -But Christina Alberta had only studied in the London School of -Economics for a year, she was beginning her second year when her mother -obliged her to resign her scholarship. Christina Alberta had stayed -late in London one evening without telling her mother she was going to -do so, she had gone to a discussion of the Population Question at the -New Hope Club in Fitzgerald Street, and she had come home smelling so -strongly of tobacco that her mother had repented of and revoked all her -concessions to modernity there and then. - -She had been waiting for that moment for many months. “This ends it,” -she said as she let her daughter in. - -Christina Alberta found there was no immediate way round or through -that decision. She worked her father and Miss Maltby-Neverson in vain. -But instead of resigning her scholarship right out as she had been -told to do, she played for time and explained her absence by a vague -reference to family trouble. - -Mrs. Preemby in those days was already in very bad health, but this -fact was completely overshadowed in the minds of both her daughter and -her husband by the far more urgent fact that she was now constantly in -a very bad temper. Everything was conspiring to worry her--except Mr. -Preemby, who knew better than to do anything of the sort. - -The closing years of the Great War, and still more so the opening year -of the Disappointing Peace, were years of very great difficulty for -the laundry business. The munitions business put laundry girls above -themselves and there was no doing anything with them. Coal, soap, -everything was at unheard-of prices, and it was impossible to get back -on the customers by raising the charges. People, even the best sort -of people, were giving up cleanliness. Gentlemen of position would -wear their dress-shirts three or four times and make their undervests -and under-pants last a fortnight. Household linen was correspondingly -eked out. People moved about; the new army officers’ wives came and -went, here to-day and gone to-morrow, leaving unpaid bills. Never -had Mrs. Preemby known so many bad debts. Van men came back from the -army so shell-shocked and militarized that they embezzled out of pure -nervousness and habit. Income tax became a nightmare. Outside as -within, Mrs. Preemby’s life was a conflict. She kept the Limpid Stream -Laundry paying all through that awful time because she was a wonder at -management, but she did it at a terrible loss of vitality. - -She became bitterly critical of the unhelpfulness of Mr. Preemby and -her daughter. When they tried to be helpful she criticized their -incapacity. They did more harm than good. - -Meal-times were awful. She would sit flushed and glowering through her -glasses, obviously afflicted by a passionate realization of the world’s -injustice and eating very little. Mr. Preemby’s attempts to start a -cheerful conversation were rarely successful. Even Christina Alberta -was overawed. - -“Things going a little better this morning?” Mr. Preemby would try. - -“Can’t I get rest from business even at my meals?” the poor lady would -complain. - -Or, “Looks like pleasant weather for the Derby.” - -“Pity you can’t go there for all the help you are in the place. I -suppose you haven’t heard what’s happened to van number two.” - -“No!” said Mr. Preemby. - -“You wouldn’t. Hind mudguard smashed. Been done for weeks. And nobody -knows who did it. One would think that that was a man’s business -anyhow. But it’s left for me to find out. And pay for. Like everything -else in the place.” - -“I’d better make inquiries.” - -“I know those inquiries of yours. Better leave the whole thing alone -now. Grin and bear it....” - -The silence of the meal would be restored. - -She seemed to set a high value upon these awful silences. She even -complained that he ate his cheese biscuits audibly. But how else can -one eat cheese biscuits? Christina Alberta was made of sterner stuff -and became controversial. Then her mother would flare out at her -insolence and declare that “one or the other of us” leaves the table. -“I’ll read upstairs,” said Christina Albert. “It isn’t _my_ wish to be -lunching here.” - -Before the abrupt ending of Christina Alberta’s university career she -was present only at breakfast and supper; supper wasn’t nearly as -awful in quality as breakfast, and breakfast could easily be bolted -and got away from; but after the New Hope Club catastrophe, she was -present at all the meals, a sort of lightning-conductor for her father -and something of a restraint upon, and an added exasperation to, her -mother. She took the line of agreeing that if her university career -was to end, then she must go into the laundry business; but she argued -very stoutly that to do that with any hope of success under modern -conditions meant a “proper business training.” If she could not go to -the London School of Economics then she ought to go to Tomlinson’s -Commercial Training School in Chancery Lane and learn book-keeping, -shorthand, typing, business correspondence, précis, commercial French, -and so forth. And after three weeks of painful midday meals this -proposal was adopted under stringent conditions and her season-ticket -to London was renewed. She worked her way very passably through -another winter with Tomlinson’s as her school and most of London as -her playground. She learnt all sorts of things. She added a new set of -friends and acquaintances, some with bobbed hair and some without, of -the most various social origins and associations, to the circle she had -already acquired at the London School of Economics. - -When presently Mrs. Preemby began to speak of a gnawing pain that -oppressed her, both her husband and daughter took it at first as a -new development of her general grievance against them and felt no -particular apprehension about it. Mr. Preemby said he thought she ought -to take advice or see some one about it, but for some days she treated -the suggestion with scorn. If once she got in a doctor, she said, -they’d have to find some one else to look after the laundry. Doctors -put you to bed and give you things to keep you there. Otherwise how -could they get a living? - -Then suddenly she changed. One morning she confessed she felt -“dreadful.” She went back to bed and Mr. Preemby, with strange -premonitions that the world was coming to an end, trotted off for a -doctor. The clinical thermometer showed a temperature mounting above -one hundred and one. “It hurts. My side hurts,” said Mrs. Preemby. -“I’ve had it once before, but not like this.” - -Christina Alberta came home that evening to discover herself capable of -fear, remorse, and tenderness. - -She had some strange moments with her mother in between phases of weak -delirium and insensibility. Mrs. Preemby’s face seemed to have become -smaller and prettier; the feverish flush in her cheeks simulated youth. -She was no longer hard or angry, but rather pathetically friendly. And -Christina Alberta hadn’t seen her in bed for years. - -“Take care of your Daddy,” said Mrs. Preemby. “You owe more to him--and -less to him--than you think. I had to do all I’ve done. Take care of -him. He’s gentle and good and easily persuaded and not to be trusted -alone in the world.... - -“I’ve never been quite all a mother should be to you. But you’ve been -_difficult_, Christina.... I’ve had a great respect for you.... - -“I’m glad you haven’t my eyes. Glasses are a Curse....” - -Anxiety about the laundry occupied a large part of her thoughts. - -“That woman Smithers in the washing room is a thief, and I’d get rid -of the new man Baxandale. I don’t know why I’ve kept Mrs. Smithers on -so long.... Weakness.... I’m not sure about _him_, there’s nothing -positive yet, but I feel he’s not straight.... I’m very much afraid -we’ve let Lady Badger’s account run too long. Nowadays titles--want -watching. I’ve been misled by her. She promised a cheque.... But I -doubt about you two in the laundry altogether. He can’t and you won’t. -_You_ might have done it.... Never mind that now. - -“Sell it as a going concern? The Widgerys might come in. He’s hard, but -he’s straight. Straight enough. They might like to come in.... - -“It’s never entered my head I wasn’t good for twenty years yet.... I -wish the doctor wouldn’t think of operating. It won’t do any good.” - -She repeated many of her phrases. - -“I hate the thought of being opened,” she said. “I suppose--. Like -those frogs in your book.... - -“Packed like a bag.... Never get it back again. Loose bits.... - -“Washing-basket or something to keep it together.” - -Then her mind went off at a tangent to things beyond Christina -Alberta’s understanding. - -“Sneaked off and left me to it.... I wonder what he’s doing now.... -Suppose.... Fancy, if it should be him that had to operate.... -Operate.... - -“Children we were.” - -She seemed to recollect herself and regarded her daughter with a -hard inquiring eye. Some instinct in Christina Alberta told her to -assume an incurious expression. But these words struck upon her mind -and stayed there and germinated like a seed. Children they were, and -he had sneaked off? Queer and yet according with all sorts of other -imponderables. - - -§ 5 - -Mr. Preemby looked unusually small but unusually dignified in his -full mourning. Christina Alberta was also extremely black and shiny. -Her skirts reached for the first time in her life to her ankles; a -sacrifice that she felt would be particularly acceptable to the spirit -of the departed. - -A new thing had come into Christina Alberta’s life--responsibility. She -perceived that for unfathomable reasons she was responsible for Mr. -Preemby. - -It was clear that the sudden death of his wife under the surgeon’s -knife had been a very great blow to him. He did not break down or weep -or give way to paroxysms of grief, but he was enormously still and sad. -His round china-blue eyes and his moustache looked at the world with -a mournful solemnity. The undertaker had rarely met so satisfactory -a widower. “Everything of the best,” said Mr. Preemby. “Whatever she -can have, she must have.” Under the circumstances, the undertaker, who -was a friend of the family, having met both Mr. and Mrs. Preemby at -whist-drives quite frequently, showed commendable moderation. - -“You can’t imagine what all this means to me,” said Mr. Preemby to -Christina Alberta, quite a number of times. “It was a pure love match,” -he said; “pure romance. She had nothing to gain by marrying me. But -neither of us thought of sordid things.” He was silent for a little -while, struggling with intractable memories. He subdued them. “We just -met,” he said, smiling faintly; “and it seemed that it _had_ to be.” - -“Sneaked off and left me”; came a faint whisper in Christina Alberta’s -memory. - - -§ 6 - -There was much to see to in those days of mourning. Christina Alberta -did her best to help, watch and guide Mr. Preemby even as her mother -had desired, but she was surprised to find in him certain entirely -unexpected decisions that had apparently leapt into existence within a -few hours of her mother’s death. One was a clear resolve that he and -she must part company with the laundry either by selling it or letting -it, or, if no means of disposing of it offered, by burning it down or -blowing it up as speedily as possible. He did not discuss this; he -treated it as an unavoidable necessity. He expressed no animosity for -the laundry, he made no hostile criticism of the life he had led there, -but every thought betrayed his fundamental aversion. And also they were -to go away--right away--from Woodford Wells and never return thither. -She had come to much the same decisions on her own account, but she had -not expected to find them in such quiet strength in him. - -He became explicit about the future as they sat at supper on the -evening of the funeral. - -“Your mother’s cousin, Sam Widgery,” he said, “was talking to me.” - -He munched for a moment; his moustache went up and down and his eyes -of china-blue stared out of the window at the sunset sky. “He wants to -take it over.” - -“The laundry?” - -“As a going concern. And he being our nearest relation, so to speak, -I’d as soon he had it as anybody else. Other things being equal.... -Wish I knew what to ask him for it. I don’t want to ask him too -little. So I said I didn’t care to discuss things at a funeral. Said -he’d better come along to-morrow. Their place isn’t doing well. It’s -got sort of embedded in Walthamstow. It would pay him to get out and -let the land go for building. He hasn’t got very much money.... But he -wants this place. He reely wants this place.” - -His blue eyes were the eyes of one who sees visions. - -“I don’t know if they taught you about making companies at the -School of Economics. I’m a child at all that sort of thing. He talks -about partnership or a mortgage or something like that, but what we -want--what we want is a limited company. And what we want is something -like debentures only rather more like preference shares. We want it so -that whatever he draws out of the business we’ve got to draw out more. -Otherwise the company can cut away the security for your debentures -by paying too much dividend on the ordinary shares. _He_’ll have the -ordinary shares. Him and his wife. I don’t say he’d do such a thing -deliberately, but he might very easily be led into doing it. He’s got -to be looked after. We want to fix it so that if he pays more on his -shares than we get on our shares we’d get our interest levelled up. -It’s all very difficult and complicated, Christina Alberta.” - -Christina Alberta regarded Mr. Preemby with a new and deepening -respect. She had never heard him make such a speech before at meals, -but then he had never before been free from interruption and correction. - -“We’ll have to have it fixed up properly by our solicitors,” said Mr. -Preemby. - -“We shan’t be badly off,” he continued, helping himself to cheese. - -“There’s a mortgage or so we’ve got and some houses at Buckhurst Hill. -It’s a curious thing, but your poor dear mother had a sort of faith in -my eye for house property. She often let me guide her. And I always -had a feeling for making some sort of reserve _out_ of the business.... -Very likely Sam Widgery will take over most of the furniture of this -house. It’s a bigger house than his....” - -“Where do you think of going to live, Daddy?” asked Christina Alberta. - -“I don’t rightly know,” said Mr. Preemby after a moment or so of -introspection. “I keep thinking of different places.” - -“London,” she said. “If I could go back to study--before it is too -late.” - -“London,” he said, “it might be.” - -He hesitated over his next suggestion with the hesitation that had -become a habit, so accustomed was he to see his suggestions crumpled -up and flung aside. “Have you ever heard of Boarding Houses, Christina -Alberta?” he asked with an unreal carelessness. “Have you ever thought -it might be possible for us to go and live in Boarding Houses?” - -“In London?” - -“All over the world--almost, there are Boarding Houses. You see, -Christina Alberta, we might get rid of our furniture here, except for -my books and a few little things, and we might put most of that away -for a time--Taylor’s Repository would take care of that for us--and we -might go and live sometimes in a Boarding House here, and sometimes in -a Boarding House there. Then you could study and needn’t keep house, -and I could read and look at things and make memorandums about some -Theories I’ve thought of, and talk to people and hear people talking. -All sorts of people go to Boarding Houses--all sorts of interesting -people. These last nights I’ve been thinking no end about living in -Boarding Houses. I keep on thinking of it, turning it over in my mind. -It would be a new life for me--like beginning again. Life’s been so -regular here. All very well while your poor dear mother was alive, but -now I feel I want distraction. I want to move about and see all sorts -of things and different kinds of people. I want to forget. Why, in -some of these Boarding Houses there’s Chinese and Indians and Russian -princesses, and professors and actors and all sorts of people. Just to -hear them!” - -“There’s Boarding Houses full of students in Bloomsbury.” - -“Every sort,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“One place that attracts me,” said Mr. Preemby, pouring out what -remained of the beer, “is Tumbridge Wells.” - -“Isn’t that sometimes called Tunbridge, Daddy?” - -“Formerly. But now it is always spoken of as Tumbridge Wells. At this -Tumbridge Wells, Christina Alberta, there are hills with names that -point directly to some connection with the ancient Israelites, Mount -Ephraim and Mount Gilboa and so on, and there are a number of curiously -shaped rocks, shaped in the likeness of great toads and prehistoric -monsters and mystical forms and nobody knows whether they are the work -of God’s hand or man’s. I am very anxious to see these things for -myself. They may have a deeper and closer significance for us than is -commonly supposed. There are plenty of Boarding Houses at Tumbridge -Wells--I was told only the other day by a man I met in the Assyrian -room in the British Museum--and some of them are said to be very -comfortable and reasonable indeed.” - -“We might go there for the holidays,” said Christina Alberta, “before -the London session begins.” - -Outside was the summer afterglow, and a dusky peace filled the room. -Father and daughter followed divergent trains of thought. Mr. Preemby -was the first to break the silence. - -“Now that I shall be in mourning, or half mourning, for some time I -have decided to give away all those Harris tweed knickerbocker suits -and stockings of mine. Some poor man might feel the comfort of them--in -winter. I have never really liked those _very_ baggy knickerbockers, -but of course while your poor dear mother was alive her taste was Law -to me. And those caps; they get over your eyes when you’re hot. That -tweed stuff.... It is overrated. When you ride a bicycle or anything it -ravels out with the friction of the seat. Makes you look ridiculous.... -And I think that quite soon I shall get myself one of those soft grey -felt hats--with a black band.” - -“I have always wanted to see you wear one, Daddy,” said Christina -Alberta. - -“It would count as mourning?” - -“Oh! yes, Daddy.” - -Mr. Preemby meditated pleasantly. The girl had common sense. Her advice -was worth having. “As for putting the swastika on your poor dear -mother’s tombstone, perhaps you are right in thinking it is not what -she herself would have chosen. It may be better after all to do as you -suggest and erect a simple cross. After all--it is _her_ tombstone.” - -Whereupon Christina Alberta got up from her chair and went round the -table--almost at a prance, until she remembered things--and kissed him. -For some obscure reason she hated the swastika almost as much as she -loved her Daddy. For her it had become the symbol of silliness, and she -did not like to think of him as silly. Particularly now when for some -obscure reason she was beginning to think of him as ill-used. - - -§ 7 - -There was much to see to before the Preembys could go to Tunbridge -Wells. There had to be quite a number of interviews with Mr. Sam -Widgery at Woodford Wells and afterwards in the dingy offices of -Messrs. Payne and Punter in Lincoln’s Inn. It was clear from the first -to these men of affairs that Mr. Preemby was a child at business, but -as they went on with him they realized that he was an extremely greedy -and intractable child. It was six weeks before Mr. and Mrs. Sam Widgery -could move in, sullenly and resentfully, to the Limpid Stream premises, -and Mr. Preemby and his daughter could go on after a day or so in -London to select a Boarding House at Tunbridge Wells. - -Christina Alberta spent her early days as an orphan struggling against -an unreasonable cheerfulness and a profound sense of release. She found -her father ready to accept almost any explanation of her need to run -up to London for a day and even disposed to be tolerant when she came -home late. She had quite a little world of miscellaneous acquaintances -in London; fellow-students and their friends, fellow-students from the -London School of Economics and fellow-students at Tomlinson’s School -and art students they knew and medical students they knew and girls -from the provinces who had chucked their families and got typing jobs, -and so on to models and chorus girls and vaguely employed rather older -young men of the intellectual class. She met them in and about the -class-rooms and in A.B.C.’s and suchlike places and in the New Hope -Club, where there were even Labour politicians and men who claimed to -be Bolsheviks, and she went to parties and duologues in studios in -high, remote, extraordinary flats. It was tremendous fun, although a -lot of it had to be snatched from the insistent claims and inquiries -of Woodford Wells. And people liked her, they liked Christina Alberta, -laughed at her jokes they did and admired her thundering cheek and -never said anything about her nose. It was much more her natural world -than the Taverners’ School people had ever been. Nobody seemed to mind -that she came out of a laundry; for all they seemed to care about -that sort of thing, she might have come out of a gaol. In between the -excitements of student life she even did some reading. - -In her first grief for her mother she tried not to feel a sense of new -unstinted freedom in regard to all these adventures and experiences. -Her Daddy in his grief, bless him! was smoking much more than he -had ever done before; he was even trying cigars; he had no nose for -tobacco reek in his daughter--or for anything of that sort. He asked -few questions and they were easily answered. Long years of exercise -had made him almost constitutionally acquiescent. Christina Alberta -realized that within very wide limits indeed now she might do anything -she pleased whenever she liked. She realized also that there was no -particular hurry to do anything at all. All the others seemed to be -running about in pairs like knives and forks. It suited her humour to -stay detached. - -And the world had altered. This break-up of the old home, the death of -her mother, the disappearance of every control, except her credulous, -inattentive Daddy, had jerked her forward from childhood to maturity. -Hitherto home had seemed an eternal, indestructible thing, from which -you started out for adventures, to which, whatever happened, you -returned like a sea-rover to rest and where you went to bed and slept -as you had been wont to sleep, secure, unthreatened. Now here the two -of them, Daddy and herself, were in the open; no bolting place at all -for them; anything might happen to them and might insist upon going on -happening. She could now do just anything she pleased, it was true, but -also she realized that now she had to take the unlimited consequences. - -So that in spite of her sense of novel, unbounded freedoms, Christina -Alberta found she did not go up to London any more than she would have -done during her mother’s lifetime. Many of her most attractive friends, -it is true, were away upon their holidays. And she found her father’s -company unusually interesting. Every time she came back to him he -seemed to be slightly enlarged and of a firmer colour and consistency. -He reminded her of Practical Biology (Botanical Section) in the -Taverners’ School, when you take a dried-up bean out of its package -and put it in a jar with water and observe it under the influence of -warmth and moisture. It germinates. And he was germinating. - -Mother had kept him dried up for nearly twenty years, but now he was -germinating and nobody could tell what sort of thing he might become. - - - - -CHAPTER THE THIRD - -_In Lonsdale Mews_ - - -§ 1 - -After a month of deep mourning, Christina Alberta put aside her long -skirts and returned to the more kilt-like garments to which she was -accustomed. She had not been inactive while her father had conducted -his business settlement with Mr. Sam Widgery, and she had worked out -a scheme of living that seemed to promise quite a happy life for her -father and herself. She fell in with the Boarding House idea and with -the project of beginning at Tunbridge Wells. She ceased to struggle -with the fact that he continued to call it quietly but insistently -_Tum_bridge Wells; it seemed to her upon reflection that _Tum_bridge -was really the place he, at any rate, was going to live at. That gentle -departure from exactitude was quite of a piece with his general habit -of living a little askew from actual things. - -But she impressed upon him the view that since their lives were to be -migratory henceforth, and since there were a certain number of books, -unsaleable articles of furniture that Mrs. Widgery would not take over -at a valuation, a number of curiosities--for example, a piece of shell -which he believed to be a fragment of a Great Auk’s Egg, a Rosicrucian -regalia, and a mummified hawk from Egypt which had prophetic qualities, -to consider--there must be a sort of permanent headquarters in -London, at which these objects could be stored and to which he and -she could return from the various Boarding Houses round and about -the earth. And, pursuant to this suggestion, she made inquiries -and worked out an admirable project for sharing some accommodation -with two little friends of hers who practised art, literature, and -picturesque economies in a converted mews in Chelsea. In fact, she -made arrangements with them. She told Mr. Preemby she had made these -arrangements according to his instructions, and after a time it did -come to seem to him that he had given her the instructions upon which -she acted. - -Lonsdale Mews opens out of Lonsdale Road, Chelsea; and there is quite -a noble entrance with large stucco pillars on either side and an arch -over, on which is a design in relievo of Neptune and sea-horses and -the words “Lonsdale Mews.” Inside there had once been stables and -coach-houses, and over each a bedroom and a sitting-room, which was -also, in the more prolific past, generally used as a bedroom, and a -cupboard and a landing and so forth, the little home of the coachman -(and his wife and family) attached to the genteel carriage and horses -below. But the advancement of science and the progress of invention -have abolished gentility, and so reduced the number of coachmen and -carriages in the world that Lonsdale Mews has had to accept other -tenants; and being too narrow down the centre for the coming and -going of automobiles without a great deal of bashing of mudguards and -radiators, has had to paint itself up attractively and fall back upon -art and the intelligenzia. - -Christina Alberta’s two young friends were in possession of one of -these perverted coachmen’s homes, and as they were very inadequately -prepared to pay the rent--it was a quite aristocratic rent--they were -extremely glad to welcome Mr. Preemby and particularly Christina -Alberta as co-tenants. Mr. Preemby was to have the big room downstairs -and there he was to arrange his books and his surplus furnishings and -ornaments and curious objects, and have a sofa that could be made into -an apparent bed when he wanted to sleep in London. And Christina -Alberta was to have a little bedroom for herself behind this wherein a -breezy decorative scheme of orange and bright blue more than made up -for a certain absence of daylight and fresh air. But when the two young -friends had a party or when Mr. Preemby was away they were to have the -use of the big downstairs room, and in the case of a party Christina -Alberta’s room was to be a ladies’ cloak-room. - -The lessors were to retain the use of the upstairs rooms and in the -matter of the kitchen all things therein were to be held in common. -None of this agreement was put into writing and many issues were left -over frankly for future controversy. “We are to be the pigs that pay -the rent,” said Christina Alberta; that was the general idea. “Much -we’ll work out,” said Mr. Harold Crumb. “Much will work itself out. -It’s no good being too definite.” What was definite was that Mr. -Preemby was to pay the rent. - -Mr. Harold Crumb was a red-haired young man, a shock-headed young man -with a rampant profile, dressed in a blue overall, frayed grey trousers -and slippers. He had large freckled hands and he did Black and White, -which Mr. Preemby had supposed to be a whisky but discovered was an -art. Harold lived by attempting to sell drawings for advertisements and -pictured jokes for the weekly papers. His expression was lofty and his -voice constrained and it seemed to Mr. Preemby that he was suffered -rather than met by Mr. Crumb. With Christina Alberta Mr. Crumb seemed -to be on terms of tacit friendship and no word passed between them. -He lifted his hand and twiddled his fingers at her--with a kind of -melancholy. - -Mrs. Crumb was more effusive. She embraced Christina Alberta warmly -and answered to the name of “Fay.” Then she turned to Mr. Preemby and -shook hands with him quite normally. She was a slender young lady -with carelessly bobbed corn-coloured hair, pale-grey eyes and an -absent-minded face. She also was dressed in a blue overall, she wore -oyster-coloured stockings and slippers and possibly other things, and -her business in life, Mr. Preemby learnt, was to review books for -various newspapers and write romantic fiction for bookstall magazines. -Her right forefinger had that indelible inkiness which only the -habitual use of an incontinent fountain-pen can give. There was a big -screen in the downstairs room Mr. Preemby was to have that Mr. Crumb -had made and Mrs. Crumb had covered with the bright mendacious wrappers -of the books she had reviewed. This exercised Mr. Preemby the more -because several of the wrappers were manifestly upside down, and he -could not understand whether this was due to art, carelessness or some -serious mental lapse. - -“We’ll have something to eat,” she told Mr. Preemby, and then they -could settle up things. But she had a surprisingly rapid articulation -and it sounded like, “We’ll ’f sum t’eat ’n’ then we’ll set lup -thins.” It took ten or twelve seconds to come through to Mr. Preemby’s -understanding. Meanwhile she had turned to Christina Alberta. “’Dabit -’f work to do,” she explained. “Bres no’ clear’ d’way. Late las’ ni’. -You be’r loo’ roun’ he’ while Nolly gessomeat an’ Ikn do ’p stairs fore -you see’t.” - -“Right-o,” said Christina Alberta, understanding perfectly. Mr. Preemby -was left stunned, with his lips moving slowly. “So long,” said Harold, -and took some money out of a black Wedgwood tea-pot and went and fell -over things in the passage, and presently went out into the wide world -while Fay vanished upstairs. - -“She’s gone upstairs,” said Mr. Preemby, interpreting slowly, “to do -their rooms. And _he’s_ gone to get some meat. It’s a nice large room, -Christina Alberta--and quite well lit. Quite. - -“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a Mew before,” said Mr. Preemby, -approaching a group of attractive drawings on the wall. - -“In a _what_, Daddy?” - -“In a Mew. Or in a _Studjo_.... I suppose these are Originals.” - -Christina Alberta awaited his reaction to the drawings with a slight -anxiety. - -“Looks like a lot of fruit and human legs and things,” said Mr. -Preemby. “Wonder what they mean? _Summer Night_ it says, and that’s -_Passion in Solitude_. Don’t quite see it, but I suppose it’s -symbolical or something.” He turned his round blue eyes to the room -generally. “I could get a mahogany cabinet for my Curiosities and have -it against the wall _there_--I’d like the sort with glass doors so that -people could see the things--and if there was some shelves put across -that place, it would hold most of my books. There’ll have to be a bed -somewhere, Christina Alberta.” - -“They’ve got a sofa upstairs,” said Christina Alberta, “with an end -that pulls down.” - -“Might go there.” - -“Or under the window.” - -“Of course there’s my clothes,” said Mr. Preemby. “I almost wish -I hadn’t practically promised Sam Widgery your mother’s wardrobe. -Rosewood it is. It has a lot of room in it and it might have gone -against that bit of wall there. The trunk will make a sort of seat if -we get the corners mended. Wonder how that screen would look the other -way up. Books might go behind it. These easels and things I suppose -they’ll take upstairs.... We’ll get things settled all right.” - -Christina Alberta turned about with arms akimbo to follow his -proposals. She perceived that they threatened a considerable -disturbance of the æsthetic balance of the studio. She’d just thought -of a little bed-sofa affair with a bright rug over it. Silly of her -to forget the baggage. But in the end perhaps it might be possible to -arrest a lot of his gear in the passage. The passage was so choked -already that a little more in it hardly seemed to matter. He could -go out and get what things he wanted when he wanted them. She had a -momentary anticipation of him in his shirt and braces, routing in -trunks. - -“Of course,” said Mr. Preemby, “when you said you’d got two little -friends in a _Studjo_, I thought they were two girls. I didn’t think -they were a married couple.” - -“They aren’t so _fearfully_ married,” said Christina Alberta. - -“No,” said Mr. Preemby, and was restrained by modesty from further -speech for some seconds. “Of course,” he said, “if presently a Family -came along--well, we’d have to move out, Christina Alberta.” - -“Never meet families half-way,” said Christina Alberta. “It isn’t very -likely anyhow. You trust Fay.” - -“You never know,” said Mr. Preemby rather weakly, and showed a tendency -to drift back to those ambiguous drawings. - -“About time we had a look at the upstairs rooms, Daddy,” said Christina -Alberta, and went out into the passage to call “Fay!” - -The answer came remotely. “Lo?” - -“Read-_dee_?” - -“Not yet.” - -Christina Alberta found her Daddy back in the illustrated corner with -his head on one side like an inquiring sparrow. For some time nothing -was said. “Of course,” he remarked at last; “it’s Art.” He turned away -with his face pursed up beneath the moustache, humming faintly. She -perceived it was just as much Art as he could stand. - -He ran his hand over the wall and turned intelligent eyes to Christina -Alberta. “It’s just canvas,” he said; “what you pack things in. With -sort of dabs of gold paint. I don’t think I’ve ever seen walls that -wasn’t either done with paper or distemper before. I suppose really one -might put all sorts of things on walls, cloth, bed-ticking, tarpaulin. -Odd how one doesn’t think of things.” - - -§ 2 - -Presently “upstairs” was “read-ee;” Mrs. Harold Crumb was free to -answer questions and make explanations and Mr. Preemby could learn -more of Christina Alberta’s plans for his comfort. Upstairs was more -various but less spacious than downstairs, the beds were dressed-up -rather than disguised as divans and there was more vaguely improper but -highly decorative Art. Like Christina Alberta Mrs. Crumb had not fully -considered Mr. Preemby’s possibilities in the way of luggage, but she -rose to the occasion very well. When Mr. Preemby spoke of the mahogany -cabinet and the wardrobe, she said that it would be quite easy for -Harold to “camouflage” them with very, very bright-coloured paint, and -she thought a lot might be done for Mr. Preemby’s trunks and clothes -by making a curtained alcove in a corner. “Trouble with clothes,” said -Mrs. Crumb, “is when somebody starts charades or dressing up. Nothing -is sacred. Last week, somebody tore my only pyjamas limb from limb.” - -“We’d have to arrange,” said Mr. Preemby, a little uneasily. - -“We’ll have to arrange somehow,” said Mrs. Crumb. - -But before anything could be arranged definitely Harold returned from -his shopping with a large piece of purple beefsteak in a mere loin -cloth of newspaper, and a lettuce and a bundle of small onions in his -hand and two large bottles of beer under his arm, and everybody’s -attention was directed to the preparation of the midday meal. - -“Generally,” said Harold, “we go Out for a meal. There’s quite a decent -aufschnittery and a little Italian place and so forth not five minutes -away in the King’s Road. It’s more fun feeding Out. But we thought -you’d like to see the studio put through its paces.” - -Mr. Preemby in the course of his life had rarely seen meals prepared; -somebody else had always laid a table and said “Dinner’s ready, -Daddy,” or “Supper’s ready, Daddy,” as the case might be, and he -had just sat down, and it was with real interest that he obeyed Mr. -Crumb’s invitation to “come and see how we do it,” and assisted under -direction in the operations. Mr. Crumb, in a few well-chosen words, -introduced the cooking apparatus that clustered around the gas-stove; -the gas-stove was lit explosively, Mr. Preemby handed things and held -things under direction and got in the way a good deal. Christina -Alberta, who seemed used to the job, chopped the onions and dressed a -salad at a small kitchen table close at hand, and the steak got itself -grilled fiercely and flaringly. - -Meanwhile Mrs. Crumb laid a blue-painted table in what was to be -Mr. Preemby’s room with an orange-coloured cloth and a selection of -plates and parts of plates, yellow-glazed mugs with rudely painted -inscriptions in some rustic dialect, “Here’s t’ absent frens” and -the like, several knives and forks, a pewter mug full of cigarettes -and a bunch of sunflowers in a brown-glazed bowl. And at this table -Mr. Preemby presently found himself seated very hot in the face and -liberally splashed with fat from the grilled steak. Nobody said grace, -and the meal began. - -There was a general assumption that Mr. Preemby’s tenancy was settled, -though there were many points upon which he would have liked a clearer -definition. He was particularly anxious to exclude as tactfully as -possible his garments and his specimens from promiscuous use as -properties when these charades occurred, but he did not know quite how -to reopen the subject. And he was preoccupied by a doubt whether his -long nightgowns of Saxony flannel, if they were publicly exposed, might -not be considered old-fashioned by these artistic young people. But -their talk jumped about so that it was difficult to lead up to what he -had to say. He was accustomed, especially when company was present, -to clear his throat “h’rrmp” and waggle his moustache up and down a -little before he spoke, and by the time he was ready to deliver what -he had to say one of the others was away with something else. So that -he hardly said anything but an occasional “h’rrmp” all through the meal. - -The two young ladies did most of the talking. Harold seemed moody, -making an occasional correction or comment upon his wife’s remarks and -eating most of the steak with the pained expression of one who has -tender teeth and is used to better food. Once he asked Mr. Preemby -if he really cared for Good Music, and once if he had been to see -the Iberian dancers last year, but neither of these inquiries led to -a sustained conversation. “H’rrmp. No-oh,” said Mr. Preemby. “Not -exactly. Not particularly,” and in the second case, “No-oh, I didn’t.” - -Mrs. Crumb talked brightly of various newspaper jobs she had got and -how she had been asked to do a children’s corner in the _Patriotic -News_ and whether she would accept the offer--Mr. Preemby thought the -editors and newspaper proprietors she mentioned seemed a depraved -lot--but mainly the talk concerned the movements and readjustments of a -large circle of friends. After the meal there was coffee, and Harold, -with an air of resignation, went and washed up. - -There were many little things awaiting attention at the laundry, and -after two or three cigarettes Mr. Preemby decided, “It’s time for us -to be going, Christina Alberta.” “We’ll work it out all right,” said -Harold on their departure. - -There were intervals of meditation as Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta -returned in the train from Liverpool Street to Woodford Wells. “It’s -not what I’ve been accustomed to,” said Mr. Preemby. “It’s all very -different from the way your mother used to manage things.... Less -orderly.... Of course I could keep my clothes locked up in my trunk.” - -“You’ll do all right. They’re perfect Dears. _She_ loves you -tremendously already,” said Christina Alberta. - - -§ 3 - -But before she went to sleep that night Christina Alberta experienced -compunction. She felt compunction about these arrangements she was -making for her Daddy. She doubted whether he would be truly comfortable -and happy in that studio in Lonsdale Mews, and able to lead the life of -steadfast curiosity he anticipated with so much quiet pleasure--ever -humming to himself about it and working his moustache and saying -“h’rrmp,” when he was not otherwise engaged. - -This story, it cannot be too often reiterated, is the story of Mr. -Preemby who became, as we shall tell in due course, Sargon, King of -Kings. But Christina Alberta has got herself hatched into this story -very much like a young cuckoo in a wagtail’s nest and it is impossible -to ignore her. She was virtually in control of him and she had the -egotism of her sex and age. - -She had also a pitiless conscience. It was almost the only thing -she could not manage in her life. It managed her. It was a large, -crystalline conscience with no foundations and no relationships; it -just flooded by itself in her being; it was her gravitational centre -and the rest of her could not get away from it. - -When Christina Alberta went up for examination and judgment before -Christina Alberta there was no nonsense in the proceedings, a fearful -frankness; it was cards on the table, everything in evidence, no -etiquette, not a stitch on, X-rays if necessary. These examinations -were all the more terrible because they were done in what was -practically an empty room, without screens, curtains, standards or -general beliefs of any sort. It is appalling to think of the drapery -and function that was absent from Christina Alberta’s court of -conscience. In the first place Christina Alberta was completely and -explicitly irreligious. In the next she was theoretically anti-social -and amoral. She did not believe in respectability, Christian morality, -the institution of the family, the capitalist system, or the British -Empire. She would say so with extreme plainness and considerable detail -except when her parent was about. Prevalent winds of sentiment did not -stir her. She did not find the Prince of Wales ravishing nor _Punch_ -funny. She thought modern dancing tiresome, though she did it very -well, and Wimbledon tennis and tennis-talk an intolerable bore. She -favoured Bolshevism because everybody she disliked abused it and she -hoped for a world-wide social revolution of an entirely destructive and -cleansing type. What was to follow this revolution Christina Alberta, -with the happy confidence of youth, did not seem to mind. - -It is not for us to speculate here why a young woman born and bred -between Woodford Wells and central London in the opening years of the -twentieth century should confront the world with a mind so entirely -swept and void of positive and restraining convictions; we put the -fact on record. And if she had been sustained by all the beliefs in -Christendom and a sure and certain respect for every detail of the -social code, whatever that code may be, she could not have confronted -the world with a more cheerful confidence, nor with a stronger -persuasion that Christina Alberta had to behave, in some undefined -fashion, well. Christina Alberta had to be Christina Alberta, clear and -sound, or the court of conscience made things plain and hard for her. - -“Christina Alberta,” the court would say, “you are the dirtiest, -filthiest little thing that ever streaked the dust of life. How do you -propose to get clean again?” - -Or, “Christina Alberta, you have been lying again. You’ll lie to _me_ -next. First it was laziness made you lie and now it is cowardice. What -are you going to make of yourself, Christina Alberta?” - -There came a time when the court had to address Christina Alberta -in this fashion: “Your nose, Christina Alberta, is large beyond -comparison. It will probably go on growing all your life--as noses -often do. Yet you are setting yourself out to charm and fascinate Teddy -Winterton. You go to places where you think you will meet him. You fuss -and preen yourself like any female idiot. You dream all sorts of things -about him, disgraceful things. You are soppy on this young man in spite -of the fact that you know he is--no sort of good. You like him to touch -you. You sit and look at him foolishly and you gloat. Does he gloat -on you? Isn’t it time you considered where you are going, Christina -Alberta?” - - * * * * * - -And now the court was in full session and the charge, the charge for -which there was no defence, was that she was going to take her absurd, -unprotected Daddy and entrust him and his foolishness and his silly -books and his ridiculous treasures and all his dreams and desires to -the insecure and unsympathetic studio of the Crumbs, not because of any -vague and general hunger for London, though that was in the background, -but because that studio was frequented by the all too seductive Teddy, -because there she had met him and danced wildly with him and been -suddenly and astonishingly kissed by him and kissed him. And then he -had beguiled her to learn a dance with him and had got her to come to -tea with him at his studio to meet his sister--who hadn’t turned up. -And there had been other meetings. He was impudent and provocative -and evasive. All her being was in a state of high excitement about -him. Coldly and exactly now the court unfolded the operations of her -mind to her; showed how the thought of Teddy, always present and never -admitted, had guided her decision to harbour with the Crumbs. Only -now did she come to confession and clear vision. “You have lied to -yourself, Christina Alberta,” said the court; “and that is the worst -sort of lie. What are you going to do about it?” - -“I can’t let the Crumbs down now. They count upon us.” - -“You are in a mess, Christina Alberta. You are in a worse mess than -we thought you were. _Soppy_ you are about Teddy Winterton. Why not -call things by their right names? You are in love. Perhaps something -frightful has happened to you. Little rabbits run about the hedges and -every day is like every other day for them; they waggle their little -noses and wiggle their little tails and do what they like with their -paws. Until one day there is a ping and the snare snaps on the little -furry foot and everything you try to do after that is different. The -snare holds your movements and you must just dance round it and squeal -if you like, till the man comes along. Is that what has happened to -you? And for Teddy! Teddy, with that open, lying face!” - -“No,” said Christina Alberta, “I don’t love him. I don’t love him. -I’ve been silly and soppy and adrift. I am no more worthy to be called -Christina Alberta. But it hasn’t got me yet and it shan’t get me. I’ll -pull Daddy out of it and myself out of it; I vow and swear....” - -“H’m,” said the court. - - -§ 4 - -It seemed to Mr. Preemby that the first evening he spent in his new -quarters in Lonsdale Mews was the most eventful evening in his life. -Impressions crowded upon each other. Insomnia was not among his habits, -but when at last he lay upon his shake-up bed he was kept awake for -most of what was left of the night (it was the frayed piece with the -bleak dawn in the middle of it) trying to get these same impressions -sorted out, impressions about his new surroundings, impressions about -Christina Alberta, impressions of new and unprecedented personalities, -a marmalade of impressions. - -Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta arrived at the studio according to -plan about half-past three, but the Picton van which had started that -morning with Mr. Preemby’s bags and trunks and the crates of books -and curiosities and the late Mrs. Preemby’s roomy wardrobe, which had -after all been rescued from the clutches of Sam Widgery, did not arrive -until it was nearly six. Unfortunately the furniture dealer in Brompton -Road from whom Mr. Preemby had purchased a specimen-cabinet and a long -low walnut bookcase had delivered these articles the day before, and -all the animosity of the modern artist towards self-assertive wood -had been aroused in Harold. He and Fay and a friend or so who had -dropped in, had sat up quite late painting these new pieces a deep -ultramarine blue with stars and splashes of gold like the paper they -put around the necks of Ayala, Tsarist and suchlike champagnes. When -Mr. Preemby saw their handiwork he could scarcely believe it was the -same specimen-cabinet and bookcase. - -“I suppose one could get it off again,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“But see how they are assimilated by the room,” said Harold in high -expostulation. - -“I mean if we moved at any time,” said Mr. Preemby. “I know it’s -art, and it goes with the things here very nicely, but there’s -neighbourhoods I wouldn’t like to move into--not with these things as -they are. You don’t know what people’s imaginations are like.” - -Matters went a little tediously until the arrival of the Picton van. -The sofa-bed was arranged and rearranged. The bed things, blankets, -sheets and pillow-cases, were to be put in a bundle on the top of Mr. -Preemby’s flat trunk behind the book-wrapper screen. “We shall have to -find some other place for the bottled beer,” said Harold. “It’s too -hot in the kitchen and too dangerous in the passage. But I’ve an idea -we might have it in the scullery under the sink, with a cloth over it -and water dripping on the cloth. Evaporation. I’ll see about it.” - -Mr. Preemby was surprised by a yawn. “I suppose you’d like to have some -tea,” said Fay suddenly, and she and Christina Alberta prepared some. - -Harold was obviously in a strained and nervous state. Mr. Preemby’s -patient little figure, sitting about hands on knees, waiting for -Picton’s van, looking at things with innocent eyes and saying “h’rrmp” -had much the same effect of nervous dislocation upon Harold that the -mild and patient camel has on a horse. Harold chafed and pranced. He -walked about and went upstairs and out and returned; he smoked endless -cigarettes and pressed endless cigarettes upon Mr. Preemby; he made -recondite remarks in a strained voice. “All this is like something out -of Dostoievsky,” he said to Mr. Preemby. “In a different scheme of -colouring of course. Different, but the same. Don’t you think so, Mr. -Preemby?” - -Mr. Preemby nodded his head in a sympathetic, humorous, not too -explicit manner. “H’rrmp,” he said. “It _is_ a bit like that.” - -“Things will work themselves out,” said Harold. “Things will work -themselves out. You know that poem of Ruby Parham’s.” He cleared his -throat. “It is called ‘Waiting,’” he said. “It goes like this--” - -His eyes became fixed and glazed; his voice gathered volume, so that -the words seemed more than life-sized. - - “After every minute - “Comes another minute - “And then, rest assured, - “Another. - “Like drops from a ledge in the rain. - “You may not want to go on; - “But _they_ will, - “Oh! endlessly - “Taking your life away, death, not final and complete, - “But death in the midst of life, - “Particles of death, - “Death by attrition. - “Drip on Old Death--in life! - “Slow, dull, implacable, unendurable! - “Drip on.” - -“That ‘Drip on’ is great. But perhaps you don’t like modern poetry?” - -“I don’t _mind_ it,” said Mr. Preemby genially. - -“Of course, nothing of a really destructive nature _can_ have happened -to that van,” said Mr. Crumb in a pessimistic tone. - -When Picton’s van arrived and the roomy wardrobe began its destructive -march through the passage, Mr. Crumb called suddenly upon his maker in -a loud distressful voice and vanished for the better part of an hour. - -Christina Alberta was torn between a sympathetic understanding of -Harold’s state of mind and the fear that her Daddy might perceive the -unfavourable reaction he produced in Harold and be hurt by it. She and -Fay became brightly helpful with the unpacking. “If I might have one of -those blue pinafores of Mr. Crumb’s to put on,” said Mr. Preemby, “I’d -be glad. These black things of mine show every mark.” - -Mr. Crumb’s overall reached far below Mr. Preemby’s knees and somehow -justified his calling it a pinafore. It brought out something -endearingly infantile in his appearance that appealed to the maternal -instinct lurking in Mrs. Crumb. She struggled with a persuasion that he -was really a little boy of nine who had been naughty and grown a big -moustache and that she had to take care of him and restrain him and -generally tell him not to. The books were put in the bookshelves as Mr. -Preemby said, “just anyhow”; they could be sorted up later, but the -curiosities and specimens took longer and had to be “put out” more or -less in the cabinet. There were not only real curiosities and specimens -but many little things that Mr. Preemby had accumulated because they -looked like curiosities and specimens. There was, for instance, a piece -of one of the laundry delivery van mudguards so bent by a collision as -to resemble a human torso in the most striking fashion; there was the -almost complete skull of an unknown mammal, probably a fallow deer, -picked up in Epping Forest, there was a potato, now rather shrivelled, -in which it was possible to detect thirty-seven distinct human faces -and--specimen of an entirely different quality--a large flint in which -there were no less than fifty-five. Ages ago some primordial Preemby -had discovered and loved that very same flint and had brought out the -likenesses by chipping an eye here or a nostril there; but Mr. Preemby -did not suspect the help of that remote and perhaps ancestral hand. -Even in waking life Mr. Preemby saw faces in everything. What he would -have been like with a high temperature it is impossible to imagine. - -Christina Alberta’s anxiety about her father’s reception by the Crumbs -diminished as she saw his virtual conquest of Fay. Fay treated him -firmly but indulgently, and they lost a good deal of time while she -tried to see all the fifty-five faces of the wonderful flint. They had -to start and start again, but always they lost count about “Twen-tee” -or “Twen-tee-one.” The question would arise whether they were counting -one of the faces over again. - -Harold returned in a moody state and could be heard, all too -distinctly, kicking Mr. Preemby’s packing cases in the hall, but Fay -went out to him with a lofty sleep-walking expression in her pale eyes, -and the concussions ceased, and presently Harold came downstairs again -looking almost handsome in nankeen trousers, a blue jacket with big -silver buttons and a voluminous black tie, and was quite nice to Mr. -Preemby. - -“You won’t mind my touching that wardrobe of yours up a bit?” he said. -“It damps us off, as it is. Kind of reproaches us. One of us has to be -altered, you see, it or me, and either I paint it or else I get a silk -hat with a deep mourning band and a gold-handled umbrella--which would -cost no end of money. Whereas I _have_ the paint.” - -“If you can get the paint off again,” said Mr. Preemby. “You see if I -was to move--_back_.... It’s all right to have all this paint in a Mew. -But out of a Mew....” - -“Exactly,” said Harold. “My idea is to make a little pink house of it -with windows and so on. Something very simple. Rather like the scenery -of a Russian Sketch. _Chauve Souris_ sort of stuff. Conventional to the -_n_^{th}. And we might put up placards at the corner of it according to -what is going on. Make a bit of an institution of it.” - -“So long as it makes things agreeable,” said Mr. Preemby. - -He found his hair being ruffled affectionately. “Dear little Daddy!” -said Christina Alberta. - - -§ 5 - -But now appeared a new-comer and life was made uncomfortable and -complicated for Christina Alberta again by the presence of Mr. Teddy -Winterton’s candid insincerity. His graceful body, his movements, his -voice, stirred her senses as she hated them to be stirred; his quiet -impudence invaded her sense of humour; he wounded her pride and she -longed to be even with him. She had no power over him and he behaved -as if he owned her. She was always letting him go just a little too -far. When he was about her nose cast a shadow that reached to her -horizon. He stood now in the doorway--trousers of one pattern of tweed, -waistcoat of another, Norfolk jacket of a third extensively unbuttoned -in the accepted student style, and he watched Mr. Preemby carry his -collection of roc’s bones, found near Staines, across the studio on a -tea-tray. His eyes were round with surprise and amusement; his mouth -said noiselessly, “What is it?” - -Christina Alberta was not going to have her Daddy laughed at by any -Teddy Winterton. “Mr. Winterton,” she said. “This is my father.” - -“I’ll just get rid of my bones,” said Mr. Preemby, “and then I’ll shake -hands.” - -“We’ll just finish up Mr. Preemby’s things and then we’ll all go round -to Poppinetti’s to get some dinner,” said Fay. “There’s hardly anything -left to unpack now.” - -“Just one or two Antediluvium bones,” said Mr. Preemby. - -Teddy seized upon one. “This,” he said, inspecting it, “is a fossil -rhinoceros thigh-bone from the Crag.” - -“It’s an Antediluvium horse,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“Forgive me! It’s a rhinoceros bone!” - -“Horses had rhinoceros bones in those days,” said Mr. Preemby. “And the -rhinoceroses--! They were incredible. If I had one I shouldn’t have -anywhere to put it.” - -Mr. Preemby was extracted from his overall and restored to the black -coat and the grey felt hat with the black band. He became one of a -straggling party that went out of Lonsdale Mews to a little Italian -restaurant in the King’s Road. Three neighbours of the Crumbs mixed -themselves up with the party, a very quiet man with silver hair and a -young man and a dusky girl. - -Mr. Preemby was much impressed by the novelty of thus going out for -dinner, and expatiated on its advantages to the silver-haired man who -seemed to be the quiet sort of listening man that Mr. Preemby liked to -meet. “You see you don’t have to _cook_ the meal and you don’t have to -lay the table and afterwards naturally there isn’t any washing up. But -I expect it comes more expensive.” - -The silver-haired man nodded intelligently. “Exactly,” he said. - -Harold Crumb overheard this. “Expensive,” he said, “it isn’t. No. -Every other crime Poppinetti can commit, but that is barred by the -circumstances of his clientele. He feeds us on stolen pigeons, his -_dinde_ is guinea-pig, his beef, _a l’omnibus_: what he minces God -knows; what he puts into his ravioli makes even the Lord God repent -of his extreme creativeness. But you see, you don’t _think_ about his -ravioli, you eat ’em, and they’re damned good. There are always flowers -on the table and an effect of inexpensive refinement. You will see. You -will see.” - -Mr. Preemby saw. Poppinetti was a small man but carefully modelled -on Caruso, and he received his large party with the deference of a -diplomatist and the effusion of a geyser. He was particularly gracious -to Mr. Preemby, bowing profoundly to him, and saluting him with great -richness subsequently whenever he caught his eye. He seemed to Mr. -Preemby to spend the rest of their time together going to remoter and -remoter parts of the restaurant in order to catch Mr. Preemby’s eye and -bow and smile to him from greater and greater distances. Mr. Preemby -had curious doubts whether he wasn’t being mistaken for somebody else. - -Signor Poppinetti, with an air of peculiar favour, guided the party -to a long, unattractive table near the centre of the restaurant and -took their conflicting orders with the gestures of a conductor guiding -an orchestra through a difficult passage. Mr. Preemby was passive but -observant; he presently found himself eating macaroni and drinking a -rough red wine with a name that sounded to his London tuned ears like a -challenge. Chianti. - -Harold Crumb showed great earnestness in the matter of macaroni. “In -order to taste macaroni,” he assured Mr. Preemby, “it is necessary to -fill the mouth absolutely full, good measure, pressed in and running -over. To cut up macaroni with your fork as you are doing, is as awful -as to cut an oyster. It--it devitalizes it.” - -“I like it cut up,” said Mr. Preemby with unexpected firmness. And he -cut up some more. - -“Otherwise,” he said in a confidential aside to the silver-haired man, -“I can’t help thinking it’s earthworms.” - -“Exactly. Exactly,” said the silver-haired man. - -Harold exemplified generously. His rampant face riding over a -squirming mouthful of macaroni was like St. George and the Dragon on -an English sovereign. He whistled as he ate. Long snakes of macaroni -hung thoughtful for a moment and then, drawn by some incomprehensible -fascination, fled into him. Teddy Winterton and one of the new-comers -from the studio next door emulated him. Christina Alberta and Fay -showed the furtive dexterity of the female. But Mr. Preemby was glad -when macaroni was over, even though it raised the problem of eating an -egg on spinach with a fork. - -But he was not really troubled in his mind as a younger man might have -been. He had the _savoir-faire_ of middle-age. This restaurant dinner -was on the whole a bright and agreeable experience for him. He liked -even the corrosive taste of the Chianti. This Chianti you drank out -of quite largish tumblers because it was almost as cheap and light as -beer. It did not intoxicate, but it warmed the mind, and it cast a -pleasant and convincing indistinctness over the universe so that the -Tunbridges all became Tumbridges without any question, and the secret -dreams and convictions of the heart became certain knowledge. Presently -Mr. Preemby found himself able and willing to tell things and hint much -more important things about his collections to the white-haired man and -also to the dark, untidy girl who was sitting on his other side, and -who came from the other studio and about whose name he had no idea, and -presently to others; and when the bird came--it was a bird new to Mr. -Preemby, and called, he gathered, _rabbkey_ or _turkit_--most of the -party was talking in the loud, confused, explosive way these young -people affected about the lost _Atlantis_. - -He had never spoken so freely before upon this topic. At home he had -always been restrained by the late Mrs. Preemby’s genuine lack of -interest. And even now he was not prepared for positive statements -or for an encounter with sceptical arguments about that great lost -continent of the Golden Age. Atlantis had been the scene and substance -of his secret reveries for many years; he knew his knowledge of it was -of a different order from common knowledge, more intuitive, mystical, -profound. From the outset his manner was defensive, discreet and -obscure, as of one willing but not permitted to speak. - -How did he know that there had been this lost continent? - -“H’rrmp,” he said with the faint smile of peculiar knowledge; “studied -it for years.” - -“What is the evidence?” asked the untidy young lady. - -“So abundant. Impossible to retail it. Convincing. Of various sorts. -Plato has much about it. Unfinished fragment. Many books have been -written. Many inscriptions in Egypt.” - -“What sort of people were they?” asked the untidy girl. - -“Very wonderful people, young lady,” said Mr. Preemby. “H’rrmp. Very -wonderful people.” - -“Philosophy, no end I suppose?” asked the young man from the next -studio with his mouth full. - -“What we know--a mere remnant,” said Mr. Preemby. “Mere remnant.” - -“How did they dress?” - -“H’rrmp. Robes. White robes--extremely dignified. Blue--azure--when -justice was administered. Plato tells us that much.” - -“Could they fly?” - -“They understood it. It was not made a practice of.” - -“Motor cars? All that sort of thing?” - -“If they wanted to. There was less motoring--more meditation. We -live--age of transition. H’rrmp.” - -“And then it all went phut?” said the young man from the next studio. -“Submerged and all that. What a lesson!” - -“That need not have happened,” said Mr. Preemby darkly. - -Mr. Preemby became dimly aware of scepticism. “There’s not an atom of -evidence that there ever was a continent in the Atlantic,” Mr. Teddy -Winterton was saying to Christina Alberta; “within thirty million years -of anything human. The ocean troughs go right back to the Mesozoic age.” - -Mr. Preemby would have noticed this remark but the untidy girl asked -him suddenly if he did not think that the swastika was a symbol derived -from Atlantis. He said he was quite certain it was. She asked what it -meant exactly; she had always been curious about its significance: -and he became guarded and mysterious. She wanted moreover to know -things about the costume of that lost world, about its social customs, -about its religion. Were women citizens? She was certainly the most -intelligent about it of all the company. The silver-haired man seemed -to be faintly amused. - -The rest of the company wandered off into a discussion of the -possibility of going to the Chelsea Arts Ball in the character of -a party from the Lost Atlantis. Many of their ideas Mr. Preemby -thought trivial and undignified. “Leaves us unlimited scope,” said -Harold Crumb. “We could invent weapons--have wings if we liked. Magic -carbuncles on our shields--illuminated. Mysterious books and tablets. -And a sort of peculiar wailing, drumming music; Mya, mya, mya.” - -He pursed up his face and made a curious mooing noise with it to convey -his intention, twiddling his fingers to assist the effect. - -It was no good protesting against such imaginative ignorance. But to -the dark, untidy girl and to the acquiescent man with silvery hair Mr. -Preemby continued to be quietly oracular and communicative from behind -his moustache. - -“But how are these things known?” the dark girl persisted. “There is -nothing in the British Museum.” - -“You forget,” said Mr. Preemby. “H’rrmp, the Freemasons. There are -Inner Groups--traditions. Thank you. Just half a glass more. Oh! you’ve -filled it! Thank you.” - -As he talked he was aware of something going on between Christina -Alberta and Winterton. At first it seemed not to matter in the -slightest degree, but to be just part of the general unusualness of the -gathering, and then it seemed to matter a great deal. He saw Christina -Alberta’s little fist resting on the table, and suddenly Winterton’s -hand enveloped it. She snatched her hand away. Then something was -whispered and her hand came back. In another moment the hands were five -inches apart and it was as if nothing had ever happened between them. - -He would probably have forgotten the momentary invasion of his -attention by Christina Alberta if something else had not occurred -at the phase of dessert. Poppinetti’s idea of dessert was a sort -of lottery of walnuts--if you found a sound one you won--masses of -compressed and damaged dates and a few defiant apples. There was a -great crackling. The company was littering the table with walnut -shells, and the green, black and yellow corruption they had contained, -when this second incident caught Mr. Preemby’s eye. He saw Teddy -Winterton run his hand very softly along Christina Alberta’s forearm. -And her arm was not withdrawn. - -Every one was talking just then and for a moment it seemed -to Mr. Preemby that he alone had seen, and then he caught an -observant expression on the face of the silver-haired man. It was -all very confusing, and this Chianti--though it was really not -intoxicating--made everything swimmy, but Mr. Preemby knew somehow -that the silver-haired man had also seen that furtive familiarity, and -that he too didn’t quite approve of it. - -Ought one to take notice? Ought one to say anything? Perhaps -afterwards. Perhaps when they were alone together, he might ask her -quietly, “Are you and that young man Winterton engaged?” - -“A bit too much,” said Mr. Preemby quietly, meeting the eye of the -silver-haired man. “I don’t like that sort of thing.” - -“Quite,” said the silver-haired man. - -“I shall speak to her.” - -“You’re right there,” said the silver-haired man warmly. A very -sensible fellow. - -A great rustle and a scraping of chairs. Poppinetti, figuring upon an -accounts-pad, came to collect the money. “I’ll pay for us, Daddy,” said -Christina Alberta, “and we’ll settle up afterwards.” - -Poppinetti bowing. Poppinetti on Mr. Preemby’s right and on Mr. -Preemby’s left; several Poppinettis bowing. A great activity of -Poppinettis handing hats and so forth. Poppinettis whichever way -you turned. The restaurant rotating slightly. Was this Chianti -perhaps stronger than Mr. Preemby had been led to believe? A number -of Poppinettis opening a number of doors and saying polite things. -Difficult to choose a door. Right the first time. Out into the street. -People going by. Taxis. No more Poppinettis. But a girl ought not to -let a young man stroke her arm at dinner, when anyone might see it -happen. It wasn’t correct. Something had to be said. Something tactful. - -Mr. Preemby became aware that he was walking next to Mrs. Crumb. “It -was lovely to hear you talking about the New Atlantis,” she said. “I -wish I had been sitting nearer.” - -“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby. - -Something very nice about Mrs. Crumb. What was it? Not so _fearfully_ -married, but married quite enough. - - -§ 6 - -Mr. Preemby thought they were going back for coffee and a little talk -and then bed; he had no idea of the immense amount of evening still -before him. He knew nothing as yet of the capacity for sitting up late -and getting lively in the small hours possessed by this new world of -young people into which Christina Alberta had led him. - -And in a sort of hectic discontinuous way they were lively for hours. -It became vaguely evident to Mr. Preemby that there was a periodic -“day” set apart by Mrs. Crumb for evening gatherings in the studio, -and that this evening he had chosen for his settling down was such -an evening. Fresh people dropped in. One it seemed was a portentous -arrival, he came in quite soon after the return from Poppinetti’s; he -was very fat and broad, a white-faced man of forty or so, rather short -of breath, with exceedingly intelligent eyes under a broad forehead and -a rather loose, peevish mouth. He carried himself with the involuntary -self-consciousness of a man who thinks he is pointed out. His name -it seemed was Paul Lambone, and he had written all sorts of things. -Everybody treated him with a faint deference. He greeted Christina -Alberta with great warmth. - -“How’s the newest Van?” he said, shaking her hand as though he liked -it, and speaking with a singularly small voice for so ample a person. -“How’s the last step in Advance?” - -“You’ve got to meet my father,” said Christina Alberta. - -“Has it got a father? I thought it just growed like Topsy--out of -Nietzsche and Bernard Shaw and all the rest of them.” - -“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby. - -Mr. Lambone turned to him. “What a Handful a daughter is!” he said, and -bowed slightly towards Christina Alberta, “even the best of them.” - -Mr. Preemby replied after the manner of the parents in Woodford Wells. -“She’s a good daughter to me, sir.” - -“Yes, but they aren’t like sons.” - -“You have sons, sir, I presume.” - -“Only dream children. I’ve not had your courage to realize things. I’ve -married a hundred times in theory and here I am just a sort of bachelor -uncle to everybody. Poking in among the younger people and observing -their behaviour with”--his intelligent eyes looked quietly over his -garrulous mouth at Christina Alberta--“terror and admiration.” - -Two other visitors appeared in the doorway and Mr. Lambone turned -from Mr. Preemby to greet them as soon as Fay had done her welcome, -a fierce-looking young man with an immense head of black hair and a -little lady like a china doll dressed to remind one of Watteau. - -Conversation became general and Mr. Preemby receded into the background -of events. - -He found himself side by side with his friend with the silver hair, -against his bookcase. “I didn’t expect a party,” he said. - -“I thought so too.” - -“I only got here this afternoon. The vans came late and lots of my -things are still to be unpacked.” - -The silver-haired man nodded sympathetically. “Often the case,” he -murmured. - -Every one was talking loudly. It was difficult to hear. It was confused -sort of talking, and whenever two or three seemed to be interested in -what they were saying, Fay Crumb went and interrupted them as a good -hostess should. Other people, only vaguely apprehended by Mr. Preemby, -got into the studio somehow. There was a red-haired young lady with a -tremendous decolletage; behind you could see almost to her waist. He -h’rrmp’d at it and thought of saying something about it, something cold -and quiet, to the silver-haired man. But he didn’t. He couldn’t think -of anything sufficiently cold and quiet to say. - -Fay Crumb came and asked whether he would like some whisky or beer. -“Not on the top of that nice Chianti, thank you,” said Mr. Preemby. - -The conversation seemed to get noisier and noisier. In one corner -Harold Crumb could be heard quoting the poems of Vachel Lindsay. Then -Mr. Lambone came up and seemed to want to talk about the Lost Atlantis, -but Mr. Preemby was shy of talking about the Lost Atlantis with Mr. -Lambone. “Getting on all right, Daddy?” said Christina Alberta, -drifting by and not waiting for any answer but an “h’rrmp.” - -There appeared three young people with a gramophone they explained they -had just bought, and Fay discovered that the beer had been forgotten -and sent Harold out to borrow some from a neighbour. These new-comers -made no very profound impression on Mr. Preemby’s now jaded mind, -except that one of them, the owner of the gramophone, a very fair young -man with a long, intelligent nose, was wearing the big horn of the -gramophone as a headdress, and that he meant to have that gramophone -going whatever else might occur. - -The music was dance-music, jazz for the most part and a few waltzes, -and it revived Mr. Preemby considerably. He sat up and beat time with -the leg-bones of a roc, and presently two or three couples were dancing -on the studio floor. Curious dancing, Mr. Preemby thought; almost -like walking--jiggety walking with sudden terrific back-swipes of the -legs. There was an interruption when Harold returned with the borrowed -beer--bringing its lenders with it. Then there was a general clamour -for Christina Alberta and Teddy to “do” their dance. Teddy was quite -willing but Christina Alberta seemed reluctant, and when Mr. Preemby -saw the dance he was not surprised. - -“H’rrmp,” he said, and stroked his moustache and looked at the -silver-haired man. - -It really was too familiar altogether; for some moments the principals -vanished upstairs, and came back altered. For some reason Teddy had -adopted a cloth cap and a red neck-wrap; he was, in fact, being an -Apache, and the bearing of Christina Alberta had become very proud and -spirited with her arms akimbo. - -Every one backed against the walls to clear a dancing floor. At the -beginning it wasn’t so bad. But presently this Mr. Teddy was pitching -Christina Alberta about, throwing her over his shoulder, taking hold -of her, bending her backward, holding her almost upside down, both -legs in the air and her hands dragging on the ground. And she was red -and excited and seemed to like these violent familiarities. There was -a kind of undesirable suitability between them for such purposes. She -and Teddy looked into each other’s eyes with a sort of intimacy and yet -with a sort of fierce defiance. At one point in the extraordinary dance -she had to smack his face, a good hard smack, nicely timed. She did it -with a spirit that made every one applaud. Whereupon he smiled and took -her nice little neck in his hands and strangled her with great realism. - -Then the gramophone had its death rattle and the dance was over. - -Mr. Preemby’s throat had not troubled him much since dinner, but now he -said “h’rrmp” repeatedly. - -They wanted Christina Alberta, bright and panting and shock-headed, to -repeat the performance, but she wouldn’t. She had had a glimpse of the -solemn dismay and perplexity upon her Daddy’s face. - -The people from the studio next door were the next to give a display: -they obliged with an imitation of a Russian imitation of a peasant -dance from Saratoff. There was a gramophone record that was not quite -the proper music, but it would do. That dance really amused Mr. -Preemby. The young man went down quite close to the floor and kicked -out his feet with the greatest agility and the girl was as wooden as -a doll. Every one clapped hands in time to the music, and so did Mr. -Preemby. - -And then came a further irruption. Five people in fancy dress demanding -beer. They impressed Mr. Preemby as strange and bright-coloured, but -totally uninteresting. One wore a red coxcomb and was dressed as a -jester in cap and bells. The others just wore tights and bright things -that signified nothing at all. They had been at some party given by -somebody or other for the “Young people.” They announced with shouts, -“They shut down at midnight. Yes, they shut down at midnight. When the -young people go to bed.” - -It was only too manifest that No. 8 Lonsdale Mews meant to do nothing -of the sort. - -Beer. Mr. Preemby declined. The last of the beer. Cigarettes. Much -smoke. The last of the whisky. More gramophone, more dancing and Harold -Crumb’s voice loose again in recitation. Beer or whisky had thickened -it. But there were countervailing noises. Movement. A circle was -cleared. Not more dancing! No. Feats of strength and dexterity with -chairs, performed chiefly by Teddy Winterton, the gramophone owner, and -Harold. This stunting stopped presently and the company flowed back -towards the middle of the room. Talk Mr. Preemby could not follow; -phrases he could not understand. Nobody taking the slightest notice of -him. - -A sense of weariness and futility and desolation came upon him. How -differently were the evenings of the past spent by the good wise people -of the lost Atlantis! Philosophical discourse they had, the lute, the -lyre. Elevated thoughts. - -He caught sight of Mrs. Crumb yawning furtively. Suddenly, stupendously -he yawned. And yawned again. - -“Yaaw,” he said to Paul Lambone who was at his side. - -“Proyawaw--Prolly thiswe sitting on my beawawd.” - -“You live here?” said Mr. Lambone. - -“Come to-day. Christina Albyawawawter arranged it.” - -“The devil she did!” said Mr. Lambone, and looked across the studio at -her. For some moments he seemed lost in thought. - -“Very remarkable young woman that daughter of yours,” he said. “Makes -me feel old-fashioned.” - -He looked at the wrist-watch he wore, “Half-past one,” he said. “I’ll -start the Go....” - - -§ 7 - -Mr. Preemby heard a few sentences of the parting between Teddy -Winterton and Christina Alberta. “Yes or no?” said Teddy. - -“_No_,” said Christina Alberta with emphasis. - -“Not a bit of it,” said Teddy. - -“I don’t want to,” she said. - -“But you _do_.” - -“Oh, go to the devil!” - -“Not as if there were risks.” - -“I shan’t come. It’s preposterous.” - -“I shall wait all the same.” - -“You may wait.” - -“Little Chrissy Hesitation. Anything to please you.” - - -§ 8 - -It took until past two o’clock for the Go Paul Lambone had started to -remove the last of the company. - -“All hands to the bedmaking,” cried Fay. “It isn’t always like this, -Mr. Preemby.” - -“Confess I feel tired,” said Mr. Preemby. “Had a long day of it.” - -Christina Alberta regarded him with belated compunction. “It just -happened like this,” she said. - -“Not used to such late hours,” said Mr. Preemby, sitting on his bed -when at last it was made, and he did a yawn that almost dislocated his -jaw. - -“Night,” said Fay, yawning also. - -“We’ll turn in,” said Harold. “So long, Mr. Preemby.” The yawning -seized upon Harold also. What a face he had! - -“Goo-i.” - -“Gawooi-i.” - -The door closed upon them. - -There was much to say to Christina Alberta, but it was too late and Mr. -Preemby was too weary to say it now And also he had no idea what it was -he ought to say. - -A casual remark fell out, “I liked that man with the white hair,” he -said. - -“Did you?” said Christina Alberta absently. - -“He was intelligent. He took a great interest in the Lost Atlantis.” - -“He’s stone deaf,” said Christina Alberta, “and he’s ashamed of -it--poor dear.” - -“Oh!” said Mr. Preemby. - -“All this is going to be rather noisy for you, Daddy,” she said, coming -to what she had in mind. - -“It _is_ a bit ramshackle,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“We ought to go to Tunbridge Wells quite soon and look round there.” - -“To-morrow,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“Not to-morrow.” - -“Why not?” - -“The next day,” said Christina Alberta. “I’m not quite sure about -to-morrow. I’d sort of half promised to go somewhere else--. But it -doesn’t matter very much really.” - -“I’d like to go to Tumbridge Wells to-morrow,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“Why not?” said Christina Alberta as if to herself, and hesitated. - -Se walked to the door and came back. “Good night, little Daddy,” she -said. - -“Are we going then? To-morrow?” - -“No.... Yes.... I don’t know. I _had_ planned to do something -to-morrow. Important in a kind of way.... We’ll go to-morrow, Daddy.” - -She walked away from him with her arms akimbo and stared at those queer -pictures. - -She spun round on her feet. “I can’t go to-morrow,” she said. - -“Yes, I will,” she contradicted. - -“Oh, hell!” she cried, in a most unaccountable and unladylike way. “I -don’t know what to _do_!” - -Mr. Preemby looked at her with grave and weary eyes. This was a new -Christina Alberta to him. She ought not to swear. She did _not_ ought -to swear. She’d caught it up from these people. She didn’t know what it -meant. He must talk to her--to-morrow. About that and one or two other -things. But Heavens! how tired he was! - -“You--” He yawned. “You must take care of yourself, Christina Alberta,” -he said. - -“I’ll do that all right, Daddy. Trust me.” - -She came and sat down beside him on his little half-fictitious bed. “We -can’t decide to-night, Daddy. We’re too tired. We’ll settle to-morrow. -Have to see what the weather’s like for one thing. Wouldn’t do to -walk about Tunbridge if it was wet. We’ll decide about everything -to-morrow--when our heads are cool. Why! you dear little Daddy! It’s -just upon half-past two.” - -She put her arm round his shoulders and kissed him on the top of his -head and the lobe of his ear. He loved her to touch him and kiss him. -He did not understand in the least how much he loved her to kiss him. - -“Dear _tired_ little Daddy,” she said in her softest voice: “You are -ever so kind to me. Good night.” - -She had gone. - -For some time Mr. Preemby sat quite motionless in a state of almost -immobile thought. - -The floor of the studio was littered with burnt matches and cigarette -ends and the air smelt of stale smoke and beer. On the blue-painted -table stood an empty beer-bottle and two or three glasses containing -dregs of beer and cigarette ash. - -It was all very different from Woodford Wells,--very different indeed. - -But it was Experience. - -Mr. Preemby bestirred himself to undress. - -That night-shirt of Saxony flannel had still to be unpacked. - - -§ 9 - -In the morning Christina Alberta was still restless and quite undecided -about going to Tunbridge Wells, though the weather was perfectly fine. -About half-past eleven she disappeared, and after a light lunch with -Fay--Harold was out also--it became evident to Mr. Preemby that the -visit to Tunbridge Wells was postponed for the day. So he went to -South Kensington to look at the Museums there. He did not go into them -actually, he just looked at them and at the colleges and buildings -generally. It was a preliminary reconnaissance. - -The Museums were quite good to look at. Larger, more extensive, than -the British Museum. Probably they contained--all sorts of things. - -Christina Alberta reappeared in the studio about half-past six -looking very bright and exalted. There was something about her subtly -triumphant. - -She offered no explanation of her disappearance. She was full of the -visit to Tunbridge on the morrow. They must catch a train soon after -nine and have a good long day. She was unusually affectionate to her -Daddy. - -Harold was out for the evening and Fay had some reviewing to do, so -they had quite a quiet and domestic evening. Mr. Preemby read with a -varying attention a nice deep confusing book he had found in the room -upstairs called _Fantasia of the Unconscious_ about the Lost Atlantis -and similar things. - - - - -CHAPTER THE FOURTH - -_The Petunia Boarding House_ - - -§ 1 - -Most places in the world have sister cities and twins and parallels, -but Tunbridge Wells is Tunbridge Wells, and there is nothing really -like it upon our planet. Not that it is in any way strange or -fantastic, but because of its brightly delicate distinction. It is -clean and open, and just pleasantly absurd. It is not more than -thirty miles from London, as the crow flies, but the North Downs six -miles away dismiss with a serene and gracious gesture all thoughts of -London from the mind. It is away from the main line out of London, -inconvenient for season-ticket holders; there is no direct route for -the hurrying motorist over those saving Downs; to Dover and Kent -generally he goes to the east of it, and to Brighton he goes to the -west--if he survive the hills of Westerham and Sevenoaks. Rich men’s -estates encircle it with accessible parks. Eridge, Bayham, Penshurst -Park, Knole and the like protect it from overmuch breeding of little -villa residences. There it lies, on a rare piece of rocky soil, dry -underfoot, airy and wholesome, with its friendly Common in the midst of -it; its Spa of evil-tasting beneficent waters as the Stuart princesses -drank them, its Pantiles and its Pump Room, much as Dr. Johnson knew -the place. Mount Sion and Mount Ephraim, Beulah Road and something -evangelical in the air, remind the light-minded visitor that London in -the past was a Puritan city. Many a serious liver has been touched -and found grace at Tunbridge Wells. Many a light liver has found fresh -strength there. And thither came Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta -seeking a boarding house--and they could have sought it in no more -favourable locality. - -They set about the search in a systematic way as became a couple, one -of whom had been partially trained for sociological research at the -London School of Economics and partially trained for business at the -Tomlinson School. Mr. Preemby had been for beginning with a general -look-round, just walking round and looking quietly at things for a bit, -but Christina Alberta consulted all the agents in order, and bought -a map and guide to the town and sat down on a seat on the Common and -planned the operations that led quite readily and easily to the Petunia -Boarding House. - -In the guide Mr. Preemby read with approval some very promising words. -“Listen to this, my dear,” he said. “H’rrmp. ‘General Characteristics. -Emphasis might very well be laid on the character enjoyed by Tunbridge -Wells as a magnet for high-class residents and visitors. The town is -never overrun with trippers, nor are its streets ever defiled by the -vulgar or the inane. Its inhabitants are composed, for the most part, -of well-to-do people who naturally create a social atmosphere tinged by -culture and refinement.’” - -“_Tinged_ is a jolly good word for it, I expect,” said Christina -Alberta. - -“I think my instinct has guided me aright to this place,” said Mr. -Preemby. - -The Petunia Boarding House looks obliquely upon the Common from where -Petunia Road runs into the quaint and pleasant High Street. It has -not the towering magnificence of the Wellington, the Royal Mount -Ephraim, the Marlborough, or their fellows, which face the sun so -bravely from the hill-crest above the Common, but it is a house of -dignified comfort. The steps, the portico, the ample hall, the name in -letters of gold on black, made Mr. Preemby say h’rrmp several times. -An excessively chubby maid in a very, very tight black dress and a cap -and apron, came and looked at Mr. and Miss Preemby with a distraught -evasive expression, answered some preliminary questions incoherently, -and said she would call Miss Emily Rewster--Miss Margaret was out. -Thereupon Miss Emily Rewster, who had been hovering attentively behind -a bead curtain, thrust it aside and came ingratiatingly into the -foreground. She was a little high-coloured old lady, with an air of -genteel _savoir-faire_; she had a lace cap and wore a great deal of -lace and several flounces, and she had the most frankly dyed chestnut -hair that Christina Alberta had ever seen. “Was it just for a week or -so Mr. Preemby wanted to come, or something--perheps--more permanent?” - -Explanations were exchanged. Mr. Preemby was to be “more permanent”; -Christina Alberta intermittent--and rather a difficulty. The existence -of headquarters in Chelsea was revealed discreetly, but not the fact -that they were in a Mews. - -Miss Emily Rewster thought Christina Alberta could be fitted in if she -wasn’t too particular about having the same room, or exactly the same -sort of room every time she came. “We have to menage,” said Miss Emily -Rewster. - -“So long as the window opens,” said Christina Alberta. - -The rooms exhibited were very satisfactory, (h’rrmp) very satisfactory. -A glimpse of a bathroom was given. “You say when you want one,” said -Miss Emily Rewster. There was a dining-room with separate tables, and -there were flowers on every table, very refined and pleasant, and there -was a large drawing-room with a piano and a great number of arm-chairs -and sofas wearing flounces so like the flounces of Miss Emily Rewster, -and antimacassars so like her cap, and with so entirely her air of -accommodating receptiveness that it seemed as though they must be -at least her cousins who had joined her in the enterprise. The piano -wore a sort of lace bed-spread, and there were polished tables bearing -majolica pots of aspidistra on mats and little less serious tables for -use, and there was a low bookcase with books in it and a great heap -of illustrated papers on the top. The hall expanded at the back into -a rather modernish lounge where two ladies were having tea; and there -was also a smoking-room, where, said Miss Emily Rewster to Christina -Alberta rather coyly, “the gentlemen smoke.” - -“We’ve been very full this season,” said Miss Emily Rewster, “very -full. We’ve had nearly thirty sitting at dinner. But of course the -season is drawing in now. Just at present we’re down to nine at -breakfast and seven at dinner; two gentlemen in business here. But -people come and people go. I’ve had two inquiries by post to-day. One -an invalid lady and her sister. They think of drinking the waters. And -there are Birds of Passage as well as Regulars. Just for a night or -so. Motor families. They take us _en route_. That’s where we have an -advantage in being so close to the shops.” - -She beamed intimately at Mr. Preemby. “Often my sister or I pop out at -the last moment and get in things ourselves. When every one else is -busy. We don’t mind any little trouble if it makes people comfortable.” - -“We’ve been on the separate table system ever since the war,” said Miss -Emily Rewster. “So much more pleasant. You can keep yourself Quate to -yourself if you wish, or you can be Friendly. People often Speak in the -Drawing-room or in the Smoking-room. And they bow. Sometimes people get -Quate friendly. Play Games. Get up Excursions together. Quate Pleasant.” - -Christina Alberta asked an obvious question. - -“Very pleasant people indeed,” said Miss Emily. “Very pleasant people. -A retired gentleman and his wife and her stepdaughter and two retired -maiden ladies and a gentleman and his lady who has been in a forest in -Burmah and so on.” - -Christina Alberta restrained a ribald impulse to ask what a “retired -gentleman” or a “retired maiden lady” really meant. - -“I’ve always been attracted to Tumbridge Wells,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“_Royal_ Tunbridge Wells _if_ you please,” said Miss Emily radiantly. -“The ‘Royal’ was added in nineteen nine, you know, by gracious command -of his Majesty.” - -“I didn’t know,” said Mr. Preemby with profound respect, and tried it -over; “_Royal_ Tumbridge Wells.” - -“Makes it rather a mouthful,” said Christina Alberta. - -“A very pleasant mouthful for Us, I can assure you,” said Miss Emily -loyally. - -The Petunia Boarding House seemed so satisfactory to Mr. Preemby that -it was arranged that he should return the next day but one, bringing -with him some clothes and other luggage, and that Christina Alberta -was to come and stay with him for a few days--there was a little room -upstairs she could have--and then she would go back to London and her -studies and take her chance of coming again when there was a room for -her. - - -§ 2 - -In the train back to London Mr. Preemby rehearsed these arrangements -and made his plans. - -“I shall come down here the day after to-morrow, after I have put my -collections in order at the Mew. I shall put the best things so that -they can be seen through the glass of the cabinet, but I think I shall -lock them up, and I shall bring down a few necessary books, and then -when I have quite settled in I shall go and have a good look at these -celebrated Rocks here.” - -“We could come down in the morning,” said Christina Alberta, “and go -and look at them in the afternoon.” - -“Not the same afternoon,” said Mr. Preemby. “No. I want my mind to -be quite fresh and open when I look at the Rocks. I think it will be -best to see them quite early--after a night’s sleep. When there are no -other visitors. I think--I think, Christina Alberta, that for the first -time I’d better go to them quite alone. Without you. Sometimes you say -things, Christina Alberta--you don’t mean to say them of course--but -they put me out....” - -Christina Alberta reflected. “What do you expect to find at these -Rocks, Daddy?” - -Mr. Preemby waved his moustache and the rest of his face slowly from -side to side. “I go with an Open Mind,” he said. “Perhaps all of -Atlantis was not lost. Some of it may be hidden. There are legends -preserved by the philosopher Plato. Partly in cipher. Who knows? It may -be here. It may be in Africa. A plan. A sign. The toad rock must be -most singular. In the British Museum there is a toad rock from Central -America....” - -He mused pleasantly for a time. - -“I shall take a note-book,” he said, “and several coloured pencils.” - -He continued to meditate. His next remark came after an interval of -three or four minutes, and was a surprise for Christina Alberta. - -“I hope, my dear,” said Mr. Preemby, “that among all these artists and -people you are not getting Ram Shackle. - -“I should be sorry to think you were getting Ram Shackle,” said Mr. -Preemby. - -“But Daddy, what makes you think I may be getting--Ram Shackle?” asked -Christina Alberta. - -“One or two little things I saw at the Mew,” said Mr. Preemby. “Just -one or two little things. You’ve got to be careful, Christina Alberta. -A girl has to take care of herself. And your friends--decidedly Ram -Shackle. Don’t mind my making a remark about them, Christina Alberta. -Just a word in season.” - -Christina Alberta’s answer came after a little interval, and without -her usual confident ring. “Don’t you worry about me, Daddy,” she said. -“I’m all right.” - -Mr. Preemby seemed about to change the subject. Then he remarked, “I -don’t like that feller, Teddy Winterton. He’s too familiar.” - -“I don’t like him either,” said Christina Alberta. “He _is_ too -familiar.” - -“That’s all right,” said Mr. Preemby. “I thought you didn’t notice,” -and relapsed into meditation. - -But this sudden and unprecedented intervention in her personal affairs -made Christian Alberta thoughtful for all the rest of the way to -London. Ever and again she glanced furtively at her Daddy. - -He seemed to have forgotten her. - -But it was dreadfully true. Teddy Winterton had become--altogether--too -familiar. - - -§ 3 - -In all ages competent observers have noted the erratic unexpectedness -of destiny, and now Christina Alberta was to add her own small -experience to this ever accumulating testimony. It seemed to her that -in planting him out in the wholesome quiet of Royal Tunbridge Wells -she was securing for her Daddy the very best possible conditions for -a happy and harmless life. There had, indeed, been a notable change -in the little man since her mother’s death, a release of will, a new -freedom of expression, a disposition to comment and even form judgments -upon things about him. She had herself likened it to the germination -of a seed brought out of a suppressing aridity into moisture and the -light, but she had not followed up that comparison so far as to -speculate what efflorescences might arise out of this belated unfolding -of his initiatives. That here, of all places, he would meet just the -stimulus that was needed for the most fantastic expansions of his -imaginative life, that for him Tunbridge Wells should prove the way -out of this everyday world of ours into what was to be for him an -altogether more wonderful and satisfactory existence, never entered her -head. - -For three days, until a fretting urgency for events carried her back -to London, she stayed in the Petunia Boarding House, and for all those -three days there was no intimation of the great change in his mind -that impended. On the whole he seemed unusually dull and quiet during -those three days. He liked Tunbridge Wells very much, he said, but he -was greatly disappointed by the High Rocks and by the Toad Rock when -he came to examine them. He even doubted whether they were not “simply -natural.” This was a terrible concession. He tried hard to believe that -the Toad Rock was like one of the big Maya carvings of a toad from -Yucatan, a cast of which he had seen in the British Museum, but it was -evident that with all the will possible he could not manage so great -an act of faith. All the decoration, he declared, all the inscription -had been obliterated, and then, making the great blonde moustache -bristle like a clothes-brush: “There never were any decorations or -inscriptions. Never.” - -It was clear to Christina Alberta that he must have evolved very -extraordinary expectations, indeed, to be so much cast down. She found -herself very interested in the riddle of what was fermenting in his -mind. It seemed to her as if he had regarded Tunbridge Wells as a -sort of Poste Restante at which some letter of supreme importance had -awaited him. And there was no letter. - -“But what did you expect, little Daddy?” said Christina Alberta, when -on the afternoon of the first day he took her to the Toad Rock to see -for herself how ordinary and insignificant a rock it was. “Did you -expect some wonderful carvings?” - -“I expected--something for me. Something significant.” - -“For you?” - -“Yes, for me. And every one. About Life and the Mysteries. I had grown -a sort of feeling there would be something there. _Now_--I don’t know -where to turn.” - -“But what sort of thing, what significance did you expect?” - -“Isn’t Life a Riddle, Christina Alberta? Haven’t you noticed that? Do -you think it is just nothing but studios and dances and excursions and -char-à-bancs and meal-times and harvest?” he said. “Obviously there is -something more in it than that. Obviously. All that is just a Veil. -Outward Showing. H’rrmp. And I don’t know what is behind it, and I am -just a plain boarder--in a boarding house--and my life is passing away. -Very difficult. H’rrmp. Almost impossible. It worries me exceedingly. -Somewhere there must be a clue.” - -“But that’s how we _all_ feel, Daddy,” cried Christina Alberta. - -“Things can’t be what they seem,” said Mr. Preemby, waving his hand -with a gesture of contemptuous dismissal towards Rusthall Village, -public house, lamp-posts, a policeman, a dog, a grocer’s delivery van -and three passing automobiles. “That at any rate is obvious. It would -be too absurd. Infinite space; stars and so forth. Just for running -about in--between meals....” - -Now who would have thought, Christina Alberta reflected, that this sort -of thing was going on in his head? Who would have thought it? - -“Either I am a Reincarnation,” said Mr. Preemby, “or I am not. And if -I am not, then I want to know what all this business of the world is -about. Symbolical it _must_ be, Christina Alberta. But of what? - -“All those years at the Laundry I knew that that life wasn’t -real. A period of rest and preparation. Your dear mother thought -differently--we never discussed it, h’rrmp, but it was so.” - -Christina Alberta could find no adequate comment and they went on in -silence for some time. When they spoke again it was to discuss how they -could get round to the High Rocks Hotel for tea. - - -§ 4 - -Mr. Preemby was evidently depressed and more than a little aggrieved, -but he had none of the comprehensive despondency of your melancholic -type. Concurrently he was quite actively interested in the boarding -house, and the fellow boarders he encountered there. It was a novel -experience for him to be in a boarding house. During his married -life he had always spent his holidays with Mrs. Preemby in seaside -apartments, so that she could supervise the provisioning properly, and -detect, expose and rectify errors and extortion. They had taken drives -inland during these vacations, or camped on the beach while Mr. Preemby -and Christina Alberta had made sandcastles or pottered among rocks, and -Mrs. Preemby had sat in a folding-chair and pined for the Laundry. If -the weather was bad they kept in their apartments, where Mr. Preemby -and Christina Alberta could read books while Mrs. Preemby could pine -for the Laundry almost as well as she could on the beach. But deep -in Mr. Preemby’s heart there had always been a craving for such a -collective, promiscuous life as a boarding house affords. - -They had made the acquaintance of the second Miss Rewster, Miss -Margaret Rewster, on their arrival with the luggage. She was a taller, -more anxious and less richly belaced variation of her sister. They -both, Mr. Preemby discovered, had a peculiar hovering quality. They -seemed always hovering behind bead curtains or down passages, or -looking over from staircase landings or peeping round doors; poor -dears! they were dreadfully anxious not to interfere with their guests, -but they were equally anxious that everything should be all right. At -meal-times they operated with the joints and dishes behind a screen, -and the chubby maid carried round the plates and vegetables. And -whenever Mr. Preemby looked at the screen he found either Miss Margaret -Rewster peeping over the top of it at him or Miss Emily Rewster peeping -round the end. It made him quite nervous with his forks and spoons. -When he dropped his serviette he hoped that would pass unobserved, but -Miss Emily noted it at once and sent the chubby maid to pick it up for -him. - -Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta came down to dinner as soon as Miss -Margaret had sounded the second gong, and so they were the first to be -seated and could survey their fellow-guests at an advantage. Christina -Alberta was quietly observant, but Mr. Preemby said “h’rrmp” at each -fresh arrival. The next to appear were two Birds of Passage, a young -man in Hudibrastic golfing knickerbockers, and a lady, presumably his -wife, in a bright yellow sporting jumper, who were motoring about Kent; -they made strenuous attempts to seize a table in the window which was -already reserved for Petunia Regulars and were subdued with difficulty, -but perfect dignity, by Miss Emily. They then consulted loudly about -wine--the young man called the lady “Old Thing,” and “Old Top,” forms -of expression new and interesting to Mr. Preemby, and she called him -“Badger”--and the chubby maid produced a card of wines that could be -sent out for. The young man read out the names and prices of wines and -made his selection almost as though he were a curate officiating in a -very large cathedral. His wife, to follow out that comparison, made the -responses. “Chablis such as we should get here might be too sweet,” he -proclaimed. - -“It might be too sweet?” - -“What of a Pommard, Old Top?” - -“Why _not_ a Pommard, Badger?” - -“The Beaune is a shilling cheaper and just as likely to be good--or -bad.” - -“Just as likely.” - -The chubby maid flew out of the room, list in hand, with her thumb on -the wine he had chosen. - -Meanwhile under cover of this hubbub the two ladies Mr. Preemby -had seen at tea in the lounge on the occasion of his first visit, -percolated unobtrusively to a table near the window. They were -obviously sisters, both rather slender and tall with small, round, -bright-coloured faces on stalk-like necks; they had sharp little noses, -and one of them wore tortoiseshell spectacles. A gentleman with a white -moustache, larger and nobler even than Mr. Preemby’s, accompanied by a -small alert-looking wife, was the next to appear. Possibly this was the -gentleman who had been in a forest in Burmah. The small alert-looking -wife bowed to the slender ladies, who became agitated like reeds in a -wind. The gentleman took no notice of them, grunted as he sat down, -produced glasses and read the menu. - -“Tomato soup _again_!” he said. - -“It’s usually very nice tomato soup,” said his wife. - -“But Three Times Running!” he said. “It favours acidity. I don’t _like_ -tomato soup.” - -The table in the bow window was occupied by three people who drifted -in separately. First came a little, thin, dark lady in grey, carrying -a bead work-bag, then a little dark, bald man with large side-whiskers -whom she addressed as father, and then a plump, healthy-looking wife -with a radiant manner who swept in and distributed greetings. - -“Did you get your walk, Major Bone?” she said to the gentleman from the -Burmese forest. - -“Just to Rusthall Common and back,” said Major Bone, speaking thickly -through his moustache and soup. “Just to Rusthall Common.” - -“And you got a char-à-banc to Crohamhurst, Miss Solbé?” The two sisters -answered in unison. “Oh! we had a _lovely_ ride.” - -“So picturesque,” said the one with spectacles. - -“So open and pleasant,” said the one without spectacles. - -“Did you see the sea?” - -“Oh, plainly!” said the one with spectacles. - -“Ever so far away,” said the one without. - -“Just as if the sky had a steel edge,” said the one with spectacles. - -“Exactly like a leetle silver line,” said the one without. - -“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby. - -Small portions of fish followed the tomato soup, and were consumed -in comparative silence. There was a little burst of scarcely audible -conversation at the window table. - -“Now is _this_ the same fish as we had yesterday?” asked the wife. - -“It is a very similar fish,” said the gentleman with whiskers. - -“The menu simply says, ‘Fish,’” said the stepdaughter. - -“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“I think our back tyres were too tight to-day, Old Top,” said the -man in plus fours, in a very loud, clear voice. “I felt the road -dreadfully.” - -“I felt the road dreadfully,” said the lady in the yellow jumper. - -“I must let them down a little to-morrow morning.” - -“It would be better.” - -“To-morrow morning will do. I won’t trouble to-night.” - -“Much better to-morrow morning, Badger. You’re tired to-night after all -that bumping. You’d make your hands dirty.” - -Silence and active business with knives and forks. - -“Porruck hasn’t written about that,” said the Major from the forest. - -“Very likely he’s busy,” said his wife. - -Silence. - -“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby. - -Christina Alberta searched her mind for some conversational opening -that would give her father a reasonable opportunity to make an -acceptable reply, but she could think of nothing that was neither -too disconcerting nor too dangerous. She met his eye and he had the -expression of one who holds out against a strain. - -Fish gave place to lamb. - -“I thought that road from Sittingbourne was just awful,” said the -motoring gentleman. - -“It was _just_ awful,” responded his wife. - -Christina Alberta saw her father’s face working. He was going to say -something. “H’rrmp. To-morrow, if it is fine, I think we will go for a -walk in the morning.” - -The knives and forks were hushed. Everybody was listening. - -“I’d love a walk to-morrow, Daddy,” said Christina Alberta. “I should -think there were some jolly walks about this place.” - -“Exactly,” said Mr. Preemby. “Very probably. The Guide Book is very -reassuring. H’rrmp.” - -He had the dignified expression of a man who has carried off a -difficult duty. - -Resumption of activity with knives and forks. - -“Hard to tell this lamb from mutton,” said Major Bone, “if it wasn’t -for the mint sauce.” - -“Peas are never so nice as they are from your own garden,” said the -wife of the whiskered gentleman to her stepdaughter. - -“It’s late for peas,” said the stepdaughter. - -The two Miss Solbés and the motoring gentleman began talking at the -same time. Mrs. Bone expressed the idea that it was hard to get good -lamb nowadays. Taking courage from this sudden swirl of conversation -Mr. Preemby was emboldened to remark to Christina Alberta that he had -always been attracted to Tumbridge Wells. He felt the air was a strong -air. It gave him an appetite. - -“You must be careful not to get fat,” said Christina Alberta. - -The outburst of active human exchanges came to an end. Baked apple and -custard were consumed in comparative silence. The chubby maid came to -ask Mr. Preemby whether he would like his coffee in the lounge or the -smoking-room. “The lounge I think,” said Mr. Preemby. “H’rrmp. The -lounge.” - -The Misses Solbé, bearing glasses containing sugar and lemon juice, -flitted from the room. The people from the window table followed. -The function of dinner was completed. They found themselves alone -in the lounge. Most of the people seemed to have drifted into the -sitting-room. The gentleman from the forests of Burmah went by towards -the smoking-room, carrying a large cigar which had an air of also -coming from the forests of Burmah. It did not look like a cigar that -had been rolled or filled; it looked like a cigar of old gnarled wood -that had been hewn from a branching tree. A straw came out of the end -of it.... - -Christina Alberta stood and contemplated a vast void of time, two hours -it might be, before she could decently go to bed. “Oh! this is the -Life!” she said. - -“Extremely comfortable,” said Mr. Preemby, sitting down with much -creaking in a basket arm-chair. - -Christina Alberta sat on a glass-topped table and lit a cigarette. She -saw those two hours stretching before her, and she wanted to scream. - -The chubby maid brought coffee and seemed gently surprised at Christina -Alberta’s cigarette. Whisperings off stage. Then Miss Emily became -dimly visible through the bead curtain at the end of the passage, -hovering. She vanished again and Christina Alberta finished her -cigarette in peace. Mr. Preemby drank up his coffee. Pause. Christina -Alberta swung her legs rhythmically. Then she slid off the table to her -feet. - -“Daddy,” she said, “let’s go into the sitting-room and see if anything -is happening there.” - - -§ 5 - -In the Boarding Houses of the past the common dining-table was the -social centre where people met and mind clashed upon and polished mind. -But the spirit of aloofness, the separate table system, has changed -all that, and now it is in the smoking-room or the sitting-room that -the vestiges of social intercourse, advances, retreats, coquettings, -exchanges, games and jests are to be found. But the company of the -Petunia Boarding House was not in a state of social fusion. The only -coalescence was a conversation. The wife of the gentleman from the -Burmese forests had secured an arm-chair by the side of the fire-place, -and she was describing in a low whisper the numerous servants she -had had in Burmah, to the cheerful wife and the younger Miss Solbé -who was knitting. The Miss Solbé with the spectacles had fortified -herself behind a table on the other side of the fire and was engaged -meticulously with a very elaborate Patience. The gentleman with the -side-whiskers sat rigidly on one of the sofas, behind a copy of the -_Times_, while his daughter sat at a table close at hand and also -threaded her way through a Patience. The Birds of Passage, after -inquiries about movies and music-halls, had gone out. - -Nobody took the slightest notice of Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta. -The two stood for some moments in the middle of the room, and then -panic came upon Mr. Preemby. A dishonourable panic so that he threw his -daughter to these silent, motionless wolves. - -“H’rrmp,” he said. “I think my dear, I will go to the smoking-room. -I think I will go and smoke. There are some illustrated papers over -there on the bookcase for you if you care to look at them.” - -Christina Alberta walked over to the low bookcase and Mr. Preemby -departed, h’rrmping. - -She stood pretending an interest in the illustrated jokes and in -the portraits of actresses and society people in the _Sketch_ and -_Tatler_. Out of the tail of her eye she surveyed those fellow-guests -of hers, and with a negligent ear she collected the gist of Mrs. Bone’s -dissertation upon the servant question in Burmah. “They will plant the -whole family upon you if they can--uncles and cousins even. Before you -know where you are.... - -“Of course a white woman is a Little Queen out there.... - -“The chief fault of the cooking from my point of view, was the way it -upset Major Bone. His stomach ... far more delicate than a woman’s.” - -“He looks so stout and strong,” said Miss Solbé. - -“In everything but that. In everything. But the Curries they used to -make----” - -She sank her voice, and the heads of the younger Miss Solbé and the -pleasant mannered lady closed in upon her for the rich particulars. - -What a Lot they were! Christina Alberta reflected. And they were -living beings! The astonishing thing to Christina Alberta was that -they were alive. And being alive and having presumably been a cause -of considerable trouble, distress, emotion and hope to various people -before they were got alive, they were now all in the most resolute way -avoiding anything that with the extremest stretch of civility could -be spoken of as living. Their hours, their days were passing; a few -thousand days more perhaps for each of them, a few score thousand -hours. Then there would be no more chance of living for ever. And -instead of filling up this scanty allowance of hours and days with -every possible sensation and every possible effort and accomplishment, -here they were, gathered into a sort of magic box of atmosphere in -which nothing could possibly be done. By anyone.... - -Christina Alberta felt like a moth caught under a glass. Well, for a -day or so, she had an excuse, little Daddy must be settled. But then? -Nothing could be done here. Neither joy nor sorrow nor sin nor creative -effort--because even Miss Solbé’s knitting was being knitted to a -prescription on a dirty cutting of printed paper. Everything they were -employed upon was an evasion, everything. Even the whispered delicate -hints of the diuretic, dyspeptic, infuriating and wildly aphrodisiac -effects of Burmah Curry upon Major Bone in his younger days that were -being handed out by his good lady to her intent hearers, were just a -substitution of second-hand knowledge for realities. - -And this Patience! Would she, Christina Alberta asked herself, would -she ever come to play Patiences in Boarding Houses? Was it credible -that some day she also would come to sit voluntarily in such an -atmosphere? - -“Rather sell matches in a gutter,” whispered Christina Alberta. - -What a marvellous thing is Man! What ingenuities he has! what powers -and capabilities! He invents paper and perfects printing! He develops -the most beautiful methods of colour printing. He makes cardboard like -silk and ivory out of rags and vegetable pulp. And all it would seem, -that human beings, hanging for a little while in life between the -nothingness before death and the nothingness after death, should fiddle -away long hours in a feeble, fuddled conflict with the permutations -of duplicate sets of four differently coloured thirteens! Cards! -The marvel of cards! All over the world millions of people drawing -nearer to death and nothingness were pursuing the chances of the four -thirteens: bridge, whist, nap, skat, a hundred forms of it. Directly -they could get in out of the wet and dark, they sat down to that -sort of thing, to the cards shining under the still lamps, to being -endlessly surprised, delighted, indignant and despondent by chances -that anyone who chose to sit down to it could work out and tabulate in -a week! - -“Getting it out, dear?” said the younger Miss Solbé. - -“The spades are _Wicked_ to-night,” said the Miss Solbé with the -glasses. - -“Mine is going rather well,” said the daughter of the gentleman with -the whiskers. - -“Does your daughter play _Miss Milligan_?” asked the younger Solbé -sister. - -“_Eight-eights_,” said the comfortable wife. “_Miss Milligan_ is too -much for her.” - -“Well, it _is_ a Beast you know,” said the stepdaughter. “You never -know where you are with it.” - -“Patience is Patience,” said the elder Miss Solbé. “Nowadays I often -get it out. But not when the spades come as they’ve done to-night, both -twos in the top row, and no aces till the last round but one.” - -Christina Alberta thought it was time to change from the _Sketch_ to -the _Tatler_. She tried to do this with careless ease and flopped a -dozen papers on the floor. “Oh, _Damn_!” said Christina Alberta to a -great stillness. She struggled to pick up and replace the disordered -sheets. For a time every one seemed to be regarding her. Then Mrs. Bone -took up her discourse again. - -“And you can’t imagine their obstinacy,” she said. “They are _wilfully_ -ignorant. When you show them, _then_ they won’t do it. I took my -cook-boy in hand for a time--boy I call him, but he was quite a -middle-aged man--and I said to him, ‘just let me show you some plain -English cookery, a boiled fowl with nice white sauce, a few plain -potatoes and vegetables--quite plain with the natural flavour left -in--the sort of food that builds up these brave young Englishmen you -see.’ Of course I’m not a good cook myself, but anyhow I knew more -of English cooking than he did. But we never got further than the -plain boiled fowl. He expressed the most violent disapproval--really -violent I mean--of the whole proceedings. As I took hold of the things -and got to work he began to behave in the most extraordinary way. He -tried _not_ to follow what I was doing. Tried not to. He said that if -he cooked a fowl like that he would lose caste, lose his position in -the local guild of cooks, be perpetually defiled and outcast. _Why_, -he would not say. When I persisted he rushed up and down pulling at -his black hair--a black madman, his eyes rolling frightfully. I could -never make out what there was in a plain boiled fowl to cause such -excitement. ‘This in my kitchen,’ he said. ‘This in _my_ kitchen!’ - -“There I stood quietly boiling my fowl while all this pother went on. -He hovered about me. He talked--fortunately in his own language. I -even caught him pretending to be sick behind my back. Then he came and -implored me to desist--with tears in his great brown eyes. He tried -to say things in English. The Major always says that he was simply -swearing, but I believe the wretched man really did believe that if he -was to boil a fowl in the plain, wholesome, simple way nice people in -England do it daily, he would be hung in the air, and the great jays of -Burmah would come and peck--ahem!” - -She cast a side glance at Christina Alberta, apparently lost in the -_Sketch_, and lowered her voice. - -“Peck at his _entrails_, just his insides you know, for a Thousand, -Thousand Years.” - -Sensation. - -“You never know What Ideas Easterners will get into their Heads,” said -the younger Miss Solbé. “East is East, and West is West.” - -But now Christina Alberta’s attention was distracted by another set -of phenomena. She had discovered that the thin, bald gentleman with -side-whiskers, rigid behind his _Times_, was not really reading that -interesting vestige of the British constitution at all. His gaze was -not directed to the edge of his paper, but beyond it. He was staring -from behind that ambush and round the corner of his glasses in a -strange, hard-eyed way, without passion or admiration, at the upper -part of Christina Alberta’s black-stockinged legs as they delivered -their last challenge to human censure before disappearing beneath her -all too exiguous but extremely comfortable skirt. And also she was -realizing that a furtive but intense scrutiny of her bobbed hair was -disorganizing the Patience of the whiskered gentleman’s daughter very -seriously, and that it was also interfering with the proper laying out -of a second and different sort of Patience by the elder Miss Solbé. And -suddenly, to her extreme annoyance, Christina Alberta found a flush -of indignation mantling her cheek, and a combative tingle passing -down the backbone of her straight little body. “Why the devil,” Miss -Preemby asked herself, “why the devil shouldn’t a girl cut her hair -to save trouble and bother, and wear clothes in which she can walk -about?” Anyhow, a mop of well-washed hair was ten times better than -those feeble, aimless interweavings of pigtails and fringes and scraps -and ends. And as for showing one’s legs and body; why shouldn’t one -show one’s legs and body? It was just a part of the universal evasion -of life by these people that had got most of their bodies hidden -away, tied up in a sort of bundle. Do they ever venture to look at -themselves? Those Solbé girls, once upon a time, they must have been -jolly little girls with an amused interest in their stalky little legs, -before they said Shush! and put them away. - -Christina Alberta’s speculative vein took charge for a time. What -becomes of legs that are put away and never looked at and encouraged? -Do they get etiolated and queer, dead-white and funny-shaped and -afraid of the light? And after you’ve really packed your body away -and forgotten it, nothing is left of you but a head sticking out and -hands that wave about and feet with hidden and distorted toes; and you -go about between meal-times and take trips in chars-à-bancs to see -what every one sees and feel what every one feels, and you play games -by rule and example according to your age and energy, and become more -and more addicted to Patience until you are ready to cover yourself up -in bed for the last time of all and die. Evasion! And the fuss they -had caused getting born! The fuss, the morality and marriages and -everything that was necessary before these vacuous lives were begotten! - -But it was all evasion, and the life shown in these _Tatlers_ -and _Sketches_ was evasion just as much. Just as much. All these -photographs of the pushful pretty, the actresses for sale and the -daughters who had to be sold, looked at you with just your own -question in their eyes: “Is this the Life?” The unending photographs -of Lady Diana This, and Lady Marjorie That, and Mr. So-and-So and a -Friend of the Duke of York or the Duchess of Shonts, at dog-shows, at -horse-shows, at race meetings, at royal inaugurations and the like, -were inevitably suggestive of obstinate doubts that were in need of a -perennial reassurance. The photographs of people playing tennis and -suchlike games were livelier, but there, too, if you care to look at -it, were evasions. Evasions. Evasions. - -Christina Alberta turned over the back numbers of the _Sketch_ without -looking at the pictures before her eyes. - -What was this Life she and these people and every one by games and -jokes and meetings and ceremonies and elaborate disregards and -concealments were all evading? What was this great thing outside, -this something like a huge, terrible, attractive and compelling black -monster, beyond the lights, beyond the movements and appearances, that -called to her and challenged her to come? - -One might evade the call of it by playing Patience and games perhaps. -One might evade it by living by rule or custom. People seemed to do -so. A time might come when that call to Christina Alberta to be -Christina Alberta to the uttermost and fulfil her mysterious mission -to that immense being beyond the lights might no longer distress her -life. She had thought that in a certain recklessness and violence with -herself she might fight her way out to the call. She had made love now. -Anyhow, she hadn’t evaded _that_. But--was it going to matter as much -as she had thought it would matter? She and her little friends were -playing desperate games with the material of love in a world where Dr. -Marie Stopes and Mr. D. H. Lawrence were twin stars, and it was just -something you went through--and came out much as you had been before. -More restless, perhaps, but no further on. It left you just where you -had been, face to face with the unsolved darkness and that mysterious, -distressing, unanswerable call to come out of it all and really live -and die. - -She had made love.... Queer it had been.... - -These furtive people were watching and watching her, reading her -thoughts, perhaps, penetrating her.... - -Christina Alberta shut her copy of the _Sketch_ with something of a -snap, and walked out of the drawing-room with a serene expression. She -shut the door behind her and went downstairs to find what had happened -to her father in the smoking-room. - -“I’m leaving the best part of the talk behind me,” reflected Christina -Alberta. - - -§ 6 - -She found that her father and the gentleman from the forests of Burmah, -after a very prolonged and brilliant “h’rrmping” match, had settled -down to conversation. But unhappily the conversation was unsuitable for -her. - -“Siam, Cambodia, Tonquin, the country is full of such temples. They -take you there and show you them.” - -“Wonderful,” said Mr. Preemby. “Wonderful. And you do not think the -carvings you speak of--? Some high symbolism?” - -Both gentlemen became aware of Christina Alberta, attentive and -hovering. - -“Symbolism,” said the arboreal gentleman, “Symbolism,” and had -complicated pharyngeal difficulties. “Heathenish indecency. Difficult -to discuss.... Presence of young lady.... H’rrmp.” - -“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby. “Had you come down to say good night, my -dear? We are having a rather--rather technical talk.” - -“Sounds like it, Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, and went round and sat -on the arm of his chair for a moment. - -“Good night, little Daddy,” she said. - -Reflective moment. - -“I think this Tumbridge is going to suit me,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“I hope it will, little Daddy. Good night.” - - -§ 7 - -Christina Alberta’s first evening at the Petunia Boarding House has -been described with some particularity because it is a sample of all -the still and uneventful evenings that seemed to lie before Mr. Preemby -there. It impressed her as an unfathomable enormity of uneventfulness -in which nothing harmful or disturbing could conceivably occur to him. -The last remote possibility of imaginative disturbance seemed to remove -itself next day when Mrs. Bone announced to the whiskered gentleman’s -wife that she and her husband were off to Bath on the morrow: they -were in luck it seemed; they had got the exact rooms for the winter in -the exact boarding house they had always had their eyes on. “Tunbridge -seems so bleak,” she said. “After Burmah.” - -The dinner was like the previous dinner; the Birds of Passage had gone -and Mr. Preemby astonished himself, Christina Alberta, the chubby maid -and the assembled company by demanding whether it was possible to send -out (h’rrmp) for a bottle or flask of Chianti. “It’s an Italian wine,” -said Mr. Preemby to inform and help the chubby maid in her inquiries. -But there was no Chianti on the wine-list supplied, and after a -conversation markedly reminiscent of that of the Birds of Passage -overnight, the Preemby table was stocked with a bottle of Australian -Burgundy and, at Christina Alberta’s request, a bottle of mineral water. - -After this display of initiative, self-assertion and social derring-do, -Mr. Preemby did little but h’rrmp throughout the rest of the meal. - -The subsequent life of the drawing-room was also vacantly similar -to the previous evening. Christina Alberta got her possibly illegal -cigarette in the lounge, indeed she smoked two, and Miss Margaret -Rewster looked at her through the bead curtain near the office and -Miss Emily had a sniff from the landing upstairs, though nothing was -said. And then Mr. Preemby followed Major Bone into the smoking-room -to gather whatever further information he could about the temple -decorations and religious customs of the peoples of further India. -He was inclined to think Major Bone rather biased by evangelical -prejudice. But Major Bone was not even indignant about Eastern -religions that night. He wanted to talk about Bath, and he talked about -Bath. He told Mr. Preemby in very great detail about a remarkable -occurrence at Bath. He had met a gentleman named Bone, a gentleman -much of his own age and appearance, a Captain Bone who had also once -been in Burmah. He detailed various extremely dramatic conversations -between himself and the other Bone, occasionally going back and -correcting himself. They had made the most elaborate comparison of -their genealogies, and it did not appear that they were even remotely -related. “Most curious coincidence that has ever occurred to me,” said -Major Bone. “In Bath. In nineteen-eh-nine.” - -In the drawing-room Patience prevailed and Mrs. Bone was talking about -Bath. The cheerful wife of the whiskered gentleman said “Deavning” to -Christina Alberta quite suddenly. - -“Oh! Good evening,” said Christina Alberta. - -“You had a walk to-day?” - -“We’ve been to see the Toad Rock and the High Rock and Eridge Park.” - -“Quite a nice walk,” said the cheerful lady, and restored her attention -to Mrs. Bone. Christina Alberta gathered she was to be noticed, but not -made a pet of. - -There was nothing for it but to go through the _Tatlers_ and _Sketches_ -again. This time the pictures were exhausted, but there were reviews of -books and one or two short stories. Christina Alberta read them all. - -When she went to say good night to her Daddy she had come to a -decision. “Daddy,” she said, “on Thursday, that’s the day after -to-morrow, I must go back to London. There are some lectures beginning.” - -Mr. Preemby made no effective opposition. - -The third evening was in countenance like the second except that the -Bones had gone and that Christina Alberta was sustained by the thought -that next day she would pass from the vacuities of Tunbridge to the -tangled riddles of London. And there was a Bird of Passage present, an -untidy young man of the student type with a lot of hair imperfectly -controlled by unguents whose motor bicycle had broken down just outside -Tunbridge Wells. He lived somewhere away in the north, it seemed, in -Northumberland; he would have to wait in Tunbridge for two or three -days while some broken part of his machine was replaced from Coventry; -he had taken refuge in the Petunia Boarding House and it was jolly hard -luck on him. He couldn’t budget for a trip to London; he would just -have to sit down in Tunbridge. He was a Cambridge undergraduate and a -geologist; he had a bag of specimens on his machine. These facts he -conveyed across the width of the room to Mr. Preemby in the course of a -rather one-sided conversation. - -From the first Christina Alberta did not like this young gentleman from -Cambridge. He was like a younger, cruder Teddy Winterton, with impudent -bad manners instead of impudent good manners, and with neither bodily -grace nor good looks. And while he spoke to Mr. Preemby he glanced at -her. But she had no inkling of the part he might play in the life of -her Daddy and herself. - -When she and her Daddy went into the lounge for coffee and her -cigarette, the young man came and placed himself at an adjacent table -and initiated some more conversation. Was Tunbridge Wells an amusing -place? Was there any chance of his getting any golf or tennis? - -“There are a number of delightful walks,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“Not much fun alone,” said the young man. - -“There are the pleasures of observation,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“All this country has been pretty well worked over,” said the young man -of science. “Is there a Museum here?” - -Mr. Preemby did not know. - -“There ought to be a Museum in every town.” - -Presently the coffee and the cigarettes were finished. This evening Mr. -Preemby was for the drawing-room. Major Bone had gone, the smoking-room -had no attractions, and Mr. Preemby had exchanged a few amiable words -with the gentleman with whiskers and hoped to follow them up. Christina -Alberta went with him. At the sight of the old _Tatlers_ and _Sketches_ -she remembered she had bought a book in the High Street that day, a -second-hand copy of Rousseau’s _Confessions_. She went off to get -it. She found the young gentleman from Cambridge still sitting in the -lounge smoking cigarettes. - -“Pretty gloomy here,” he said. - -“Oh! _I_ don’t know,” said Christina Alberta with an open mind, pausing -before him. - -“Nothing much doing--what?” - -“It’s not a Gala Night.” - -“I’m stranded.” - -“You must bear up.” - -“S’pose you wouldn’t be disposed to come out for a bit and forage -around for some fun?” said the young man from Cambridge, taking his -courage in both hands. - -“Sorry,” said Christina Alberta conclusively, and turned to go on. - -“No offence?” said the young man from Cambridge. - -“Nice of you to think of me,” said Christina Alberta who would rather -have been thought utterly shameless than the least bit prudish. “Good -hunting.” - -And the young man from Cambridge perceived that he was dismissed. - -Christina Alberta went into the drawing-room for another tremendous -bout of nothingness. But anyhow she had got Rousseau to read, and -to-morrow she would be in London. - -About the Rousseau--? She had always wanted to know how she stood -towards Rousseau. - -He carried her on to ten o’clock. But she didn’t think much of -Rousseau. He ought to have known a few of the New Hope Club girls. -They’d have shown him. - - -§ 8 - -For three weeks Christina Alberta did not return to Tunbridge Wells, -and when she returned she had passed through a variety of experiences -that will have their due effect upon the course of this story. This -story is the story of Mr. Preemby, and we have little sympathy with -that modern sort of novel which will not let a girl alone but must -follow her up into the most private and intimate affairs. Christina -Alberta was perplexed and worried and would have hated the pursuit -of such a searchlight. Suffice it that events had crowded so closely -upon her that for whole days together she thought scarcely at all of -her possibly quite lonely little Daddy at Tunbridge Wells. Then came a -letter that brought her bustling down. - -“I think it only right to tell you,” said the letter, “that Very -Important Communications indeed have been made to me _of the Utmost -Importance_, and that I ought to tell you about them. They seem to -alter all our lives. I know you are immearced in your studies, but -these Communications are so Important that I want to talk them over -with you soon. I would come up to the Studio to tell you about it all, -but very likely Mr. Crumb might be in and I would much prefer to tell -you here on the Common amid more congenial surroundings. Some of it you -will find almost unbeleavable.” - -“Communications?” said Christina Alberta, re-reading the letter. -“Communications?” - -She went down to Tunbridge Wells that afternoon. - - - - -CHAPTER THE FIFTH - -_The Scales Fall from Mr. Preemby’s Eyes_ - - -§ 1 - -“The scales,” said Mr. Preemby, “have fallen from my eyes.” - -He had chosen a seat upon the Common which commanded an extensive view -of the town, the town crowned by the green cupolas of the Opera House -and lying as though the houses had been shot out of a cart down the -long incline to the Pantiles. Beyond were the wide distances of the -Kentish hill country, blue and remote. - -Christina Alberta waited for more. - -“This experience,” said Mr. Preemby, speaking with an occasional -h’rrmp; “all these experiences--difficult to relate. Naturally I think -you are of a sceptical disposition--taking after your dear mother. She -was very sceptical. Of psychic phenomena in particular. She said it was -Nonsense. And when your dear mother said a thing was Nonsense, then it -was Nonsense. It only made things disagreeable if you argued it was -anything else. As for myself--always the open mind. No dogma either -way. I just refrained.” - -“But, Daddy, have you been having psychic experiences? How could you -have psychic experiences down here?” - -“Let me tell you the story in due order. I want you to see it as I saw -it--in due order.” - -“How did it begin?” - -Mr. Preemby held up a propitiatory hand. “Please! In my own way,” he -said. - -Christina Alberta bit her lips and scrutinized the tranquil resolution -of his profile. There was no hurrying him; he had to tell his tale as -he had prepared it. - -“I do not think,” said Mr. Preemby, “that mine is a very credulous sort -of mind. It is true I am not given to argument. I do not _say_ very -much. But I think and observe. I think and observe and I have a kind of -gift for judging people. I do not think I am a very easy man to deceive. - -“And it is to be noted that I started the whole affair. It began at my -suggestion. I do not know what put it into my head, but I do know that -it was me started the whole thing going. - -“You know, after your departure our little band at the Petunia Boarding -House was reduced to just six persons, not counting the young gentleman -from Cambridge who was, as Miss Rewster says, a Bird of Passage. -Naturally the six of us felt rather drawn together. There were the two -Miss Solbés, both very intelligent young ladies, and there were Mr. -Hockleby and Mrs. Hockleby, and Miss Hockleby, and there was me. We -were drawn together at lunch after you had gone off--it was a little -showery and we had a fire in the drawing-room and Miss Solbé, the -one with the glasses, tried to show me one of her Patiences. We got -into quite an interesting argument about whether it was possible to -_will_ which card would turn up next. I have always inclined to the -view that for certain people, people with the necessary gift, it was -possible to do so, but Mr. Hockleby showed himself extremely sceptical -in the matter. He said that if there was a card on the top of the -pack ready to turn up, and if one willed that a different card should -turn up, then that meant that one had really by sheer will force to -re-manufacture two of the cards in the pack, make them over again, each -into the other, make them blank, reprint them and everything. But I -tried to explain to him that this is not philosophically sound because -of predestination. If you were predestined to will that such a card -should be on the top of the pack, then that card was also predestined -to be there. He argued----” - -“But is it necessary to tell me all this, Daddy, before we get to your -psychic experience?” - -“It is just to illustrate the fact that Mr. Hockleby was an extremely -sceptical person.” - -“Was that young man from Cambridge present at the discussions?” - -“No-oh. No. He was not. He had probably gone down to the Garage to see -if his Spare Part had come. He was always going down to the Garage to -see about his Spare Part.” - - -§ 2 - -Mr. Preemby h’rrmped and began a new section of his narrative. - -“It was in the evening after dinner,” he said, “that things really -began. I went into the smoking-room--to smoke--and afterwards I went -into the drawing-room, and when I went into the drawing-room I had no -more thought of occult phenomena, Christina Alberta, than I had of -flying over the moon. But as I came into the drawing-room I saw Miss -Solbé looking at her Patience cards which she had just put out, and -the way she was holding her hands on the table reminded me of the way -I had read that people put their hands together on the table when they -were trying experiments in table-turning. And almost without thinking I -said: ‘Why, Miss Solbé, the way you are holding your hands is just the -way they do when they are going to do table-turning!’ I said it just -like that. - -“Mr. Hockleby was reading his paper at the time--the _Times_, I think, -but it may have been the _Morning Post_--but he put it down when he -heard me say that and he looked over his glasses at me and said, ‘You -don’t believe in that sort of thing, Mr. Preemby, surely?’ - -“His wife was sitting with her back to me and from the way she spoke -I think she must have been eating some sort of sweet or lozenge at the -time. ‘_I_ do,’ she said. ‘We did it at home dozens of times before I -was married.’ - -“And I don’t know what put it into my head, Christina Alberta; it -seemed almost as though it was something behind myself that did it, or -it may have been a sort of antagonism I have always felt about that -man Hockleby; but anyhow, I said, ‘I’d really like to try some of this -table-turning.’ - -“The younger Miss Solbé, she’s really quite a charming young lady when -you get to know her, and it seems she has been reading a little occult -literature lately----” - -“How old is she, Daddy?” asked Christina Alberta, regarding him with a -look of novel suspicion. - -“I don’t think she can be very much more than thirty-two or three. -Thirty-four at the outside. And really quite well-read, quite -well-read. Well, anyhow, she said she would like to try it. And Miss -Hockleby, evidently she had been brought up on strictly sceptical lines -by her father, she was curious too. So to cut a long story short, -we tried it. Only Mr. Hockleby objected and Mrs. Hockleby overruled -that. She was the only one among us who had ever seen anything of the -sort before, and so it was she who arranged things and told us what -to do. We chose a very solid table, the one that usually has the big -aspidistra on it, and while we were turning out the light----” - -“But why did you do that, Daddy?” - -“One always does that,” said Mr. Preemby. “It makes the atmosphere more -favourable. We lit a candle which Miss Margaret Rewster got for us and -turned out all the electric lights; and while we were doing this, in -came young Mr. Charles Fenton and said--_what_ did he say? A peculiar -expression. Ah, yes! ‘Gollys,’ he said, ‘what’s up?’” - -“Was that the young man with the motor bicycle?” - -“Yes. The young man from Cambridge. We explained what we were doing -and asked him to join us. He declared he knew nothing of psychic -phenomena, had never experimented with it at all and seemed very -doubtful about taking part in the trial. ‘I don’t think there’s -anything in it,’ he said. ‘We shall just waste our time.’ Indeed I -remember now that he did go out intending to visit a music-hall, and -then he came back and said it was raining. It’s very important to -note that he was not at all eager to join us and that he was quite -uninformed about occult things because, you see, as I will tell you, we -found out presently that he was a person of exceptional psychic gifts, -much greater psychic gifts than anyone else among us. - -“Well, we arranged ourselves about the table in the usual manner, -thumbs and little fingers touching, and for a time nothing seemed to -happen at all. We found Miss Emily Rewster was peeping in through the -slightly open door, and perhaps that may have had an unfavourable -influence. I suppose she wondered what we were doing and why we had -asked her sister for a candle. Then Mr. Fenton got very restive and -grumbled to himself and said it was the silliest way of passing an -evening he had ever tried. It was a little difficult to persuade him -to keep silence and persevere. ‘_All_ right,’ said he, with a kind of -resentment. ‘Have it your own way.’ And then suddenly came two violent -raps, raps like little pistol shots, not immediately under the table it -was, but as if it was in the air a foot or so under the table. And then -the table began to move. Slowly at first, shifting along the floor, and -then quite strongly twisting and pushing up against our hands. It was -very weird and impressive, Christina Alberta, very weird and impressive -indeed. It rose nearly two feet I should think and then Mr. Hockleby -broke the circle and it fell rather heavily, I fancy, and the leg hit -his shin. He uttered an exclamation and stooped to rub his leg, and -in the indistinct light he hit his head on the edge of the table. It -seemed almost a judgment on his scepticism I thought. We turned up one -or two of the lights to attend to him. ‘I don’t like this,’ said Mr. -Fenton. ‘This is a bit too rum for me.’ - -“I asked him to try just once more. - -“‘I don’t like this table riding up like this,’ he said. ‘It’s such a -bad example for the chairs. Suppose some of them start playing cup and -ball with us! You might get a nasty toss from a buck-jumping chair. And -besides, it’s a lot too like a Channel crossing for my taste.’ - -“I think we were all a good deal excited by what had happened, and all -the others, even Mr. Hockleby, were eager to continue. - -“‘Next time I shall _press_ down,’ he said. I think he was a little -suspicious that either his wife or me had something to do with the -phenomena. Evidently spiritualism was a long-standing dispute between -him and his wife. His wife said she had seen tables move before, but -none so actively as this one had done. - -“Down we sat again. We had hardly waited a minute before the table -began rocking about in the most extraordinary fashion, and then -absolutely flew up so violently that the elder Miss Solbé was thrown -back over that Ottoman there is there, and I was bumped under my chin. -At the same time there was a perfect volley of cracks, like somebody -cracking his fingers, but ever so much louder. It was quite a comfort -to have the lights up again and see Mr. Hockleby holding the table down -firmly in its proper place. ‘Damn you,’ he said--quite loudly. ‘Damn -you. Keep down.’ Miss Hockleby and her father picked up Miss Solbé, who -was on the floor in a sort of hysterical fit of laughter, with her feet -waving about. - -“‘I don’t like this,’ said Mr. Fenton. ‘It goes through one like an -electric shock.’ - -“He spoke quite simply. - -“The only one of us who had had any experience with occult phenomena -was Mrs. Hockleby, and she had not done anything of the sort since -her marriage to Mr. Hockleby five or six years before, because of -his scepticism. She said now that it was very evident that some very -strong and resolute spirit was present and was trying to communicate -with us, and she explained a simple and safe method of getting into -communication. We were to reform the circle round the table and we -were to call over the alphabet, and when we came to the letter the -spirit wanted there would be a rap and so we should be able to arrive -at something definite. There is a sort of code quite well understood -it seems in the spirit world, in which you convey ‘No’ by one rap and -‘Yes’ by two, and so on. - -“We set to work at this,” said Mr. Preemby. “We asked if the spirit -would like to spell out anything and it answered with two very loud -raps, and then Mr. Hockleby read out the letters: A B C and so on. When -it got to S the spirit gave a rap so loud it made me jump.” - -“And what did you spell out, Daddy?” - -“A name quite unknown to me then--SARGON, and then KING OF KINGS. We -asked: was the spirit that was communicating with us Sargon? The answer -came _No_. Was Sargon present? _Yes._ Then who was our communicant? -OUJAH. Who was Oujah? WISE MAN. It was a very slow process spelling -out the words in this way, and by the time we had got so far we were -all very tired. Mr. Fenton in particular was very tired. He yawned and -seemed greatly exhausted, and said at last he felt so weary and muzzy -that he _must_ go to bed. That was really very natural, because though -none of us realized it at the time he was the actual medium under -Oujah’s control. He went to bed and we tried to go on without him, but -the magic had departed and we could not get so much as a rap. So we -sat for a time talking all this over. Mr. Hockleby in particular was -greatly flabbergasted, and then the rest of us went to bed.” - -“Evidently Mr. Fenton made the raps,” said Christina Alberta. - -“Evidently his presence was necessary for the raps to be made,” -corrected Mr. Preemby. “Quite unconsciously he was a Mejum.” - -There was a pause. - -“Go on with the story,” said Christina Alberta. - - -§ 3 - -“The next evening was wet again, and as his Spare Part hadn’t come Mr. -Fenton was able to join us once more. He made some little objection at -first because he said he and his people were all Particular Baptists, -and he was doubtful whether this sort of thing was not Necromancy and -forbidden in the Bible. But I persuaded him out of that. And this time -we spelt out a quite singular message. It was AWAKE, SARGON! ARISE OR -BE FOREVER FALLEN! - -“Even from the first I had had a feeling that those messages from -Sargon had something to do with me. Now suddenly conviction came upon -me. I asked ‘Is Sargon present?’ ‘_Yes._’ I knew it would be so. ‘Is it -anyone in the circle?’ ‘_Yes._’ ‘Is it this gentleman?’--pointing to -Mr. Hockleby. A very loud _No_. ‘Is it me?’ ‘_Yes._’ - -“Mr. Hockleby I noted at the time looked annoyed--as though he felt it -was he who ought to be Sargon. - -“Then young Mr. Fenton stood up suddenly. ‘Oh! I can’t stand any more -of this,’ he said. ‘My head feels quite muzzy. I’m sure this sort of -thing is harmful.’ He walked across the room and sat down suddenly with -his hands hanging over the arms of the chair--it was one of the big -arm-chairs covered in cretonne. We all felt very much concerned, but -as for myself I was all in a daze at the thought of being this Sargon -and being called upon so openly to rouse myself to action. I did not -understand fully as yet all that it meant to me, but I did realize -that it meant a very great deal.” - -“But what did you think it meant?” said Christina Alberta sharply, and -her perplexed gaze searched his profile. His blue eyes stared at things -far away beyond the distant hills, strange things, fantastic empires, -secret cities, mystical traditions, and his brows were knit in the -effort to keep his story together. - -“All in good time,” said Mr. Preemby. “Let me tell my story in my -own way. I was telling you, I think, that young Mr. Fenton said he -felt heavy and strange. Mrs. Hockleby happily was quite equal to that -situation. She had seen the same thing before. ‘Don’t struggle against -it,’ she said. ‘Let yourself go. Just lean back in your chair. If -you want to lie quiet, do. If you want to say anything, do. Let the -influence work.’ And she turned to me and whispered ‘trance.’ - -“‘What is a trance?’ said Mr. Fenton--just like that. ‘What is a -trance?’ - -“She began moving her hands in front of his face, ‘making passes,’ I -think they call it. He shut his eyes, gave a sort of sigh and his head -lolled back. We all sat round him waiting, and presently he began to -mutter. - -“At first it was just nonsense. ‘Oojah Woojer Boojer,’ words like that. -Then more distinctly, ‘Oujah the Wise Man, Sargon’s servant. Oujah -comes to serve Sargon. To awaken him.’ After that he seemed to wander -off into sheer rubbish. ‘Why is a mouse when it spins?’ he whispered in -his own voice and then, ‘That damned Spare Part.’ - -“Mrs. Hockleby said that was quite characteristic of this sort of -trance, and then Mr. Hockleby got a writing-pad and a pencil to take -down anything more that was said. - -“And presently when Mr. Fenton spoke again, he did not speak in his own -voice but in a kind of hoarse whisper quite different from his usual -voice. It was the voice of this Oujah speaking--Oujah the control. -With a slight accent--Sumerian I suppose. - -“Well, the things he said were very astonishing indeed. I think that -this Oujah was anxious to secure my attention by convincing me that he -knew of things, intimate things that nobody else could know. At the -same time he did not wish the others to know too clearly what he was -aiming at. How did it go? What can I remember? Mr. Hockleby has a lot -of it written down, but so far I have not had time to make a copy. -‘Child of the sea and the desert,’ he said, ‘the blue waters and the -desert sand.’ Is it too fanciful to find an allusion to Sheringham in -that? ‘Cascades and great waters and a thing like a wheel on a blue -shield.’ That is more puzzling. But ‘cascades and great waters’ set -me thinking of our big washers. And you remember the swastika on our -blue delivery vans, Christina Alberta? Is not that oddly suggestive of -a thing like a wheel on a blue shield? The Norse peoples called the -swastika the fire-wheel. ‘Armies with their white garments fluttering, -the long lines drawn out--armies of delivery.’ That again is queer. -One is reminded of armies and also--don’t think me absurd!--of the -drying-ground and the vans. It is like one thing becoming transparent -and your seeing the other behind it.” - -“Are you sure of the exact phrases, Daddy?” - -“Mr. Hockleby has them written down. If I have not got them quite right -you will be able to read his notes.” - -“The swastika may be a coincidence,” said Christina Alberta. “Or -you may have been drawing it on the edges of the newspaper. You do -sometimes. And he may have seen it.” - -“That does not account for the blue ground. He laid great stress on -the blue ground. And there were other things; matters known only to -me and your dear mother. I could not tell you them without telling -you everything. And small things, entirely private to me. The name -of my late grandfather at Diss. Munday his name was. It is sometimes -difficult to argue about things although one may be absolutely -convinced. And all this was mixed up with broken sentences about a -great city and the two daughters of the western King and the Wise Man. -And also he called me Belshazzar. Belshazzar seemed to drift in and out -of his thoughts. ‘Come again to a world that has fallen into disorder.’ -These are remarkable words. And then ‘Beware of women; they take the -sceptre out of the hands of the king. But do they know how to rule? Ask -Tutankhamen. Ask the ruins in the desert.’” - -“Pah,” said Christina Alberta. “As though women have ever had a fair -chance!” - -“Well, anyhow, Mr. Hockleby has that written down.... And it seemed to -me that this too applied to me, for because of my great fondness for -your mother I had let so many years of my life slip away. He said many -other things, Christina Alberta, richly suggestive things. But I have -told you enough for you to understand what has happened. In the end Mr. -Fenton came-to quite suddenly, much more suddenly than is usual in such -cases, Mrs. Hockleby said. He sat up and yawned and rubbed his eyes. -‘Oh, Lord!’ he said, ‘what nonsense all this is! I’m going to bed.’ - -“We asked him if he felt exhausted. He said he was. ‘Absolutely fed -up,’ were his actual words. - -“We asked him if that was the end of his message. - -“‘What message?’ he said. He had absolutely no memory of his -communications at all. ‘Have I been talking?’ he asked. ‘This isn’t the -sort of thing one ought to get up to. What sort of things have I been -saying? Nothing objectionable I hope. If so I apologize. I mustn’t do -any more of this sort of thing.’ - -“Mrs. Hockleby told him she had never met anyone with such a promise -of great psychic power as he had, before. He said he was really very -sorry to hear it. She said he owed it to himself to cultivate so rare -and strange a gift, but he said That wouldn’t do for his people at -all. The rain had stopped and he said he thought he would take a walk -down to the Pantiles and back before turning in. Perfectly simple and -natural he was from first to last, and rather unwilling. And he really -did look tired out.” - -“Didn’t he laugh once?” asked Christina Alberta. - -“Why should he? He seemed a little afraid of what he had transmitted. -The next day his Spare Part came. Mrs. Hockleby did her utmost to try -to get him once more in the afternoon and develop his Communication, -but he would not do so. He was full of questions about the ferry at -Tilbury and the time of high tide. He would not even give us his name -and address. When I spoke of sending Mr. Hockleby’s notes to the -_Occult Review_ he was suddenly quite alarmed. He said that if his name -appeared in connection with them it might mean a very serious row with -his family. He would not even allow us to put a Mr. F. from Cambridge. -‘Put quite another name,’ he said, ‘quite a different name. Put -anything you like that does not point to me, a Mr. Walker, say, from -London. Or something of that sort.’ - -“Of course there was nothing for us to do but agree.” - - -§ 4 - -“And that was the whole of your communication, Daddy?” - -“It was only the beginning. Because after that I began to remember. I -began to remember more and more.” - -“Remember?” - -“Things from my other lives. Memories stored up. This young Mr. -Fenton was, so to speak, no more than the first cut in the curtain of -forgetfulness that hung between this present life and all my previous -existences. Now it was rent and torn open so that I could see things -through it at a dozen points. Now I begin to realize what I really was -and what I can really be.... - -“You know, Christina Alberta, I have never actually believed I was -myself--not even as a schoolboy. And now it is interesting, I know -and understand clearly that I _am_ somebody else. I have always been -somebody else.” - -“But who do you believe you are, Daddy?” - -“So far as I can gather I was first a chief called Porg in a city -called Kleb in the very beginning of the world, æons and æons ago, -and I tamed my people and taught them many things. Then afterwards I -was this Sargon--Sargon the King of Kings. There is very little about -him here in the Public Library, in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_; an -upstart who took his name, _my_ name, three thousand years later, an -Assyrian fellow is the Sargon they tell about--he got mixed up with the -Jews and he besieged Samaria--but I was the original Sargon long before -there were Jews or anything of the sort, long before Abraham and Isaac -and Jacob. And afterwards I was Belshazzar, the last crown prince of -the Babylonians, but that is not very clear. That remains obscure. Only -one part of the record is lit--as yet. And possibly I have been other -people. But the figure that stands out in my memory now is Sargon. It -is his memories have been returning to me. It is he who has returned in -me.” - -“But Daddy, you don’t really believe all this?” - -“Believe!--I _know_. Long before this Communication came to me I had -had those intimations,--that assurance that I was somebody else. _Now_ -I see clearly. I can remember days in Akkadia now just as clearly as -I can remember days in Woodford Wells. I could almost doubt whether -I have ever lived at Woodford Wells; it seems so far away now. It -was when I was in bed the night after Mr. Fenton had gone that these -memories began to come. I was in bed, and then suddenly I was not in -bed--I was reclining on a couch under a canopy, a canopy of pure white -wool very finely woven and embroidered with emblems and symbols and -suchlike things in golden thread, and I was upon my state barge upon -the Euphrates. Two King’s daughters, sisters, with slender necks, not -unlike the two Miss Solbés except that they were fairer--and decidedly -younger--_much_ younger--and clad rather more in accordance with the -requirements of a warm climate, chiefly in woven gold--sat and fanned -me with fans of Eagles’ feathers dyed a royal purple. And at my feet -sat my councillor Prewm, who was oddly enough extremely like Mr. -Hockleby--just the same iron-grey whiskers and with the same little -tufts of hair over his ears. He was wearing an extremely tall cap of -some black woollen substance, and he was making memoranda with a wooden -style on a tablet of wet clay. It was like writing on a mud pie. And -beyond him were the officers of the boat on a kind of bridge--they were -wearing leather helmets studded with brass--and then one saw the rowers -below, chained to their oars, and then on either side spread the broad -brown river just crinkled by the breeze. The little boats fled to make -way for us. They had coarse, square sails, and they lowered them and -turned them about all in precisely the same way at precisely the same -time. It was very pretty to see. Along the banks were little villages -of mud-brick houses and clumps and lines of palm trees; and everywhere -there were primitive contrivances, great bent poles of wood like giant -fishing-rods, for raising water out of the river for the cultivation of -the land. And the people were all crowded along the water’s edge and -bowing with their hands and foreheads in the water and crying, ‘Sargon -the Conqueror, Sargon, King of Kings!’” - -“But Daddy, this was a dream?” - -“How could I dream of things I had never seen nor heard of before?” - -“One does.” - -“One does _not_,” he replied with a quiet, invincible obstinacy. “I -remember I was coming back from the South where I had given peace to -a multitude of warring tribes, Elamites and Perrizites and Jebusites -and people of that sort, and I was returning to my capital. I remember -distinctly many details of the campaign and I know that with an effort -I could recall more in the proper order. In dreams absurd things -happen, dreams when you think them over afterwards are all at sixes and -sevens, but this is all sane and orderly. One might think, Christina -Alberta, that I had never dreamt dreams and that all these memories of -that previous existence which crowd upon me now were a deception of my -imagination! But I can go right back as if it was yesterday, and I am -surer by far that I am Sargon than that I am Albert Edward Preemby your -father. The former is my true self, the latter is just a very simple, -unpretending wrapping that for some purpose, at present inexplicable to -me, has hidden me from the world.” - -He waved his hand with a bolder gesture than was habitual to him. He -sat with his eyes wide open, looking at unseen things. - -The girl regarded him for some seconds in silence. She was trying to -grasp the full import of this amazing speech. - -“And _this_ was your Communication?” she said at last. - -“You have to know,” he said. “You have to serve and help me.” - -(Help him! How could she help him or herself? How far was this thing -going? What was she to do?) - -“Have you told anyone else of this, Daddy?” she asked abruptly. “Have -you told anyone else?” - -He turned his solemn little face towards her. - -“Ah, _there_,” he said, “we have to be very discreet and careful--very -careful indeed. Here and now is not the time to proclaim that Sargon, -King of Kings, has come back to the civilization he did so much to -found. One has to be careful, Christina Alberta. There is a spirit of -opposition. - -“For instance, I have told something of my first vision--dream you -may call it if you like--to Mr. Hockleby. I described the resemblance -between himself and Prewm. He was by no means pleased. His is a -seditious, insubordinate nature. And besides--since then--I have -recalled what happened--on the advice of Oujah--to Prewm.... - -“And I have realized since then that, though one may be convinced -oneself, it does not follow that one will convince other people. It is -true that Miss Hockleby and the two Miss Solbés have asked me to tell -them more of my dreams--they too call them dreams. But their manner was -curious rather than respectful and I have been extremely reserved with -them.” - -“That’s my wise Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, “You have to think of -your dignity.” - -“I have to think of my dignity, certainly. Nevertheless--” His hands -went out in a new amplitude of gesture. “Here I am and this is my -world. My world! I nursed it in its infancy. I taught it law and -obedience. Here I am, the most ancient of monarchs. Rameses and -Nebuchadnezzar, Greece and Rome, the Kingdoms and Empires, things of -yesterday--interludes while I have been sleeping. And clearly I have -been sleeping. And clearly I have not been sent back to the world -without a mission. This is a great and crowded world now, Christina -Alberta, but it is in a sad state of disorder. Even the newspapers -remark upon it. People are not happy now. They are not happy as they -were under my rule in Sumeria thousands of years ago. In the sunshine -and abundance of Sumeria.” - -“But what can you _do_, Daddy?” - -“Dear Princess, my child, that I have to think out. Nothing hastily; -nothing rashly.” - -“No,” said Christina Alberta. - -There came a pause. “One person only seems to have any belief in me. -The younger Miss Solbé---- Did you say anything, dear?” - -“No. Go on.” - -“I have asked her if she too has had any dreams, any vague memories of -a previous existence. She seems to have had something confirmatory in -a shadowy sort of way. Very vague intimations. She tells them timidly, -when her sister is not about. But she is under a misapprehension that -her relationship to me was a particularly close and special one. She -was not my Queen. There she is wrong. It is perhaps natural for her to -think so, but I remember quite distinctly how it was. She was one of -the Twenty Principal Concubines who carried the Eagle fans.” - -“Have you told her that?” - -“Not yet,” said Mr. Preemby. “Not yet. One has to go discreetly in all -these things.” - -Another pause followed. Christina Alberta looked at her wrist-watch. -“My word!” she cried. “We shall be late for lunch!” - -She noted as they walked back towards the Petunia Boarding House that -his bearing and manner had undergone a subtle change. He seemed larger -and taller and his face was serener and he held his head higher. He -did not h’rrmp once. He seemed to expect people and things to get out -of his way, and it was as if the path was a carpet that was being -unrolled before his advance. Had she been able to see herself she -would have remarked an equal change in her own carriage. The dance had -gone out of her paces. She walked like one upon whose shoulders the -responsibilities of life might easily become overwhelming. - -They were late for lunch and all the other boarders were in their -places, beginning. Every one turned to look at Mr. Preemby’s face as -they came in, and then they glanced at one another. “So you’ve come -back to us,” said Mrs. Hockleby to Christina Alberta, meeting her eye. - -“It’s jolly to be back,” said Christina Alberta. - - - - -CHAPTER THE SIXTH - -_Christina Alberta Consults a Wise Man_ - - -§ 1 - -Christina Alberta and Paul Lambone had been great friends for nearly a -year. He liked her and admired her, and as became his literary line of -work, he studied her. And she liked him and trusted him, and showed off -a good lot when she was with him. - -Paul Lambone wrote novels and short stories and books of good advice, -and he was particularly celebrated for the pervading wisdom of his -novels and the excellence of his advice. It was his pervading wisdom -that had picked him up out of the general poverty of writers and placed -him in a position of comparative prosperity. Not that his conduct of -his affairs was wise, but that the quality of his wisdom was extremely -saleable. Some writers prosper by reason of their distinctive passion, -some by reason of their austerity and truth, some by their excellent -invention, and some even by simple good writing, but Paul Lambone -prospered because of his kindness and wisdom. When you read the stories -you always felt that he was really sorry for the misfortunes and -misbehaviour of his characters and anxious to help them as much as he -could. And when they blundered or sinned he would as often as not tell -you what was the better course they might have chosen. His book of -advice, and particularly his _Book of Everyday Wisdom_ and his _What to -Do on a Hundred and One Occasions_ sold largely and continually. - -But like that James, King of England, to whom the Bible was dedicated, -Paul Lambone was far wiser in his thoughts and counsels than in his -acts. In small matters and most of the time his proceedings were -foolish or selfish or indecisive or all of those things. His wisdom -did not reach below the level of his eyes, and his face and body and -arms and legs were given over to the unhappiest tendencies which -were restrained by his general indolence rather than by any real -self-control. He was very well off chiefly because he was lazy; he -asked the highest possible prices for everything he wrote because -that was just as easy as asking the lowest, and there was always a -chance that the bargain would not come off and then he would be saved -the trouble of correcting his proofs. He accumulated money because he -was too unenterprising to buy things or incur the responsibility of -possessions, and so he just let a trust invest it for him. His literary -reputation was high because a literary reputation in England and -America depends almost entirely upon apparent reluctance of output. The -terse beauty of his style was mainly due to his sedulous indisposition -to write two words where one would suffice. And in the comfort and -leisure his indolence accumulated for him, he sat about and talked -and was genially wise and got fatter than was becoming. He tried to -eat less as a preferable alternative to taking exercise, but in the -presence of drink and nourishment his indolence flagged and failed -him. He went about a good deal, and was always eager for new things -because they saved him from boredom, the malign parent of much needless -activity. He had an expensive little cottage near Rye in Kent to which -he could motor without needless trouble whenever London bored him, and -directly his cottage bored him he would come back to London. And he -visited people’s houses a lot because it was too troublesome to resist -invitations. - -There were, it must be admitted, limits to the wisdom of Paul Lambone. -It is often more difficult to see what is near us than what is far -away; many a stout fellow who looks with a clear, discerning eye upon -the universe sees little of his toes, and ignores the intervening -difficulty; and something sub-conscious in Paul Lambone’s mind -obstinately refused to recognize the defective nature of many of his -private acts. He knew he was indolent, but he would not allow himself -to admit that his indolence was fundamental and vicious. He thought -there was a Paul Lambone in reserve of very great energy. He liked to -think of himself as a man of swift and accurate decisions who, once -aroused, was capable of demoniac energy. He had spent many an hour -in arm-chairs, on garden seats, and on Downland turf, thinking out -his course of action on various possible occasions of war, business, -criminal attempt or domestic crisis. His favourite heroes in real life -were Napoleon, Julius Cæsar, Lord Kitchener, Lord Northcliffe, Mr. -Ford, and suchlike heroic ants. - -He liked Christina Alberta because of her tremendous go. She was always -up to something; she preferred standing to sitting, and she kicked her -legs about while she talked to you. He idealized her go; he attributed -to her much more go than she really had. He was secretly persuaded that -her blood must be like a bird’s, a degree or so above normal. He felt -that in imagination she had much in common with him. He called her the -Last Thing, the Van, the Ultimate Modern Girl, and the Life Force. He -openly professed pity for the unaided single-handed man who would in -accordance with our social laws presently have to marry her and go her -pace and try to keep her in order. - -She had been to tea with him once or twice. She perceived his -admiration and suspected a certain affection, and she basked in -admiration and affection. She liked his books and thought he was very -like what he thought he was himself. She told him all sorts of things -about herself just to lift his eyebrows. - -And he was wise all over her and round and about her, tremendously wise. - - -§ 2 - -It was quite interesting to be rung up by Christina Alberta and asked -if she might come for tea and advice. “Come along now,” he said. “I’m -probably all alone for tea.” - -And as he replaced the instrument he said: “Now I wonder what the young -woman has been up to! And what she wants me to do for her.” - -He went back to his sitting-room and spread himself on his very nice -Persian hearthrug, and regarded the pretty silver kettle that swung -over his spirit lamp. “It won’t be money,” he considered. “She isn’t -the sort that tries to get money.... - -“She’s barked her shins on something.... - -“Girls nowadays are a lot too plucky--they’re a lot too plucky -altogether.... I hope it’s nothing serious.... She’s just a kid.” - -Christina Alberta appeared in due course. Erect as ever, but -nevertheless looking a little dashed and subdued. - -“Uncle,” she said--for that was her theory of their relationship--“I’m -in trouble. You’ve got to give me all sorts of advice.” - -“Take off that brigand’s cloak,” he said, “and sit down there and make -me some tea. I’ve been watching your love affair out of the corner of -my eye for some time. I’m not surprised.” - -Christina Alberta paused with her cloak in her hand and stared at him. -“That’s nothing,” she said. “I can manage that little affair all right. -Such as it is. Don’t you worry about _me_, in that respect. Don’t -imagine things. But there is something--something different.” She threw -the cloak over a chair back and came and stood by the silver tea-tray. - -“You know my Daddy,” she said, arms akimbo. - -“I never saw a more dissimilar parent.” - -“Well--” She considered how she should put it. “He’s behaving queerly. -So that people may think--people who don’t know him--that he’s going -out of his mind.” - -Mr. Lambone reflected. “Was it ever such a very serious mind to go out -of?” - -“Oh! don’t make jokes. His mind was good enough to keep him out of -trouble, and now something’s happened and it isn’t. People will -think--some of them think already--he is mad. They may take him away. -And there’s just him and me. It’s serious, Uncle. And I don’t know what -I ought to do. I don’t know enough to know. I’m scared. I’ve got no -friends that I can talk to about it. None. You’d think I’d have women -friends. I haven’t. I don’t get on with older women. They want to boss -me. Or I think they do. And I irritate them. They know, they feel--the -proper ones--that I don’t--oh! respect their standards. And the other -sort just hate me. Because I’m young. The girls I know--no good for -what I want just now.” - -“But isn’t there a man,” said Lambone, “on whom you have a sort of -claim?” - -“You know who it is, I suppose?” - -He was frank. “Things rather show.” - -“If you know him--” She left the sentence unfinished. - -“I know the young man only very incidentally,” he said. - -“I go to Teddy,” said Christina Alberta without any further -reservations. “I went to him as a matter of fact before I telephoned to -you. He hardly listened to what I had to say. He didn’t bother.” She -winced. Suddenly tears stood in her eyes. “He was just loafing about in -his studio. He kissed me and tried to excite me. He would hardly listen -to what I had to tell him.... That I suppose is what one gets from a -lover.” - -“So it’s got to that,” Paul Lambone reflected with hidden dismay, and -then remarked a little belatedly: “Not every lover.” - -“Mine--anyhow.” - -“And you came away?” - -“_Well!_ What do _you_ think?” - -“H’m,” said Lambone. “You _have_ barked your shins, Christina Alberta! -More than I thought.” - -“Oh, Hell take Teddy!” said Christina Alberta, putting it on a bit and -helping herself by being noisy. “What does that matter now? I’ve done -with Teddy. I was a fool. Never mind that. The thing is my Daddy. What -am I to do about my Daddy?” - -“Well, first you’ve got to tell me all about it,” said Lambone. -“Because at present, you know, I’ve hardly got the hang of the trouble. -And before you do that you sit down in that easy chair and I make the -tea. No, not you. Your nerves are on edge and you’ll upset something. -You’ve been having your first dose of adult worry. Sit down there and -don’t say anything for a minute. I’m glad you came along to me. Very -glad.... I liked that Daddy of yours really. Little innocent-eyed man -he was. Blue eyes. And he was talking--what nonsense _was_ he talking? -About the Lost Atlantis. But it was quite nice nonsense.... No, don’t -interrupt. Just let me recall my own impression of him until you’ve had -your tea.” - - -§ 3 - -When the tea was made and Christina Alberta had sipped a cup and looked -more comfortable, Lambone, who felt he was managing things beautifully, -told her she might begin. - -“He’s getting queer in his mind, but you know that he isn’t really -going out of his mind,” said Lambone. “That’s it, isn’t it?” - -“That _is_ it,” said Christina Alberta. “You see--” She paused. - -Lambone sat down in a second arm-chair and sipped his tea in a -leisurely manner. “It’s a little difficult,” he said. - -“You see,” said Christina Alberta, knitting her brows at the fire, -“he’s a person of peculiar imaginativeness. He always has been. Always. -He’s always lived half in a dream. We’ve been very much together ever -since I was born almost, and from the earliest times I remember his -talks, rambling talks, about the Lost Atlantis, and about the secrets -of the pyramids and Yogis and the Lamas of Tibet. And astrology. -All such wonderful, impossible, far-off things. The further off the -better. Why!--he almost got me into a dream too. I was a Princess of -Far Atlantis lost in the world. I used to play at that, and sometimes -my play came very near to believing. I could Princess it for a whole -afternoon. Lots of children day-dream like that.” - -“I did,” said Lambone. “For days together I would be a great Indian -chief, sentenced to death again and again--disguised as a small -preparatory schoolboy. The incongruity didn’t matter a rap. Everybody -does it more or less for a time.” - -“But he’s gone on doing it all his life. And he’s doing it now more -than ever. He’s lost the last trace of any sense that it is a dream. -And some one played a trick upon him at Tunbridge Wells. Not realizing -what it might mean for him. They seem to have muddled about with -spiritualism in the evenings while I was in London, table-rapping and -so forth, and a man who had nothing better to do pretended to have a -trance. He told Daddy he was Sargon the First, Sargon King of Kings he -called him, who was Lord of Akkadia and Sumeria--you know--ages ago, -before Babylon was born or thought of. The man who did it couldn’t have -hit on anything more mischievous so far as Daddy was concerned. You see -he was exactly ready for it; leaving Woodford Wells where he had spent -half his life in one routine had cut him off, even more than he was -usually cut off, from reality. He was uprooted already before this idea -came to him. And now it’s just swamping him. It suited him exactly. -It--fixed him. Always before one could get him back--by talking about -my mother or the laundry vans, or something familiar like that. But -now I can’t get him back. I can’t. He’s Sargon, incognito, come back -as Lord of the World, and he believes that just as firmly as I believe -that I am his daughter Christina Alberta Preemby talking to you now. -It’s a reverie no longer. He’s got his evidence and he believes.” - -“And what does he want to do about it?” - -“All sorts of things. He wants to declare himself Lord of the World. He -says things are in a bad way and he wants to save them.” - -“They _are_ in a bad way,” said Lambone. “People don’t begin to know -half how bad they are. Still--I suppose having a delusion about who one -is, isn’t Insanity. Does he want to make some sort of fuss?” - -“I’m afraid, yes.” - -“Soon?” - -“That’s what worries me. - -“You see,” she went on, “I’m afraid he’s going to strike most people -as queer. He’s back at Lonsdale Mews. We had to come up from Tunbridge -Wells yesterday. On a few hours’ notice. It’s that has upset me. For a -couple of days things went on all right. Practically we were turned out -of the boarding house. There was a frightfully disagreeable man there, -a Mr. Hockleby, and he seemed to take a violent dislike to Daddy. You -know those unreasonable dislikes people take at times?” - -“A very disagreeable side of human nature. _I_ know. Why, people have -taken dislikes to _me_!... But go on.” - -“He and his daughter got upset about Daddy’s queerness. They frightened -the Miss Rewsters, the sisters who run the place. They said he might -break out at any moment, and either he would have to leave or they -would. There they were all whispering on the stairs and talking of -sending for a policeman and having him taken away. What could I do? We -had to clear out. You see Daddy had a sort of idea that when he was -Sargon Mr. Hockleby had been alive too and had had to be impaled for -seditious behaviour; and instead of letting bygones be bygones as one -ought to do in such cases, he said something about it to him, and Mr. -Hockleby construed it as a threat. It’s all so difficult, you see.” - -“He didn’t try to impale him over again, or anything?” - -“No. He doesn’t do things like that. It’s only his imagination that is -doing tremendous things. He isn’t.” - -“And now he’s in London?” - -“He has a sort of idea he’s overlord of the King, and he wants to go to -the King at Buckingham Palace and tell him about it. He says the King -is a thoroughly good man, thoroughly good; and directly he hears how -things are, he will acknowledge Daddy as his feudal superior and place -him on the throne. Of course if he tries to do anything of that sort -he will be locked up for a certainty. And he’s written letters to the -Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor and the President of the United -States and Lenin, and so forth, directing them to wait upon him for his -instructions. But I’ve persuaded him not to post them till he can have -a proper seal made.” - -“Rather like Muhammad’s letters to the potentates,” said Lambone. - -“He’s thinking, too, of a banner or something of that sort, but all -that’s quite vague. He’s just got the phrase ‘raise my banner.’ I don’t -think that matters much yet. But the Buckingham Palace idea,--something -may come of that.” - -“This is no end interesting,” said Lambone, and walked across his room -and back, and then half sat on the arm of his easy chair with his -hands deep in his pockets. “Tell me; is he distraught to look at?” - -“Not a bit of it.” - -“Untidy in his dress?” - -“Neat as ever.” - -“I remember when I saw him how neat he was. Is he--at all--incoherent? -Or does it all hold together?” - -“Absolutely. He’s perfectly logical and coherent. He talks I think -rather better and more clearly than usual.” - -“It’s just one simple delusion? He has no delusions about having great -physical strength or beauty or anything of that sort?” - -“None. He’s not a bit crazy. He’s just possessed by this one grand -impossible idea.” - -“He’s not throwing away money or anything of that sort?” - -“Not a bit of it. He’s always been--careful with money.” - -“And he is now?” - -“Yes.” - -“Let’s hope that lasts. I don’t see that a man is insane because he -believes he is a King or an Emperor--if some one tells him he is. After -all, George V has no other grounds for imagining he is a King. The -only difference is that rather more people have told him so. Fancying -yourself a King isn’t lunacy, and behaving in accordance with that idea -isn’t lunacy either. It may be some day, but it isn’t so yet. No.” - -“But I’m afraid that people will think that it is.... You see it’s -only in the last few days I’ve realized how fond I am of my father and -how horrible it would be for me if anyone attempted to take him away. -I’m afraid of asylums. Restraint for those who can least understand -restraint. He particularly would go mad in a week, really mad, if he -got into one. That Mr. Hockleby has frightened me--he’s frightened me. -He was so intent and cruel. He was _evil_ about Daddy--malignant. A -nasty man.” - -“Yes, I know,” said Lambone. “Hate.” - -“Yes,” she said. “Hate.” - -She jumped to her feet and took possession of the hearthrug, looking -with her bobbed hair and short skirts and manly pose and serious face -the most ridiculous and attractive mixture of fresh youth and mature -responsibility conceivable. - -“You see, I don’t know what they can do with him--whether they can take -him away from me. I’ve never been much afraid of what might happen -before, but I am now. I don’t know how to take hold of all this. I -thought life was just a lark and people were fools to be afraid of -doing anything. But now I see _life’s dangerous_. I’ve never been much -afraid of what happened to myself. But this is different. He’s walking -about in a dream of glory--with absolute wretchedness hanging over -him. Think of it! People getting hold of him! Perhaps hitting him! An -asylum!” - -“About the law on these matters I know very little,” Lambone reflected. -“I doubt if they can do very much to him without your consent. But -I agree about asylums. From their very nature they must be horrible -places, haunted places. Most of the attendants--hardened. Even if they -start well. Every day at it ... too much for anyone.... I don’t know -how a lunatic is made, a legal lunatic I mean, or who has a right -to take him. Somebody--I think two doctors--have to certify him or -something of that sort. But, anyhow, I don’t think your father is a -lunatic.” - -“Nor I. But that may not save him.” - -“Something else may. He’s as you say an imaginative--a -super-imaginative man, possessed by a fantastic idea. Well, isn’t that -a case perhaps for a psycho-analyst?” - -“Possibly. Who’d talk him back--to something like he used to be.” - -“Yes. If such a man as Wilfred Devizes, for example, could talk to -him----” - -“I don’t know much about these people. I’ve read some Freud of -course--and a little Jung.” - -“I know Devizes slightly. We talked at lunch. And I liked his wife. And -if perhaps you could get your father away into a country cottage. By -the by--have you got any money?” - -“He’s got the cheque-book, but he makes me an allowance. So far there’s -been no money trouble. He signs his cheques all right.” - -“But he may not presently.” - -“Oh! Of course at any time he may begin putting a swastika or a royal -cipher in the place of his signature, and then the fat _would_ be in -the fire. I shouldn’t know where to turn. I hadn’t thought of that.” - -“No,” said Lambone. - -For some seconds--it seemed quite a long time to Christina Alberta--he -said nothing more. He sat half leaning upon the arm of his chair and -looked past her at the fire. She had said what she wanted to say, and -now stood waiting for him to speak. His wisdom told him that things -had to be done in this matter very soon; his temperament inclined him -just to stay in that pleasant room and say things. Meanwhile she looked -about the room and realized how comfortable a wise man could be. It was -the best furnished room she had ever been in. The chairs were jolly; -there were bound books in the bookcase, a delightful old Chinese horse -on the top of it; all his tea-things were silver or fine china; there -was a great writing-desk with silver candlesticks; the windows that -gave on Half Moon Street were curtained with a rich, subtly folding -material very pleasing to the eye. Her eyes came back to his big fat -face and his peevish mouth and fine, meditative eyes. - -“Something,” he said and sighed, “ought to be done at once. It isn’t a -matter to leave about. He might commit some indiscretion. And get into -trouble.” - -“I’m afraid of that.” - -“Exactly. He’s safe--where you left him?” - -“There’s somebody with him.” - -“Who won’t let anything happen?” - -“Yes.” - -“So far, good.” - -“But what am I to do?” - -“What are you to do?” he echoed, and said no more for some seconds. - -“Well?” she said. - -“What in fact are _we_ to do? I ought to see him. Decidedly. Yes, I -ought to see him.” - -“Then come and see him.” - -“I ought to come and see him. Now.” - -“Then let’s.” - -He nodded. He seemed to be making an intense internal effort. “Why -not?” he asked. - -“Well?” - -“And then--then we can broach a visit to Wilfred Devizes. Generally fix -that up. Then our subsequent action will be determined by what Wilfred -Devizes says. The sooner he sees Devizes the better. It’s a question -whether it wouldn’t be better for you or both of us to see Devizes -first. No. Father first. Then when I’m properly instructed--as a lawyer -would say--Devizes.” - -A great tranquillity descended upon him. - -She could not restrain a faint exclamation of impatience. - -He looked up as if he awakened from profound meditation. “I’ll come -along now,” he said, “to Lonsdale Mews. I’ll have a talk to your father -and then I’ll try to get at Devizes and fix up some sort of a meeting -between them. That’s what I ought to do. I’ll go along with you now--at -once.” - -“Right-o,” said Christina Alberta, “_come_ along.” She threw on her -cloak and clapped her hat upon her head in a dozen seconds and stood -waiting. - -“I’m ready,” she said. - -“I’ll just change this jacket,” said Lambone; and kept her waiting a -full ten minutes. - - -§ 4 - -The taxi dropped them at the entrance of the Mews. - -“I suppose it won’t matter our arriving together?” said Lambone. “He -won’t think it’s something preconcerted?” - -“He doesn’t have suspicions of that sort.” - -But when they reached the studio a little surprise awaited them. Fay -Crumb opened the door to them and her eyes looked paler and her neck -longer and her face more absent-minded than ever. - -“I’m so glad you’ve come at last,” she said in a flat, distraught -voice. “You see--he’s gone!” - -“Gone!” - -“Completely. He’s been away since three. He went out alone.” - -“But, Fay, you promised!” - -“I know. I could see he was restless and I kept telling him you’d be -back soon. It wasn’t so easy keeping him. He walked up and down and -talked. ‘I must go out to my people,’ he said. ‘I feel they need me. -I must be about my proper business.’ I didn’t know what to do. I just -hid his hat. I never dreamt he’d go out without his hat--prim as he -is. I just went upstairs for a moment to get something--I forget what -now--but, anyhow, it wasn’t there, and I may have spent five minutes -looking for it--and meanwhile he slipped out. He left the door open and -I never heard him go. As soon as I knew he’d gone I ran up the Mews -right up into Lonsdale Road and stood about there.... He’d vanished. -I’ve been hoping he’d come back every moment since. Before you -returned. But! He hasn’t come back.” - -Her conviction was all too manifest that he would never come back. - -“I’d have done anything--” she said. - -Christina Alberta and Paul Lambone looked at one another. “This rather -puts the lid on,” said Christina Alberta. “What are we going to do now?” - - -§ 5 - -Lambone followed Christina Alberta into the studio and sat down at once -on the simple couch that became Mr. Preemby’s bed at night. The couch -squeaked and submitted. He stared at the floor and reflected. “I’ve got -no engagements this evening,” he said. “None.” - -“It won’t be much good waiting here for him,” said Christina Alberta. - -“I feel in my bones he won’t head back here for hours and hours,” he -said. - -“And meanwhile he may be up to anything!” said Christina Alberta. - -“Any old lark,” said Lambone. - -“Anything,” said Christina Alberta. - -“Three,” said Lambone and consulted his watch: “it’s now nearly five. -Do you think there is any particular place, Christina Alberta, more -than any other place, where we might go and look for him? Where, in -fact, we ought to look for him?” - -“But will you come and look for him?” - -“I’m at your service.” - -“It wasn’t in the bond.” - -“I want to. If you won’t walk too fast. I feel I ought to.” - -Christina Alberta stood before him with her arms akimbo. “I would bet -five to one,” she said slowly, “that he heads for Buckingham Palace and -demands an audience--No, that isn’t how he puts it--offers to give an -audience to his Vassal, the King. He was full of that this morning. And -then--Then I suppose they will lock him up and have an inquiry into his -mental condition.” - -“H’m,” said Lambone, and then, rising to the occasion: “Let’s go to -Buckingham Palace. - -“We’ll go there at once,” he said, and moved slowly doorward. “We’ll -get a taxi.” - -They found a taxi in the King’s Road. Christina Alberta did not -belong to the taxi-ing class, and she was impressed by a sudden -realization that Lambone had all these thousands of taxi-cabs upon the -streets alert to do his bidding. The taxi dropped them according to -instructions at the foot of the Victoria Memorial which gesticulates in -front of Buckingham Palace, and they stood side by side surveying that -building. “It looks much as usual,” said Lambone. - -“You didn’t expect him to bend it?” said Christina Alberta. - -“If he made a disturbance they’ve cleared him up very completely. That -flag I suppose means G. R. is at home.... I wonder--what do we do next?” - -He was rather at a loss. The emotional atmosphere of this wide-open -place was quite different from the emotional atmosphere of his flat or -the Lonsdale Mews. In the flat and in the Mews the appeal had been for -him to act; the appeal here was not to make himself conspicuous. He was -a man of decorous instincts. A car passed, a beautiful, big, shining -Napier, and he thought the occupants looked at him as though they -recognized him. Lots of people knew him nowadays and might recognize -him. In his flat, in the studio at Lonsdale Mews, he could foregather -with Christina Alberta without compunction; but now, in this very -conspicuous place, this most conspicuous place, he had a momentary -realization that he and she didn’t exactly match, he with his finished -effect of being a man about town, a large, distinguished, mature man -about town, and she with her air of excessive youthfulness, her very -short skirts and her hat, like the calyptra of a black mushroom, pulled -over her bobbed hair. People might think them an incongruous couple. -People might wonder what had brought them together and what he was up -to with her. - -“I suppose we ought to ask some one,” she said. - -“Who?” - -“Oh!--one of those sentinels.” - -“May one speak to the sentinels at the gate? Frankly, I’m afraid of -those tremendous chaps in the busbies. I’d as soon speak to the Horse -Guard in Whitehall. He’d probably look right over our heads and say -nothing. And we should just dither away from beneath him. I couldn’t -stand that....” - -“But what are we to do?” - -“Nothing rash.” - -“We _must_ ask some one.” - -“Away there on the left towards Victoria there’s what looks like -the real business way in. There’s two policemen. I’m not afraid of -policemen. No. And of course that man at the corner is a plain-clothes -man.” - -“Then let’s ask _him_!” - -Lambone made no move. “Suppose he hasn’t come here at all!” - -“I know he meant to do so.” - -“I suppose if he hasn’t come,” said Lambone, “we ought to wait about -here on the chance of his coming.” He felt extremely like flight at -that instant. “There ought to be seats here. - -“Come along,” he said, with a sudden return to manly decision, “let’s -ask one of those bobbies at the far gate.” - - -§ 6 - -The policeman at the gate to whom they addressed themselves listened -gravely to their inquiries, making no instant reply. He belonged to -that great majority of English speakers who are engaged upon the -improvement of the word “yes.” His particular idea was to make it long -and purry. - -“Yurrss,” he said breaking presently into speech: “Yurrss. There was -a small gentleman without a ’at on. Yurrss. He _’ad_ blue eyes. And -a moustache? Yurrss, come to think of it there _was_ a moustache. A -rather considerable moustache. Well, ’e said he wanted to speak to King -George on a rather urgent matter. It always is a rather urgent matter. -Never ‘quite.’ Always ‘rather.’ We replied, according to formula, ’e’d -’ave to write for’n ’pointment. ‘Perhaps,’ ’e says, ‘You don’t know who -I am?’ They all say that. ‘I guess it’s something important,’ I says. -‘Not the Ormighty, by any chance,’ I says. But ’e was ’ere last week -and ’e wouldn’ go away and they ’ad to take ’im off in a taxi-cab. You -know there _was_ a chap ’ere, sir--Thursday last or Friday, I forget -which--with a long white beard and ’air all down ’is back. Very like -’im I should think. Well any’ow this sort of dashed your gentleman. He -kind of mumbled a name.” - -“Not Sargon?” asked Christina Alberta. - -“It might ’ave been. Any’ow, ‘There is no exceptions,’ I says. ‘Not -even if you was a close relation. We got no option here. We’re just -machines.’ He stood sort of looking baffled for a time. ‘All this must -be altered,’ he said in a sort of low, earnest voice. ‘It’s the duty -of every king to give audience to every one, every day.’ I says, ‘Very -likely it is, sir. But we policemen aren’t in any position to ’elp it,’ -I says, ‘much less alter it.’ So off ’e goes. I kind of tipped the -wink to the detective at the corner and ’e watched ’im go along the -front and then cross over to the monument and stand looking up at the -windows. And then ’e shrugged ’is shoulders and took ’imself off. And -that’s the last I see of ’im.” - -Lambone asked a superfluous question. - -“It might be Piccadilly way,” said the policeman, “it might be down -towards Trafalgar Square. Fact is, sir, I didn’t notice.” - -It was clear that the conversation was drawing to an end. - - -§ 7 - -“So that’s that,” said Lambone. “So far, good. He’s still at large.” - -He expressed his thanks to the policeman. - -“And now,” he said with an air of bringing out the solution of a -difficult problem very successfully, “all we have to do is to find him.” - -“But where?” - -“That’s the essence of the problem.” - -He led the way back to the Victoria Memorial and stood side by side -with Christina Alberta beneath that perfect symbol of the British -Empire, the statue of Queen Victoria. They stared down the Mall to the -distant Admiralty Arch, and for a moment neither of them said a word. -It was a warm and serene October afternoon; the cupolas of Whitehall -and Westminster’s two towers and a brown pile of mansions were just -visible over the trees on the right, transfigured to beauty by the -afternoon glow; the two tall columns of the Duke of York and Nelson -rose over the trees and buildings to the left; it was in the pause -before the dinner and theatre traffic begins, and only a few taxi-cabs -and a car or so emphasized the breadth of the processional roadway. -Half a dozen windows in the Admiralty had taken fire already from the -sinking sun. - -“I suppose,” said Lambone, “he’s gone down there.” - -Christina Alberta stood with her arms akimbo and her feet a little -apart. “I suppose he has.” - -The wide road ran straight to the distant Admiralty Arch. And through -that remote little opening was Trafalgar Square and Charing Cross and -a radiating tangle of roads and streets spreading out and beyond and -further into the twilight blue. - -“What will he make for now?” - -“Heaven knows. I’m bankrupt. I haven’t an idea.” - -Neither spoke for a little while. - -“He’s gone,” she said, “just gone,” and that simple and desolating -thought filled her mind. - -But the thoughts of Paul Lambone were more complex and intricate. - -He perceived that a serious adventure was happening to him and that -he was called upon to exert himself. He had suddenly been called -away from his tea and hot tea-cake to hunt a slightly demented -comparative stranger about London. He wanted to do it, and he wanted -to do it properly and in a way to impress Christina Alberta. And his -intelligence told him that the best thing he could do would be to -follow upon the probable track of his quarry and come up with him -before he got into mischief. Or while he was getting into mischief--and -interfere and carry him off. And meanwhile his more exercised lower -nature was exhorting him to leave Christina Alberta to do the pursuing -alone, and go back as straightly as possible to his ample arm-chair and -sit down and think things out. And then go to his best club to dinner. -And in fact quietly and neatly get out of this unexpected and tiresome -business altogether. - -And then he looked at Christina Alberta and realized that he could do -nothing of the sort. He couldn’t leave her. He looked at her profile, -the profile of a grave child, and an almost maternal emotion was -aroused in him. She looked with anxious and perplexed eyes at the blue -and limitless city that had swallowed up her Daddy. The scene was still -warm with the evening sun-glow, but the blue twilight gathered in the -lower eastern sky. Here and there a yellow pin-point showed that London -was beginning to light itself up. She couldn’t go down that road alone. -Absurdly, preposterously they were linked. The impulse to disentangle -himself was the impulse of a selfish discretion that was rapidly taking -all the happiness out of his life and leaving security and luxuries in -its place. This was a call to that latent Paul Lambone to _act_. Even -supposing she was a common, queer little flapper that his imagination -had made into a friend and heroine, was that any reason whatever why he -shouldn’t see her through this trouble that had come upon her? - -He made his decision. - -“He won’t go back for ages,” he said following up the problem. “Nobody -would on an evening like this.” - -“No,” she said. “But I don’t see that that gives me any hint of what I -ought to do next.” - -“We can keep together and go down towards Trafalgar Square. We might -look along the Embankment. When we are tired we can get some dinner -somewhere. You can get a sort of dinner almost anywhere I suppose. We -shall want our dinner.... Perhaps it’s not so hopeless a job as it -seems at first. A big job but not a hopeless one. There are limitations -to what he may do. Limitations in himself I mean. I don’t think he’ll -go into uninteresting streets. His feeling is--spectacular. He’s much -more likely to keep to open spaces and near conspicuous buildings. That -cuts out a lot of streets. And he won’t go far east. In another hour -the city will be shutting up and going home and putting out its lights. -He’ll turn back out of that--westward.” - -“You can spare the time?” - -“I’ve no engagements at all to-night. It was to have been an ‘off’ -night. And this business attracts me. It is interesting to see just -how far we can infer and guess his proceedings. It’s a curious mental -exercise.... Do you know I think we shall find him!” - -She stood quite still for some moments. - -“It’s awfully good of you to come with me,” she said. - -“I come on one condition.... That you don’t walk too fast. We’ve never -walked much together, Christina Alberta, but I’ve seen enough of you to -know that you walk abominably fast.” - - -§ 8 - -Every one knows the Café Neptune near Piccadilly Circus and the various -crowd that assembles there. There you see artists and painters that -are scarcely artists, poets and mere writers, artists’ models and -drug-fiends, undergraduates in arts and medicine who are no better -than they should be, publishers and gay lawyers, Bolsheviks and White -Refugees, American visitors who come to scoff and remain a prey, stray -students from the Far East and Jews and Jews and Jews--and Jewesses. -And hither at about half-past nine that night came a stout, large, and -wearily-distinguished-looking man accompanied by an attractive young -lady in short skirts and bobbed hair who carried a large and shapely -nose high and sternly, and they threaded their way among the tables -through the smoky atmosphere, seeking a congenial place. Out of the -garrulous confusing mirk arose a young man with a mop of red hair and -protruded a rampant face and asked in a large whisper: “_Have you found -him?_” - -“Not a trace,” said Paul Lambone. - -Fay Crumb’s face looked up from the table through a haze of cigarette -smoke. - -“Nor we. _We’ve_ been looking too.” - -“As well here as anywhere,” said the stout man. “Where have you -looked?” - -“Here,” said Harold, “and hereabouts. It seemed a suitable rendezvous.” - -“We’ve ranged far and wide,” said Lambone. “We’ve done miles--oh! -endless miles. And Christina Alberta has refused all nourishment--for -me as well as for herself. At last I said, either I sit down and eat -or I drop down and die. May we take these chairs? You have that one, -Christina Alberta. Waiter! It is a case of extreme fatigue. No--neither -Munchner nor Pilsener. I must have champagne. Bollinger 1914 will do -and it must be iced--rather over-iced, and with it, sandwiches--a very -considerable number of sandwiches of smoked salmon. Yes--a dozen. Ah!” - -He dropped his wrists on the table. “When I have had some drink I will -talk,” he wheezed and became silent. - -“When did you leave the Mews?” Christina Alberta asked Fay. - -“Half-past eight.... Not a sign of him.” - -“Have you been far?” Harold asked Lambone. - -“_Far!_” said Lambone and for a time was incapable of more. - -His voice seemed to recede in perspective. “Asking policemen for a -small, hatless man. Over great areas of London. On and on--from one -policeman to another.... She’s a most determined young woman. God help -the man who wins her love! Not a soul had seen him. But I can’t talk -_yet_....” - -Harold clawed his chin softly with long artistic fingers. “It is just -possible,” he said slowly, “that he went in somewhere and bought a hat.” - -“Of course he must have got a hat,” said Fay. - -“It never occurred to either of us that he would do anything so sane.” - -“We never thought of asking in the hatters’ shops,” said Christina -Alberta. - -“Happily,” said Lambone, and turned to welcome his refreshment. “That -would have been the last straw.” - -“For a long time we were on the trail of another hatless man,” said -Christina Alberta. “We ran him down in the Essex Road after tracking -him all up Pentonville. But he was just a vegetarian in sandals and -a beard. And there was a report of a hatless man near the Britannia, -but that came to nothing. He seemed just to have come out of his house -somewhere to buy fried fish off a barrow in the Camden Town High -Street.” - -“Extraordinary how a crowd collects when you ask the simplest -questions,” said Lambone with his mouth full of sandwich. “And how -urgently helpful it can be. They almost forced us up a staircase -after that fried-fish man, who struck me as an extremely pugnacious, -suspicious-looking fellow. The crowd would have it we wanted him, and -he didn’t seem to want in the very least to be wanted. If I hadn’t had -an inspiration something very disagreeable might have happened. I just -said ‘No, it’s not this gentleman, it’s another of the same name.’” - -“But what did he say?” - -“‘You _better_,’ he said. But anyhow it satisfied the crowd, and -afterwards we got away quite easily on an omnibus that took us down to -Portland Road Station.” - -The champagne arrived in its ice pail. “Hardly cold, sir, yet,” said -the waiter, feeling the bottle. - -“It’s not a time for fastidiousness,” said Lambone and took a third -sandwich. “You’re not eating, Christina Alberta. And I insist upon your -having at least one glass of this.” - -Christina Alberta drank a little and ate mechanically. - -“I wonder if we shall ever see him again,” said Harold. “London is -so vast. So _vast_! But I always feel that, when I see anyone go -out anywhere. There is a tremendous courage in going out. London -must be full of lost people. I used to be afraid of London until I -discovered the Tubes and the Underground. I felt I might be sucked -up side-streets to God knows where. And keep on going round corners -into longer and longer streets for ever. I used to dream of the last -street of all--_endless_. But whenever I get nervous I just ask for the -nearest tube station and there I am.” - -“He _may_ be back at the studio now,” said Fay. - -Paul Lambone reached his fourth sandwich and his third glass of -champagne with great rapidity. He became more leisurely in his -refreshment. - -“I am disappointed,” he said, “that I didn’t think of the possibility -of his buying a hat. It has disorganized all my inductions. You see I -was so concentrated on what was going on inside his head that I never -troubled about what might be going on outside it. But a man of his neat -and proper habits--acquired through a lifetime of orderly living--would -get himself a hat almost mechanically.... We may have passed quite -close to him in that.” - -“I should have known him,” said Christina Alberta. - -“But, until that Pentonville man drew a red herring across the trail, I -am convinced we were close on his footsteps. You see Christina Alberta -insisted upon my asking every policeman we saw--even men, overworked, -irritable, snappy, _rude_ men controlling the traffic--but at any rate -I chose the route--I inferred the route. You see, my dear Watson”--he -smiled faintly in weary self-approval at Crumb--“the essential thing -in a case like this is to put yourself in your man’s place, to think -his thoughts instead of your own. That is what I tried--so far as being -out of breath would allow it--to impress on Christina Alberta. It’s -fairly straightforward. Here you have a man convinced, beautifully and -enviably convinced, that he is the supreme lord of the world, unknown, -unrecognized as yet, but on the eve of his proclamation. Will such a -man go along any street just as easily as any other? Not at all! He -will be elated, expansive, ascendant. Very well; he will go up hill -and not down. He will choose wide highways and not narrow ones and tend -towards the middle of the street----” - -“He hasn’t been run over!” cried Christina Alberta sharply. - -“No. No. He would avoid traffic because that would hustle him and -impair his dignity. Open spaces would attract him. High buildings, -bright lights, the intimations of any assembly would draw him -powerfully. So he certainly crossed Trafalgar Square from the Admiralty -Arch in a diagonal direction, towards the conspicuous invitation of the -Coliseum.... You see my method?” - -He did not wait for Crumb to answer. “But the more I think over our -missing friend,” he went on, “the more I admire and envy him. What -crawling things we are!--content to be subjects, units, items, pawns, -drops of water and grains of sand, in the multitudinous, unmeaning -muddle of human affairs. He soars above it. He soars above it now. He -rejects his commonness and inferiority in one magnificent gesture. -_His_ world. The grandeur of it! Wherever he is to-night and whatever -fate overtake him, he is a happy man. And we sit here, we sit here -and drink--I am ordering another bottle of that wine, Harold, and I -expect you and Mrs. Crumb to abandon that warm and sticky beer and -join me--Waiter! Yes--another, please--we sit here in this crowded, -smoky gathering (_look_ at ’em!) while he plans the salvation of the -world that we let slide, and lifts his kingly will to God. Glorious -exaltation! Suppose that all of us could be touched----” - -Christina Alberta interrupted. “I think we ought to telephone to the -hospitals. I didn’t think before of the possibility of his being run -over. Always he has been a little careless at crossings.” - -Paul Lambone lifted a deprecating hand and searched in his mind for -some excuse for rest. - -“A little later,” he said after a slight pause, “the hospital staffs -will be more at leisure. It is their rush hour now--ten to eleven. Yes, -the Rush Hour....” - - -§ 9 - -Teddy Winterton appeared wading through obstructive seated people. His -eye was fixed on Christina Alberta. “Hullo!” said Lambone in not too -cordial greeting, and glanced at Christina Alberta and back at the -new-comer. - -Teddy struggled for an unoccupied chair over which some lady had thrown -a sealskin coat, and captured it with profuse apologies to the owner of -the cloak and squeezed it in at the end of the table between Harold and -Fay, who barred his way to Christina Alberta. “Have pity on a lonely -man,” he said genially and tried to catch the eye of Christina Alberta. - -“You shall have one glass of champagne,” said Lambone with a slightly -forced welcome in his tone. - -“How do, Christina Alberta!” said Teddy forcing her attention. - -Christina Alberta turned to Fay. “Will you come back with me now,” -she said to her, “back to the flat? I must do that telephoning to the -hospitals now or it won’t be done.” - -Fay looked at her curiously. “It’s serious,” said Christina Alberta’s -eyes, and Fay stood up and struggled with her coat. Teddy leaped to his -feet to assist her. Christina Alberta had not removed her cloak, and -was ready. “I say, Christina Alberta,” said Teddy. “I want a word with -you.” - -“Go on, Fay,” said Christina Alberta, giving her friend a little dig in -the back and pretending not to hear him. - -Teddy followed them out to the Piccadilly pavement. “Just a word,” he -said. Fay was for standing a little way off, but Christina Alberta -would not let that happen. - -“I don’t want a word,” she said. - -“But I might help you.” - -“You might have done. But it’s too late. I never want to see you again.” - -“Give a fellow a chance.” - -“You’ve had your chance. And tried to take it.” - -“You might at least keep up appearances,” said Teddy. - -“Damn appearances!” said Christina Alberta. “Oh! _Come_ on, Fay.” - -She gripped her friend’s arm. - -Teddy was left hovering. He hesitated and then went back into the café -to rejoin Crumb and Lambone. - -The two young women went on in silence for a little while. - -“Anything up?” Fay ventured. - -“Everything’s up,” said Christina Alberta. “I wonder if there’s a ghost -of a chance of finding Daddy at the studio.” - -They made their way to Chelsea without much further conversation. Fay -had never before seen Christina Alberta looking tired. - -When Fay opened the door Christina Alberta pushed in past her. “Daddy!” -she cried in the dark passage. “Daddy!” - -Fay clicked on the light. “No,” said Christina Alberta. “Of course he’s -not here. He’s gone. Fay! What am I to _do_?” - -Fay’s pale blue eyes became rounder. Christina Alberta, the valiant, -the modern, was in tears. - -“There’s the hospitals,” said Fay, doing her best to be brisk and -cheerful. - - - - -_BOOK THE SECOND_ - -THE WORLD REJECTS SARGON, KING OF KINGS - - - - -CHAPTER THE FIRST - -_Incognito_ - - -§ 1 - -Mr. Preemby had disappeared from Christina Alberta’s world. For a time -he must disappear almost as completely from this story. Mr. Preemby -fades out. Taking over his outward likeness we have now to tell of -another and greater person, Sargon the First, the Magnificent One, King -of all Kings, the Inheritor of the Earth. - -It is no doubt a very wonderful and glorious thing to discover that -instead of being the rather obscure widower of a laundry proprietor -with no particular purpose in the world one is Lord of the Whole -World, but it is also, to a conscientious man anxious to do right, -an extremely disturbing and oppressive discovery. And at first it is -natural that there should be something a little confusing to the mind -in this vast and glittering idea. It was an idea that carried with it -an effect of release and enlargement. For purposes as yet obscure, he -had been caught like a caged creature in that limited and uninteresting -Preemby life. His imagination had rebelled against its finality; some -deep instinct had warned him that his life was an illusion; in moments -of reverie, and sometimes between sleeping and waking, there had been -intimations of a light and purpose beyond the apparent reality. Now -abruptly, as though a portal swung open, as though a curtain was drawn, -that light poured upon him dazzlingly. His was no single life that -begins and ends and is done with like an empty song. His existence -was like a thread that shone and vanished and returned in the unending -fabric of being; that was woven into a purpose. In the past he had -been Porg in the city of Kleb, and he had been Sargon and Belshazzar. -Many others had he been, but those memories still slumbered under the -dark waters of forgetfulness. But the memory of Sargon shone bright. -It was his Sargon self that had returned and no other of his selves. -For some reason that was still obscure the Power that ruled his life -needed him to be Sargon once again, in this great distressful world of -to-day. Sargon had begun life humbly as an outcast babe and had risen -to restore and rule and extend a mightier Empire than the old world -had ever seen before. Certain qualities (h’rrmp) had been displayed by -Sargon, and because of these qualities the Power had called upon him -again. - -A whole series of memories was unfolding in his mind. With an -extraordinary convincingness he recalled his youth, memories of those -distant days in Sumeria where the Power had set him on high. They -were so bright and so pleasing that already they were thrusting his -recollections of Sheringham and Woodford Wells into the background, -making a fading phantom of his Preemby existence. He had never -cherished these latter experiences, never turned them over in his -mind with any pleasure. But his newly-restored memories were memories -to dwell upon. There were pictures of his early life when he was a -foundling, a mysterious foundling at the court of his predecessor. -(That predecessor’s name still escaped him.) Young Sargon was a fair -and blue-eyed youth, a thing rare in brown Sumeria, and he had been -found floating down the great river in a little cradle boat of rushes -and bitumen, and he had been taken and adopted by the ruler of the -land. And already as a lad he was pointed out as having an exceptional -wisdom, as being able to do what other men could not do, he had the -genius of the ruler. It was not that he had great cleverness nor great -skill nor strength. Many of those about him excelled him in these minor -things--in cleverness and memory work in particular, Prewm, the son of -the Grand Vizier, excelled him--but he had the true, the kingly wisdom -beyond them all. - -“The true, the kingly wisdom,” said Mr. Preemby-Sargon aloud and -came into sharp collision with a tall, dark gentleman hurrying from -St. James’s Park towards St. James’s Palace. “Sorry!” cried Mr. -Preemby-Sargon. - -“My fault,” said the tall, dark gentleman. “Late for an appointment.” -And swept on. - -Odd! Where had Mr. Preemby--or Sargon--seen that face before? Could it -be--Something connected it vaguely with Sheringham and sunlit sand. And -then Sumeria came uppermost and the tall, dark gentleman became the -chieftain of a desert tribe, a desert tribe amidst the sands. - -The ruffled surface became calm again, and that boyhood in Sumeria -resumed possession of the mirror. Where were we? Even in those early -days men had marked a gravity in the lad beyond his years. He had -avoided puerile games. In all his lives he had avoided puerile games. -No cricketer even at Sheringham. Modestly but firmly this youth had -raised his voice in the council chamber and his words were seen to be -wisdom. The old men had sat around marvelling. “He sayeth Sooth,” they -said in their antique Sumerian way. A soothsayer. He was also called -the Young Pathfinder. - -Before Sargon was fifteen the old childless ruler, beset by enemies, -threatened with plots, had marked him. “This boy might save the state.” -Then, while yet only a few days over eighteen he was given charge of an -expedition to pacify the mountain folk of the north and persuade them -not to ally themselves with the Enemy of the North. He did more than -he was told to do. He went through the mountain land into the plains -beyond, and gave battle to the Enemy of the North and defeated him and -smote him severely. After that all men perceived that he must be the -new Lord and Master of Sumeria, the successor of his aged Patron. All -applauded with sincerity except Prewm the Clever (already adorned with -precocious sprouting whiskers) and he applauded with envy in his eyes. -And then came the days of the Succession, and the Inauguration of the -Harem, beautiful days. And after that the birth of the Princess Royal, -his only child, and that great expedition into the deserts of the -south. And more expeditions and great law-makings, wise laws and wiser, -and crowds of applauding, grateful people and happy villages. Life -became happy universally. Prewm plotted and rebelled and was dealt with -after the simple custom of the time. That was a regrettable necessity, -a thing not to be dwelt upon. The frontiers spread and the great -peace spread; Russia, Turkey in Europe, Persia, India, Ancient Egypt, -Somaliland, and so on and so forth, were conquered and made happy. -America and Australia and the remains of Atlantis, still not completely -submerged, were discovered. They were forgotten again afterwards, but -they were really discovered then--and paid tribute. A League of Nations -was established. - -All the world told of the goodness of Sargon and lived golden days. For -Sargon ruled by the light of justice in his heart. He mitigated the -sacrifices in the Temples and introduced a kind of Protestantism into -the creeds and services. The people made songs praising him. Passing -men and women would run to kiss his hand. Nor did he deny himself to -his people. That confidence was his end. Came alas! the assassin’s -knife, the black assassin, a madman, a stranger----! - -It was wonderful. He could remember his people mourning after he was -dead. - -The white glove of a policeman against Mr. Preemby-Sargon’s chest -just saved him from stepping in front of a motor ’bus. He recoiled -dexterously. He was in Trafalgar Square, a great meeting-place, a -confluence. Here in the warm light of the October afternoon was a crowd -even greater than the Sumerian crowds. Here he would observe them. -They were dark crowds, anxious-faced crowds. His coming back had to do -with them. There had been a great war, much devastation; the world was -wounded and unable to recover. The poor rulers and politicians of this -age had no wisdom, had no instinct for the fundamentally right thing. -Once more a leader and a saviour was required, one who had the wisdom -that counts. - -It was Sargon that walked under the noses of Nelson’s lions and made -his way past the statue of George the Fourth to the balustrading that -commands the square. He took up his position there for a long survey. -He looked down Whitehall to the great tower of the Houses of Parliament -and Whitehall was full of a golden haze set with a glitter of traffic. -The stream of omnibuses, cars, and motor vans poured up to mingle with -the streams that came out of Northumberland Avenue and the Strand, and -the joint flow sundered again to the left of him and to the right away -to Pall Mall, across the square there. No street lamps were lit as yet, -but in the rounded bluffs of building to the left a few windows were -warm with lights. Below, across the square, thin streams of pedestrians -flowed like ants from one point to another and the squat little -station of the Tube Railway perpetually swallowed up dots and clumps -of individuals. Some sort of meeting was going on at the foot of the -Nelson column, a mere knot of people without evident enthusiasm. Men -with white and red placards about Unemployment were distributing white -handbills and shaking collecting boxes. Immediately underneath a few -poorly-dressed children ran about and played and squabbled.... - -Just a little patch this was in one of his cities. For, you see, by the -lapse of time and the development of his ancient empire, he was the -rightful owner and ruler of this city and of every other city in the -world. - -And he had come back to heal the swarming world’s disorders and -reinstate the deep peace of old Sumeria once again. - - -§ 2 - -But how to set about this task? - -That was the difficulty. There must be no Half Advent. He must take -hold swiftly and decisively he realized, and from the balustrading in -front of the National Gallery it looked a large, loose, scattering -sort of world to take hold of. It might refuse to be taken hold of. -If he began now, if he began to shout from this place, it was more -than likely that no one would heed him. He must watch warily for his -opportunity and _make no mistakes_. It did not become the Lord and -Restorer of the Whole Earth to make mistakes. - -Now, for example, that had nearly been a mistake at Buckingham Palace. -It had blown over all right but it might have had serious consequences. -People did not know the Master yet, had no inkling. “They might,” said -Sargon, lapsing into a Preemby homeliness “have run me in. And a Pretty -Fool I should have looked then!” - -There must be no more hasty action of that sort. - -No. Indeed it became him rather to wait for guidance. - -The Power that had brought him back into the world and awakened him -to a sense of his true identity and his mission, might be trusted -presently to send him an enlightened supporter or so--who would -recognize him. Because, of course, he must resemble the monarch he -had been--even as Hockleby had been recognizably like Prewm. As he -weighed this thought his hand sought his moustache and he twisted it -thoughtfully. It was in effect a disguise. Meanwhile--? Meanwhile he -must see what he could, determine the mood of the people and learn -their particular needs and distresses. He could go among his people -unsuspected--like Haroun al Raschid, but for a wiser purpose.... - -“Haroun al Raschid,” whispered Sargon and looked up to Lord Nelson -and nodded to him in a friendly way. “Haroun al Raschid. Would that -my pocket was full of pieces of gold! But of that to-morrow. That -man--what was his name?--Preemby had a bank somewhere.” - -He felt for his breast pocket. The cheque-book was still there. One -signed the cheques “_A. E. Preemby_”--queer, but one did. This A. E. -Preemby had played the part of a chrysalis. His hoard remained. - - -§ 3 - -In the Strand his Majesty caught a glimpse of his reflection in a shop -window. His hair was a little disordered, and he disliked to have -his hair disordered. He went into a hat shop that presented itself -conveniently and bought himself a hat. - -He took out his little note-case to pay--a reassuring thing to do. -For in it were no less than seven pound-notes. He counted them with -satisfaction. After paying up at Tunbridge he had drawn again on his -bank. He hesitated whether he should give largesse to the shopman--and -did not do so. - -It was not another grey felt hat with a black ribbon he bought; it -was an exceptional felt hat with a large brim such as an artist or a -literary personage might have chosen. It was not the hat that Albert -Edward Preemby, the restrained, the hesitating, would have bought; it -was much more Sargon’s sort of hat. Yet not pure Sargonesque; there -was a touch of disguise about it still, a more manifest disguise. The -brim came down over one’s brow. One could see ever and again in shop -windows and incidental mirrors that now a shadow of mystery lay upon -those brooding blue eyes. - -He made his way eastward towards Aldwych and so into Kingsway, looking -now at the shops, now scanning the faces of the people. - -To-day he was The Unknown. Scarce a soul that gave him a second glance. -But soon would come discovery and then all this careless jostling -crowd would be magnetized as he passed, would turn with one accord to -him. They would salute and whisper and wonder. And he must be ready -for them, ready to guide their destinies forthwith. It would not do -to stand at a loss and say “Er,” to stand collecting his thoughts and -clear his throat, “H’rrmp.” - -Terrible the responsibility that lay upon him! But he would not -shirk it. What should be his opening words to them when the moment -of revelation came? “First;--Let there be Peace!” Better words than -that one could not imagine. He muttered to himself; “Peace and not War -among the Nations. Peace and not War among individuals. Peace in the -street--in the workroom--in the shop. _Peace_. - -“Love and Peace. I, Sargon the Magnificent, command it. I, Sargon, have -come back after many ages to give Peace to the Whole World.” - -A shop window drew him. It was a map shop and prominently displayed in -the window was a map of _Europe after the Treaty of Versailles:--Two -and Sixpence._ He stood looking at that. It would all have to be -altered again. That was just part of his task. Then he surveyed the -rest of the window. Behind the map of Europe there hung a wall-map of -the world. He would need such a map of the world; you cannot rule the -world without a map of it. Or you may forget large portions. Or would a -globe be better? Maps are all to be seen at once, and besides they are -more portable. Furthermore, the shop did not seem to sell globes and -he did not know where globes were to be bought. He went in and bought -the world map and emerged again on Kingsway after an interval, with a -roll four feet long under his arm. He was also carrying an ingenious -flat-paper planisphere which had caught his fancy as he stood at the -counter. It might be useful, he felt, for astrological purposes. - -He began to think vaguely of his possible destination. Whither was he -going? - -He was seeking quarters, he was seeking indeed some lonely hermitage. -He had slipped away from the Princess Royal, who also had come -back--rather needlessly he thought--into this modern world, because -it was necessary for him to be absolutely alone for a time. He had -to spend some days or weeks in spiritual struggle and meditation and -mental purification before his revelation came. Even she might not -minister to him during that period. She was devoted, but she hampered -him. Indeed, she hampered him greatly. She did not fully understand. -Her remarks and questions were generally disconcerting and sometimes -downright annoying. It was quite probable that the metamorphosis might -never occur with her about. And, besides, always in the history of -great Visitants and marvellous returns there had been this opening -phase of withdrawal and self-communion. Buddha, Muhammad; they had all -done it. Perhaps he would fast. Perhaps fasting would be necessary. -Perhaps there would be Celestial Visitants. - -He wished he knew more of the technique of fasting. Did one just stop -having meals or were there ceremonies and precautions? But of that -later. First he had to find that quiet room, his secret place of final -preparation. - -Presently he found himself in the grey squares of Bloomsbury and -every house he passed displayed in its window a genteel card offering -“Apartments” or “Bed and Breakfast.” Here also were “Private Hotels” -and even a plain “Boarding House.” Well, here no doubt it had to be. A -simple room amidst his unsuspecting people, a simple, simply furnished -room. - - -§ 4 - -But through all Bloomsbury, to judge by the dark green and silver cards -in its ground-floor windows, was offering shelter and sustenance to the -homeless and the stranger, the new Lord of the World found it no easy -matter to secure that simple room he needed for his own use. For more -than an hour he was visiting one grey house after another, knocking, -standing on doorsteps, entering passages laid with immemorial oilcloth, -and demanding a sight of the accommodation offered, inspecting -it, asking prices--and--it became more and more evident--arousing -suspicion. The people stared at his rolled-up map and his planisphere -and seemed to dislike them instinctively. He had not expected such -blunt demands for information; his vague mysteriousness was swept -aside, he found himself difficult to explain. They wanted to know -how he was occupied and when he would like to move in. None of them -seemed prepared for him to just sit down in his room there and then. -They expected him to go out and fetch his luggage. It undermined his -confidence that behind him there was no luggage. All these people, he -realized more and more distinctly, would expect him to produce luggage -and might behave unreasonably if he did not do so. A mere readiness to -pay in advance, he gathered, was not enough for them. - -He had counted upon finding kind and simple people behind these -lodging-house doors, people who would accept him and look up to him -from the first and wonder about him and his planisphere, speculate -about its significance and gradually realize the marvellous visitant -that had come to them. But the people he saw were not simple people. -Mostly they were dingy, sophisticated people. They came up out of -basements in a mood of sceptical scrutiny, men in shirt sleeves, morose -for the most part and generally ill-shaven; extremely knowing and -anything but virginal young women, grimy looking older women, hungrily -lean or unwholesomely fat. One had a goitre-like growth. And always -there was something defensive in their manner. - -And the rooms he saw were even less simple than the people. His -consciousness was invaded by a sense of the vast moral changes that had -happened to the world since he had ruled the white-robed honesty of his -Sumerian irrigators. Then a room would have a table, a seat or two, a -shelf with a few phials, an image or suchlike religious object, a clay -tablet and a writing style, perhaps, if the occupant was educated. -But these rooms were encumbered with contradictions. They had windows -to let in the light and dark curtains to keep it out. Sargon’s hidden -second youth in the laundry had made him very sensitive to dirtiness, -and the cotton-lace curtains of those places were generally very -dirty indeed. Electric light was still rare in “apartments”; mostly -they were lit from gas brackets that descended from the centre of the -ceiling and carried globes of frosted and cut glass. Always there -was a considerable table in the centre and two uneasy arm-chairs. -And there were lumpish sideboards of shiny, liver-coloured wood and -comfortless sofas and incredible ornaments. Sometimes the rooms, and -particularly the bedrooms, had a meretricious smartness and gaiety with -mezzotints of ladies in the natural state trying to pass themselves -off as allegorical figures or of the Baths in the congested harems -of wealthy, rather than refined, Orientals. The over-mantels were -extraordinary affairs and much loaded with crockery ornaments, little -jars, small gilt-winged angels, red devils, or encouraging looking -ladies in bathing-dresses that were too tight for them. A common form -of decoration was to fasten up plates on the wall much as one sees -vermin nailed up on a barn. - -A considerable number of these homes for hire were as shabby as -roadside tramps. One stood out in his memory as faded and dusty -and grey and threadbare beyond the possibility of reality. His -self-absorption was penetrated by the wonder of who could live and who -could have lived in such quarters. All his life had been amongst clean -and bright surroundings; it was rare that he had any glimpses of that -worn and weary stratum of English town life in which things are patched -indeed, but in which it is rare for anything to be mended or cleaned -and incredible that anything should be replaced. Even the air in these -rooms seemed long out of date and the glass over the rusty engravings -of the Monarch of the Glen and the Stag at Bay spotted by remote -ancestral flies. - -“Does anyone ever stay here?” asked Sargon of the shattered-looking -lady in charge. - -He did not realize the cruelty of his question until he had asked it. - -“My last gentleman stayed here fifteen years,” said the shattered lady. -“He was a copying clerk. He died in hospital this June. Dropsy. He -always found this very satisfactory--_very_ satisfactory. I never knew -him complain. He was a very good friend to me.” - -A great desire for fresh air came upon Sargon. “How much are these -rooms?” he asked. “I must think it over. Think it over and let you -know.” - -She asked her price, the usual price in that street, but as she led the -way down to the door she said: “If it’s too much--If you made an offer, -sir----” - -Despair looked out of her grime-rimmed eyes. - -“I must think about it,” said Sargon and was once more at large. - -Why did people get so dirty and dismal and broken down? Surely in -Sumeria there were never lives like that! It would have to be altered; -all this would have to be altered when the Kingdom came. - - -§ 5 - -Then as the twilight deepened Sargon discovered just the peaceful -room he desired. It announced itself hopefully not by the usual -printed card but by a hand-written tablet saying “A Room to Let,” in -a window that had no lace curtains but little purple ones enhancing -rather than concealing a bare-looking white room lit pleasantly by the -flickering of a fire. There were one or two pictures--real coloured -pictures--hanging on the white wall. Rather wearily Sargon lifted the -knocker and supplemented its appeal by pressing the electric bell. - -There was no immediate answer, and he knocked a second time before the -door opened. A slender young man appeared holding a small girl perched -on his shoulder. She regarded Sargon gravely with very dark grey-blue -eyes. - -“Everybody seems to have gone out,” said the slender young man in a -very pleasant voice. “What can I do for you?” - -“You have a room to let,” said Sargon. - -“There _is_ a room to let here, yes,” said the slender young man and -his appreciative dark eyes took in the details of the figure in front -of him. - -“Could I see it?” - -“I suppose he might _see_ it, Susan,” the young man hesitated. - -“Of course the gem’s got to see it,” said the small girl. “If Mrs. -Richman was here she’d show it him fast enough, old stoopid.” And she -pulled the slender young man’s hair--affectionately but very, very hard. - -“You see,” the young man explained. “The landlady is out. _Don’t_, -Susan. And the landlady’s lady assistant is out, too. Every one is -out--and we’re sort of unofficially left in charge somehow. Properly, I -ought not to have answered the door.” - -“But I told you to--_silly_!” said the little girl. - -The young man made no definite move. Instead, he asked a question. “Is -that a map, sir, you are carrying?” he asked. - -“It is a map of the world,” said Sargon. - -“Very helpful I should think, sir. And so you found your way here. -Well--The room’s upstairs if you’d come up. Hold tight, Susan, and try -not to strangle me.” And he led the way up the staircase. - -It was just the usual staircase and hall with oilcloth and wall-paper -to imitate some exceptionally bilious coarse-grained wood. As they -ascended the young lady ran great risks in her resolution never to take -her eyes off Sargon and his map. She twisted round a complete circle -and forced her bearer to stop on the first landing and readjust her. -“If you pull my hair once more,” said the slender young man, “I shall -put you down and never, never, never give you a ride again. It’s on the -next floor, sir, if you’d go first.” - -The room appeared delightfully free from unnecessary furnishings. There -was a little plain bed, a table under the window, and a gas-stove, and -the walls were papered in brown paper, adorned with commonplace but -refreshing Japanese colour prints. There was a recess one side of the -fire-place with three empty shelves painted like the mantelpiece, a -deep blue. The young man had clicked on an electric light, which was -pleasantly shaded. - -“It’s rather plain,” said the young man. - -“I like it,” said Sargon. “I have no use for superfluities.” - -“It used to be my room,” said the young man, “but now I share the -dining-room floor with the people downstairs and I’ve given this up. -It’s rather on my conscience----” - -“People downstairs--what people downstairs? There aren’t no People -downstairs. It’s Daddy and Mummy he means,” said the young lady. - -“It’s rather on my conscience,” said the young man, “that I persuaded -Mrs. Richman to alter the furniture. It isn’t to everybody’s taste.” - -“May I ask,” said Sargon, “how much the room might be?” - -“Thirty shillings, I _believe_,” said the young man, “with breakfasts.” - -Sargon put down his map and the planisphere upon the table. He felt -that he must secure this room or be for ever defeated. - -“I am willing,” he said, “to take the room. I would pay for it in -advance. And take up my quarters at once. But, I must warn you, my -position in the world is peculiar. I give no reference, I bring no -luggage.” - -“Except of course these charts,” said the young man. “Haven’t you--for -instance--a toothbrush?” - -Sargon thought. “No. I must get myself a toothbrush.” - -“I think it would _look_ better,” said the young man. - -“If necessary,” said Sargon, “I will pay for two weeks in advance. And -I will get myself all necessary things.” - -The young man regarded him with an affectionate expression. “If it -was my room I should let you have it like a shot,” he said. “But Mrs. -Richman is the landlady and in many respects she’s different from me. -Have you--travelled far, sir?” - -“In space,” said Sargon, “_No_.” - -“But in time, perhaps?” - -“In time, yes. But I would rather not enter into explanations at -present.” - -The young man’s interest and amusement deepened. He put Susan down on -her feet. “Might I look at your map?” he asked. - -“Willingly,” said Sargon. He unrolled the map on the table and put his -finger on London. “We are here,” he said. - -“Exactly,” said the young man, helping to hold the map on the table -from which it seemed likely to slip. - -“It is still the most convenient centre in the world,” said Sargon. - -“For almost any purpose,” said the young man. - -“For mine, yes,” said Sargon. - -“And that star thing--that must be a great help?” - -“It is,” said Sargon. - -“I suppose you would--_work_ in the room? It would be just yourself? -There would be no coming and going of people?” - -“None. While I was here, no one would know me. Afterwards perhaps. But -that does not concern us. Here I should remain incognito.” - -“Incognito,” the young man repeated, as though he considered the word. -“Of course. Naturally. By the by, sir, might I ask your name? (If you -hit me again, Susan, I shall do something cruel and dreadful to you.) -We’d have to know your name.” - -“For the time I think Mr.--Mr. Sargon.” - -“Of course,” said the young man, “for the time. Sargon--wasn’t that an -Assyrian king, or does my memory betray me?” - -“It is not the Assyrian Sargon in this case, it is the Sumerian Sargon, -his predecessor.” - -“Not a word more, sir--I understand. You must be fatigued after your -long journey and I should love--I should dearly love to let you the -room. _Wow!_ Susan, you go downstairs. Pinching I can’t stand. Come -along. You go down to your own proper room and let’s have no nonsense -about it. _Come!_” - -Susan backed to the wall and prepared to resist tooth and nail. “I -didn’t _mean_ to pinch, Bobby,” she said. “I didn’t mean to pinch. -Troof and really! I was just feelin’ your trousis. Oh, don’t take me -down, Bobby! Don’t take me down. I _will_ be good! I’ll be awful good. -I’ll just stay here and look at the funny geman. If you take me down, -Bobby----” - -“Now, is this a real reformation, Susan--a conversion, a change of -heart? Will you be a _jeune femme rangée_ and all that, if I forgive -you?” - -“I’ll be anyfing, Bobby dear, flet me stay.” - -“Well! cease to exist then--for all practical purposes and I’ll forgive -you. What can the nice gentleman think of you, Susan? And you more -than five! _Bah!_ We were saying, Mr. Sargon--? Yes, of course, I was -saying that you ought to take the room. Payment in advance will be -accepted. _But_--there is that toothbrush. And other small--what shall -I say?--realistic touches. _I_ shouldn’t mind personally, but I’m -only an agent, so to speak. Properly I am a sort of writer. Properly -I ought to be writing a novel now, but, as you see, Mrs. Richman has -left the house on my hands and my friends downstairs have left this -charming young lady on my hands--Put that tongue back at once, Susan. -Unladylike child!--and here we are! But as I’m saying, Mrs. Richman -is the principal. She has her fancies about lodgers. It is useless to -dispute about them. She will want a show of luggage. She will insist. -But that is really not an insurmountable difficulty. This--you will -remember the name?--is Nine Midgard Street. If you go out from here and -turn to the left, take the third to the right and go straight on, you -will come to a main thoroughfare full of ’buses and trams and traffic -and light and noise, and at the corner you will find a shop where they -sell second-hand trunks and bags. Now if you bought an old, battered, -largish bag--and then went across the road to a chemist’s shop and -got those washing things you need--Oh! and a reserve collar or so at -the outfitter’s next door--You _must_ get such things.... You see the -idea?” - -Sargon stood in front of the unlit gas-stove. “This seems to be acting -a falsehood.” - -“But you must have clean collars sometimes,” protested the young man. - -“I admit that,” said Sargon. - -“And then you can settle down here and tell me about that business of -yours. Otherwise, you know, you’ll just wander about.” - -“Your suggestion is really quite a helpful one,” said Sargon, getting -the thing into focus. “I shall adopt it.” - -“You won’t lose the way back?” - -“Why should I?” - -“Nine Midgard Street.” - -“I shall remember.” - -“Queer world it is,” said the young man; “isn’t it? How did you leave -the old folks in--Sumeria?” - -“My people were happy,” said Sargon. - -“Exactly. I’ve been there since. _Quite_ recently. But the weather -wasn’t good and I got knocked about by a shell and had a nasty time as -a wounded prisoner. Hot. Crowded. No shelter. Nothing cool to drink. -But in your time it was different.” - -“Very,” said Sargon. - -“And now--by Jove! that kettle is boiling over all by this time, Susan. -Come down to my room, such as it is, and have a cup of tea, sir. And -then you can go out and make those little arrangements of yours and -dig yourself in so to speak before Mrs. Richman comes back. This, by -the by, is your gas meter. You get gas by the shilling in the slot -arrangement.” - -“You are being very, very helpful to me,” said Sargon. “It shall not be -forgotten when my time comes.” - -“Nothing. It just happened you came into my hands so to speak. No, -Susan, we don’t. You _walk_ downstairs. Pinching is forgiven but not -forgotten. You can leave your map, sir--and that star thing--as -visible signs of your occupation. No, Susan--on foot.” - - -§ 6 - -The young man’s room was bookish and rather untidy, and Susan had been -killing toys on the carpet--a china-headed doll and something or other -of yellow painted wood appeared to be the chief victims. The doll had -bled sawdust profusely. Dark curtains were drawn and a green-shaded -electric light threw all the apartment into darkness except the floor. -There was a gas-fire with a gas-ring on which a boiling kettle steamed -like an excited volcano; there was a deal table on which was a big -pile of letters address to “_Aunt Suzannah_” c/o Editor of _Wilkins’ -Weekly_, and there was a large untidy desk on which was another litter -of letters evidently receiving attention, and in the midst of the desk -a writing-pad, on which reposed a squeezable tube of liquid glue and a -half-mended toy. The glue oozed upon the face sheet of the writing-pad -beneath these words, written in a beautifully neat handwriting: - - UPS AND DOWNS - - _A Pedestrian Novel_ - - BY ROBERT ROOTHING - - CHAPTER THE FIRST - - WHICH INTRODUCES OUR HERO - -Beyond that the novel did not seem to have progressed. - -With the dexterity of long-established usage Bobby made tea and -produced plum-bread and butter. Meanwhile he kept a wary eye on Susan -who had sat down by the waste-paper basket and was tearing up paper, -and attended to the remarks and attitudes of his remarkable visitor. - -Sargon already liked this young man enormously. It was extremely -reassuring and encouraging to meet such kindly acceptance and -understanding after the chill and doubt and ugliness of the previous -hour’s experiences. And it was nice and refreshing to have tea. A sort -of grey insecurity, a threat of suppression that had come over his -mind, vanished in this genial atmosphere. The shrivelled incognito -expanded. The hidden mystery beneath it grew rich and full once more. -This young man--he seemed ready to believe anything. Sargon walked -up and down with his hands behind his back as if in the profoundest -meditation. He would have muttered a few phrases in Sumerian, but for -some reason he had quite forgotten that forgotten tongue. - -“And so you write books?” he said regally. - -“Not books,” Bobby answered over his shoulder; he was now toasting a -circle of plum-bread. “Not books _yet_. But--it _is_ ridiculous, isn’t -it?--I am a bit of a poet and all that sort of thing, and a journalist -of sorts. Just answers to correspondents--laborious, but a living.” He -indicated the piles of letters on the deal table. “As for books--I have -as a matter of fact _started_ a novel--it’s on that desk--but that’s -only in the last few days. And it’s so difficult to get a lot of time -to oneself to really let oneself go with it.” - -“Inspiration,” said Sargon understandingly. - -“Well, one must let oneself go a bit, I suppose; particularly at first. -But there’s always something one must do cropping up to prevent it.” - -“With me also.” - -“No doubt.” - -“That is why,” said Sargon, “I am withdrawing into this solitude. To -collect my forces. In Sumeria it was always the practice, before any -great undertaking, to go out into the wilderness for a certain tale of -days.” - -“If I go out into the wilderness I get so lonely in the evenings,” said -Bobby. “_Ssh!_ That was the front door.” - -He went out upon the staircase and stood listening. - -“Mrs. Richman,” Sargon heard him call. - -“S’me,” said a lady’s voice. - -“Here’s a lodger for the second-floor front.” - -“I bin to the pictures,” said the voice outside. “Mary and Doug--a fair -treat.” - -A corpulent lady in a black bonnet appeared breathing heavily. She -panted a few obvious questions and Bobby hovered helpfully at Sargon’s -elbow to prevent him making any mistakes. “He’ll pay in advance,” said -Bobby. - -“That’s awright,” said Mrs. Richman. “When will he move in?” - -“He’s getting his luggage right away,” said Bobby. - -“I suppose it’s all right,” said Mrs. Richman. - -“I know his people. At least I know about them. I’ve been in his part -of the country. You can be quite sure he’s all right,” said Bobby. - -“Well, if _you_ say so,” said Mrs. Richman. “’Ope you’ll be -comfortable, Mr.----” - -“Mr. Sargon.” - -“Mr. Sargon.” - -And after a few rather vague comments on the weather Mrs. Richman -withdrew. “And now,” said Bobby, “I’ll just unload Susan on her and -come with you for that bag. It’s extraordinary how people lose their -way in London at times.” - - -§ 7 - -“I’ve let the second-floor front to a lunatic,” said Bobby, breaking -the news to his ground-floor friends, Mr. and Mrs. Malmesbury. - -“Oh, _Bobby_! and with Susan about!” cried Mrs. Malmesbury -reproachfully. - -“But he’s a quite _harmless_ lunatic, Tessy--and he had to be taken in -somewhere.” - -“But a lunatic!” said Mrs. Malmesbury. - -“I only said that for effect,” said Bobby. “He’s really morbidly sane. -I wouldn’t have let him go for anything. Some day when I really get to -work on that novel I’ll put him in. I _must_ have material, Tessy. And -he’s wonderful.” - -He was preparing supper for the Malmesburys and himself. He was frying -some sausages and potatoes over a gas-ring. Previously Bobby had done -most of the putting of Susan to bed, and he had sat and told her -stories according to custom until she was fast asleep. Tessy Malmesbury -was out of sorts; she had a neuralgic headache, Billy Malmesbury had -taken her for a walk in Regent’s Park and she had come home exhausted; -things would have gone to pieces badly if Bobby had not taken them in -hand. - -Tessy was never very well nowadays; she was a slight and fragile little -thing and Susan had been a violent and aggressive child long before -she was born. In the long-lost days before the war when Bobby had -seen Tessy first she had been the lightest, daintiest, most perfect -thing imaginable; he had compared her to a white petal drifting down -through sunlight, and almost written a poem about her; he had loved -her tremendously. But it had seemed to him impossible to make love to -so exquisite a being, and Billy Malmesbury, who was less scrupulous, -had slipped in front of him and married her; she had not appreciated -the delicacy of not making love to her. And then came the war and -wounds and here they all were again, fagged and near the thirties, in a -world where their small annuities brought them far less than they had -promised to do. Billy was the junior partner of an architect and much -encumbered with drawing-boards. He was a large-framed young man with a -big, round, good-looking, slightly astonished face, pleasantly dappled -with freckles. He had a great protective affection for Bobby. He sat -now and designed a new sort of labour-saving pantry and, with a sense -of infinite protection, let Bobby get the meal. - -“And now I can tell you,” said Bobby, when at last all three of them -were sitting at table. - -“It’s a little dear of a lunatic,” he said. “If it’s a lunatic at all.” - -“I hope it isn’t,” said Tessy. - -“He’s quite tidy in his person and he hangs together--mentally he hangs -together--and his eyes aren’t in the least wild. A leetle too bright -and open perhaps. But he _does_ think the world belongs to him.” - -“Well, Susan does that,” said Billy. - -“And so does Billy,” said Tessy. - -“But not quite with the same air of magnificent responsibility. You see -he thinks he’s a certain Mesopotamian monarch called Sargon--I’ve heard -of him because we had a little dust-up with the Turks round and about -his stamping ground--he thinks he’s this Sargon come again and come -somehow--that bit’s a little difficult--into the empire of the whole -earth. It was Sargon, you know, who started all these British Lions and -Imperial Eagles in the world. And so he proposes to take possession of -the planet, which is in such a frightful mess----” - -“Hear, hear!” said Billy. - -“And put it in order.” - -“What more simple?” cried Tessy. - -“Exactly. Why haven’t we _all_ thought of that?” said Billy. - -“But where does he come from?” asked Tessy. - -“Not a sign. He might be a suburban nurseryman or a small draper or -something of that sort. I can’t place him. One or two phrases he -used suggested a house-agent. But he may have picked them up from -advertisements. And his first proceeding--perfectly rational--was to -buy a map of the world. Naturally if you are going to rule the world, -you ought to have a map of it handy.” - -“Has he any money?” - -“Enough to pay his way. He’s got a small note-case. That seems to be -all right. After we’d got a bag for him--he hadn’t any luggage, and -I thought he’d better buy a bag to satisfy Mrs. Richman--we sat down -upstairs and had a simple straightforward talk about the world and what -had to be done with it. Most instructive.” - -Bobby helped himself to some more fried potatoes. - -“And what _is_ going to be done with it?” - -“Let me see,” said Bobby; “it’s quite an attractive little programme. -Rather I think on the lines of the Labour programme. Only simpler and -more thorough. The Distinction of Rich and Poor is to be Abolished -Altogether. Women are to be Freed from all Disadvantages. There is to -be No More War. He gets at the roots of things every time.” - -“If those are the roots,” said Billy. - -“But isn’t the real question how to do it?” asked Tessy, “Aren’t we all -agreed about those things--in theory?” - -“In theory, yes,” said Bobby. “But not in reality. If every one really -wanted to abolish the difference of rich and poor it would be as easy -as pie to find a way. There’s always a way to everything if you want -to do it enough. But nobody really wants to do these things. Not as we -want meals. All sorts of other things people want, but wanting to have -no rich and poor any more isn’t real wanting; it is just a matter of -pious sentiment. And so it is about war. We don’t want to be poor and -we don’t want to be hurt or worried by war, but that’s not wanting to -end those things. _He_ wants to end them.” - -“But how’s he going to set about it?” said Billy. - -“That is still a little vague. I think there is to be a sort of -Proclamation. He’s thinking that out upstairs now. He seems to -think that he has to call up some sort of disciples. Then I think -he will go down to Westminster and take the Speaker’s place on the -Woolsack or something of that sort. It _is_ the Speaker sits on the -Woolsack, isn’t it? Or is it the Lord Chancellor? Anyhow, there are -to be demonstrations--on a large and dignified scale. The people have -forgotten the ancient simple laws, he says. He himself had forgotten -them. But he has remembered them now; they have come back to him, and -presently every one will remember them, all the great old things, -justice, faith, obedience, mutual service. As it was in Ancient -Sumeria. Dreamland Ancient Sumeria, you know. The dear old Golden -Age. He has come to remind people of the true things in life--which -every one has forgotten. And when he has reminded them every one will -remember. And be good. And there you are, Tessy! I hope it will affect -Susan--but I don’t feel at all sure. I have a sort of feeling that -Susan could stash up any golden age they started in about five minutes, -but then perhaps I’m a bit prejudiced about her.” - -“It’s rather wonderful all the same,” said Billy. - -“He _is_ rather wonderful. He sits up there and looks at you with -his little round innocent face and tells you all these things. And, -assuming he’s Lord of the World, they’re perfectly right and proper. -He sits with the map of the world unrolled on the table. I ventured -to suggest that he would require a lot of subordinate rulers and -directors. ‘They will come,’ he said. ‘No office, no duty shall be done -henceforth except by the Proper People. That has been neglected too -long. Let every man do that he is best fitted to do. Then everything -will be well.’” - -“And when’s all this to begin?” asked Billy. - -“Any time. I don’t think--” Bobby’s expression became profoundly -judicial. “I don’t think he’ll do anything for a day or so. I pointed -out to him that he ought to consider his demonstrations very carefully -before he makes them, and he seemed inclined to agree. Some mistake, -he says, has occurred already--I couldn’t find out what. Apparently -to-morrow he is just going to look at London, quietly but firmly, -from the Monument and from the Dome of Saint Paul’s. And also he wants -to observe the manners of his subjects in the streets and railway -stations, and wherever there is a concourse of people. The scales -have fallen from his eyes, he explains, and now that he knows that he -is Lord of the World he realizes how distressed and unsatisfactory -everybody’s life is--even when they don’t know it’s unsatisfactory. His -own life was terribly unsatisfactory he says, unreal and frustrated, -until he awoke and realized the greatness of his destiny.” - -“And what was that life of his?” asked Tessy. - -“I tried to get that. And he caught the eager note in my voice I -suppose, and shut up like an oyster. The draper’s shop perhaps. Or a -milk-round. I wonder.” - -“But, Bobby,” cried Billy in the expostulatory tone of one who -remonstrates with wild unreason; “he must come from _somewhere_!” - -“Exactly,” said Bobby. “And somewhere must be looking for him. But -you can’t always hurry these things. And meanwhile I take it it’s -our bounden duty to keep an eye on him and see that he doesn’t bump -himself too hard or fall into the wrong hands.... Until some one comes -along.... Don’t you get up, Tessy, you’re tired.” - -And Bobby jumped to his feet and proceeded to change the plates and -dishes while Billy fell into a profound meditation upon the problem of -the new neighbour upstairs. - -Presently he smiled and shook his head in kindly disapproval. - -“This will suit Bobby all right,” he said to Tessy. “Whenever he ought -to be upstairs in his own room getting on with that novel of his he -will be up on the second floor talking to--what is it?--Sargon.” - -“Accumulating material,” corrected Bobby from the Welsh dresser where -he was turning a tin of peaches out into a glass dish. “Accumulating -evidence.... Not even a spider could spin a yarn out of an empty -stomach. Tessy, have you just simply _lost_ the cream or have you put -it away in a new place very carefully for me to guess? Oh, right-o! -I’ve got it.” - - -§ 8 - -Let us be frank about it; Sargon had his doubts. - -Not always. There were times when his fantasy was bravely alive and -carried him high above any shadow of uncertainty, and he was all that -he could have ever wished to be. Then Mr. Preemby was almost forgotten. -But there were moments, there were phases, when he became aware of a -cold undertow of conviction that he was after all just Mr. Preemby, -Mr. Preemby, formerly of the Limpid Stream Laundry, making believe, -carrying it off and perhaps presently failing to carry it off. This -chill flow of doubt could even oblige him to reason with himself, force -him into a definite reassurance of himself. He would debate the whole -question, candidly, fairly. Surely there was no deception, could have -been no deception, about that séance. “Told me things no one but I -could have known,” he would repeat. “I pin my faith to that.” - -He knew that Christina Alberta had not really believed. It was just -because of her revealing scepticism that he had fled from her. She had -asked questions, tearing, rending questions, and she had said “Um.” It -is not proper to say “Um” to world emperors. If presently he fasted or -went into a trance, he felt sure that she would come and stand about -beside him and say “Um,” and spoil everything. Well, anyhow, he was -away from that for a bit. But to be away from doubt was not enough. The -great discovery threatened to evaporate. He wanted the comfort of the -disciple. He wanted help and reassurance. - -Bobby had comforted him greatly. While Sargon had been going from one -suspicious lodging-house keeper to another, the faith of the new -Saviour of mankind had weakened dreadfully. But Bobby from the first -had had something deferential in his manner, had seemed to understand. -His questions had grown more and more intelligent. Perhaps he was to -be the first of the reawakened adherents. Perhaps presently he would -be recognizable as some faithful servant in that still so largely -forgotten past, a trusted general perhaps or some intimate court -official. - -Yet even when Sargon doubted he believed. It is a very comprehensible -paradox. He knew clearly that to be Sargon was to be real, was to -signify and make all the world signify, was to go back into the past -and reach right out into the future, was to escape altogether from -the shrivelled insignificance of the Preemby life. To be Sargon was -to achieve not only greatness but goodness. Sargon could give and -Sargon could dare. Sargon could face lions and die for his people, but -Preemby could go round three fields, had been known to go round three -fields, to evade the hostility of a barking terrier. Preemby’s world -was dust and dirt, a mud speck in infinite space, and there was no -life on it but abjection. Preemby was death; Sargon was rebirth into -a world of spacious things. Not very clearly did Sargon achieve these -realizations, but he felt them throughout his being. Something had -happened to him of inestimable value and truth; he had to cling to this -gift and hold it and keep it or be for ever fallen. Christina Alberta -notwithstanding, the whole world notwithstanding. - -So he walked up and down his little upper room in Midgard Street and -elaborated his conception of his new rôle as lord and protector of -the whole world. Twilight gave place to night but he did not turn on -the light. He liked the friendly darkness. All visible things are -limiting things, but the darkness goes out and beyond everything to -God. “I must look,” he said. “I must watch and observe. But not for -too long. There is action. Action gives life. That fellow Preemby, -poor soul, he could look at things, but dared he lift a finger? No! -Everywhere suffering, everywhere injustice and disorder, the desert -and the wilderness breaking back in on us and he did nothing. If one -does not call and call aloud, how can one expect an answer? In this -world, vast, terrible--strikes--hoardings--adulteration--profiteers.... -Nevertheless men who once lived bravely and did their duty.... Who may -do it again.... Once they hear the call. Awake! Remember! The High -Path. Simple Honour. Sargon calls you.... H’rrmp....” - -He came to a halt at his uncurtained window and looked out on the -plain, flat face of the opposite houses, pierced here and there by a -lit window. Most had the blinds drawn, but just opposite a woman worked -by lamp-light at a table, sewing something, her needle hand flew out -perpetually and the book and one hand and the cuff of a reader came -also into the picture, the rest of him hidden behind the curtain. At a -bedroom window there was a looking-glass, and a girl tried on a hat and -looked at it this way and that; then suddenly she vanished, and after a -little interval the light went out. - -“All their scattered lives,” said Sargon, holding out his arms with -a benevolent gesture, “knitted--drawn together by wisdom and love. A -rudder put on the drifting world.” - -Came a knock at the door. “Come in,” said Sargon. - -Bobby appeared. “Getting on all right, sir?” he said in his engaging -subaltern manner. He clicked on the electric light and came into the -room. (Cadaverous and pleasant face he had; surely one would remember -presently what he had been.) “Wondered if you were eating anything -to-night?” he asked. - -“I quite forgot eating,” said Sargon. “Quite. My mind--troubled by many -grave matters. I have much to think of, much to plan. The hour grows -late. The time is near. I wonder if the serving woman here----?” - -“Only breakfasts,” said Bobby. “Here we are on bed and breakfast terms -strictly. The rest is with ourselves. For an emergency like this there -is nothing so good as the Rubicon Restaurant. The Grill Room keeps open -quite late. They will do you a chop or a cutlet. Or ham and eggs. Very -good ham and eggs--crisp ham. You go out from here, turn to the left at -the second corner, and go right down Hampshire Street until you come to -it. You’ll have no difficulty in finding it.” - -The word “crisp” had settled it. - -“I will avail myself,” said Sargon. - -“And it’s equally easy to find your way back,” said Bobby with a faint -flavour of anxiety in his voice. - -“Have no fear, young man,” said Sargon in a tone of jolly reassurance. -“Have no fear. I’ve found my way in many climes and under many -conditions--the wild mountains--the trackless desert. Time and space.” - -“Of course,” said Bobby. “I forgot that. - -“Still--London is different,” said Bobby. - - -§ 9 - -The next day at about half-past four in the afternoon a small but -heavily moustached figure, with eyes full of blue determination, -emerged from Saint Paul’s Cathedral and stood at the top of the steps -before the great doors, surveying the jostling traffic of Ludgate Hill -and the Churchyard. There was a sort of valiant uncertainty in the -figure’s pose, as though it was equally resolved to be up to something, -and uncertain about what it meant to do. London had been looked at from -the top of the Monument and from the Cathedral dome on a crystal-clear -October day, and it had betrayed an unusual loveliness and greatness -under the golden sunshine. But it had shown itself, too, as a vast -dreamy multitudinousness in which none but those who are resolute and -powerful in action can hope to escape being swallowed up. It had -stretched away to wide sunlit stretches that seemed to be the horizon, -and then up in the leaden-blue other stretches had been visible of -houses, of shipping, of distant hills. The vans and carts in the -shadowed streets below had looked like toys; the people were hats and -hurrying legs and feet, curiously proportioned. And over all an immense -dome of kindly cloud-flecked sky. - -He had walked round the little gallery under the ball, muttering: “A -wilderness. A city that has forgotten.... - -“How fair it might be. How great it might be! - -“How fair and great it _shall_ be!” - -And now he had come down again from these high places and the time -had come for him to gather together his disciples and ministers and -inaugurate the New World. He had to call them. Followers would not come -to him unless he called them; they would wait for him to act, not know -even of what awaited them until he called them, but when he called them -they would surely come. - -It was with an extraordinary sense of power over men’s destinies that -he stood now upon Saint Paul’s steps and reflected that even now men -and women might be passing by, among these busy men thronging the -pavement, among the people in omnibuses, among the girls clattering -away at their typewriters behind the upstairs windows, over whose busy, -petty, undistinguished lives hung the challenge of his summons. Yonder -perhaps was his Abu Bekr, his right-hand man, his Peter. Let them wait -a little longer. He waved the traffic onward with a gesture of kindly -encouragement. “Soon now,” he said, “very soon. Go on while ye may. -Even now the sorting of the lots begins.” - -Yet a moment more he stood still and silent, a statuette of destiny. -“And now,” he whispered; “and now.... - -“And first----” - -He was no longer troubled by his oblivion of the Sumerian tongue. -In the night he had recovered the gift of tongues; he had muttered -strange words in the darkness, and understood. - -“H’rrmp,” he said, a word common to many tongues, clearing the way -after five thousand years for the return of the forgotten sounds -to a renewed use in the world of men. “Dadendo Fizzoggo Grandioso -Magnificendodidodo--yes,” he whispered. “The Unveiling of the -Countenance. The First Revelation. Then perhaps they will see.” - -And slowly he descended the steps, his eyes searching the convergent -frontages of the Churchyard for some intimations of a barber’s shop. - - - - -CHAPTER THE SECOND - -_The Calling of the Disciples_ - - -§ 1 - -There are already wide differences of statement and opinion about -the order and the details of the calling of the followers of Sargon. -Happily we are in a position to give the circumstances with all the -exactitude that may be necessary, and with an authority that will -anticipate vexatious criticism. It was about half-past six that Sargon -appeared in Cheapside, and the day’s traffic was already ebbing in that -busy city thoroughfare. His countenance was transformed and shone with -that kind of luminosity that only the most thorough and exhaustive -shaving can give. A youthful smoothness had been restored to it. The -facial mane, the vast moustache, that had veiled it for so many years -from mankind was abandoned, a mess of clippings and lather now in a -barber’s basin. Now the face was as bare as the young Alexander, a -fresh-complexioned, sincere and innocent countenance speaking clearly -with an unfiltered voice. It was flushed with a natural excitement as -it went along Cheapside scrutinizing the faces of the foot passengers -on a momentous and mystical search. The blue eyes beneath the brim of -the distinguished-looking hat were alight. Was it to be this man? Was -it to be this? - - -§ 2 - -The first to be called was a young man of Leytonstone named Godley, -a young man with a large and excessively grave grey face and a -deliberation of utterance amounting to an impediment. He was carrying -a microscope in a wooden box. He was a student of biology with a -cytological bias; naturally very polite and temperamentally disposed to -be precise and deliberate in all he said and did. He was making his way -from Liverpool Street station to the Birkbeck Institute by a circuitous -route because he had nearly an hour in hand before his class began. He -stood poised on the pavement edge at a street-corner waiting for two -vans to pass, when his call came to him. - -He found a very earnest, barefaced little man beside him whose blue -eyes searched his countenance swiftly, and who then gripped his arm. - -“I think,” said Sargon, “that it is you.” - -Mr. Godley, who was not without a sense of humour, attempted to reply -that it certainly was him, but that impediment of his, partly natural -but greatly developed by affectation, arrested him about the word -“certainly,” and he was still sawing the air with his profile when -Sargon spoke again. - -“I have need of your help,” said Sargon. “The great task is beginning.” - -Mr. Godley went through the preliminary convulsions of explaining that -he had the better part of an hour to spare and that he was willing to -give help in any reasonable matter provided it was first explained to -him clearly just exactly what the matter was. But he could only give -help for a limited time. His engagement with his class at the Birkbeck -was imperative. Sargon paid little heed to the significance of the -various sounds that Mr. Godley was biting off and swallowing. He led -his captive by the arm and explained, with helpful gestures of his free -hand, the full significance of this call. “You are, I perceive, a young -man of scientific qualifications. They will be needed. I do not know -if you recognize me--your memory may still be imperfect--but I recall -your face, chief among the wise men of our ancient court. Yes, indeed, -chief among our wise men.” - -“N-no-no-not as-as-assure that I follow you aw-ow-ow quite,” said the -young man. “My my--my aw-ow-ow-work issferr’ll aw-ow-ow-known as yet.” - -“_I_ know it,” said Sargon boldly. “_I_ know it. I have been seeking -you. Do not be deceived by my plain incognito. Believe me I have -tremendous powers behind me. In a little while all men will understand. -The age of confusion draws near its end; a new age begins. We are the -first two particles, the very first, in a great crystallization----” - -“Where aaare we g-g-g-oing agg-aggs-aggs-exactly?” asked the young man. - -“Trust me,” said Sargon bravely. “Keep with me.” - -The young man struggled with some complex question. But now three -fresh individuals came under the magic attraction of the call and the -young man’s question fell in unheeded chunks. These new adherents were -a little group of men standing at the kerb, about a small, almost -inaudible hurdy-gurdy on which was a placard stating: “We want Work -not Charity; but there is no Work for Us in this So-called Civilized -State.” They were clad in faded khaki, and were all youths of less than -five-and-twenty. - -“Now look at that!” said Sargon. “Is it not time the new age began?” - -He addressed himself to the man on the right of the organ-grinder. - -“All this is to be altered here and now,” he said. “I have work for you -to do.” - -“Oh!” said the ex-soldier in the accent of a fairly well-educated man. -“What sort of work?” - -“We’re straight,” said the organ-grinder. “We’ll take it. If it’s work -we can do. We ain’t fakers. Wot work is it?” - -“Shillin’ an hour?” said the third. - -“More than that. Much more than that. And very great and responsible -work. A harvest! A splendid harvest! You shall be leaders of men. -Follow after me.” - -“Far?” asked the man who had spoken first. - -Sargon made a gesture that effectually concealed his own lack of a -definite plan, and led the way. - -“Lead on, Macbeth,” said the organ-grinder, and swung his hurdy-gurdy -into its carrying position on his back. The two other ex-soldiers -exchanged views that it was all right and that anyhow they’d see what -was offered them. Mr. Godley, keeping abreast of his leader, began an -immense and ultimately futile struggle with a fresh question. - -The next disciple was not so much called as fell into the gathering -body of Sargonites. He was a tall gentleman of a rich brown colour with -frizzy black hair, and a vast disarming smile. He was dressed in an -almost luminous grey frock-suit, a pink tie, buttoned shoes with bright -yellow uppers, and a hat as distinguished as Sargon’s own. He carried -a grey alpaca umbrella. He held out a sheet of paper in a big mahogany -hand and emitted in a rich abundant voice the word “Escuse.” The -paper had printed on it at the head the words, “Lean and Mackay, 329 -Leadenhall Street, E.C.” and below written in ink, “Mr. Kama Mobamba.” - -Sargon regarded his interlocutor for a moment and then recognized him. -“The Elamite King!” he said. - -“Non spik English,” said the black gentleman. “Portugaish.” - -“No,” said Sargon with a gesture that explained his intention. -“Providence. Follow after me.” - -The coloured gentleman fell in trustfully. - -“Look here!” protested one of the ex-soldiers. “There ain’t going to be -coloured labor on this job?” - -“Peace!” said Sargon. “Very soon everything will be shown to you.” - -“I don’t think you have any ub-ub-business to mislead ap-ap-people,” -said Mr. Godley, who was becoming more and more interested in, and -perplexed by, Sargon’s proceedings. - -Sargon quickened his pace. - -“This--this gentleman s-s-s-simply wa-wa-wanted tu-tu-tu-tu-to go to -that address,” said Mr. Godley. - -In his eagerness to get the idea home to Sargon he became a little -disregardful of his microscope box which inflicted a sudden sharp -blow on the knee of a passing gentleman, a business man in a silk -hat. The victim cursed aloud with extraordinary vehemence and stood -hopping on the pavement with his hand to his knee. Then he succumbed -to a passionate impulse to tell Mr. Godley exactly what he thought of -his conduct, his upbringing, and his type of human being. He joined -the followers of Sargon at a brisk limp, occasionally saying “Hi!” -in a breathless voice. A rather intoxicated man in deep mourning had -witnessed the incident. He came hurrying, with a certain margin of -error, to the side of the angry gentleman in the silk hat. - -“’Sgraceful salt,” he said. “’Sgraceful! F’want a witness _I_’m your -man!” - -His general intention was to go forward at the side of the gentleman -in the silk hat, but there were chemically emancipated factors in his -being that drove him sideways. The resultant was a sinuous course that -presently involved him with a display of oranges in a barrow at the -pavement edge. It was not a serious nor a prolonged contact, but it -involved a certain scattering of oranges in the gutter and added a new -ingredient, a very angry costermonger’s assistant with a remonstrance -and a claim for damages, to the gathering body of Sargon’s followers. - -The moral of a proverb depends entirely upon the image chosen, and -though a rolling stone gathers no moss, a rolling snowball grows -by what it rolls upon. A small hurrying group of people in a -London street is a moving body of the snowball type; its physical -pull is considerable; it appeals to curiosity and the increasing -gregariousness of mankind. Sargon, blue-eyed and exalted, with Mr. -Godley intent and eloquent upon his left hand, and Mr. Kama Mobamba, -tall, silent, smiling, with a shining confidence upon his ebony face -that soon he would be led into the presence of Messrs. Lean and -Mackay, formed the spearhead of the procession. Behind came the three -out-of-work ex-soldiers, who were now involved in obscure protests -and explanations with the gentleman in the silk hat, and a smart but -rather incomprehensible young newspaper reporter, who had acquired his -native tongue in Oldham, and had just come up to London to push his -fortunes, and was anxious for something called a “scoop.” He seemed to -think that Sargon might be the “scoop” he sought. Two ambiguous-looking -individuals in caps and neck-wraps had also fallen in, possibly for -nefarious purposes, a vague-faced young woman of the streets in a -weather-worn magenta hat was asking what was “_up_” and the intoxicated -man in mourning was explaining as wittily and obscurely as possible. -There was also a fringe of skirmishing juveniles. And an Eton boy. He -was very, very young and fresh-faced, a scion of one of the oldest and -best families in England and a convinced and fierce Communist. He had -been on his way with a bosom friend to the celebrated model engine shop -in Holborn when Sargon had swept past him and the inscription on the -organ had caught his eye. - -He was a boy of swift initiatives and with a highly developed dramatic -sense. - -“Sorry, old Fellow,” he said to his friend. “But I feel the time has -come. Unless I’m very much mistaken that little bunch is the beginning -of the Social Revolution, and I must do my duty.” - -“Oo I _say_, Rabbit!” said the friend. “Come and buy that steam-launch -first, anyhow.” - -“_What’s_ a model steam-launch?” said Rabbit scornfully, and turned to -follow Sargon. - -He would have liked to have had a swift strong hand-clasp first, but -you can’t do that sort of thing with a chap who will always keep both -hands in his trouser pockets. He darted off, and his friend followed -discreetly in a state between amusement and dismay, and at such a -distance as seemed to him to exonerate him from any personal complicity -with the social revolution. - -“Where are we going?” asked the young Etonian as he came up with the -hindmost of the out-of-work ex-soldiers. - -“_He_ knows,” said the out-of-work ex-soldier, indicating Sargon. - - -§ 3 - -But that was exactly what our dear Sargon did not know. By this time he -was no longer a convinced and complete Sargon. A scared and doubting -and protesting Preemby was struggling back into his being. - -Up to the beginning of the calling of the disciples Sargon had ruled -in his own soul assured and unchallenged. But he had expected his -disciples to respond to his call, to recognize and remember, to be -immediately understanding and helpful. The calling was to have been -like the lighting of a lamp in their minds and the world about them. -He had expected not only his own clear and unquestioning conviction -but accession and reinforcement for it. And so leaping from soul to -soul the restoration of Humanity, the Empire of Sargon would have -spread. For disciples who made conditions, for disciples who followed, -gesticulating strangely and spluttering and bubbling and stammering -injurious criticisms, for disciples who asked for a minimum wage, and -for disciples who came limping after one calling “Hi!” as though one -was a cab, Sargon was totally unprepared. - -Had he called these disciples rashly? Had he been premature again? Had -he made another mistake? - -These were unpleasantly urgent questions for a Master to solve while -he was going briskly to nowhere in particular about four miles an hour -along Holborn with his following gathering at his heels. Perhaps all -leadership is a kind of flight. In every leader of men perhaps the -fugitive has been latent. In Sargon now it was more than latent; it was -awake and stirring, and its name was Preemby. - -Since first mankind in its slow ascent from mere animalism became -susceptible to Prophets and Great Teachers and Leaders there must -always have been something of this internal conflict between the -greatness of the mission and something discreetly less, and there -must also have been always something of this clash of the disciples’ -quality and motive with the teacher’s expectations. The very calling -of disciples seems to admit a sense of weakness on the prophet’s part. -Their calling puts him in pledge. He puts himself in pledge to them. -They will, he knows, hold him to it when he falters; deep gregarious -instincts assure him he will not desert his declaration to them even -when he might desert himself. They desert him--inevitably. In the whole -record of the world there is only one unvarying, faithful disciple, Abu -Bekr. All other disciples failed and crippled their Masters and misled -them. They deserted or they drove the prophet whither he would not go. -Great things and little things of the same kind follow the same laws. -At the head of that small wedge of commotion driving along lamp-lit -Holborn in the October twilight went Sargon the Lord and Protector of -Mankind, the Restorer of Faith and Justice, the Magnificent One, and -though he was already aware of an error made and dangers incurred, he -was still resolved to pull a great occasion by some stupendous gesture -out of the jaws of disaster. And closer than his shadow was Preemby, -scared nearly out of his wits, ready for a desperate headlong bolt down -any side turning, a bolt from explanation, a bolt from effort, a bolt -back to Preembyism and infinite nothingness. - -Suddenly there came to Sargon a reassuring voice, the voice of one who -had at least seemed to believe and accept. - -There had been a slight altercation with Billy before Bobby came -hurrying across the road. “There he goes!” said Bobby. - -“That isn’t him,” said Billy. “Where’s his moustache? He was pretty -nearly all moustache.” - -“Shaved,” said Bobby. “I’d swear to him anywhere. A sort of prance in -his walk. It’s our prophet, Billy, and he’s heading for trouble.” - -“Looks more like a welsher,” said Billy. “Where’d he get that ecstatic -nigger? It’s too rummy for me altogether, Bobby. You keep out of it. -There’s a policeman tacking on now.” - -Bobby hesitated. “Can’t let him go like that,” he said, and dodged -across the road just as four racing omnibuses blotted out the -Sargonites from Billy’s eyes. - -“Forgive me, but where are you going?” said Bobby, stooping to Sargon’s -grateful ear in spite of a considerable push from Mr. Godley. - -“I have declared myself,” said Sargon, and straightway reassurance -came. This was the First of the Disciples, and he had found his way to -his Master. Quite clearly now did Sargon see what he had to do. These -first followers had to be instructed. The Teaching had to begin. To do -that it was necessary to lead them apart out of the hurry and tumult -of the street. A vision came to Sargon of a long brightly lit table, -and an array of disciples asking questions, and of memorable answers -and great sayings. And straight ahead, glowing, bursting with light, -already a friend, there towered up the inviting mass of the Rubicon -Restaurant, pioneer in the great enterprise of supplying dinners de -luxe at popular prices. - -“Yonder,” said Sargon with a sweeping gesture of the hand, “we will -rest and sit at meat, and I will talk, and all things shall be -explained.” - -The bright vision of a discourse to a gathering of disciples at a table -had so restored the gloriousness of Sargon that by the time he reached -the entrance of the Rubicon Restaurant, which bulges invitingly at a -corner, he had called two further disciples. One of these acquisitions -was a matchbox-holding beggar of venerable appearance, and the other -a highly intelligent-looking man of perhaps fifty, lean and thinly -bearded, carrying a book on the Doukhobors and wearing mittens and -a tall black felt hat--a hat of an unusual shape rather like the -steam-dome of a railway engine. This last acquisition was made at the -very door of the Restaurant. - -“Come in here,” said Sargon, seizing his arm, “and take meat with me. I -have things to tell you that will change your whole life.” - -“This is very _suddan_,” said the intelligent-looking man, speaking -in the high neighing protesting accent of an English scholar and -gentleman, as he yielded himself to Sargon’s grip. - - -§ 4 - -The actual invasion of the Rubicon Restaurant was a confused and swift -affair. Sargon’s mind was clear and simple now; he had to make that -vision of a long white table with his disciples grouped about him -a reality or incur a great defeat. His following was animated by a -mixture of unequal and incompatible motives, as all followings are, -and it was now swollen to something near thirty--the exact number -is uncertain because it passed marginally into mere onlookers and -passers-by--by the action of the least worthy of the three out-of-work -ex-soldiers, who had been uttering these magic words, “A Free Feed!” -ever since the Rubicon Restaurant had been in sight. - -The attention of that challenging individual, the outside porter, had -happened to be distracted by the arrival of guests in a motor car when -the Sargonites came along. They therefore swept through the outer -entrance without encountering any obstacle other than the rotating -door, which chopped the little crowd into ones and twos before it -reached the entrance hall. Perhaps twenty got into the entrance hall, -that space of marble and mahogany and hovering cloak-room attendants, -before the mechanical incompetence of the man in deep mourning and -his subsequent extraction by the politely indignant outer porter, the -costermonger’s assistant intervening unhelpfully, jammed the apparatus. -The man with the bruised shin seems to have fallen out before the -restaurant was reached, and the vague-faced young woman in the magenta -had drifted away at some unnoted moment. - -In the spacious, glittering and observant outer hall a tendency to -dispersal manifested itself. The out-of-work ex-soldier with the organ, -seized by a sudden shyness, made for the gentleman’s cloak-room to -deposit his instrument and became involved in an argument with his -colleagues. The two ambiguous young men in caps and neck-wraps seem to -have hesitated about the correctness of their costume. But Sargon held -the newly caught gentleman tight, and the venerable match-seller did -not mean to be separated from his patron in this bright, luxurious, -dangerous place. Mr. Kama Mobamba, tall and smiling and shining, handed -hat and umbrella to an attendant and followed closely upon the Master, -serene in his assurance that these were the lordly portals of the long -sought firm of African traders, Lean and Mackay. And Mr. Godley, with -his natural passion for explicitness, would not leave Sargon until -he had made it perfectly clear to him why he did not feel bound to -accompany him further. He came next after the others into the Large -Restaurant, making noises like a cuckoo clock that has lost control -of itself. The reporter from Oldham was also holding on, though in -considerable doubt now what sort of story he would have to write. The -Eton boy, more than half aware now of his error, and so disposed to be -a little detached also, came into the restaurant after depositing hat -and umbrella without. - -Bobby never came through. He was overtaken and held up in the entrance -hall by Billy. “This isn’t your affair, Bobby,” said Billy. “This -really isn’t your affair.” - -“I can’t make out what he’s up to,” said Bobby. “He’s bound to get into -trouble.” - -“Never mind.” - -“But I do mind.” - -“The management’s scared,” said Billy. “They’re sending for the police. -There’s a crowd gathered outside. Look at the faces looking in. See -that chap peering through the hole in the glass? Nice thing for Tessy -and Susan if we get into some police-court scrape.” - -“But we can’t leave him to get into a mess here.” - -“But how can we help him?” - - -§ 5 - -Within the restaurant Sargon made his supreme and final effort and -encountered swift and overwhelming defeat. But at any rate he did not -run away. He made a frontal attack on the world he had set out to -subdue--as Sargon. As Sargon, invincibly Sargon, he met disaster. - -Things had not begun to be very brisk yet in the Rubicon Restaurant. -But indeed it is never so brisk in the Rubicon of an evening as it is -at lunch time; it is too far from the west; pre-eminently a luncheon -place. And the hour even for such briskness as is customary had not yet -come. The neat lines of the little white tables, each with its lamp -and flowers, were only broken here and there by occupants. A family -group going to a circus; a little knot of people going to a meeting in -the Kingsway Hall; three or four couples of theatre-goers in evening -dress; three or four of those odd couples of a rather inexperienced -looking middle-aged business man and an extremely inexperienced looking -young woman in imperfectly conceived dinner dress who are to be seen -everywhere in London, and a group of three business men from the north -dressed in a canny grey and dining with a resolute completeness from -cocktail to liqueur, was all the company yet assembled in the body of -the restaurant. There were one or two occupants in the lower gallery, -dimly seen; the upper gallery was unlit. The atmosphere was still -timorous and chilly; even the three men from the north exacted their -tale of London luxury in a subdued and even furtive manner. - -The staff was still largely unemployed. The head-waiters, wine-waiters -and table-waiters fidgeted serviettes and glasses, or stood about with -that expression of self-astonishment and melancholy upon their faces -habitual to waiters. A slight hubbub in the entrance hall and the sound -of the smashing of the glass in the rotating door by the last effort of -the man in mourning preceded the entry of Sargon. - -Every one looked up. The guests forgot their food and their company -manners; the waiters forgot their secret sorrows. Sargon appeared, -an inconspicuous figure, a little white, almost luminous face, round -bright eyes. With one hand he still gripped his last disciple. With the -other he waved aside the gobbets of speech which Mr. Godley proffered -him. A tall expectant negro face rose like a shield of ebony and ivory -above him. Behind were the match-seller and other followers, less -clearly apprehended. - -A head-waiter faced him. Behind hovered a manager and a little further -off an assistant manager fiddled with the fruit on the buffet. - -Sargon released his latest catch and stood forward. - -“Set a table here,” he said with a fine gesture. “Set a table here for -a great company. I have called a following and must needs discourse -with them.” - -“Table, sir,” said the head-waiter. “For ’ow many, sir?” - -“A great company.” - -“Well, sir,” said the head-waiter with an appealing glance at the -manager, “we’d like to ’ave an idea ’ow many.” - -The manager came up to take control and the assistant manager deserted -his piles of fruit and came up behind helpfully. Sargon perceived he -was against opposition and gathered all the forces within him. “It is a -great company,” he said. “It must sit at meat with me here and I must -discourse to it. These people yonder may join. Set all the tables one -to another. The day of separate tables and separate lives is at an end. -Let even the tables manifest the Brotherhood of Man. Under Our Rule. -Set them together.” - -At the words “Brotherhood of Man” one of the three business men from -the north was smitten with understanding. “It’s a blood-stained -Bolshevik,” he said, or words to that effect. “Shovin’ in here! Of all -places!” - -“Oughtn’t to be allowed,” said his friend. “Aren’t we to have _no_ -peace from them?” - -The first business man expressed a general antipathy for incarmined -Bolsheviks and went on eating bread in a hurried, fussed, irritated -manner. “When’s that Fricassee of Chicken coming?” he said. “They must -have dropped it or something.” - -But the manager’s intelligence had been even quicker than the business -man’s. A swift signal had been given at the very beginning of Sargon’s -speech. The waiter sent to summon the police had already sped past -Billy and Bobby and the rest of the uncertain crowd in the entrance -hall, draughty now and uneasy because of the broken glass in the -rotating door that the man in mourning had broken. - -But Sargon heeded nothing of this byplay. He held on to the only course -that he could see before him, which was to overwhelm the opposition -that gathered against him. - -“We don’t have banquets in this room, sir,” said the manager, playing -for time. “Banquets you can have in the Syrian Hall or in the Elysian -Chamber or in the Great Masonic or Little Masonic Hall--given due -notice and after proper arrangements, but this is the general public -restaurant. You can’t _suddenly_ give a banquet to an unknown company -or society or something here. We don’t cater for that. It isn’t done.” - -“It will be done to-night,” said Sargon, with a glance and intonation -and gesture that would have bent all dream Sumeria to its knees. - -But the managers of European restaurants are made of sterner stuff, it -seems, than were the old Sumerians. “I’m afraid _not_, sir,” he said, -and stood blandly obstructive. - -“Do you know,” cried Sargon, “who it is with whom you have to deal?” - -“Not one of our regular customers, sir,” said the manager, with the -apologetic air of one who scores a point perforce. - -“Listen,” said Sargon. “This day is an Epoch. This is the End and the -Beginning of an Age. Men will count this banquet I shall hold here the -sunrise moment of a new world. I am Sargon, Sargon the Great, Sargon -the Restorer, come to proclaim myself. This multitude of my followers -must be fed and instructed here, fed bodily and fed spiritually. See to -it that your share is done.” - -He made a gesture behind him when he spoke of his followers, but indeed -there was no following behind him now save that one faithful but -deluded African, and that perplexed but persistent Oldham reporter. The -Eton boy had detached himself completely now. He was sitting at a table -afar off, where he had been joined by his friend, and they conversed -in undertones and watched. Even Mr. Godley with his microscope, and -the gentleman with the book about the Doukhobors, had faded out of -this story by this time, and were going along Holborn exchanging and -interrupting each other’s explanations and surmises about this singular -affair that had so unexpectedly deflected their high and reasonable -progress through life. - -“I can only sus-sas-sas-suppose that-the-fellow-was-mad,” said Mr. -Godley. - -While Sargon’s retinue had melted the manager’s had gathered. Behind -him now stood an array of waiters of every description, three dozen -perhaps of various and yet uniform waiters, tall waiters and short -ones, fat and thin, hairy and bald, young and old, waiters in aprons -and one in shirt sleeves. - -“I’m afraid you’re creating a disturbance here,” said the manager. “I’m -afraid I must ask you to go, sir.” - -Should he go? Never! - -“Oh, generation of blind and deaf!” he cried, lifting his voice in an -attempt to reach the scattered diners beyond this lowering crowd of -waiting men, “do you not recognize me? Have you neither memories nor -vision? Do you not see the light that offers itself to you? Can you not -hear the call that thrills throughout the world? The hour for awakening -has come. It is to-day; it is now. You may cease to be things of habit -and servitude, and you may become masters of a world reborn. Now! This -moment. _Will_ the change with me and the change is upon you! Sargon -calls you, Sargon the Ancient and the Eternal, the Wise Ruler and the -Bold One, calls you to light, to nobility, to freedom----” - -“’Fraid we can’t let you make speeches here,” said the manager with -hand extended. - -“Let’s chuck ’im out _now_,” said a short, thick-set waiter. - -“Chuck him out!” said the anti-Bolshevik business man, standing up and -speaking in a voice replete with indignation and gathering volume as -he went on. “And then bring us our Fricassee of Chicken. We have been -waiting Ten Minutes for THAT FRICASSEE OF CHICKEN!” - -And then a voice could be heard saying: “Wot’s it all _about_?” and -suddenly a policeman stood beside Sargon and overshadowed him. - -A wave of horror went through his soul, a wave of horror that was -entirely Preemby. Throughout his whole virtuous life he had never once -been in antagonism to the Police. “Oh, Lord! oh, Lord!” cried this -horror in his soul. “What have I done now? I’m going to be run in!” -The blue eyes grew rounder and he gasped for air, but no one there -perceived how close he came to ignominious collapse. Preemby shivered -and passed. Sargon choked and then spoke stoutly. “What is this, -Officer?” he said. “Would you lay hands on the Master of the World?” - -“My duty, sir, if he makes a disturbance,” said the policeman. “Master -or no Master.” - -Very rapidly did Sargon adjust himself to this new phase in his -affairs. He was defeated. He was to be led away. Yes, but he was still -Sargon. The Power that ruled him had thrust him into defeat, but that -could only be to try him. He had not expected this of the Power, but -since the Power willed it, so it had to be. - -“You understand, Officer, what it is you are doing?” he said, -magnificently and gently. - -“Quite, sir. I ’ope you don’t intend to give us any trouble.” - -A captive! Not thus had he foreseen the revelation of the Master. He -gave one last look at the rich decorations of the great restaurant in -which the opening banquet was to have taken place. Not here then but -in some squalid police-court it was that the New Empire of Justice and -Brotherhood had to be proclaimed. - -He turned in silence and went out at the policeman’s side quietly, deep -in thought. - - -§ 6 - -So ended Sargon’s first effort to enter into his Empire. Unless we -count the visit to Buckingham Palace as his first attempt. - -But before we go on to tell of the unexpected and dreadful experience -that now came upon him, we must record one or two minor incidents of -his capture. - -One is the behaviour of Mr. Kama Mobamba. He watched the closing -incidents in the restaurant with a growing amazement upon his great -bronze face. Had this little blue-eyed man been, after all, leading him -wrong? When at last Sargon was led away, Mr. Mobamba moved at first as -though still half inclined to follow him. Then he stood still, frowned -reflectingly and fumbled at his ticket-pocket. With some effort he -produced the sheet of paper that seemed to be his one intelligible link -with London; it was now in a rather crumpled condition. Smoothing it -out with his great hands, he advanced upon the manager with it extended. - -“What’s this?” said the manager. - -The black gentleman bowed with infinite suavity, still tending his -paper. “Non spik English,” said the black gentleman. “Portugaish. -Lean-a-Kay. Lemonallstree.” - -He was difficult to direct. - -Meanwhile in the entrance hall Bobby tacitly denied all knowledge of -Sargon. He was still hovering there with Billy, held by a curious -half-maternal solicitude. The ex-soldiers had “mizzled,” to use the -expressive word of the man with the organ, at the appearance of -policemen; the man in mourning and his troubles had been cleared up; -but there were still quite a number of people hanging about in a state -of vague anticipation, and the young reporter was trying to find some -one who understood the rare and obscure language of Oldham in order to -verify his facts. And there were several policemen; one evidently a -superior officer, a very good-looking man in a peaked cap and a frogged -coat. - -“Here he comes!” said Billy, and Sargon was led out. - -There was a silence as he passed through the hall to the rotating door. -And upon Sargon, it seemed to Bobby, there rested a hitherto unnoted -dignity. He looked neither to the right nor the left, and his eyes were -exceedingly mournful. - -“But what will they do with him?” asked Bobby. - -“You don’t happen to know him, sir?” asked the superior officer -abruptly. - -“Not a bit!” said Billy, taking the answer out of Bobby’s mouth. “Never -seen him before. We just came in here to see what was up.” - -And by his silence Bobby acquiesced. - -“I’ve got no power to move you on here,” said the police officer, and -smiled a suggestion of inopportuneness to Billy, and motioned to his -satellites that the business there was at an end. - -“We’d better go home,” said Billy, interpreting the smile. - - -§ 7 - -The three friends sat round a fire in the white room with the purple -curtains, and Bobby poured out his regret that he had denied Sargon. -“They’ve taken him off, Tessy,” he said for the third time, “and I do -not know what they will do with him.” - -“Discharge him with a caution,” said Billy with a drawing-board on his -knee. “He hadn’t committed very much of an offence that I can see.” - -“And then?” said Bobby, and meditated on the fire. - -“I shall go round to the police-court and try to pick him up again -afterwards if they let him go,” he said presently. - -“Better leave it all alone,” said Billy. - -But Tessy sat in her arm-chair between Billy and the fire and looked -at Bobby’s preoccupied profile rather sweetly out of the warm shadow. -And nobody in the world saw her. - -“They’ll warn him and he’ll come back here of his own accord, Bobby,” -said Tessy comfortingly. - -“Of course he’ll come back,” said Billy. - -“Very likely, Tessy,” said Bobby. “But suppose they don’t.” - -He got up and stood by the fire. “I suppose I ought to go upstairs and -do some work.” - -“I suppose you had,” said Billy. - -“How is the novel getting on?” asked Tessy. - -“Not much done yet,” said Bobby. “The Prophet has disorganized the -actual writing. But I’ve learnt a lot of things that will tell some -day. And of course I have to do all my Aunt Suzannah stuff. Aunt -Suzannah gets more and more popular. You can’t imagine the things they -ask me. It’s all material in the long run. Still--it takes time.... -I suppose they’ve locked him in a beastly little cell somewhere. And -he’s wondering why they don’t see that he’s truly the great Sargon, -come again to this world.... Billy, the world’s a dangerous place, a -dangerous, unkind place. Why couldn’t they let him rip a bit? And his -poor little map of the Whole World upstairs--he always called it the -Whole World--and his little paper star-machine, and his poor little -empty room and his poor little empty bed.” - -“I protest,” said Billy, putting his drawing-board aside. “Bobby, -you are a case of morbid overgrowth of the sympathies. You are a new -disease. You are the type case of Bobbyism. It’s bad enough that you -should sympathize openly with that little devil Susan when I have -spanked her, and so undo all my teaching. It’s bad enough that you -should do about a third of Mrs. Richman’s work because she needs -light and air. I can even understand something of your emotional -relationships with various stray cats and pigeons. But when it comes -to your being sorry for a poor little empty lodging-house bed, I draw -the line. Absolutely, Bobby; I draw the line. Poor little empty bed! -It’s--it’s _morbid_, Bobby.” - -“But of course he was thinking of Sargon,” said Tessy. “You’ll go to -the police-court to-morrow, Bobby?” - -“I’ll go--in spite of Billy. I don’t care if it is a disease. I’m -worried about that little man. I’m afraid. He’s too round-eyed for this -cruel world.” - -And next morning Bobby went. He went to Lemon Square Court and sat -through a frowsty morning and waited for Sargon who never appeared. He -heard all the morning “drunks” and suchlike come up for judgment, a -case about stolen soda-water syphons, two matrimonial differences, and -all about the wilful smashing of a plate-glass window with intent to -rob, but nothing about Sargon. The magistrate vanished and the court -began to disperse. He asked questions of a policeman who had never -heard of Sargon and the little trouble at the Rubicon Restaurant. Had -he come to the right court? the policeman asked. Bobby hurried headlong -to Minton Street. Minton Street, too, it seemed, had never heard of -Sargon. It did not occur to Bobby to ask in either police station. He -retired baffled. He tried to find something about Sargon in the evening -newspapers; there was not a line about the Rubicon or him. Perhaps he -had not been charged! He hurried back and rushed upstairs full of a -vain surmise; the room was desolate, the window open, the map of the -world on the floor. Had Sargon been spirited out of existence? - -Next day brought neither Sargon nor news of Sargon. Bobby lay awake of -nights. - -After three full days Billy, who had been watching his friend -furtively, remarked in a casual manner: “Why don’t you go and see the -Head Panjandrum at the Lemon Square Police Station about it? He’d be -sure to know if anyone does.” - -Shown in to Inspector Mullins, Bobby found himself confronted by the -same good-looking officer he had seen in the entrance hall of the -Rubicon Restaurant. “You’re the young man who didn’t happen to know -anything about him, three nights ago,” said Inspector Mullins, not -answering Bobby’s questions. - -Bobby explained the situation candidly. - -“Doesn’t help much now,” said the Inspector. “Still it’s all in order. -We took him, in the exercise of our discretion, to the Workhouse -Infirmary--for observation as to his mental state. Three clear days -they keep them there. Then they’re either certified or let go. Or -charged.” - -“Certified?” asked Bobby. - -“As a lunatic,” said Inspector Mullins. - -“And what happened to him?” - -“Usual thing, I suppose. He was a pretty clear case. By this time he’s -a certified lunatic, I suppose, and either at Cummerdown Hill or on his -way there. Or if that’s full--somewhere else.” - -“Phew!” said Bobby. “Pretty quick.” - -He sat disconcerted. “Can I go and see him at Cummerdown Hill?” he -asked. - -“Probably not,” said Inspector Mullins. “Seeing you’re not a relation.” - -“I’m interested in him.” - -“It isn’t your business.” - -“Exactly. But I like him. And I don’t think he’s exactly mad.... Seems -odd of his people--Do you know anything about his people? I might go -and talk to them about him.” - -“That’s possible,” said the Inspector. “I don’t know who they are. -You might find out at the Workhouse Infirmary or they might tell you -from Cummerdown. I don’t know. Very likely _they_ don’t know who his -relations are. There’s all sorts of such stragglers in the world. -Possibly he hasn’t any relations--the sort of relations, I mean, who -would want to bother about him. My impression is that once a man or -woman is certified and put away it’s rather hard for an outsider to get -through. But, as you say, you can but try. Sorry I can’t tell you any -more. I never saw him myself at all--except as he went past me. Not my -affair.... Yes, our usual procedure in such a case.... Oh! no trouble. -Good morning.” - -Left sitting squarely, an embodiment of implacable and indifferent law -and rule. - - - - -CHAPTER THE THIRD - -_The Journey of Sargon Underneath the World_ - - -§ 1 - -It has been said in an earlier chapter that Mr. Preemby, after his -wife’s death, was like some seed which germinates and thrusts out bold -and unexpected things. A new phase in that belated germination began as -he walked through the London streets beside his captor policeman. If -the thing had happened to Mr. Preemby while he was still Mr. Preemby, -it would have been merely a dreadful, shameful horror. It would have -been an insupportable experience, a thing to regret, a thing to get -through and conceal and if possible obliterate from record and memory. -If, again, it had happened in the early days of Sargon’s dreams it -would have been an occasion for an immense dramatic improvisation. He -would have thought of the effect upon the spectators and passers-by, he -would have posed and gesticulated and said profound, memorable words. -But some power of growth had taken possession of him now and he did -none of these things. He posed now neither to the world without nor to -himself within. For the first time in his life almost he was looking -directly at himself and at what he had done and what had befallen him, -and so full of wonder was he at this ultimate discovery of reality that -he forgot all the vast fabric of make-believe, imaginative response, -and deliberate self-delusion, up which he had clambered to this new -phase of vision. He walked so quietly through the lit streets that -only the most observant noted he was in charge and that the policeman -was on duty; to the rest he might have been any casual companion of a -home-going policeman. - -One determination had been released in this renascent mind with an -extraordinary strength and clearness, that he was not, and never -would again be, that Albert Edward Preemby who had launched him into -existence. He was a being called, it mattered not what, in reality, -but for his present purposes, Sargon, Sargon the Magnificent King. -The first concrete visions of Sumeria and his ancient glories had -passed now into the background of his mind. He had not lost his belief -in them at all, but they were now ancient history to him, and even -the revelation at the boarding house seemed very far away. His ideas -had travelled long distances and gathered much in the past week. The -expectation of an immediate sensational splendour had been rudely -shattered. The Power that had called him had surprised him exceedingly, -but had not overwhelmed him. He knew quite clearly that he had to be -Sargon who lived not for himself but for the Whole World, and that to -relinquish or deny that was to perish utterly. It had not seemed to be -necessary to him that his own faith should be tried, but manifestly the -Power had determined that it should be tried. And manifestly he was to -be put through some austere process of preparation before he entered -into his Empire. He was to know what prison was and to stand a trial. -He would be asked to deny himself. - -What should he say to them? I am not He--I am not Him--which was it? I -am not Him you suppose I am. He muttered it to himself. - -“Whassay?” said the policeman. - -“Nothing. Is it much further?” asked Sargon. - -It was just round the corner. Sargon found himself in a little austere -room with half a dozen quite amiable but slightly disrespectful men in -uniform. He was asked his name and address by one who sat at a table. -“Sargon,” he said. “Sargon the First.” - -“No Christian name?” - -“Pre-Christian,” said Sargon. - -“No given name, I mean,” said the questioner. - -“No.” - -“And the address?” - -“None at present.” - -“Just anywhere?” - -Sargon did not answer. - -“Case for Gifford Street,” said a voice behind him. - -“Memory case or something,” said the man at the table. “Anyhow, it’s -Gifford Street.” - -Sargon reflected. “What’s Gifford Street?” he asked. - -“’Ospital. Where they’ll give you a bit of a rest and quiet.” - -“But I want to meet a magistrate in open court. I have a message. I am -in no need of rest or quiet.” - -“They’ll tell you all about that at Gifford Street. Buxton, will you -take ’im round?” - -“But I am perfectly well! Why should I go to hospital?” - -“Routine I suppose,” said the seated policeman and gave his mind to -other things. - - -§ 2 - -Queer! Why should it be a hospital? The way the Power was treating him -was a strange way. He had to submit to the Power; he had to maintain -himself Sargon. Still he could have wished for more explicitness. - -He was so turned inward now that he went along beside Constable Buxton, -not noting the streets nor the traffic nor the passers-by. Presently -they were at a door in a high wall, within which there were buildings. -Then they were in a little office and a large, grey-faced porter -looked at him and exchanged muttered explanations with the constable. -Then they were going across a wide yard and through large doors into -a corridor where there was an unoccupied stretcher and two or three -nurses in uniform. They came to a little glazed-in office and Sargon -was asked to sit down on a bench against a wall while there was -telephoning. Constable Buxton hovered down the corridor as though the -task was nearly done. - -A small bright-eyed man in a grey suit came and looked at Sargon. For -some moments they regarded each other in silence. “Well?” said the man -in the grey suit. - -“My name is Sargon. I do not know why I have been brought here. Is this -a hospital? I understand it is. I am not ill.” - -“You may be ill without knowing it.” - -“No.” - -“We just want to have you here for a bit to have a look at you.” - -Sargon shrugged his shoulders. - -A very big man with exaggerated shoulders and a large, clean-shaven, -intensely self-satisfied looking face appeared. He had a wide, -thin-lipped mouth, protruding grey eyes and highly oiled and entirely -subjugated sandy hair with an army “quif” on the forehead. - -“Busy evening,” he said. “This is number three.” - -“Pretty full then,” said the small man in grey. - -“Too full,” said Mr. Jordan, “You don’t know where you are. This -_’im_?” he asked and indicated Sargon by creasing his thick neck and -depressing the corner of his mouth towards him. - -“This,” said the little man in grey to Sargon, “is Mr. Jordan. He’s -going to show you just where you have to go and just what you have to -do.” - -Immediately, instinctively, Sargon disliked Mr. Jordan. But he stood -up obediently because his idea of submission to the Power seemed in -some way to overlap and include this new coercion. Mr. Jordan produced -a voice of flat, oily, insincere amiability. “You come along, Old Chap, -with me,” he said. “We’ll make you comfortable all right ’fyou don’t -give no trouble.” - -They went round a corner and up a cheerless stone staircase that -turned back on itself; they came to a landing and double doors with -glass panes in them that opened upon a very long, dark passage lit by -a single very remote light. And suddenly it appeared to Sargon that -behind him and already distant lay that outer world of freedom, the -streets and the lights, the coming and going of people and things, the -endless chance encounters, the events and the spectacle of life to -which the Power had sent him, and before him were dark and narrow and -dreadful experiences. Why should he turn his back thus voluntarily on -the great outer world he had come to save? Was this again only another -mistake he was making? He took a step or so away from Jordan and faced -him. - -“No,” he said. “I do not want to go further into this place. I do not -wish it. Let me return. I have disciples to call and many things to do.” - -The full moon of Jordan’s face displayed incredulous astonishment that -passed into fierceness. “_Wot?_” he said. - -He left a tremendous pause after “Wot” and then spoke very rapidly. -“None of your tricks _’ere_, you thundering old Bastard.” With a swift -movement his huge, raw, red hand gripped Sargon by the upper arm. His -thin lips were retracted to show his teeth; his eyes seemed popping -out. He gripped not to hold but to pinch and compress and injure, and -he dug his fingers in between muscle and bone, so that Sargon stared at -him with dilated eyes and uttered a sharp, involuntary cry of pain. - -The grip relaxed from the acutely painful to the merely uncomfortable, -and the big face came down close to Sargon’s. It was manifest that Mr. -Jordan had been regaling himself on cheese and cocoa. “Don’t you try it -on, you Old Fool! Don’t you blooming well try it on. Whatever it is, -don’t you try it on ’ere. You’re right enough to understand what I say. -See? You do exactly wot you’re told ’ere. You do exactly wot you’re -told. You do your best to avoid givin’ trouble and I’ll do my best -ditto. But if you start doin’ tricks--Gawd ’elp you! See?” - -And he crushed the arm again. - -“Understan’?” - -The blue eyes seemed to assent. - -“Down that passage, blast you!” said Mr. Jordan. - -A distressed and wondering and yet not absolutely abject Sargon was -taken to a wet and untidy bathroom in which a broken chair, pools -of water, great splashings on the wall, and some crumpled towels in -the corner suggested a recent struggle. There he was made to undress -and take a tepid bath, dried with a towel that had already been in -action, put into a grey nightgown that was doubtfully clean, a grey -shoddy dressing-gown that certainly wasn’t, and a pair of down-at-heel -slippers two sizes too big, and so garbed, was led by Mr. Jordan, a -little propitiated now by alert obedience, into the ward in which he -was to pass the night. - -A rufous man with very light eyelashes appeared. - -“’Ere ’e is, Mr. ’Iggs,” said Mr. Jordan. - -“I’ve got his bed ready,” said Mr. Higgs. “’Ow many more of ’em?” - -“Perfec’ shower of ’em,” said Mr. Jordan. - -“Three,” said Mr. Higgs. - -“Well,” said Mr. Jordan. “So long.” - -“So long,” said Mr. Higgs. - -Neither of them addressed the Lord of the Whole World directly. He -might have been a parcel passed from hand to hand. - - -§ 3 - -When Sargon entered the Observation Ward of the Gifford Street -Infirmary his sense of having left life, ordinary current life, -far away behind him, beyond these grey passages and corridors and -staircases and glass offices and high walls and little doors, was -enormously reinforced. Never had he seen anything so emptily bleak and -cheerless as this place. A heartless great dingy room it was, with -green-grey distempered walls discoloured in patches, lit by a few bare -lights that gave neither high-lights nor shadows. Black night and a -greasily lit brick wall stared in through uncurtained windows. Half-way -down the length of the place projecting pieces of wall suggested that -two former rooms had been thrown into one. The floor was of polished -bare boards. Far off was a table set against the wall with two or -three torn and crumpled magazines thereon, and at the end an empty -fire-place. In the near half, on either side, there were iron bedsteads -in rows, twenty or thirty perhaps altogether. There was a foul smell -in the air, faint and yet indescribably offensive, a fæcal smell mixed -with a heavy soapy odour. - -Even had it been unoccupied, this cold, large, evil-smelling room would -have seemed a strange inhospitable place to Sargon. For it had always -been the lot of Mr. Preemby, even in the days of his early poverty, to -live snug, to have carpets, even if they were shabby carpets, under -his feet, and an encumbrance of furniture and silly human pictures -and brackets and things about him on the walls. Here in this harsh -plainness it was as though the fussy, accumulative, home-making -imagination of man had never been. - -But the strange soulless atmosphere of the place was but the first -instant impression of Sargon. It was followed by a far more vivid and -terrible realization, that this place was inhabited by beings who -were only at the first glance men. Then as one looked again it became -clear that they were not exactly men, they did not look up at his -entry as men should, or they showed their awareness of him by queer -unnatural movements. Several were in bed; others were dressed in shabby -and untidy clothes and either sat on their beds or were seated in -chairs about the lower part of the room. One individual only was in -motion; a grave-faced young man who was walking with an appearance of -concentrated method to and fro in a restricted circle in the far corner -of the ward. Another sat and seemed to remove a perpetually recurrent -cobweb from his face by a perpetually repeated gesture. Two men were -jammed behind the table against the wall and one, a fleshy lout with a -shining pink skin and curling red hair on his bare chest, was making -violent gestures, hammering the table with a freckled fist, talking -in a voice that rose and sank and occasionally broke into curses -while the other, a sallow-complexioned, cadaverous individual, seemed -to be sunken in profound despair. In one of the beds close at hand -a young man with a shock of black hair and an expression of fatuous -satisfaction, that changed with dramatic suddenness to triumphant -fierceness or insinuating lucidity, sat up and gesticulated and -composed and recited an interminable poem--something in the manner of -Browning. It was running in this fashion: - - “God shall smite them - And blight them - They may prevail but God will requite them - Light ’em. - Burn ’em to ashes and burn ’em to atoms - Atoms! - Burning atoms--exactly like stars. See? - Stars in the void and all over the place. - Atoms galore and God can’t show his face. - (Triumphant discovery.) - He _hasn’t_ a face. - That’s it! That’s it, my Boys! - Atheists wrong and theology wrong, - Plainly and simply here’s every one wrong! - And I have to tell ’em! - There’s a God, _item_ one, but he hasn’t a face - So he can’t show his face. - That’s the kink of it. - Naturally every one thinks he’s _non est_ - But he’s there as I know to my cost; - For I’m lost - But I’ve shown how it is all the same. - No face--what a game! - I found God in the void - Unmasked and a little annoyed. - _Quod erat demonstrandum_ X.L....” - -“There’s your bed,” said Mr. Higgs at Sargon’s elbow, shoving him -slightly. - -Sargon moved a little unwillingly, his puzzled eyes still on the talker. - -“You’ll hear enough of him before you’re done, Old Chap,” said Mr. -Higgs. “Hop into bed now.” - -Impelled partly by the arm of Mr. Higgs and partly by his natural -disposition to please, Sargon got into bed. Mr. Higgs assisted him in -a rough brotherly fashion. But before Sargon could pull up the clothes -about him, Mr. Higgs, glancing over his shoulder, became aware of -something that was happening down the room--Sargon could not see what. - -In an instant the genial authoritativeness of Mr. Higgs gave way to -rage. “Yaaps, you dirty old devil!” said Mr. Higgs. “You’re at it -again!” - -He quitted Sargon and ran down the room very swiftly. Sargon sat up in -bed to see what was happening. Three or four of the other patients did -the same. A very dirty old man with a face of extreme misery, who was -sitting in a chair, was seized upon and bumped up and down and hit -several times with great vigour by Mr. Higgs. Then Mr. Higgs departed -and returned, still uttering admonitions, with a pail and a rag. - -For Mr. Higgs was not only an attendant on the mentally afflicted but -also, on account of economy, the floor-scrubber and general cleaner -of the ward. He had been trained in the navy to ideals of a speckless -brightness and he scrubbed better than he attended. - -“Lie down there!” cried Mr. Higgs returning up the ward with his pail. -“It ain’t nothing to do with you.” - -The Lord of the World lay down. - - -§ 4 - -It was an extremely uninteresting ceiling to look at except for a -streak of yellowish stains, but it was better to look at the ceiling -for a time than to look too much at these distressing people around -him. They were distressing and distracting, and Sargon knew that it -was urgently necessary not to be distracted, but to think over his -position very carefully before anything further happened to him. All -this rush of consequences had been so unexpected, preposterous and -violent since--a few hours ago--he had surveyed London from the dome of -Saint Paul’s and decided that the moment had come to take hold of his -Lordship of the World, that he perceived he might very conceivably be -overwhelmed. How serene and distant now was that spectacle of London -spread out under the amber sunshine between its far blue hills and -its shining river, with its dense clusters of shipping and the black -ant-currents of folk below. From that he had come swiftly, inevitably, -to this echoing prison. For prison he saw it was. He knew quite well -that these men around him were demented men and that he had been seized -upon as a lunatic, but he thought that the Workhouse Observation -Ward in which he was, was a lunatic asylum already. In his wildest -imaginations he had never imagined the Power over all things could -treat him thus. The possibility of a brief interlude in prison, of a -severe but very public and triumphant trial, had entered his mind; but -not that he might be hustled away out of the possibility of any such -appeal. He had to think his position out anew, to discover what all -this monstrous experience was intended to show and to teach him, and -what he had to do to meet this strange occasion. - -And it was very difficult to do this with a raucous voice down the room -uttering foul threats about the ward attendant and a great fist beating -the table in sudden storms and with that smooth, fluctuating, unending -recitation nearer at hand, that cosmic poem, now almost inaudible--so -that one strained to catch the words--and now in high-pitched delight. -For long stretches it was just incoherent jumble and Sargon would -hold it almost completely out of his attention while he pursued his -own perplexities, and then it would rush together into something that -challenged its way to mingle with his inmost thoughts. - - “Filthy old Nature, she drives us amain; - One goad is lust and the other goad pain. - And so we get back to old nowhere again. - Nowhere to start from and nowhere again. - Want and be hurt, want and be hurt, - Out of the dirt you came, back to the dirt. - Hunger for dirt and dirty regretting - Dirty our feeding and dirty begetting - Smear yourself, paint yourself, wear a fine shirt - Put a brave face on it, Yah!--you are dirt.” - -“Now is that true?” asked Sargon of himself. Is that true? Dirt? What -is dirt? But no! he must not wander off after this mad raving! What -was it he had been thinking about? He had been asking why had the Power -thrust him into this dreadful place? Why had the Power brought him to -this place? If only the man would stop that improvisation of his for a -little while it might be possible to think that out. Why had he been -given over to the commands of Jordan and Higgs to live among the madmen -and--sudden fantastic side question!--why had _they_? - -If only that poem would cease! If only that voice would fade to -silence! It was now mere rubble and rubbish, as though thought had been -broken up with a pickaxe and loaded in carts and shot down a slope. -Don’t listen to it, Sargon! Don’t listen to it! Concentrate! - -In his endeavour to concentrate, Sargon forgot even Higgs. He sat up in -bed and drew his knees nearly to his chin and thought. - -He was Sargon; that was the great issue. He had to remain Sargon. -He was probably in this place of trouble and torment because of the -conflict between his being Sargon and the possibility of his relapsing -into Preemby. The Power had called him to be Sargon and to serve and -suffer for and at last to rule the Whole World, but manifestly it was -not a simple direct call. There was something working in opposition -to this destiny, an Anti-Power, opposed to the Power, which was -trying to put him back to Preemby and Preembyism, to being little and -insignificant, to living obscurely and to no purpose and so at last to -dying and becoming utterly and finally dead. That Anti-Power it was -that had been permitted to bring him here, to frighten and torment -him, to din mad rhymes into his ears, to urge upon him in a monotonous -persistent voice that he was dirt and that God was without a face, -and a multitude of suchlike blasphemies. But they were not true. The -Anti-Power might talk and talk--would God there could be a respite from -his talking!--but the truth was outside this place and greater than -this place and altogether comprehended it. He was one, Sargon was one, -from the beginning in Sumeria, in many lands and now here, the same -spirit, the ruler who serves; he was one just as London was one when it -was seen from on high up above there, endlessly multitudinous yet drawn -together into a single personality. And so was the whole world one. -To be Preemby was to be like a wretched little back street house down -below there, swallowed up in the general effect. Never more could he -be Preemby, even if he would. That was what he had to keep hold of. He -could only be Sargon by denying Preemby--even though he had to face the -pains of death. - -Yet all the while the Anti-Power was insulting life and himself through -that disordered poet and his recitation. The man had now fallen under -the spell of a fascinating but detestable word, if one may call such a -thing a word, “Tra-la-la.” - - “Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la. - That is the note of it. - Get the full gloat of it. - Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la. - All times and places - Happy derision for Gods without faces. - Tra-la-la sunshine or Tra-la-la rain. - Eat, drink, and kiss ’em and at it again. - Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la. - Kiss ’em and Kiss ’em and at it again. - At it again! - Tra-la-la.” - -He varied his recitation with a loud explosive noise made by his lips -on the back of his hand. - -“Pray don’t think me cynical,” he said to Sargon. “It is just pure Joy -de Vive.” - -Sargon could not stand it any longer. This was damnable teaching to -fling out before the very regenerator of mankind. He suddenly thrust -out a pointing finger. “You are wrong!” he said loudly and sharply. - -The poet stared for a minute and with a gesture of salutation said: -“Tra-la-la-la.” - -“I tell you life is real,” cried Sargon. “Life is immense. Life is full -of meaning and order. I have come to tell you and all men so.” - -The poet interrupted smilingly and politely with: - - “Tra-la-la - Tra-la-la - Life is a hiccup and life is a sneeze - A smell from a dunghill borne on the breeze - A thing of no moment--so do as you please! - Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.” - -He was going on, but Sargon would not hear him. He lifted his voice to -drown his antagonist. “I tell you, you poor soul! you are utterly wrong -and blind,” he said. “For the light has come to me and understanding is -mine. You are not the lost thing you deem you are, or at least you need -not be. No! I, too, was a lost thing such as you are, a little while -ago. I, too, thought I was a grain, a fragment, a thing of no account. -But the call has come to me, and I have been called to call others to -take part with me in a new awakening. I have had a vision and I have -seen the world like one who awakens from a long sleep. All things are -joined together and work together and continue for ever.” - -The poet wrinkled up his nose and waved his hand at Sargon as who -should wave aside some object of offence. “Tra-la-la,” he shouted. - -“All things I tell you are joined together and work together----” - -“Tra-la-la,” louder. - -“I tell you,” much louder. - -“Shuddup there,” cried the loud and wrathful voice of Sanity embodied -in Mr. Higgs. - -“You’ll have the whole ward jabbering in a minute,” said Mr. Higgs, -approaching and addressing Sargon in tones of earnest expostulation. -“Shud Dup.” - -And after a brief pause of reflection the Lord of the Whole World -obeyed. - -With a gesture of extreme dignity he indicated to Higgs that his crude -demands were conceded. - -“That’s o right,” said Higgs. “_You_ can hold in if you want to. So you -better. _He_ can’t.” - -The poet went on in a soft insinuating undertone reviling and mocking -Sargon’s faith to a refrain of: “Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.” - - -§ 5 - -Sargon sat up in bed, motionless now except that his head turned slowly -to look at the people about him, and silent. His recent outbreak had -in some way assuaged the exasperation of that endless recitation. It -continued, now crazily persuasive, now strident and vehement, now a -mere babble of words, it flowed past him and over him; it was now -manifestly directed at him, but he was able to disregard it. He sat up -and looked at the people about him and contemplated the vast dreadful -hours that plainly lay before him. - -He did not look beyond the coming night. That alone he foresaw as an -eternity. - -He knew that this harsh, naked electric light which prized up his -eyelids however tightly he closed them, would be glaring all night; he -knew that because he had noted a glance that Higgs had directed at the -violent man with red hair. Instantly he knew that Higgs was afraid of -that red-haired man with the shining pink skin and would never dare -to have the ward in darkness, never dare to have even shade in it, -whatever the custom or the regulations might be. And also he understood -why ever and again Higgs went out of the room at the upper end; he went -out to assure himself of the presence of Jordan or some such other -helper, within call. Yes, this light would certainly keep on all night -and the poet seemed as likely to keep on, and there would be occasional -outbreaks of table hammering and shouting from the red-haired man and -from another man who uttered a sudden flat shout ever and again. And -there would be misadventures of various sorts; noises and comings and -goings. So he might just as well sit up and think as lie down and make -hopeless attempts to slumber. One could always think. Of course if one -was too tired one would cease thinking onward, one would just think -round and round, but it would be impossible not to go on waking and -thinking. There was no sleeping in this place. Eyes, ears, nose were -all too much offended. Did anyone ever sleep here, mad or sane? - -There was nothing for him to do, therefore, but to sit up and think, -sit up and think, doze perhaps and think into a dream, until some -unexpected jolt or jar brought him back to his thinking. - -The longest night must end at last. - -Then suddenly Sargon, between sleeping and waking, saw something -horrible. At least it struck upon his nerves as horrible. Two beds away -from him there lay an extremely emaciated young man and his head was -lifted up. It was not supported by pillows; it was six inches above the -pillow. It was held up in an attitude that it was painful to realize. -The young man’s face expressed a serenely proud satisfaction at this -fantastic rigidity. It was incredible. Was there such a thing as an -invisible pillow? Or was this a delusion of Sargon’s eyes, a waking -dream? - -In the bed beyond another man was lying down with his wakeful face -towards Sargon. His eyes met Sargon’s. Neither man said a word nor -made a gesture, but to each came infinite comfort. For the eyes each -encountered were as sane as his own and each gave support to the other. -It is so, they said. It is strange, but your eyes are not deceiving -you. That is the form of that young man’s affliction. - -Sargon nodded. The other sane man nodded in reply and then turned over -in his bed as a reassured child might do, to sleep. But could he sleep? - -Sargon’s gaze went round the ward with a new discovery. Yes, several of -these others might be sane--sane as he was--and caught like himself. -There was another man across the corridor with a little beard, a very, -very mournful man, but he also had sane eyes. - -To-morrow Sargon must go and talk to these others and tell them about -himself and discuss this dreadful situation, but not now because Higgs -would certainly interfere. Many things had already conspired to annoy -Higgs. It was plain he could be easily irritated and it would be well -not to annoy him further. For the present one must just sit and think. - -What were the mad and what did madness mean? - -Why had he been lifted up by the Supreme Power, out of the common acts -and imaginations of his daily life, to a knowledge of his immortal -being, why had he been shown his endless destinies and a vision of the -whole world as his sphere, merely to be cast out of life and light and -freedom forthwith into this grey underworld of the demented? It could -not be that this was for nothing. It must signify. - -And then the wind of a second question blew across his mind. The -Power that had called him and called him it would seem only to bring -him into this place, had also brought all these others to this same -dreadfulness. _Why?_ For him it might be a trial but what was it for -these others, whose souls had indeed dissolved and gone? What was the -Power doing with them? - -The whole scheme of things in Sargon’s mind began to shudder and -dissolve. If the Power had not done this, then it must be the -Anti-Power had done it. There must be an Anti-Power as strong almost -as the Power then, able to snatch men out of life into confusion, -indignity, and death for ever. Or else--_there was Nothing_! - -He sat quite still with his chin on his knuckles and eyes staring -blankly at the last black possibility. - -Was the whole of this call and this mission of his a deception and a -delusion? Had he been cheated at Tunbridge Wells when the call first -came to him to arise and awake? Were those memories of Sumeria no more -than dreams? Was he indeed just Albert Edward Preemby--gone crazy? In -a crazy, pointless universe of commonplace inanities? If so he was -indeed the most foolish of living men. He had left his comfort and -securities, sound though insignificant; he had run away from his dear -Christina Alberta--to obey a Power that was nothing more than his own -imagination and to follow a phantom end. For days he had been shutting -Christina Alberta out of his thoughts; she was a sceptic, an ally of -the Anti-Power. Now she came back, over-valiant and rash, but just a -girl. He had left her to shift for herself, left her beyond reach of -his reproofs and cautions. What was she doing? What evil and danger -might not be overtaking her even now? It had not occurred to him before -that his disappearance might distress and endanger her. Now he saw -plainly that it must have done so. - -The enemy came and argued frankly with him. “You have been a fool, -Albert Edward Preemby,” said the enemy. “You have got yourself into a -position of great danger and discomfort, you have deserted your own -proper life for a horror of nothingness. Go back. Go back while there -is still a chance of going back.” - -But could he go back? - -Yes. That could be done. So easily! He could say plainly that now -he remembered his proper name. He could ask to see the doctor or the -director or whoever it was presided over Jordan and Higgs and their -colleagues; he could give his name and the address of the studio and -his bankers’ address and the address of the laundry and so forth, -speaking very plainly and quietly, he could admit that he had behaved -strangely but that the fit was over, and so he would pass out of -these grim shadows back into the world. It would rejoice the heart of -Christina Alberta.... - -He thought of that alert, kind, slightly antagonistic figure. If only -he could see it now! Coming down the long ward to him, to rescue, to -release.... - -Then he would be just Preemby again for the rest of his days, -comfortably Preemby, Preemby the bystander, Preemby the onlooker, the -ineffective, speechless man in the background of the noisy studio. But -certain things would be at an end. He would never go to any museums -again or browse in the dark shadows of book-shops over dusty forgotten -books about vanished cities and enigmatical symbols. He would think no -more of the wonder and mystery of Atlantis and of the measurements of -the Pyramids and of all the high riddles of the past and the future. -There would be no more wonder in his life at all, for he had sought to -enter into wonder and had found it delusion. Those things would be old -tales and fancies of things that would never arrive. Past and future -would be dead for him. The days would be dull and empty as they had -never been before. The bladder of his life would be pricked.... - -And the other way lay pain, indignity, rough treatment, vile food, -filthy circumstances, trials that might break him--but with the Power -still beckoning. - -He thought of the things that belonged to Sargon; of the Power, of -cities that were like great single persons, of the Whole World, of the -mystical promise of the stars, of all these things he must renounce -now and be Preemby, Preemby plain and sensible, to the end of his -days, if he would go out of this place. He sat at it seemed to him for -an immense time, still and brooding, though his answer was already -definite in his mind. And at last he spoke. “No,” he said in a hoarse -voice that was almost a shout. “I am Sargon, Sargon the servant of -God--and the Whole World is mine!” - - -§ 6 - -Long after midnight Sargon was still sitting up in that bleak greasy -glare amidst the noises and disorder about him. He had lost all count -of time; his watch had been taken from him. Somewhen in the small hours -he was praying. And at times he wept a little. - -He prayed. Sometimes he made sentences and whispered them to himself -and sometimes the sentences never got to words but passed through his -mind like serpents that are seen through deep, dark water. “Great is -the task thou hast put upon me. I see now I am not worthy, O Master, -to do the least thing that is required of me. I am not worthy. I am a -petty man and a foolish man and all I have done so far is folly. But -thou hast called me, knowing my folly. Forgive thou my folly and help -thou my faith.” Silent and still he sat with tears upon his cheeks. -“Any punishment and any trial,” he whispered at last, “only that thou -shouldst not desert me and vanish out of my world.” - -He prayed that the Power would yet make him the servant of the world -and added falteringly and feebly, “even as it was in the ancient days.” - -For had there even been those ancient days? Sumeria was now very far -away from him, and the white towns and the blue river and the river -galleys had faded and the worshipping crowds were just a faint smear -upon his mind no stranger than the fading memory of a dream. He said -nothing for a time, and then in a very loud whisper he said: “Help thou -my unbelief.” - -Sometimes he prayed in a whisper and sometimes he prayed silently -and sometimes he sat quite still. Higgs came and looked at him once -or twice but did not interfere with him. The poem in the adjacent -bed still went on, but it had now become a mere rhyming stream of -blasphemous obscenities. - -For a time after he had made an end to his praying, Sargon must have -slept; he must have slept because he was awakened by the dawn. It did -not come gradually; he awoke to it. - -A cold, shadowless light filled the ward and the electric lamps that -had seemed so bright were just luminous orange-yellow threads. And -Higgs was standing in the doorway peering intently at the red-haired -man, who was lying with his head on the table as though he were -asleep--but perhaps only pretending to be asleep. - - -§ 7 - -It was on the afternoon of the following day that two strangers came to -see Sargon. He was taken to them and they talked a little with him, and -then chiefly with each other. Higgs was off duty but Jordan hovered in -the background. - -Neither of these gentlemen explained their business with Sargon to him. -One of them was a short man in a black coat; he wore a gold watch-chain -and a rich-looking tie with a jewelled pin; he had a gold pince-nez, a -little pointed nose, a fat, clean-shaven white face, and a mouth like -an oblique spade-thrust in a lump of dough. He spoke with something -between a sniff and a lisp, and he was evidently rather in a hurry and -annoyed at having been called in to see Sargon. The other was large and -grey and worn-looking; he impressed Sargon in some indefinable way as -being a medical man who had private troubles. He seemed to consider -himself in charge of the conversation, and would occasionally refer -upon some point of fact to the hovering Jordan. - -“Understand,” said the pasty-faced man, “you wanted to give some sort -of dinner party to all sorts of people. Eh?--at the Rubicon. I suppose -it came on you sort of sudden like. Eh?” - -“I wished to confer with certain people,” said Sargon. “It may have -been a mistake on my part.” - -“No doubt it was a mistake, Mr.--Mr.----” - -“Won’t ’ave a Mister to it,” said Jordan from the background. “Calls -’isself Sargon.” - -The doctor became very acute in his manner. “Now isn’t that some sort -of historical name?” he asked with a sideways searching look. - -“It is,” said Sargon. - -“But it isn’t _your_ name, you know.” - -“Possibly not. I mean--It is my only name.” - -“That’s a bit of an answer, that is,” said the pasty-faced man. “My -_word_!” - -“What is your _real_ name?” asked the doctor persuasively. - -“Sargon.” - -“Not Mr. A. E. Preemby?” - -Sargon started and stared, possibly with a certain wildness in his -eyes. “With God’s help, _No_!” he said. - -“Was it ever Mr. Preemby?” asked the doctor. - -“That does not matter now. That is of no importance now.” - -“It may be of _some_ importance,” said the pasty-faced man. - -“And now you’re a King or a Lord or something and you own the world?” -said the doctor. - -Sargon made no answer. He felt he was in a net. - -The doctor turned to Jordan and beckoned him in a whisper. Only one -sentence came to Sargon’s ears. “’Iggs ’eard it,” said Mr. Jordan. - -“Aren’t you called Sargon the Magnificent?” asked the doctor. - -Sargon bent his head in sorrow. “Better were it to call me Sargon the -Unworthy. For in many things I have failed.” - -The pasty-faced man looked at the doctor. “Haven’t we had about enough -of this?” - -“My conclusions are clear,” said the doctor. “In fact, I have the -certificate ready.” - -“If you’re satisfied, Dr. Manningtree, I am. If I’m to see those other -fellers.” - -“I’ve got all the papers in my room,” said the doctor. - -“Right-o,” said the pasty-faced man. - -“It’s very good of you to come to-day. I wouldn’t have bothered you -until to-morrow but we are really getting overcrowded here. One chap’s -decidedly dangerous. The attendants here don’t like the look of him. -You need only just see him for a moment. Or any of them. All clear -cases for summary reception orders.” - -They spoke now as if Sargon were not present or as if he were an -inanimate object. And indeed for them he had become so; he had passed -for them already out of the comity of mankind. - -“Why have you been talking to me?” asked Sargon suddenly with a vague -fear of what had been said and done developing in his mind. - -The doctor’s manner altered. He spoke to Sargon as one might speak to a -small child. “You’ll be going back to bed now,” he said. “Jordan!” - -“But I want to know.” - -“Go with Mr. Jordan.” - -“What are these papers you speak about?” - -The doctor turned his back on Sargon without an answer and the man with -the pasty face opened the door to depart. Sargon made a step towards -them, but Jordan laid hold of his arm. - -And while Sargon was being steered back to bed, firmly rather than -gently, in the grip of Jordan, the justice and the doctor filled in and -signed the forms that were necessary to deprive him of nearly every -right he possessed as a human being. For there is no trial by jury -and no writ of habeas-corpus in Britain for the unfortunate charged -with insanity. He may not plead in public and there is no one to whom -he may appeal. He may write complaints but they will be neglected; -his most urgent expostulations will be disregarded in favour of any -dull attendant’s asseverations. He is handed over to the nearly -autocratic control of under-educated, ill-paid, ill-fed, and overworked -attendants. Every night and every day seems endless to him at first, -and then the nights and days fall into a sort of routine and become -unimportant and pass away more and more rapidly. He is almost always -kept in a state of bodily discomfort, always rather ill from the -ill-prepared and sometimes tainted food, and much incommoded by clumsy -drugging and particularly by the administration of violent purgatives. -In croton oil alone are our asylums truly generous. He has excellent -reason for fearing many of his fellow inmates and for a servile -obedience to the attendants in charge of him. A medical superintendent -hovers in the background; a medical staff with no special training in -mental science. They pass through the wards at the appointed times, -avoiding trouble, seeing as little as possible. - -And, after all, what can they do? They cannot raise the expenditure -upon food or increase the number or salaries of the attendants. -They are appointed to save and not to spend the ratepayers’ money. -The attendants work together and protect each other; they must hang -together; many of them go in fear of the violent cases. Occasionally, -after due notice, a visiting magistrate will pay a formal visit to the -asylum. Everything is put in order for the occasion. The inmate with a -grievance dares not accost him or does not know how to accost him nor -how to frame his complaint. The attendants are at hand to interrupt, -embarrass, and explain. So, with no possibility of redress, the poor -half-lunatic will be roughly handled, badly fed, and coarsely clothed, -and night and day he will have no other familiar company than the -insane. It is bad enough for the sane to be afflicted by the vagaries, -the violence, the exasperating mechanisms, the incoherences of the -truly demented, but what must it be for those upon whom the penumbra -of that same shadow has fallen? They have no privacy; no escape from -those others; no peace. Our world herds these discards together out of -sight, walls them up, spends so little upon them that they are neither -properly fed nor properly looked after, and does its brave hopeful best -to forget all about them. - -And our Sargon, who even in the outer world of usage and freedom was -sometimes a little at a loss, must now go on into this dark underworld. -For two days more he will be kept in the Gifford Street Observation -Ward awaiting the convenience of the authorities; then in the company -of four other prisoners he will be sent to a still bleaker and more -desolate and hopeless confinement within the clustering buildings and -walls and railings of Cummerdown Hill. - -So he passes now for a time out of sight of everyday mankind, and -so also for a time he shall pass out of this story. It would be -insufferable to tell with any fulness his daily tale of discomfort and -indignity. - - - - -_BOOK THE THIRD_ - -THE RESURRECTION OF SARGON, KING OF KINGS - - - - -CHAPTER THE FIRST - -_Christina Alberta in Search of a Father_ - - -§ 1 - -Hitherto Christina Alberta had faced life with a bold, disdainful, and -successful gesture. The discretions and scruples of others were not -for her. She had seen no reason for their prudent hesitations, their -conventions and restraints. Now for the first time she knew dismay. Her -Daddy had vanished into a world that she suddenly realized could be -immensely cruel. Teddy was rotten, so plainly rotten that only a fool -wrapped up in her own sensations would have touched him. She lay awake -for most of the night after her Daddy had vanished, biting her hands -and damning Teddy. Lambone the great friend was lazy, incompetent, and -futile. Harold and Fay seemed already a little tired of her misfortune -and vaguely disposed to blame her for bringing her Daddy to London. She -had no one else to whom she could turn. No one remained to her--except -Christina Alberta herself, feeling a little soiled now and more than a -little afraid. “But what am I to do?” she asked the night, again and -again, in her stuffy but artistic little bedroom. - -Among the other disadvantages of her position she had less than a pound -of ready money. - -It has to be recorded that for two whole days Christina Alberta did -not even take the obvious step of going to the police. She had a queer -instinctive knowledge of the danger of bringing the police and the -social system generally to bear upon her odd little Daddy. She had -an innate distrust of official human beings. It was Paul Lambone who -induced her to go to the police. He had the grace to be ashamed of his -unhelpfulness, and after an interval of two clear days he came round to -the Lonsdale Mews to offer his generous but sluggish help once more. He -caught her having tea with Fay. - -“Christina Alberta,” he said, looking a very large comfortable figure -of sorrow, “I’ve been worrying and worrying about you all the time. I -didn’t help enough. I thought he’d come back of his own accord and that -all the fuss was a little premature. Have you heard anything?” - -Christina Alberta was torn between the desire to snap his head off -and the realization that he was, after his fashion, quite sincerely -friendly to her and could be very useful. - -“_Say_ it!” said Lambone. “You’ll be better, my dear, after you’ve said -it and then we can talk matters over.” - -He got the reassurance of a smile. He brightened visibly. He was the -sort of man who would hate to feel hated even by a cockroach. “I won’t -sit in that chair, thanks,” he said to Fay. “It’s too comfortable. And -at any moment we may think of something, and I may have to leap up and -act. - -“Spartan,” he said, sitting down. - -“Eh?” said Fay. - -“Spartan. My doctor tells me to say it before every meal and especially -before tea. I don’t know why. Magic or Coué or something. Are these -things cocoanut cakes? I thought so.... Good they are. And what are we -going to do about it, Christina Alberta?” - -He became sane and helpful and more and more like the man who wrote -_What to Do on a Hundred and One Occasions_. He made Christina Alberta -admit to bankruptcy, and made it clear to her that it was her duty to -accept a loan of twenty-five pounds from him. He then dealt with the -point about reporting the disappearance to the police, and convinced -Christina Alberta upon that. If Mr. Preemby had fallen into bad hands -the sooner the police looked for him the better. But he did not think -that likely; he was much more inclined to the idea that Preemby had -made a disturbance and been taken up. He guessed he would be dealt with -as a mental case. He had consulted those useful books _The Justice -of the Peace_ and the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, and displayed the -excellence of his mental digestion. Christina Alberta perceived that he -had in him the makings of a competent barrister. - -He carried off Christina Alberta in a taxi to Scotland Yard. “Either -they’ll tell us there or tell us where we shall be told,” he said. - -Fay was impressed by the originality of that. “Now if it was a lost -umbrella,” she said, “I could understand it. But I’d never have thought -of going to Scotland Yard for a lost father.” - -By six Mr. Preemby had been traced to Gifford Street. But there was no -seeing him at Gifford Street. He had been certified as a lunatic and he -was bound, the attendant thought but wasn’t quite sure, for Cummerdown -Hill. Paul Lambone tried to be dignified and important and to prevail -over the attendant and extract further information, but not very -successfully. In the end he and Christina Alberta departed with little -more than one immense discouraging fact. They would not be able to see -Mr. Preemby nor to learn anything very material about his condition -until the next visiting day, whenever that might be, at Cummerdown -Hill. Then if he was “fit to be visited,” they might go and see him. -The attendant was rigid in his statements and had the air of disliking -both Lambone and Christina Alberta extremely. - -As they came away from Gifford Street Christina Alberta observed that -Lambone was angry. She had never seen him angry before. It was a very -transitory phase. There was an unusual depth of pink in his cheeks. - -“Dog in office,” he said. “Just there to annoy people--anxious people. -One would think ... man in my position ... certain standing.... Some -attention.... Any other country but this, Man of letters has respect.” - -Christina Alberta agreed mutely. - -“Manners in a public official--primary.” - -“He was detestable,” said Christina Alberta. - -“Not at the end of my resources,” said Lambone. - -Christina Alberta waited. - -“Ought to have gone to Devizes in the first place. Knows more about -mental cases and lunacy law than any other man in London. Wonderful -fellow. I’ll go back to my flat and I’ll ring him up and make an -appointment. Then he’ll put us wise about the whole business. And I -want you to meet him anyhow. You’ll appreciate Devizes. Come to think -of it, you’re remarkably like him.” - -“How?” - -“Got the Life Force and all that. And physically like him. Very. The -same nose--much the same profile.” - -“It’s a nose more suitable for a man,” said Christina Alberta. “I -suppose _he_ carries it off all right!” - -“It’s a damned good nose, Christina Alberta,” said Lambone. “It’s a -valiant nose. Don’t you break down to any modesty about it. It was -your nose attracted me first to you. You’ll spike a husband with it -yet, and he’ll adore it and follow it even as you do. Nowadays women -have to be free and individualized; they have got to have features -and distinction. The days of the wanton curl and the swan neck and -complexion have gone. Not that you haven’t the clearest skin I’ve ever -set eyes upon, Christina Alberta.” - -“Tell me some more about Dr. Devizes,” said Christina Alberta. - - -§ 2 - -But it wasn’t the next day that Christina Alberta met Devizes. She put -that off for a day and fled down to Woodford Wells in response to a -remarkable communication from Mr. Sam Widgery. - -The Widgerys had never been correspondents of the Preembys except in so -far as the payment of the dividends upon Mr. Preemby’s interest in the -Limpid Stream Laundry necessitated letters. There had been a certain -amount of friction in the flotation of the company, and Mr. Widgery had -remained resentful and sought to show as much by a studied curtness -in his communications. But now came this letter addressed to “Miss -Chrissie Preemby.” “_My dear Chrissie_,” the letter began. - -“_This is a shocking business about your poor father I can’t tell you -how shocked I am I went up post haste to the workhouse where you had -put him as soon as they wrote to me and got his watch and cheque-book. -It is fortunate they found my address in his pocket or I suppose I -should have been kept in the dark as per usual about all this he did -not know me and denied his own name but afterwards he said he knew -me for a filching commercial wrogue and would have my ears cut off -and threatened me. I was to be unpailed whatever that may be. I have -been thinking over all this business and since you are not yet of age -I suppose I am a sort of guardian to you and have to look into your -interests at the laundry which is not paying nearly so well as your -father led me to believe. I think he was already queer at the time and -didn’t fully understand what he was doing and I doubt if all that of -his about preference shares which I never held with really but did to -humour him ought to stand. Luckily there is no hurry about this has you -won’t have to pay anything for him where he is Mr. Punter says so long -as you leave well alone and we can see about these other things when -you have got over the first shock of your father’s breakdown. My wife -sends her love and kind sympathy. You must keep calm and not let these -things disturb you too much because very often it is hereriterary and -one cannot be too careful so leave everything to me and believe me to -remain_ - - “_Your affectionate cousin_ - - “_Sam Widgery_.” - -“Rather!” said Christina Alberta and telephoned forthwith to put off -Paul Lambone and Wilfred Devizes and hurried off with a combatant light -in her eye to the Underground and Liverpool Street Station. - - -§ 3 - -When Christina Alberta got down to Woodford Wells it seemed to her -that the laundry was just a little smaller than it used to be and -that a slight tarnish had fallen upon the bright blue delivery vans. -The swastika upon them had been covered over by paper bills in -red lettering saying: “Under Entirely New Management. Address all -Communications to the Managing Director Samuel Widgery Esq. By Order.” - -She went up the garden path to the door that had been home to her for -nearly all her life, and it was opened to her by Sam Widgery himself, -who had seen her coming. “So you came down,” he said, and seemed to -hesitate about admitting her. He was a tallish, stooping man with -a large bare pock-marked face, a dropping nether lip, a large nose -that snored occasionally when he breathed, and furtive very small -brown eyes. He was clad in dark grey ill-fitting garments, with a -frayed collar and a very worn made-up black satin tie. His waistcoat -was mainly unbuttoned and he fidgeted with his hands. He looked at -Christina Alberta as though he found her more formidable than he had -thought her. - -“Did you see Daddy?” said Christina Alberta, coming straight to the -point. - -He compressed his mouth and shook his head from side to side as though -he recalled painful things. - -“Was he bad? Was he queer or--_dreadful_?” - -“Not too loud, my dear,” he said in his husky whispering voice. “We -don’t want _every one_ to hear about your trouble. Come in here where -we can talk properly.” - -He led the way into the little living-room in which her father had so -recently planned the conditions for the conversion of the laundry into -a limited company. The familiar furniture had been rearranged rather -amazingly, and a large, dark bureau had been placed under the window. -With discreet gestures, Sam Widgery closed the door and came towards -her. “Sit down, Chrissie,” he said, “and don’t get excited. I was -afraid you might come rushing down here. But of course I was bound to -write to you.” - -“Did you see him?” she repeated. - -“Mad as a hatter,” he said. “They say he made a riot at the Rubicon -Restaurant. Wanted to give a great banquet there to all the beggars in -London.” - -“Did you see him? Was he well? Was he unhappy? What have they done with -him?” - -“You mustn’t _pelt_ me with questions, Chrissie. You mustn’t let your -mind go on at such a pace. I told you in my letter I went up and saw -him. They called him out and he came to me in a little room.” - -“Where was it? Where was this workhouse?” - -“There you go again. Just sit down and take things quietly, my girl. I -can’t answer all these questions at once.” - -“Where was it you saw him? Was it at Gifford Street?” - -“Yes. Where else could it be? They was waiting to remove him.” - -“Where?” - -“Some asylum I suppose?” - -“Cummerdown Hill?” - -“Come to think of it, it _was_ Cummerdown Hill. Yes--they said -Cummerdown Hill. He came out. He looked much as usual, but more vacant -perhaps, until he set eyes on me and then he gave a sort of start and -said, ‘Don’t know you,’ he said. Like that.” - -“Well, that wasn’t mad. Did he _look_ mad? I suppose he didn’t want to -talk to you--after all the disagreeable things that have been said.” - -“Very likely. Any’ow I said to him, ‘What! don’t know _me_?’ I said; -‘not know old Sam Widgery what you planted your laundry on?’ Just like -that--joking at him like. Quite kindly but--humorous. ‘I don’t know -you,’ he says and tried to go. ‘Hold hard!’ I said and took him by the -arm. ‘You’re a base, complaining scoundrel,’ he says to me and sort of -tried to push me away. ‘You’d rewin any laundry!’ he says--him to me, -what was in the laundry business a dozen years before he married your -poor mother. ‘Any ’ow I haven’t your complaint,’ I says, ‘Mr. Albert -Edward Preemby.’ He sort of stiffened. ‘Sargum,’ he says, ‘if you -please....’” - -“Sargon,” Christina Alberta corrected. - -“Maybe. It sounded like ‘Sargum.’ And ‘Sargum’ he would have it. Mad -as a hatter on that. I tried to talk but what was the good of talking? -I couldn’t get anything plain or straight out of him at all. Started -threatening me with the bastinado--whatever that may be. I asked him to -be decent with his language. ‘I’ve ’ad enough’ I says to the attendant -at last and the attendant took him away. And so we’re quit of him, -Chrissie.” - -“Quit of him!” - -“Quit of him. What can anyone do?” - -“Everything. Did he look very unhappy? Did he look frightened or -ill-treated?” - -“Why should he? They’re taking proper care of him and he’s out of -harm’s way.” - -“You’re sure he looked--serene?” - -“Bit jaded perhaps. That’s his own internal workings I expect. But he’s -where he ought to be, Chrissie. I feel that. What we’ve got to do, from -what Mr. Punter says, is to let well alone. There he is with everything -he wants, living on the ratepayers’ money. We’ve got ourselves to -consider. We’ve got to think of that crazy preference-share idea he’s -saddled the laundry with. _That’s_ urgent. It’s a charge of nearly five -hundred a year as things are, nearly ten pound a week. There isn’t a -laundry in London could stand it.” - -“I shall have to see my Daddy,” said Christina Alberta. “I don’t -believe he _is_ so comfortable. I’ve heard horrid stories of asylums. -Anyhow, I ought to go right away and see him.” - -“Can’t do that, Chrissie,” said Mr. Widgery, shaking his large grey -face slowly from side to side and watching her as he spoke. “They don’t -have visitors running in and out of these mad-houses just whenever they -want to. Wouldn’t _do_, you know. The poor creatures have to be kept -quiet and not excited. I daresay I could give you a letter for next -visiting day----” - -“_You!_ Give _me_ a letter!” - -Mr. Widgery shrugged his shoulders. “It would help you to get in. But -you won’t make anything of him, Chrissie, even if you see him. And -you’ll have to wait for a visiting day. You must do that.” - -“I want to see him.” - -“Very likely. But regulations are regulations. Meanwhile there’s all -this business muddle we got to put straight. While he’s in that asylum -I think what I ought to do is to give you ’n allowance, five pounds -a week say, and keep back the rest until we’re able to get something -settled up. Or four. Or perhaps as you want it--not a definite sum. I -don’t know. I haven’t thought it out yet. You can’t possibly want to do -with all that ten pounds a week with him off your hands. Then we’ll be -able to see where we stand and everything will be all right again.” - -He paused and scratched his cheek and watched her with his little -sidelong eyes. “See?” he said as if to stimulate her to speech. - -Christina Alberta looked at him in a silence that became painful. Then -she stood up and regarded him--her arms akimbo and her face alight. - -“I see now,” she said. “You damned old Rascal!” - -Mr. Widgery had nice old-fashioned ideas about young ladies and -ladylike language. He was taken aback. “Now!” he said. “_Now!_” - -“Always I should think,” said Christina Alberta. - -“You mustn’t say things like that, Chrissie. You mustn’t use words like -that. You mustn’t get wrong ideas about all this. What d’you mean? Old -rascal! Something old rascal! Why? I’m only doing what I got to do. You -aren’t really of age yet, you’re just a mere child legally speaking, -and it falls to _me_ naturally, _me_, his nearest relative so to speak, -to make such arrangements as have to be made about his affairs. That’s -all. You mustn’t get wrong ideas about it all and you mustn’t get -excited. See?” - -“I called you,” said Christina Alberta, “a damned old Rascal.” - -He did not meet her eye. He spoke as if he appealed to the bureau. - -“And does it do you any good to use such horrible expressions? And does -it do me any harm? And does it alter the fact that whether I like it or -not, I’ve got to look after his property now and see about it and see -you don’t get into any trouble or mischief? All me and your aunt have -been thinking about is just what’s right and proper to be done for you. -And then you turn on me like a serpent and use language----!” - -Words failed Mr. Widgery, and still seeking sympathy from the bureau, -he shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands. - -“You’re no relation of his,” said Christina Alberta. “I guessed when I -read your letter that this was the sort of thing you’d be up to. You’re -glad to have him out of the way because he was such a one for punctual -payments. You think I’m all alone; you think I’m just a girl and that -you can do what you like now with me. You’ve made a mistake. I’ll make -you pay up every penny that’s due on the laundry and I’ll see you do it -more punctually than ever. And why didn’t you do something to get him -out as soon as you heard they’d taken him?” - -“Now don’t you go getting excited, Chrissie,” said Mr. Widgery. “Even -if I ain’t a blood relation of his, I am of yours. I’m your next-of-kin -and your best friend and I got to think what’s got to be done about -_you_. I got to act for _you_. In spite of bad language and everything. -I tell you he’s right and safe where he is and I’m not going to have -anything done to disturb him. Nothing at all. There he is and there -he’s going to stay, and I’m going to act as Mr. Punter advised me to -act. I’m going to keep back his dividends as they fall due, and pay you -what I think proper to pay you for your keep and so on and charge it to -him, and I’m going to see you live an orderly sort of life in future -now too, same as my poor cousin Christina would have wanted you to do. -You’ve been knocking about the world in a perfectly scandalous way and -learning to curse and swear. It can’t go on. That’s how things are, -Chrissie, and the sooner you see them the right way round the better.” - -The young woman stood speechless while Mr. Widgery unfolded his -intentions. - -“Where’s Mrs. Widgery?” she said at last with an effect of stupendous -self-control. - -“Up in the laundry seeing to things. No need to bother her. We been -talking about all this, over and over, and we’re quite of one mind -in the matter. It’s _our_ right to look after you and it’s _our_ -responsibility to look after you, and we mean to do our duty by you, -Chrissie, whether you like it or not.” - -Unpleasant doubts assailed Christina Alberta. She was still two months -short of one and twenty, and it was quite conceivable that the law -gave this ugly, oily creature all sorts of preposterous powers of -interference with her. Still it was her style to carry off things with -a brave face. - -“All this is just nonsense,” she said. “I’m not going to have my Daddy -put away like this without a word from me, and I’m not going to let you -muddle about with his property. Everybody in the family knows you’re -a crooked muddler. Mother used to say so. I’m going to see about him -myself, and I’m going to have him sent off to some special sort of -mental nursing place where he can have proper attention. And that’s -what I came to tell you.” - -Mr. Widgery’s little eyes seemed to weigh and judge her. “You’re giving -yourself high and mighty airs, Chrissie,” he said, after a little -pause. “You’ll do this and you’ll do that. You’ve got a sort of wrong -idea of what you can do in the world. You haven’t got any money and you -haven’t got any authority, and the sooner you get that into your head -the better.” - -That scared feeling was gaining upon Christina Alberta. In order to -counteract it she deliberately lost her temper. “I’ll jolly soon show -you what I can do and what you can’t,” she said with a flaming face. - -“Now don’t _yew_ go getting excited,” said Mr. Widgery. “You of all -people shouldn’t get excited.” - -“_Excited!_” said Christina Alberta; rallying for a repartee, and then -struck by an ugly thought she stopped short and stared at the little -bright brown eyes in the pock-marked face. Mutely they answered her -mute amazed question. This was the third or fourth time he had used the -word “excited” and now she knew what he was aiming at. Suddenly she -realized the train of ideas that her Daddy’s extinction had set going -in his head. He also had been studying the lunacy laws--and dreaming -dreams. - -“Exactly,” said Mr. Widgery. “You’ve always been a queerish sort of -girl, Chrissie, and the rackety life you lead and now this affair has -been a strain on you. Must have been. You’ve got no quiet friends but -your aunt and me and no quiet place to come to but here. Don’t you go -flaring out at me, Chrissie; I mean well by you. I’m not going to go -paying you money to keep you up there in London. Why!--you might go -gettings drugs or anything. Call me a something rascal if you like. -Swear at me as though you were out of your senses; it won’t alter what -I mean to do. I want you to come down here and rest your mind and -nerves for a time, and let me get in some one to see you--see what -ought to be done about you.... You’ll thank me for it some day.” - -His big grey face seemed to expand and swim about before her eyes and -the room grew small and dark. - -“It’s my duty to see after you,” he said. “It can’t hurt you or anyone -for us to have advice.” - -In the train from Liverpool Street she had told herself she had -intended to wipe the floor with Mr. Sam Widgery, but things hardly -seemed to be happening like that. - -“Bah!” she cried. “D’you think I’d come back here?” - -“Better than being lost in London, Chrissie,” he said. “Better than -being lost in London. We can’t have you wandering off in London, same -as your father did.” - -She felt that the time had come for her to go, but for a second or so -she could not move to do so. She could not move because she feared he -might do something to detain her, and if he did she did not know what -she would do. Then she pulled herself up by the feet. - -“Well,” she said with a step past him doorward that turned him on his -heel; “I’ve told you what I think of you. I’d better be getting back to -London.” - -In his eyes she saw the thought of obstructing her flash into being and -die. “Won’t you stay and have something,” he said, “before you go back?” - -“Eat _here_!” she cried and got to the door. - -Her hand trembled so that it was difficult to turn the handle. He -stood motionless, staring at her with his lower lip dropping and an -expression of doubt upon his face. It was as if he was not quite sure -of himself nor of the course he meant to pursue. The course he wanted -to pursue was appallingly plain. - - -§ 4 - -She walked with dignity out of the open front door and down the garden -path. She did not look back, but she knew his face came up close to the -window and watched her. Never in her whole life had panic come so near -to her. She would have liked to run. - -After the train had started she felt a little safer. “How the devil can -he get at me?” she said aloud to the empty compartment. - -But she wasn’t at all sure that she couldn’t be got at and she found -herself trying to estimate just how much support and friendship she -might find in her London friends. Could she, for instance, count upon -Mr. Paul Lambone? If supplies were cut off could she get some sort -of job and keep herself for a time until she could extract her silly -Daddy from the net into which he had fallen? How would Harold and Fay, -perennially hard-up, behave if supplies ran out? And meanwhile there -was Daddy, wondering why no help came to him--puzzled by what had -happened to him and no doubt getting sillier and sillier. - -Christina Alberta was growing up fast now. Beneath all her radicalism -and rebellion there had always hitherto been a belief, tacit, -sub-conscious, in the rightness and security and sustaining energy -of the social framework. There is under most youthful rebellion. She -had assumed without thinking very much about it that hospitals were -places of comfort and luxury, doctors in full possession and use of -all existing science, prisons clean and exemplary places, that though -laws might still be unjust that the administration of the law was -untouched by knavery or weakness. She had had the same confidence in -the ultimate integrity of social life that a little child has in the -invincible safeness of nursery and home. But now she was awakening to -the fact that the whole world was insecure. It was not that it was a -wicked or malignant world, but that it was an inattentive and casual -world. It dreaded bothers. It would do the meanest, most dangerous, and -cruellest things to escape the pressure of bothers, and it would refuse -to be bothered by any sufferings or evil it could possibly contrive -to ignore. It was a dangerous world, a world of bothered people in -which one might be lost and forgotten while one was still alive and -suffering. It was a world in which it is not good to be alone, and she -was beginning to feel herself very dangerously alone. - -She had never, she reflected, thought very much of her family, but now -she perceived a family may dissolve away too soon. She wanted a wall to -put her back against if after all Sam Widgery screwed up his courage -to be aggressive; she wanted some one who would be her very own, a -safe ally, some one she could count upon, some one closer than law -or custom, some one who would go about and find out exactly what had -happened to her if she fell into disaster, who would refuse to accept -her downfall, some one who would care for her more than he cared for -himself and not be lightly turned away. - -_Himself?_ Not _herself_. In fact, a lover. - -“Damn Teddy!” cried Christina Alberta, and knocked a puff of dust out -of the railway cushion with her fist. “He messes it up. - -“And I knew what he was. I knew all the time exactly what he was! - -“I’ve got to stick it alone,” said Christina Alberta. - -“And besides who’d have cared for me, anyhow, with a nose like mine?” - -“Even if there were such things in the world as lovers who loved like -that! But it’s a world of people who don’t care. It’s a world of people -who haven’t the guts to care. It’s a dust-heap of a world,” said -Christina Alberta. - - -§ 5 - -Her thoughts began to flow into a new region. After all, wasn’t there -something too disagreeably justifiable in the suggestion that she -was--how to put it--_queer_? Hitherto Christina Alberta had always -regarded herself as a model of sanity and mental directness--with no -fault indeed except possibly her nose. Now the word “queer” stuck in -her mind like a thorn that has gone right home. She could not get it -out again. - -She had always, she knew, been different. She had always had a style of -her own. - -Most of the people she had met in the world had impressed her as being -colourless, weak in speech and action, evasive--that was the word, -“evasive.” They evaded the use of all sorts of blunt words, they didn’t -know why. Christina Alberta was all for saying “Damn” and “guts” and so -forth until some one convinced her of some better reason for avoiding -them than merely that they weren’t used by “nice” people. These others -were always not saying things because they weren’t said and not doing -things because they weren’t done. And for what was said and what was -done, however manifestly preposterous it was, they had a sort of -terrified imitativeness. They just ran about being as far as possible -somebody else until they died. Why exist at all then? Why not get out -of it and leave some one else in possession? But, anyhow, they got -through life. They didn’t get into trouble. They supported one another. -And, on the other hand, if you didn’t evade? You puzzled other people. -You left the track. You were like a train leaving the rails and trying -to take a cross-country short-cut. You hit against--everything. - -Was this evasive life she had always despised really the sane life? Was -ceasing to evade ceasing to be sane? Sheep, she had read, had a disease -called gid; then they wandered alone and died. Was all this originality -and thinking for oneself and not going with the crowd and so forth, -that had been her pride and glory, just the way out from the sane life? -Originality, eccentricity, queerness, craziness, madness; was that -merely a quantitative scale? - -Was not her Daddy’s queerness this, that after years of the extremest -evasion he had at last tried to break away to something real and -strange? And had she, after her fashion, been attempting anything else? -Was she, too, lop-sided? Lop-sided in a different direction, perhaps, -but lop-sided none the less. An inherited lop-sidedness? - -Her mind went off at a tangent on the question whether she had really -inherited anything whatever from her Daddy. Was his queerness her sort -of queerness at all? It ought to be, seeing that they were father and -daughter. - -How different they were! For a father and daughter how amazingly -different they were!... - -But were they father and daughter? A much repressed fantasy came back -to her--a fantasy based on the flimsiest foundations, on chance phrases -her mother had used, on moments of intuition. Once or twice a reverie -had arisen out of these lurking particles of memory and had taken her -by surprise only to be thrust aside again with contempt. - -Blup. Blup. Blup. There came a familiar variation to the familiar -sounds of the train. Christina Alberta was running into Liverpool -Street Station and her perplexities were all unsolved. - -The old fantasy lost heart and faded away. What was the good of such -dreams? There she was. - - -§ 6 - -Christina Alberta’s meeting next day with Wilfred Devizes turned out to -be a much more exciting affair than she or he had expected it to be. - -Acting on the advice of Paul Lambone, she had brought photographs and a -letter or so in her Daddy’s handwriting with her, and she had thought -out what she judged would be significant things to tell about him. She -went in a taxi with Paul Lambone to Devizes’ house just off Cavendish -Square, and they were shown up at once past a waiting-room and a -consulting-room to a dignified little sitting-room with an open fire -and a table with tea-things and a great array of bookcases. Devizes -came in to them forthwith. - -She was a little shocked to think that this lank, dark, shock-headed -man could be recognizably like her. He was younger than she had -expected him to be, younger she thought, than her Daddy or Mr. Lambone, -and he wore a long unbuttoned morning coat. He carried the nose all -right; he was indeed very good-looking. - -“Hullo, Paul,” he said cheerfully. “Is this the young lady whose -father’s been stolen? We’ll have some tea. It’s Miss----?” - -“Miss Preemby,” said Paul Lambone, “but every one calls her Christina -Alberta.” - -Devizes turned an eye that was by habit and disposition a scrutinizing -eye upon her. He betrayed a faint momentary surprise and came and shook -hands. “Tell me all about it,” he said. “You don’t think he’s really -mad, but only rather exceptional and odd. That’s it, isn’t it? Lambone -tells me he is sane. It’s quite possible. I’d better go over the state -of his mind first, and then we can discuss the question of the asylum -afterwards. I gather you want to get him under your own care--outside. -That isn’t by any means simple. We’ll have to study the obstacles. -Meanwhile tea.... I’ve been disentangling the delusions of a perfectly -terrible old lady, and I’m rather deflated. Just tell me all about it -in your own way.” - -“Tell him,” said Paul, settling his shoulders into his arm-chair, and -preparing to interrupt. - -Christina Alberta began to unfold her premeditated discourse. Every now -and then Devizes would interrupt her with a question. He kept his eyes -on her, and it seemed to her even from the beginning that they betrayed -something more than attention to what she was saying. He looked at her -as though he had seen her before and couldn’t quite remember where. -She described her Daddy’s talks to her when she was a girl, about the -Pyramids and the Lost Atlantis and so forth, and the odd spirit of -release and renewed growth that had followed the death of her mother. -She told of the spiritualistic séance and the coming of Sargon. Devizes -was very keen on various aspects of the Sargon story. “It was odd that -the suggestion fell in so aptly with Preemby’s mental disposition. What -was that young man up to? I don’t quite understand him.” - -“I don’t know. I think he just hit by chance on the stuff he talked. It -was just bad luck that it fitted.” - -“Undergraduate idea of fun?” - -“Undergraduate fun. It might have been Tut-an-ka-man.” - -“But it happened to be Sargon.” - -“He may have been reading some ancient history.” - -“He didn’t, I suppose, know anything about your father?” - -“Couldn’t have done. I suppose he thought my--my Daddy looked a little -small and absurd, and I suppose it appealed to his sense of humour to -single him out from the others and make him a great king. I’d like to -have a few minutes straight talk with that young man.” - -“This you see isn’t a delusion, Devizes. It’s a deception,” said Paul -Lambone. - -“Is he generally coherent,” asked Devizes. - -“Granted his thesis, he’s amazingly coherent,” she said. - -“He doesn’t sometimes become some one else, God or a millionaire, or -anything of that sort?” - -“No. He believes in reincarnation and hints at having lived other -lives, but that’s all.” - -“Thousands of people do that,” said Lambone. - -“And nobody is persecuting him? Nobody makes noises to trouble him or -gets at him with X-rays or anything of that sort?” - -“Not a shadow of that sort of thing.” - -“The man’s sane. Unless he went mad when he walked out of your friends’ -studio.” - -“I’m for his sanity right out,” said Lambone. “I wish I’d had a chance -to talk to him. There’s something--everybody’s chattering now about -an Inferiority Complex. Well, isn’t it common for people who have -been rather put upon and deceived and so forth, and who don’t want -to face the facts of life, to take refuge in an assumed personality? -And putting the reveries, the spiritualist séance and so forth all -together, doesn’t it work out on those lines?” - -“He knows he is really, _au fond_, Preemby?” Devizes asked. - -“It annoyed him to tell him so,” said Christina Alberta. “I think one -reason why he went away was because I and my friend, Mrs. Crumb that -is, at the studio where we live, would try to make him be sensible -about that. It drove him away. He knows he is really Preemby and he -hates it. He knows this is all a make-believe.” - -Paul Lambone took up the discourse. “I do so sympathize with that. So -far from that being insane it’s perfectly rational. Becoming somebody -else greater than oneself is part of half the religions of the world. -All the Mithraists used to become Mithra. The Serapists, if I remember -rightly, used to become Osiris. We all want to be born again really. -Every one with any sense and humility does. Into something greater. -‘Who will deliver me from the body of this death?’ That’s why Christina -Alberta’s Daddy is so tremendously interesting. He’s got imagination; -he’s got originality. He may be a feeble little chap, but he has that.” - -“Having an exceptional mind isn’t insanity,” said Devizes, “or else we -should put all our poets and artists in asylums.” - -“Few would come up to that standard,” said Lambone. “I wish they did.” - -Devizes reflected. “I think I’ve got things clear. He’s coherent. He’s -neat in his dress. He isn’t persecuted. He’s unselfish in his thoughts, -almost romantically so. And he’s not fattish and lumpish, and he’s -never had any sort of fit. There’s no insane type a properly qualified -doctor could class him under, but then most doctors are altogether -unqualified for mental practice. A stupid doctor might mistake his -imaginations for the splendour of paranoia or take his abstraction in -reverie for _dementia præcox_ or think he was a masked epileptic. But -all these are cases of mental disease, and your father is probably -not diseased at all. He’s mentally disturbed, but that’s all. The -difference between him and a real lunatic is the difference between a -basketful of fruit that’s been overturned, and a basketful that’s gone -rotten. Overturned fruit gets bruised and rots very easily--but being -overturned isn’t being rotten. What sort of man is he to look at?” - -“She’s got photographs,” said Lambone. - -“I’d like to see them,” he said, and was given a recent one of Mr. -Preemby as laundryman. “Too much moustache by a long way,” he said. -“Is there anything--with some at least of his face uncovered? There’s -nothing here but his eyes.” - -“I thought you’d feel that,” said Lambone. “There’s one of Mr. Preemby -as a young man, taken soon after his wedding with Mrs. Preemby. Have -you got it, Christina Alberta?... Here we are.... That’s Mrs. Preemby -in the chair. The moustache--in bulk--has yet to come.” - -“He married young?” Devizes asked Christina Alberta. - -“He must have done,” she said. “I don’t know his exact age. My mother -never told me.” - -Devizes scrutinized the photograph. “Queer,” he said, and seemed to be -searching his memory. “Something familiar. I’ve met people like this. - -“They were both London people, I suppose,” he said, looking hard at -Christina Alberta. - -“Woodford Wells,” said Christina Alberta. - -“My father was born at Sheringham,” she added as an afterthought. - -“Sheringham. That’s queer.” With a manifestly deepened interest he -looked at the couple posed against one of those rustic backgrounds -dear to Victorian photographers. “Chrissy,” he repeated to himself. -“Chrissy. Christina Alberta. It _can’t_ be.” - -For some moments Dr. Devizes ceased to attend to his consultants and -they remained intently observing him. He tried to fix his attention on -the young man’s face in the picture, but it was the young woman who sat -on the rustic style that absorbed his interest. Amazing how completely -he had forgotten her face, and how she came back now incredibly unlike -and yet like his memory of her. He remembered the glasses and the neck -and shoulders. And a sort of stiff defiance. “When were your mother and -father married?” he asked. “How long ago?” - -“Eighteen ninety-nine,” she answered. - -“And then you were born straight away?” He asked the question with an -affectation of ease. - -“There was a decent interval,” said Christina Alberta with a clumsy -levity. “I was born in nineteen hundred.” - -“A little, fair, blue-eyed chap with rather an absent-minded manner. -I seem to see him,” Devizes said, and resumed his examination of -the photograph. Nobody spoke for the better part of a minute. “Good -Lord!” whispered Lambone to himself. Devizes drank a cup of tea -absent-mindedly. “Extraordinary,” he ejaculated. “I never dreamt of it.” - -“What is?” - -His answer went off at a tangent. “Christina Alberta’s resemblance -to my mother. It’s amazing. It’s been worrying me ever since I came -into the room. It’s been distracting my attention. I’ve got a little -picture....” - -He jumped up and went out of the room. Christina Alberta, puzzled, -excited, turned instantly on Lambone. “He knew my father and mother,” -she said. - -“Apparently,” said Lambone with something defensive in his voice. - -“_Apparently!_” she echoed. “But--he _knew_ them! He _knew_ them well. -And--_What’s he thinking of?_” - -Devizes reappeared holding out a small gold-framed picture. “Look at -that!” he said and handed it to Paul Lambone. “It might be Christina -Alberta. Don’t you see how like it is? Allowing for that preposterous -hair piled upon her head and the way her dress goes up round her neck.” - -He handed the picture to Christina Alberta and looked at Lambone in -amazed interrogation. - -“It might be me in fancy dress,” Christina Alberta agreed, with the -picture in her hands. There came a long pause. She looked up and -saw the expression of his face. Her mind gave a fantastic leap, so -fantastic that it instantly leapt back to the point of departure. It -was like a flash of lightning in a night as dark as pitch. She made a -great effort to pull the conversation together, to behave as though -her mind had never leapt at all. “But what has all this to do with my -Daddy’s case?” she asked. - -“Nothing directly. Your resemblance to my mother is a pure coincidence. -Pure. But it’s a curious coincidence! Just for the moment it pulled -my attention aside. Forgive me. I’ve a belief that where there’s -resemblance of this sort there’s a blood relationship. I suppose your -mother’s people--what did you say they were called--Hoskin?” - -“Did I say? I don’t remember. I _didn’t_ say. I didn’t. Her name was -Hossett.” - -“Ah, yes!--Hossett. I suppose that two or three generations back the -Hossetts and Devizes intermarried. And there we are! Cousins--at we -don’t know what remove. But types go under in a family and then bob up -again. It sort of links us, Christina Alberta, doesn’t it? It gives me -a special interest. I don’t feel now that you’re just any old patient. -Or, rather, just Paul’s friend. I feel linked. Well--That’s that. -Let’s come back to your father. Who married your mother just when they -were starting the old South African war. He’s always been a dreamy, -unobservant type. As we were saying. Even from the beginning....” - -He stopped short. - -“Always,” said Christina Alberta, after a long pause. - -“We’ve been into all that,” said Devizes and paused, and was for a -minute entirely at a loss for words. “Yes,” he said at last. - -Her heart was beating fast and there was a flush of excitement on her -cheeks. Her quick wits had filled in all the gaps. She understood -now--and then again it vanished. She would have liked to have gone -away and thought it all over at once. But that wouldn’t do. She must -disregard the questions that surged up within her. Her mind went -forward like an obstinate traveller caught in a whirlwind. Her mother -for example. She was trying to recall something about her mother that -had long been stifled in her mind. “Went away and left me to it,” -was it? “Went off and left me to it?” Her mother lying in bed and -wandering. Who had left her to what? That standing perplexity. That -suspicion. That dream. But attend to him now, Christina Alberta; attend -to him! She was observing him with all her being, and yet she seemed -deaf to what he said. - -He was saying that now that he agreed with them that Preemby was -sane, he could see his way to the real business before them. It was -the old, old story of making lunatics out of sane people which they -encountered in Preemby’s case. It was the old, old story of making -lunatics out of sane people which they encountered in Preemby’s case. -(He repeated his sentence word for word without apparently realizing -he had said it twice.) All exceptional people were in danger of being -misunderstood, but such a type as Preemby, original and yet incapable -of abstract expression or philosophical method, which sought fantastic -expression for its feelings and impulses, was particularly liable to -give offence, awaken suspicion and dread and hostility. It was just -these borderland cases he was always trying to save from asylums, and -just such cases that were always going there. And they were the last -people to bring into contact with real insanity. “To go back to my -metaphor, the basketful of fruit isn’t rotten, is scarcely speckled -with decay, but it is disordered and overturned. A mind is a delicate -thing to knock about. It will rot very easily, and a mind like your -father’s particularly will rot very easily under asylum conditions. -After all this rigmarole I come to just the conclusion you’ve already -reached, that we have to get Preemby out of Cummerdown Hill and away -under restful conditions as soon as possible. When we’ll comb out his -particular complex and get him into working relations with the world -again. I’m quite sure we can do that somehow, make his incognito -permanent, make him an Emperor in exile, restore his proper name, -organize a common daily round for him and get him back more and more to -be a chastened and released Preemby.” - -He paused. - -“That’s it,” said Lambone, roused from a profound contemplation of the -two interesting faces before him. - -“It isn’t easy. Even to get at him isn’t easy. There will be delays. -A careless magistrate and a silly doctor can make a lunatic in five -minutes. It takes no end of time to unmake one.” - -“That’s what I want to set about doing,” said Christina Alberta. - -“Naturally,” said Devizes, “and I’m with you.” - -He explained one or two points in lunacy law, began sketching a scheme -of operations, considered the people to whom she ought to write and the -people to whom he ought to write, and how soon it would be possible -to see Preemby, and give him a word of encouragement. Already Devizes -had had several brushes with lunacy organization; he was considered -a troublesome but dangerous man for a medical superintendent to be -up against. That might arouse either hostile obstruction or the -propitiatory spirit. They must go carefully. - -Lambone scarcely interrupted now at all. He had ceased to be acutely -interested in Preemby, immured away there in Cummerdown. He was lost -in admiration of the self-control his astonishing friends displayed. -He tried to imagine what an undertow of strange excitement, of queer -thoughts and confused emotions there must be beneath their highly -intelligent discussion of the case of Mr. Preemby. They wasted very -little attention upon the onlooker. Christina Alberta’s face was -faintly flushed, and her eyes glowed; Devizes was rather less of a -conversationalist than usual and rather more like a university tutor -with an exceptionally interesting student. - -The subject was exhausted at last and the time came to depart. Devizes -came to the door with them. - -“Don’t forget that I’m always round the corner, so to speak,” he said. -“I’m in the telephone directory. And don’t forget, Christina Alberta, -don’t forget I’m your long-lost cousin, very much at your service.” - -“I won’t forget that,” said Christina Alberta, meeting his eye. - -A little pause, and then rather stiffly they shook hands. - - -§ 7 - -“Am I mad?” said Christina Alberta as soon as she and Paul Lambone were -in the street together. “Am I dreaming?” - -Lambone was clumsy. “Mad? Dreaming? How?” - -“Oh! don’t pretend not to understand. That he’s my real father? Don’t -pretend! or, please don’t pretend! Is he or is he not?” - -Lambone did not reply for a moment. “You flash at things--like a -lizard. How could it have happened?” - -“Then you _did_ think?” - -“My dear Christina Alberta, he didn’t know you existed until he set -eyes on you. I’m sure of that.” - -“But then. Wasn’t it plain? He _knew them both_!” - -“Devizes,” said Lambone, “is ten years younger than I am. He’s barely -forty. He must have been--not more than eighteen. Nineteen at most. -It’s a little difficult.” - -“That makes it easier. You never knew mother. If they were both -young----” - -“It’s just possible,” said Lambone, “there is some other explanation.” - -“But what?” - -“Can’t imagine. I suppose he was at Sheringham--perhaps for a -holiday--and met her. But----” - -“It must have been something casual, a kind of accident. Mother used to -have flashes.... I never quite understood her. She used to suppress me, -and perhaps she was suppressing herself.... And at the end--she said -something. Someone had left her to it.... Do you know--at times--I’ve -had fancies--suspicions! It seemed as though she guessed that I was -guessing. Now I know--I _was_. It’s incredible. And yet it explains a -hundred things.” - -“He certainly never knew of you. He’s--amazed.” - -“And what’s going to happen next?” - -“Legally you’re Preemby’s daughter. Nothing can alter that. All the -resemblances and coincidences in the world won’t alter that.” - -“And all the law in the world won’t alter the facts. And----” - -She turned on Lambone with a flushed face. “Do you realize what it -means to think you are the daughter of a certified lunatic? And then -find you are not? All last night I was awake with that unendurable -thought.” - -“All night--at your age!” - -“It seemed all night. Last night--I _tried_ to imagine that something -of this sort had happened. Tried--and couldn’t. Tried to bring back all -those old fancies. And here it is! I might have known. I did know and -wouldn’t know. - -“Tell me about this real father of mine. I don’t know a thing about -him. Is he a good man? Is he a bad man? Has he a wife?” - -“He adored his wife. And so did I. She was one of the loveliest and -cleverest young women I’ve ever known. She was strong and jolly--and -the beastly influenza and pneumonia got her. In a week. It cut him to -ribbons. They’d had no children. They’d had only four years together. -He’s attractive to women, but I don’t think there’ll be a second Mrs. -Devizes for a long time. I can’t imagine it. Any other woman! Why! All -that house--it’s full of her presence.” - -“Yes,” said Christina Alberta, and thought for a time. - -They were detached for a time in crossing Bond Street, and the pavement -was too crowded and Piccadilly was too congested for them to talk again -until they went in St. James’ Street. - -“Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, “seems ten thousand miles away. But -when I’m over the amazement of this I expect I’ll get back to him all -right. But just for a time--he must wait.” - -“You’ll come in for a bit?” said Lambone at the corner of Half Moon -Street. “I could give you some dinner.” - -“No, thanks. I’ll walk all the way to Chelsea,” said Christina -Alberta. “I want to think this out by myself. I want to get alone with -this spinning head of mine and try to slow it down. My life’s gone -topsy-turvy. Or it’s been topsy-turvy and it’s suddenly come right side -up. I don’t know which. Oh!--I don’t know anything. I’ve got to begin -all over again.” - -She shook hands and paused. Lambone waited, for manifestly she had -something to say. She got it out at last. - -“Do you think--he liked me?” - -“He liked you all right, Christina Alberta. Don’t you worry about that.” - - -§ 8 - -It was a little more than two days before Christina Alberta, to use her -own expression, “got back” to her lost Daddy. - -Those two days were full of an immense excitement. Devizes was the -most wonderful fact in the world. She exploded into love for him. She -had the most vivid impression of him, dark and tall, rather grave, -watchful and amazingly understandable. Yet vivid as her impression -was she doubted every detail of it, and wanted to go back to him and -verify it all over again. It was their quality of mutual understanding -that was at once the most delightful and the most incredible aspect -of the whole affair. Their brains no doubt were unlike, as every -two individual brains must be, yet their unlikeness was not a mere -accumulation of accidental difference, but the unlikeness of two -variations of one theme. She could feel his intentions beneath his -words. Her mind had jumped with his realizations and there must be -kinks and turns in her brain, kinks and turns that just made her -difficult and queer for most people, which would find the completest -parallels in his. She didn’t believe there was a thing in her thoughts -and acts that she would be surprised at his knowing and comprehending. - -She had never before thought of parentage with any enthusiasm. She -had viewed it rather in the spirit of Samuel Butler and Bernard Shaw, -and conceived of parents generally in relation to their children -as embarrassed hypocrites with an instinctive disposition towards -restraint and suppression. She had made an exception of her own -particular pair; Daddy had been a great friend anyhow, though mother -for the most part had been a concentrated incarnate “Don’t.” But -she had never realized there might be something rather intimately -interesting in consanguinity. And then suddenly a door had opened, a -man had come in and sat down and talked to her and discovered himself -the nearest thing in life to her. And she to him. She wanted to go to -him again; she wanted to see more of him, be with him. But he made no -sign and she could think of no decent excuse for a call upon him. The -very intensity of her desire made her unable to go to him easily. She -wrote the various letters they had agreed she should write, and then -decided to master mental science and lunacy generally. That and the -case of her “Daddy” she perceived to be her formal link with Devizes. - -She set out for the Reading Room of the British Museum, for which she -had a students’ ticket, and she tried to concentrate her mind upon -the book she had requisitioned, instead of letting it wander off -into the strangest reveries about this miraculously discovered blood -relation. In the afternoon she rang up Lambone to be given tea, with -the intention of learning everything that the wise man could tell her -about Devizes and generally turning him over conversationally. But -Lambone was out. The next day the craving for Devizes was overpowering. -She rang him up. - -“May I have some tea?” she asked. “I’ve got nothing much to say, but I -want to see you.” - -“Delighted,” said Devizes. - -When she got to him she found herself shy, and him as shy as herself. -For a little while they made polite conversation; it might almost have -been the conversation of two people at a formal call in a country town. -He called her “Christina Alberta,” but she called him “Doctor Devizes,” -and he asked her if she played or danced, and whether she had ever been -abroad. She sat in an arm-chair and he stood over her on the hearthrug. -It was clear that the only way to intimacy lay in a frank treatment -of her Daddy. She felt that if this sort of talk went on for another -minute she would have to scream or throw her tea-cup in the fire. So -she plunged. - -“When did you first know my mother?” - -Devizes’ attitude stiffened, and he smiled faintly at her boldness. “I -was a Cambridge undergraduate reading for the Natural Science Tripos, -and I went down to Sheringham to read. We--we picked each other up on -the beach. We made love--in a scared, furtive, desperate, ignorant sort -of way. People were primitive in those days--compared with what they -are now.” - -“Daddy wasn’t there.” - -“He came in afterwards.” - -Devizes considered for a moment. He decided that it wasn’t fair to -oblige her to go on questioning him. “My father,” he said, “was a -pretty considerable old bully. He was Sir George Devizes, the man -who invented the Devizes biscuit and cured old Alphonso, and he -was celebrated for being rude to his patients. He would smack their -stomachs and tell them they ought to be scooped out. He helped make -Unter Magenbad. He suspected me of being a bit of a soft, though as a -matter of fact I wasn’t, and he generally had the effect of laying up -for a quarrel with me. He kept me pretty short. He wasn’t particularly -nice to my mother. He used to get at my mother through me. I didn’t -dare to have a scrape of any sort. I was really afraid of him. If I saw -a scrape blowing up my habit and disposition was to run away.” - -“I see.” - -Devizes considered the implications of that “I see.” “Not that I ran -away from any definite scrape that I knew of at Sheringham,” he said -very carefully. - -“What was my mother like in those days?” - -“A sort of subdued fierceness. A flushed warm face. She was pretty, you -know, and very upright in her carriage. And she had a swift decision -beneath her stiffness. Her wishes would suddenly crystallize out, and -after that there was no bending her.” - -“I know.” - -“I suppose you do.” - -“She wore glasses then?” - -“Oh, yes.” - -“Was she fresh then? Was she happy?” - -“A little too fierce to be happy.” - -“Did you--ever--love her?” - -“It is a long time ago, Christina Alberta. There was--seaside -love-making. Why do you cross-examine me like this?” - -“I want to know. Why”--Christina Alberta had a momentary terror at her -own boldness--“Why didn’t you marry her?” - -Devizes made no pretence of surprise at the question. “There was no -reason manifest why I should have married her. None at all. I can’t -conceive what my father would have done if I had come back from -Sheringham engaged to a chance acquaintance. And anyhow, why should I -have done anything of the sort?” - -His eyes defied hers. - -“I left her my address,” he added. “She could have written to me. She -never did.” - -“Did a letter go astray?” said Christina Alberta, and added hastily, -“my imagination is running away with me.” - -She hesitated and trembled at the next words she had resolved to say, -but she said them, with a forced offhandedness. “You see--I might have -fancied you as a father?” - -It produced no catastrophe. He looked her in the face and then smiled. -After that smile she felt that they understood each other completely, -and it was very pleasant to think that. “Instead of which, you have to -adopt me as a cousin,” he said deliberately. “Cousins it is, Christina -Alberta. It’s the best we can do. We have to put our heads together and -think of your Daddy. He’s our common concern. I’m interested in that -little man. He’s defended himself against many things by those dreams -of his. Very wilful dreams they may have been. Who knows? Necessary -protective dreams.” - -Christina Alberta did not speak for a little time. She nodded. She was -glad at their manifest understanding and yet she was disappointed, -though she could not have told herself what else she had expected. This -man a yard away was the nearest thing in the world to her, and always -there might be this invisible barrier between them. They were linked by -an invisible tie and they were separated by an unfathomable necessity. -Never before in her life had she known what love could be; she wanted -to be free to love him; she wanted him to love her. - -She realized that she was standing quite still, and that Devizes was -standing just as still upon his hearthrug, watching her face. His -mouth and eyes were quiet and serene, but she imagined he must be -gripping his hands together behind him. She had to obey him. There was -nothing for her to do but follow his lead. - -“Daddy’s our common concern,” she said. “I suppose I shall begin to -hear from some of those people to-morrow.” - - -§ 9 - -Christina Alberta got back to her Daddy in a dream. - -It was a queer dream. She was going about the world with Devizes and -they were locked together in such a way that she and he could never -look at each other, but were always side by side. But also with -the sublime incoherence of dreams they were at the same time great -ebony images, and they sat stiffly side by side like a Pharaoh and -his consort, and they looked over a great space; they were very big -effigies indeed and their profiles were alike. All through the dream -she thought of Devizes and herself as black. The space before them was -sometimes a sandy desert and sometimes a grey cloudy expanse. Then -suddenly something round and white came bounding into the midst of this -arena and became a little man, a familiar little blue-eyed man, tied up -into a ball with ropes and sorely maimed, who rolled about and panted -and struggled to be free. Oh! but he struggled pitifully. Christina -Alberta’s heart went out to him, and yet impelled by some tremendous -force within her she rose and Devizes rose beside her and they marched -stiffly forward. She could not help herself, she could not control the -rigid movements of her hands and feet. They stepped high and forcibly. -She was voiceless, she tried to cry out, “We shall trample upon him! -We shall trample upon him!” but there was no more than a hoarse -inarticulate sound of horror in her throat.... - -They were upon him. She felt the body of her Daddy writhe under her. -He was like a bladder. His soft, ineffectual body, with her feet upon -him, bent and bulged about. She forgot there was anything else but -her Daddy and herself. Why had she treated him like this? Devizes -disappeared. Her Daddy was clinging to her knees and now a crowd of -vile figures had appeared and sought to drag him away. “Save me, -Christina Alberta,” he was pleading, though she heard no sound. “Save -me. Save me! Every day they torture me.” But they dragged him away and -she could not put out her arms to him. Because she was made of ebony -and all of one piece with Devizes. - -Then some one, a bird or a Sphinx with the face and voice of Lambone, -came into the dream. “Listen to your Daddy,” he said. “Do not despise -him or simply pity him. He has much to teach you. The world will never -learn anything until it will learn from ridiculous people. All people -are ridiculous. I am. I am ridiculous. We learn in suffering what we -teach in song.” She saw that her Daddy was now sheltering between the -paws of the Sphinx, and that the evil men had vanished. - -She became intensely aware of a revealing absurdity in her dream. No -previous incompatibility had shocked her at all, and she had never -thought that she was dreaming up to this point. But now she became -intensely oppressed by the idea that the Sphinx was an ancient Egyptian -and classical figure, and that Sargon was a still more ancient -Sumerian. The dream was going wrong. The periods, the cultures, were -mixed. She conveyed this to Sphinx-Lambone, and he turned his head to -answer her, and immediately the evil figures were back, and taking -advantage of Lambone’s inattention, were dragging her Daddy away. She -tried to call Lambone’s attention to that, but he said there would be -plenty of time to recover her Daddy when the point about the Sphinx -was settled. He wasn’t a Sphinx, he explained, but a Winged Bull. He -never had been a Sphinx. Or why should he be wearing a long curly -stone beard? She wanted to argue that it was a false beard and that -he had only just put it on. And anyhow it was just like him to start -an inopportune discussion. Meanwhile her Daddy was receding into -wretchedness. She became aware of this rapidly and painfully. It was -her Daddy still, but his body was different; it was not a human body -any more, but a basket of fruit overturned. Unless she did something at -once it would go rotten and be bad for ever. - -She tried to cry out words of comfort and reassurance to the poor -tragic little figure before the dream came to an end--for now she knew -surely that it was a dream. Of course he was suffering intolerably. Why -had she not written to him or telegraphed to him? Surely they would -give him a letter or a telegram! A profound self-detestation for her -incompetence and negligence, and a great horror of pain and cruelty -came upon her, and she awoke completely to black night and infinite -dismay in her little hard bed in her stuffy little bedroom in Lonsdale -Mews. - - -§ 10 - -But the impression of her Daddy, desolate and broken-hearted and in -danger, remained with her, terribly vivid. It clung to her. She got up -in the morning anxious and depressed by it. - -“I am not doing enough for him,” she said. “I am letting days slip -by--and for him they must be days of despair.” - -“Sure th’ ’Sylums ’nt so ba-s-at,” said Fay. “Sure yr overrating it.” - -“But to live among lunatics and be classed as a lunatic!” - -“They’ve _bans_ play-them. Foxhill ’Sylum there’s _buful_ ban. -’Ntainments nors-sorts treats,” said Fay. - -Christina Alberta refrained from bad language. - -“You getting ill ove’ all this,” said Fay. “You doing no good ’n Lun. -Youffar be’r come dow’ Shore’m. The’s th’ouse spoilin’. In this las’ -bit of fine w’r.” - -For the October weather was holding out that year quite wonderfully, -a succession of calm golden days, and the Crumbs had been offered the -loan of a bungalow on the beach at Shoreham by a friend who had used it -throughout the summer. They wanted to go down to it before the weather -broke, but going down to it meant leaving Christina Alberta all alone -in the studio, and they did not want to do that. But they meant to go -to Shoreham. Christina Alberta, now that she had discovered Devizes, -could not endure the thought of getting out of telephone range of -him. London, she argued, was manifestly her proper centre. She could -get down to Cummerdown Hill in an hour; she could keep in touch with -everything. The Crumbs might go but she _must_ stay. - -Fay would not understand. She pestered. - -About eleven o’clock Christina Alberta went to the Post Office -telephone booth and rang up Devizes. - -“Can’t something be done to hurry things up?” she asked. “I’ve got -Daddy on my nerves. I can’t bear to think of him there day after day. -I’ve been dreaming of him.” - -“Worrying is no good. We--I’ve got some bad news for you. So put all -your controls on.” - -He paused. Christina Alberta, for all her love of Devizes, had to -restrain her violent desire to snap, “Oh! what is it?” - -“Visiting day was yesterday. He had one visitor. I suppose that’s the -agreeable relation you described--what was his name? Wiggles? Mr. -Widgery. But your Daddy can’t be seen again by the outer world for a -week. Not until next Tuesday.” - -“Oh, damn!” said Christina Alberta. - -“Exactly. I’ll do what I can to arrange some sort of special access. -I got on to the Medical Superintendent himself. But he’s queer. He’s -evidently quite friendly and well disposed, but he fences about. He -can’t say either Yes or No. Odd! I’m free to-day in the afternoon, -but I’m tied up to-morrow. I was for going down to see _him_--the -superintendent I mean, for a talk after lunch. ‘Better in a day or so,’ -he says. Hope there’s nothing wrong that he’s keeping back. Afterwards -he promised me to ring me up later, and then abruptly he switched off. -So hold yourself ready, there. What’s your telephone number?” - -“Haven’t got one. You must telegraph.” - -“Or I’ll chase round in a taxi and pick you up. Sorry to hold you up -like this, Christina Alberta.” - -“I don’t mind anything so long as it’s getting towards Daddy.” - -“Right-o,” and the voice was cut off. - -The telegram came after an interval of two hours, two hours which -had been devoted to a rambling dispute with Fay about the Shoreham -difficulty. The message ran as follows: “_Has your father turned up he -escaped at dawn this morning in slippers and dressing-gown and nothing -seen of him since if not appeared meet me Victoria two-seven for -Cummerdown telephone Gerrard 0247 if there._” - - -§ 11 - -But Mr. Preemby did not turn up anywhere. He just vanished. - -Christina Alberta, in a state of incredulous astonishment at this -fresh disappearance, went down with Devizes to Cummerdown. They found -a Medical Superintendent by no means so amazed as they were. Sargon -had been missing at breakfast time; everything seemed to point to -his just walking out of the Asylum. That sort of thing had happened -before. It showed a certain sleepy negligence on the part of one or -two attendants, and they would be reprimanded. But as for wonder, the -Medical Superintendent refused to wonder. Lunatics often stray or -escape, and unless they are dangerous the authorities made no great -commotion about it. They kept it out of the newspapers as far as it was -possible to do so. - -“This place isn’t Portland,” said the Medical Superintendent. “They get -back all right. I give him a day. He’s probably coming back now. He may -be hiding up a mile away. I’m chiefly anxious about his catching cold. -Pneumonia is the standard death of a lunatic. But it’s wonderfully warm -for the time of year. I’ve never known such an October.” - -He was much more desirous to talk to Devizes about lunacy reform, -and convince him that he was a highly progressive and able Medical -Superintendent than to discuss the special case of Mr. Preemby. “We -do what we can,” he said, “but we’re fixed by the extreme economy we -have to practise. Low-grade attendants and not enough even of them. -The public indifference to lunatics is monstrous. Everybody--even the -people with insane relations--wants to forget all about them.” - -“But how could Preemby have got out of the grounds?” asked Devizes. -“Aren’t there walls all round?” - -“Like everything else about lunacy law, the back is not as good as -the front,” said the superintendent. “But here we have got at least -a complete wall of sorts all round. The original building used to be -a private mansion with a walled park. For a time--in the eighteenth -century--it was a boys’ school.” - -He showed them from his window over the roofs of a clump of -outbuildings the limits of the garden and farm at the back, dropping -towards a streamlet and defined by a roadside wall and old thorn and -oak trees. “For my own part,” said the Medical Superintendent, “I admit -the urgency of very drastic reforms.” - -“I wonder if Cousin Widgery can throw any light on this,” said Devizes. - -“Widgery?” - -“That was his visitor yesterday.” - -“_Was_ it?” said the Medical Superintendent, and reflected and went to -his desk as if to look for a paper. “I thought it was a different sort -of name--rather more like Goodchild. Perhaps I’ve mixed up the names.” - -“Mr. Sam Widgery,” said Christina Alberta, “would be the last person -who’d want Daddy to get out. He probably came to make sure that he -wouldn’t. He may have come just for the pleasure of gloating over him. -Uncle Sam’s not a pretty soul. He may have wanted to make sure the wall -went all the way round.” - -The Medical Superintendent forgot his doubt about the name and the -paper and turned with a fresh idea to them. “You don’t think there was -any animus? You don’t think he may have made for Mr. Widgery? Where -does this Mr. Widgery live?” - -But neither Devizes nor Christina Alberta thought there was any great -possibility of Mr. Preemby beating back to Woodford Wells. - -“He’s much more likely to go to Canterbury or Windsor or start straight -off for Rome,” said Christina Alberta. - -“Or Mesopotamia--or the British Museum,” said Devizes. - -“Or _anywhere_!” said Christina Alberta with a note of despair. - -They returned to London completely baffled. Christina Alberta was -for a visit to the Cummerdown Police Station and for a search in the -villages round about, but Devizes explained that this might do more -harm than good. Until now Christina Alberta had never heard of that one -kindly weakness in the British lunacy laws, the release of the fourteen -days freedom. If the lunatic can get away from the Asylum and remain -at large for that period, he or she becomes legally sane again, and -cannot be touched without a fresh examination and a new certificate. To -set the whole countryside hunting for Preemby might merely lead to his -recapture by the Asylum authorities. And whatever happened the mystery -must not get into the papers. - -“But while we do nothing, he may be lying dead in some out-of-the-way -ditch,” said Christina Alberta. - -“If he’s dead he won’t mind a little delay in finding him,” said -Devizes. - -No, the only thing was to wait at Lonsdale Mews against the chance of -his returning thither. The Crumbs went off to Shoreham and Christina -Alberta was left alone in the studio, but after one endless day of it -Paul Lambone thought of a convenient agency called “Universal Aunts,” -and a suitable lady was sent to relieve her from a continuous vigil. - -One, two, three days passed. There came no sign from Sargon, no news -of any fresh calling of disciples or visits to the King. He had -evaporated. A vision of a little crumpled-up body in a ditch replaced -the tormented figure in the cell in the distressed imagination of -Christina Alberta. But the mind refuses to go on with a painful fancy -that leads to nothing, and Christina Alberta’s imagination presently -ceased further dealings with her Daddy until fresh material came to -hand. “He will turn up somewhere,” she repeated feebly, and became a -great consumer of evening papers. “He will turn up somehow.” Her chief -anxiety was that he should not turn up with too tremendous head-lines. -She began to adjust herself like an early Christian for the Second -Coming. The riddle of her Daddy’s disappearance became a habit of -mind, became, as it were, a frame, a proscenium arch to her current -activities. Beneath it she returned to the urgent and extraordinary -problem of herself and her relationship to Devizes. - - -§ 12 - -It was manifest that he was almost as excited as she was at their -mutual discovery. The possible proceedings of Sargon, fantastic as -they might prove to be when they came to light, remained for him -as for her a matter of urgent importance, but the thought of this -strange relationship completely overshadowed it. Each had a reciprocal -desire to get at the other, to discover what magic of sympathy and -understanding might not be latent in their consanguinity. - -The evening after the Universal Aunt was installed he took Christina -Alberta out to dine with him at a pleasant little Italian restaurant in -the corner of Sloane Square, and afterwards he came back to the studio -with her and talked until nearly one in the morning. He showed himself -shyly anxious to find out her aims and purposes in life, and what she -was doing and what might be done to let out her possibilities. He was -evidently disposed to shoulder just as much parental responsibility as -he could, subject to the preservation of appearances and a proper care -for the self-respect of the vanished Sargon. She attracted him and he -liked her. Her feelings for him were more tumultuous and abundant and -indefinite. She didn’t particularly want help or support from him. The -idea of being dependent upon him for anything repelled rather than -attracted her, but she wanted to get hold of him, to please and satisfy -him, to be better than he had expected and interesting in fresh ways. -She wanted him to like her--to care for her more than mere liking. She -wanted that anxiously and tremendously. - -She liked a sort of ease and confidence he had with waiters and cabmen -and the common services of life. He seemed to know just what people -would do and they seemed to know just what he would do; there was -no tension in these matters, no nervous “h’rrmping.” These common -attributes of habitual prosperity were so little in her experience -that they seemed a distinction of his; and they threw a flavour of -knowing what he was about, and being serenely in control over most of -the conversation, when indeed he was as curious and experimental and -emotionally stirred almost as she was. The eyes that met hers when she -talked were steady, friendly, interested, intimate eyes, and her heart -went out to them. - -Over the dinner he talked at first about music. He had had no music -in his education, and now he was discovering it. A friend of his had -been taking him to concerts, and he had got a pianola, “so as to spell -it out at home first.” But Christina Alberta’s education had missed -out music too, and she hadn’t as yet discovered it. So that topic died -out presently. He tried her about pictures, but there again she wasn’t -particularly interested. They had a little silence. - -He looked across at her and smiled. - -“I’d like to ask you all sorts of questions, Christina Alberta, if I -dared,” he said. - -She blushed--absurdly. “Any questions you like,” she said. - -“Immense questions,” he said. “For example--generally--what do you -think you are up to?” - -She understood what he meant at once. But she was so unprepared with an -answer that she became evasive. - -“Up to!” she said, playing for time. “I suppose I’m looking for my lost -Daddy.” - -“But what are you up to generally? What are you doing with your life? -Where are you going?” - -“I’m at sea,” she said at last. “Lots of my generation are, I think. -The girls especially. You are older than I am; I’m only beginning. -I don’t want to seem cheeky, but aren’t you better able to say what -_you_ are up to? Suppose--” Her slightly scared gravity broke into an -impudent smile that Devizes found very congenial--“suppose you play -first?” - -He considered that. “Perfectly fair,” he said. “I will. Have another -olive. I’m glad you like olives. I do too. Nobody’s called me to -account for a long time. What _is_ my game? It’s a fair question.” - -But not an easy one evidently. - -“I suppose one ought to begin right back at one’s philosophy,” he said. -“A long story. But I started the idea.” - -Christina Alberta was greatly elated at her successful repulse of his -projected cross-examination. Instead of making a display herself she -could watch him. She watched him over the flowers on the table and had -to be nudged by the waiter when he brought the pheasant to her elbow. -“How _should_ one begin?” he plunged. She had heard of Pragmatism? Yes. -She was probably better read in that sort of thing than he was. He was, -he considered, a sort of Pragmatist. Most modern-minded, intelligent -people he held were Pragmatists as he understood it. Pragmatist? As he -understood it? He met her eye and explained. In this sense he meant it; -we, none of us, had a clear vision of reality; nobody perhaps would -ever do more than approach reality. What we perceived was just that -much of reality that got through to us, through our very defective -powers of interpretation. “They’ve done this pheasant _en casserole_ -very well,” he broke off. “Three minutes’ truce we ought to give it. Do -you find I’m talking comprehensibly? I doubt it.” - -“I’m hanging on,” said Christina Alberta.... - -“Perhaps I’m beginning rather too far off.” - -Pheasant.... - -“To come back to my confession of faith,” he said presently.... “Mind -you, Christina Alberta, you’ve got to say your bit afterwards.” - -“It won’t be as definite as yours,” she said. “Some of yours I shall -steal. But go on--telling me.” - -“Well, keep hold, Christina Alberta. I feel I’m going to be at once -hesitating and condensed. And I’m not sure of what you know or don’t -know. If I say I’m an Agnostic about the nature of the universe, and -how it began and where it ends, does that convey anything to you?” - -“Just what I think,” said Christina Alberta. - -“Well.” He started afresh and got into parenthetical difficulties. The -Pêche Melba came to interrupt and permit a fresh start. He unfolded a -psychologist’s vision of the world for her inspection, a curious and -yet attractive vision to her. He expressed himself in terms of mind and -understanding. She was used to hearing everything expressed in terms of -labour and material necessity. Life, he said, was one continuous thing, -all life was connected. He tried to illustrate that. The conscious -life of most lower animals was intensely individual, a lizard, for -example, was just itself, just its instincts and appetites; it received -no teaching and no tradition, it handed on nothing to its kind. But -the higher animals were taught when they were young, learnt and taught -others and communicated with each other. Men far more than any animal. -He had developed picture-writing, speech, oral tradition, scientific -record. There was now a common mind of the race, a great growing body -of knowledge and interpretations. - -“People like ourselves are just cross-sections of that flow. -Individually we receive it, react to it, change it a little, and pass -away. We are just passing phases of that increasing mind--which may be -for all we can certainly say, an immortal mind. Does this sound like -Greek--or nonsense to you?” - -“No,” she said, “I think I get the drift of it.” She looked at his -intent face. He wasn’t in the least talking down to her; he was simply -trying to express himself as well as he possibly could to her. He was -treating her like an equal. Like an equal! - -That was his general philosophy. He was coming to the question of -himself now, he said. He became very earnest over the coffee cups -and ash tray on the swept tablecloth. He spread elucidatory hands -before her. He was conscientiously explicit. He saw in himself two -phases, or rather two levels of existence. Roughly speaking, two. -They had links and intermediate stages of course, but they could be -ignored when one just wanted to express the idea. First of all, he was -the old instinctive individual, fearful, greedy, lustful, jealous, -self-assertive. That was the primary self. He had to attend to that -primary self because it carried all the rest of him, as a rider -must see that his horse gets oats. Deeper lay social instincts and -dispositions arising out of family life. That was the second self, the -social self. Man, he threw out, is a creature that has become more -and more consciously social in the last two or three hundred thousand -years. He has been lengthening his life, keeping his children with him -longer and longer, enlarging his community from family herds into clans -and tribes and nations. The deep-lying continuity of life was becoming -more apparent and finding more and more definite expression with this -socialization of man. To educate anyone in the proper sense of the word -was to make him more and more aware of this continuity. The importance -of the passionate feverish self was then reduced. True education was -self-subordination to a greater life, to the social self. The natural -instincts and limitations of the primary self were in conflict with -this wider underflow; education, _good_ education, tended to correct -them. - -“Here am I,” said Devizes, “as we all are, a creature in a state of -internal conflict, quicker, fiercer mortal instincts at issue with a -deeper, calmer, less brightly lit, but finally stronger drive towards -immortal purposes. And I am--how shall I put it?--I personally am, to -the best of my ability, on the side of the deeper things. My aptitudes -and temperament and opportunities have brought me to psychology--as a -profession. I work to add to the accumulation of human knowledge and -understanding about the mind. I work for illumination. My particular -work is to study and cure troubled and tangled minds. I try to -straighten them out and simplify them and illuminate them. And above -all I try to learn from them. I seek the mental or physical cause -of their distresses. I try to set down as clearly and accessibly as -possible, all I observe and learn. That’s my job. That’s my aim. It -gives me a general direction for my life. All the stuff of my mere -individual existence I try to subordinate to that end. Not always. My -monkey individual gets loose at times and gibbers on the roof. And at -other times it’s rather good company as a relief from overwork. Vanity -and self-indulgence have their uses. But never mind the monkey now. I -do not want to be a brilliant person; I want to be a vital part. That’s -my essential creed. I want to be the sort of wheel in the machinery -they call a mental expert. As good a wheel as I can be. That’s what I’m -up to in general terms, Christina Alberta. That’s what I think I am.” - -“Yes,” said Christina Alberta, reflecting profoundly. “Of course I -can’t produce a statement like that. You’ve got your system--complete.” - -“And finished,” said Devizes. “You’ve got to tell your story in your -own way. At your age--you ought to be with loose ends to all your -convictions.” - -“I wonder if I can tell you any story.” - -“You’ve got to try your best now. It’s only fair play.” - -“Yes.” - -There was a little silence. - -“It’s wonderful to talk to you like this,” said Christina Alberta. -“It’s wonderful to talk to anyone like this.” - -“I feel that you and I--have to understand each other.” - -She met his grave eyes for a moment. There was a wave of emotion within -her. She could not speak. She reached out her hand to touch his, and -for a moment their hands were together. - - -§ 13 - -Christina Alberta only got to her confession of faith in the studio -after they had returned thither and relieved the Universal Aunt. Even -then they didn’t settle down to the business all at once. Devizes -walked about and looked for drawings by Harold; he deduced Harold from -his drawings to a quite remarkable extent, Christina Alberta thought. -He was curious about Fay. “What’s Mrs. Crumb like?” he asked. “Show me -something of hers, something that seems to give her.” - -It pleased Christina Alberta very much to think that he was shy with -her. She felt that this was a recognition of her equality. He was -respecting her and she was very eager that she should be respected by -him. - -He got to an anchorage at last in the gaily painted seat by the -gas-fire; and Christina Alberta, after flitting about the room for -a time, came and stood before it, shapely legs wide apart and hands -behind her back in an attitude that would have shocked all her feminine -ancestors for many generations. But it did not shock Devizes; he found -her more and more interesting to watch, and he sat at his ease and -regarded her with a lively admiration. Most of us get used to our -daughters so gradually; they grow up and we carry the wonder of them -as Milo carried his ox; it isn’t common for a man to get an unexpected -daughter abruptly at the age of twenty-one. - -She said she hadn’t much in the way of metaphysics; she was a -Materialist. - -“No prayers at mother’s knee? Religion of Mother and Daddy? School -prayers and teaching? Church or chapel?” - -“It all washed out and faded out, I think, as they laid it on.” - -“No fear of hell? Most of my generation went through the fear of hell.” - -“Not a trace of it,” said the New Age. - -“But--a desire for God in the night?” - -Christina Alberta paused for a little while. “I have that,” she said. -“It comes--sometimes. I don’t know whether it’s very important or not -important at all.” - -“It’s part,” said Devizes slowly, “of something that has to do with -wanting to be more than a miserable worm--and disliking meanness--and -so forth.” - -“Yes. Do you know more about it?” - -Rather oddly he didn’t answer that. “And how do you see yourself in -relation to mankind--and the animals--and the stars? What sense of -obligation have you? What do you think the road is along which you have -to go?” - -“H’m,” said Christina Alberta. She considered she was a Communist, she -said, though she didn’t belong to the Party. But she knew some other -young people who did. She produced some of the phrases of the movement, -“the materialist conception of history” and so forth. He said he failed -to understand and asked rather irritating questions; she thought -controversially. She didn’t realize at first how widely apart was their -phraseology. As they talked this became apparent. He seemed to have -nothing too good to say for the Communist idea, for wasn’t it just his -own idea of being a part of a greater being of life? but he seemed to -have nothing too bad for practical Communism. Marxist Communism he -said wasn’t a constructive movement at all; it was merely a solvent. -It had no idea, no plan. Christina Alberta was put on the defensive. -“Enthusiasm for an ideal Communist state isn’t nearly so important as -the question of immediate Communist tactics in a decaying society,” she -recited, in an almost official tone. That was how her young friends in -the Party talked. But when she talked like this to him it didn’t seem -so effective. He wouldn’t leave her phrases alone. He wanted to know -what she meant by decay in a society, whether there had ever been a -society not actively in decay and not also actively in growth, what -good tactics were except in relation to general strategy and whether -there could be any strategy without a clear war-end. She countered more -vigorously than effectively and their manner became controversial. - -He pressed the difference in their opinions. Communism for him meant a -new spirit, a spirit of science reorganizing the world upon scientific -collective lines, but the whole temper of party communism was -contemporary. It was saturated with the feelings and ideas of existing -social classes, with the natural resentment of the dispossessed. It -had the angry dogmatism of desperate people not sure of their grip. -It needed more of the passion of creative self-forgetfulness. Many -Communists, he said, were simply reversed capitalists, egotists without -capital; they wanted revenge and expropriation, and when they were -through with that they would be left with nothing but social ruins -and everything to begin all over again. And they were suspicious and -intolerant because of their want of internal assurance. They distrusted -their best friends, their proper leaders, scientific men like Keynes -and Soddy. - -“Keynes a Communist!” cried Christina Alberta in derision. “He doesn’t -accept the first scientific fact of the class war.” - -“It isn’t much of a fact--certainly not a First Scientific Fact,” he -replied. “Keynes builds up slowly a conception of a scientifically -organized exchange system. Most of your friends in Russia don’t seem -capable even of realizing that such a thing is necessary.” - -“But they do!” - -“Have they shown it?” - -“What do _you_ know of the Russian Bolsheviks?” - -“What do _you_? You just look at the labels on people. Nothing genuine -without the red label--and everything genuine with.” - -She said he saw things from his “bourgeois” standpoint, and he laughed -cheerfully at her social classifications; there was no bourgeoisie -in England, he said; she attempted some of the stock cynicisms and -sarcasms of the movement but with an unusual lack of conviction. It -was easy for him to criticize, she said, living as he did on invested -capital. - -“It would make it easier,” he smiled. “But really I live on my fees.” - -“You have invested capital.” - -“Some. I don’t live on it.” - -They had exhausted the dispute for a time. After all she reflected she -hadn’t put up such a bad fight, considering her age and standing. The -momentary glow of controversial exasperation faded again. They drifted -to the more immediate question in which they were interested, the -question of what she was to do with her life. - - -§ 14 - -“We progress, Christina Alberta,” said Devizes, “but it’s still -generally the rule that a woman’s life is determined very largely by -the character and occupations of--the leading man in the play. Have you -by any chance been in love yet?” - -She wanted to tell him all the truth about herself, but some things are -untellable. She hesitated and blushed hotly. “Nowadays,” she said, and -stopped. “I’ve some imagination. I’ve run about London. I’ve perhaps -imagined things----” - -His eyes were very searching for a moment but none the less kindly. - -“I’ve been in love--in a kind of way,” she admitted. - -He nodded with a dreadful effect of complete comprehension. - -“I don’t want to run my life in relation to any man,” she extended. - -“Clever girls never do. Any more than clever young men want to spend -their lives adoring a goddess.” - -“In any case I don’t see myself becoming a child-producing -housekeeper,” she said. - -“Even if you married. No. I doubt whether you are that type. But if you -are going to reject that easy way--and it _is_ an easy way, in spite of -what people say--if you are going to be a citizen on your own as a man -is, then you’ve got to do a man’s work, Christina Alberta. There’s to -be none of the Pretty Fanny business you know.” - -“Well, _am_ I?” asked Christina Alberta. - -“No, I don’t think you are. And in that case, I guess you want some -more education. You’re clever, but you’re a bit patchy.” - -“I’m good enough to get a job. And then learn.” - -“Learn,” he said. “That’s enough to take you all your time. I’d rather -we agreed it’s got to be a student for two or three years more. You -need have no anxiety about ways and means. You and I are of the same -Clan--a clan of two practically--and I am the head. I’ll see you -through just as though you were a son. And now, what sort of work is it -to be? Law? Medicine? a general education for journalism or affairs? -Doors open to women now--fresh doors every day.” - -To that Christina Alberta could speak a little more fully. She had been -thinking out some of these things. She wanted to know about life and -the world as a whole. Could she have a good year at physical science, -biology and geology chiefly and anthropology? Would that be possible? -And then if she was any good at medical work, another year at mental -science or politics and public health? “It sounds ambitious I know,” -she said. - -“Ambitious! It’s an encyclopædia in a year.” - -“But I want to know about all these things.” - -“Naturally.” - -“Could I have longer than that?” - -“You’d have to have longer than that.” - -“It seems to be asking for so much.” - -“It wouldn’t be if you were in trousers. We’ve agreed to unsex you to -that extent. Why shouldn’t you be ambitious?” - -“You think I might do work--scientific work--at last--as you do?” - -“Why not?” - -“A girl?” - -“You’re the sort of stuff I am, Christina Alberta.” - -“Do you think--some day--I might even come to work--to work with you?” - -“Kindred minds may follow kindred courses,” he said, with the -completest recognition of their relationship “Why not?” - -She stood and looked at him with a dark excitement in her eyes and he -had a momentary intimation of all that he might be to her. Gallant she -was and fine and ambitious; a wonderful life to come out of nothingness -into his own. And she meant this relationship to grow, as well it might -grow, into something very great and deep for both of them. - -He went off at a tangent to talk of the contrast of men and women -students and of men and women as workers. “You’ll never run parallel -with men, you free women, so don’t expect it. You’ve got to work out -a way that is similar perhaps but different. Different down to the -roots.” He argued that probably the whole fabric of a man had its -qualities that a woman’s did not possess and vice versa, down even to -a muscular fibre or a nerve tendril. A time might come when we should -be able to put a drop of blood or a scrap of skin under the microscope -or apply some subtle reagent to it and tell its sex. “A man resists,” -he said. “A man is intractable. He has greater inertia, physical and -mental. That keeps him to his course. Men compared with women are -steadier and stupider. Women compared with men are quicker and sillier. -Bludgeons and bodkins.” - -He talked of his student days when women medical students were still -rather novel intrusions, and from that he passed to his father’s -prejudices, to his father’s treatment of his mother and his boyish -days. Presently they were exchanging experiences of childish delusions -and fancies. She forgot how much older and more experienced he was in -the ease of his talk. He told her about himself because he recognized -her right to know about him; he listened with a friendly eagerness -to all she chose to tell him of her Daddy and herself and about -her impressions and her few adventures in encounter as a suburban -student in London. They shared their delight in Paul Lambone’s kindly -absurdity. Presently it occurred to her to offer him drink. The Crumbs -had left a bottle of beer and a syphon. But Devizes asked her to make -tea and helped her with the kettle. Meanwhile the mutual exploration -went on. Their friendliness grew richer and deeper as they talked. She -had never before met so intimate and delightful a curiosity as his. She -had had friends before but no such friendliness; she had had a lover -but never such intimacy. - -It was one o’clock before he went away. - -The talk had ebbed. He sat thoughtful for a moment. - -“I must go,” he said, and stood up. They faced each other, a little at -a loss for parting words. - -“It’s been wonderful to talk to you,” she said. - -“It’s a great thing to have discovered you.” - -Another pause. “It’s a great thing for me,” she said lamely. - -“We’ll talk--many times,” he said. - -He wanted to call her “my dear,” and an absurd shyness prevented him. -And she was aware of that suppression. - -She stood up straight before him in the passage with a flush on her -cheeks and her eyes alight, and he wondered he had not thought her -beautiful from the beginning. “Good-bye for the time,” he said, and -smiled at her gravely and took and held her hand for a moment. - -“Good night,” she said, and hesitated and then opened the green door -for him and stood and watched him go up the Mews. - -At the top he turned and waved his hand to her before he disappeared. -“Good night,” she whispered and started, and looked about her as if she -feared that her unspoken thoughts had been audible. - -Father. Her father! - -So real fathers leave one aglow like this! - -He had left her tense as a violin string on which the bow rests -motionless. Now Daddy, who wasn’t her father, she would just have -hugged and kissed. - - - - -CHAPTER THE SECOND - -_How Bobby Stole a Lunatic_ - - -§ 1 - -A man may be a mental expert and yet fail to take the most obvious -hints in a detective investigation. The medical superintendent at -Cummerdown Hill had doubted for a moment whether Widgery was the name -of Sargon’s visitor. He had thought it was more like Goodchild. But -since there was no known Goodchild in the world of Christina Alberta, -neither she nor Devizes had troubled to scrutinize this momentary -uncertainty. Nor had she and Devizes asked themselves why Widgery -should have made a second visit to his cousin. Indeed, he had not done -so. It was a much younger man who had visited Sargon that Tuesday; he -had falsely represented himself as Sargon’s nephew and given the name -of “Robin Goodchild.” His real name was Robert Roothing, and he had -come for the sole purpose of getting Sargon out of the asylum as soon -as possible, because he could not endure the thought of his staying -there. - -Circumstances had conspired with a natural predisposition to give Bobby -a great horror of all restraint. His mother, a gentle dark creature, -the wife of a large blond negligent landowner, had died when Bobby was -twelve; and he had been entrusted to the care of a harsh, old-fashioned -aunt--to whom the cupboard seemed a proper place for discipline. When -she discovered that he was really distressed by it, she sought to break -his “cowardice” by giving him quite liberal doses of it--even when -he had committed no offence. He went to a school where discipline -was maintained by “keeping-in.” The war eliminated his father, who -died suddenly of over-excitement while in command of an anti-aircraft -gun during an air-raid, and it led Bobby through some tiresome -campaigning in Mesopotamia and the beleaguerment of Kut to an extremely -unsympathetic Turkish prison. In any case he would probably have been -a free-going easy creature, but now he had so passionate a hatred of -cages that he wanted to release even canaries. He disliked the iron -fences round the public parks and squares with a propagandist passion, -he wrote articles about them in _Wilkins’ Weekly_ and elsewhere -clamouring for their “liberation,” and he never went by train if he -could help it because of the claustrophobia that assailed him in the -compartment. He would ride a push-bike except for long distances, and -then he would borrow Billy’s motor bicycle. He did his best to prevent -his craving for the large and open from becoming too conspicuous or a -nuisance to other people, but Tessy and Billy understood about it and -did their best to make things easy for him. - -It was not only claustrophobia that Bobby had to fight against. He -carried on a secret internal conflict with a disinclination to act -upon most occasions, that he believed had developed in him as a result -of war experiences. Sometimes it seemed to him to be just indolence, -sometimes fastidiousness, sometimes sheer funk and cowardice. He -could not tell. He had a rankling memory of a case of cruelty he had -witnessed in the prisoners’ camp when he had stood by and done nothing. -He would wake up sometimes at three o’clock in the morning and say -to himself aloud, “I stood by and I did nothing. Oh God! Oh _God_! -Oh GOD!” And at times he would walk up and down his study repeating: -“_Act!_ You vegetable! you hiding cur! Out and act!” Meanwhile he -obeyed routines and did whatever came to his hand. As “Aunt Suzannah” -he was excellent, indefatigably considerate, lucid, really helpful. -_Wilkins’ Weekly_ was proud of him. He was the backbone of the paper. - -And now this affair of Sargon’s had twisted him up very badly between -his desire to free the little man, who had taken an extraordinary hold -upon his imagination and sympathy, and his sense of the immense forces -against which he would have to pit himself if he tried to give him any -help. It was only after a considerable struggle with himself that he -had called at the police station and the Gifford Street Workhouse. He -was afraid of awkward questions, afraid above all of being “detained.” -The workhouse was a detestable place with high walls and a paved court -and a general effect of sinister seclusion from the grubby street -outside. For the best part of a day after his Gifford Street visit he -hesitated whether he should do anything more. - -“Bobby’s got a grouch,” Susan told Tessy. “He’s stoopid. Just sits and -says ’E ’as to fink sumpfink over. What’s he fink fings over for? Said -I was to come downstairs again, there was a good girl.... Meant it.... -Said so.... Puss’d me ’way.... I do-o-n’t fink I lo-o-o-ove Bobby -’nymore.” - -Great distress. A storm of tears. Tessy was deeply sympathetic. - -But after tea Bobby was brighter and drew Susan her “Good night -picture” and came down and sat on her bed and talked her to sleep the -same as usual, and Tessy perceived that the worst of Bobby’s trouble -was over. - -At supper Bobby unfolded his plans. - -“I mean to go to Cummerdown Hill to-morrow,” he said compactly. - -“To see Sargon?” said Tessy understandingly. - -“If I can. But it won’t be visiting day. That’s Tuesday. I want to look -round.” - -Billy raised his eyebrows and helped himself to butter. - -“But--” said Tessy, and stopped short. - -“Yes?” said Bobby. - -“You won’t be able to see him. You don’t know the name he’s under.” - -“They’ll call him Mr. Sargon,” said Billy. - -“His name’s Preemby. He’s a laundryman. They told me at the workhouse. -His people _want him to be there_!” - -“I can’t stand the thought of it,” said Bobby after a brief silence. - -“Don’t follow,” said Billy. - -“That nice little thing being made into a lunatic. Like a little -blue-eyed bird he was. High walls. Great louting warders. Sargon, King -of Kings.... I’ve got to do something about it or I shall burst.” - -He looked at once weak and desperate. Tessy reflected. “You’d better -go,” she said. - -“But what good will that do?” said Billy, and was quelled by a glance -from Tessy. - -“If you can lend me the old motor bike and the side-car. You’re not -using it this week-end.” - -“You can take off the side-car,” said Billy. - -“I may want it,” said Bobby. - -“You don’t mean--!” said Billy. - -Bobby came as near to an explosion as he ever did. - -“Oh never mind _what_ I mean. I tell you I’m going down to Cummerdown -to have a look at the place. No doubt I’m a futile ass, Billy, but I -just can’t help myself going. The poor little beggar’s got no friends. -His own family’s helped to put him away. Families do. It’s an infernal -world. I’ve got to do something. If it’s only to shake ’em up. If I -stay here another day I shall start smacking Susan.” - -“Somebody ought to,” said Billy. - -“If he can only keep away for fourteen days clear----” - -“He’s free?” said Tessy. - -“He has to be certified all over again--anyhow,” said Bobby. - - -§ 2 - -Bobby discovered that the village of Cummerdown lies nearly two miles -away from the asylum, and does its best very successfully to have as -little to do with it as possible. It nestles among trees just off the -high-road to Ashford and Hastings, and has one cramped little inn that -gave him a bleak bedroom and accommodated his machine and side-car in -an open outhouse crowded with two carts and a Ford and populous with -hens. The day was still young, and after he had deposited the elderly -rucksac in which he had brought his “things” upstairs, he set out with -a walking-stick and an air of detached interest to reconnoitre the -asylum and develop his plans for the rescue of Sargon. That golden -autumn was still holding out; the pleasant lane he followed to the -high-road was patterned with green and yellow chestnut leaves and the -trees overhead were full of sunshine. It was a reassuring day. It -encouraged him. It took him with a kindly seriousness and made him feel -that rescuing people from lunatic asylums was the sort of work the sun -could shine upon and nature welcome. - -It had needed a great effort to get down from London. He had felt then -like a midget setting out to attack an embattled universe. Amidst the -Croydon traffic he had been half-minded to go back, but he had felt -that he could not face Tessy until he had been at least definitely -defeated. It was delightful to note an increased assurance within -himself as he drew nearer to his enterprise. He felt much more on -the scale of the powers he attacked. After all, what were laws and -regulations but just things patched up by men like himself? What were -prison walls but the slow work of shirking bricklayers and evasive -contractors? The attendants and custodians, the superintendents and -so forth he was setting out to circumvent, were all as fallible as -himself. And the thing was urgent and outrageous, this seizure of a -harmless little fantastic, this frightful imprisonment. It had to be -fought. The world would be intolerable unless such things were fought. - -Queer world it was! Such beauty on these tree-stems, such a glow, and -the delightfulness of rustling one’s feet through these leaves! But all -that was by the way; the real business of life was to fight evil things. - -He came out from between the trees and saw the wide downs opening out -before him and the blocked masses of the asylum with its broad bare -grounds and walls, an eyesore. This was his objective. In that place -somewhere was Sargon, and he had to be released. - -He seated himself on a convenient stile and inspected that heavy -architecture and tried to frame a plan. That white building in the -centre looked like a gaunt Georgian private house. That was probably -the nucleus of the whole place. Two men were visible in front of it -mowing the grass--patients perhaps. The wall and railings along the -road looked implacable. Two stern-looking lodges there were, no doubt -with a testy janitor lurking within, and there were iron gates--one -open. A van was coming out, a furniture dealer’s van. For a time -Bobby’s mind ran on the possibility of becoming a tradesman with -parcels or a crate to deliver.... Many difficulties that way.... - -“But why a frontal attack?” said Bobby with an effect of discovery. The -place fell away behind, down-hill. He would inspect the rear. If he -worked round by the open down to the right, he would probably get on to -slopes commanding a view of the asylum grounds. - -An hour later Bobby was sitting on a heap of flints by the side of a -minor road which ran over the rising ground behind the asylum. He -found the rear of the place much more hopeful and much more interesting -than the front. There were fields with a number of men working in them, -and at one place near the buildings a row of men seemed to be digging -a trench under the supervision of an attendant. There was quite a lot -of movement closer to the buildings, under a sort of open shed half -a dozen men seemed to be taking exercise by walking up and down. It -vexed Bobby to think that any one of these figures might be his Sargon. -If only he had the elementary common sense to bring a field-glass, he -reproached himself, he might have been able to make out his little -friend’s features. “No clearness of thought,” he whispered. “No -decision.” A lot of these people seemed to be going about very freely, -carrying gardening implements and so forth. One he noted, walking about -and gesticulating as if he talked to himself; he was manifestly a -patient and quite unattended. - -The wall bounding the asylum on this side had none of the austerity of -the front wall. It seemed to be an old estate wall; in several places -it was covered with ivy and here and there it was overhung with trees. -The ground dropped away to his right, there was a little stream which -ran out of the asylum grounds at the lowest corner; the corner was -shaded by trees and seemed to be left to the trees and undergrowth; the -stream ran under a low arch in the wall and went on down a widening -valley towards London. The seclusion and shade of this corner appealed -to Bobby very strongly. It seemed to him exactly the point at which -Sargon ought to be got out of the place. He decided that presently -he would stroll down and examine its possibilities as precisely as -possible. If one could get Sargon to come down there---- - -He found the details difficult. He meant to have a plan worked out -in every detail and to communicate it to Sargon on the next visiting -day, but it was very hard to fit this plan together. He did not know -when it would be most convenient for Sargon to attempt to slip away, -whether this was to be a daylight or a night affair. He saw before -him a great vista of inquiries to be made and suspicious people to be -faced. “Damn!” said Bobby, and for a time he was again for abandoning -the attempt. - -Why couldn’t one go in at these gates, boldly and overwhelmingly, and -say, “There is a sane man here and I have come to set him free?” A -superman might do that, or an archangel. How splendid it would be to be -a sort of Archangel-Knight-Errant, a great flaming presence of light -and winged power, righting wrongs, reproving oppressors, liberating -every kind of captive creature. Then one might do things. Bobby lapsed -into a childish day-dream. - -Presently he roused himself, stood up and went down towards the exit of -the stream. The wall struck him as quite climbable--even by a little -old gentleman. The stream came out meandering among pebbles through -a short tunnel. One could have got into the asylum grounds or out of -them quite easily over the wall by the ivy or through the culvert. He -resolved to come again at twilight and--just to satisfy himself about -his own pluck among other things--get into the asylum premises and walk -about a little. - -Yes. He would do that. - -He tried to imagine himself assisting Sargon over the wall. One could -get on the top of the wall and reach down to his hands. A cripple could -do it. The motor bicycle would have to be waiting up there in the lane. -And then? _Where would he take him?_ - -This was a new consideration. For a time Bobby’s mind was appalled and -paralyzed by the complexities of his enterprise. He had not thought of -taking him anywhere in particular. - -The days that intervened before visiting day seemed at once -interminable and frightfully swift. He had been to Dymchurch in the -summer with the Malmesburys, and liked the landlady of his lodgings -very much; he wired to her “Can I come with a relation not ill but -overworked for week or so you will remember me last summer Roothing the -Feathers Cummerdown” and had got a reply, “Glad to see you any time.” -So that was all right. But the rest of the plan failed very largely to -materialize. He made his nocturnal visit to the asylum grounds without -misadventure. - -The morning of visiting day found him with half a dozen plans, and they -all had gaps and none seemed much better or worse than the others. And -he had walked round the asylum grounds at various discreet distances, -by night and day just twenty-three times, not counting loops, returns -and visits to particular points of interest. Fortunately asylums are -much preoccupied with their internal affairs, and do not keep look-out -men upon the battlements. They do not reckon with rescuers from outside. - -Bobby made his final decision among these conflicting projects over -his breakfast bacon. With a resolute sang-froid and his nerves all -a-tingle, he set out for the asylum to see Sargon and begin the work of -rescue as he had thought it out. First he had to find out what freedom -of movement was permitted Sargon, when it might be possible for him to -get away to the corner by the culvert, and he had to arrange a time for -that meeting. Then he would have to provide also for alternative times -if Sargon failed to keep his first appointment. Bobby would be waiting -under the wall and the motor bicycle and side-car would be hidden among -the bushes up by the road. In a trice Sargon would be over the wall. -After that they could laugh at pursuit. Off they would go to Dymchurch, -and there, safe and untrackable, Sargon would keep indoors until the -fifteen days needed to make him legally a sane man again had passed. -And then Bobby could find out those relations of his and talk the -matter over with them, and get things on a proper footing. So Bobby -planned it out. - -Just at the lodge gates he decided upon an assumed name. He wasn’t -quite clear why he didn’t give his own name, but an assumed name seemed -to him to be more in the spirit of the adventure. - - -§ 3 - -When Sargon was informed that he was to be visited by Mr. Robin -Goodchild he was in a depressed mood. He betrayed no surprise at the -name. It seemed to him to be as good as any other name. It might be -the name of some intelligent inquirer or possibly even some precursor -of the release he still hoped for. His spirits rose. He submitted -cheerfully to a searching examination of his personal tidiness, and he -nodded acquiescently to a warning not to talk about “_every_ blessed -thing” he’d seen. - -His spirits rose still more when he saw the dark kindliness of Bobby’s -face. It was the one disciple who had ever seemed to believe. He held -out both his hands in a little storm of emotion. Whatever sort of -muddler Bobby might be to himself, to Sargon in that moment at least he -was strength and hope. - -The meeting occurred in the reception-room downstairs, for no one -from the outside world may ever penetrate to the wards and the -bleak realities of everyday asylum life. The reception-room had a -baize-covered table in the middle, a black horsehair sofa and numerous -chairs; it was totally devoid of small movables; there was an A B C -time-table and one or two illustrated weeklies on the table, and the -walls bore brown-spotted steel engravings of Prince Albert and Queen -Victoria in the Highlands and of Windsor Castle from the Thames. There -were three or four groups, each of two or three people, with their -heads together conversing in tactful undertones; there were several -women and one little girl; a tearful lady in profound mourning sat -apart by the empty fire-place and no doubt awaited a patient; two -attendants tried hard not to look as though they were listening as -intently as possible to the conversations going on about them. The -patients present were all in the sanest phase, “fit to be visited.” -There was no madness visible; at most only a little nervous oddity. -Bobby had been watching these other groups while he waited, and he had -been impressed by a certain quality of furtiveness in their behaviour. -The furtiveness he connected with the alertness of the attendants. -One affected to look out of the window, the other half sat at a -table holding an old _Graphic_, and ever and again there would be a -quick glance at this patient or that. It had not occurred to Bobby -that his talk to Sargon would be semi-public; it was a disconcerting -interference that would greatly hamper him in giving his instructions. - -Bobby saw at once that Sargon was very much thinner than when he had -taken his room in Midgard Street. He looked ill and worn, an effect -that was emphasized by the fact that he was badly shaven and wearing -ill-fitting clothes. His eyes seemed larger and sunken under his brows -and his forehead more definitely lined. Yet if he looked unhappier he -also looked more intelligent. He seemed more aware of the things about -him--less a man in a dream. - -“I have come to see if I can be of service to you,” said Bobby, holding -out his hands. “Your friends and disciples are anxious for your -welfare.” - -“You have come to see me,” he said, and glanced sideways at the -listening attendant and dropped his voice; “me--_Sargon_?” - -Bobby understood that note of doubt and it grieved him. “You, Sargon, -the King out of the Past.” - -“They would have me deny it,” whispered Sargon. - -Bobby raised his eyebrows and nodded his head as who should say, -“They’d do _anything_.” - -The little man’s manner changed. “How is one to know?” he said. “How is -one to know?” - -He sighed. “Nothing seems certain any more.” - -“Can we sit down and talk together?” said Bobby. “There is much to be -said between us.” - -Sargon glanced round. There were two chairs in a corner, and in that -corner they might be a little beyond the eavesdropper’s range. “I -cannot understand this madness,” said Sargon as they sat down. “I -cannot understand this Riddle that has been set me. Why does the Power, -why does God, permit men to be mad? When they are mad they are beyond -good and evil. What are they? Men still? What becomes of justice, what -becomes of righteousness--when men go mad?” His voice sank. His eyes -became furtive. “Dreadful things happen here,” he whispered. “Dreadful -things. Quite dreadful things.” - -He ceased. For a little while neither he nor Bobby said a word. - -“I want to get you out of this,” said Bobby. - -“Are my friends doing anything?” asked Sargon. “What is Christina -Alberta doing? Is she well?” - -“She is splendid,” he said haphazard. No doubt she was one of this -beastly family of Sargon’s that was content to leave him here. “I want -you to listen to me,” he said. - -But Sargon had things to tell. “Everyone in this place is always -thinking about what their friends outside are doing for them. The poor -souls come and talk to me. They know I am different from what they are. -They write letters, petitions. I tell them that when God releases me I -will bear them all in mind. Some mock at me. They have delusions. They -think they are kings or emperors or rich men or great discoverers, and -that the world has plotted against them.... Some are suspicious and -cruel.... Darkened souls.... Some have dreadful habits. You cannot -help but see.... Some are badly sunken--degraded--indescribably.... It -is very painful, very painful.” - -The blue eyes stared blankly at unpleasant memories. - -“There can be no doubt that I am Sargon,” he said abruptly, and looked -sharply at Bobby. - -“I call you by no other name,” said Bobby. - -The momentary acuteness faded again. “That man Preemby was unawakened. -He was asleep--scarcely dreaming of life. _But I have seen!_ I have -looked at the world from high places. And from dark places too.... -Sargon. Sargon is a different person.... But it is difficult.” - -He became silent. - -Bobby felt that they were getting nowhere. In his anticipations of this -conversation he had talked and Sargon had listened. And there had been -no one to overhear. But this was all unexpected. Anyhow, the plan had -to be told; Sargon had to be instructed in his part. He glanced warily -at the people nearest to them. “There are those among us,” he said -quietly and quickly, “who would set you free. I want to tell you--” On -the spur of the moment he attempted a code. “When I speak of a city in -Central Asia it will mean this place, the Asylum. Do you understand?” - -“This place--Central Asia. If I am Sargon.... Everything is possibly -something else. But we are still in England nevertheless.” - -“In reality. But I want to explain to you.” - -“Yes, yes. Explain.” - -“I shall speak of great discoveries in Central Asia. That will mean -this.” - -_Did_ he understand? - -“_Rescue!_” whispered Bobby in Sargon’s ear, and glanced at the -attendant and met his eye and was discomposed. - -“Tell me about the discoveries,” said Sargon after a little pause as -though he had not heard that whispered word. - -“It is a symbol for this place,” said Bobby. - -Sargon looked puzzled. The attendant was watching their faces now. -Perhaps he suspected already. Bobby flushed hotly and plunged abruptly -into an account of the discoveries of an amazing Russian he called -Bobinsky. Bobinsky had found a walled city with no way out. “Yes,” said -Sargon, interested. The attendant was now looking away. “Like this -place,” said Bobby, and more explicitly; “I _mean_ this place.” There -was a river ran through the city, the city of confinement, and went -out by the lower part. There it was the helper waited. The rescuers. -That was the place for them to wait. Did he understand? At that point -where the trees grew and the river went out through the wall. They they -waited. There they would wait until the captive king came to them. - -“It is a curious story,” said Sargon. “What captive king do you mean?” - -“It is meant for you.” - -“The river you speak of may be the Euphrates,” said Sargon. “I dream of -the Euphrates.” - -He had missed it all! He was out upon some woolgathering of his own. -Euphrates! What had the Euphrates to do with Central Asia? Or the -Asylum? - -“Bother!” said Bobby. “I say-- It is a smaller river I mean, a -streamlet--in the grounds here. Don’t you understand?” - -A tall sharp-faced woman in a hat of hard black straw came near them -and sat down. Bobby, as he talked, observed her out of the corner of -his eye. Was she the friend of a patient or what was she doing here? “I -speak in symbols,” said Bobby, still watching and thinking about this -woman. “This city is your prison.” He caught the woman exchanging a -glance of intelligence with the male attendant who had moved a couple -of yards up the room. They knew each other. Then she must be another -observer. “I want no other prison than this,” said Sargon, evidently -quite at cross-purposes. “One prison is enough.” - -“I don’t mean that,” said Bobby. “Can you walk about here pretty -freely?” - -“Not freely,” said Sargon. “No.” - -“If you could come out into the grounds. To-morrow.” - -The woman turned her long sharp foxy nose towards him, and stared at -him with rather stupid green-blue eyes. - -Bobby’s nerve was going to pieces altogether. He was always more -afraid of women than men. This prim sharp-nosed figure so manifestly -listening, and listening with a faint hostility to all he said, -completed his discomfiture. He tried to improvise a story of lost -and recovered cities that would be crystal clear to Sargon and yet -incomprehensible to the listener. But his invention faltered at the -difficult task. Where the river ran out of the city, he repeated; -he harped upon that idea; where there were trees and ivy, there the -faithful waited. When was the propitious hour for the Master to steal -away to them? Everything was prepared. When could it be? When might -it be? Fragmentally and mixed with many irrelevancies Bobby tried to -get the import of these suggestions over to his hearer. Now he would -be explicit; now as the fear of the listener returned, vague and -misleading. He did convey a sense of mystery and intention to Sargon, -that was plain; but he felt he conveyed nothing more. The time was -slipping by. Bobby could have throttled that infernal woman. More and -more did she become audience to his floundering efforts. He maundered -back to his starting point about Bobinsky. “There is no such person as -Bobinsky,” he threw in. - -“Then how could he explore cities?” asked Sargon, manifestly more and -more perplexed at Bobby’s rigmarole. - -“He is dead,” said Bobby. “He was just a mask.” - -“Some men are.” - -“Don’t mind about Bobinsky. Could you slip away to that corner? No, no. -She’s looking. Don’t answer. - -“Now _answer_.” - -“I don’t understand,” said Sargon. - -Bobby felt that he was only puzzling Sargon. But what else was to be -done? He could have kicked himself for not having brought a brief -statement of his plan written plainly on a little piece of paper that -he could have slipped into Sargon’s hand--or pocket. It would have been -so simple. He could have made a map and a drawing. Too late to do that -now. - -Despair came upon Bobby. Everything had gone wrong. He got up to go and -then sat down again to make another attempt. He felt murderous towards -that woman, towards himself, even towards slow-witted little Sargon. - -“It was very good of you to come and see me,” said Sargon. - -“_Why_ did you come?... - -“Do you think anything will be done about me?... - -“You will see Christina Alberta? When I saw you first I thought you -had things to tell me--important things. One lives on such hopes here. -Here--when there are no visitors--nothing happens, nothing pleasant. -And one is distressed.... - -“I am interested to hear of those cities in Central Asia of course, but -it is a little puzzling. Did you come specially about them? Or just to -see me? - -“You will come again. Even to come down here to this sitting-room is an -event....” - -Then in a swift whisper. “The food is frightful. So badly cooked. It -disagrees with me....” - -“That woman,” said Bobby as he went, “She has spoilt everything. I -can’t stand her.” - -“That woman?” said Sargon, and followed the direction of Bobby’s eyes. -“Poor soul,” he said. “She’s a deaf mute. She comes to see her brother. -The whole family is defective or insane.” - -A maddened Bobby returned towards his little inn. Should he chuck the -whole thing? Intolerable thought! He must make fresh plans--fresh plans -altogether. He must begin all over again. The little man was evidently -wretched. But it was going to be harder to get hold of him than Bobby -had thought. - -Bobby had no sleep that night. - - -§ 4 - -In the night just before daybreak suddenly Sargon woke up and -understood. He understood quite clearly what the young man had been -saying to him. He had said “Rescue!” Of course he had meant to say -“Escape”! That city in Central Asia was only a parable; he had said -as much. He had been describing a corner of the asylum grounds, -that corner where the stream ran out beyond the work-fields and the -shrubbery where the patients were supposed not to go. He had been -telling of friends who would wait outside. He had been trying to -arrange an hour when these friends would come there. And Sargon had -failed to understand. He sat up in bed very still. - -It was perfectly clear, but through a sort of dulness that came upon -him at times he had not grasped the drift of it at the time. The young -man had shown irritation, naturally enough. What would he do now? Would -he try again? Were the friends still waiting? - -Who was this young man? His name was unknown or forgotten. But he -believed. He had said, “I call you by no other name.” Sargon! And there -were these friends he spoke of, who waited outside for the king. They -must know. How could they know, if there was nothing to be known? After -all, perhaps it was no dream. Perhaps the world was awakening.... But -he had failed them. He had not understood.... They waited without.... - -How still everything was! A strange unusual stillness. It was rare for -this place to be so bereft of noise. It was dark and yet not altogether -dark. The ward was dimly lit by a blue-shaded light. The three nearer -beds were unoccupied, and beyond the man who tossed and muttered almost -incessantly lay for a little while at peace. The man who raved had died -three days ago; the man who gave sudden loud shouts had been taken away -to another ward. Through the open door one could see across the landing -into the little yellow-lit room, where Brand the ward attendant sat -with his arms crossed and chin on his chest and slept, his patience -cards spread out before him. He seemed to be alone and yet he could -sleep like that! Where could the other man be--the new attendant whose -name Sargon did not know? And yet he felt--some one had just gone out! - -The uncurtained windows showed the night outside, a darkness that -became translucent, a streak of very black cloud and five pale stars. -Across the lower edge of that oblong picture one could see indistinctly -a tracery of tree branches and the lumpish head of a young oak still -bearing its leaves, the trees along the first hedge. These outlines -grew distincter as he watched. It was like the slow development of a -photographic plate in the dark-room. The stars dissolved. Had there -been five? There were three; the other two had dissolved into the pale -invading light. - -Dared one venture on to the landing? If Brand awoke he could make some -natural excuse. He stood well with Brand. But the other fellow----? - -There was not a trace of him. Where had he gone?... - -_Do it now!_--wisest of maxims. - -Very swiftly Sargon slipped out of bed and put on his dressing-gown and -slippers. Hush! _What was that?_... Only some one snoring. Nothing -more. He went out and stood on the landing. Brand slept on like a log. - -The stone staircase was lit and empty and from the open door to the -left downstairs came the harsh breathing of a sleeper. All the world -seemed asleep for once, except Sargon and those friendly watchers -outside the walls. Far away there were sounds of bawling and raving, -but these were stifled by distance and an intervening door. They merely -made the nearer silence more perceptible. - -Something stirred, a little clicking sound that sent Sargon’s heart -racing. Then a resonant blow. A second blow. It was nothing; it was the -clock downstairs striking six. - -Very quietly but very resolutely he walked downstairs. An intuition, an -instinct impelled him. He felt and peered at the door and behold! it -was ajar! Unbolted! Unlocked! Brand’s colleague was abroad upon some -errand of his own. The cold air of freedom blew upon Sargon’s face. - -The door opened and closed softly and Sargon stood upon the doorstep of -the left wing of the asylum, facing the dim world of a November dawn. - -It was dark but it was clear, a world of ebony outlines and colourless -forms. Everything looked as if it had just been wiped over with a -wet rag. It was cold, but it was cold without any of the hate and -bitterness of wind. - -He crossed the gravel drive and came to a stop and stood looking -about him. The heavy building of the left wing rose above him, a vast -bulk that went up into the paler darkness of the sky. It receded in -perspective and the central block beyond looked like the ghost of a -house. Here and there were orange-lit windows and others fainter lit -by some remote reflected light. In the lodge to the left of the gates -there was also a light. For where there is madness there is never -perfect sleep. - -But the asylum was as near complete silence that morning as an asylum -can ever be. - -He looked and listened. Not a footfall. It would not do to be found -here by that other attendant.... - -But the man was snugly away somewhere. No one would loiter here in this -chill air. - -What was it Sargon had to remember? - -The friends and believers were waiting for him. They were waiting now. -Where the river ran out of the city wall; that was to say where the -little streamlet ran out of the grounds. That would be this way--to the -left, where the fields dropped down-hill. He stepped on to the grass, -for his feet made loud sounds on the gravel. The grass hissed crisply. -It was heavy with white frost and his footmarks made black blots in the -wet silvery grey. - -He walked past and away from the ponderous dark mass of the asylum into -the open, colder air of freedom. He unlatched and went through the -small iron gate in the iron fencing that separated the trim grass plots -of the front from the cabbage field. It complained a little on its -hinge and he opened and closed it very carefully. He struck across the -field. The path ran before him into a mist. It came out of the mist to -his feet and vanished behind him. It was as if it went past him while -he marked time. He could not remember whither the path ran, nor how it -lay with regard to the corner he sought. But every moment things grew -clearer. - -Every moment things grew clearer. There had been something dark and -brooding in the sky that hung over him and seemed to watch him. He had -done his best to ignore the vague presence, because he was afraid of -his own imagination. But suddenly he saw plainly that it was just the -tops of trees showing above the mist. That must be the line of trees -along the hedge parallel to the asylum front. He must go through these -if he wanted to go down-hill. He left the path and made his way slowly -along a frozen ridge of dug earth. He skirted long rows of stalky -cabbages, black and shrivelled and unkempt they looked like Cossack -sentinels afoot. They all leant towards him as though they listened to -the sound of him. - -As he drew near the hedge and the trees he heard a sound like the feet -of an army of midgets. It was the drip, drip of moisture from the trees. - -Far away behind him and quite invisible to him a motor car scurried -along the high-road. - -He had some difficulty in finding a way through the hedge and a bramble -scratched his ankle. He told himself there was no hurry; the friends -waited. Beyond the hedge the ground went down-hill and the mist grew -whiter and thicker. The daylight was strong enough now to show the mist -dead-white. It veiled the stream altogether. - -He walked slowly. He had no sense of being pursued. Brand would not go -into the ward for an hour yet; he might not miss him for a long time.... - -What a wonderful thing, thought Sargon, is daybreak, and how little -one sees of it! Every day begins with this miraculous drama and we -sleep through it as though it did not concern us and rouse ourselves -only for the trite day. A little while ago the world had been an inky -monochrome and now it was touched with colour. The sky was blue. All -the stars had gone--but no! not all. One still shone, a large pale -star, the star of Sargon. And the sky about it was flushed with a faint -increasing pinkiness. That must be the east and that star must be the -morning star, hanging above the outhouse chimneys. Those chimneys were -very distinct. The butt end of the asylum which had been a black and -shapeless monster a little while ago, had now become a dark purple -shape outlined with an exquisite clearness, eaves and ridges and -chimneys and creasings and window-frames. Four windows shone a fading -orange and two of them suddenly blinked and vanished. - -Would anyone look out of a window there and see him? - -It did not matter. He would go on down towards the stream. This -friendly mist would hide him. - -It was wonderful to be in this white mist and yet not in it. It was -always a little way from him. And nevertheless it wetted him. How crisp -the frosted ground was, but if one kicked through the surface, it was -soft. - -Overhead the blueness increased and there was now a rippled patch of -pink cloud. - -He went deeper and deeper into the soft mist. Presently he was walking -on long wet shrivelled grass. When he turned presently to look back at -the asylum it had altogether disappeared. - -_What was that?_ Was it something talking or was it the beating heart -of some busy elfin machine? Listen! Peer! Think! - -It was the stream. - -Now everything was plain and easy. - -He walked beside the stream. Near at hand trees became visible, -attendant trees with mist about their waists, white-clad sentinel -trees. The dry grass was ranker here. And what was this, like a denser -lower mist within the mist? This was the wall. Beyond that wall, almost -within shouting distance now, the friends and believers would be -waiting. How discreet they were! Not a murmur, not a footfall. - -For a long time Sargon stood motionless beside the culvert beneath the -wall. At last he roused himself and by a great effort and with the help -of the ivy he scrambled to the top of the wall. - -No one waited. Some dim four-footed thing bolted from the frost-bitten -weeds below, and then there was silence. There was no sign of watchers -nor helpers. - -No matter. If it was God’s will they would come. - -He sat very still. He did not feel deserted nor alone. He was not in -the least dismayed. He felt that the Power who had called him into -being was all about him. - -Slowly, steadily the light grew brighter. A little cloud like a -floating feather caught fire very suddenly and then another. A great -beam of light, like the beam of a searchlight, only very much broader, -appeared slanting to the north. Then above a whaleback of distant -downland came a knife-edge of dazzling light, an effulgence, like a -curved knife, like a cap, like a dome, a quivering blazing fire-birth. -And then torn clear of the hill and round and red the November sun had -risen. - - -§ 5 - -It was full daylight and the mist had dissolved away. The roofs of -the asylum buildings were now visible over the crest, divested of all -magic, bleak and commonplace. From some point in that direction a dog -was barking. - -It was strange that there should be no one here. That young man whose -name he had never known, had made it very plain that there were friends -in waiting here. Perhaps they had gone away and would come back -presently. - -Still it did not matter now very much. At any rate he had seen a -sunrise of almost incredible beauty. How good a thing the sun was! The -thing of all visible things that was most like God. - -Perhaps there were no helpers here at all. Perhaps he had -misunderstood. He was stupid he knew. He misunderstood more and more. -Perhaps presently keepers would come in search of him and take him back -to the asylum. It might be so that things were decreed. He would not -let it distress him. Life was full of trials and disappointments. He -was feeling now very cold throughout his substance and tired so that -all his energy was gone. With a start he became aware that there was a -man standing up the slope that overlooked the asylum grounds. He felt a -thrill of renewed vitality. This man was standing quite still looking -down at the asylum. It might be one of the staff looking for him. Or -one of the promised helpers. One of the promised helpers? - -Sargon was not so calm and apathetic as he had supposed. He was -atremble from head to foot. He was not shivering with cold but -trembling with excitement. He felt he must end this doubt one way or -the other. Could he catch this man’s eye? He waved a hand. Then he drew -a dirty little pocket-handkerchief from his dressing-gown pocket and -began to wave it. Now! Now it seemed the man was looking straight down -at Sargon. - -He was moving towards Sargon slowly, as if incredulous. Then he was -signalling and running. - -Sargon sat quite still. He knew all along they would come for him. - -It was Bobby, close at hand now and crying out, “Sargon! It is you! -Sargon!” Sargon did not wait for him. He turned about and scrambled and -dropped off the wall. They clasped hands. “You have come to fetch me?” - -“I was in despair. I didn’t dream you understood me. I’m all amazed.... -Let me think; what are we to do? This is splendid. My motor bicycle is -in the inn. Nuisance that. Yes, come along. I must hide you somewhere -and fetch it. Then we will get away. I didn’t think you’d have no -clothes. Clothes? Won’t show much. Cold? May be cold. I’ll get a rug. -There’s a rug in the side-car.” - -He led the way back up the slope, glancing ever and again at the asylum -fields. Sargon trotted beside him, calmly confident in God and Bobby, -with the limitless docility of one who trusts his servant. - - -§ 6 - -Bobby’s mind was fresh and bright that morning. He had wandered out to -the asylum simply because he could lie in bed in a fever of regrets no -longer. His extreme luck in encountering Sargon had restored all his -confidence in himself and in the propitiousness of things. He made his -plans quickly and with decision. It would be impossible to take Sargon -back to the inn and give him coffee. So soon as he was missed they -would surely go to the village. And every one would note this queer -little figure with its dressing-gown and slippers and scarred ankles. -He must get the little man into hiding somewhere close at hand. In that -small beech-wood just over the next crest. (Pity he was so scantily -clad!) Then the motor bicycle must be fetched as quickly as possible. - -Sargon was absolutely trustful and obedient. “It is cold I know,” said -Bobby, “but unavoidable. I wish there were not so many wet dead leaves.” - -“Only be quick and fetch help,” said Sargon. - -“Don’t stir from here,” said Bobby. - -It was not the most perfect hiding-place in the world, a ditch, a -clump of holly on the edge of a bare beech-wood, but it was all that -downland was likely to provide. “So long,” said Bobby and set off at -a smart trot for the inn and the motor bicycle. He arrived flushed, -dishevelled, and out of breath and found the inn suspicious and -reluctant when he announced that he wanted his bill instantly, refused -any breakfast but a cup of tea and a chunk of bread and butter, and -set about packing his little roll. There seemed endless things to -do, taking an interminable time. To cap a score of irritating delays -the inn was short of change and had to send out to the village shop. -Billy’s motor bicycle, always a temperamental creature, gave great -trouble with its kick starter. And meanwhile Sargon was shivering -amidst the mud and dead leaves under the dripping trees or worse, being -recaptured and led back into captivity. - -It was nearly eight before Bobby came back along the cart-track into -sight of the little beech-wood, and his heart jumped when he saw two -heavy-looking men advancing towards him. He knew them for asylum men -at once; they had the unmistakable flavour of subaltern authority -that distinguishes prison warders, ex-policemen, time-keepers, and the -keepers of the insane. As he throbbed near them they came into the -middle of the road and made signs for him to stop. “Hell!” said Bobby, -and pulled up. - -They came alongside and without evident hostility. - -“Excuse me, sir,” said one--and Bobby felt better. - -“That large place you see there, sir, is Cummerdown Asylum. Perhaps you -know it, sir?” - -“No. _Which_ is the asylum? All of it?” Bobby felt he was being really -clever and his spirits rose. - -“Yesir.” - -“Damn great place!” said Bobby. - -“We’ve got one of our inmates astray this morning. Harmless little man, -he is, and we ventured to stop you and ask you if you’ve seen him.” - -Bobby had an inspiration. “I believe I have. Was he in a sort of brown -robe and slippers with nothing on his head?” - -“That’s ’im, sir. Where did you see him?” - -Bobby turned round and pointed in the direction from which he had -come. “He was making off along the edge of a field,” he said. “I saw -him not--oh, not five minutes ago. Mile, or a bit more, away from -here. Running he was. Along a hedge to the right--left I mean--near a -chestnut plantation.” - -“That’s ’im all right, Jim. _Where_ did you say, sir?” - -Bobby’s brilliance increased. “If one of you will sit behind me and -the other get into this contraption--bit of a load, but we can manage -it--I’ll run you back to the very place. Right away.” And without more -ado he set about turning round. “That’s a real help, sir,” said Jim. -“Don’t mention it,” said Bobby. - -Bobby was now at the top of his form. He loaded them in with helpful -words--even the smaller of the two was a tight fit for the side-car and -the other sat like a sack on the luggage carrier--he took them back -a mile and a half until he found the suitable hedge by the chestnut -tree. He unloaded them carefully, received their hearty but hasty -thanks with a generous gesture and sent them off at a smart trot across -the fields. “He can’t have a mile’s start,” he said. “And he wasn’t -going particularly fast. Sort of limping.” - -“That’s ’im,” said Jim. - -Bobby kissed his hand to their retreating backs. “That’s _you_,” said -Bobby. “God help you both and cleanse your hearts. And now for Sargon.” - -He buzzed back to the place where he had left Sargon, turned his -machine round again and then looked towards the corner of the wood by -the holly clump where the little man ought to have been waiting. But -there was no sign of a peeping head. “Queer!” said Bobby, and ran up to -the place where he had left Sargon crouching in the ditch. Not a sign -was there of him. Bobby looked about him, baffled and frightened. After -all, after everything, could things go wrong now? - -“Sargon,” he called, and then louder, “Sargon!” - -Not a sound, not a rustle came in reply. - -“He’s hidden! Can he have crawled away and fainted? Exhausted perhaps!” - -Fear touched Bobby with a chilly finger. Had he mistaken the place -perhaps? Had Sargon strayed away in spite of his promise, or crept -back numbed and wretched to the warmth and shelter of the asylum? -Bobby followed the ditch down to the corner of the wood, and beyond -the corner in the ditch to the right he suddenly beheld a little old -woman, a little old woman sitting bunched in a heap on a litter of -dry straw and fast asleep. She was wearing a battered black straw hat -adorned with a broken black feather, a small black jacket bodice; a -sack was drawn over her feet and a second sack thrown shawlwise over -her shoulders. She was so crumpled up her face was hidden, all except -one bright red ear, and behind her on the bank lay two large stakes -tied in the form of a cross. To Bobby she was the most astonishing of -apparitions. It was disconcerting enough to discover Sargon gone. It -was still more amazing to find him so oddly replaced. - -Bobby stood hesitating for the better part of a minute. Should he wake -the old thing up and ask her about Sargon, or should he steal away? -Nothing, he decided, would be lost by asking. - -He went close up to her and coughed. “Excuse me, Madam,” he said. - -The sleeper did not awake. - -Bobby rustled among the leaves, coughed louder, and asked to be excused -again. The sleeper muttered a choking snore, woke with a start, looked -up, and revealed the face of Sargon. He stared at Bobby without -recognition for a moment and then gave way to an enormous yawn. While -he yawned, his blue eyes gathered intelligence and understanding. “I -was so cold,” he said. “I took these things from the scarecrow. And the -straw was nice and dry to sit on. Shall we put it all back?” - -“Oh, glorious idea!” cried Bobby, with all his spirits restored. “It -makes an honest woman of you. Can you walk in that sack? No, we haven’t -time to put it back. Shake it down off your legs and bring it with you. -The side-car isn’t two hundred yards away. You’ll be able to put it on -again then. This is magnificent! This is wonderful! Certainly we won’t -put it back. Off we’ll go, and when we’ve a good ten miles between us -and the asylum we’ll stop and get some hot coffee and something to eat.” - -“Hot coffee!” said Sargon, brightening visibly. “And bacon and eggs?” - -“Hot coffee and bacon and eggs,” said Bobby. - -“The coffee there is--_beastly_,” said Sargon. - -Bobby helped Sargon into the side-car and raised the hood over him, -erected the wind-screen, and so packed him away. He became a quite -passable aunt, dimly seen. And in another minute Bobby had kicked the -engine into an impatient fuss and was in the saddle. - -He felt himself now the cleverest fellow that ever stole a lunatic. Not -that it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to get a lunatic away. -If you knew how.... They quivered and jolted along the little minor -road and so on to the smooth main highway to Ashford and Folkestone. -The accelerator was urged to do its best. “Good-bye, Cummerdown,” sang -Bobby. “Cummerdown Hill, good-bye!” - -The little old motor bike was going beautifully. - - -§ 7 - -They got their breakfast at an inn near a Post Office a mile or so -beyond Offham. Bobby left Sargon dozing in the side-car and went -to send a telegram to Dymchurch announcing his coming. There was -some delay in the Post Office, as the post-mistress had mislaid her -spectacles. Bobby returned to find the breakfast nearly ready and to -assist Sargon out of his sack and into the little room of the inn. -The landlord was a short, stout man, with a grave observant face. He -watched this emergence of Sargon and his progress to a chair behind the -little white tablecloth, with silent wonder. Then for a time he hid. -Then he came back into the little room where the table was set. For -some moments he stood regarding Sargon. “Umph!” he said at last and -turned about and went slowly into his kitchen where some sort of wife -seemed to be cooking things. “’E’s a rummun”; Bobby heard him remark, -and so was prepared for discussion. - -The ham and eggs and coffee were served and received with eagerness. -The landlord stood over them scrutinizing their reception of his -provisions. “Hain’t ’ad no breakfast, then?” he said. - -“Having it now,” said Bobby, helping himself to mustard. - -“Come far?” said the landlord after a thoughtful pause. - -“Fairly,” said Bobby with judgment. - -“Going far?” the landlord tried. - -“So-so,” said Bobby. - -The landlord rallied his forces for a great effort. “We get some rummy -customers here at times,” he said. - -“You must attract them,” said Bobby. - -The landlord could make nothing of that. He turned about and said -“Umph”--meaningly. - -“Umph,” said Bobby, just saturating it with meaning. - -The landlord made a cunning attempt as they were departing. “Hope you -enjoyed your breakfast,” he said. “I don’t know rightly whether it’s a -lady or a gentleman you got with you--still----” - -Bobby’s mercurial temperament was far too high just then. “It’s -hermaphrodite,” he said in a confidential whisper and left the landlord -with that. - -But when they had gone a few miles further he told Sargon he had -decided to buy him some socks and a jacket and trousers at the next -shop they saw. “As it is,” he said, “you are ambiguous. And then we’ll -put that hat and jacket and the sacking by the wayside for anyone who -wants to use them. And I’ll have to send another telegram. I made a -mistake.” - -Bobby’s mental state became more febrile as the day wore on. He -developed a wonderfully circumstantial lie about a cottage and a -fire and how his friend had only escaped with just a few articles of -clothing hastily put on. “Everything else,” said Bobby, “practically -incinerated.” They were going down to take refuge with a variable -relation, a brother, an uncle, a maiden aunt. As the day progressed -the circumstances of the fire became richer and more remarkable and -the particulars of the escape more definitely thrilling. Bobby told -such lies with great sincerity and gravity; they were a form of -freedom--from reality. - -Sargon himself said very little. For him this adventure was a severer -endurance test than Bobby realized at the time. For the most part he -was either cramped up and boxed in under the hood and wind-screen and -being jolted and jumped along the hard high-road, or he was hastily -changing some garment by the roadside, or he was sitting still in the -side-car taking refreshment and being lucidly but perplexingly, and -usually quite unnecessarily, explained. - - -§ 8 - -Mrs. Plumer, of Maresett Cottage, Dymchurch, was an anxious widow -woman. She had a kind, serviceable heart, but it was troubled about -many things. She saved and eked out almost too much. She let most of -her rooms in the summer and some even in the winter, but she hated to -think of the things careless lodgers might do to her furniture. She -liked everything to be in order and lodgers better looking and better -behaved than Mrs. Pringle’s lodgers or Mrs. Mackinder’s lodgers. She -had taken a fancy to Bobby because he had fitted in nicely when she had -had only one room to spare, and because he had shaved in cold water -instead of calling down as every other man lodger did--there was no -bell in that room--for hot. Also he talked agreeably when he came in -and out and didn’t want more at meals. - -She was very pleased when he wrote to take her downstairs living-room -and two bedrooms for himself and a friend for a fortnight. There were -few people in Dymchurch who got “lets” in November. They might come -“any time” after Tuesday. - -She told Mrs. Pringle and Mrs. Mackinder that she was expecting two -young gentlemen, and left them to suppose that her guests might stay on -indefinitely. - -On Wednesday she was excited and rather perplexed by a series of -telegrams from Bobby. The first said plainly and distinctly: “_Arriving -with aunt about four Roothing._” That disappointed her. She would have -infinitely preferred two gentlemen. - -But within an hour came another wire and this said: “_Error in telegram -not aunt uncle sorry Roothing._” - -Now what was one to make of _that_? - -Presently the child from the Post Office was back again. “_Uncle -catching cold fire hot-water bottles whisky._” - -The next sensational telegram announced a delay. “_Tyre trouble not so -soon later Roothing._” - -Then came: “_Sixish almost certain good fire please Roothing._” - -“It’s very good of him,” said Mrs. Plumer “to keep me informed like -this. But I hope the old gentleman won’t be fussy.” - -The fire in the downstairs sitting-room was burning brightly at six, -there was a kettle on the hob, there were not only tea-things, but -whisky, sugar, glasses, and a lemon on the table and a hot-water bottle -in both the beds upstairs when the fugitives arrived. Mrs. Plumer’s -first feelings at the sight of Sargon were feelings of disappointment. -She had allowed her mind to run away with the idea of a warm, -comfortable uncle with at most a whisky-drinking cold, an uncle who -would be, if not absolutely golden, at least gilt-edged. She had, if -anything, exaggerated her memories of Mr. Roothing’s geniality. So soon -as she held open her door at the roar and toot of the motor bicycle, -she saw that her anticipations would have to be modified again. Things -were rather indistinct in the deepening twilight, but she could see -that Bobby wasn’t wearing the full and proper leather costume with -gauntlets and goggles complete, that a real young gentleman would have -worn on such an occasion and which Mrs. Pringle and Mrs. Mackinder -would have respected, and that the shape he was extracting from the -side-car was not the shape of a properly-expanded uncle. It looked much -more like a large hen taken out of a small basket on market day. - -As Sargon came into the light of the living-room, Mrs. Plumer’s -disillusionment deepened and decreased. She had rarely seen so strange -and weather-beaten an outcast. His blue eyes stared pitifully out of a -pale face; his hair, beneath an unsuitable black felt hat, was greatly -disordered. He was clad chiefly in an excessive pair of trousers -which he clutched nervously to keep up; very full they were with his -dressing-gown tails; his too ample white socks fell like gaiters -over his old felt slippers and betrayed his distressful ankles. He -looked afraid. He stared at her almost as though he anticipated an -unfriendly reaction. And Bobby, too, standing beside him, looked rough -and travel-worn and eventful, and not at all the self-effacing young -gentleman she had remembered. - -When Bobby saw the swift play of Mrs. Plumer’s expression he realized -that their foothold in this pleasant, restful, firelit apartment was -precarious. Happily a reserve lie he had thought of, but not hitherto -used, came aptly to his mind. - -“Isn’t it a shame!” he said. “They went off with his clothes. Even his -socks.” - -“They seem to have,” said Mrs. Plumer, “whoever they were.” - -“Pure hold-up. This side of Ashford. My big bag too.” - -“And where did the gentleman get the clothes he’s wearing?” she asked. -Her tone was unpleasantly sceptical. - -“They exchanged. I’d gone back along the road to see if I could see -anything of the tyre-pump I’d dropped, never thinking anything of the -sort was possible on an English high-road. (Come and sit by the fire, -uncle.) And when I came back they’d gone and there he was--as you see -him. Imagine my astonishment!” - -“And you never sent a telegram about it!” said Mrs. Plumer. - -“Too near home. I’d have got here first, anyhow. Well, we’ve had -adventures enough to-day, anyhow. I’ve never known such a journey. -Thank heaven, we’ve had our tea. I think the best place for uncle is -bed--until we can arrange some clothes for him. What do you think, Mrs. -Plumer?” - -“After he’s had a good wash,” said Mrs. Plumer. She was still doubtful, -but a sort of kindliness was struggling to the surface. “Weren’t you -afraid when they jumped out on you, sir!” She asked Sargon directly. -His blue eyes sought Bobby’s for instructions. - -“It was a great shock to him,” said Bobby, “a great shock. He’s hardly -got over it yet.” - -“Hardly got over it yet,” said Sargon in confirmation. - -“Took all your clothes off, they did. It’s shameful,” said Mrs. Plumer. -“And you with a cold coming on.” - -“We’ll get him to bed. Of course, if you’ve got anything for us to -eat we might have it first here. Perhaps just a bit of toasted cheese -or Welsh Rarebit, or something of that sort, and a good hot grog. Eh, -uncle?” - -“Don’t want much to eat,” said Sargon. “No.” - -“I haven’t forgotten that Welsh Rarebit you made for me, Mrs. Plumer, -after I got caught in the rain on the way from Hythe.” - -“Well, I daresay I could get you a Welsh Rarebit,” said Mrs. Plumer, -softening visibly. - -“Famous,” said Bobby. “Make a new man of him. And meanwhile I’ll run -the old bike round to the shed. If I may put it in the shed? You’ll be -all right here, uncle?” - -“It’s safe?” - -“Every one’s safe with Mrs. Plumer,” said Bobby, and held the door open -for her to precede him out of the room. - -“I’ll tell you about him to-morrow morning,” he said to her -confidentially in the passage. “He’s a wonderful man.” - -“He’s all right?” asked Mrs. Plumer. - -“Right as can be.” - -“He looks that distraught!” - -“He’s a poet,” said Bobby, “besides playing on the violin,” and so -satisfied her completely. - -But he did not feel that he had brought the wonderful day to a -completely successful end until he had got Sargon washed and brushed -and tucked up cosily in Mrs. Plumer’s bright little best bedroom. “Now -we’re anchored,” he said. He went into his own room and sat down for a -time to invent things about his uncle in case Mrs. Plumer was desirous -of more explicit information when he went downstairs. He decided to -say “He’s eccentric,” in an impressive, elucidatory way. “And very -shy.” His uncle, he would explain, was suffering from overwork, due to -writing an heroic poem about the Prince of Wales’ journey round the -world. He wanted a complete rest. And sea air. The more he stayed in -bed and indoors the better. He filled in a few useful details of this -story, sat for a little while twiddling the toes of his boots, and -then got up and went downstairs. He felt sure he could carry it off -all right with Mrs. Plumer. He found her waiting for him. The chief -difficulty he encountered was her conviction that the police ought to -be told of the highway robbery this side of Ashford at once. - -“H’m,” said Bobby and for a moment he was at a loss. Then he decided. -“I’ve done that already,” he said. - -“But when?” - -“I telephoned from an Automobile Association box. To the Ashford -police. It will be in their district you know. Not in Romney Marsh. -Sharp fellows, the Ashford police. I had to describe the lost clothes -and everything. They don’t let much get by them.” - -She took it beautifully. After that everything was easy. - - -§ 9 - -The next morning found Sargon developing an evil cold in his throat -and chest. His chest was painful and he was feverish, red-cheeked, -bright-eyed, and short of breath. Bobby did not care to consult a -doctor. He believed that all doctors constituted a league for the -re-incarceration of escaped lunatics. He imagined secret notices about -escapes being circulated throughout the profession. He motored to Hythe -and got ammoniated quinine, several sorts of voice jujube, two iodine -preparations for the chest, and suchlike trifles that the chemist -recommended. When he returned about midday the patient looked better -and seemed in less pain. After Bobby had administered quinine and -rubbed his chest and made a generally curative fuss, he was able and -disposed to talk. - -“The pillow all right?” said Bobby. - -“Perfect.” - -“You ought to doze for a bit now.” - -“Yes.” - -Sargon thought. “I shall not have to go back to that Place again?” - -“I hope not.” - -The flushed face became very earnest. “Promise me not. Promise me not. -I couldn’t endure it.” - -“No need to be anxious,” said Bobby. “Here, you are quite safe.” - -“And there will be no need to get into that side-car again?” - -“None.” - -“Never?” - -“No.” - -“It bumped--horribly.... Where is Christina Alberta?” - -Bobby did not answer for a moment or so. - -“Perhaps I ought to explain. I do not know who Christina Alberta is. I -took you out of the asylum because I do not believe you are mad. But I -know nothing of your family. I know nothing about your circumstances at -all. I just couldn’t bear the thought of you in an asylum.” - -Sargon lay in silence for a little while with his blue eyes on Bobby’s -face. “You were sorry for me?” - -“I liked you from the very first moment I saw you in Midgard Street.” - -“_Liked_ me? But you believed I was Sargon, King of Kings?” - -“Practically,” said Bobby. - -“You didn’t. Neither, I suppose, did I.” - -The vague blue eyes left Bobby’s face and stared out of the window at -the sky. “I have been very much confused in my mind,” said Sargon. -“Even now I am not clear. But I realize I am confused. Christina -Alberta is my daughter. The Princess Royal I called her. In Sumeria. -She is a very dear, bold girl. She is all I have. I left her and came -away from her, and I must have distressed her greatly.” - -“Then she may not know where you have been?” - -“She may be looking for me.” - -“Where is she?” - -“I have been trying to remember. It was in a studio somewhere--with -peculiar pictures. I never liked those pictures. A studio in a Mew. It -had a name but I cannot remember its name. It is stupid of me. Probably -Christina Alberta is there with her friends--still wondering what has -become of me.” - -“At the--at the _Place_, they told me your name was Preemby.” - -“Albert Edward Preemby.... I wonder.” - -He lay reflecting for a time. “I remember that for a long time I -thought I was Albert Edward Preemby, a small creature, a little man -living a mean life in a laundry. A laundry with large blue vans. The -swastika. You cannot imagine what a small, insignificant life it was -that this Preemby led. And then suddenly I thought I could not possibly -be Preemby and also an immortal soul. Either there was no Preemby, I -thought, or there was no God. There could not possibly be both. It -perplexed and worried me very much. Because there I was--Preemby. I am -not good at thinking--all my thinking goes off into a kind of dreaming. -And then when there came evidence that seemed satisfactory--perhaps -I jumped at what I was told. But Sargon must have been a great king, -a very great king, and I am small and weak and not very intelligent. -When the keepers and attendants bullied me and ill-treated me I did not -behave as a great king should have behaved, and when I saw them doing -evil things to other--other patients, I did not interfere. Yet all the -time I think I am something different from the Albert Edward Preemby -I used to be, something more and something better. But it leaves me -confused to think who I am, and I am very tired. Perhaps, when I have -rested a day or two, I may be better able to think about these things.” - -The faded voice died away. The blue eyes remained staring tranquilly at -the sky. - -Bobby said nothing for a little while. Then he remarked, “I have seen -men ill-treated.” - -And then; “and I am not so slight as you are.” - -He said no more. It did not seem as though Sargon had heard him. Bobby -stood up. - -“You must rest. You are perfectly safe here. If we can remain unnoted -here for two weeks then it will be impossible ever to send you back to -that place again. Are you comfortable?” - -“It is a beautiful bed,” said Sargon. - -But beautiful though the bed was it was not sufficient to arrest -the trouble in Sargon’s aching chest. He seemed very exhausted that -evening. In the night he began coughing; he coughed so distressingly -that Bobby went in to him. In the morning he was spiritless and did -not want to eat. Bobby sat in the room downstairs working at the pile -of Aunt Suzannah correspondence that Billy had sent on to him. He was -half-minded to appeal to Tessy to come down and help with the nursing, -but there was no bedroom available for her. Mrs. Plumer pressed for -a doctor and he put her off. Finally, on her own responsibility, she -brought in a young man who was just starting a practice in the place. -Bobby had a terrifying interview, but the young doctor betrayed no -suspicions. On the whole, he was reassuring. There was congestion of -the lungs but nothing worse. Sargon must keep very warm and take this -and that. No urgent need for a nurse. Keep him warm and give him his -medicine. - -Late in the evening Bobby went up to say good night and found Sargon -better and more talkative. - -“I have been thinking of Christina Alberta and I should like to see -her. I would like to see her and tell her things I have been thinking -about her. I have been thinking out all sorts of curious things. -Perhaps I am not so much to her as she may think. But chiefly I want to -talk to her about a young man I dislike. What was he called? When I was -last at Lonsdale Mews, she danced with him.” - -“Lonsdale Mews!” - -“Yes, yes, of course. I had forgotten. Eight Lonsdale Mews, Lonsdale -Road, Chelsea. But my mind is very confused and I do not know what I -should say to her even if she came.” - -Bobby wrote down the address forthwith. - -“And this Christina Alberta is all you have?” he asked. - -“All I have. - -“Twenty. Quite a child really. I ought never to have left her. But -there came a sort of wonder upon me--As though the world was opening. -It made everything else seem very trivial.” - - -§ 10 - -“_There came a sort of wonder upon me as though the world was opening._” - -Bobby wrote that down also. And he sat very late before the fire in -the ground-floor room thinking that over and thinking over the message -he would have to send to Christina Alberta in the morning. To-morrow -he would have to explain himself and his extraordinary intervention -in Preemby affairs. It was by no means plain to himself as yet, and -to-morrow he would have to make plain to a probably very indignant -young lady why her father had so caught his sympathies and fascinated -his imagination as to tempt him to this escapade. He found himself -thrown back on self-analysis. He found himself scrutinizing his own -motives and his own scheme of existence. - -He knew and understood that feeling, “as though the world was opening” -so well. Still better did he know that feeling of dead emptiness -in life out of which it arose. In his own case he had thought this -habitual discontent with the daily round, this urgency towards -something strange and grandiose, was due to the dislocation of all his -expectations of life by the great war; that it was a subjective aspect -of nervous instability; but in the case of this little laundryman it -could not have been the war that had sent him out, a sort of emigrant -from himself, to find a fantastic universal kingdom. It must be -something more fundamental than the war accident. It must be a normal -disposition in men towards detachment from safety and comfort. - -He glanced towards the pile of his Aunt Suzannah correspondence on -the table and the next sheet of “copy” for _Wilkins’ Weekly_ he had -distilled therefrom. He rose from his arm-chair and went back to his -work with his wisdom refreshed. He wrote: “So soon as man’s elementary -needs are satisfied and he is sure of food, clothing and shelter, he -comes under the sway of a greater imperative; he goes out to look for -trouble. So that I would not discourage ‘Croydon’s’ desire to become -a missionary in West Africa in spite of his religious doubts and his -peculiar feeling about black people. Such a region as Sherborough -Island will probably supply him with a good sustained, sustaining, and -ennobling system of troubles. A white man who has once challenged the -hostility of a West African secret society will have little leisure for -morbid introspection. He will hardly have a dull moment....” - -He stopped writing. “Reads a little ironical,” he said “And not quite -Aunt Suzannah enough.” - -He reflected. “My mind scampers off from me at times. Not in the vein -to-day.” - -The one thing they must never feel about Aunt Suzannah was that she -could be ironical. No! it wouldn’t do. He ran his pen through the six -sentences he had just written and pushed the sheet away from him. He -drew another sheet towards him on which he had been composing with -great difficulty a telegram to be sent next morning to “Preemby, 8 -Lonsdale Mews, Chelsea.” He read over various drafts. The current form -ran as follows: “_Your father safe but with severe chest cold care of -Roothing Maresett Cottage Dymchurch desires see you discretion very -necessary return confinement fatal results best station Hythe and cab -could meet you Hythe if wire in time but do not know you personally am -tallish slender dark Roothing._” - -Properly considered it was all right. - -He tried to imagine what sort of girl this Christina Alberta Preemby -would be. She would be blue-eyed of course and probably very fair; -a little taller and rounder than her father, soft-voiced and rather -dreamy. She would be timid and affectionate, very kind and gentle and -a little incompetent. Perhaps it would be well to meet her at Hythe -so soon as he knew which train she was coming by. The cab business -might be a strain on her. He would have to tell her what to do. To -a considerable extent now he had made himself responsible for the -fortunes of both these people. And he liked to think that. He liked to -think that perhaps these might become his own people, more of his own -people than the Malmesburys. Because to be frank about it with himself -he was a little bit of an interpolation in the Malmesbury household. -They liked him; they were perfect dears to him; but they could do -without him. Even that little devil Susan managed without him; she -liked him and tyrannized over him but he knew he wasn’t indispensable -to her. Here at last might be two people who couldn’t do without him, -who might to an extraordinary extent become his people. - -Of course he would have to put on a little more appearance of strength -and determination than was actually his quality. He owed it to them to -keep up their confidence in him so that he might be able to direct them -in their difficulties. - -He would say to her--what would he say to her? “I have been hasty, I -know, but I know something of the strain that is put upon the sane -patient in an asylum. I thought that the first thing to do was to get -your father out of it. It didn’t occur to me that for a time he might -have forgotten your address. Perhaps I ought to have come to you before -I acted. But then how was I to know there _was_ a you? Until he told me -of your existence. In so many cases in these asylums the relatives are -hostile to release. It is dreadful to admit it, but it is so.” - -Then rather humorously and quite modestly he would describe the escape. -He was already forgetting the uncertainties of the visiting-day -conversation and the numerous accidental factors in the meeting by the -culvert. But all history has this knack of eliminating unnecessary -detail. - -So he would make his statement. It did not occur to him that Christina -Alberta might be the sort of person who interrupts speeches with -elucidatory questions. - -He lit a cigarette, strolled about the room, and came to rest standing -before the fire and looking down on the glowing coals. He was sure -now that Christina Alberta was blue-eyed, fragile, shy--with a deep -sweet vein of humorous fantasy hidden away in her. Very probably she -concealed a gift for writing. It would be for him perhaps to discover -that and cultivate it and bring it out. Together they would protect -Sargon, already more than half recovered from the intoxication of his -dream. They would have to soften the humiliations of his complete -awakening. How fortunate and as it were providential it was that he had -been impelled to rescue the little man!--for otherwise he would never -have met Christina Alberta, never won her timid wealth of love.... - -“_Eh!_ - -“But this is all damned nonsense!” said Bobby violently, and threw his -cigarette into the fire. “This is just fancy! I haven’t even _seen_ the -girl!” - -He lit his candle, put out Mrs. Plumer’s oil lamp with all the devices -and precautions proper to this dangerous survival from the Dark Ages, -and went up to bed. He stopped and listened outside Sargon’s door. The -patient was asleep and breathing rather noisily--ever and again choking -with a little cough. - -“I wish the weather had kept warmer,” said Bobby. - -When he opened his own bedroom door, the flame of his candle writhed -and flared horizontally, the curtains streamed into the room and a -sheet of paper flapped on the dressing-table. He put down the candle -and went to shut the window. The wind was rising and there was a little -patter of raindrops on the pane. - - - - -CHAPTER THE THIRD - -_The Last Phase_ - - -§ 1 - -It was part of the general unsatisfactoriness of Bobby’s make-up that -he was acutely responsive to meteorological conditions. That late -Indian summer was over now, and the heavens and the earth and the -air between began to push, hustle, wet, chill, darken, distress and -bully him. Jumbled grey clouds came hurrying across Dymchurch from -Dungeness and the Atlantic, torn, angular, outstretched clouds with -malicious expressions like witches and warlocks, emitting fierce -squirts of rain. Under their skirts came the waves in long rolling -regiments, threatening from afar, breaking into premature handfuls of -foam, gathering force at last, towering up for a last culminating thud -against the sea-wall and spouting heavenward in white fountains of -suddy water. - -“Face it, man,” said Bobby. “Face it. It’s only Nature. Brace up to it. -Think of this poor girl.” - -He forced himself to do a morning’s walk along the top of the sea-wall, -with his wet trousers flapping against his legs like flags against -their staves. - -“Glorious wind!” he told Sargon when he went in to see him. “But I wish -there was a gleam of sun.” - -“Have you any news from Christina Alberta?” asked Sargon. - -“There’s hardly time yet for a reply to my wire. But she’ll surely -come,” said Bobby, and went downstairs to dry his legs at the fire. - -He did not expect a summons to Hythe to meet the young lady very much -before half-past twelve. Meanwhile he went out to the shed and assured -himself that the motor bicycle and side-car were in perfect order for a -hasty journey. Half-past twelve came, one, half-past one. He had some -lunch. He became very restless, and rose and looked out of the window -frequently to see if the messenger girl was coming with Christina -Alberta’s telegram. About two a large, silent, luxurious-looking, -hired Daimler car appeared outside and stopped at Mrs. Plumer’s gate. -A hatless bobbed head appeared at the window and exchanged remarks -with the driver, who descended and opened the door. The car emitted a -handsome and determined young woman of advanced appearance, hatless and -short-skirted, and a lean, dark, prosperous-looking man of thirty-eight -or forty in blue serge and a grey felt hat. The man opened the gate for -the girl, and she surveyed the house as she advanced. - -Bobby realized that Christina Alberta had not kept her promise to be -blue-eyed and fragile. She had betrayed him. Yet for all her treachery -he had built up a sense of personal relationship with her that gripped -him still. He watched her approach with an excitement he found -difficult to control. He wondered who the devil the dark man was. A -cousin perhaps. She discovered Bobby watching her from the window and -their eyes met. - - -§ 2 - -Bobby, with an instinct that is given to young people for such -occasions, perceived that he interested Christina Alberta extremely. He -parleyed with her and Devizes in Mrs. Plumer’s little downstairs room. -He spoke chiefly to her. Devizes he treated as a secondary figure, a -voice at her elbow. “He’s got a nasty cold on his chest,” he said. -“He’s been asking for Miss Preemby----” - -“Christina Alberta,” said Christina Alberta. - -“Christina Alberta a lot. But it was only last night I could get the -address out of him. He’d forgotten it before. We’ve been here over a -day. He caught the cold coming here.” - -“How did you come here?” Devizes threw in. - -“Motor bicycle,” said Bobby. “But there was a lot of waiting about -before we could get away and it was a cold raw morning, and he had -just his nightgown and dressing-gown and slippers. So hard to foresee -everything.” - -“But how did you come to be rescuing him?” - -Bobby smiled at Devizes. “Somebody had to be rescuing him.” - -He turned to Christina Alberta again. “Couldn’t bear the thought of his -being under lock and key. He took a room, you see, in the place where -I lodged, and there was something innocent and--delightful about him. -I’ve a weakness, a sympathy perhaps, with absurdity.... You ought to go -up to him and see him.” - -“Yes, we’d better look at him,” said Devizes. - -(Who the devil was this fellow?) - -Bobby asserted himself. “Christina Alberta first, I think.” - -He took Christina Alberta up to her daddy and closed the door on a -warm embrace. “And now, Mr. de Vezes, or whatever you are,” he said -to himself on the staircase, “where do _you_ come in?” He descended -and found Devizes standing very irritatingly upon his hearthrug before -his fire. As he stood there a remote resemblance to Christina Alberta -was perceptible. Bobby had an incoherent recognition of the fact that -in some obscure way Devizes was responsible for Christina Alberta’s -failure to produce blue eyes. He was a little slow in saying what he -intended to say, and Devizes was able to take the initiative. “Forgive -my blunt impertinence,” he said, “but may I ask who you are?” - -“I’m a writer,” said Bobby, refraining from any glance at the -accumulation of Aunt Suzannah material upon the side table. - -“You’ve finished lunch?” asked Devizes in a disregarded parenthesis. - -“May I ask the same question of you?” said Bobby, “and how it is you -come to be connected with the Preembys?” - -“I’m a blood relation,” said Devizes, considering it. “On the mother’s -side. A sort of cousin. And I happen to be a nervous and mental -specialist. That’s why I’ve been brought in to-day.” - -“I see,” said Bobby. “You’ve got no intention of--putting him back?” - -“None at all. We’re not antagonists, Mr----” - -“Roothing.” - -“We’re on the same side. You did well to get him out. We were trying -to do the same thing by less original methods. We’re very grateful to -you. The lunacy laws are rather a clumsy and indiscriminating machine. -But, as you probably know, if he keeps clear of them for fourteen -days, they’ll have to begin with him all over again. He renews his -sanity. We’re allies in that. We’ve got to know each other better. Your -intervention--most surprising--strikes me as being at once eccentric -and courageous. I wish you’d tell me more about it, how you met him, -how they got hold of him, and what set you thinking of an escape.” - -“H’m,” said Bobby, and came and asserted his right to half the -hearthrug. He had thought of the way in which he could tell this -story--to Christina Alberta--the original Christina Alberta with the -blue eyes. He felt that that version needed considerable revision, -indeed, possibly even a complete rearrangement, for the present hearer. -He was by no means sure he wanted to tell it to the present hearer. The -man was a doctor and a mental specialist and a distant relation, and -he was for keeping Sargon out of an asylum, and that was all to the -good, but it still lingered in Bobby’s mind that he was an interloper. -Nevertheless, he made way for Bobby quite civilly on the hearthrug, -and his manner was attentive and respectful. Bobby embarked upon a -description of Sargon’s first appearance in Midgard Street. - -Devizes showed himself alert and intelligent. He grasped the -significance of Sargon’s projected visit to the dome of Saint Paul’s at -once. “I’ve no doubt he did it,” said Devizes. “Neither have I,” said -Bobby, “though I’ve not asked him about it yet.” They pieced together -the probable story of the calling of the disciples before Billy and -Bobby had come upon the procession. “It’s touching,” said Devizes, “and -immense.” Bobby approved these words. - -“You see how he got me,” said Bobby. - -A distinct flavour of friendliness for Devizes crept by imperceptible -degrees into Bobby’s mind. Difficulties that had seemed to threaten his -explanation vanished; this man, he perceived, could understand anything -a fellow did. Devizes made him feel that the extraction of Sargon from -Cummerdown by a perfect stranger was the most simple and natural thing -to do imaginable. Bobby warmed to his story; his sense of humour took -heart of grace, and he became frank and amusing about his difficulties -on the visiting day. As he was telling of the foxy-faced deaf mute, -Christina Alberta came back again into the downstairs room. - -“He takes me as a matter of course,” she said. “He seems weak and -drowsy and his chest is bad.” She spoke more definitely to Devizes. “I -think you ought to overhaul him.” - -“There is a doctor in attendance?” he asked Bobby. - -Bobby explained. Devizes considered. Was Sargon dozing? Yes. Then let -him doze for a bit. Bobby, working now a little more consciously for -effect, went on with his story. Christina Alberta regarded him with -manifest approval. - -By tea-time Bobby had adjusted his mind to the existence of Devizes -and the unexpectedness of Christina Alberta. All that carried over -from his state of expectation was the idea that his relations with -Christina Alberta were to be very profound and intimate. He still -believed that, hidden away in her somewhere, there must be a blue-eyed, -yielding, really feminine person, but it was very deeply hidden. -Meanwhile the superimposed disguise struck him as agreeable, alert, -humorous, and friendly. Devizes too he saw more and more as a strong, -capable, understanding personality. He had seen Devizes examining -Sargon, and it was clever, confidence-provoking doctoring. Sargon’s -lungs, he said, were badly congested, especially on the left side; he -was on the edge of pneumonia and without much vitality to fight it. He -ought to be kept in a warmer, less draughty room with a night-nurse -available. Mrs. Plumer had no room for a nurse, and not an hour away by -automobile was Paul Lambone’s excessively comfortable week-end cottage -at Udimore. A little masterly telephoning and telegraphing and the -cottage was available, fires were alight in the best bedroom, a trained -nurse was on her way to it, and it was all settled for Sargon, warmly -wrapped up and fortified with hot-water bottles, to go thither. Bobby -found himself a mere accessory in this new system of things; he was -to follow next day to Udimore on his motor bicycle, for there would -be room for all of them in Paul Lambone’s cottage. Apparently Paul -Lambone’s conception of a simple cottage in the wilderness involved a -housekeeper, several servants, and four or five visitors’ rooms. - -This fellow Devizes carried out all his arrangements with a smooth -competence that gave Bobby no scope for self-assertion. Sargon and -Christina Alberta and Devizes would depart at five and get to Udimore -by six, by which time the nurse would be installed. Then Devizes would -go back to London and get there in time to dress for a dinner he had -to attend. On Saturday morning he would be busy in London, and then -he would come back to Udimore and see if Sargon was recovered enough -for the beginnings of his mental treatment. Perhaps the unknown Paul -Lambone would be there too. He was a lazy person, Bobby gathered; he’d -have to be brought down by Devizes. Bobby was to stay at Udimore for -some days. He made modest protestations. “No, you’re _in_ it now,” said -Devizes cheerfully and glanced at Christina Alberta. “You’re in for -Sargon like the rest of us. Bring your work with you.” - -“Yes, do come,” said Christina Alberta. - -The only reason Bobby had for resisting the invitation was that it -attracted him so much. - - -§ 3 - -This “cottage” at Udimore, which struck Bobby as being a really very -pretty and comfortable modern house, and these three people, Christina -Alberta, Devizes and Paul Lambone, who now grouped themselves round -Sargon, exercised his mind in a quite extraordinary way. They struck -him as being novel and definite to a degree he’d never met in anyone -before, and even the house was fresh and decisive in its broad white -grace, like no house that had ever before held his attention. It made -most of the other houses he had ever observed seem accidental and -aggregatory and second-hand and wandering in their purpose. But this -house was the work of a clever young architect who had considered Paul -Lambone intelligently, and its white rough-cast walls sat comfortably -on the hill-side and looked with an honest, entirely detached -admiration at Rye and across the marsh to Winchelsea and the remote -blue sea; and it had seats and arbours and a gazebo for sitting about -in, and up hill was a walled garden with broad paths up which you -looked from the back of the house through lead-paned windows. You could -watch the sunset from a number of excellent points of view, but it did -not shine upon any room to weary and blind you. There was a kind wall -to shelter hollyhocks and delphiniums from the south-west wind, and to -bear a plum or so and a pear and a fig tree. Downstairs was mainly one -great rambling room with a dining recess in one corner and the power -of opening itself out into a loggia, and with conversational centres -about fire-places or windows as the season might require, but there -were several little studies about the house in which one could be shut -off and write. Bookshelves grew in convenient corners, and the house -was everywhere mysteriously warm from unseen and scarce suspected -radiators. The house was so like Paul Lambone, and Paul Lambone so much -a part of his house that he seemed to be really no more than its voice -and its eyes. - -Paul Lambone was the first successful writer Bobby had ever met. -Bobby knew various needy young writers, tadpole writers, insecure -writers, but this was the first completely grown-up and established -and massively adult writer he had ever known. The man struck Bobby as -being stupendously secure and free and prosperous. And the remarkable -thing was that he was in no way a great writer, no Dickens nor Scott -nor Hardy; his work wasn’t, after all, in Bobby’s opinion anything so -very remotely above Bobby’s own efforts. A certain terseness he had -at times, a certain penetration: those were the chief differences. In -Bobby’s imagination the literary and artistic life had hitherto had -an unavoidable flavour of casual adventure, glorious achievements, -maddening difficulties, wild delights and tragic unhappinesses. Swift, -Savage, Goldsmith, the Carlyles, Balzac, Dumas, Edgar Allan Poe, -these had been his types. But this new bright house was as sound and -comfortable as any country house, and Lambone sat in it with as safe -a dignity as though he was a provincial banker or a mine owner or -the senior member of some widespread firm of solicitors. No fears of -losing his “job” or “writing himself out” oppressed him. He said and -did exactly what he thought proper, and the policeman saluted him as he -passed. - -If this sort of thing could spring from the _Book of Everyday Wisdom_ -and Paul’s amiable novels, what hitherto unsuspected possibilities of -accumulation and ease and security and helpfulness might there not be -in Aunt Suzannah’s kindly responsiveness? It had never before seemed -credible to Bobby that a day might come when he would be secure and his -own master, able to refuse limitations himself and to release other -people from limitations. All Bobby’s life hitherto had been a matter -of direction and eminent necessity. He had been _sent_ to school and -_sent_ to college. He had been on the eve of being _put into_ the -position of agent upon a friendly estate when the Great War had seized -upon him and the rest of his generation and drilled him and sent him -off to Mesopotamia. And after the war he had had to do something to -supplement his diminished inheritance. Life had been so indicated -and prescribed for him at every stage, his parents’ existence had -been so entirely directed by a class tradition, that Bobby’s mind was -exceptionally well prepared to be impressed by Paul Lambone’s freedoms. - -It was curious to note how completely Paul Lambone arose out of the -present-day world, and how completely he didn’t belong to it. He had -all its advantages and so little of its standard obligations. He had -escaped from it with most of its gifts. He had to go to no court, -follow no seasons, make no calls, and perform no functions. Was he -exceptional in his circumstances altogether, or were there a lot -of people escaping, as he was escaping, prosperously, from the old -decaying social system? a queer sort of new people who didn’t belong? - -Bobby sat on the terrace and looked over the back of his seat at this -extremely new but very sightly and comfortable cottage of Lambone’s, -with this freshly arrived idea of a new sort of people getting loose in -the world and living unrelated to the old order of things and shaping -out new ways of living, very active in his mind. This house seemed to -embody that idea; it was new and novel, but not a bit apologetic nor -rebellious. It was just breaking out like a new fashion. It was just -arising like a new century. He had always assumed that revolutions came -from below through the rage of the excluded and the disinherited. He -had thought every one took that for granted. But suppose revolutions -were merely smashes-up that hadn’t very much to do with real progress -either way, and that the new age dawned anywhere in the social order -where people could get free enough to work out new ideas. - -New ideas! - -Sargon was new, Paul Lambone was new, Devizes new; before the war -there could not have been any such people. They had grown out of -their own past selves; they were as different from pre-war people as -nineteenth-century people had been different from eighteenth-century -people. Newest of all was this Christina Alberta who had effaced her -blue-eyed predecessor. She was so direct and free in her thoughts and -talk that she made Bobby feel that his own mind wore a bonnet and -flounces. He had gone for two walks with her, once to Brede and once -to Rye, and he liked her tremendously. Whether he was in love with her -he didn’t yet know. Falling in love with her for anyone was evidently -going to be a quite unconventional, untested, and difficult series -of exercises. Nothing at all like that unborn normal affair with the -non-existent blue-eyed girl. - -She seemed to like him, and particularly the way his hair grew on his -head. She had mentioned it twice and ruffled it once. - -A queer aspect of the situation was the riddle of how she and Sargon -and himself came to be the guests of Paul Lambone with Devizes -in attendance. It was just a part of Paul Lambone’s freedom from -prescription that he should be able to give sanctuary to Sargon and -assemble this odd, unconventional week-end party. But Bobby had a -sense of hidden links and missing clues. Devizes was a natural enough -visitor, of course; he was manifestly Lambone’s close friend. But their -interest in Sargon was stronger than Bobby could imagine it ought -to be. He was puzzled; he examined all sorts of possibilities in a -gingerly fashion. Some impulse like his own, no doubt, but not quite -the same, lay at the bottom of this--Sargonism. - -Bobby had begun by feeling very hostile to Devizes as an unexpected -intruder on a system of relationships sufficiently interesting without -him. He was glad that he had to go to London for Friday, and not -particularly pleased by his return on Saturday. Then he found his -feelings changing to a curious respect, mingled with a defensive -element that was almost like fear. - -Devizes was more aware of you than Lambone. He looked at you, his -mind came at you. It had the habit of coming at people. He was more -actively and aggressively interested in things than Lambone and more -self-forgetful. Lambone observed enough to make bright comments; -Devizes made penetrating observations. Bobby often felt encumbered -with himself; most people he thought were encumbered with themselves, -but Devizes to a conspicuous degree wasn’t. He was a man of science; -a man of scientific habits. Bobby had known one or two scientific men -before, rather wrapped away from ordinary things, but the interest that -wrapped them was something that wrapped them away from oneself; one had -been concerned chiefly with stresses in glass and another with the eggs -of echinoderms. You always seemed to be looking at the backs of these -fellows’ heads and smiling at their immense preoccupation. But this -man Devizes was wrapped up in the motives and thoughts of people; he -didn’t look away from you; he looked into you. That grew upon Bobby’s -consciousness. Devizes’ eye lacked delicacy. - -He had come down for the week-end chiefly to deal with Sargon. He went -up and had long talks to Sargon. He was “treating” Sargon. He didn’t -go up and talk to Sargon as man to man, as Bobby would have done. He -went up to a sort of mental jiu-jitsu with Sargon to exercise him -and push him about into new attitudes. Devizes was formidable enough -in himself, but far more formidable as a portent. He had all the -appearance of being a precursor, the most vigorous precursor--they were -all precursors!--of a new type of human relationships, relationships -without delicate reservations, without rich accumulations of feeling -behind emotions avoided and things unsaid. So it seemed to Bobby, -who didn’t for a moment suspect how much these people were avoiding -and suppressing. Christina Alberta’s thoughts and speech seemed to -him to be moving about without a stitch on, like the people in some -horrible Utopia by Wells. He compared the vast impalpable network of -“understanding” he and Tessy had woven between each other. - -“New people,” he whispered, and looked Paul Lambone’s new house in the -face. To him they were stupendously new, an immense discovery. The -war had overstrained him, he realized, and left him too tired for a -time to see new things. He had been one of the vast multitude of those -who had come out of the war in the expectation of a trite and obvious -old-fashioned millennium, and who expressed their disappointment -by declaring that nothing had happened except devastation and -impoverishment. They were too jaded at first to observe anything else. -But indeed Bobby now realized the European world had been travelling -faster and faster since the break-up of the armed peace in 1914; and -here were new types, new habits of thought, new ideas, new reactions, -new morals, new ways of living. He discovered himself in the advent of -a new age, a new age that was coming so fast that there hadn’t been -time ever to clear the forms and institutions of the old age away. They -weren’t reversed or abolished, they weren’t overthrown, they were just -disregarded. Which was just why it was possible to get along for a year -or so without noting the tremendous changes everything was undergoing. - -“New People.” Did that apply to Sargon? That was Sargon’s room: the two -long windows between the buttresses. Was Sargon also an escape from the -established order of relationships into novel things? What was the real -significance of the absurd little man with his preposterous map of the -world and his still more preposterous planisphere, who wanted to be -Lord of the Earth? - - -§ 4 - -When Bobby came to talk it over with Sargon it seemed to him that -Devizes had taken the little man completely to pieces and presented -him with the disarticulated portions of himself. Devizes went back to -London on Monday; he took Christina Alberta with him in his hired car; -but Lambone urged Bobby to stay on for a day or so to cheer up the -patient. Lambone, so far as he could discover his own intentions, meant -to stay on at Udimore for a week or more and work. Bobby saw Christina -Alberta off, meditated on her for an hour, then gave the rest of the -morning to Aunt Suzannah and the afternoon to Sargon; and Sargon, who -was distinctly better, sat propped up by two pillows and discussed the -dissected structure of himself. - -“Not a bit fatigued,” said Sargon. “I’m having a tonic now. Every three -hours.” - -He considered his next remark for some moments before he made it. “Who -_is_ this Mr. Paul Lambone?” he asked. “It is very hospitable for him -to entertain us. Very. (_H’rrmp_).... Is he a friend of yours?” - -“He’s quite a well-known writer. He’s a friend of Christina Alberta’s.” - -“She has so many friends. Young people do nowadays. And what is this -Dr. Devizes?” - -“He is a nervous specialist, and he was consulted--he was consulted -about the possibilities of getting you away from that--Place.” - -“Nervous specialist. He is a wonderful talker--most intelligent and -(h’rrmp) understanding. I have a curious feeling that somewhere, -somewhen, somehow I have met him before. In this life--or some other. -It is all quite vague, and he does not seem to have any corresponding -recollection. No. Probably a coincidence of some sort.” - -Bobby saw nothing in the coincidence. - -Sargon shut his eyes for a second or so. - -“We talked of my recent experiences,” he resumed. - -“Naturally,” said Bobby, helping. - -“There has been a lot of confusion about my personality. It is a -trouble more frequent nowadays than it used to be. Most of my life -I have thought that I was a person called Albert Edward Preemby, a -limited person, a most limited person. Then I had a light. I began -to realize that nobody could really be such a thing as that Albert -Edward Preemby. I began to seek for myself. I had reason--too long to -explain--to suppose that I was Sargon the First, the great Sumerian, -the founder of the first Empire in the world. Then--then came trouble. -You saw something of it. I grasped at the sceptre--one afternoon--in -Holborn--rashly. Most painful affair. I was sent to that Place. Yes. It -shook me. Humiliations. Hardship. Real--uncleanness. I doubted whether -I wasn’t after all just that little Preemby. A human rabbit. My faith -faltered. I admit it faltered.” - -He mused painfully for some moments. - -Then he laid his hand reassuringly on Bobby’s wrist. - -“I _am_ Sargon,” he said. “Talking to your friend Devizes has cleared -my mind greatly. I _am_ Sargon, but in a rather different sense from -what I had imagined. Preemby was, as I had supposed, a mere accidental -covering. But----” - -The little face puckered with intellectual effort. “I am not -_exclusively_ Sargon. You--you perhaps are still unawakened--but you -are Sargon too. His blood is in our veins. We are co-heirs. It is -fairly easy to understand. Sargon, regal position. Naturally many -wives. Political--biological necessity. Offspring numerous. They -again--positions of advantage--many children. Next generation, more. -Like a vast expanding beam of intellectual and moral force. You can -prove it--prove it by mathematics. Dr. Devizes and I--we worked it out -on a piece of paper. We are all descended from Sargon, just as we are -all descended from Cæsar--just as nearly all English and Americans are -descended from William the Conqueror. Few people realize this. A little -arithmetic--it is perfectly plain. Long before the Christian era the -blood of Sargon was diffused throughout all mankind. His traditions -still more so. We all inherit. Not merely from him--from all the great -kings, from all the noble conquerors. From all the brave and beautiful -women. All the statesmen and inventors and creators. If not directly -from them, from their fathers and mothers. All that rich wine from the -past is in my veins. And I thought I was just Albert Edward Preemby! -And at Woodford Wells I went for a silly little walk nearly every -afternoon with sixpence in my pocket to spend and nothing in the world -to do! For twenty years. It seems incredible.” - -The blue eyes sought confirmation from Bobby, who nodded. - -“There was I walking about Epping Forest in a suit of clothes I -never really liked--a rather exaggerated golfing suit with baggy -knickerbockers that my wife chose for me--they seemed to get baggier -every year--and I was quite ignorant that I was the heir of all the -ages, and that the whole earth down to the centre and up to the sky was -mine. And yours. Ours. I had no sense of duty to it; I hadn’t woke up -to self-respect. I wasn’t only Sargon, but all the men and women who -have ever mattered on earth. I was God’s Everlasting Servant. Instead -of which I was rather timid about horses and strange dogs, and often -when I saw people approaching and thought they were observing me and -speaking about me, I did not know what to do with my arms and legs, and -became quite confused about them.” - -He paused to smile at the thought of it. - -“It has been interesting to talk to your Dr. Devizes of the absurdity -of that contracted blind littleness in which I lived so long. We talked -of the Great Man I really was, the Great Men we really were. All the -Incorporated Great Men. You and I, the same. Because in the past you -and I and he were one, and in the future we may come together again. We -have just separated to take hold of things as the hand separates into -thumb and fingers. We talked of the time when the spirit that is in -us made the first hut, launched the first ship, rode the first horse. -We could not remember those great moments as exact incidents, but we -recalled them--generally. We recalled a blazing day when a band of men -went out across a sandy desert for the first time, and when a man first -stood upon a glacier. It was--slippery. Then I remembered watching my -people heap up the earth-walls of my first city. We went out against -the robbers of the first herds. Then Dr. Devizes and I stood in -imagination on a sort of quarter-deck, and watched our men lugging the -great oars of the galley that took us to Iceland and Vinland. We both -saw. We planned the Great Walls of China; I counted our lateen sails -upon our grand canal. You see, I have built a million wonderful temples -and made an innumerable multititude of lovely sculptures, paintings, -jewels and decorations. I had forgotten it, but I have. And I have -loved a billion loves--I have indeed--to bring me here. We all have. We -talked it over, your Dr. Devizes and I. I had not dreamt the millionth -part of what I am. When I thought I was Sargon wholly and solely I -still did not realize my great inheritance and my enormous destiny. -Even now I am only beginning to see that.... It is preposterous to -think that I who have all this past of efforts and adventures behind me -should have been content to run about Woodford Wells in a ridiculous -suit of tweeds with plus-four breeches that were extremely heavy and -uncomfortable--they tickled me, you know--on hot days. Yet I did. I -did.... Not realizing.... I used to go on until I could endure it no -longer, and then I would have to stop and scratch behind my knees.... - -“Of course, when I called myself Sargon, King of Kings, and proposed -to rule all the world I was--Dr. Devizes called it--_symbolizing_. Of -course, everybody is really Sargon, King of Kings, and everybody ought -to take hold of all the world and save it and rule it just as I have -got to do.” - -He had concluded his exposition. He had spread out his disarticulated -parts before Bobby just as Devizes had returned them to him. - - -§ 5 - -“But just what are you going to do?” said Bobby. - -“I have been thinking of that.” - -For a little while he continued to think. - -“It becomes all different,” he said, “when one realizes that one is not -the _only_ Sargon. I thought of being a great king, a great leader, -with the rest of the world just following me. I doubt if I ever felt -quite _up_ to a job of that sort, but I couldn’t see any other way of -being Sargon and a king. Now I do. I did my best, but even when I went -to Buckingham Palace I realized that the thing was going to be too big -for me. I was telling Dr. Devizes--I told him, that since he was Sargon -and King just as much as me and that almost anyone might become Sargon -and King, then it wasn’t a case for palaces and thrones any longer, or -for being proclaimed and crowned--such things were as much out of date -as flint implements; and that the real things was to be just a kingly -person and work with all the other kingly persons in the world to make -the world worthy of our high descent. Anyone who wakes up to that -becomes a kingly person. We can be active kings even if we remain kings -incognito. One can be a laundryman like I was when I was just Preemby, -and think of nothing but the profits and needs and vanities and fears -of a little laundryman--and how dull it was!--or one can be a king, the -descendant of ten thousand kings, the joint heir to the inheritance -of all human affairs, the lord of the generations still unborn--who -happens to be living in exile as a laundryman.” - -He paused. - -“I agree with most of that,” said Bobby. “It’s--it’s attractive.” - -“So far it is as plain as can be. But after that the difficulties -begin. It isn’t enough just to say you are a king. You have to be a -king. You have to _do_. You can’t be a king and not do kingly things. -But it’s just there that Dr. Devizes and I--we weren’t so clear. -There’s a lot to be thought out. What is my kingly task? In this frail -body--and what I am? I am not clear. Yet the mere fact that I am not -clear shows clearly where I have to begin. I have to get clear. I have -to get knowledge, find out about my kingdom. That’s reasonable. I have -to learn more about my great inheritance, our great inheritance, the -history of it, the possibilities of it, the ways of the men who misrule -it. I have to learn about business and economics and money; and then -when I see it all plain I have to exert myself and vote and work, and I -have to find out what particular gifts I have and how I may best give -them to our kingdom. Each king must glorify his particular reign with -his particular gift. We agreed about that. - -“So far I do not know my particular gift. Dr. Devizes says that so -far as he is concerned he must work out human motives and human -relationships; his gift and his natural interest is for mental science. -He has his task meted out for him, his kingly task. But for me at -present there isn’t that much self-knowledge. I have to begin lower -down and with broader questions. I have to learn about the universe -and about the history of this world-empire of Sargon’s, and of all the -things I have neglected in my dreams and littleness. I have to go to -school again. To learn how to think harder. I don’t mind the fatigue. -But I am impatient. When I think of all that lies before me, the -reading, the inquiries, the visits to museums and suchlike places, I -want to get up right away and begin. I have lived so unobservant and -irresponsible a life that I am puzzled how to account for the years I -have spent. I have mooned them away. But I am glad I have awakened to -my kingship before it is too late. - -“I am quite a young man still. I am a little past forty, but that is -nothing. Half of that was childhood and boyhood, and much of the rest -inattention. For all I know I may live for another forty years. I’m -not half through. And they may be the best years, the full years. I -can spend three or four just learning--learning the round world. I -shall begin to find out politics, and why men and women are servile -and little-minded. I shall begin to realize how I can extend to those -others this great liberation that has come to me. I shall begin to have -a political life. A man who has no political life is like a rat which -lives in a ship rather than like a man who navigates it. Then within -that I shall begin to find my own proper life, my particular task. -It is premature, I think, but I am very greatly drawn to the riddle -of madness and asylums. I do not understand why there is madness. It -puzzles and distresses me, and Dr. Devizes agrees with me that when a -thing puzzles and distresses the mind the thing to do is to gather all -the knowledge and ideas one can about it--scientifically. Presently it -ceases to distress; it interests and occupies. And when I was in--that -Place, I talked to some of those poor creatures. I was very sorry for -them, I made them promises to help them when my kingdom came. And now I -begin to see what my kingdom is, and the way in which I must enter in -to possess it. Perhaps in good time I shall learn and spread knowledge -about asylums, and make things better in them so that they will not -simply imprison people but help and cure them. - -“It was Dr. Devizes’ idea, I think--or we may have worked it out -together--that there is a real and important purpose in madness. It -is a sort of simplification, a removal of checks and controls, and a -sort of natural experiment. The secret things of the mind are laid -bare. But then if poor souls are to suffer that sort of thing to -yield knowledge for others, they ought to be treated properly; they -ought to be cherished and made the utmost use of, and not handed over -to such brutes as we had.... I can’t tell you. Not yet. Brutes they -were.... And in their sane moments--they all have sane moments, these -lunatics--they ought to be comforted and told.” - -The queer little round face, with its sprouting moustache and its pale -blue eyes, stared at Bobby. - -“When first I saw you,” said Sargon, “I did not realize in the -least how things really were between us. I was still wrapped up in -vaingloriousness; I thought I was a great prophet and teacher and -king, and that all the world had to obey me. I thought you were going -to be the first and best and nearest of my disciples. But now I know -better about myself. And about other people. They are here not to be -my followers and disciples but to be my fellow kings. We have to work -together with all the others who are awakened, for our kingdom and the -great progress of mankind.” - -He went on talking rather to himself than to Bobby. - -“I have always wanted to know things, but now I shall have the will -really to know them. I shall be different now. It seems incredible -that a little while ago I was bothered about what I should do with my -time. Now I am only eager to get at things, and however long my time -may be I know it will be full. It is astonishing to me that there -has been flying in my kingdom for a dozen years, and I have never -been in an aeroplane. I must look at the world from an aeroplane. And -perhaps I shall need to go to India and China and suchlike strange and -wonderful countries, because they, too, are a part of my inheritance. -I need to know about them. And jungles and wildernesses that we have -to subjugate; I have to see them. The beasts are under us; we have -to cherish them or destroy them mercifully as the necessities of -our kingdom may require. It is a terrible thing even to be lord of -a beast. All the beasts, wild or tame, are under our dominion. And -there is science. All the wonderful work men do in laboratories and -their marvellous discoveries are our care. If I do not understand I -may hinder. How blind I have been to the splendour of my life. When I -think of all these things, I can hardly endure to be here in bed; I am -so impatient to get on with them. But I suppose I must be patient with -these poor wheezing lungs. - -“Patient,” he repeated. - -He looked at his wrist-watch and it had stopped. “Can you tell me the -time? At seven I ought to take some more of that excellent tonic. It -is working wonders in me. But no! don’t trouble; the nurse will be -thinking of it.... It puts fresh life into me.” - - -§ 6 - -But Sargon did not live forty years more, nor thirty, nor twenty. He -lived just a day under seven weeks from that conversation. He stayed -in bed for two days after Bobby returned to London; then Lambone also -went and he became intractable. As his strength returned he bothered -his nurse more and more for books he couldn’t name or describe, and for -volumes of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_; and when she declared that -seven volumes of that monumental publication were surely as much as any -invalid could need at one time, he got up and put on his rough little -dressing-gown and came paddling downstairs, h’rrmping resolutely, to -the library. After that he got up for three days running. A fire was -made in the most bookish corner of the downstairs room and screens put -to keep him warm. But his tonic was driving him, perhaps it was too -stimulating a tonic, and he would not stay in his protected corner. - -The nurse seems to have been a weak, complaining character, indisposed -to act without authority. She telephoned through to Devizes in London, -but she did not succeed in making clear to him the gravity of Sargon’s -misbehaviour. The crowning offence came when he wouldn’t go to bed at -seven, but instead slipped out, in an overcoat and a wrapper indeed but -in slippers, upon the terrace before the house. His bare ankles and -legs were exposed to the cold wind. The slow-moving periodic beams of -light from the lighthouse upon the coast, sweeping across the phantom -hills under the clear starlight, had drawn him out, those processional -lights, and Sirius that white splendour, and the steadfast sprawling -glory of Orion. It was a clear November night with frost in the air. -The nurse heard him cough and rushed out to him. He was looking at -Sirius through Lambone’s field-glasses and she had to drag him in by -main force. She lost her temper; there was an ungracious struggle. - -The next day he was in no state to leave his bed. Yet he tossed about -and exposed his inflamed chest in feeble attempts to read. “I know -nothing,” he complained. For a while he got better again, and then it -is highly probable that he went to his open window in the night and sat -for a long time wondering at the stars. After that came a relapse and a -week or so of struggle, and then after a phase of delirium came great -weakness, and then one night, death. He was quite alone when he died. - -Bobby had not expected the death at all. He heard of it from Christina -Alberta with great astonishment. He had been told nothing of Sargon -being worse nor of his misbehaviour; he had been thinking of him rather -enviously as growing steadily stronger and better and gratifying day by -day a happy and expanding curiosity. He had looked forward presently to -another talk and another phase in this odd belated adolescence. It was -as though an interesting story had come to an abrupt end in the middle, -as though all its concluding chapters had been torn out rudely and -unreasonably. - -This mood of frustrated sympathy lasted over the cremation of Sargon -at Golders Green. Bobby went to that queer ceremony. He arrived late -with Billy; the coffin that held the little body stood ready to glide -into the furnace, the Church of England burial service had already -begun. There were very few people in the chapel. Christina Alberta in -the black she had worn for her mother was in the front seat, as chief -mourner, between Paul Lambone and Devizes. Behind her with an air -of earnest support were Harold and Fay Crumb, astonishingly in deep -mourning and following the service meticulously in two prayer-books. -An unpleasant-looking individual with a very long pock-marked sheep’s -face, small eyes and habitual-looking blacks turned round and stared -at Bobby as he came in. He was accompanied by a very large blonde -lady who seemed to have slept in her mourning under a bed. Relations -of the deceased? The air of relationship was unmistakable. Behind, -a young woman and two detached old ladies seemed to be indulging a -simple propensity for funeral services at large. They completed the -congregation. - -Christina Alberta looked unusually small and overshadowed by her two -odd men friends. It was a grey day outside, and the general effect of -the gathering was thin and scattered and damp and chilly. The organ -was playing as Bobby came in, and he thought he had never heard a less -musical organ. The service as it went on sounded more and more trite -and theological and insincere. What an old second-hand damp mackintosh -the Church of England is, thought Bobby, for a striving soul to wear? -But then what can any religion in the world really be in the face of -normal death? Theologically one should rejoice when a good man dies, -but none of these religions had had the pluck to brazen it out to that -extent. None can get rid of the effect of confrontation with a blank -amazing interrogation. Was there anything within that coffin there that -heard or cared a jot for those sombre mummeries? - -Bobby’s thoughts converged upon that still thing within the coffin. The -little face would be wearing a waxen unaccustomed dignity; the round, -preposterously innocent blue eyes would be closed and a little sunken. -Where were those thoughts and hopes, now, that Bobby had listened to -a few weeks since? Sargon had talked of flying, of visiting India and -China, of doing noble work in the world. He had said that half his life -still lay before him. He had seemed to be opening like a flower on the -first sunny morning of a belated spring. And it was all delusion; the -door of death that had slammed upon him was already closing then. - -Surely those hopes had been life! In them if in anything was something -of the life that lives and cannot die. But was it yonder? No. That in -the coffin there was no more than a photographic impression, a cast -garment, the parings of a nail. There was more of Sargon now in Bobby’s -brain alone, than in that coffin. But Sargon, where was he? Where were -those dreams and desires? - -Bobby became aware of the voice of the officiating clergyman driving -high, like a flying bird, over the welter of his thoughts: “_But some -men will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they -come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened unless it die. -And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be, but -bare grain, it may chance of wheat or any other grain: But God giveth -it a body, as it hath pleased him, but to every seed its own body...._” - -“Queer, tortuous, ingenious fellow that Paul,” thought Bobby. Now -what exactly was he driving at there? Queer fellow! Bad manners too -with his “Thou fool.” A rather strained analogy this about the seed, -“sown in corruption.” After all a seed was the cleanest, most living -bit of vegetable matter you could have; it had to be sown in clean -mould. Growing plants you manured perhaps, but not seed-boxes. But -there was a queer insistence in the discourse of the “difference,” the -discontinuity, of the new life. What was to come was to be altogether -different from what was sown. Bobby had never noted that before, never -noted how plainly the apostle insisted that no body, no earthly sort of -body, no personality, ever came back. - -“_The glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial -is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the -moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from -another star in glory._” - -What was the drift of that? Was it translated properly? What had Paul -been up against in Corinth? After all, why couldn’t the Church speak -to one’s living needs instead of disinterring this Levantine argument? -And that analogy of the seed; was it after all a good one? Whatever -comes from a seed must itself die again; it is no more immortal than -the plant that came before it. The clergyman was going too fast, too, -to follow him closely. Better get a prayer-book at home afterwards and -read all this. - -“_O Grave where is thy sting? O death where is thy victory? The sting -of death is sin and the strength of sin is in the law._” - -No. There was no following that. It sounded like nonsense. One just -missed the implications. It was like listening to some one who was -too far off to be heard distinctly but who made eloquent gestures and -noises. - -The service came to an embarrassed pause. Everyone was motionless, -arrested. - -“_Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live.... He cometh -up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow...._” - -Set in motion by unseen hands the coffin went gliding towards the -furnace doors which opened to receive it. There was a deep roar, a -sound like a mighty rushing wind, an elemental and chaotic sound.... - -Life is a faint dispersed film upon one little planet, but flames roar -like this and great winds rush and whirl, out to the remotest star in -the unfathomable depths of space. That deep disorderly tumult is the -true voice of lifeless matter, not of dead matter, for what has never -lived cannot be dead, but of lifeless matter, outside of and beneath -and beyond life. - -Everyone in the chapel seemed still and bowed and hushed and dwarfed to -minute dimensions until the furnace doors had closed again upon that -soulless devouring clamour. - - - - -CHAPTER THE FOURTH - -_May at Udimore_ - - -§ 1 - -Bobby _forgot_ that glimpse of the elemental powers that the furnace -doors had given him altogether, for such things do not remain -naturally in the mind. They inconvenience life. But the voice of the -clergyman hustling the arguments of St. Paul along, and the scene in -the Crematorium Chapel with the little coffin waiting to be launched -into eternity and the few still black mourners dotted among the yellow -benches came back to him very vividly when Paul Lambone began to quote -and twist those familiar sentences about the contrast between the -corruptible and the incorruptible and expand a fantastic philosophy of -his own. Bobby had always intended to read that funeral service over -again slowly and judicially, but he had never done so and he regretted -it now very much. It left him--and Paul of Tarsus--at the mercy of -Paul Lambone, and he knew that Paul Lambone loved ingenious slight -misquotations. - -It was a very warm, serenely still May evening, and Lambone’s party -sat after dinner in the twilight, some just inside the house and some -on deck-chairs upon the terrace. They looked out over the marsh and -over the still sea. The sky was like the inside of a deep blue globe -on which an ever increasing multitude of starry midges was alighting, -and Rye and Winchelsea crouched low beneath it, black low lumps with a -street light and a window or so showing minutely. Receding out to sea -was a liner quite brightly lit. With a swift steadiness the beam of the -nearer lighthouse swept the distant flats, came near, lit the faces of -the talkers, lit the room, called a church tower and a group of trees -into existence and dropped them back into the darkness and forgot about -them and passed on. And then presently it was coming again, a thin -white streak of light hurrying far away across the levels. - -When one’s attention wandered from the talk one became aware of an -abundance of nightingales. They were nightingales newly come from the -south. One or it might be two were in the trees close at hand; others -remoter wove a gauze curtain of faint sweet sounds over the visible -universe. - -Bobby sat on the step between the room and the terrace with his back -against a pillar and with his empty coffee-cup beside him. He had put -himself there by the feet of Christina Alberta, who was deep in a big -arm-chair and very still. Her face was dim except when her cigarette -glowed and showed a red-lit unfamiliar face. And yet that afternoon -she had been the most familiar thing in the world to him; she had -kissed him and pulled his ears and he had kissed her bare shoulders -and clasped her in his arms. Devizes too was silent and preoccupied. -He sat over against Christina Alberta on the other side of the opening -of the room; and he was so much in the twilight that except when the -lighthouse beam lit his face, only his shining shoes and socks were -clearly visible to Bobby. There had been times when Bobby had thought -that Devizes was in love with Christina Alberta, and he had a vague -inexplicable feeling that to some extent she was or had been in love -with Devizes. He had a sense of unfathomed deeps in their relationship, -but he did not know where these deeps lay. If Christina Alberta loved -Devizes she would have said so. Bobby knew of no reason why she -should not. But to-day she had hugged and kissed Bobby so that it was -impossible to believe she loved anyone else. - -Yet in the last three or four months she had gone about with Devizes -a lot; Bobby had seen her mind responding and changing with her talks -with this man. She used to quote him, and she would say things exactly -like the things he said. It had been a great inconvenience and trial -to Bobby, this preoccupation. And then suddenly he found Devizes -wasn’t the lover at all, never could have been a lover. That day she -had proved that up to the hilt. And now in a state between pride and -servitude Bobby sat at her feet. He sat at her feet and close to her; -Devizes in the darkness was remote, a full three yards away. - -Except for Lambone’s unquenchable flow it had not been a very talkative -party. To-night it was less talkative than ever. “This is too perfect,” -Margaret Means had sighed. “I can’t talk. I just thank God I am alive,” -and she had nestled into her big deck-chair upon the terrace. This was -the girl--it had suddenly become apparent to Bobby a fortnight ago in -London--whom Devizes intended to marry. Abruptly she had come upon the -scene to destroy the triangle that had obsessed Bobby’s imagination. -A sweetly pretty fragile thing she was; in the twilight she seemed as -faint and fragrant as nightstock, and she was a wonderful pianist. -Last night she had played for two hours. Paul’s sister, Miss Lambone, -had been evoked from somewhere in the west of England to come and be -hostess to the engaged couple. Bobby had tried to talk to Christina -Alberta about Margaret, but Christina Alberta hadn’t wanted to talk -about her. “You see,” said Christina Alberta compactly, “she has opened -the whole world of music to him. That’s what brought them together. -She’s clever; she’s very clear and clever. - -“I’d never heard of her--until you mentioned their engagement. - -“They’ve gone to concerts together and that sort of thing. He’s known -her much longer than he has known me.” - -“When did you first meet Devizes?” - -“About the time my Daddy came to Midgard Street. As recently as that. -It’s hardly six months. Paul Lambone took me to him to get advice -about Daddy. But _they_ have been going about--for more than a year. -I thought it was just music that interested them. They’d seemed to be -friends. And I thought he didn’t mean to marry again. He just suddenly -decided.” - -Christina Alberta reflected. “That’s the way with life, Bobby. Things -accumulate, and then you suddenly decide.” - -“Had she been undecided? Had she made him wait?” - -“Not her,” said Christina Alberta with a remarkable hardness in her -voice. - -“No,” she said. “_He_ decided.” - -She seemed to feel there was still something to express. “He just took -hold of the situation.” - - -§ 2 - -This was Bobby’s second visit to Udimore. Paul Lambone had suddenly -seen fit to gather this party; apparently on the spur of Devizes’ -engagement. In the interval Bobby had seen Christina Alberta a number -of times and developed an immense sense of relationship to her. It -filled his life. He had always been dreaming things about her from the -time when he anticipated her with blue eyes and a fragile person, and -always she was and did things that tore his dreams to shreds. This -made her profoundly interesting. More and more he had become dependent -upon her for interest. He wanted to marry her if only to make sure he -wouldn’t lose the interest of her. She had refused--twice. Without any -of the graces proper to the occasion. “No fear, Bobby,” she said. “It -wouldn’t do. I’m not the woman you take me for.” - -“You never are,” he said. “I don’t mind that.” - -“You’re the dearest companion,” she said. “I like the way your hair -grows.” - -“Then why not make it yours, and be companions for ever?” - -“Nothing more frightful,” she said, and so dismissed the proposal. - -They went about together; they spent much of their spare time together -except for those distressing occasions when she would suddenly throw -him over to go to a theatre or walk with Devizes. Or to go to Devizes -to talk. She never hesitated to throw him over for Devizes. Yet Bobby -got a lot of her. She didn’t know much about theatres or music-halls -or restaurants or dancing-places or that sort of thing, and Bobby was -discreetly competent in that province. The Malmesburys felt themselves -deserted, and Susan was vindictive in her resentment at his frequent -absence from her bed-time rituals. Tessy, Bobby declared, remained his -dearest friend; but when he tried to tell her all about himself in the -old, old fashion--which he did when Christina Alberta was away with -Devizes--he naturally had to tell her all about Christina Alberta. But -Tessy declined in the most emphatic way to be told about Christina -Alberta. It was extremely surprising and disappointing to Bobby to find -out how incapable Tessy was of appreciating the endless interestingness -and charm of Christina Alberta. It was a blind spot in her mind. She -seemed to assume that Christina Alberta was no better than she should -be, whereas she was much better. It estranged Bobby and Tessy very -much, and it was a great sorrow to Bobby. - -Because Christina Alberta _was_ good--and interesting--beyond dispute. -She was growing with tremendous rapidity mentally and in her knowledge -of the world. Every time he met her she seemed more of a person, with -richer, fuller, more commanding ideas. She seemed to be living every -moment of her time. She was working now at the Royal College of Science -under Macbride. She was taking hold of her new studies there with -tremendous enthusiasm. She was in love with comparative anatomy. Bobby -had always thought that comparative anatomy was dry, pedantic stuff -about bones, but she declared it lit up the whole story of life for -her. It changed her ideas about the world and about herself profoundly. -“It is the most romantic stuff I have ever read or thought about,” she -said. “It makes human history seem silly.” - -She took him three times to the Natural History Museum at South -Kensington to show him something of the fine realizations that stirred -her mind. She made it clear to him how the bones of a wing or the -scratches of a flint could restore the storms and sunlight and passions -of ten million years ago. - -And then suddenly a week ago Christina Alberta had consented to marry -Bobby. She had taken back her two refusals. But the way she did it -made it like everything else she did, astonishing and disconcerting. -She had a confession to make, and for a time until he could think it -over thoroughly that confession seemed to Bobby to explain her refusals -completely and to clear up everything about her. - -She got him to take her to Hampton Court. But they did not go into the -gardens because they saw through the park gates that the chestnuts of -Bushey Avenue were in full blossom; they went instead by the pond and -up under the riotously flowering branches. A belated spring was coming -now in a hurry, warm and brilliant. The trees were glorious. It was as -if a bright green sea was splashing up warm creamy foam under a shower -of cannon shots. The blue sky hummed with light. - -“The spring has come fast now that it has begun to come,” she said. - -He felt she had something to say and waited. - -“I never know, Bobby--this year less than ever--whether spring is the -happiest time in the year or the most miserably restless. Everybody and -everything is falling in love.” - -“I didn’t wait for spring,” said Bobby. - -“But what of the frogs that can’t find water?” said Christina Alberta. - -“There’s water where there are frogs,” said Bobby. - -“Everybody is marrying and giving in marriage,” she said. “I thought--I -thought--Dr. Devizes at least was an inconsolable widower. But the -spring tides have caught even him. They catch everybody.” - -“They’ve caught you?” - -“I don’t know. I’m miserable, Bobby, and restless and all astir.” - -“Then let yourself go.” - -“One aches--alone.” - -“But are you alone?” - -“Fairly.” - -“There’s me.” - -“Bobby dear, what do you want in me?” - -“_You._ To be with you. To be always about with you. And to be loved by -you.” - -“It’s kind of you.” - -“Oh, nonsense! _Kindness!_” - -“Listen, Bobby,” she said, and made a long pause. - -Her voice when she spoke had adopted the ease of casual conversation. -“Do you believe in chastity, Bobby? Could you love a girl who -wasn’t--chaste?” - -Bobby winced as if she had struck his face with a whip. He went white. -“What do you mean?” he asked. - -“Plainly,” she said. - -For a time neither of them said a word. - -“You have had _your_ experiences,” she thrust. “In France. They all -did.” - -Bobby made no answer to that. - -“Now you know,” she flung at him. - -For a little while the light had gone out of Bobby’s world. - -“Did you love the man?” he asked. - -“If I did I don’t remember it. It was just--curiosity. And the stir of -growing up. And the intolerable sense of being forbidden. No--I think I -was almost--cold-blooded. I liked the look of him. And then I disliked -him.... But there it is, Bobby. That’s how things are.” - -Bobby weighed his words. “I’d care if it were any girl but you. -You--you’re different. I love you. What has or hasn’t happened to you -doesn’t matter. At least--it doesn’t matter so much.” - -“You’re sure it doesn’t matter so much?” - -“Quite.” - -“Sure for good?” - -“Yes.” - -“From this moment you forget, you begin to forget what I have told you? -As I want to forget it?” - -“It will go soon enough if you want to forget it. It doesn’t matter at -all. I see now, it doesn’t matter at all.” - -“But why on earth do you want to marry me, Bobby? What is there in me? -I’m ugly, rude, greedy, inconsiderate. I’ve no purity, no devotion.” - -“You’re incessantly interesting. You’re straight, swift, and endlessly -beautiful.” - -“Bobby, truly! Does it look like that to you?” - -“Yes. Doesn’t my manner--? Don’t you _know_?” - -“Yes,” she said gravely; “I suppose I know.” - -She came to a stop in front of him with her arms akimbo. They stood -looking at one another, and Bobby winced as if he was going to cry. Her -face was grave and troubled, and then at the sight of his expression -her smile broke through. Her gravity vanished. She was a different -Christina Alberta. She was suddenly the gayest conceivable thing to -him, confident and impudent. - -“If you were to kiss me, Bobby, right here and now in Bushey Park, -would they lock us up?...” - -Most wonderful it was to Bobby to take her in his arms. A new -Christina Alberta was revealed to Bobby; Christina Alberta seen from a -distance of six inches or so, an amazingly beautiful Christina Alberta. -One might have thought she had never lived for anything but being loved -by Bobby. - -“You’re learning,” said Christina Alberta after a little while. “Now do -it all over again, Bobby. Nobody seems to be looking....” - - -§ 3 - -Neither Lambone nor Devizes had seemed in the least surprised at their -engagement. Indeed their attitude of gratified expectation was almost -embarrassing. The young couple had come down to Udimore with Devizes -and Miss Means under the ample protection of Miss Lambone almost as -though they had been appointed for each other from the beginning of -things. - -But at Udimore there were further surprises and perplexities for -Bobby. All day Saturday Christina Alberta seemed to be not so much -in love as in a thoroughly bad temper. She seemed far more concerned -by the fact that Devizes was going to marry Miss Means than by the -generous devotion that Bobby was prepared to lavish upon her. She was -inattentive to his various little manœuvres to get isolated with her. -The two couples played tennis after tea until it was time to dress for -dinner; she was badly out of practice and fundamentally unorthodox, and -Margaret played with a smoothness and sweetness that roused her to a -pitch of viciousness only too evident to Bobby’s fine perceptions. It -seemed to Bobby that Devizes also noted her annoyance, but Miss Means -was blissfully unobservant of anything in the world but Devizes. - -On Sunday morning Christina Alberta carried off Bobby through the -distant cheerfulness of church bells for a walk to Brede Castle. And -she announced to Bobby that she did not intend to marry him. - -Bobby protested. “You don’t love me?” - -“Haven’t I kissed you? Didn’t I hug you? Haven’t I ruffled your hair?” - -“Then why don’t you want to marry me?” - -“I do not want to marry anyone. I don’t love anybody. Except of course -you. But even you, I can’t marry. I want to be loved, Bobby, yes. But -not to be married.” - -“But why? Not the--the old reason?” - -“No. I took your word about that. But all the same I don’t want to -marry you, Bobby.... I think it’s because I don’t want to be bound up -with anyone’s life. I don’t want to be a wife. I want to be my free and -independent self. I’ve got to grow. That’s it, Bobby. I want to be free -to grow.” - -Bobby made protesting noises. - -“I don’t want some one seeing me grow all the time. You’d always be -looking at me, Bobby; I know you would.” - -It was useless of Bobby to say he wouldn’t. He would. - -“I didn’t know that things were going to take me like this until I -fixed to marry you. I wanted to marry you when I consented--honestly -I did. I wanted dreadfully then to get close to some one, as close as -possible, and to be kissed and told ‘There! There!’ and to keep there. -It was a comfort for me, Bobby. You are a comfort for me. I’d ache to -madness without you. But how close we come when we love, Bobby, and how -far away we are all the time! How can we know each other when we hardly -know ourselves? When we don’t _dare_ know ourselves? - -“You are such a dear, Bobby. You are so warm and kind that it seems -ungrateful not to give myself to you with both hands. But I just -can’t. I’m not a normal woman perhaps. Or something has happened to me -unawares. Perhaps life has cheated me out of something.... Oh, I don’t -know, Bobby. I want some one dreadfully; I want you dreadfully and I -don’t want you at all. I’d rather be dead than a female thing like -Margaret Means. If _that’s_ marrying----!” - -“But I thought,” said Bobby, “after all that’s happened----” - -“No.” - -“I’ll wait ten years for you,” said Bobby, “on the chance of your -altering your mind.” - -“You are the dearest comforter,” said Christina Alberta, and stopped -short.... - -And suddenly she had put her hands upon his shoulders and clung to him -and broken into a wild passion of weeping. - -“Wetting you instead of wedding you,” she sobbed and laughed. “Oh, my -poor Bobby! you dear lover!” - -She clung to him for a time. Then she detached herself and stood wiping -her eyes, the Christina Alberta he generally knew, except for the -traces of her tears. “If women can’t control their emotions better,” -she said, “they’ll have to go back to Harems. We can’t have it both -ways. But I _won’t_ marry you. There’s no man in the world I can marry. -I’m going to be a free and independent woman, Bobby. From now on.” - -“But I don’t understand!” said Bobby. - -“It’s not because I don’t want you to love me.” - -He was baffled. “_Bobby!_” she whispered, and seemed to glow. - -Bobby took her back into his arms and held her, and pressed his cheek -and ears against hers, and kissed her and kissed her again, and it -seemed to him to mark his own unworthiness that he should think at such -a time that there were no such wonderful kisses in the world as kisses -flavoured with salt tears. - -And yet she wasn’t going to marry him! She had snatched herself back -from him and nevertheless she was in his arms. - -He was enormously perplexed at what was happening, but it was quite -clear that the end of his engagement was not to be the end of his -love-making. Anyhow here was love. It was so manifestly the time for -love. High May ruled the world. About them there were hawthorn trees -white with blossom and great bushes of elder just breaking into flower. - - -§ 4 - -Bobby sat in the gloaming with his friends and thought of the things -that had happened to him that day, thought of Christina Alberta’s -salt tears and the incessant intriguing strangeness of her ways. He -was still immensely puzzled, but now in a large, restful, contented -fashion. Christina Alberta and he were not to marry it seemed; -nevertheless he had kissed her and embraced her, and he was free to sit -at her feet. For a time he was not even to humiliate himself by telling -these others he was not to marry her. He said nothing. His thoughts and -feelings were beyond words. Christina Alberta too was darkly silent. -Everyone indeed seemed preoccupied. Talk about the view and the stars -and the coming of the nightingales, and about migratory birds and -lighthouses rambled on for a time and died away. - -They were all too full for talking. The silence lengthened. He wondered -what would happen if nobody spoke any more. He thought of Christina -Alberta close behind him and he began to quiver in all his being. The -silence was becoming oppressive. He felt as though he could no longer -change his attitude. Nobody stirred. But Lambone saved the situation. - -“It is exactly six months ago to-night that Sargon died upstairs,” said -Lambone. He paused and seemed to answer an unspoken question. “We don’t -know when he died exactly. He just faded out in the night.” - -“I wish I could have known him,” said Margaret Means after quite a long -interval. - -Bobby’s thoughts came round to Sargon. That still young woman sitting -in the darkness behind him ceased to dominate his thoughts. He was -moved to speak, and had to cough to clear his throat. - -“I hate to think of his being burnt and scattered,” he said. - -“It’s not so disagreeable,” said Miss Lambone, “as to think of the body -all shut up in the coffin and decaying.” - -“Oh, don’t!” cried Bobby. “It’s death--any death, that I hate to think -of. Now when it is spring time, when the whole world is so full of -life, I remember all he was, the hopes he had, and they are scattered -and dispersed. Anyhow they are scattered and dispersed, they are not -boxed up and locked up and buried.... When I was here last he was like -a little boy who has just heard of the world. He was going to fly, -going to India and China, going to learn all about everything and then -do all sorts of splendid things. And there were the beastly bacteria at -work in his lungs and beating his strength down and none of it was ever -to happen.... When first I heard he was dead I could not believe it.” - -“_Is_ he dead?” said Paul Lambone. - -There was no reply to be made to that. - -Paul adjusted his shoulder-blades a little more comfortably against the -back of the small deep sofa on which he sat. “The more I think over -Sargon the less dead he seems to me, and the more important he becomes. -I don’t agree with you, Roothing. I don’t find anything futile in his -life. I think he was--symbolically--perfect. I have thought about him -endlessly.” - -“And talked,” said Devizes, “endlessly.” - -“And given you some very helpful ideas for your treatment. Don’t be -ungrateful. You think that Sargon is over. He has only just begun. You -are becoming too professional with success, Devizes. You begin to take -up cases and work them off and drop them out of your mind. You don’t go -on with them and learn. You don’t sit about and think about them as I -do. I continue to think about Sargon. I go on with him because he is -still a living being for me. I have got a new religion from him, the -religion of Sargonism. I declare him prophet of a new dispensation. -It is my latest new religion. There will always be new religions, and -the new religions will always be the only ones that matter. Religion -is a living thing, and what is alive must be continually dying and be -continually born again--differently but the same.” - -“You believe in immortality, Mr. Lambone,” said Miss Means. “I wish -that I could. But when I try to imagine it my wits fail me. Sometimes -one seems to _feel_ what it might be. On a night like this perhaps----” - -Her pretty clear voice died away in the stillness as the trail of a -falling star dies away. - -Paul, a large dark lump on the dim pale sofa, went on speaking. -“Immortality,” he said, “is a mystery. One can only speak of it in dark -metaphors. How can we believe that each of our individual commonplace -lives is to have an endless commonplace sequel? That is incredible -nonsense. Yet we go on living after death nevertheless. When we die we -are changed. All wise teachers have insisted upon that. As Roothing -said, we are not boxed up and buried and forgotten. Our real death is -an escape, and we escape and become--what did you say?--dispersed. -Immortal life is endless consequence. Our lives are like lines in a -great poem. It is an unfinished and yet it is a perfect poem. The line -begins and ends but it has to be there, and once it is there, it is -there eternally. Nothing could follow if it was not there. But every -star has not the same glory. Some lives, some lines, stand out as more -significant than the others. They open a new branch of the subject, -they start a new point of view, they express something fresh. They are -geniuses, they are prophets, they are major stars. Sargon was the last, -the latest of these prophets, and I am his Paul. Not for nothing was I -christened Paul.” - -“Paul of Tarsus,” said Devizes, “was a man of energy.” - -“There will always be minor differences in such parallels,” said -Lambone. - -“I will tell you my doctrine,” he said. - -He began to talk in that clear miniature voice of his, which was so -like a little mouse running out of the mountain of his person, of -Sargon and his struggles with his individuality, and of the struggles -in every man between his individual life and something greater that -is also in him. There was a streak of fantasy in what he was saying, -a touch of burlesque in his constant use of theological and religious -phrasing, and withal a profound sincerity. In every human being, he -declared, the little laundryman battled with the King of Kings. He -expanded and amplified his theme. Ever and again Devizes would cut into -the monologue and talk for a time, not so much to make objections as to -restate and amend and amplify. The others said little. Margaret Means -twice made soft sweet sounds suggestive of intellectual sensuousness, -and once Christina Alberta said “But--!” very loudly and then “Never -mind. Go on” and relapsed for a long time into a silence that could -be felt. Bobby sat still, sometimes listening intently and sometimes -with his mind spreading out like an uncared-for stream into a number of -parallel channels. The argument itself was interesting to follow, but -moving at the side of that was the question of the talker’s sincerity. -How much of all this stuff did Lambone mean? How much of what he said -was of a piece with the rest of his observant, self-indulgent life, his -life as a humorous comment on a universe that was profoundly absurd? - -How easily Lambone played with phrases and ideas for which men had -lived and died! How widely he had read and thought to bring so many -things together! He produced a great effect of erudition. The Golden -Bough he had at his fingers’ ends. He talked of the sacramental -mysteries of half a dozen cults, from Mithraism to ritual sacrifices, -of varying ideas of personality that had held and swayed human life -from Fiji to Yucatan. Now he was in pre-Christian Alexandria, and now -among the Chinese philosophers. The “Superior Person” of Confucius he -declared was merely an example of our way of translating all Chinese -phrases as ridiculously as possible; it meant really the Higher and -Greater Man, the Universal Man, in whom the inferior egotistical man -merged himself. It was the salvation of the Revivalist everywhere; it -was the Spiritual Man of Pauline Christianity. When the late Mr. Albert -Edward Preemby poured out all his little being into the personality of -Sargon, King of Kings, he was only doing over again what the saints -and mystics, the religious teachers and fanatics, have done throughout -the ages. He was just the Master under the Bo Tree translated into the -cockney of Woodford Wells. - -Presently Devizes was talking. Devizes was a great contrast to -Lambone. He talked a different language. He did not seem nearly so -clear and clever to Bobby as Lambone did, but he had an effect of -sincerity and solidity of conviction that Lambone lacked altogether. -His interventions made all that Lambone said seem like a wild and -picturesque parody of something that was otherwise inexpressible. Both -he and Lambone had an air of casting verbal nets for some truth that -still eluded them. And yet this truth so remotely and imperfectly -apprehended was for each of them the most important thing in life. - -“Stripped of its theological trappings,” Devizes said to Lambone, “your -new religion is simply a statement of this. That our race has reached, -and is now receding, from a maximum of _individuation_. That it turns -now towards synthesis and co-operation. It will move back towards what -you call Sargon, the great ruler, and it will swallow up individual -egotistical men in its common aims. As already scientific work swallows -them up. Or good administrative work. Or art. That is what you are -saying.” - -“Exactly,” said Paul Lambone. “If we _must_ talk your language, -Devizes, and not mine. Art, science, public service, creative work of -every sort, these are parts of what you, I suppose, would call the race -mind, parts of the race life. Every man who matters is a fresh thought, -a fresh idea. He is himself still, it is true, but his significance is -that he comes out of his past and out of his conditions and he flows on -to further men. This is the new realization that is changing all the -values in human life. It is happening everywhere. Even in the books and -reading of to-day you can see the thing happening. History now becomes -more important than biography. What made up the whole of life in the -romantic past; the love story, the treasure story, the career, getting -on, making a fortune, the personal deed and victory, the sacrifices for -an individual friend or love or leader; remains no longer the whole -of life and sometimes not even the leading interest in life. We are -passing into a new way of living, into a new sort of lives, into new -relationships. The world which seemed for a time not to be changing any -more is changing very swiftly ... in its mental substance.” - -“New sorts of people,” said Bobby softly, and went off from listening -to Lambone’s lucid little voice into a final recapitulation of the -puzzling things Christina Alberta had said and done that day. - - -§ 5 - -Bobby was recalled to the matter of the talk by a movement in the chair -behind him. - -Lambone’s smooth voice was explaining: “So that it does not matter so -much what we achieve as what we contribute. That cherished personal -life which men and women struggle to round off and make noble and -perfect, disappears from the scheme of things. What matters more and -more is the work one does. What matters less and less is our personal -romance and our personal honour. Or rather our honour will go out of us -into our work. Our love affairs, our devotions and private passions, -for example, will fall more and more definitely into a subordination -to our science or whatever our function is. Our romances and our fame -and honour will join our vices among the things we suppress. There was -a time when men lived for a noble tomb and in order to leave sweet and -great memories behind them; soon it will matter nothing to a man and -his work to know that he will probably die in a ditch--misunderstood. -So long as he gets the work done.” - -“With no last Judgment ever to vindicate him,” said Devizes. - -“That will not matter in the least to him.” - -“I agree. Some of us begin to feel like that even now.” - -“Even if one has done nothing worth doing,” said Paul Lambone, and in -his voice was that faint quality of the sigh of one who has crowned a -rather difficult and uncertain card castle, “even if Sargon had died -unrescued in his Asylum and all the world had thought him mad, all the -same he would have escaped, his imagination would have touched the -imagination of the greater life.” - -Came a pause of edification and then a sigh of satisfaction from Miss -Lambone. She never understood in the least what her brother was talking -about, but she adored him when he talked. Nobody she thought had ever -talked like him, or could possibly talk like him. His voice was so -clear and bright, like the best sort of print. Only sometimes you -wished you had spectacles. - -But now Miss Lambone was to receive a shock. Christina Alberta suddenly -came out of the silence in which she had been sitting. - -“I don’t believe in this,” said Christina Alberta out of the depths of -her chair. - -Bobby was beginning to know the voice of Christina Alberta very well; -and he knew now that she was terrified at having to talk, and at the -same time desperately resolved to get something said. He knew too that -she was gripping hard at the arms of her chair. He glanced at Devizes -and in that instant the lighthouse beam touched his face and Bobby -saw it very intent, watching Christina Alberta steadily and as if -forgetful of all other things. It was intent and tender and tenderly -apprehensive, grave and very pale in that white illumination. When the -light had passed away Bobby still seemed to see that face, but now -conversely it was a face of ebony. - -“I do not believe in _any_ of this,” said Christina Alberta. - -She paused with the effect of marshalling her argument. “It is -theology, I suppose,” she said. “Or mysticism. It is all an -intellectual game that men have played to comfort themselves. Men -rather than women. It makes no real difference. Tragedy _is_ tragedy, -failure _is_ failure, death is death.” - -“But is there ever complete failure?” asked Lambone. - -“Suppose,” said Christina Alberta, “suppose a man is thrown into prison -and misrepresented to all the world, suppose he is taken away presently -and made to dig his own grave, and shot at the edge of it and buried -and then lied about for a time and forgotten. It isn’t part of the race -that is murdered, it isn’t a wonderful thing that passes on; it is a -man who has been killed and made away with. Your mysticism is just an -attempt to dodge the desolation of that. It doesn’t. Such things have -happened. They happen to-day. In Russia. In America. Everywhere. Men -are just wiped out, body and soul, hope and will. That man and his -black personal universe are done with and over, and there is an end -to his business; he is beaten and wiped out, and all the clever talk -upon easy sofas in the warm twilight will not alter that one jot. It -is frustration. If I am frustrated I am frustrated, if I have desires -and dreams and they are defeated and die, I die. It is playing with -words to say I do not die or that they are changed and sublimated and -carried on into something better.” - -“My dear,” said Miss Lambone to Miss Means. “You are sure you are not -feeling cold?” Her voice conveyed a faint intimation that she would -cease to be acutely interested in the talk if this chit of a girl -intervened any further in the discussion, and that she would begin to -do things with wraps and shawls and break up the meeting. - -“I’m perfectly happy, dear,” Miss Means answered. “All this--! I wish -it could go on for ever.” - -But Christina Alberta disregarded Miss Lambone’s warning. She had -something to say and there was some one she wanted to say it to, not -too pointedly, not too plainly. - -“All this theology, this religion, the new religions that are only the -old ones painted over----” - -“Reborn,” said Paul. - -“Painted over. I don’t want them. But that is not what I want to say. -What I want to say is that you are wrong about my Daddy, you are quite -wrong about him. That I do know. Mr. Lambone has dressed him up to suit -his own philosophy. He had that philosophy long before he knew him. And -you talked my Daddy over and put Mr. Lambone’s ideas into him when he -was beaten and broken because they suited his case. They weren’t there -before. I know him and exactly how he thought. I was brought up on him. -He talked to me more than to anyone. And it is all nonsense to talk of -him--his exaltation, as being like the great soul coming like the tidal -sea into the pool of the little soul. It didn’t. When he said he was -Lord of the World he wanted to be Lord of the World. He didn’t want to -incorporate any other people at all--or be incorporated. He was just -as exclusively himself when he was Sargon as when he was Albert Edward -Preemby. More so.... And I believe that is how it is with all of us.” - -She went on rather hurriedly, for she knew there were forces there very -ready to silence her. - -“I want to be myself and nothing else. I want the world--for myself. -I want to be a goddess in the world. It does not matter that I am an -ugly girl with natural bad manners. It does not matter that it is -impossible. That is what I want. That is what I am made to want. One -may get moments anyhow. A moment of glory is better than none.... -I believe that sort of thing is what you all want really. You just -persuade yourselves you don’t. And you call that religion. I don’t -believe anyone has ever believed religion from the beginning. Buddhism, -Christianity, this fantastic Sargonism, this burlesque religion you -invent to make an evening’s talk, they are all consolations and -patchings-up--bandages and wooden legs. People have tried to believe in -such religions no doubt. Broken people. But because we cannot satisfy -the desires of our hearts--why should we cry ‘Sour grapes’ at them? - -“I don’t want to serve--anything or anybody. I may be heading for -frustration, the universe may be a system of frustration, but that -doesn’t alter the fact that this is how I feel about it. I may be -defeated; it may be certain that I shall be defeated--but as for -bringing a contrite heart out of the mess and starting again as a good -little part of something--I _don’t_ fink. Oh, I know I beat my hands -against a wall. It’s not my fault. Why don’t we take? Oh, why don’t we -dare?” - -Miss Lambone stirred and rustled. - -The darkness that was Devizes spoke to Christina Alberta, and Miss -Lambone became still. - -“We don’t take and we don’t dare,” he said, “we don’t defy laws and -customs because there are other things in our lives, _in_ us and not -outside us, that are more important to us. That is why. It pleases Paul -to dress up his view of these things in old mystical phrasing, but -what he says is really an unscientific way of putting psychological -fact. You think you are simple, but you are really complex. You are the -individual but you are the race also. That is your nature and mine and -everyone’s. The more our intelligence awakens the more we know that.” - -“But it is the difference that is distinctively me, and not the -general part. The race in me is no more to me than the ground I walk -on. I am Christina Alberta; I am not Woman or Mankind. As Christina -Alberta, I want and I want and I want. And when the door is slammed -upon my imaginations I cry out against it. Why pretend I give up a -thing because I can’t have it? Why make a glory of renunciation and -letting-go? I hate the idea of self-sacrifice. What is the good of -coming into the world as Christina Alberta just in order to sacrifice -being Christina Alberta? What is the good of being different if one is -not to live a different life?” - -Unexpectedly Miss Lambone intervened, “The life of a woman is one long -sacrifice,” she said. - -There was a pause. - -“But we have the vote now?” said Christina Alberta almost flippantly. -“Why is a woman’s life sacrifice?” - -“Think of the children we bear,” said Miss Lambone in a constrained -voice. - -“_Well!_” said Christina Alberta, and suppressed some scandalous remark. - -“The most astonishing thing about us,” she broke out again, after a -pause; “the most astonishing thing in the feminine make-up is that -hardly any of us _do_ seem to want children. A lot of us anyhow don’t. -Now that I am beginning to learn something about biology, I realize how -marvellous that is. As a race of creatures specialized for children, -we ought to be eaten up by the desire for children. As a matter of -fact most modern women will do anything to avoid having children. We -dread them. To me they seem like a swarm of hidden dwarfs, prepared to -come upon me and eat up my whole existence. It’s not simply I don’t -want them; I live in fear of them. Love we _may_ want. Many of us do. -Intensely. We want to love and be loved--to get close and near to -some one. It’s a delusion I suppose. One of Nature’s clumsy tricks. -It is all a delusion. He vanishes--he was never there. Under the old -conditions it availed; it got the children Nature wanted. But we -don’t think of children. We don’t want to think about them. There it -is! And anyway children do not take a woman out of her egotism; they -only extend and intensify it. I have known intelligent girls marry -and have children, and when the baby appeared their minds evaporated. -They became creatures of instinct, messing about with napkins. I could -scream at the thought of it. No, I am an egoist pure and simple. I am -Christina Alberta, and her only. I am not Sargon. I refuse altogether -to mix with that promiscuous anybody-nobody.” - -“After all that may only be a phase in your development,” said Devizes. - -“It is the only one I know.” - -“That is evident. But I assure you, Christina Alberta, that this revolt -and distress of yours is a phase. You are talking rebellion and egoism -and anarchism as a healthy baby screams to get breath into its lungs, -and escape from the stuffiness of old air. The baby doesn’t know why it -screams and no doubt finds some dim little grievance in its brain----” - -“Go on,” said Christina Alberta. “Chastise me and chastise me.” - -It seemed to Bobby that there were tears in her voice. - -“No, but you are so young, my dear,” said Devizes. - -My dear! - -“Not so young. Not so actually young,” cried Christina Alberta. - -“If I live to be eighty,” said Christina Alberta, “shall I ever be able -to feel more than I am feeling now? Why will you always treat me like a -child nowadays?” - -“Feeling isn’t the only measure,” said Devizes. “Even now, to-night, -you are talking below your beliefs. You are not an egoistic -adventurer. You take sides on a score of matters. You insist you are a -Communist for example.” - -“Oh! just to smash up things,” said Christina Alberta. “Just to smash -up everything.” - -“No. You say that to-night, but you have told me differently before. -You have a care for the world. You want to help forward the common -interest. You develop a passion for scientific truth. Well--there’s no -way of fencing in your individuality from other minds in science or in -public affairs. You’re a part by necessity; you can’t be a complete -whole. You find already you can’t keep away from these things. They -will take you more and more, whether you like it or not, because it is -the spirit of the time. That is what is happening to us all. You can’t -escape. Our work, our part, is the first thing in our lives. To that, -pride must bow now and passion and romance. We have to slam and lock -and bar the door against all personal passion that might wreck our -work. Bar it and put it out of your mind. As a secondary thing. Work. -Give the greater things a chance to keep you.” - -“That’s all very well.” - -“It’s everything.” - -“Why _should_ they keep me?” came from Christina Alberta, sullenly and -resolutely. - -“I know that this is your faith,” she said. “You told me all about it. -You’ve always told me about it.” Bobby’s quick ear detected a change in -her voice “Do you remember our first talk together? Do you remember our -talk in Lonsdale Mews? When we dined together at that Italian place? -That night. Just after we had found each other.” - -Found each other? - -“But I did not know then that your faith meant all the suppressions and -sacrifices and discretions it seems to do. I thought it was something -robust and bold. I did not understand its--qualifications. But since -then we have argued about these things and argued. That day at Kew -Gardens. That day when you took me for that walk over the downs to -Shere. We have threshed things out. Why should we argue again? I am -giving in--what can I do but give in?--and soon I will be a Sargonite -with you and Paul. But not this summer. Not now. This night--This -wonderful first night of summer. To-night I rebel against any -renunciation, any fobbing-off of individuals with second-best things. -I am going to be impossible and absurd. For the last time. I want the -world from the stars to the bottom of the sea for myself, for my own -hungry self. And all between. The precious things between. The love.... -_There!_” - -Vague questions appeared and vanished again on the screen of Bobby’s -mind. What had Christina Alberta renounced? What was she renouncing? -What was anyone renouncing? And had his ears cheated him, or had -Devizes called her, “my dear”? In front of Margaret Means and in face -of all the circumstances of the case it seemed to Bobby that Devizes -was the last person who ought to call Christina Alberta “my dear.” -And what was this about “fobbing-off”? Was this really a shameless -plainness of speech, an atrocious confession, or something that he -misunderstood? - -Miss Lambone stirred uneasily. - -It was as if an evil spirit possessed Christina Alberta. “Oh, _damn_ -renunciation!” she said with bitter gusto. - -They seemed to be sitting for some moments in a profound silence, and -then the nightingale became very audible. - - -§ 6 - -“I think,” said Miss Lambone in the silence, “that it is getting just a -_leetle_ chilly.” - -“It is so beautiful here,” said Miss Means, who was warm in Miss -Lambone’s shawl. “Perfectly beautiful. - -“How you can talk of frustration--!” she added, and left her sentence -incomplete. - -“I think,” said Miss Lambone, “that I shall go in and light the -candles. It is too wonderful a night for the electric lights, far too -wonderful. We will just light the candles and the fire. And perhaps you -will play us something beautiful. These are such marvellous fire-places -here that they blaze up at once. I don’t know if you have noticed -them--a new sort. The fire is all on the hearth--no draught below, but -the shape of the back draws it up. - -“I love a wood fire,” said Miss Lambone, and sighed and rose slowly and -voluminously. - - -§ 7 - -Two days later Bobby came into one of the little studies on the garden -side of Paul Lambone’s house. Paul had found out that Bobby wanted a -few days of uninterrupted thought in which to begin his novel, and had -asked him to stay on after the other guests had returned to London. -It was a perfect room for a writer of Bobby’s temperament; it had a -low writing-table close to the sill of the casemented window, and -on the sill was a silver bowl of forget-me-nots and white tulips. A -little glass-paned door released one into the garden without one’s -having to go back through the house. The writing-table had everything -a fastidious writer could desire, a pleasant paper-rack and wafers, -and real quill pens, and plenty of elbow room. The chair he sat in was -an arm-chair, immensely comfortable but not too luxurious; no hint -of repose in it but only a completely loyal support for a working -occupant. A garden path ran up hill from the window, a garden path -skirted by wonderful clusters of pansies. On either side of the pansies -were rose bushes, and though not a rosebud was showing, yet the fresh -green leaves, tinged with ruddy brown, were very exquisite in the -light. - -He stood looking up the path for a time and then sat down and drew the -writing-pad towards him. He took one of those delightful quills, tested -the delicious flexibility of its points, dipped it in the ink and wrote -in his very neat and beautiful handwriting: - - UPS AND DOWNS - - _A Pedestrian Novel_ - - BY ROBERT ROOTHING - - CHAPTER THE FIRST - - WHICH INTRODUCES OUR HERO - -He wrote this very readily because it was very familiar to him. From -first to last he had written it on fair fresh sheets of paper perhaps -half a dozen times. - -Then he stopped short and sat quite still with his head on one side. -Then very neatly he corrected “which introduces” into “in which we -introduce.” - -It was nearly two years now since he had first begun his novel in -this fashion, and he was still quite uncertain about the details -of his hero’s introduction. His original intention about the story -still floated pleasantly in the sky of his mind; a promise of a happy -succession of fine, various and delightful adventures, told easily -and good-humouredly; the fortunes of a kindly, unpretending, not too -brave but brave enough young man, on his way through the world, to live -happily afterwards with a delicious young woman. “Picaresque” was the -magic word. None of these adventures had as yet assumed a concrete form -in his mind. He felt they would come to him definitely enough one day. -If one sat and mused one half saw them, and that was assurance enough -for him. And so having rewritten his title page neatly and prettily, he -fell into a day-dream and was presently thinking round and about his -Christina Alberta as a good hero should. - -Bobby was always being puzzled by Christina Alberta, always coming -upon something that seemed to clear up everything, and then being -puzzled again. But now it seemed to him that he really did know the -last fact of importance that was to be known about her. Overnight Paul -Lambone had described how he had taken her to Devizes to get advice, -and how they had blundered upon the reality of her parentage. He told -his story well as a story-writer should; he gave it dramatic point. -Evidently he told the tale of set intention, because it was time Bobby -knew. Lambone was aware of Christina Alberta’s engagement. He did not -know and nobody but Bobby knew that she never intended to be married. -But this, it seemed to Bobby, made the understanding of her situation -possible; explained that watchful tenderness of Devizes’ face suddenly -betrayed by the light of his inadvertent “my dear”; explained her -position as though she belonged to him and Paul Lambone instead of -being a rather unaccountable visitor; excused her vehement jealousy of -Margaret Means, because evidently she had become violently possessive -of her father, and had counted perhaps upon recognition and being very -much with him. No doubt Margaret Means stood in the way of that. It -was natural for Christina Alberta to want to be with Devizes and work -with him, and natural for her to suspect and anticipate and resent an -intervening personality. Apart from the magic of kinship it was natural -that two such subtle and abundant personalities should attract each -other greatly. That Devizes should have decided quite abruptly to marry -Margaret Means did not present any difficulties to Bobby; he was not -thinking very closely about Devizes. Margaret Means was pretty enough -for anyone to want to marry her. There are times, as Bobby knew, when -that sweet prettiness can stab one like an arrow. It had evidently -stabbed and won Devizes. And almost the only thing that gave Bobby -a second thought, but no more than a second thought, was Christina -Alberta’s fluctuation of purpose, why she should have consented to -marry him and then have changed her mind so quickly and definitely and -yet have retained him as a lover. - -That resolution not to marry seemed after all just a part of her -immense modernity. Because of all this group of “new people” in which -he found her, she seemed to Bobby to be in every way the newest. -She was the boldest enterprise in living he had ever met. Her flare -of hungry rebel individuality fascinated him. Where in this world -was she going? Would she win out to this free personal life she -desired or would she fail to find an objective of work and come upon -disappointment and solitude like some creature that has strayed? The -world had terrified Bobby in his own person greatly; it terrified him -still more when he thought of this valiant little figure going out to -challenge it. - -Bobby was naturally, inherently, afraid; his instinct was for security, -protection, kindliness and help. He clung to his “Aunt Suzannah” job -for safety. He didn’t believe Christina Alberta knew one tenth of the -dangers she ran of insult, defeat, humiliation, neglect, repulse, -fatigue and lonely distress. His imagination presented a tormenting -picture of her away there in dark, confused, immense and blundering -London, as an excessively fragile figure, light on its feet, shock-head -erect, arms akimbo, unaware of monstrous ambushed dangers. Now that -he began to understand her, he began to understand a great number of -bright-eyed, adventurous, difficult young women he had met in the last -few years, and he had his first dim realization of the meaning of the -deep wide stir among womankind that had won them votes and a score of -unprecedented freedoms. - -Many of these younger women were doing their work and holding their -own exactly like men. They were painting and drawing like men, writing -criticism like men, writing plays and novels like men, leading -movements, doing scientific work, playing a part in politics. Like -men? On reflection--not exactly. No. They still kept different. But -they didn’t do their things in any fashion one could call womanly. -Without adding strange new meanings to “womanly.” The novels they were -writing interested him immensely. People like Stella Benson wrote -books like--anybody; you could not tell from her work whether she was -a man or a woman. All that again was new. George Eliot perhaps was a -precursor. Perhaps. The former sort of women’s writings, when they -were not “pretty me” books, were “kindly auntie” books; you heard the -petticoats swish in every page. - -Sexless, these new ones? Bobby weighed the word. The earlier generation -of women who wanted to be emancipated suppressed sex, suppressed it so -fiercely that its negative presence became the dominant factor in their -lives. They ceased to be positive woman; they became fantastically -negative woman. But this newer multitude was not so much repressing as -forgetting their sex, making little of it. Christina Alberta had in -a way made nothing of her sex, not by struggling against it, but by -making it cheap for herself as a man makes it cheap for himself--so -that it was a thing of mere intermittent moods and impulses for -her--and she could go on to other things. - -Going on to other things. His imagination recurred to that little -figure resolved to conquer the world for itself in defiance of every -tradition. - -There was a strong urgency in him to start off to London in pursuit -of her, to hover about her, intervene, protect her and carry her off -to security. He knew she wouldn’t permit that sort of thing to happen -anyhow. He’d have to be just a friend and companion to her, be at hand -for her, and if she did encounter some disaster, stand by her. - -It was a queer thing that he should want to stand by this unsexed -young woman. It was just what one would not expect; it was part, -perhaps, of the immense biological changes of the time. In the past -the species had needed half the race specialized for child-bearing and -child-rearing; now plainly it didn’t. The tremendous and worshipful -dignity of wife and mother was not for all women any longer. That would -remain for a certain sort of them to take up if they would. But a vast -multitude of women were born now to miss that. Some would become pretty -nuisances who would presently cease to be pretty, parasites on love and -the respect for motherhood; shams, simulacra. Others would break away -to a real individual life--a third sex. Perhaps in the new world there -would cease to be two sexes only; there would be recognized varieties -and subdivisions. So Bobby speculated. For just as there were women who -did not want to bear children, so there were men who did not want to -lord it over wife and children. - -They would want to love all the same. Every individual of a social -species needed love; to fail in that need was to escape out of social -life to lonely futility. “Mutual comfort,” Bobby quoted. In his past -Bobby had dreamt of the love of children. Even now he remembered as -a fact that he had dreamt particularly of a little girl of his own -that he could protect and explore. But now the thought and interest of -Christina Alberta had blotted that out. It was extraordinary to him -to perceive how possessed he was by her. He could endure no prospect -of life just now unless it was to include Christina Alberta as its -principal fact. But he’d be no use to her unless she respected him. -He couldn’t hope to stand subordinate to her, any more than he could -hope to be her master. In the latter case she’d rebel; in the former, -she’d despise. They would have to stand side by side. And since she was -clever, able and resolved to work hard and distinguish herself, he must -word hard and also distinguish himself too. He had to be her equal and -remain and keep himself her equal.... - -That, in fact, was why he was going to write a great novel--not just a -novel but a great one. - -He looked again at the neatly written page. “Ups and Downs,” he read. -“A Pedestrian Novel.” - -It dawned upon him that there was something profoundly wrong about that. - -It was to have been a story of wandering about in the world that is; -the story of the happy adventures of a well tempered mind in a well -understood scheme of things. But Bobby was beginning to realize that -there is not, and there never has been, a world that is; there is -only a world that has been and a world that is to be. “New people,” -whispered Bobby, and dipped a quill in the ink and made a border of -dots round his title. Then suddenly he crossed out those three words -“Ups and Downs” and wrote instead, “New Country.” - -“That might be the title of any novel that matters,” said Bobby. - -He mused deeply. Then he altered the sub-title to “The History of an -Explorer.” - -He scratched out “Explorer.” - -“Involuntary traveller,” said Bobby. - -Finally he put back “A Pedestrian Novel” as his sub-title.... - -He became aware of an intermittent dull tapping, and following the -sound discovered a thrush trying to break up a snail on the gravel -path. But the gravel path was too fine and soft to give a firm anvil -for the beating. “The silly bird ought to find a brick or a potsherd,” -said Bobby and reflected. “I suppose all the flower-pots are shut up in -the shed.... - -“I don’t like to see that bird wasting the morning and being -disappointed.... - -“It wouldn’t take a minute....” - -He got up, let himself out by the little glass door beside the window -and went to find a brick. Presently he returned with it. - -But he did not go back into the study because while he had been -looking for the brick, he had seen a young blackbird which had got -under the strawberry netting, and was evidently scared out of its -silly wits. So he went back to see about the blackbird. The minutes -passed and he did not reappear. Perhaps he had found some other -fellow-creature in trouble. - -Presently a little breeze blew into the study through the open glass -door, and lifted the sheet of paper which was to introduce our hero, -and wafted it softly and suggestively on to the unlit wood fire upon -the hearth. There it lay for a long time. - - - - -TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: - - - Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - - Superscripted characters are preceded by a carat character: n^{th}. - - Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - - Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. - - Archaic or variant spelling has been retained. - - No attempt has been made to regularize dialect. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69410 *** diff --git a/old/69410-h/69410-h.htm b/old/69410-h/69410-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 44c00a4..0000000 --- a/old/69410-h/69410-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,16576 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html> -<html lang="en"> -<head> - <meta charset="UTF-8"> - <title> - Christina Alberta’s father, by H. G. Wells—A Project Gutenberg eBook - </title> - <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> - <style> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2,h3,h4 { - text-align: center; - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: 33.5%; - margin-right: 33.5%; - clear: both; -} - -hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} -hr.tiny {width: 10%; margin-left: 45%; margin-right: 45%;} -hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} -@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } - -div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} -h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} -h3.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} - -table { - margin-left: auto; - margin-right: auto; -} - -p.drop-cap { - text-indent: -0.35em; -} -p.drop-cap2 { - text-indent: -0.75em; -} -p.drop-cap:first-letter, p.drop-cap2:first-letter -{ - float: left; - margin: 0em 0.15em 0em 0em; - font-size: 250%; - line-height:0.85em; - text-indent: 0em; -} -.x-ebookmaker p.drop-cap, .x-ebookmaker p.drop-cap2 { - text-indent: 0em; -} -.x-ebookmaker p.drop-cap:first-letter, .x-ebookmaker p.drop-cap2:first-letter -{ - float: none; - margin: 0; - font-size: 100%; -} - -.indentright {margin-right: 5em;} - -th {font-size: 125%} - -.tdr {text-align: right;} -.tdc {text-align: center;} - -.pagenum { - position: absolute; - left: 92%; - font-size: smaller; - text-align: right; - font-style: normal; - font-weight: normal; - font-variant: normal; - text-indent: 0; -} - -.blockquot2 { - margin-left: 5%; - margin-right: 5%; -} - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.right {text-align: right;} - -.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} - -.allsmcap {font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;} - -.ph1 {text-align: center; font-size: large; font-weight: bold;} -.ph2 {text-align: center; font-size: xx-large; font-weight: bold;} - -div.titlepage {text-align: center; page-break-before: always; page-break-after: always;} -div.titlepage p {text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: 2em;} - -.xxlarge {font-size: 175%;} - -.large {font-size: 125%;} - -.x-ebookmaker .hide {display: none; visibility: hidden;} - -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; - page-break-inside: avoid; - max-width: 100%; -} - -.antiqua { - font-family: Blackletter, Fraktur, Textur, "Old English Text MT", "Olde English Mt", "Olde English", Gothic, serif, sans-serif;} - -.poetry-container {text-align: center;} -.poetry {display: inline-block; text-align: left; margin-left: 2em;} -.poetry .verse {text-indent: -2.5em; padding-left: 3em;} -.poetry .indent2 {text-indent: 2.5em;} -.poetry .first {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;} -.poetry .center {text-align: center;} -@media print { .poetry {display: block;} } -.x-ebookmaker .poetry {display: block;} - -.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; - color: black; - font-size:smaller; - margin-left: 17.5%; - margin-right: 17.5%; - padding: 1em; - margin-bottom: 1em; - font-family:sans-serif, serif; } - -</style> -</head> -<body> -<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69410 ***</div> - -<div class="figcenter hide"><img src="images/coversmall.jpg" width="450" alt=""></div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h1>CHRISTINA ALBERTA’S FATHER</h1> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<p><span class="xxlarge">M</span><span class="allsmcap">R. WELLS</span> has also written the following novels:</p> - -<div class="blockquot2"> -<p>THE WHEELS OF CHANCE.<br> -LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM.<br> -KIPPS.<br> -TONO-BUNGAY.<br> -ANN VERONICA.<br> -MR. POLLY.<br> -THE NEW MACHIAVELLI.<br> -MARRIAGE.<br> -THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS.<br> -THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN.<br> -BEALBY.<br> -THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT.<br> -MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH.<br> -THE SOUL OF A BISHOP.<br> -JOAN AND PETER.<br> -THE UNDYING FIRE.<br> -THE SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART.</p> -</div> - -<p>The following Fantastic and Imaginative Romances:</p> - -<div class="blockquot2"> - -<p>THE TIME MACHINE.<br> -THE WONDERFUL VISIT.<br> -THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU.<br> -THE INVISIBLE MAN.<br> -THE WAR OF THE WORLDS.<br> -THE SLEEPER AWAKES.<br> -THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON.<br> -THE SEA LADY.<br> -THE FOOD OF THE GODS.<br> -IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET.<br> -THE WAR IN THE AIR.<br> -THE WORLD SET FREE.<br> -MEN LIKE GODS.<br> -THE DREAM.</p> -</div> - -<p>Numerous Short Stories collected under the following Titles:</p> - -<div class="blockquot2"> - -<p>THE STOLEN BACILLUS.<br> -THE PLATTNER STORY.<br> -TALES OF SPACE AND TIME.<br> -TWELVE STORIES AND A DREAM.</p> -</div> -<p>The same Short Stories will also be found in three volumes:</p> - -<div class="blockquot2"> - -<p>TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED.<br> -TALES OF WONDER.<br> -TALES OF LIFE AND ADVENTURE.</p> -</div> - -<p>A Series of Books on Social, Religious, and Political Questions:</p> - -<div class="blockquot2"> -<p>ANTICIPATIONS (1900).<br> -A MODERN UTOPIA.<br> -THE FUTURE IN AMERICA.<br> -NEW WORLDS FOR OLD.<br> -FIRST AND LAST THINGS.<br> -GOD THE INVISIBLE KING.<br> -THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY.<br> -RUSSIA IN THE SHADOWS.<br> -THE SALVAGING OF CIVILIZATION.<br> -WASHINGTON AND THE RIDDLE OF PEACE.<br> -A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD.<br> -THE STORY OF A GREAT SCHOOLMASTER.<br> -A YEAR OF PROPHESYING.</p> -</div> - -<p>And Two Little Books about Children’s Play, called:</p> - -<div class="blockquot2"> -<p>FLOOR GAMES AND LITTLE WARS.</p> -</div> - -<p class="center"><i>A uniform Atlantic Edition of Mr. Wells’ works is in course of -publication.</i></p> -</div></div></div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> -<div class="chapter"> - -<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_title.jpg" alt=""></div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="titlepage"> -<p><span class="xxlarge">CHRISTINA ALBERTA’S<br> -FATHER</span></p> - -<p>BY<br> -<span class="large">H. G. WELLS</span></p> - -<p><span class="antiqua">New York</span><br> -THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br> -1925<br> -<i>All rights reserved</i></p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1925,<br> -By</span> H. G. WELLS.</p> - -<hr class="tiny"> - -<p class="center">Set up and electrotyped.<br> -Published September, 1925.<br> -Reprinted September 22, 1925.<br> -Reprinted November, 1925.<br> -<br> -<br> -PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY<br> -THE CORNWALL PRESS</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>CONTENTS</i></h2> -</div> - -<table> - -<tr><th colspan="2"><a href="#Page_9">BOOK THE FIRST</a></th></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2"><i>The Coming of Sargon, King of Kings</i></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE FIRST</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>THE EARLY LIFE OF MR. PREEMBY</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11"> 11</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE SECOND</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>CHRISTINA ALBERTA</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_28"> 28</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE THIRD</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>IN LONSDALE MEWS</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_50"> 50</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE FOURTH</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>THE PETUNIA BOARDING HOUSE</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_85"> 85</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE FIFTH</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>THE SCALES FALL FROM MR. PREEMBY’S EYES</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_114"> 114</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE SIXTH</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>CHRISTINA ALBERTA CONSULTS A WISE MAN</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_132"> 132</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td colspan="2"> </td></tr> - -<tr><th colspan="2"><a href="#Page_161">BOOK THE SECOND</a></th></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2"><i>The World Rejects Sargon, King of Kings</i> - -<tr><td colspan="2"> </td></tr> -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE FIRST</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>INCOGNITO</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_163"> 163</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE SECOND<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span></td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>THE CALLING OF THE DISCIPLES</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_195"> 195</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE THIRD</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>THE JOURNEY OF SARGON UNDERNEATH THE WORLD</small>      </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_218"> 218</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td colspan="2"> </td></tr> - -<tr><th colspan="2"><a href="#Page_243">BOOK THE THIRD</a></th></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2"><i>The Resurrection of Sargon, King of Kings</i> - -<tr><td colspan="2"> </td></tr> -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE FIRST</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>CHRISTINA ALBERTA IN SEARCH OF A FATHER</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_245"> 245</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE SECOND</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>HOW BOBBY STOLE A LUNATIC</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_300"> 300</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE THIRD</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>THE LAST PHASE</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_343"> 343</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE FOURTH</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>MAY AT UDIMORE</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_369"> 369</a></td></tr> -</table> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="ph2">CHRISTINA ALBERTA’S FATHER</p> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span> -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>BOOK THE FIRST</i><br> -<br> -THE COMING OF SARGON, KING<br> -OF KINGS</h2> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE FIRST<br> - -<i>The Early Life of Mr. Preemby</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">T<small>HIS</small> is the story of a certain Mr. Preemby, a retired -laundryman and widower, who abandoned his active -interest in the Limpid Stream Laundry, in the parish of -Saint Simon Unawares, near Woodford Wells, upon the -death of his wife in the year of grace 1920. Some very -remarkable experiences came to him. The story is essentially -a contemporary story: it is a story of London in the -age of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, broadcasting, and the first -Labour peers. The historical element in it is insignificant -and partly erroneous, and the future, though implicitly -present, is substantially ignored.</p> - -<p>Since washing in London, like the milk trade and baking -and the linen drapery and various other branches of commerce, -is something rather specialized and hereditary and -a little difficult towards outsiders, it is necessary to explain -that Mr. Preemby was not a laundryman born. He had -little of the spirit and go of a true London laundryman. -He married into laundrying. He met a Miss Hossett at -Sheringham in 1899, an heiress and a young lady of great -decision of character; he wooed and won her and married -her, as you will be told, almost without realizing what he -was doing. The Hossetts are big people in the laundry -world, and the Limpid Stream concern, which presently -fell into the capable hands of Mrs. Preemby, was only one<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span> -of a series of related and sympathetic businesses in the -north, north-east and south-west districts of London.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby, as Miss Hossett’s family came to recognize -quite frankly and explicitly at a very early stage, derived -from a less practical strain than his wife. His father had -been an artist of considerable charm and unpunctuality, a -photographic artist, who resided at Sheringham and made -what were called in the eighteen-eighties, “gem” photographs -of the summer visitors to that place. In the -eighteen-eighties he was a well-known Sheringham figure, -dark and handsome and sometimes a little unkempt, wearing -a brown velvet jacket and a large grey soft felt hat. He -would fall into conversation with the visitors upon the -beach, and a certain air of distinction about him would -bring a sufficient proportion to his studio to maintain him. -His wife, our Mr. Preemby’s mother, was a patient, underdeveloped -personality, the daughter of a farmer near Diss. -When presently Mr. Preemby senior passed out of his -son’s life—he became romantically entangled with a small -variety entertainment in the summer of 1887 and vanished -away with it in the autumn with as little fuss as possible, -never to return to Sheringham—Mrs. Preemby senior -became the working partner in a small lodging-house and -died in a year or so’s time, leaving her furniture, her -interest in the lodging-house and her only son to her -cousin and partner, Mrs. Witcherly.</p> - -<p>Young Albert Edward Preemby was then a good-looking, -slender youth of sixteen, with his father’s curliness and -his mother’s fair hair and eyes of horizon blue, dreamy and -indisposed for regular employment. Even as a child he -had been given to reverie; at school he would sit with sums -or book neglected before him, looking beyond them at unknown -things; his early experiences in business were disappointing -by reason of this abstraction. After a number -of unsuccessful attempts to exploit his gifts at some favourable -point in the complex machinery of our civilization, he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span> -came to rest for several years in the office of a house-agent -and coal-merchant in Norwich to whom his mother was -distantly related.</p> - -<p>Some ancient, remembered, sentimental tie helped -Albert Edward to this appointment and shielded any imperfections -in his performance from too urgent a criticism. -He did much better at it than anyone could have expected. -The calling of a house-agent differs from most other callings -in the fact that the necessary driving energy is supplied -entirely by the clientele, and there was something -about the letting of the larger houses that touched the -dormant imagination of young Preemby. He revealed a -natural gift for attractive description and was duly entrusted -with the work of collecting particulars from prospective -lessors. He had a quite useful hopefulness. And -even the coal proved unexpectedly interesting so soon as -he found that none of it had to be carried about by him. -He could never believe that all the golden scales one finds -in it were pyrites. He cherished a secret dream of a great -commercial enterprise to work cinder heaps for residual -gold. He told no one of this project, he took no steps to -realize it, but it warmed his daily routines with its promise -of release and wealth. And when things were slack in the -office in the early afternoon and he was left in charge, he -would go and sit on the coal counter and pick out the coal -samples for the little trays and turn them over and over -and view them from various angles and weigh them in his -hand and lapse into the most splendid visions.</p> - -<p>And if inquirers after houses came in, he would receive -them with a manner almost regal.</p> - -<p>In Norwich he became a member of the Y.M.C.A., but -he was interested in its literary rather than its religious -side, and he attended any political debates available. He -never spoke in these debates, but he sat at the back -reflecting that politicians are, after all, no more than puppets -in the hands of the silent rich men who sit behind the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span> -scenes. It was in Norwich, too, that he was able to buy his -first tailor-made suit, of a most becoming grey. When he -went to stay with Mrs. Witcherly at Sheringham for his -summer holiday of a fortnight, she was delighted by the -improvement in his appearance and much impressed by the -active hopefulness that had replaced his former lethargy. -Upon the sea front in the afternoon in his grey suit, to -anyone who did not know about him, he might have been -almost any sort of prosperous summer visitor.</p> - -<p>It seems a yesterday, and yet it seems ages ago, that our -plump and short Mr. Preemby was that small blonde young -man twirling his stick and glancing furtively but desirously -at the lady bathers in their vast petticoated bathing-dresses -and oilskin caps, as he strolled along the Sheringham -front. That was in the days when motor cars were -still rather a joke, a smell, and a noise and wayside repairs, -and flying was understood to be impossible. Queen -Victoria had had her Diamond Jubilee and nobody thought -Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, would ever survive to be -King. The War in South Africa was being arranged for -that summer, to last six months and employ forty thousand -men. And it was on the third day of his grey suit holiday -at Sheringham that Mr. Preemby was run into by his future -wife, Miss Hossett, riding on a bicycle, and thrown against -and almost run over by her friend Miss Meeta Pinkey.</p> - -<p>Because, incredible as it may seem to the modern reader, -people did succeed in those distant nineties, before the -coming of the more suitable automobile, in knocking down -and running over other people with the sluggish apparatus, -bicycles, horse-drawn vehicles and so forth, then available.</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>Miss Meeta Pinkey was an emotional blonde girl, and she -fell off her machine gracefully and naturally into Mr.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span> -Preemby’s arms as he was hurled against her. It would -seem to have been the original intention of Destiny to have -made this the beginning of a permanent relationship, but -in this matter Destiny had reckoned without Miss Hossett. -Miss Meeta Pinkey was as ripe for love just then as dry -gunpowder is for a bang, and she was already deeply in -love with Mr. Preemby before she had been replaced -securely on her feet. She stood flushed and round-eyed -and breathless, and Mr. Preemby looked quite manly and -handsome after picking up her bicycle with an air of -rescue.</p> - -<p>Miss Hossett, after butting against Mr. Preemby, had -swerved, dismounted and stood now prepared for a dispute. -The collision had further loosened the already loose -handlebar of the entirely untrustworthy hired machine she -had been riding. It was this looseness had caused the accident. -Her attention seemed divided equally between this -and the possible grievance of Mr. Preemby. “I rang my -bell,” she said.</p> - -<p>She was flushed and erect. She was a round-faced girl -with a long, thin neck, a good bright complexion, glasses -on her thin nose and a resolute thin-lipped mouth.</p> - -<p>“I did all I could to avoid you,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Awkward of me,” said Mr. Preemby disarmingly. “I -was lost in a day-dream.”</p> - -<p>“You aren’t hurt—?” asked Meeta.</p> - -<p>“Startled,” said Mr. Preemby, “especially where the -wheel got me. This place is full of corners.”</p> - -<p>“I’d’ve been over,” said Meeta, “if you hadn’t caught -me.”</p> - -<p>Miss Hossett was reassured about any possible conflict -with Mr. Preemby. Evidently he was going to be quite -nice about the accident. “This handlebar was as loose as -could be,” she said. “Look at it! You can twist it about -like on a swivel. They ought to be punished for letting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span> -out such machines. Some of these days one of ’em’ll get -let in for Damages. Then they’ll be a bit more careful. -Scandalous I call it.”</p> - -<p>“You can’t ride it at all now,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“No,” she agreed. “Have to take it back to them.”</p> - -<p>It seemed only right and proper for Mr. Preemby to -wheel the machine for her back through the town to the -hiring place, where Miss Hossett reproved the hirer, refused -to pay anything, and secured the return of her -deposit in a few well-chosen words. Miss Pinkey paid the -hire of her bicycle for a First Hour. It seemed natural -after that for the little party of three to keep together. -They kept together with a faint sense of adventure, and -Mr. Preemby behaved as nothing less than a normal lodger -at Miss Witcherly’s establishment and summer visitor to -the seaside. His new-found friends were Londoners, and -he referred himself to Norwich and the management of -house property. He was quite amusing about Sheringham. -He said it was “a dear little backward-forward -place,” that it was a real treat to come to for a breath of -sea air.</p> - -<p>“I don’t like regular smart places,” said Mr. Preemby. -“I’m too absent-minded.”</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>In after years Mr. Preemby would often try to recall the -various stages that led to his marrying Miss Hossett, but -there was always a vague sense that he missed out something, -though he knew not what it was nor where it ought -to have come in.</p> - -<p>At first things did not look in the least like his marrying -Miss Hossett. Indeed they did not look like his marrying -anyone, and if the word marriage had been whispered in -his ears as the possible consequence of this encounter he -would have been terrified. He perceived that he was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span> -acceptable company to these girls, but it seemed to him -that it was Meeta who formed the link between them and -himself. A fourth person presently joined their company -who answered to the name of Wilfred, and it seemed to -Mr. Preemby that the air of mutual proprietorship between -Wilfred and Miss Hossett was unchallengeable.</p> - -<p>The young people wandered in a little party along the -sea front until the sea front came to an end, and there they -found a sheltered and comparatively secluded niche in the -brow of the low cliffs and gave themselves up to the -delights of Spooning; and it was Meeta who Spooned with -Mr. Preemby that afternoon and Wilfred who Spooned -with Miss Hossett. Across the gulf of a quarter of a century -the memory of Mr. Preemby was still certain that -this was so.</p> - -<p>The fashions of life change from age to age. Knowledge -has spread and refinement increased; and a generation of -young people, more restrained, more sophisticated, or more -decisive than their predecessors has taken possession of -the world. This Spooning was an artless, clumsy dalliance -in great favour in those vanished days, a dalliance that was -kept within the bounds of strict decorum—if ever that -became necessary—by cries of “Starp it” or “Starpit, I tell -you,” on the part of the lady. They embraced, they kissed, -and put their silly young heads together and so whiled -away the long waiting-time before love had its way with -them. The summer resorts of England were littered with -young people indulging in these poor, silly, undignified -anticipations of love. Mr. Preemby, it became manifest, -was a natural born Spooner.</p> - -<p>“It’s lovely,” said Miss Meeta, “the way you squeeze -me.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby squeezed some more and ventured to kiss -a hot ear.</p> - -<p>“Go On with you!” said Miss Meeta, in a voice thick -with delight. “That little moustache of yours—it <i>tickles</i>.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>Flushed with encouragement and preoccupied with ideas -for further enterprises, Mr. Preemby did not remark that -the affairs of Miss Hossett and her Wilfred followed a -more troubled and less satisfactory course. Wilfred was -not a type that appealed to Mr. Preemby. In spite of the -fact that he was much less neat in his dress than Mr. -Preemby—he had grey flannel trousers, an old fancy vest, -a tweed Norfolk jacket, and low brown shoes with light-coloured -socks—he impressed Mr. Preemby as being consciously -a social superior. He was young—the youngest -of the party—and yet dominant. He had large red hands -and big feet, much untidy hair, ill-regulated features that -might later be handsome, and a hoarse guffaw. He viewed -Mr. Preemby as though he knew all about him and thought -the worse of him for it, but did not intend to make any -positive trouble for the present about his existence. He -was, Meeta whispered, a medical student at Cambridge, -and his father was a Harley Street physician who had been -knighted. He did not Spoon with any abandonment; he -seemed weary of Spooning, he had perhaps been Spooning -for some days, and his conversation with Miss Hossett -went on in subdued contentious tones. He sat a little apart -from her amidst the sand and coarse bluish grass, and her -face was flushed. What they said was inaudible to our -intertwined couple.</p> - -<p>“Chris and Wilfred don’t get on together as we do,” -Meeta said in a low voice. “They’re sillies.”</p> - -<p>“He’s like all the men,” said Meeta, “’Sept one perhaps. -Want everything they do and give nothing.</p> - -<p>“He won’t even say they’re engaged,” she said. “Dodged -seeing her father.”</p> - -<p>There was a pause for reflection and then a renewal of -endearments.</p> - -<p>“I’m gorne on you,” said Meeta. “I <i>am</i> fair gorne on -you. You’ve got the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. China -blue they are.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>So detachedly it was that Mr. Preemby and his future -wife passed their first afternoon together. He remembered -it, as he remembered most actual things, indistinctly, in a -setting of hot sand and sunshine, blue-grey grass and a -line of poppies nodding against an intense blue sky. And -then across these opening memories Chris Hossett seemed -to leap at him with flushed cheeks and glowing eyes, magnified -by her glasses.</p> - -<p>Two or three days intervened before that passionate -pounce. Mr. Preemby, in his character of an incidental -visitor to Sheringham, was under no obligation to produce -a social background, but Miss Pinkey introduced him to -two large, kindly aunts of a sedentary sort, as a young man -related to Miss Hossett who had saved her from a nasty -fall off a bicycle, and he and she both went to tea with -Chris Hossett’s “people.” Old Mr. Hossett was a very ailing -man, excessively fat and irritable; he had never been -the same, whatever the same was, after his only son had -died; and Mrs. Hossett, an energetic lean threat of what -her daughter might become, had to wait on Mr. Hossett -hand and foot. She had spectacles instead of Chris’s -glasses, her eyes were careworn and her complexion was -leaden and her neck lean. There were also a married -cousin and his wife, a Mr. and Mrs. Widgery, who seemed -to be under the impression that Mr. Preemby was a relation -of Miss Pinkey’s. Mr. Widgery had a long pock-marked -face and the dullest brown eyes Mr. Preemby had -ever seen. There was nothing difficult to eat at tea and Mr. -Preemby got on very well listening to an explanation of -the precariousness of Mr. Hossett’s existence, due to heart -trouble, from Mrs. Hossett and of just how unsatisfactory -and distressing it was to come away and leave the laundry -in the hands of a manager. Wilfred did not come to the -tea. He had been asked but he did not come.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>The next day Mr. Preemby met Wilfred on the sea front -watching the girls bathing from a bathing machine. Afterwards -all four went for a walk in search of privacy, and -it became evident that Miss Hossett declined to Spoon -further with Wilfred. It was evident that there was profound -trouble between Chris and Wilfred. They scarcely -spoke as they returned towards the town; and before the -sea front was reached Wilfred said “So long” quite suddenly, -and turned away and vanished up a road running -inland. Thereupon Wilfred passed out of Mr. Preemby’s -world; Mr. Preemby never knew what became of him and -never wanted to know; and the next day he became aware -for the first time of Miss Hossett’s magnified eyes, regarding -him with an interest and a challenge that made him -feel almost uncomfortable.</p> - -<p>Miss Hossett became a serious obstacle to the Spooning -of Meeta. The quartette was now reduced to a trio; and -Mr. Preemby found himself the apex, so to speak, of a -triangle, the eternal triangle in an exceptionally acute -form. Whenever Meeta was on the one hand, Chris was -on the other. She called him “Our Teddy”; she pressed -upon him; she went so far as to stroke his hair. Meeta’s -endearments faded to some extent in the presence of this -competition, but she made no explicit objection.</p> - -<p>Deep in the nature of the human male is a fount of polygamous -pride. Mr. Preemby in these novel circumstances -was proud and disingenuous. He believed himself “carrying -on” with two girls at once, and it seemed to him to -be a very splendid situation. But indeed it was not so -much a case of carrying on as of being carried off. In the -American world of emotional imaginations there is an ideal -called the Cave Man, much cherished by quiet, unaggressive -women because its realization would involve so little -trouble on their own part. The Cave Man is supposed to -seize and grip and carry off and adore. In this simple love -story of Mr. Preemby’s Miss Hossett played the Cave<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span> -Man’s rôle, up to the carrying-off point at any rate. On -the first occasion of their being alone together she drew -him to her and kissed him on the mouth with a warmth -and an intensity and thoroughness that astonished and -overwhelmed Mr. Preemby. It was quite different from -Meeta’s coy achievements, or anything he had ever met -around Norwich. He had not known that there was such -kissing.</p> - -<p>And in the warm summer twilight Mr. Preemby found -himself being carried off to a lonely piece of beach to -Spoon with Chris Hossett. The light of a rising full moon -mingled with the afterglow; pebbles shone out like gems -and stars. He carried himself bravely but he was all -atremble. He knew that this time the enterprises would -not come from him. And the Spooning of Chris Hossett -was no more like the Spooning of Meeta than a furnace -glow is like the light of the moon.</p> - -<p>“I love you,” said Chris as though that justified anything, -and as they stumbled homeward at an hour that Mr. -Preemby called “feefully late,” she said: “You’re going to -marry me aren’t you? You’ve <i>got</i> to marry me now. -And then we can <i>really</i> make love. ’Soften as we like.”</p> - -<p>“I can’t rightly say that I’m exactly in a position to keep -a wife just at present,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“I don’t see that there’s any necessity for me to ask a -man to keep me,” said Miss Hossett. “You’re a wonder, -Teddy, anyhow, and I’m going to marry you. It’s got to be, -and there you are.”</p> - -<p>“But <i>’ow</i> can I marry you?” asked Mr. Preemby almost -peevishly—for he was really very tired.</p> - -<p>“One would think to hear you that no one had ever married -before,” said Chris Hossett. “And besides—after -this—you <i>must</i>.”</p> - -<p>“Mind you I’ve got to go back to Norwich next Tuesday,” -said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“You ought to have thought of that before,” she said.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span>“But I’ll lose my situation.”</p> - -<p>“Naturally father will find you something better. We -aren’t poor people, Teddy. There’s no need to be scared -about it....”</p> - -<p>In such terms was Chris Hossett wooed and won by Mr. -Preemby. He was scared, dreadfully scared, but also he -was tremendously roused. It impressed him as being a -wildly romantic affair and very terrifying and a little hard -on Meeta Pinkey. But he was bustled along too fast to -think very much about Meeta Pinkey. He was introduced -over again to the Hossett parents next day as their daughter’s -affianced husband, and in secret she gave him three -golden sovereigns to buy her an engagement ring as a -surprise. Mrs. Hossett behaved at first as though she -approved of Mr. Preemby and disapproved of the marriage, -and then after what was clearly a stormy scene upstairs -with her daughter, she behaved as though she -approved highly of the marriage and thought Mr. Preemby -a very objectionable person. Mr. Hossett would not speak -to Mr. Preemby directly, but he spoke of him to his wife -and to imaginary auditors in Mr. Preemby’s presence as a -“scoundrel” who had “got hold” of his girl. Yet he, too, -seemed to regard the marriage as desirable, and no one -made any reply to his <i>obiter dicta</i>.</p> - -<p>It was all very puzzling and exalting to Mr. Preemby. He -did little except what he was told to do. He was carried -over his marriage as a man might be carried over a weir. -He left any explanation to Mrs. Witcherly of what was -happening for some more favourable occasion. He went -off on Tuesday with his little valise as though he was -going back to Norwich. He wrote a simple letter of regret -to the house-agent and coal-merchant. Private affairs, he -said, of an urgent nature prevented his return to his -duties. Mrs. and Miss Hossett went up to London with -him. They all took rooms at a temperance hotel in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span> -Bloomsbury, and Mr. Preemby was married by special -licence at St. Martin’s by Trafalgar Square.</p> - -<p>Then he went down to the Limpid Stream Laundry to -live with his parents-in-law and master the duties of assistant -manager, canvasser and publicity agent. Mr. Hossett -never spoke to him and sometimes talked rather unpleasantly -about him when he was in the room, making accusations -that were better ignored, but Mrs. Hossett gradually -became cordial again. And presently Mr. Hossett had a -heart seizure and died, and in the course of a few months -Mr. Preemby found himself a father. When he was first -confronted with his daughter and, as it proved, his only -child, he thought her an extremely ugly little red object. -He had never seen a baby at so early a stage before. -She had a lot of very fine moist dark hair which subsequently -gave place to a later crop; she had large indeterminate -features and remarkably large feet and hands. Mr. -Preemby had an absurd impression that he had seen her -somewhere before and hadn’t liked her. Then in a day or -so she became a quite ordinary pink baby and wonder gave -place to affection.</p> - -<p>She was christened Christina Alberta after her mother -and Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>In time all these experiences mellowed in Mr. Preemby’s -memory into a vague, glorious, romantic, adventurous -past. He continued to be rather dreamy and distraught, -but on the whole he made a dutiful, faithful husband, and -he got on very well with his masterful and capable wife.</p> - -<p>She was, he had discovered on his marriage, three years -his senior, and she continued to be in every respect his -senior to the day of her death. But she treated him with -proprietary affection; she chose all his clothes for him, she -cultivated his manners and bearing and upheld him against<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span> -all other people. She dressed him rather more like a golf -champion than he would have done himself if he had had -any say in the matter. She would not let him have a -bicycle for many years, she was a little exacting about his -ways of keeping the laundry accounts, she fixed his pocket-money -at ten shillings a week, and she was disposed to -restrict his opportunities for conversation with feminine -members of the laundry staff. But he made no marked -protest against these slight deviations from the customary -obedience of a wife. A tendency to plumpness manifested -itself, and he grew considerable quantities of blonde moustache -without apparent effort.</p> - -<p>Their home was an agreeable one, the more so after Mrs. -Hossett had followed her husband to his resting-place, -under a marble crucifix with a dove and olive branch in -relievo at the intersection of the arms, at Woodford Wells. -Mr. Preemby became a great reader, reading not only -romantic novels—he had a great distaste for “realism” in -any form—but ancient history, astronomy, astrology and -mystical works. He became deeply interested in the problem -of the pyramids and in the probable history of the lost -continent of Atlantis. Mental science also attracted him, -and the possibility of increasing will-power very greatly. -He would sometimes practise will-power before the looking-glass -in his bedroom when Mrs. Preemby was not -about. At nights he would sometimes will himself to sleep -instead of going to sleep in the usual fashion. He gave a -considerable amount of attention to prophecy and eschatology. -He developed views of his own about the Day of -Judgment that might have led to a breach with the Established -Church if Mrs. Preemby had not thought that such a -breach would react unfavourably upon the Laundry. As -time went on he accumulated a library of upwards of a -thousand volumes and a very considerable vocabulary.</p> - -<p>His wife viewed these intellectual preoccupations with -friendly sympathy, at times even with pride, but she took<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span> -little part in them herself. The Laundry was good enough -for her. She loved the Laundry more and more; loved its -piled clean and starched shirts and collars and its folded -and stacked sheets, loved the creak of its machinery and -the suddy bustle of the washing room. She loved to have -it all going on, orderly and right; to feel everything going -through the tubs and washers and wringers, sure and safe; -nothing astray, nothing missing at the end. When she -walked about the place voices were hushed and scrubbing -became respectfully assiduous. And she liked making -things pay.</p> - -<p>On Sunday afternoons and on days when the laundry had -no need of his services, Mr. Preemby took long walks. In -fine weather he would walk into Epping Forest or to Ongar -or even into the rustic peace of the Roothings, but in dull -weather he would go Londonward. After a while the -trams were extended as far as the present terminus at -Woodford and it became possible to ride very pleasantly -right into the heart of London by way of Seven Sisters -Road and Camden Town or, with a little bit of extra -walking, by the Lea Bridge Road and the Angel and -Holborn.</p> - -<p>The greatness and multitudinous activities of London -stirred slumbering strands of Mr. Preemby’s imagination. -He would go in and lunch at an Aërated Bread Shop on a -scone and butter, with a cup of cocoa and perhaps a jam-puff, -and he would spend hours looking into shop windows -and sometimes even making small purchases. He loved -Charing Cross Road with its book-shops, Tottenham Court -Road, Holborn, Clerkenwell, and the Whitechapel Road, -but Piccadilly and Bond Street and Regent Street seemed -costly and lacking in true intellectual interest, and he felt -his baggy tweed knickerbockers and cap a little out of -tune in these smart places. Sometimes he would go to the -British Museum and look very hard at objects connected -with the pyramids. Great public events always drew<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span> -him to London. If there was a great murder or a great -fire or a Royal Wedding or a Royal Funeral, Mr. Preemby -would be sure to be looking at it where the crowd was -thickest, often with a neat packet of provisions, a sandwich, -an orange, or so forth, that Mrs. Preemby had provided. -But he never saw illuminations and fireworks because Mrs. -Preemby liked to have him at home when the day’s work -was over. He enjoyed the Great War of 1914-18 gravely -and profoundly. Once he passed a man who he thought -afterwards was almost certainly a German spy. The -thought thrilled him for days. He had given him a good -look anyhow. He attended air raids in plenty, and he saw -the Potters Bar Zeppelin shot down. He was a good four -years too old for compulsory military service when the -time came, and Mrs. Preemby would not let him be a special -constable because she thought he might catch cold.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby’s work in the counting house was not very -onerous, but he also gave thought and attention to the -extension of the business outside. He invented several -attractive circulars. His experience as a house-agent had -trained him to note the existence of large comfortable-looking -houses that might otherwise have escaped his -observation and to ascertain whether they were occupied; -he would then find out whether the Limpid Stream Laundry -got the washing from such establishments, and if not -he would send a circular and even follow it up with a personal -letter. He was vaguely observant about the premises. -He would go sometimes and look for quite a long time at -the furnaces or the delivery vans or any new piece of -machinery like the new calendering machine until he got -used to it. But if he stood about where there were girls -working, Mrs. Preemby would make some excuse to get -him back into the office because, as she explained, she -thought a man standing about affected the girls’ work -unfavourably. He took in and sometimes read the <i>British -Laundryman</i> and the <i>Dyers’ and Cleaners’ Gazette</i>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span>Occasionally he had happy ideas. It was his idea to paint -the delivery vans bright blue and decorate them with a -swastika, and to paint exactly the same colour and design -on the front of the laundry and put it on the bills. But -when he wanted to put the van drivers into swastika caps -and blue the clothes baskets, Mrs. Preemby said she -thought the thing had gone far enough. It was also Mr. -Preemby who suggested Ford cars instead of horse vans as -early as 1913. This change was made in 1915.</p> - -<p>And at home with her peaceful interested father and her -busy, occasionally, rather astringent, mother, Christina -Alberta grew to girlhood and womanhood.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE SECOND<br> - -<i>Christina Alberta</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">T<small>HIS</small> story, it was clearly explained in the first paragraph -of the first section of the first chapter, is a story -about Mr. Preemby in the later years, the widower years, -of his life. That statement has all the value of an ordinary -commercial guarantee, and on no account shall we ever -wander far from Mr. Preemby. But the life of his daughter -was so closely interwoven with his own during that time -that it is necessary to tell many things about her distinctly -and explicitly before we get our real story properly begun. -And even after it has begun, and while it goes on, and -right up to the end, Christina Alberta will continue to -intrude.</p> - -<p>Intrusion was in her nature. She was never what is -called an engaging child. But she always had a great liking -for her Daddy and he had the greatest affection and respect -for her.</p> - -<p>She had little or no tact, and there was always something -remote and detached, something of the fairy changeling -about her. Even her personal appearance was tactless. -She had a prominent nose which tended to grow larger, -whereas Mrs. Preemby’s nose was small and bright and -pinched between her glasses, and her father’s delicately -chiselled and like some brave little boat shooting a great -cascade of moustache; she was dark and both her parents<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span> -were fair. As she grew up the magic forces of adolescence -assembled her features into a handsome effect, but she was -never really pretty. Her eyes were brown and bright and -hard. She had her mother’s thin-lipped, resolute mouth -and modestly determined chin. And she had her mother’s -clear firm skin and bright colour. She was a humming, -shouting, throwing, punching child with a tendency not to -hear admonitions and an almost instinctive dexterity in -avoiding sudden slaps. She flitted about. She might be up -the drying-ground or she might be under your bed. The -only thing to do was to down and look.</p> - -<p>She danced. Neither Mr. Preemby nor Mrs. Preemby -danced, and this continual jiggeting about perplexed and -worried them. A piano or a distant band would set her -dancing or she would dance to her own humming; she -danced to hymn-tunes and on a Sunday. There was a -standing offer from Mr. Preemby of sixpence if ever she -sat quiet for five minutes, but it was never taken up.</p> - -<p>At her first school, a mixed day-school in Buckhurst Hill, -she was first of all extremely unpopular and then extremely -popular and then she was expelled. Afterwards she did -fairly well at the Taverners’ Girls’ School at Woodford, -where she was recognized from the first as a humorist. -There was always a difficulty in calling her any other name -than Christina Alberta. People tried all sorts of names but -none of them stuck but “Christina Alberta.” “Babs” and -“Baby” and “Bertie” and “Buss” she was called at home and -“Ally” and “Tina,” and at school they tried “Nosey” and -“Suds” and “Feet” and “Preemy” and “Prim.” Also “Golliwog” -because of her hair at hockey. These all came off -again, and left the original name exposed.</p> - -<p>She was quick at her lessons and particularly at history, -geography and drawing, but disrespectful to her teachers; -at school hockey she played forward right with marked -success. She could run like the wind, and she never seemed -blown. Her pinch was simply frightful. She could make<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span> -sudden grimaces with her nose that gave the weaker sort -hysterics. She was particularly disposed to do this at -school prayers.</p> - -<p>Between her mother and herself there was a streak of -animosity. It was not a very broad streak, but it was -there. Her mother seemed to cherish some incommunicable -grievance against her. It didn’t prevent Mrs. Preemby -from doing her duty by the child, but it restrained any -real warmth of affection between them. From an early age -it was Daddy got the kisses and got climbed over and -pulled about. He returned this affection. He called her -“my own little girl” and would even say at times that she -was a Wonder. He took her for walks with him and told -her many secret things that were in his mind, about the -Lost Atlantis and the Lamas of Tibet and the fundamentals -of Astrology preserved indecipherably in the proportions -of the pyramids. He’d often wished, he said, to -have a good look at the pyramids. Sometimes one man -saw things that others didn’t. She would listen intently, -although not always in quite the right spirit.</p> - -<p>He would tell her of the virtue and science of Atlantis. -“They walked about in long white robes,” he said. “More -like Bible Characters than human beings.”</p> - -<p>“Good for the laundries, Daddy,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“All we know of astrology is just fragments of what they -knew. They knew the past and future.”</p> - -<p>“Pity they were all drowned,” she remarked without -apparent irony.</p> - -<p>“Maybe they weren’t all drowned,” he said darkly.</p> - -<p>“You don’t mean there’s Atlantics about nowadays.”</p> - -<p>“Some may have escaped. Descendants may be nearer -than you suppose. Why you and me, Christina, we may -have Atlantic blood!”</p> - -<p>His manner conveyed his conviction.</p> - -<p>“It doesn’t seem to help much,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Helps more than you think. Hidden gifts. Insight.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span> -Things like that. <i>We</i> aren’t common persons, Christina -Alberta.”</p> - -<p>For some moments the two of them pursued independent -reveries.</p> - -<p>“Still we don’t <i>know</i> we’re Atlantics,” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>After she had fought her way to the sixth form in the -Taverners’ School the educational outlook of Christina -Alberta was troubled by dissensions both within the school -and without. The staff was divided about her, her discipline -was bad, her class-work rank or vile, but she passed -examinations, and particularly external examinations by -independent examiners, with conspicuous success. There -was a general desire to get her out of the school; but -whether that was to be done by a university scholarship -or a simple request to her parents to take her away, was a -question under dispute. The games-mistress was inclined -to regard murder as a third possible course because of the -girl’s utter disregard for style in games, her unsportsmanlike -trick of winning them in irregular and unexpected -ways, and her tendency to make drill and gymnastics an -occasion for a low facetiousness far more suitable for the -ordinary class-room. The English and Literature mistress -concurred—although Christina Alberta would spend hours -over her essays working in sentences and paragraphs from -Pater and Ruskin and Hazlitt so that they might pass as -her own original constructions. It was not Christina -Alberta’s fault if ever and again these threads of literary -gold were marked in red ink, “Clumsy” or “Might be better -expressed” or “Too flowery.” Only the head-mistress had a -really good word for Christina Alberta. But then the head-mistress, -as became her position, made a specialty of -understanding difficult cases.</p> - -<p>And Christina Alberta was always quietly respectful to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span> -the head-mistress, and could produce a better side to her -nature with the most disconcerting alacrity whenever the -head-mistress was called in.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta, as soon as the issue became clear to her, -decided for the scholarship. She reformed almost obtrusively, -she became tidy, she ceased to be humorous, she -lost sets of tennis to the games-mistress like a little sports-woman, -and she stopped arguing and became the sedulous -ape of Stevenson for the estranged English mistress. But -it was up-hill work even in the school. There was a little -too much elegant surrender in her reformed tennis and a -little too much parody about her English in velveteen. The -possibility that she would ever join that happy class of -girls who go in from the suburbs to classes in London and -lead the higher life beyond parental inspection and sometimes -until quite late in the evening in studios, laboratories -and college lecture-rooms, seemed a very insecure one, even -without reckoning with the quiet but determined opposition -of her mother.</p> - -<p>For Mrs. Preemby was not the woman to like a daughter -educated above her parentage and station. She came to -lament her weakness in not bringing Christina Alberta -into the laundry as she herself had been brought in at the -age of fourteen. Then she would have learnt the business -from the ground up, and have qualified herself to help and -at last succeed her mother, even as Mrs. Preemby had -helped and succeeded Mrs. Hossett. But the school with -its tennis and music and French and so forth had turned -the girl against this clean and cleansing life. She was rising -seventeen now, and the sooner she abandoned these things -which lead straight to school-teaching, spinsterhood, Italian -holidays, “art” clothes and stuck-up incapacity, the better -for her and every one.</p> - -<p>She made a campaign against Christina Alberta’s habit of -sitting about in unladylike attitudes and reading; and when -Mr. Preemby took the unusual and daring course of saying<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span> -that it was a bit hard on the girl, and that he didn’t see any -harm in a book or so now and then, Mrs. Preemby took him -up to Christina Alberta’s own little room to see what came -of it, and more particularly to see the sort of pictures she’d -stuck up there. Even when he was confronted with a large -photographic reproduction of Michael Angelo’s creation of -Adam as the master had painted that event on the roof of -the Sistine Chapel in Rome, he still made a feeble show -of resistance, and said that it was “Art.”</p> - -<p>“You’d stand anything she did, I believe,” said Mrs. -Preemby. “Look at it. Art! Look at these books! Darwin’s -<i>Origin of Species</i>! That’s a nice book for a girl to be -prying into.”</p> - -<p>“Very likely she doesn’t see the harm of it,” said Mr. -Preemby.</p> - -<p>“<i>Her!</i>” said Mrs. Preemby compactly. “And look at -this!”</p> - -<p>“This” was Howe’s <i>Atlas of Biology</i>. She opened it to -display its large pages crowded with pictures of the detailed -dissection of a frog.</p> - -<p>“Reely, my dear!” said Mr. Preemby. “It’s one of her -schoolbooks. There reely isn’t nothing what I should call -<i>improper</i> in that. It’s Science. And, after all, it’s only a -frog.”</p> - -<p>“Pretty things they teach at school nowadays. What -with your Art and your Science. Doesn’t leave much to the -imagination. Why, when I was a girl if I’d asked Ma -what was inside <i>any</i> animal, she’d have slapped me and -slapped me hard. And rightly. There’s things rightly hid -from us—and hid they ought to be. God shows us as -much as is good for us. More. No need to <i>open</i> animals. -And here—here’s a book <i>in French</i>!”</p> - -<p>“H’m,” said Mr. Preemby, yielding a little. He took up -the lemon-yellow volume and turned it over in his hand.</p> - -<p>“All this reading!” said Mrs. Preemby and indicated three -shelves of books.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span>Mr. Preemby assembled his courage. “You mustn’t expect -me to go against reading, Chris,” he said. “It’s a pleasure -and a light. There’s things in books.... Reely, Chris, -I believe you’d be happier if you read a bit. Christina -Alberta is a born reader, whether you like it or not. She -gets it from me, I suppose.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Preemby started and regarded his flushed opposition; -the anger in her eyes was magnified through her -glasses. “It’s wonderful,” she said after a little pause; “it’s -truly wonderful how Christina Alberta manages to get -everything she wants.”</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>Miss Maltby-Neverson, the head-mistress of the Taverners’ -School, called upon Mrs. Preemby and shook her -resolution a good deal. She was obviously a lady, and the -school washing ran in term-time to twenty pounds a week. -She was taken to see the scandalous picture and she said: -“Very beautiful, I’m sure. One of the really Great Paintings -in the world. Pro-foundly religious. It’s the very -words of the Bible made into a picture. What do you find -in it to object to, Mrs. Preemby?”</p> - -<p>Whereupon, as if by a trick, the picture ceased to be -scandalous and Mrs. Preemby was ashamed of herself. She -saw now there never had been anything wrong about that -picture.</p> - -<p>Miss Maltby-Neverson said that Christina Alberta was -a difficult type but a thoroughly interesting personality, -a <i>real</i> personality. She had a great capacity for affection.</p> - -<p>“I haven’t found that,” said Mrs. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“It is a type I have studied,” said Miss Maltby-Neverson, -simply but conclusively.</p> - -<p>She explained that Christina Alberta was an <i>active</i> type. -Left to herself without employment to <i>stretch</i> her faculties -she might easily get into almost any sort of mischief.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span> -Almost any sort. Not that there was anything wrong in -her essentially. It was just energy. Given good hard -work and a scope for ambition, she might become a very -satisfactory woman indeed—possibly even a distinguished -woman.</p> - -<p>“I’ve no use for distinguished women,” said Mrs. Preemby -shortly.</p> - -<p>“The world has,” said Miss Maltby-Neverson gently.</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid I’m one of the old-fashioned sort,” said Mrs. -Preemby.</p> - -<p>“Christina Alberta isn’t.”</p> - -<p>“Let the man be distinguished abroad and the woman distinguished -at home,” said Mrs. Preemby. “I’m sorry to -differ from you, Miss Maltby-Neverson, but one cannot -help one’s opinions.”</p> - -<p>“It depends upon ourselves,” said Miss Maltby-Neverson.</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid I like men to rule,” said Mrs. Preemby. -“Woman has her place in the world, and it isn’t man’s.”</p> - -<p>“But I thought Mr. Preemby rather favoured the scholarship -idea.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Preemby was baffled. “He <i>did</i>,” she said as though -she did not see clearly what that had to do with the matter. -“Give the thing a trial,” said Miss Maltby-Neverson. -“After all, she may not win this scholarship.”</p> - -<p>But Christina Alberta won it with marks to spare. She -took no risks. It was a biennial scholarship which had -been established by a benefactor of advanced views. It -was tenable at the London School of Economics. As soon -as Christina Alberta knew she had secured it she went, -without consulting her mother or anyone, to a hairdresser’s -and had her hair bobbed. To Mrs. Preemby this was -almost a worse blow than the scholarship. She surveyed -her shock-headed, handsome-nosed daughter in her short -gymnastic skirts with a qualm of sincere hatred.</p> - -<p>She wished she could make her daughter feel about herself<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span> -as she felt about her. “I wish you could only see yourself,” -she said with concentrated bitterness.</p> - -<p>“Oh, <i>I</i> know,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“I suppose you’re a judgment on me,” said Mrs. Preemby.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>But Christina Alberta had only studied in the London -School of Economics for a year, she was beginning her -second year when her mother obliged her to resign her -scholarship. Christina Alberta had stayed late in London -one evening without telling her mother she was going to -do so, she had gone to a discussion of the Population -Question at the New Hope Club in Fitzgerald Street, and -she had come home smelling so strongly of tobacco that -her mother had repented of and revoked all her concessions -to modernity there and then.</p> - -<p>She had been waiting for that moment for many months. -“This ends it,” she said as she let her daughter in.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta found there was no immediate way -round or through that decision. She worked her father -and Miss Maltby-Neverson in vain. But instead of resigning -her scholarship right out as she had been told to do, -she played for time and explained her absence by a vague -reference to family trouble.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Preemby in those days was already in very bad -health, but this fact was completely overshadowed in the -minds of both her daughter and her husband by the far -more urgent fact that she was now constantly in a very bad -temper. Everything was conspiring to worry her—except -Mr. Preemby, who knew better than to do anything of the -sort.</p> - -<p>The closing years of the Great War, and still more so the -opening year of the Disappointing Peace, were years of very -great difficulty for the laundry business. The munitions -business put laundry girls above themselves and there was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span> -no doing anything with them. Coal, soap, everything was -at unheard-of prices, and it was impossible to get back on -the customers by raising the charges. People, even the -best sort of people, were giving up cleanliness. Gentlemen -of position would wear their dress-shirts three or four -times and make their undervests and under-pants last a -fortnight. Household linen was correspondingly eked out. -People moved about; the new army officers’ wives came -and went, here to-day and gone to-morrow, leaving unpaid -bills. Never had Mrs. Preemby known so many bad debts. -Van men came back from the army so shell-shocked and -militarized that they embezzled out of pure nervousness -and habit. Income tax became a nightmare. Outside as -within, Mrs. Preemby’s life was a conflict. She kept the -Limpid Stream Laundry paying all through that awful -time because she was a wonder at management, but she -did it at a terrible loss of vitality.</p> - -<p>She became bitterly critical of the unhelpfulness of Mr. -Preemby and her daughter. When they tried to be helpful -she criticized their incapacity. They did more harm than -good.</p> - -<p>Meal-times were awful. She would sit flushed and glowering -through her glasses, obviously afflicted by a passionate -realization of the world’s injustice and eating very little. -Mr. Preemby’s attempts to start a cheerful conversation -were rarely successful. Even Christina Alberta was -overawed.</p> - -<p>“Things going a little better this morning?” Mr. Preemby -would try.</p> - -<p>“Can’t I get rest from business even at my meals?” -the poor lady would complain.</p> - -<p>Or, “Looks like pleasant weather for the Derby.”</p> - -<p>“Pity you can’t go there for all the help you are in the -place. I suppose you haven’t heard what’s happened to -van number two.”</p> - -<p>“No!” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>“You wouldn’t. Hind mudguard smashed. Been done for -weeks. And nobody knows who did it. One would think -that that was a man’s business anyhow. But it’s left for me -to find out. And pay for. Like everything else in the -place.”</p> - -<p>“I’d better make inquiries.”</p> - -<p>“I know those inquiries of yours. Better leave the whole -thing alone now. Grin and bear it....”</p> - -<p>The silence of the meal would be restored.</p> - -<p>She seemed to set a high value upon these awful silences. -She even complained that he ate his cheese biscuits audibly. -But how else can one eat cheese biscuits? Christina Alberta -was made of sterner stuff and became controversial. Then -her mother would flare out at her insolence and declare -that “one or the other of us” leaves the table. “I’ll read -upstairs,” said Christina Albert. “It isn’t <i>my</i> wish to be -lunching here.”</p> - -<p>Before the abrupt ending of Christina Alberta’s university -career she was present only at breakfast and supper; -supper wasn’t nearly as awful in quality as breakfast, and -breakfast could easily be bolted and got away from; but -after the New Hope Club catastrophe, she was present at -all the meals, a sort of lightning-conductor for her father -and something of a restraint upon, and an added exasperation -to, her mother. She took the line of agreeing that if -her university career was to end, then she must go into the -laundry business; but she argued very stoutly that to do -that with any hope of success under modern conditions -meant a “proper business training.” If she could not go to -the London School of Economics then she ought to go to -Tomlinson’s Commercial Training School in Chancery Lane -and learn book-keeping, shorthand, typing, business correspondence, -précis, commercial French, and so forth. And -after three weeks of painful midday meals this proposal was -adopted under stringent conditions and her season-ticket -to London was renewed. She worked her way very passably<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span> -through another winter with Tomlinson’s as her school -and most of London as her playground. She learnt all -sorts of things. She added a new set of friends and -acquaintances, some with bobbed hair and some without, -of the most various social origins and associations, to the -circle she had already acquired at the London School of -Economics.</p> - -<p>When presently Mrs. Preemby began to speak of a gnawing -pain that oppressed her, both her husband and daughter -took it at first as a new development of her general grievance -against them and felt no particular apprehension about -it. Mr. Preemby said he thought she ought to take advice -or see some one about it, but for some days she treated -the suggestion with scorn. If once she got in a doctor, -she said, they’d have to find some one else to look after -the laundry. Doctors put you to bed and give you things -to keep you there. Otherwise how could they get a living?</p> - -<p>Then suddenly she changed. One morning she confessed -she felt “dreadful.” She went back to bed and Mr. Preemby, -with strange premonitions that the world was coming to -an end, trotted off for a doctor. The clinical thermometer -showed a temperature mounting above one hundred and -one. “It hurts. My side hurts,” said Mrs. Preemby. “I’ve -had it once before, but not like this.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta came home that evening to discover -herself capable of fear, remorse, and tenderness.</p> - -<p>She had some strange moments with her mother in -between phases of weak delirium and insensibility. Mrs. -Preemby’s face seemed to have become smaller and prettier; -the feverish flush in her cheeks simulated youth. She -was no longer hard or angry, but rather pathetically -friendly. And Christina Alberta hadn’t seen her in bed for -years.</p> - -<p>“Take care of your Daddy,” said Mrs. Preemby. “You -owe more to him—and less to him—than you think. I had -to do all I’ve done. Take care of him. He’s gentle and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span> -good and easily persuaded and not to be trusted alone in -the world....</p> - -<p>“I’ve never been quite all a mother should be to you. -But you’ve been <i>difficult</i>, Christina.... I’ve had a great -respect for you....</p> - -<p>“I’m glad you haven’t my eyes. Glasses are a -Curse....”</p> - -<p>Anxiety about the laundry occupied a large part of her -thoughts.</p> - -<p>“That woman Smithers in the washing room is a thief, -and I’d get rid of the new man Baxandale. I don’t know -why I’ve kept Mrs. Smithers on so long.... Weakness.... I’m -not sure about <i>him</i>, there’s nothing positive -yet, but I feel he’s not straight.... I’m very much -afraid we’ve let Lady Badger’s account run too long. Nowadays -titles—want watching. I’ve been misled by her. She -promised a cheque.... But I doubt about you two in the -laundry altogether. He can’t and you won’t. <i>You</i> might -have done it.... Never mind that now.</p> - -<p>“Sell it as a going concern? The Widgerys might come in. -He’s hard, but he’s straight. Straight enough. They might -like to come in....</p> - -<p>“It’s never entered my head I wasn’t good for twenty -years yet.... I wish the doctor wouldn’t think of operating. -It won’t do any good.”</p> - -<p>She repeated many of her phrases.</p> - -<p>“I hate the thought of being opened,” she said. “I suppose—. -Like those frogs in your book....</p> - -<p>“Packed like a bag.... Never get it back again. -Loose bits....</p> - -<p>“Washing-basket or something to keep it together.”</p> - -<p>Then her mind went off at a tangent to things beyond -Christina Alberta’s understanding.</p> - -<p>“Sneaked off and left me to it.... I wonder what he’s -doing now.... Suppose.... Fancy, if it should be him -that had to operate.... Operate....</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>“Children we were.”</p> - -<p>She seemed to recollect herself and regarded her daughter -with a hard inquiring eye. Some instinct in Christina -Alberta told her to assume an incurious expression. But -these words struck upon her mind and stayed there and -germinated like a seed. Children they were, and he had -sneaked off? Queer and yet according with all sorts of -other imponderables.</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>Mr. Preemby looked unusually small but unusually dignified -in his full mourning. Christina Alberta was also -extremely black and shiny. Her skirts reached for the first -time in her life to her ankles; a sacrifice that she felt would -be particularly acceptable to the spirit of the departed.</p> - -<p>A new thing had come into Christina Alberta’s life—responsibility. -She perceived that for unfathomable reasons -she was responsible for Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>It was clear that the sudden death of his wife under the -surgeon’s knife had been a very great blow to him. He -did not break down or weep or give way to paroxysms of -grief, but he was enormously still and sad. His round -china-blue eyes and his moustache looked at the world -with a mournful solemnity. The undertaker had rarely met -so satisfactory a widower. “Everything of the best,” said -Mr. Preemby. “Whatever she can have, she must have.” -Under the circumstances, the undertaker, who was a friend -of the family, having met both Mr. and Mrs. Preemby -at whist-drives quite frequently, showed commendable -moderation.</p> - -<p>“You can’t imagine what all this means to me,” said Mr. -Preemby to Christina Alberta, quite a number of times. -“It was a pure love match,” he said; “pure romance. She -had nothing to gain by marrying me. But neither of us -thought of sordid things.” He was silent for a little while, -struggling with intractable memories. He subdued them.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span> -“We just met,” he said, smiling faintly; “and it seemed that -it <i>had</i> to be.”</p> - -<p>“Sneaked off and left me”; came a faint whisper in -Christina Alberta’s memory.</p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>There was much to see to in those days of mourning. -Christina Alberta did her best to help, watch and guide -Mr. Preemby even as her mother had desired, but she was -surprised to find in him certain entirely unexpected decisions -that had apparently leapt into existence within a few -hours of her mother’s death. One was a clear resolve that -he and she must part company with the laundry either by -selling it or letting it, or, if no means of disposing of it -offered, by burning it down or blowing it up as speedily -as possible. He did not discuss this; he treated it as an -unavoidable necessity. He expressed no animosity for the -laundry, he made no hostile criticism of the life he had led -there, but every thought betrayed his fundamental aversion. -And also they were to go away—right away—from -Woodford Wells and never return thither. She had come to -much the same decisions on her own account, but she had -not expected to find them in such quiet strength in him.</p> - -<p>He became explicit about the future as they sat at supper -on the evening of the funeral.</p> - -<p>“Your mother’s cousin, Sam Widgery,” he said, “was talking -to me.”</p> - -<p>He munched for a moment; his moustache went up and -down and his eyes of china-blue stared out of the window -at the sunset sky. “He wants to take it over.”</p> - -<p>“The laundry?”</p> - -<p>“As a going concern. And he being our nearest relation, -so to speak, I’d as soon he had it as anybody else. Other -things being equal.... Wish I knew what to ask him for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span> -it. I don’t want to ask him too little. So I said I didn’t -care to discuss things at a funeral. Said he’d better come -along to-morrow. Their place isn’t doing well. It’s got -sort of embedded in Walthamstow. It would pay him to -get out and let the land go for building. He hasn’t got very -much money.... But he wants this place. He reely -wants this place.”</p> - -<p>His blue eyes were the eyes of one who sees visions.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know if they taught you about making companies -at the School of Economics. I’m a child at all that sort of -thing. He talks about partnership or a mortgage or something -like that, but what we want—what we want is a -limited company. And what we want is something like -debentures only rather more like preference shares. We -want it so that whatever he draws out of the business we’ve -got to draw out more. Otherwise the company can cut -away the security for your debentures by paying too much -dividend on the ordinary shares. <i>He</i>’ll have the ordinary -shares. Him and his wife. I don’t say he’d do such a thing -deliberately, but he might very easily be led into doing it. -He’s got to be looked after. We want to fix it so that if he -pays more on his shares than we get on our shares we’d get -our interest levelled up. It’s all very difficult and complicated, -Christina Alberta.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta regarded Mr. Preemby with a new and -deepening respect. She had never heard him make such a -speech before at meals, but then he had never before been -free from interruption and correction.</p> - -<p>“We’ll have to have it fixed up properly by our solicitors,” -said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“We shan’t be badly off,” he continued, helping himself to -cheese.</p> - -<p>“There’s a mortgage or so we’ve got and some houses at -Buckhurst Hill. It’s a curious thing, but your poor dear -mother had a sort of faith in my eye for house property.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span> -She often let me guide her. And I always had a feeling for -making some sort of reserve <i>out</i> of the business.... Very -likely Sam Widgery will take over most of the furniture of -this house. It’s a bigger house than his....”</p> - -<p>“Where do you think of going to live, Daddy?” asked -Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“I don’t rightly know,” said Mr. Preemby after a moment -or so of introspection. “I keep thinking of different places.”</p> - -<p>“London,” she said. “If I could go back to study—before -it is too late.”</p> - -<p>“London,” he said, “it might be.”</p> - -<p>He hesitated over his next suggestion with the hesitation -that had become a habit, so accustomed was he to see his -suggestions crumpled up and flung aside. “Have you ever -heard of Boarding Houses, Christina Alberta?” he asked -with an unreal carelessness. “Have you ever thought it -might be possible for us to go and live in Boarding -Houses?”</p> - -<p>“In London?”</p> - -<p>“All over the world—almost, there are Boarding Houses. -You see, Christina Alberta, we might get rid of our furniture -here, except for my books and a few little things, and -we might put most of that away for a time—Taylor’s -Repository would take care of that for us—and we might -go and live sometimes in a Boarding House here, and -sometimes in a Boarding House there. Then you could -study and needn’t keep house, and I could read and look -at things and make memorandums about some Theories -I’ve thought of, and talk to people and hear people talking. -All sorts of people go to Boarding Houses—all sorts of -interesting people. These last nights I’ve been thinking no -end about living in Boarding Houses. I keep on thinking -of it, turning it over in my mind. It would be a new life -for me—like beginning again. Life’s been so regular here. -All very well while your poor dear mother was alive, but -now I feel I want distraction. I want to move about and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span> -see all sorts of things and different kinds of people. I want -to forget. Why, in some of these Boarding Houses there’s -Chinese and Indians and Russian princesses, and professors -and actors and all sorts of people. Just to hear -them!”</p> - -<p>“There’s Boarding Houses full of students in Bloomsbury.”</p> - -<p>“Every sort,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“One place that attracts me,” said Mr. Preemby, pouring -out what remained of the beer, “is Tumbridge Wells.”</p> - -<p>“Isn’t that sometimes called Tunbridge, Daddy?”</p> - -<p>“Formerly. But now it is always spoken of as Tumbridge -Wells. At this Tumbridge Wells, Christina Alberta, there -are hills with names that point directly to some connection -with the ancient Israelites, Mount Ephraim and Mount -Gilboa and so on, and there are a number of curiously -shaped rocks, shaped in the likeness of great toads and -prehistoric monsters and mystical forms and nobody knows -whether they are the work of God’s hand or man’s. I am -very anxious to see these things for myself. They may -have a deeper and closer significance for us than is commonly -supposed. There are plenty of Boarding Houses at -Tumbridge Wells—I was told only the other day by a man -I met in the Assyrian room in the British Museum—and -some of them are said to be very comfortable and reasonable -indeed.”</p> - -<p>“We might go there for the holidays,” said Christina -Alberta, “before the London session begins.”</p> - -<p>Outside was the summer afterglow, and a dusky peace -filled the room. Father and daughter followed divergent -trains of thought. Mr. Preemby was the first to break the -silence.</p> - -<p>“Now that I shall be in mourning, or half mourning, for -some time I have decided to give away all those Harris -tweed knickerbocker suits and stockings of mine. Some -poor man might feel the comfort of them—in winter. I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span> -have never really liked those <i>very</i> baggy knickerbockers, -but of course while your poor dear mother was alive her -taste was Law to me. And those caps; they get over your -eyes when you’re hot. That tweed stuff.... It is overrated. -When you ride a bicycle or anything it ravels out -with the friction of the seat. Makes you look ridiculous.... -And I think that quite soon I shall get myself one of -those soft grey felt hats—with a black band.”</p> - -<p>“I have always wanted to see you wear one, Daddy,” said -Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“It would count as mourning?”</p> - -<p>“Oh! yes, Daddy.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby meditated pleasantly. The girl had common -sense. Her advice was worth having. “As for putting -the swastika on your poor dear mother’s tombstone, perhaps -you are right in thinking it is not what she herself would -have chosen. It may be better after all to do as you -suggest and erect a simple cross. After all—it is <i>her</i> -tombstone.”</p> - -<p>Whereupon Christina Alberta got up from her chair and -went round the table—almost at a prance, until she remembered -things—and kissed him. For some obscure reason -she hated the swastika almost as much as she loved her -Daddy. For her it had become the symbol of silliness, and -she did not like to think of him as silly. Particularly now -when for some obscure reason she was beginning to think -of him as ill-used.</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>There was much to see to before the Preembys could go -to Tunbridge Wells. There had to be quite a number of -interviews with Mr. Sam Widgery at Woodford Wells -and afterwards in the dingy offices of Messrs. Payne and -Punter in Lincoln’s Inn. It was clear from the first to these -men of affairs that Mr. Preemby was a child at business, -but as they went on with him they realized that he was an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span> -extremely greedy and intractable child. It was six weeks -before Mr. and Mrs. Sam Widgery could move in, sullenly -and resentfully, to the Limpid Stream premises, and Mr. -Preemby and his daughter could go on after a day or so -in London to select a Boarding House at Tunbridge Wells.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta spent her early days as an orphan -struggling against an unreasonable cheerfulness and a profound -sense of release. She found her father ready to -accept almost any explanation of her need to run up to -London for a day and even disposed to be tolerant when -she came home late. She had quite a little world of -miscellaneous acquaintances in London; fellow-students and -their friends, fellow-students from the London School of -Economics and fellow-students at Tomlinson’s School and -art students they knew and medical students they knew -and girls from the provinces who had chucked their families -and got typing jobs, and so on to models and chorus girls -and vaguely employed rather older young men of the intellectual -class. She met them in and about the class-rooms -and in A.B.C.’s and suchlike places and in the New Hope -Club, where there were even Labour politicians and men -who claimed to be Bolsheviks, and she went to parties and -duologues in studios in high, remote, extraordinary flats. -It was tremendous fun, although a lot of it had to be -snatched from the insistent claims and inquiries of Woodford -Wells. And people liked her, they liked Christina -Alberta, laughed at her jokes they did and admired her -thundering cheek and never said anything about her nose. -It was much more her natural world than the Taverners’ -School people had ever been. Nobody seemed to mind -that she came out of a laundry; for all they seemed to -care about that sort of thing, she might have come out of -a gaol. In between the excitements of student life she -even did some reading.</p> - -<p>In her first grief for her mother she tried not to feel a -sense of new unstinted freedom in regard to all these<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span> -adventures and experiences. Her Daddy in his grief, bless -him! was smoking much more than he had ever done -before; he was even trying cigars; he had no nose for -tobacco reek in his daughter—or for anything of that sort. -He asked few questions and they were easily answered. -Long years of exercise had made him almost constitutionally -acquiescent. Christina Alberta realized that within -very wide limits indeed now she might do anything she -pleased whenever she liked. She realized also that there -was no particular hurry to do anything at all. All the -others seemed to be running about in pairs like knives and -forks. It suited her humour to stay detached.</p> - -<p>And the world had altered. This break-up of the old -home, the death of her mother, the disappearance of every -control, except her credulous, inattentive Daddy, had jerked -her forward from childhood to maturity. Hitherto home -had seemed an eternal, indestructible thing, from which -you started out for adventures, to which, whatever happened, -you returned like a sea-rover to rest and where -you went to bed and slept as you had been wont to sleep, -secure, unthreatened. Now here the two of them, Daddy -and herself, were in the open; no bolting place at all for -them; anything might happen to them and might insist -upon going on happening. She could now do just anything -she pleased, it was true, but also she realized that now she -had to take the unlimited consequences.</p> - -<p>So that in spite of her sense of novel, unbounded freedoms, -Christina Alberta found she did not go up to London -any more than she would have done during her mother’s -lifetime. Many of her most attractive friends, it is true, -were away upon their holidays. And she found her father’s -company unusually interesting. Every time she came back -to him he seemed to be slightly enlarged and of a firmer -colour and consistency. He reminded her of Practical -Biology (Botanical Section) in the Taverners’ School, when -you take a dried-up bean out of its package and put it in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span> -a jar with water and observe it under the influence of -warmth and moisture. It germinates. And he was -germinating.</p> - -<p>Mother had kept him dried up for nearly twenty years, -but now he was germinating and nobody could tell what -sort of thing he might become.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE THIRD<br> - -<i>In Lonsdale Mews</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap2">A<small>FTER</small> a month of deep mourning, Christina Alberta -put aside her long skirts and returned to the more -kilt-like garments to which she was accustomed. She had -not been inactive while her father had conducted his business -settlement with Mr. Sam Widgery, and she had -worked out a scheme of living that seemed to promise quite -a happy life for her father and herself. She fell in with -the Boarding House idea and with the project of beginning -at Tunbridge Wells. She ceased to struggle with the fact -that he continued to call it quietly but insistently <i>Tum</i>bridge -Wells; it seemed to her upon reflection that -<i>Tum</i>bridge was really the place he, at any rate, was going -to live at. That gentle departure from exactitude was -quite of a piece with his general habit of living a little -askew from actual things.</p> - -<p>But she impressed upon him the view that since their -lives were to be migratory henceforth, and since there were -a certain number of books, unsaleable articles of furniture -that Mrs. Widgery would not take over at a valuation, a -number of curiosities—for example, a piece of shell which -he believed to be a fragment of a Great Auk’s Egg, a Rosicrucian -regalia, and a mummified hawk from Egypt which -had prophetic qualities, to consider—there must be a sort -of permanent headquarters in London, at which these -objects could be stored and to which he and she could -return from the various Boarding Houses round and about<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span> -the earth. And, pursuant to this suggestion, she made -inquiries and worked out an admirable project for sharing -some accommodation with two little friends of hers who -practised art, literature, and picturesque economies in a -converted mews in Chelsea. In fact, she made arrangements -with them. She told Mr. Preemby she had made -these arrangements according to his instructions, and after -a time it did come to seem to him that he had given her the -instructions upon which she acted.</p> - -<p>Lonsdale Mews opens out of Lonsdale Road, Chelsea; -and there is quite a noble entrance with large stucco -pillars on either side and an arch over, on which is a design -in relievo of Neptune and sea-horses and the words “Lonsdale -Mews.” Inside there had once been stables and coach-houses, -and over each a bedroom and a sitting-room, which -was also, in the more prolific past, generally used as a -bedroom, and a cupboard and a landing and so forth, the -little home of the coachman (and his wife and family) -attached to the genteel carriage and horses below. But the -advancement of science and the progress of invention have -abolished gentility, and so reduced the number of coachmen -and carriages in the world that Lonsdale Mews has -had to accept other tenants; and being too narrow down -the centre for the coming and going of automobiles without -a great deal of bashing of mudguards and radiators, -has had to paint itself up attractively and fall back upon -art and the intelligenzia.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta’s two young friends were in possession -of one of these perverted coachmen’s homes, and as they -were very inadequately prepared to pay the rent—it was -a quite aristocratic rent—they were extremely glad to -welcome Mr. Preemby and particularly Christina Alberta -as co-tenants. Mr. Preemby was to have the big room -downstairs and there he was to arrange his books and his -surplus furnishings and ornaments and curious objects, and -have a sofa that could be made into an apparent bed when<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span> -he wanted to sleep in London. And Christina Alberta was -to have a little bedroom for herself behind this wherein a -breezy decorative scheme of orange and bright blue more -than made up for a certain absence of daylight and fresh -air. But when the two young friends had a party or -when Mr. Preemby was away they were to have the -use of the big downstairs room, and in the case of a -party Christina Alberta’s room was to be a ladies’ -cloak-room.</p> - -<p>The lessors were to retain the use of the upstairs rooms -and in the matter of the kitchen all things therein were to -be held in common. None of this agreement was put into -writing and many issues were left over frankly for future -controversy. “We are to be the pigs that pay the rent,” -said Christina Alberta; that was the general idea. “Much -we’ll work out,” said Mr. Harold Crumb. “Much will -work itself out. It’s no good being too definite.” What -was definite was that Mr. Preemby was to pay the rent.</p> - -<p>Mr. Harold Crumb was a red-haired young man, a -shock-headed young man with a rampant profile, dressed -in a blue overall, frayed grey trousers and slippers. He had -large freckled hands and he did Black and White, which -Mr. Preemby had supposed to be a whisky but discovered -was an art. Harold lived by attempting to sell drawings -for advertisements and pictured jokes for the weekly papers. -His expression was lofty and his voice constrained and it -seemed to Mr. Preemby that he was suffered rather than -met by Mr. Crumb. With Christina Alberta Mr. Crumb -seemed to be on terms of tacit friendship and no word -passed between them. He lifted his hand and twiddled his -fingers at her—with a kind of melancholy.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Crumb was more effusive. She embraced Christina -Alberta warmly and answered to the name of “Fay.” Then -she turned to Mr. Preemby and shook hands with him -quite normally. She was a slender young lady with carelessly -bobbed corn-coloured hair, pale-grey eyes and an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span> -absent-minded face. She also was dressed in a blue overall, -she wore oyster-coloured stockings and slippers and possibly -other things, and her business in life, Mr. Preemby learnt, -was to review books for various newspapers and write -romantic fiction for bookstall magazines. Her right forefinger -had that indelible inkiness which only the habitual -use of an incontinent fountain-pen can give. There was -a big screen in the downstairs room Mr. Preemby was to -have that Mr. Crumb had made and Mrs. Crumb had -covered with the bright mendacious wrappers of the books -she had reviewed. This exercised Mr. Preemby the more -because several of the wrappers were manifestly upside -down, and he could not understand whether this was due -to art, carelessness or some serious mental lapse.</p> - -<p>“We’ll have something to eat,” she told Mr. Preemby, -and then they could settle up things. But she had a surprisingly -rapid articulation and it sounded like, “We’ll ’f -sum t’eat ’n’ then we’ll set lup thins.” It took ten or twelve -seconds to come through to Mr. Preemby’s understanding. -Meanwhile she had turned to Christina Alberta. “’Dabit -’f work to do,” she explained. “Bres no’ clear’ d’way. Late -las’ ni’. You be’r loo’ roun’ he’ while Nolly gessomeat an’ -Ikn do ’p stairs fore you see’t.”</p> - -<p>“Right-o,” said Christina Alberta, understanding perfectly. -Mr. Preemby was left stunned, with his lips moving -slowly. “So long,” said Harold, and took some money out -of a black Wedgwood tea-pot and went and fell over things -in the passage, and presently went out into the wide world -while Fay vanished upstairs.</p> - -<p>“She’s gone upstairs,” said Mr. Preemby, interpreting -slowly, “to do their rooms. And <i>he’s</i> gone to get some -meat. It’s a nice large room, Christina Alberta—and quite -well lit. Quite.</p> - -<p>“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a Mew before,” said Mr. -Preemby, approaching a group of attractive drawings on -the wall.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>“In a <i>what</i>, Daddy?”</p> - -<p>“In a Mew. Or in a <i>Studjo</i>.... I suppose these are -Originals.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta awaited his reaction to the drawings -with a slight anxiety.</p> - -<p>“Looks like a lot of fruit and human legs and things,” -said Mr. Preemby. “Wonder what they mean? <i>Summer -Night</i> it says, and that’s <i>Passion in Solitude</i>. Don’t quite -see it, but I suppose it’s symbolical or something.” He -turned his round blue eyes to the room generally. “I could -get a mahogany cabinet for my Curiosities and have it -against the wall <i>there</i>—I’d like the sort with glass doors -so that people could see the things—and if there was some -shelves put across that place, it would hold most of my -books. There’ll have to be a bed somewhere, Christina -Alberta.”</p> - -<p>“They’ve got a sofa upstairs,” said Christina Alberta, -“with an end that pulls down.”</p> - -<p>“Might go there.”</p> - -<p>“Or under the window.”</p> - -<p>“Of course there’s my clothes,” said Mr. Preemby. “I -almost wish I hadn’t practically promised Sam Widgery -your mother’s wardrobe. Rosewood it is. It has a lot of -room in it and it might have gone against that bit of wall -there. The trunk will make a sort of seat if we get the -corners mended. Wonder how that screen would look the -other way up. Books might go behind it. These easels -and things I suppose they’ll take upstairs.... We’ll get -things settled all right.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta turned about with arms akimbo to -follow his proposals. She perceived that they threatened a -considerable disturbance of the æsthetic balance of the -studio. She’d just thought of a little bed-sofa affair with a -bright rug over it. Silly of her to forget the baggage. But -in the end perhaps it might be possible to arrest a lot of his -gear in the passage. The passage was so choked already<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span> -that a little more in it hardly seemed to matter. He could -go out and get what things he wanted when he wanted -them. She had a momentary anticipation of him in his -shirt and braces, routing in trunks.</p> - -<p>“Of course,” said Mr. Preemby, “when you said you’d got -two little friends in a <i>Studjo</i>, I thought they were two -girls. I didn’t think they were a married couple.”</p> - -<p>“They aren’t so <i>fearfully</i> married,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“No,” said Mr. Preemby, and was restrained by modesty -from further speech for some seconds. “Of course,” he -said, “if presently a Family came along—well, we’d have -to move out, Christina Alberta.”</p> - -<p>“Never meet families half-way,” said Christina Alberta. -“It isn’t very likely anyhow. You trust Fay.”</p> - -<p>“You never know,” said Mr. Preemby rather weakly, and -showed a tendency to drift back to those ambiguous -drawings.</p> - -<p>“About time we had a look at the upstairs rooms, Daddy,” -said Christina Alberta, and went out into the passage to -call “Fay!”</p> - -<p>The answer came remotely. “Lo?”</p> - -<p>“Read-<i>dee</i>?”</p> - -<p>“Not yet.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta found her Daddy back in the illustrated -corner with his head on one side like an inquiring sparrow. -For some time nothing was said. “Of course,” he remarked -at last; “it’s Art.” He turned away with his face pursed -up beneath the moustache, humming faintly. She perceived -it was just as much Art as he could stand.</p> - -<p>He ran his hand over the wall and turned intelligent eyes -to Christina Alberta. “It’s just canvas,” he said; “what -you pack things in. With sort of dabs of gold paint. I -don’t think I’ve ever seen walls that wasn’t either done with -paper or distemper before. I suppose really one might -put all sorts of things on walls, cloth, bed-ticking, tarpaulin. -Odd how one doesn’t think of things.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>Presently “upstairs” was “read-ee;” Mrs. Harold Crumb -was free to answer questions and make explanations and -Mr. Preemby could learn more of Christina Alberta’s -plans for his comfort. Upstairs was more various but less -spacious than downstairs, the beds were dressed-up rather -than disguised as divans and there was more vaguely -improper but highly decorative Art. Like Christina Alberta -Mrs. Crumb had not fully considered Mr. Preemby’s possibilities -in the way of luggage, but she rose to the occasion -very well. When Mr. Preemby spoke of the mahogany -cabinet and the wardrobe, she said that it would be quite -easy for Harold to “camouflage” them with very, very -bright-coloured paint, and she thought a lot might be done -for Mr. Preemby’s trunks and clothes by making a curtained -alcove in a corner. “Trouble with clothes,” said Mrs. -Crumb, “is when somebody starts charades or dressing up. -Nothing is sacred. Last week, somebody tore my only -pyjamas limb from limb.”</p> - -<p>“We’d have to arrange,” said Mr. Preemby, a little -uneasily.</p> - -<p>“We’ll have to arrange somehow,” said Mrs. Crumb.</p> - -<p>But before anything could be arranged definitely Harold -returned from his shopping with a large piece of purple -beefsteak in a mere loin cloth of newspaper, and a lettuce -and a bundle of small onions in his hand and two large -bottles of beer under his arm, and everybody’s attention -was directed to the preparation of the midday meal.</p> - -<p>“Generally,” said Harold, “we go Out for a meal. There’s -quite a decent aufschnittery and a little Italian place and -so forth not five minutes away in the King’s Road. It’s -more fun feeding Out. But we thought you’d like to see -the studio put through its paces.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby in the course of his life had rarely seen -meals prepared; somebody else had always laid a table and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span> -said “Dinner’s ready, Daddy,” or “Supper’s ready, Daddy,” -as the case might be, and he had just sat down, and it was -with real interest that he obeyed Mr. Crumb’s invitation -to “come and see how we do it,” and assisted under direction -in the operations. Mr. Crumb, in a few well-chosen -words, introduced the cooking apparatus that clustered -around the gas-stove; the gas-stove was lit explosively, Mr. -Preemby handed things and held things under direction and -got in the way a good deal. Christina Alberta, who -seemed used to the job, chopped the onions and dressed a -salad at a small kitchen table close at hand, and the steak -got itself grilled fiercely and flaringly.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile Mrs. Crumb laid a blue-painted table in what -was to be Mr. Preemby’s room with an orange-coloured -cloth and a selection of plates and parts of plates, yellow-glazed -mugs with rudely painted inscriptions in some rustic -dialect, “Here’s t’ absent frens” and the like, several knives -and forks, a pewter mug full of cigarettes and a bunch of -sunflowers in a brown-glazed bowl. And at this table Mr. -Preemby presently found himself seated very hot in the -face and liberally splashed with fat from the grilled steak. -Nobody said grace, and the meal began.</p> - -<p>There was a general assumption that Mr. Preemby’s -tenancy was settled, though there were many points upon -which he would have liked a clearer definition. He was -particularly anxious to exclude as tactfully as possible his -garments and his specimens from promiscuous use as properties -when these charades occurred, but he did not know -quite how to reopen the subject. And he was preoccupied -by a doubt whether his long nightgowns of Saxony flannel, -if they were publicly exposed, might not be considered -old-fashioned by these artistic young people. But their -talk jumped about so that it was difficult to lead up to what -he had to say. He was accustomed, especially when company -was present, to clear his throat “h’rrmp” and waggle -his moustache up and down a little before he spoke, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span> -by the time he was ready to deliver what he had to say -one of the others was away with something else. So that -he hardly said anything but an occasional “h’rrmp” all -through the meal.</p> - -<p>The two young ladies did most of the talking. Harold -seemed moody, making an occasional correction or comment -upon his wife’s remarks and eating most of the steak -with the pained expression of one who has tender teeth -and is used to better food. Once he asked Mr. Preemby if -he really cared for Good Music, and once if he had been to -see the Iberian dancers last year, but neither of these -inquiries led to a sustained conversation. “H’rrmp. No-oh,” -said Mr. Preemby. “Not exactly. Not particularly,” -and in the second case, “No-oh, I didn’t.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Crumb talked brightly of various newspaper jobs -she had got and how she had been asked to do a children’s -corner in the <i>Patriotic News</i> and whether she would accept -the offer—Mr. Preemby thought the editors and newspaper -proprietors she mentioned seemed a depraved lot—but -mainly the talk concerned the movements and readjustments -of a large circle of friends. After the meal there -was coffee, and Harold, with an air of resignation, went -and washed up.</p> - -<p>There were many little things awaiting attention at the -laundry, and after two or three cigarettes Mr. Preemby -decided, “It’s time for us to be going, Christina Alberta.” -“We’ll work it out all right,” said Harold on their -departure.</p> - -<p>There were intervals of meditation as Mr. Preemby and -Christina Alberta returned in the train from Liverpool -Street to Woodford Wells. “It’s not what I’ve been accustomed -to,” said Mr. Preemby. “It’s all very different from -the way your mother used to manage things.... Less -orderly.... Of course I could keep my clothes locked up -in my trunk.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>“You’ll do all right. They’re perfect Dears. <i>She</i> loves -you tremendously already,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>But before she went to sleep that night Christina Alberta -experienced compunction. She felt compunction about -these arrangements she was making for her Daddy. She -doubted whether he would be truly comfortable and happy -in that studio in Lonsdale Mews, and able to lead the life -of steadfast curiosity he anticipated with so much quiet -pleasure—ever humming to himself about it and working -his moustache and saying “h’rrmp,” when he was not -otherwise engaged.</p> - -<p>This story, it cannot be too often reiterated, is the story -of Mr. Preemby who became, as we shall tell in due course, -Sargon, King of Kings. But Christina Alberta has got -herself hatched into this story very much like a young -cuckoo in a wagtail’s nest and it is impossible to ignore her. -She was virtually in control of him and she had the egotism -of her sex and age.</p> - -<p>She had also a pitiless conscience. It was almost the only -thing she could not manage in her life. It managed her. -It was a large, crystalline conscience with no foundations -and no relationships; it just flooded by itself in her being; -it was her gravitational centre and the rest of her could not -get away from it.</p> - -<p>When Christina Alberta went up for examination and -judgment before Christina Alberta there was no nonsense -in the proceedings, a fearful frankness; it was cards on the -table, everything in evidence, no etiquette, not a stitch on, -X-rays if necessary. These examinations were all the more -terrible because they were done in what was practically -an empty room, without screens, curtains, standards or -general beliefs of any sort. It is appalling to think of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span> -drapery and function that was absent from Christina -Alberta’s court of conscience. In the first place Christina -Alberta was completely and explicitly irreligious. In the -next she was theoretically anti-social and amoral. She -did not believe in respectability, Christian morality, the -institution of the family, the capitalist system, or the -British Empire. She would say so with extreme plainness -and considerable detail except when her parent was about. -Prevalent winds of sentiment did not stir her. She did not -find the Prince of Wales ravishing nor <i>Punch</i> funny. She -thought modern dancing tiresome, though she did it very -well, and Wimbledon tennis and tennis-talk an intolerable -bore. She favoured Bolshevism because everybody she -disliked abused it and she hoped for a world-wide social -revolution of an entirely destructive and cleansing type. -What was to follow this revolution Christina Alberta, with -the happy confidence of youth, did not seem to mind.</p> - -<p>It is not for us to speculate here why a young woman born -and bred between Woodford Wells and central London in -the opening years of the twentieth century should confront -the world with a mind so entirely swept and void of -positive and restraining convictions; we put the fact on -record. And if she had been sustained by all the beliefs -in Christendom and a sure and certain respect for every -detail of the social code, whatever that code may be, she -could not have confronted the world with a more cheerful -confidence, nor with a stronger persuasion that Christina -Alberta had to behave, in some undefined fashion, well. -Christina Alberta had to be Christina Alberta, clear and -sound, or the court of conscience made things plain and -hard for her.</p> - -<p>“Christina Alberta,” the court would say, “you are the -dirtiest, filthiest little thing that ever streaked the dust of -life. How do you propose to get clean again?”</p> - -<p>Or, “Christina Alberta, you have been lying again. You’ll -lie to <i>me</i> next. First it was laziness made you lie and now<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span> -it is cowardice. What are you going to make of yourself, -Christina Alberta?”</p> - -<p>There came a time when the court had to address Christina -Alberta in this fashion: “Your nose, Christina Alberta, -is large beyond comparison. It will probably go on growing -all your life—as noses often do. Yet you are setting -yourself out to charm and fascinate Teddy Winterton. -You go to places where you think you will meet him. You -fuss and preen yourself like any female idiot. You dream -all sorts of things about him, disgraceful things. You are -soppy on this young man in spite of the fact that you know -he is—no sort of good. You like him to touch you. You -sit and look at him foolishly and you gloat. Does he gloat -on you? Isn’t it time you considered where you are going, -Christina Alberta?”</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>And now the court was in full session and the charge, the -charge for which there was no defence, was that she was -going to take her absurd, unprotected Daddy and entrust -him and his foolishness and his silly books and his ridiculous -treasures and all his dreams and desires to the -insecure and unsympathetic studio of the Crumbs, not -because of any vague and general hunger for London, -though that was in the background, but because that -studio was frequented by the all too seductive Teddy, -because there she had met him and danced wildly with -him and been suddenly and astonishingly kissed by him -and kissed him. And then he had beguiled her to learn a -dance with him and had got her to come to tea with him at -his studio to meet his sister—who hadn’t turned up. And -there had been other meetings. He was impudent and -provocative and evasive. All her being was in a state of -high excitement about him. Coldly and exactly now the -court unfolded the operations of her mind to her; showed -how the thought of Teddy, always present and never -admitted, had guided her decision to harbour with the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span> -Crumbs. Only now did she come to confession and clear -vision. “You have lied to yourself, Christina Alberta,” said -the court; “and that is the worst sort of lie. What are you -going to do about it?”</p> - -<p>“I can’t let the Crumbs down now. They count upon -us.”</p> - -<p>“You are in a mess, Christina Alberta. You are in a -worse mess than we thought you were. <i>Soppy</i> you are -about Teddy Winterton. Why not call things by their -right names? You are in love. Perhaps something frightful -has happened to you. Little rabbits run about the -hedges and every day is like every other day for them; -they waggle their little noses and wiggle their little tails -and do what they like with their paws. Until one day -there is a ping and the snare snaps on the little furry -foot and everything you try to do after that is different. -The snare holds your movements and you must just dance -round it and squeal if you like, till the man comes along. -Is that what has happened to you? And for Teddy! -Teddy, with that open, lying face!”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Christina Alberta, “I don’t love him. I don’t -love him. I’ve been silly and soppy and adrift. I am no -more worthy to be called Christina Alberta. But it hasn’t -got me yet and it shan’t get me. I’ll pull Daddy out of it -and myself out of it; I vow and swear....”</p> - -<p>“H’m,” said the court.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>It seemed to Mr. Preemby that the first evening he spent -in his new quarters in Lonsdale Mews was the most eventful -evening in his life. Impressions crowded upon each -other. Insomnia was not among his habits, but when at -last he lay upon his shake-up bed he was kept awake for -most of what was left of the night (it was the frayed piece -with the bleak dawn in the middle of it) trying to get these<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span> -same impressions sorted out, impressions about his new -surroundings, impressions about Christina Alberta, impressions -of new and unprecedented personalities, a marmalade -of impressions.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta arrived at the studio -according to plan about half-past three, but the Picton van -which had started that morning with Mr. Preemby’s bags -and trunks and the crates of books and curiosities and the -late Mrs. Preemby’s roomy wardrobe, which had after all -been rescued from the clutches of Sam Widgery, did not -arrive until it was nearly six. Unfortunately the furniture -dealer in Brompton Road from whom Mr. Preemby had -purchased a specimen-cabinet and a long low walnut bookcase -had delivered these articles the day before, and all the -animosity of the modern artist towards self-assertive wood -had been aroused in Harold. He and Fay and a friend or -so who had dropped in, had sat up quite late painting these -new pieces a deep ultramarine blue with stars and splashes -of gold like the paper they put around the necks of Ayala, -Tsarist and suchlike champagnes. When Mr. Preemby saw -their handiwork he could scarcely believe it was the same -specimen-cabinet and bookcase.</p> - -<p>“I suppose one could get it off again,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“But see how they are assimilated by the room,” said -Harold in high expostulation.</p> - -<p>“I mean if we moved at any time,” said Mr. Preemby. -“I know it’s art, and it goes with the things here very -nicely, but there’s neighbourhoods I wouldn’t like to move -into—not with these things as they are. You don’t know -what people’s imaginations are like.”</p> - -<p>Matters went a little tediously until the arrival of the -Picton van. The sofa-bed was arranged and rearranged. -The bed things, blankets, sheets and pillow-cases, were to -be put in a bundle on the top of Mr. Preemby’s flat trunk -behind the book-wrapper screen. “We shall have to find -some other place for the bottled beer,” said Harold. “It’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span> -too hot in the kitchen and too dangerous in the passage. -But I’ve an idea we might have it in the scullery under the -sink, with a cloth over it and water dripping on the cloth. -Evaporation. I’ll see about it.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby was surprised by a yawn. “I suppose you’d -like to have some tea,” said Fay suddenly, and she and -Christina Alberta prepared some.</p> - -<p>Harold was obviously in a strained and nervous state. -Mr. Preemby’s patient little figure, sitting about hands on -knees, waiting for Picton’s van, looking at things with -innocent eyes and saying “h’rrmp” had much the same -effect of nervous dislocation upon Harold that the mild -and patient camel has on a horse. Harold chafed and -pranced. He walked about and went upstairs and out -and returned; he smoked endless cigarettes and pressed -endless cigarettes upon Mr. Preemby; he made recondite -remarks in a strained voice. “All this is like something out -of Dostoievsky,” he said to Mr. Preemby. “In a different -scheme of colouring of course. Different, but the same. -Don’t you think so, Mr. Preemby?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby nodded his head in a sympathetic, humorous, -not too explicit manner. “H’rrmp,” he said. “It <i>is</i> a -bit like that.”</p> - -<p>“Things will work themselves out,” said Harold. “Things -will work themselves out. You know that poem of Ruby -Parham’s.” He cleared his throat. “It is called ‘Waiting,’” -he said. “It goes like this—”</p> - -<p>His eyes became fixed and glazed; his voice gathered -volume, so that the words seemed more than life-sized.</p> - -<div class="blockquot2"> -<p>“After every minute<br> -“Comes another minute<br> -“And then, rest assured,<br> -“Another.<br> -“Like drops from a ledge in the rain.<br> -“You may not want to go on;<br> -“But <i>they</i> will,<br> -“Oh! endlessly<br><span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span> -“Taking your life away, death, not final and complete,<br> -“But death in the midst of life,<br> -“Particles of death,<br> -“Death by attrition.<br> -“Drip on Old Death—in life!<br> -“Slow, dull, implacable, unendurable!<br> -“Drip on.”</p> -</div> - -<p>“That ‘Drip on’ is great. But perhaps you don’t like -modern poetry?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t <i>mind</i> it,” said Mr. Preemby genially.</p> - -<p>“Of course, nothing of a really destructive nature <i>can</i> -have happened to that van,” said Mr. Crumb in a pessimistic -tone.</p> - -<p>When Picton’s van arrived and the roomy wardrobe -began its destructive march through the passage, Mr. -Crumb called suddenly upon his maker in a loud distressful -voice and vanished for the better part of an hour.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta was torn between a sympathetic understanding -of Harold’s state of mind and the fear that her -Daddy might perceive the unfavourable reaction he produced -in Harold and be hurt by it. She and Fay became -brightly helpful with the unpacking. “If I might have one -of those blue pinafores of Mr. Crumb’s to put on,” said -Mr. Preemby, “I’d be glad. These black things of mine -show every mark.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Crumb’s overall reached far below Mr. Preemby’s -knees and somehow justified his calling it a pinafore. It -brought out something endearingly infantile in his appearance -that appealed to the maternal instinct lurking in Mrs. -Crumb. She struggled with a persuasion that he was -really a little boy of nine who had been naughty and grown -a big moustache and that she had to take care of him and -restrain him and generally tell him not to. The books -were put in the bookshelves as Mr. Preemby said, “just -anyhow”; they could be sorted up later, but the curiosities -and specimens took longer and had to be “put out” more or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span> -less in the cabinet. There were not only real curiosities -and specimens but many little things that Mr. Preemby -had accumulated because they looked like curiosities and -specimens. There was, for instance, a piece of one of the -laundry delivery van mudguards so bent by a collision as -to resemble a human torso in the most striking fashion; -there was the almost complete skull of an unknown mammal, -probably a fallow deer, picked up in Epping Forest, -there was a potato, now rather shrivelled, in which it was -possible to detect thirty-seven distinct human faces and—specimen -of an entirely different quality—a large flint in -which there were no less than fifty-five. Ages ago some -primordial Preemby had discovered and loved that very -same flint and had brought out the likenesses by chipping -an eye here or a nostril there; but Mr. Preemby did not -suspect the help of that remote and perhaps ancestral -hand. Even in waking life Mr. Preemby saw faces in -everything. What he would have been like with a high -temperature it is impossible to imagine.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta’s anxiety about her father’s reception -by the Crumbs diminished as she saw his virtual conquest -of Fay. Fay treated him firmly but indulgently, and they -lost a good deal of time while she tried to see all the fifty-five -faces of the wonderful flint. They had to start and -start again, but always they lost count about “Twen-tee” -or “Twen-tee-one.” The question would arise whether they -were counting one of the faces over again.</p> - -<p>Harold returned in a moody state and could be heard, all -too distinctly, kicking Mr. Preemby’s packing cases in the -hall, but Fay went out to him with a lofty sleep-walking -expression in her pale eyes, and the concussions ceased, -and presently Harold came downstairs again looking -almost handsome in nankeen trousers, a blue jacket with -big silver buttons and a voluminous black tie, and was -quite nice to Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“You won’t mind my touching that wardrobe of yours up<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span> -a bit?” he said. “It damps us off, as it is. Kind of reproaches -us. One of us has to be altered, you see, it or me, -and either I paint it or else I get a silk hat with a deep -mourning band and a gold-handled umbrella—which would -cost no end of money. Whereas I <i>have</i> the paint.”</p> - -<p>“If you can get the paint off again,” said Mr. Preemby. -“You see if I was to move—<i>back</i>.... It’s all right to have -all this paint in a Mew. But out of a Mew....”</p> - -<p>“Exactly,” said Harold. “My idea is to make a little -pink house of it with windows and so on. Something very -simple. Rather like the scenery of a Russian Sketch. -<i>Chauve Souris</i> sort of stuff. Conventional to the <i>n</i><sup>th</sup>. And -we might put up placards at the corner of it according -to what is going on. Make a bit of an institution of it.”</p> - -<p>“So long as it makes things agreeable,” said Mr. -Preemby.</p> - -<p>He found his hair being ruffled affectionately. “Dear -little Daddy!” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>But now appeared a new-comer and life was made uncomfortable -and complicated for Christina Alberta again -by the presence of Mr. Teddy Winterton’s candid insincerity. -His graceful body, his movements, his voice, stirred -her senses as she hated them to be stirred; his quiet -impudence invaded her sense of humour; he wounded her -pride and she longed to be even with him. She had no -power over him and he behaved as if he owned her. She -was always letting him go just a little too far. When he -was about her nose cast a shadow that reached to her -horizon. He stood now in the doorway—trousers of one -pattern of tweed, waistcoat of another, Norfolk jacket of -a third extensively unbuttoned in the accepted student -style, and he watched Mr. Preemby carry his collection -of roc’s bones, found near Staines, across the studio on a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span> -tea-tray. His eyes were round with surprise and amusement; -his mouth said noiselessly, “What is it?”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta was not going to have her Daddy -laughed at by any Teddy Winterton. “Mr. Winterton,” -she said. “This is my father.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll just get rid of my bones,” said Mr. Preemby, “and -then I’ll shake hands.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll just finish up Mr. Preemby’s things and then -we’ll all go round to Poppinetti’s to get some dinner,” said -Fay. “There’s hardly anything left to unpack now.”</p> - -<p>“Just one or two Antediluvium bones,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>Teddy seized upon one. “This,” he said, inspecting it, -“is a fossil rhinoceros thigh-bone from the Crag.”</p> - -<p>“It’s an Antediluvium horse,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“Forgive me! It’s a rhinoceros bone!”</p> - -<p>“Horses had rhinoceros bones in those days,” said Mr. -Preemby. “And the rhinoceroses—! They were incredible. -If I had one I shouldn’t have anywhere to put -it.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby was extracted from his overall and restored -to the black coat and the grey felt hat with the black -band. He became one of a straggling party that went out -of Lonsdale Mews to a little Italian restaurant in the -King’s Road. Three neighbours of the Crumbs mixed -themselves up with the party, a very quiet man with silver -hair and a young man and a dusky girl.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby was much impressed by the novelty of -thus going out for dinner, and expatiated on its advantages -to the silver-haired man who seemed to be the -quiet sort of listening man that Mr. Preemby liked to -meet. “You see you don’t have to <i>cook</i> the meal and you -don’t have to lay the table and afterwards naturally there -isn’t any washing up. But I expect it comes more -expensive.”</p> - -<p>The silver-haired man nodded intelligently. “Exactly,” -he said.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>Harold Crumb overheard this. “Expensive,” he said, -“it isn’t. No. Every other crime Poppinetti can commit, -but that is barred by the circumstances of his clientele. -He feeds us on stolen pigeons, his <i>dinde</i> is guinea-pig, -his beef, <i>a l’omnibus</i>: what he minces God knows; what he -puts into his ravioli makes even the Lord God repent of -his extreme creativeness. But you see, you don’t <i>think</i> -about his ravioli, you eat ’em, and they’re damned good. -There are always flowers on the table and an effect of -inexpensive refinement. You will see. You will see.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby saw. Poppinetti was a small man but -carefully modelled on Caruso, and he received his large -party with the deference of a diplomatist and the effusion -of a geyser. He was particularly gracious to Mr. Preemby, -bowing profoundly to him, and saluting him with great -richness subsequently whenever he caught his eye. He -seemed to Mr. Preemby to spend the rest of their time -together going to remoter and remoter parts of the restaurant -in order to catch Mr. Preemby’s eye and bow and -smile to him from greater and greater distances. Mr. -Preemby had curious doubts whether he wasn’t being mistaken -for somebody else.</p> - -<p>Signor Poppinetti, with an air of peculiar favour, guided -the party to a long, unattractive table near the centre of -the restaurant and took their conflicting orders with the -gestures of a conductor guiding an orchestra through a -difficult passage. Mr. Preemby was passive but observant; -he presently found himself eating macaroni and drinking -a rough red wine with a name that sounded to his London -tuned ears like a challenge. Chianti.</p> - -<p>Harold Crumb showed great earnestness in the matter of -macaroni. “In order to taste macaroni,” he assured Mr. -Preemby, “it is necessary to fill the mouth absolutely full, -good measure, pressed in and running over. To cut up -macaroni with your fork as you are doing, is as awful -as to cut an oyster. It—it devitalizes it.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>“I like it cut up,” said Mr. Preemby with unexpected -firmness. And he cut up some more.</p> - -<p>“Otherwise,” he said in a confidential aside to the silver-haired -man, “I can’t help thinking it’s earthworms.”</p> - -<p>“Exactly. Exactly,” said the silver-haired man.</p> - -<p>Harold exemplified generously. His rampant face riding -over a squirming mouthful of macaroni was like St. George -and the Dragon on an English sovereign. He whistled as -he ate. Long snakes of macaroni hung thoughtful for a -moment and then, drawn by some incomprehensible fascination, -fled into him. Teddy Winterton and one of the -new-comers from the studio next door emulated him. -Christina Alberta and Fay showed the furtive dexterity -of the female. But Mr. Preemby was glad when macaroni -was over, even though it raised the problem of eating an -egg on spinach with a fork.</p> - -<p>But he was not really troubled in his mind as a younger -man might have been. He had the <i>savoir-faire</i> of middle-age. -This restaurant dinner was on the whole a bright -and agreeable experience for him. He liked even the -corrosive taste of the Chianti. This Chianti you drank -out of quite largish tumblers because it was almost as -cheap and light as beer. It did not intoxicate, but it warmed -the mind, and it cast a pleasant and convincing indistinctness -over the universe so that the Tunbridges all -became Tumbridges without any question, and the secret -dreams and convictions of the heart became certain knowledge. -Presently Mr. Preemby found himself able and -willing to tell things and hint much more important things -about his collections to the white-haired man and also to -the dark, untidy girl who was sitting on his other side, and -who came from the other studio and about whose name he -had no idea, and presently to others; and when the bird -came—it was a bird new to Mr. Preemby, and called, he -gathered, <i>rabbkey</i> or <i>turkit</i>—most of the party was talking<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span> -in the loud, confused, explosive way these young people -affected about the lost <i>Atlantis</i>.</p> - -<p>He had never spoken so freely before upon this topic. -At home he had always been restrained by the late Mrs. -Preemby’s genuine lack of interest. And even now he was -not prepared for positive statements or for an encounter -with sceptical arguments about that great lost continent -of the Golden Age. Atlantis had been the scene and substance -of his secret reveries for many years; he knew his -knowledge of it was of a different order from common -knowledge, more intuitive, mystical, profound. From the -outset his manner was defensive, discreet and obscure, as -of one willing but not permitted to speak.</p> - -<p>How did he know that there had been this lost continent?</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” he said with the faint smile of peculiar knowledge; -“studied it for years.”</p> - -<p>“What is the evidence?” asked the untidy young lady.</p> - -<p>“So abundant. Impossible to retail it. Convincing. -Of various sorts. Plato has much about it. Unfinished -fragment. Many books have been written. Many inscriptions -in Egypt.”</p> - -<p>“What sort of people were they?” asked the untidy girl.</p> - -<p>“Very wonderful people, young lady,” said Mr. Preemby. -“H’rrmp. Very wonderful people.”</p> - -<p>“Philosophy, no end I suppose?” asked the young man -from the next studio with his mouth full.</p> - -<p>“What we know—a mere remnant,” said Mr. Preemby. -“Mere remnant.”</p> - -<p>“How did they dress?”</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp. Robes. White robes—extremely dignified. -Blue—azure—when justice was administered. Plato tells -us that much.”</p> - -<p>“Could they fly?”</p> - -<p>“They understood it. It was not made a practice of.”</p> - -<p>“Motor cars? All that sort of thing?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>“If they wanted to. There was less motoring—more -meditation. We live—age of transition. H’rrmp.”</p> - -<p>“And then it all went phut?” said the young man from -the next studio. “Submerged and all that. What a lesson!”</p> - -<p>“That need not have happened,” said Mr. Preemby -darkly.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby became dimly aware of scepticism. -“There’s not an atom of evidence that there ever was a -continent in the Atlantic,” Mr. Teddy Winterton was -saying to Christina Alberta; “within thirty million years -of anything human. The ocean troughs go right back to -the Mesozoic age.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby would have noticed this remark but the -untidy girl asked him suddenly if he did not think that -the swastika was a symbol derived from Atlantis. He said -he was quite certain it was. She asked what it meant -exactly; she had always been curious about its significance: -and he became guarded and mysterious. She wanted -moreover to know things about the costume of that lost -world, about its social customs, about its religion. Were -women citizens? She was certainly the most intelligent -about it of all the company. The silver-haired man seemed -to be faintly amused.</p> - -<p>The rest of the company wandered off into a discussion -of the possibility of going to the Chelsea Arts Ball in the -character of a party from the Lost Atlantis. Many of their -ideas Mr. Preemby thought trivial and undignified. “Leaves -us unlimited scope,” said Harold Crumb. “We could invent -weapons—have wings if we liked. Magic carbuncles -on our shields—illuminated. Mysterious books and tablets. -And a sort of peculiar wailing, drumming music; Mya, -mya, mya.”</p> - -<p>He pursed up his face and made a curious mooing noise -with it to convey his intention, twiddling his fingers to -assist the effect.</p> - -<p>It was no good protesting against such imaginative<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span> -ignorance. But to the dark, untidy girl and to the acquiescent -man with silvery hair Mr. Preemby continued to be -quietly oracular and communicative from behind his -moustache.</p> - -<p>“But how are these things known?” the dark girl persisted. -“There is nothing in the British Museum.”</p> - -<p>“You forget,” said Mr. Preemby. “H’rrmp, the Freemasons. -There are Inner Groups—traditions. Thank you. -Just half a glass more. Oh! you’ve filled it! Thank you.”</p> - -<p>As he talked he was aware of something going on between -Christina Alberta and Winterton. At first it seemed not -to matter in the slightest degree, but to be just part of the -general unusualness of the gathering, and then it seemed -to matter a great deal. He saw Christina Alberta’s little -fist resting on the table, and suddenly Winterton’s hand -enveloped it. She snatched her hand away. Then something -was whispered and her hand came back. In another -moment the hands were five inches apart and it was as if -nothing had ever happened between them.</p> - -<p>He would probably have forgotten the momentary invasion -of his attention by Christina Alberta if something -else had not occurred at the phase of dessert. Poppinetti’s -idea of dessert was a sort of lottery of walnuts—if you -found a sound one you won—masses of compressed and -damaged dates and a few defiant apples. There was a -great crackling. The company was littering the table -with walnut shells, and the green, black and yellow corruption -they had contained, when this second incident -caught Mr. Preemby’s eye. He saw Teddy Winterton -run his hand very softly along Christina Alberta’s forearm. -And her arm was not withdrawn.</p> - -<p>Every one was talking just then and for a moment it -seemed to Mr. Preemby that he alone had seen, and then -he caught an observant expression on the face of the silver-haired -man. It was all very confusing, and this Chianti—though -it was really not intoxicating—made everything<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span> -swimmy, but Mr. Preemby knew somehow that the silver-haired -man had also seen that furtive familiarity, and that -he too didn’t quite approve of it.</p> - -<p>Ought one to take notice? Ought one to say anything? -Perhaps afterwards. Perhaps when they were alone together, -he might ask her quietly, “Are you and that young -man Winterton engaged?”</p> - -<p>“A bit too much,” said Mr. Preemby quietly, meeting the -eye of the silver-haired man. “I don’t like that sort of -thing.”</p> - -<p>“Quite,” said the silver-haired man.</p> - -<p>“I shall speak to her.”</p> - -<p>“You’re right there,” said the silver-haired man warmly. -A very sensible fellow.</p> - -<p>A great rustle and a scraping of chairs. Poppinetti, -figuring upon an accounts-pad, came to collect the money. -“I’ll pay for us, Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, “and we’ll -settle up afterwards.”</p> - -<p>Poppinetti bowing. Poppinetti on Mr. Preemby’s right -and on Mr. Preemby’s left; several Poppinettis bowing. -A great activity of Poppinettis handing hats and so forth. -Poppinettis whichever way you turned. The restaurant -rotating slightly. Was this Chianti perhaps stronger -than Mr. Preemby had been led to believe? A number of -Poppinettis opening a number of doors and saying polite -things. Difficult to choose a door. Right the first time. -Out into the street. People going by. Taxis. No more -Poppinettis. But a girl ought not to let a young man -stroke her arm at dinner, when anyone might see it happen. -It wasn’t correct. Something had to be said. Something -tactful.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby became aware that he was walking next to -Mrs. Crumb. “It was lovely to hear you talking about the -New Atlantis,” she said. “I wish I had been sitting -nearer.”</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span>Something very nice about Mrs. Crumb. What was it? -Not so <i>fearfully</i> married, but married quite enough.</p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>Mr. Preemby thought they were going back for coffee -and a little talk and then bed; he had no idea of the immense -amount of evening still before him. He knew -nothing as yet of the capacity for sitting up late and getting -lively in the small hours possessed by this new world of -young people into which Christina Alberta had led him.</p> - -<p>And in a sort of hectic discontinuous way they were -lively for hours. It became vaguely evident to Mr. -Preemby that there was a periodic “day” set apart by Mrs. -Crumb for evening gatherings in the studio, and that this -evening he had chosen for his settling down was such an -evening. Fresh people dropped in. One it seemed was a -portentous arrival, he came in quite soon after the return -from Poppinetti’s; he was very fat and broad, a white-faced -man of forty or so, rather short of breath, with -exceedingly intelligent eyes under a broad forehead and -a rather loose, peevish mouth. He carried himself with -the involuntary self-consciousness of a man who thinks he -is pointed out. His name it seemed was Paul Lambone, -and he had written all sorts of things. Everybody treated -him with a faint deference. He greeted Christina Alberta -with great warmth.</p> - -<p>“How’s the newest Van?” he said, shaking her hand as -though he liked it, and speaking with a singularly small -voice for so ample a person. “How’s the last step in -Advance?”</p> - -<p>“You’ve got to meet my father,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Has it got a father? I thought it just growed like -Topsy—out of Nietzsche and Bernard Shaw and all the -rest of them.”</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>Mr. Lambone turned to him. “What a Handful a -daughter is!” he said, and bowed slightly towards Christina -Alberta, “even the best of them.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby replied after the manner of the parents -in Woodford Wells. “She’s a good daughter to me, sir.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, but they aren’t like sons.”</p> - -<p>“You have sons, sir, I presume.”</p> - -<p>“Only dream children. I’ve not had your courage to -realize things. I’ve married a hundred times in theory -and here I am just a sort of bachelor uncle to everybody. -Poking in among the younger people and observing their -behaviour with”—his intelligent eyes looked quietly over -his garrulous mouth at Christina Alberta—“terror and -admiration.”</p> - -<p>Two other visitors appeared in the doorway and Mr. -Lambone turned from Mr. Preemby to greet them as soon -as Fay had done her welcome, a fierce-looking young man -with an immense head of black hair and a little lady like -a china doll dressed to remind one of Watteau.</p> - -<p>Conversation became general and Mr. Preemby receded -into the background of events.</p> - -<p>He found himself side by side with his friend with the -silver hair, against his bookcase. “I didn’t expect a party,” -he said.</p> - -<p>“I thought so too.”</p> - -<p>“I only got here this afternoon. The vans came late -and lots of my things are still to be unpacked.”</p> - -<p>The silver-haired man nodded sympathetically. “Often -the case,” he murmured.</p> - -<p>Every one was talking loudly. It was difficult to hear. -It was confused sort of talking, and whenever two or three -seemed to be interested in what they were saying, Fay -Crumb went and interrupted them as a good hostess -should. Other people, only vaguely apprehended by Mr. -Preemby, got into the studio somehow. There was a red-haired -young lady with a tremendous decolletage; behind<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span> -you could see almost to her waist. He h’rrmp’d at it and -thought of saying something about it, something cold and -quiet, to the silver-haired man. But he didn’t. He couldn’t -think of anything sufficiently cold and quiet to say.</p> - -<p>Fay Crumb came and asked whether he would like some -whisky or beer. “Not on the top of that nice Chianti, -thank you,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>The conversation seemed to get noisier and noisier. In -one corner Harold Crumb could be heard quoting the poems -of Vachel Lindsay. Then Mr. Lambone came up and -seemed to want to talk about the Lost Atlantis, but Mr. -Preemby was shy of talking about the Lost Atlantis -with Mr. Lambone. “Getting on all right, Daddy?” said -Christina Alberta, drifting by and not waiting for any -answer but an “h’rrmp.”</p> - -<p>There appeared three young people with a gramophone -they explained they had just bought, and Fay discovered -that the beer had been forgotten and sent Harold out to -borrow some from a neighbour. These new-comers made -no very profound impression on Mr. Preemby’s now jaded -mind, except that one of them, the owner of the gramophone, -a very fair young man with a long, intelligent nose, -was wearing the big horn of the gramophone as a headdress, -and that he meant to have that gramophone going -whatever else might occur.</p> - -<p>The music was dance-music, jazz for the most part and -a few waltzes, and it revived Mr. Preemby considerably. -He sat up and beat time with the leg-bones of a roc, and -presently two or three couples were dancing on the studio -floor. Curious dancing, Mr. Preemby thought; almost -like walking—jiggety walking with sudden terrific back-swipes -of the legs. There was an interruption when -Harold returned with the borrowed beer—bringing its -lenders with it. Then there was a general clamour for -Christina Alberta and Teddy to “do” their dance. Teddy -was quite willing but Christina Alberta seemed reluctant,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span> -and when Mr. Preemby saw the dance he was not surprised.</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” he said, and stroked his moustache and looked -at the silver-haired man.</p> - -<p>It really was too familiar altogether; for some moments -the principals vanished upstairs, and came back altered. -For some reason Teddy had adopted a cloth cap and a -red neck-wrap; he was, in fact, being an Apache, and the -bearing of Christina Alberta had become very proud and -spirited with her arms akimbo.</p> - -<p>Every one backed against the walls to clear a dancing -floor. At the beginning it wasn’t so bad. But presently -this Mr. Teddy was pitching Christina Alberta about, -throwing her over his shoulder, taking hold of her, bending -her backward, holding her almost upside down, both -legs in the air and her hands dragging on the ground. -And she was red and excited and seemed to like these -violent familiarities. There was a kind of undesirable -suitability between them for such purposes. She and Teddy -looked into each other’s eyes with a sort of intimacy and -yet with a sort of fierce defiance. At one point in the -extraordinary dance she had to smack his face, a good hard -smack, nicely timed. She did it with a spirit that made -every one applaud. Whereupon he smiled and took her -nice little neck in his hands and strangled her with great -realism.</p> - -<p>Then the gramophone had its death rattle and the dance -was over.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby’s throat had not troubled him much since -dinner, but now he said “h’rrmp” repeatedly.</p> - -<p>They wanted Christina Alberta, bright and panting and -shock-headed, to repeat the performance, but she wouldn’t. -She had had a glimpse of the solemn dismay and perplexity -upon her Daddy’s face.</p> - -<p>The people from the studio next door were the next to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span> -give a display: they obliged with an imitation of a Russian -imitation of a peasant dance from Saratoff. There was a -gramophone record that was not quite the proper music, -but it would do. That dance really amused Mr. Preemby. -The young man went down quite close to the floor and -kicked out his feet with the greatest agility and the girl -was as wooden as a doll. Every one clapped hands in time -to the music, and so did Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>And then came a further irruption. Five people in fancy -dress demanding beer. They impressed Mr. Preemby as -strange and bright-coloured, but totally uninteresting. -One wore a red coxcomb and was dressed as a jester in -cap and bells. The others just wore tights and bright things -that signified nothing at all. They had been at some party -given by somebody or other for the “Young people.” They -announced with shouts, “They shut down at midnight. Yes, -they shut down at midnight. When the young people go -to bed.”</p> - -<p>It was only too manifest that No. 8 Lonsdale Mews -meant to do nothing of the sort.</p> - -<p>Beer. Mr. Preemby declined. The last of the beer. -Cigarettes. Much smoke. The last of the whisky. More -gramophone, more dancing and Harold Crumb’s voice loose -again in recitation. Beer or whisky had thickened it. -But there were countervailing noises. Movement. A circle -was cleared. Not more dancing! No. Feats of strength -and dexterity with chairs, performed chiefly by Teddy -Winterton, the gramophone owner, and Harold. This -stunting stopped presently and the company flowed back -towards the middle of the room. Talk Mr. Preemby could -not follow; phrases he could not understand. Nobody -taking the slightest notice of him.</p> - -<p>A sense of weariness and futility and desolation came -upon him. How differently were the evenings of the past -spent by the good wise people of the lost Atlantis! Philosophical<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span> -discourse they had, the lute, the lyre. Elevated -thoughts.</p> - -<p>He caught sight of Mrs. Crumb yawning furtively. -Suddenly, stupendously he yawned. And yawned again.</p> - -<p>“Yaaw,” he said to Paul Lambone who was at his side.</p> - -<p>“Proyawaw—Prolly thiswe sitting on my beawawd.”</p> - -<p>“You live here?” said Mr. Lambone.</p> - -<p>“Come to-day. Christina Albyawawawter arranged it.”</p> - -<p>“The devil she did!” said Mr. Lambone, and looked -across the studio at her. For some moments he seemed -lost in thought.</p> - -<p>“Very remarkable young woman that daughter of yours,” -he said. “Makes me feel old-fashioned.”</p> - -<p>He looked at the wrist-watch he wore, “Half-past one,” -he said. “I’ll start the Go....”</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>Mr. Preemby heard a few sentences of the parting -between Teddy Winterton and Christina Alberta. “Yes -or no?” said Teddy.</p> - -<p>“<i>No</i>,” said Christina Alberta with emphasis.</p> - -<p>“Not a bit of it,” said Teddy.</p> - -<p>“I don’t want to,” she said.</p> - -<p>“But you <i>do</i>.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, go to the devil!”</p> - -<p>“Not as if there were risks.”</p> - -<p>“I shan’t come. It’s preposterous.”</p> - -<p>“I shall wait all the same.”</p> - -<p>“You may wait.”</p> - -<p>“Little Chrissy Hesitation. Anything to please you.”</p> - -<h4>§ 8</h4> - -<p>It took until past two o’clock for the Go Paul Lambone -had started to remove the last of the company.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>“All hands to the bedmaking,” cried Fay. “It isn’t always -like this, Mr. Preemby.”</p> - -<p>“Confess I feel tired,” said Mr. Preemby. “Had a long -day of it.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta regarded him with belated compunction. -“It just happened like this,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Not used to such late hours,” said Mr. Preemby, sitting -on his bed when at last it was made, and he did a yawn -that almost dislocated his jaw.</p> - -<p>“Night,” said Fay, yawning also.</p> - -<p>“We’ll turn in,” said Harold. “So long, Mr. Preemby.” -The yawning seized upon Harold also. What a face he -had!</p> - -<p>“Goo-i.”</p> - -<p>“Gawooi-i.”</p> - -<p>The door closed upon them.</p> - -<p>There was much to say to Christina Alberta, but it was -too late and Mr. Preemby was too weary to say it now -And also he had no idea what it was he ought to say.</p> - -<p>A casual remark fell out, “I liked that man with the -white hair,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Did you?” said Christina Alberta absently.</p> - -<p>“He was intelligent. He took a great interest in the Lost -Atlantis.”</p> - -<p>“He’s stone deaf,” said Christina Alberta, “and he’s -ashamed of it—poor dear.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“All this is going to be rather noisy for you, Daddy,” -she said, coming to what she had in mind.</p> - -<p>“It <i>is</i> a bit ramshackle,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“We ought to go to Tunbridge Wells quite soon and look -round there.”</p> - -<p>“To-morrow,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“Not to-morrow.”</p> - -<p>“Why not?”</p> - -<p>“The next day,” said Christina Alberta. “I’m not quite<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span> -sure about to-morrow. I’d sort of half promised to go -somewhere else—. But it doesn’t matter very much -really.”</p> - -<p>“I’d like to go to Tumbridge Wells to-morrow,” said Mr. -Preemby.</p> - -<p>“Why not?” said Christina Alberta as if to herself, and -hesitated.</p> - -<p>Se walked to the door and came back. “Good night, -little Daddy,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Are we going then? To-morrow?”</p> - -<p>“No.... Yes.... I don’t know. I <i>had</i> planned to do -something to-morrow. Important in a kind of way.... -We’ll go to-morrow, Daddy.”</p> - -<p>She walked away from him with her arms akimbo and -stared at those queer pictures.</p> - -<p>She spun round on her feet. “I can’t go to-morrow,” she -said.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I will,” she contradicted.</p> - -<p>“Oh, hell!” she cried, in a most unaccountable and -unladylike way. “I don’t know what to <i>do</i>!”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby looked at her with grave and weary eyes. -This was a new Christina Alberta to him. She ought not -to swear. She did <i>not</i> ought to swear. She’d caught it -up from these people. She didn’t know what it meant. -He must talk to her—to-morrow. About that and one or -two other things. But Heavens! how tired he was!</p> - -<p>“You—” He yawned. “You must take care of yourself, -Christina Alberta,” he said.</p> - -<p>“I’ll do that all right, Daddy. Trust me.”</p> - -<p>She came and sat down beside him on his little half-fictitious -bed. “We can’t decide to-night, Daddy. We’re -too tired. We’ll settle to-morrow. Have to see what the -weather’s like for one thing. Wouldn’t do to walk about -Tunbridge if it was wet. We’ll decide about everything -to-morrow—when our heads are cool. Why! you dear -little Daddy! It’s just upon half-past two.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span>She put her arm round his shoulders and kissed him on -the top of his head and the lobe of his ear. He loved her -to touch him and kiss him. He did not understand in the -least how much he loved her to kiss him.</p> - -<p>“Dear <i>tired</i> little Daddy,” she said in her softest voice: -“You are ever so kind to me. Good night.”</p> - -<p>She had gone.</p> - -<p>For some time Mr. Preemby sat quite motionless in a -state of almost immobile thought.</p> - -<p>The floor of the studio was littered with burnt matches -and cigarette ends and the air smelt of stale smoke and -beer. On the blue-painted table stood an empty beer-bottle -and two or three glasses containing dregs of beer -and cigarette ash.</p> - -<p>It was all very different from Woodford Wells,—very -different indeed.</p> - -<p>But it was Experience.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby bestirred himself to undress.</p> - -<p>That night-shirt of Saxony flannel had still to be -unpacked.</p> - -<h4>§ 9</h4> - -<p>In the morning Christina Alberta was still restless and -quite undecided about going to Tunbridge Wells, though -the weather was perfectly fine. About half-past eleven -she disappeared, and after a light lunch with Fay—Harold -was out also—it became evident to Mr. Preemby that the -visit to Tunbridge Wells was postponed for the day. So -he went to South Kensington to look at the Museums -there. He did not go into them actually, he just looked -at them and at the colleges and buildings generally. It -was a preliminary reconnaissance.</p> - -<p>The Museums were quite good to look at. Larger, more -extensive, than the British Museum. Probably they contained—all -sorts of things.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta reappeared in the studio about half-past<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span> -six looking very bright and exalted. There was -something about her subtly triumphant.</p> - -<p>She offered no explanation of her disappearance. She -was full of the visit to Tunbridge on the morrow. They -must catch a train soon after nine and have a good long -day. She was unusually affectionate to her Daddy.</p> - -<p>Harold was out for the evening and Fay had some -reviewing to do, so they had quite a quiet and domestic -evening. Mr. Preemby read with a varying attention a -nice deep confusing book he had found in the room -upstairs called <i>Fantasia of the Unconscious</i> about the Lost -Atlantis and similar things.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE FOURTH<br> - -<i>The Petunia Boarding House</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">M<small>OST</small> places in the world have sister cities and twins -and parallels, but Tunbridge Wells is Tunbridge -Wells, and there is nothing really like it upon our planet. -Not that it is in any way strange or fantastic, but because -of its brightly delicate distinction. It is clean and open, -and just pleasantly absurd. It is not more than thirty miles -from London, as the crow flies, but the North Downs six -miles away dismiss with a serene and gracious gesture all -thoughts of London from the mind. It is away from the -main line out of London, inconvenient for season-ticket -holders; there is no direct route for the hurrying motorist -over those saving Downs; to Dover and Kent generally he -goes to the east of it, and to Brighton he goes to the west—if -he survive the hills of Westerham and Sevenoaks. -Rich men’s estates encircle it with accessible parks. Eridge, -Bayham, Penshurst Park, Knole and the like protect it -from overmuch breeding of little villa residences. There -it lies, on a rare piece of rocky soil, dry underfoot, airy -and wholesome, with its friendly Common in the midst of -it; its Spa of evil-tasting beneficent waters as the Stuart -princesses drank them, its Pantiles and its Pump Room, -much as Dr. Johnson knew the place. Mount Sion and -Mount Ephraim, Beulah Road and something evangelical -in the air, remind the light-minded visitor that London in -the past was a Puritan city. Many a serious liver has been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span> -touched and found grace at Tunbridge Wells. Many a -light liver has found fresh strength there. And thither -came Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta seeking a boarding -house—and they could have sought it in no more -favourable locality.</p> - -<p>They set about the search in a systematic way as became -a couple, one of whom had been partially trained for sociological -research at the London School of Economics and -partially trained for business at the Tomlinson School. -Mr. Preemby had been for beginning with a general look-round, -just walking round and looking quietly at things for -a bit, but Christina Alberta consulted all the agents in -order, and bought a map and guide to the town and sat -down on a seat on the Common and planned the operations -that led quite readily and easily to the Petunia Boarding -House.</p> - -<p>In the guide Mr. Preemby read with approval some very -promising words. “Listen to this, my dear,” he said. -“H’rrmp. ‘General Characteristics. Emphasis might very -well be laid on the character enjoyed by Tunbridge Wells -as a magnet for high-class residents and visitors. The -town is never overrun with trippers, nor are its streets ever -defiled by the vulgar or the inane. Its inhabitants are -composed, for the most part, of well-to-do people who -naturally create a social atmosphere tinged by culture and -refinement.’”</p> - -<p>“<i>Tinged</i> is a jolly good word for it, I expect,” said -Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“I think my instinct has guided me aright to this place,” -said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>The Petunia Boarding House looks obliquely upon the -Common from where Petunia Road runs into the quaint -and pleasant High Street. It has not the towering magnificence -of the Wellington, the Royal Mount Ephraim, the -Marlborough, or their fellows, which face the sun so -bravely from the hill-crest above the Common, but it is a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span> -house of dignified comfort. The steps, the portico, the -ample hall, the name in letters of gold on black, made -Mr. Preemby say h’rrmp several times. An excessively -chubby maid in a very, very tight black dress and a cap and -apron, came and looked at Mr. and Miss Preemby with a -distraught evasive expression, answered some preliminary -questions incoherently, and said she would call Miss Emily -Rewster—Miss Margaret was out. Thereupon Miss Emily -Rewster, who had been hovering attentively behind a bead -curtain, thrust it aside and came ingratiatingly into the -foreground. She was a little high-coloured old lady, with -an air of genteel <i>savoir-faire</i>; she had a lace cap and wore -a great deal of lace and several flounces, and she had the -most frankly dyed chestnut hair that Christina Alberta -had ever seen. “Was it just for a week or so Mr. Preemby -wanted to come, or something—perheps—more permanent?”</p> - -<p>Explanations were exchanged. Mr. Preemby was to be -“more permanent”; Christina Alberta intermittent—and -rather a difficulty. The existence of headquarters in -Chelsea was revealed discreetly, but not the fact that they -were in a Mews.</p> - -<p>Miss Emily Rewster thought Christina Alberta could -be fitted in if she wasn’t too particular about having the -same room, or exactly the same sort of room every time she -came. “We have to menage,” said Miss Emily Rewster.</p> - -<p>“So long as the window opens,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>The rooms exhibited were very satisfactory, (h’rrmp) -very satisfactory. A glimpse of a bathroom was given. -“You say when you want one,” said Miss Emily Rewster. -There was a dining-room with separate tables, and there -were flowers on every table, very refined and pleasant, and -there was a large drawing-room with a piano and a great -number of arm-chairs and sofas wearing flounces so like -the flounces of Miss Emily Rewster, and antimacassars so -like her cap, and with so entirely her air of accommodating<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span> -receptiveness that it seemed as though they must be at -least her cousins who had joined her in the enterprise. -The piano wore a sort of lace bed-spread, and there were -polished tables bearing majolica pots of aspidistra on mats -and little less serious tables for use, and there was a low -bookcase with books in it and a great heap of illustrated -papers on the top. The hall expanded at the back into a -rather modernish lounge where two ladies were having tea; -and there was also a smoking-room, where, said Miss Emily -Rewster to Christina Alberta rather coyly, “the gentlemen -smoke.”</p> - -<p>“We’ve been very full this season,” said Miss Emily -Rewster, “very full. We’ve had nearly thirty sitting at -dinner. But of course the season is drawing in now. Just -at present we’re down to nine at breakfast and seven at -dinner; two gentlemen in business here. But people come -and people go. I’ve had two inquiries by post to-day. -One an invalid lady and her sister. They think of drinking -the waters. And there are Birds of Passage as well as -Regulars. Just for a night or so. Motor families. They -take us <i>en route</i>. That’s where we have an advantage in -being so close to the shops.”</p> - -<p>She beamed intimately at Mr. Preemby. “Often my -sister or I pop out at the last moment and get in things -ourselves. When every one else is busy. We don’t mind -any little trouble if it makes people comfortable.”</p> - -<p>“We’ve been on the separate table system ever since the -war,” said Miss Emily Rewster. “So much more pleasant. -You can keep yourself Quate to yourself if you wish, or -you can be Friendly. People often Speak in the Drawing-room -or in the Smoking-room. And they bow. Sometimes -people get Quate friendly. Play Games. Get up -Excursions together. Quate Pleasant.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta asked an obvious question.</p> - -<p>“Very pleasant people indeed,” said Miss Emily. “Very -pleasant people. A retired gentleman and his wife and her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span> -stepdaughter and two retired maiden ladies and a gentleman -and his lady who has been in a forest in Burmah and -so on.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta restrained a ribald impulse to ask what -a “retired gentleman” or a “retired maiden lady” really -meant.</p> - -<p>“I’ve always been attracted to Tumbridge Wells,” said -Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“<i>Royal</i> Tunbridge Wells <i>if</i> you please,” said Miss Emily -radiantly. “The ‘Royal’ was added in nineteen nine, you -know, by gracious command of his Majesty.”</p> - -<p>“I didn’t know,” said Mr. Preemby with profound -respect, and tried it over; “<i>Royal</i> Tumbridge Wells.”</p> - -<p>“Makes it rather a mouthful,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“A very pleasant mouthful for Us, I can assure you,” -said Miss Emily loyally.</p> - -<p>The Petunia Boarding House seemed so satisfactory to -Mr. Preemby that it was arranged that he should return -the next day but one, bringing with him some clothes and -other luggage, and that Christina Alberta was to come and -stay with him for a few days—there was a little room -upstairs she could have—and then she would go back to -London and her studies and take her chance of coming -again when there was a room for her.</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>In the train back to London Mr. Preemby rehearsed -these arrangements and made his plans.</p> - -<p>“I shall come down here the day after to-morrow, after I -have put my collections in order at the Mew. I shall put -the best things so that they can be seen through the glass -of the cabinet, but I think I shall lock them up, and I shall -bring down a few necessary books, and then when I have -quite settled in I shall go and have a good look at these -celebrated Rocks here.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>“We could come down in the morning,” said Christina -Alberta, “and go and look at them in the afternoon.”</p> - -<p>“Not the same afternoon,” said Mr. Preemby. “No. I -want my mind to be quite fresh and open when I look at -the Rocks. I think it will be best to see them quite early—after -a night’s sleep. When there are no other visitors. I -think—I think, Christina Alberta, that for the first time I’d -better go to them quite alone. Without you. Sometimes -you say things, Christina Alberta—you don’t mean to say -them of course—but they put me out....”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta reflected. “What do you expect to -find at these Rocks, Daddy?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby waved his moustache and the rest of his -face slowly from side to side. “I go with an Open Mind,” -he said. “Perhaps all of Atlantis was not lost. Some of it -may be hidden. There are legends preserved by the philosopher -Plato. Partly in cipher. Who knows? It may be -here. It may be in Africa. A plan. A sign. The toad rock -must be most singular. In the British Museum there is a -toad rock from Central America....”</p> - -<p>He mused pleasantly for a time.</p> - -<p>“I shall take a note-book,” he said, “and several coloured -pencils.”</p> - -<p>He continued to meditate. His next remark came after -an interval of three or four minutes, and was a surprise for -Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“I hope, my dear,” said Mr. Preemby, “that among all -these artists and people you are not getting Ram -Shackle.</p> - -<p>“I should be sorry to think you were getting Ram -Shackle,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“But Daddy, what makes you think I may be getting—Ram -Shackle?” asked Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“One or two little things I saw at the Mew,” said Mr. -Preemby. “Just one or two little things. You’ve got to -be careful, Christina Alberta. A girl has to take care of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span> -herself. And your friends—decidedly Ram Shackle. Don’t -mind my making a remark about them, Christina Alberta. -Just a word in season.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta’s answer came after a little interval, -and without her usual confident ring. “Don’t you worry -about me, Daddy,” she said. “I’m all right.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby seemed about to change the subject. Then -he remarked, “I don’t like that feller, Teddy Winterton. -He’s too familiar.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t like him either,” said Christina Alberta. “He <i>is</i> -too familiar.”</p> - -<p>“That’s all right,” said Mr. Preemby. “I thought you -didn’t notice,” and relapsed into meditation.</p> - -<p>But this sudden and unprecedented intervention in her -personal affairs made Christian Alberta thoughtful for all -the rest of the way to London. Ever and again she glanced -furtively at her Daddy.</p> - -<p>He seemed to have forgotten her.</p> - -<p>But it was dreadfully true. Teddy Winterton had become—altogether—too -familiar.</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>In all ages competent observers have noted the erratic -unexpectedness of destiny, and now Christina Alberta was -to add her own small experience to this ever accumulating -testimony. It seemed to her that in planting him out in the -wholesome quiet of Royal Tunbridge Wells she was securing -for her Daddy the very best possible conditions for -a happy and harmless life. There had, indeed, been a -notable change in the little man since her mother’s death, a -release of will, a new freedom of expression, a disposition -to comment and even form judgments upon things about -him. She had herself likened it to the germination of a -seed brought out of a suppressing aridity into moisture -and the light, but she had not followed up that comparison<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span> -so far as to speculate what efflorescences might arise out of -this belated unfolding of his initiatives. That here, of all -places, he would meet just the stimulus that was needed -for the most fantastic expansions of his imaginative life, -that for him Tunbridge Wells should prove the way out of -this everyday world of ours into what was to be for him -an altogether more wonderful and satisfactory existence, -never entered her head.</p> - -<p>For three days, until a fretting urgency for events carried -her back to London, she stayed in the Petunia Boarding -House, and for all those three days there was no intimation -of the great change in his mind that impended. On the -whole he seemed unusually dull and quiet during those -three days. He liked Tunbridge Wells very much, he said, -but he was greatly disappointed by the High Rocks and by -the Toad Rock when he came to examine them. He even -doubted whether they were not “simply natural.” This was -a terrible concession. He tried hard to believe that the -Toad Rock was like one of the big Maya carvings of a toad -from Yucatan, a cast of which he had seen in the British -Museum, but it was evident that with all the will possible -he could not manage so great an act of faith. All the -decoration, he declared, all the inscription had been obliterated, -and then, making the great blonde moustache bristle -like a clothes-brush: “There never were any decorations -or inscriptions. Never.”</p> - -<p>It was clear to Christina Alberta that he must have -evolved very extraordinary expectations, indeed, to be so -much cast down. She found herself very interested in the -riddle of what was fermenting in his mind. It seemed to -her as if he had regarded Tunbridge Wells as a sort of -Poste Restante at which some letter of supreme importance -had awaited him. And there was no letter.</p> - -<p>“But what did you expect, little Daddy?” said Christina -Alberta, when on the afternoon of the first day he took her -to the Toad Rock to see for herself how ordinary and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span> -insignificant a rock it was. “Did you expect some wonderful -carvings?”</p> - -<p>“I expected—something for me. Something significant.”</p> - -<p>“For you?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, for me. And every one. About Life and the Mysteries. -I had grown a sort of feeling there would be something -there. <i>Now</i>—I don’t know where to turn.”</p> - -<p>“But what sort of thing, what significance did you -expect?”</p> - -<p>“Isn’t Life a Riddle, Christina Alberta? Haven’t you -noticed that? Do you think it is just nothing but studios -and dances and excursions and char-à-bancs and meal-times -and harvest?” he said. “Obviously there is something -more in it than that. Obviously. All that is just a Veil. -Outward Showing. H’rrmp. And I don’t know what is -behind it, and I am just a plain boarder—in a boarding -house—and my life is passing away. Very difficult. -H’rrmp. Almost impossible. It worries me exceedingly. -Somewhere there must be a clue.”</p> - -<p>“But that’s how we <i>all</i> feel, Daddy,” cried Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Things can’t be what they seem,” said Mr. Preemby, -waving his hand with a gesture of contemptuous dismissal -towards Rusthall Village, public house, lamp-posts, a -policeman, a dog, a grocer’s delivery van and three passing -automobiles. “That at any rate is obvious. It would be -too absurd. Infinite space; stars and so forth. Just for -running about in—between meals....”</p> - -<p>Now who would have thought, Christina Alberta reflected, -that this sort of thing was going on in his head? -Who would have thought it?</p> - -<p>“Either I am a Reincarnation,” said Mr. Preemby, “or I -am not. And if I am not, then I want to know what all -this business of the world is about. Symbolical it <i>must</i> be, -Christina Alberta. But of what?</p> - -<p>“All those years at the Laundry I knew that that life<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span> -wasn’t real. A period of rest and preparation. Your dear -mother thought differently—we never discussed it, h’rrmp, -but it was so.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta could find no adequate comment and -they went on in silence for some time. When they spoke -again it was to discuss how they could get round to the -High Rocks Hotel for tea.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>Mr. Preemby was evidently depressed and more than a -little aggrieved, but he had none of the comprehensive -despondency of your melancholic type. Concurrently he -was quite actively interested in the boarding house, and -the fellow boarders he encountered there. It was a novel -experience for him to be in a boarding house. During his -married life he had always spent his holidays with Mrs. -Preemby in seaside apartments, so that she could supervise -the provisioning properly, and detect, expose and -rectify errors and extortion. They had taken drives inland -during these vacations, or camped on the beach while -Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta had made sandcastles -or pottered among rocks, and Mrs. Preemby had sat -in a folding-chair and pined for the Laundry. If the -weather was bad they kept in their apartments, where -Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta could read books -while Mrs. Preemby could pine for the Laundry almost as -well as she could on the beach. But deep in Mr. Preemby’s -heart there had always been a craving for such a collective, -promiscuous life as a boarding house affords.</p> - -<p>They had made the acquaintance of the second Miss -Rewster, Miss Margaret Rewster, on their arrival with the -luggage. She was a taller, more anxious and less richly -belaced variation of her sister. They both, Mr. Preemby -discovered, had a peculiar hovering quality. They seemed -always hovering behind bead curtains or down passages,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span> -or looking over from staircase landings or peeping round -doors; poor dears! they were dreadfully anxious not to -interfere with their guests, but they were equally anxious -that everything should be all right. At meal-times they -operated with the joints and dishes behind a screen, and -the chubby maid carried round the plates and vegetables. -And whenever Mr. Preemby looked at the screen he found -either Miss Margaret Rewster peeping over the top of it at -him or Miss Emily Rewster peeping round the end. It -made him quite nervous with his forks and spoons. When -he dropped his serviette he hoped that would pass unobserved, -but Miss Emily noted it at once and sent the -chubby maid to pick it up for him.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta came down to dinner -as soon as Miss Margaret had sounded the second gong, -and so they were the first to be seated and could survey -their fellow-guests at an advantage. Christina Alberta was -quietly observant, but Mr. Preemby said “h’rrmp” at each -fresh arrival. The next to appear were two Birds of Passage, -a young man in Hudibrastic golfing knickerbockers, -and a lady, presumably his wife, in a bright yellow sporting -jumper, who were motoring about Kent; they made -strenuous attempts to seize a table in the window which -was already reserved for Petunia Regulars and were subdued -with difficulty, but perfect dignity, by Miss Emily. -They then consulted loudly about wine—the young man -called the lady “Old Thing,” and “Old Top,” forms of -expression new and interesting to Mr. Preemby, and she -called him “Badger”—and the chubby maid produced a -card of wines that could be sent out for. The young man -read out the names and prices of wines and made his selection -almost as though he were a curate officiating in a very -large cathedral. His wife, to follow out that comparison, -made the responses. “Chablis such as we should get here -might be too sweet,” he proclaimed.</p> - -<p>“It might be too sweet?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span>“What of a Pommard, Old Top?”</p> - -<p>“Why <i>not</i> a Pommard, Badger?”</p> - -<p>“The Beaune is a shilling cheaper and just as likely to be -good—or bad.”</p> - -<p>“Just as likely.”</p> - -<p>The chubby maid flew out of the room, list in hand, with -her thumb on the wine he had chosen.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile under cover of this hubbub the two ladies -Mr. Preemby had seen at tea in the lounge on the occasion -of his first visit, percolated unobtrusively to a table near -the window. They were obviously sisters, both rather -slender and tall with small, round, bright-coloured faces -on stalk-like necks; they had sharp little noses, and one -of them wore tortoiseshell spectacles. A gentleman with -a white moustache, larger and nobler even than Mr. -Preemby’s, accompanied by a small alert-looking wife, was -the next to appear. Possibly this was the gentleman who -had been in a forest in Burmah. The small alert-looking -wife bowed to the slender ladies, who became agitated like -reeds in a wind. The gentleman took no notice of them, -grunted as he sat down, produced glasses and read the menu.</p> - -<p>“Tomato soup <i>again</i>!” he said.</p> - -<p>“It’s usually very nice tomato soup,” said his wife.</p> - -<p>“But Three Times Running!” he said. “It favours -acidity. I don’t <i>like</i> tomato soup.”</p> - -<p>The table in the bow window was occupied by three -people who drifted in separately. First came a little, thin, -dark lady in grey, carrying a bead work-bag, then a little -dark, bald man with large side-whiskers whom she addressed -as father, and then a plump, healthy-looking wife with a -radiant manner who swept in and distributed greetings.</p> - -<p>“Did you get your walk, Major Bone?” she said to the -gentleman from the Burmese forest.</p> - -<p>“Just to Rusthall Common and back,” said Major Bone, -speaking thickly through his moustache and soup. “Just -to Rusthall Common.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span>“And you got a char-à-banc to Crohamhurst, Miss -Solbé?” The two sisters answered in unison. “Oh! we -had a <i>lovely</i> ride.”</p> - -<p>“So picturesque,” said the one with spectacles.</p> - -<p>“So open and pleasant,” said the one without spectacles.</p> - -<p>“Did you see the sea?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, plainly!” said the one with spectacles.</p> - -<p>“Ever so far away,” said the one without.</p> - -<p>“Just as if the sky had a steel edge,” said the one with -spectacles.</p> - -<p>“Exactly like a leetle silver line,” said the one without.</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>Small portions of fish followed the tomato soup, and -were consumed in comparative silence. There was a little -burst of scarcely audible conversation at the window table.</p> - -<p>“Now is <i>this</i> the same fish as we had yesterday?” asked -the wife.</p> - -<p>“It is a very similar fish,” said the gentleman with -whiskers.</p> - -<p>“The menu simply says, ‘Fish,’” said the stepdaughter.</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“I think our back tyres were too tight to-day, Old Top,” -said the man in plus fours, in a very loud, clear voice. “I -felt the road dreadfully.”</p> - -<p>“I felt the road dreadfully,” said the lady in the yellow -jumper.</p> - -<p>“I must let them down a little to-morrow morning.”</p> - -<p>“It would be better.”</p> - -<p>“To-morrow morning will do. I won’t trouble to-night.”</p> - -<p>“Much better to-morrow morning, Badger. You’re tired -to-night after all that bumping. You’d make your hands -dirty.”</p> - -<p>Silence and active business with knives and forks.</p> - -<p>“Porruck hasn’t written about that,” said the Major from -the forest.</p> - -<p>“Very likely he’s busy,” said his wife.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span>Silence.</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta searched her mind for some conversational -opening that would give her father a reasonable -opportunity to make an acceptable reply, but she could -think of nothing that was neither too disconcerting nor too -dangerous. She met his eye and he had the expression of -one who holds out against a strain.</p> - -<p>Fish gave place to lamb.</p> - -<p>“I thought that road from Sittingbourne was just awful,” -said the motoring gentleman.</p> - -<p>“It was <i>just</i> awful,” responded his wife.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta saw her father’s face working. He was -going to say something. “H’rrmp. To-morrow, if it is fine, -I think we will go for a walk in the morning.”</p> - -<p>The knives and forks were hushed. Everybody was -listening.</p> - -<p>“I’d love a walk to-morrow, Daddy,” said Christina -Alberta. “I should think there were some jolly walks about -this place.”</p> - -<p>“Exactly,” said Mr. Preemby. “Very probably. The -Guide Book is very reassuring. H’rrmp.”</p> - -<p>He had the dignified expression of a man who has carried -off a difficult duty.</p> - -<p>Resumption of activity with knives and forks.</p> - -<p>“Hard to tell this lamb from mutton,” said Major Bone, -“if it wasn’t for the mint sauce.”</p> - -<p>“Peas are never so nice as they are from your own -garden,” said the wife of the whiskered gentleman to her -stepdaughter.</p> - -<p>“It’s late for peas,” said the stepdaughter.</p> - -<p>The two Miss Solbés and the motoring gentleman began -talking at the same time. Mrs. Bone expressed the idea -that it was hard to get good lamb nowadays. Taking -courage from this sudden swirl of conversation Mr. -Preemby was emboldened to remark to Christina Alberta<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span> -that he had always been attracted to Tumbridge Wells. -He felt the air was a strong air. It gave him an appetite.</p> - -<p>“You must be careful not to get fat,” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>The outburst of active human exchanges came to an end. -Baked apple and custard were consumed in comparative -silence. The chubby maid came to ask Mr. Preemby -whether he would like his coffee in the lounge or the -smoking-room. “The lounge I think,” said Mr. Preemby. -“H’rrmp. The lounge.”</p> - -<p>The Misses Solbé, bearing glasses containing sugar and -lemon juice, flitted from the room. The people from the -window table followed. The function of dinner was completed. -They found themselves alone in the lounge. Most -of the people seemed to have drifted into the sitting-room. -The gentleman from the forests of Burmah went by towards -the smoking-room, carrying a large cigar which had an -air of also coming from the forests of Burmah. It did -not look like a cigar that had been rolled or filled; it -looked like a cigar of old gnarled wood that had been -hewn from a branching tree. A straw came out of the -end of it....</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta stood and contemplated a vast void of -time, two hours it might be, before she could decently go -to bed. “Oh! this is the Life!” she said.</p> - -<p>“Extremely comfortable,” said Mr. Preemby, sitting down -with much creaking in a basket arm-chair.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta sat on a glass-topped table and lit a -cigarette. She saw those two hours stretching before her, -and she wanted to scream.</p> - -<p>The chubby maid brought coffee and seemed gently surprised -at Christina Alberta’s cigarette. Whisperings off -stage. Then Miss Emily became dimly visible through the -bead curtain at the end of the passage, hovering. She -vanished again and Christina Alberta finished her cigarette -in peace. Mr. Preemby drank up his coffee. Pause. Christina<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span> -Alberta swung her legs rhythmically. Then she slid off -the table to her feet.</p> - -<p>“Daddy,” she said, “let’s go into the sitting-room and see -if anything is happening there.”</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>In the Boarding Houses of the past the common dining-table -was the social centre where people met and mind -clashed upon and polished mind. But the spirit of aloofness, -the separate table system, has changed all that, and -now it is in the smoking-room or the sitting-room that the -vestiges of social intercourse, advances, retreats, coquettings, -exchanges, games and jests are to be found. But the -company of the Petunia Boarding House was not in a state -of social fusion. The only coalescence was a conversation. -The wife of the gentleman from the Burmese forests had -secured an arm-chair by the side of the fire-place, and she -was describing in a low whisper the numerous servants she -had had in Burmah, to the cheerful wife and the younger -Miss Solbé who was knitting. The Miss Solbé with the -spectacles had fortified herself behind a table on the other -side of the fire and was engaged meticulously with a very -elaborate Patience. The gentleman with the side-whiskers -sat rigidly on one of the sofas, behind a copy of the <i>Times</i>, -while his daughter sat at a table close at hand and also -threaded her way through a Patience. The Birds of Passage, -after inquiries about movies and music-halls, had -gone out.</p> - -<p>Nobody took the slightest notice of Mr. Preemby and -Christina Alberta. The two stood for some moments in -the middle of the room, and then panic came upon Mr. -Preemby. A dishonourable panic so that he threw his -daughter to these silent, motionless wolves.</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” he said. “I think my dear, I will go to the -smoking-room. I think I will go and smoke. There are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span> -some illustrated papers over there on the bookcase for you -if you care to look at them.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta walked over to the low bookcase and -Mr. Preemby departed, h’rrmping.</p> - -<p>She stood pretending an interest in the illustrated jokes -and in the portraits of actresses and society people in the -<i>Sketch</i> and <i>Tatler</i>. Out of the tail of her eye she surveyed -those fellow-guests of hers, and with a negligent ear she -collected the gist of Mrs. Bone’s dissertation upon the -servant question in Burmah. “They will plant the whole -family upon you if they can—uncles and cousins even. -Before you know where you are....</p> - -<p>“Of course a white woman is a Little Queen out -there....</p> - -<p>“The chief fault of the cooking from my point of view, -was the way it upset Major Bone. His stomach ... far -more delicate than a woman’s.”</p> - -<p>“He looks so stout and strong,” said Miss Solbé.</p> - -<p>“In everything but that. In everything. But the Curries -they used to make——”</p> - -<p>She sank her voice, and the heads of the younger Miss -Solbé and the pleasant mannered lady closed in upon her -for the rich particulars.</p> - -<p>What a Lot they were! Christina Alberta reflected. And -they were living beings! The astonishing thing to Christina -Alberta was that they were alive. And being alive and -having presumably been a cause of considerable trouble, -distress, emotion and hope to various people before they -were got alive, they were now all in the most resolute way -avoiding anything that with the extremest stretch of civility -could be spoken of as living. Their hours, their days were -passing; a few thousand days more perhaps for each of -them, a few score thousand hours. Then there would be -no more chance of living for ever. And instead of filling -up this scanty allowance of hours and days with every -possible sensation and every possible effort and accomplishment,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span> -here they were, gathered into a sort of magic -box of atmosphere in which nothing could possibly be done. -By anyone....</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta felt like a moth caught under a glass. -Well, for a day or so, she had an excuse, little Daddy must -be settled. But then? Nothing could be done here. -Neither joy nor sorrow nor sin nor creative effort—because -even Miss Solbé’s knitting was being knitted to a prescription -on a dirty cutting of printed paper. Everything they -were employed upon was an evasion, everything. Even -the whispered delicate hints of the diuretic, dyspeptic, -infuriating and wildly aphrodisiac effects of Burmah Curry -upon Major Bone in his younger days that were being -handed out by his good lady to her intent hearers, were -just a substitution of second-hand knowledge for realities.</p> - -<p>And this Patience! Would she, Christina Alberta asked -herself, would she ever come to play Patiences in Boarding -Houses? Was it credible that some day she also would -come to sit voluntarily in such an atmosphere?</p> - -<p>“Rather sell matches in a gutter,” whispered Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>What a marvellous thing is Man! What ingenuities he -has! what powers and capabilities! He invents paper and -perfects printing! He develops the most beautiful methods -of colour printing. He makes cardboard like silk and ivory -out of rags and vegetable pulp. And all it would seem, -that human beings, hanging for a little while in life between -the nothingness before death and the nothingness after -death, should fiddle away long hours in a feeble, fuddled -conflict with the permutations of duplicate sets of four -differently coloured thirteens! Cards! The marvel of -cards! All over the world millions of people drawing -nearer to death and nothingness were pursuing the chances -of the four thirteens: bridge, whist, nap, skat, a hundred -forms of it. Directly they could get in out of the wet and -dark, they sat down to that sort of thing, to the cards<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span> -shining under the still lamps, to being endlessly surprised, -delighted, indignant and despondent by chances that anyone -who chose to sit down to it could work out and tabulate -in a week!</p> - -<p>“Getting it out, dear?” said the younger Miss Solbé.</p> - -<p>“The spades are <i>Wicked</i> to-night,” said the Miss Solbé -with the glasses.</p> - -<p>“Mine is going rather well,” said the daughter of the -gentleman with the whiskers.</p> - -<p>“Does your daughter play <i>Miss Milligan</i>?” asked the -younger Solbé sister.</p> - -<p>“<i>Eight-eights</i>,” said the comfortable wife. “<i>Miss Milligan</i> -is too much for her.”</p> - -<p>“Well, it <i>is</i> a Beast you know,” said the stepdaughter. -“You never know where you are with it.”</p> - -<p>“Patience is Patience,” said the elder Miss Solbé. “Nowadays -I often get it out. But not when the spades come as -they’ve done to-night, both twos in the top row, and no -aces till the last round but one.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta thought it was time to change from the -<i>Sketch</i> to the <i>Tatler</i>. She tried to do this with careless ease -and flopped a dozen papers on the floor. “Oh, <i>Damn</i>!” said -Christina Alberta to a great stillness. She struggled to pick -up and replace the disordered sheets. For a time every one -seemed to be regarding her. Then Mrs. Bone took up her -discourse again.</p> - -<p>“And you can’t imagine their obstinacy,” she said. -“They are <i>wilfully</i> ignorant. When you show them, <i>then</i> -they won’t do it. I took my cook-boy in hand for a time—boy -I call him, but he was quite a middle-aged man—and I -said to him, ‘just let me show you some plain English -cookery, a boiled fowl with nice white sauce, a few plain -potatoes and vegetables—quite plain with the natural -flavour left in—the sort of food that builds up these brave -young Englishmen you see.’ Of course I’m not a good cook -myself, but anyhow I knew more of English cooking than<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span> -he did. But we never got further than the plain boiled -fowl. He expressed the most violent disapproval—really -violent I mean—of the whole proceedings. As I took hold -of the things and got to work he began to behave in the -most extraordinary way. He tried <i>not</i> to follow what I was -doing. Tried not to. He said that if he cooked a fowl like -that he would lose caste, lose his position in the local guild -of cooks, be perpetually defiled and outcast. <i>Why</i>, he -would not say. When I persisted he rushed up and down -pulling at his black hair—a black madman, his eyes rolling -frightfully. I could never make out what there was in a -plain boiled fowl to cause such excitement. ‘This in my -kitchen,’ he said. ‘This in <i>my</i> kitchen!’</p> - -<p>“There I stood quietly boiling my fowl while all this -pother went on. He hovered about me. He talked—fortunately -in his own language. I even caught him pretending -to be sick behind my back. Then he came and implored -me to desist—with tears in his great brown eyes. He tried -to say things in English. The Major always says that he -was simply swearing, but I believe the wretched man really -did believe that if he was to boil a fowl in the plain, wholesome, -simple way nice people in England do it daily, he -would be hung in the air, and the great jays of Burmah -would come and peck—ahem!”</p> - -<p>She cast a side glance at Christina Alberta, apparently -lost in the <i>Sketch</i>, and lowered her voice.</p> - -<p>“Peck at his <i>entrails</i>, just his insides you know, for a -Thousand, Thousand Years.”</p> - -<p>Sensation.</p> - -<p>“You never know What Ideas Easterners will get into -their Heads,” said the younger Miss Solbé. “East is East, -and West is West.”</p> - -<p>But now Christina Alberta’s attention was distracted by -another set of phenomena. She had discovered that the -thin, bald gentleman with side-whiskers, rigid behind his -<i>Times</i>, was not really reading that interesting vestige of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span> -British constitution at all. His gaze was not directed to -the edge of his paper, but beyond it. He was staring from -behind that ambush and round the corner of his glasses in -a strange, hard-eyed way, without passion or admiration, -at the upper part of Christina Alberta’s black-stockinged -legs as they delivered their last challenge to human censure -before disappearing beneath her all too exiguous but -extremely comfortable skirt. And also she was realizing -that a furtive but intense scrutiny of her bobbed hair was -disorganizing the Patience of the whiskered gentleman’s -daughter very seriously, and that it was also interfering -with the proper laying out of a second and different sort of -Patience by the elder Miss Solbé. And suddenly, to her -extreme annoyance, Christina Alberta found a flush of -indignation mantling her cheek, and a combative tingle -passing down the backbone of her straight little body. -“Why the devil,” Miss Preemby asked herself, “why the -devil shouldn’t a girl cut her hair to save trouble and -bother, and wear clothes in which she can walk about?” -Anyhow, a mop of well-washed hair was ten times better -than those feeble, aimless interweavings of pigtails and -fringes and scraps and ends. And as for showing one’s legs -and body; why shouldn’t one show one’s legs and body? -It was just a part of the universal evasion of life by these -people that had got most of their bodies hidden away, tied -up in a sort of bundle. Do they ever venture to look at -themselves? Those Solbé girls, once upon a time, they -must have been jolly little girls with an amused interest in -their stalky little legs, before they said Shush! and put -them away.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta’s speculative vein took charge for a -time. What becomes of legs that are put away and never -looked at and encouraged? Do they get etiolated and -queer, dead-white and funny-shaped and afraid of the -light? And after you’ve really packed your body away and -forgotten it, nothing is left of you but a head sticking out<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span> -and hands that wave about and feet with hidden and distorted -toes; and you go about between meal-times and take -trips in chars-à-bancs to see what every one sees and feel -what every one feels, and you play games by rule and -example according to your age and energy, and become -more and more addicted to Patience until you are ready -to cover yourself up in bed for the last time of all and die. -Evasion! And the fuss they had caused getting born! The -fuss, the morality and marriages and everything that was -necessary before these vacuous lives were begotten!</p> - -<p>But it was all evasion, and the life shown in these <i>Tatlers</i> -and <i>Sketches</i> was evasion just as much. Just as much. All -these photographs of the pushful pretty, the actresses for -sale and the daughters who had to be sold, looked at you -with just your own question in their eyes: “Is this the -Life?” The unending photographs of Lady Diana This, and -Lady Marjorie That, and Mr. So-and-So and a Friend of -the Duke of York or the Duchess of Shonts, at dog-shows, -at horse-shows, at race meetings, at royal inaugurations -and the like, were inevitably suggestive of obstinate doubts -that were in need of a perennial reassurance. The photographs -of people playing tennis and suchlike games were -livelier, but there, too, if you care to look at it, were -evasions. Evasions. Evasions.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta turned over the back numbers of the -<i>Sketch</i> without looking at the pictures before her eyes.</p> - -<p>What was this Life she and these people and every one -by games and jokes and meetings and ceremonies and -elaborate disregards and concealments were all evading? -What was this great thing outside, this something like a -huge, terrible, attractive and compelling black monster, -beyond the lights, beyond the movements and appearances, -that called to her and challenged her to come?</p> - -<p>One might evade the call of it by playing Patience and -games perhaps. One might evade it by living by rule or -custom. People seemed to do so. A time might come when<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span> -that call to Christina Alberta to be Christina Alberta to -the uttermost and fulfil her mysterious mission to that -immense being beyond the lights might no longer distress -her life. She had thought that in a certain recklessness and -violence with herself she might fight her way out to the -call. She had made love now. Anyhow, she hadn’t evaded -<i>that</i>. But—was it going to matter as much as she had -thought it would matter? She and her little friends were -playing desperate games with the material of love in a -world where Dr. Marie Stopes and Mr. D. H. Lawrence -were twin stars, and it was just something you went -through—and came out much as you had been before. -More restless, perhaps, but no further on. It left you just -where you had been, face to face with the unsolved darkness -and that mysterious, distressing, unanswerable call to -come out of it all and really live and die.</p> - -<p>She had made love.... Queer it had been....</p> - -<p>These furtive people were watching and watching her, -reading her thoughts, perhaps, penetrating her....</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta shut her copy of the <i>Sketch</i> with -something of a snap, and walked out of the drawing-room -with a serene expression. She shut the door behind her and -went downstairs to find what had happened to her father -in the smoking-room.</p> - -<p>“I’m leaving the best part of the talk behind me,” -reflected Christina Alberta.</p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>She found that her father and the gentleman from the -forests of Burmah, after a very prolonged and brilliant -“h’rrmping” match, had settled down to conversation. But -unhappily the conversation was unsuitable for her.</p> - -<p>“Siam, Cambodia, Tonquin, the country is full of such -temples. They take you there and show you them.”</p> - -<p>“Wonderful,” said Mr. Preemby. “Wonderful. And you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span> -do not think the carvings you speak of—? Some high -symbolism?”</p> - -<p>Both gentlemen became aware of Christina Alberta, -attentive and hovering.</p> - -<p>“Symbolism,” said the arboreal gentleman, “Symbolism,” -and had complicated pharyngeal difficulties. “Heathenish -indecency. Difficult to discuss.... Presence of young -lady.... H’rrmp.”</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby. “Had you come down to -say good night, my dear? We are having a rather—rather -technical talk.”</p> - -<p>“Sounds like it, Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, and -went round and sat on the arm of his chair for a moment.</p> - -<p>“Good night, little Daddy,” she said.</p> - -<p>Reflective moment.</p> - -<p>“I think this Tumbridge is going to suit me,” said Mr. -Preemby.</p> - -<p>“I hope it will, little Daddy. Good night.”</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>Christina Alberta’s first evening at the Petunia Boarding -House has been described with some particularity because -it is a sample of all the still and uneventful evenings that -seemed to lie before Mr. Preemby there. It impressed -her as an unfathomable enormity of uneventfulness in -which nothing harmful or disturbing could conceivably -occur to him. The last remote possibility of imaginative -disturbance seemed to remove itself next day when Mrs. -Bone announced to the whiskered gentleman’s wife that -she and her husband were off to Bath on the morrow: they -were in luck it seemed; they had got the exact rooms for -the winter in the exact boarding house they had always had -their eyes on. “Tunbridge seems so bleak,” she said. -“After Burmah.”</p> - -<p>The dinner was like the previous dinner; the Birds of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span> -Passage had gone and Mr. Preemby astonished himself, -Christina Alberta, the chubby maid and the assembled -company by demanding whether it was possible to send -out (h’rrmp) for a bottle or flask of Chianti. “It’s an -Italian wine,” said Mr. Preemby to inform and help the -chubby maid in her inquiries. But there was no Chianti -on the wine-list supplied, and after a conversation markedly -reminiscent of that of the Birds of Passage overnight, the -Preemby table was stocked with a bottle of Australian -Burgundy and, at Christina Alberta’s request, a bottle of -mineral water.</p> - -<p>After this display of initiative, self-assertion and social -derring-do, Mr. Preemby did little but h’rrmp throughout -the rest of the meal.</p> - -<p>The subsequent life of the drawing-room was also -vacantly similar to the previous evening. Christina Alberta -got her possibly illegal cigarette in the lounge, indeed she -smoked two, and Miss Margaret Rewster looked at her -through the bead curtain near the office and Miss Emily -had a sniff from the landing upstairs, though nothing was -said. And then Mr. Preemby followed Major Bone into -the smoking-room to gather whatever further information -he could about the temple decorations and religious customs -of the peoples of further India. He was inclined to think -Major Bone rather biased by evangelical prejudice. But -Major Bone was not even indignant about Eastern religions -that night. He wanted to talk about Bath, and he talked -about Bath. He told Mr. Preemby in very great detail -about a remarkable occurrence at Bath. He had met a -gentleman named Bone, a gentleman much of his own -age and appearance, a Captain Bone who had also once -been in Burmah. He detailed various extremely dramatic -conversations between himself and the other Bone, occasionally -going back and correcting himself. They had -made the most elaborate comparison of their genealogies, -and it did not appear that they were even remotely related.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span> -“Most curious coincidence that has ever occurred to me,” -said Major Bone. “In Bath. In nineteen-eh-nine.”</p> - -<p>In the drawing-room Patience prevailed and Mrs. Bone -was talking about Bath. The cheerful wife of the -whiskered gentleman said “Deavning” to Christina Alberta -quite suddenly.</p> - -<p>“Oh! Good evening,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“You had a walk to-day?”</p> - -<p>“We’ve been to see the Toad Rock and the High Rock -and Eridge Park.”</p> - -<p>“Quite a nice walk,” said the cheerful lady, and restored -her attention to Mrs. Bone. Christina Alberta gathered -she was to be noticed, but not made a pet of.</p> - -<p>There was nothing for it but to go through the <i>Tatlers</i> -and <i>Sketches</i> again. This time the pictures were exhausted, -but there were reviews of books and one or two -short stories. Christina Alberta read them all.</p> - -<p>When she went to say good night to her Daddy she had -come to a decision. “Daddy,” she said, “on Thursday, -that’s the day after to-morrow, I must go back to London. -There are some lectures beginning.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby made no effective opposition.</p> - -<p>The third evening was in countenance like the second -except that the Bones had gone and that Christina Alberta -was sustained by the thought that next day she would pass -from the vacuities of Tunbridge to the tangled riddles of -London. And there was a Bird of Passage present, an -untidy young man of the student type with a lot of hair -imperfectly controlled by unguents whose motor bicycle -had broken down just outside Tunbridge Wells. He lived -somewhere away in the north, it seemed, in Northumberland; -he would have to wait in Tunbridge for two or three -days while some broken part of his machine was replaced -from Coventry; he had taken refuge in the Petunia Boarding -House and it was jolly hard luck on him. He couldn’t<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span> -budget for a trip to London; he would just have to sit -down in Tunbridge. He was a Cambridge undergraduate -and a geologist; he had a bag of specimens on his machine. -These facts he conveyed across the width of the room to -Mr. Preemby in the course of a rather one-sided conversation.</p> - -<p>From the first Christina Alberta did not like this young -gentleman from Cambridge. He was like a younger, cruder -Teddy Winterton, with impudent bad manners instead of -impudent good manners, and with neither bodily grace nor -good looks. And while he spoke to Mr. Preemby he glanced -at her. But she had no inkling of the part he might play -in the life of her Daddy and herself.</p> - -<p>When she and her Daddy went into the lounge for coffee -and her cigarette, the young man came and placed himself -at an adjacent table and initiated some more conversation. -Was Tunbridge Wells an amusing place? Was there any -chance of his getting any golf or tennis?</p> - -<p>“There are a number of delightful walks,” said Mr. -Preemby.</p> - -<p>“Not much fun alone,” said the young man.</p> - -<p>“There are the pleasures of observation,” said Mr. -Preemby.</p> - -<p>“All this country has been pretty well worked over,” said -the young man of science. “Is there a Museum here?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby did not know.</p> - -<p>“There ought to be a Museum in every town.”</p> - -<p>Presently the coffee and the cigarettes were finished. -This evening Mr. Preemby was for the drawing-room. -Major Bone had gone, the smoking-room had no attractions, -and Mr. Preemby had exchanged a few amiable words with -the gentleman with whiskers and hoped to follow them up. -Christina Alberta went with him. At the sight of the old -<i>Tatlers</i> and <i>Sketches</i> she remembered she had bought a -book in the High Street that day, a second-hand copy of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span> -Rousseau’s <i>Confessions</i>. She went off to get it. She found -the young gentleman from Cambridge still sitting in the -lounge smoking cigarettes.</p> - -<p>“Pretty gloomy here,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Oh! <i>I</i> don’t know,” said Christina Alberta with an open -mind, pausing before him.</p> - -<p>“Nothing much doing—what?”</p> - -<p>“It’s not a Gala Night.”</p> - -<p>“I’m stranded.”</p> - -<p>“You must bear up.”</p> - -<p>“S’pose you wouldn’t be disposed to come out for a bit -and forage around for some fun?” said the young man -from Cambridge, taking his courage in both hands.</p> - -<p>“Sorry,” said Christina Alberta conclusively, and turned -to go on.</p> - -<p>“No offence?” said the young man from Cambridge.</p> - -<p>“Nice of you to think of me,” said Christina Alberta -who would rather have been thought utterly shameless than -the least bit prudish. “Good hunting.”</p> - -<p>And the young man from Cambridge perceived that he -was dismissed.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta went into the drawing-room for -another tremendous bout of nothingness. But anyhow she -had got Rousseau to read, and to-morrow she would be in -London.</p> - -<p>About the Rousseau—? She had always wanted to know -how she stood towards Rousseau.</p> - -<p>He carried her on to ten o’clock. But she didn’t think -much of Rousseau. He ought to have known a few of the -New Hope Club girls. They’d have shown him.</p> - -<h4>§ 8</h4> - -<p>For three weeks Christina Alberta did not return to Tunbridge -Wells, and when she returned she had passed -through a variety of experiences that will have their due<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span> -effect upon the course of this story. This story is the story -of Mr. Preemby, and we have little sympathy with that -modern sort of novel which will not let a girl alone but -must follow her up into the most private and intimate -affairs. Christina Alberta was perplexed and worried and -would have hated the pursuit of such a searchlight. Suffice -it that events had crowded so closely upon her that for -whole days together she thought scarcely at all of her possibly -quite lonely little Daddy at Tunbridge Wells. Then -came a letter that brought her bustling down.</p> - -<p>“I think it only right to tell you,” said the letter, “that -Very Important Communications indeed have been made to -me <i>of the Utmost Importance</i>, and that I ought to tell you -about them. They seem to alter all our lives. I know you -are immearced in your studies, but these Communications -are so Important that I want to talk them over with you -soon. I would come up to the Studio to tell you about it -all, but very likely Mr. Crumb might be in and I would -much prefer to tell you here on the Common amid more -congenial surroundings. Some of it you will find almost -unbeleavable.”</p> - -<p>“Communications?” said Christina Alberta, re-reading -the letter. “Communications?”</p> - -<p>She went down to Tunbridge Wells that afternoon.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE FIFTH<br> - -<i>The Scales Fall from Mr. Preemby’s Eyes</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">“T<small>HE</small> scales,” said Mr. Preemby, “have fallen from -my eyes.”</p> - -<p>He had chosen a seat upon the Common which commanded -an extensive view of the town, the town crowned -by the green cupolas of the Opera House and lying as -though the houses had been shot out of a cart down the -long incline to the Pantiles. Beyond were the wide distances -of the Kentish hill country, blue and remote.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta waited for more.</p> - -<p>“This experience,” said Mr. Preemby, speaking with an -occasional h’rrmp; “all these experiences—difficult to relate. -Naturally I think you are of a sceptical disposition—taking -after your dear mother. She was very sceptical. Of -psychic phenomena in particular. She said it was Nonsense. -And when your dear mother said a thing was -Nonsense, then it was Nonsense. It only made things -disagreeable if you argued it was anything else. As for -myself—always the open mind. No dogma either way. I -just refrained.”</p> - -<p>“But, Daddy, have you been having psychic experiences? -How could you have psychic experiences down here?”</p> - -<p>“Let me tell you the story in due order. I want you to -see it as I saw it—in due order.”</p> - -<p>“How did it begin?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby held up a propitiatory hand. “Please! In -my own way,” he said.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span>Christina Alberta bit her lips and scrutinized the tranquil -resolution of his profile. There was no hurrying him; he -had to tell his tale as he had prepared it.</p> - -<p>“I do not think,” said Mr. Preemby, “that mine is a very -credulous sort of mind. It is true I am not given to argument. -I do not <i>say</i> very much. But I think and observe. -I think and observe and I have a kind of gift for judging -people. I do not think I am a very easy man to deceive.</p> - -<p>“And it is to be noted that I started the whole affair. It -began at my suggestion. I do not know what put it into -my head, but I do know that it was me started the whole -thing going.</p> - -<p>“You know, after your departure our little band at the -Petunia Boarding House was reduced to just six persons, -not counting the young gentleman from Cambridge who -was, as Miss Rewster says, a Bird of Passage. Naturally -the six of us felt rather drawn together. There were the -two Miss Solbés, both very intelligent young ladies, and -there were Mr. Hockleby and Mrs. Hockleby, and Miss -Hockleby, and there was me. We were drawn together at -lunch after you had gone off—it was a little showery and we -had a fire in the drawing-room and Miss Solbé, the one -with the glasses, tried to show me one of her Patiences. -We got into quite an interesting argument about whether -it was possible to <i>will</i> which card would turn up next. I -have always inclined to the view that for certain people, -people with the necessary gift, it was possible to do so, but -Mr. Hockleby showed himself extremely sceptical in the -matter. He said that if there was a card on the top of the -pack ready to turn up, and if one willed that a different -card should turn up, then that meant that one had really by -sheer will force to re-manufacture two of the cards in the -pack, make them over again, each into the other, make -them blank, reprint them and everything. But I tried to -explain to him that this is not philosophically sound because -of predestination. If you were predestined to will<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span> -that such a card should be on the top of the pack, then that -card was also predestined to be there. He argued——”</p> - -<p>“But is it necessary to tell me all this, Daddy, before we -get to your psychic experience?”</p> - -<p>“It is just to illustrate the fact that Mr. Hockleby was an -extremely sceptical person.”</p> - -<p>“Was that young man from Cambridge present at the -discussions?”</p> - -<p>“No-oh. No. He was not. He had probably gone down -to the Garage to see if his Spare Part had come. He was -always going down to the Garage to see about his Spare -Part.”</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>Mr. Preemby h’rrmped and began a new section of his -narrative.</p> - -<p>“It was in the evening after dinner,” he said, “that things -really began. I went into the smoking-room—to smoke—and -afterwards I went into the drawing-room, and when I -went into the drawing-room I had no more thought of -occult phenomena, Christina Alberta, than I had of flying -over the moon. But as I came into the drawing-room I -saw Miss Solbé looking at her Patience cards which she -had just put out, and the way she was holding her hands -on the table reminded me of the way I had read that -people put their hands together on the table when they -were trying experiments in table-turning. And almost -without thinking I said: ‘Why, Miss Solbé, the way you -are holding your hands is just the way they do when they -are going to do table-turning!’ I said it just like that.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Hockleby was reading his paper at the time—the -<i>Times</i>, I think, but it may have been the <i>Morning Post</i>—but -he put it down when he heard me say that and he -looked over his glasses at me and said, ‘You don’t believe -in that sort of thing, Mr. Preemby, surely?’</p> - -<p>“His wife was sitting with her back to me and from the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span> -way she spoke I think she must have been eating some sort -of sweet or lozenge at the time. ‘<i>I</i> do,’ she said. ‘We -did it at home dozens of times before I was married.’</p> - -<p>“And I don’t know what put it into my head, Christina -Alberta; it seemed almost as though it was something -behind myself that did it, or it may have been a sort of -antagonism I have always felt about that man Hockleby; -but anyhow, I said, ‘I’d really like to try some of this -table-turning.’</p> - -<p>“The younger Miss Solbé, she’s really quite a charming -young lady when you get to know her, and it seems she has -been reading a little occult literature lately——”</p> - -<p>“How old is she, Daddy?” asked Christina Alberta, regarding -him with a look of novel suspicion.</p> - -<p>“I don’t think she can be very much more than thirty-two -or three. Thirty-four at the outside. And really quite -well-read, quite well-read. Well, anyhow, she said she -would like to try it. And Miss Hockleby, evidently she -had been brought up on strictly sceptical lines by her -father, she was curious too. So to cut a long story short, -we tried it. Only Mr. Hockleby objected and Mrs. Hockleby -overruled that. She was the only one among us who -had ever seen anything of the sort before, and so it was she -who arranged things and told us what to do. We chose a -very solid table, the one that usually has the big aspidistra -on it, and while we were turning out the light——”</p> - -<p>“But why did you do that, Daddy?”</p> - -<p>“One always does that,” said Mr. Preemby. “It makes -the atmosphere more favourable. We lit a candle which -Miss Margaret Rewster got for us and turned out all the -electric lights; and while we were doing this, in came young -Mr. Charles Fenton and said—<i>what</i> did he say? A -peculiar expression. Ah, yes! ‘Gollys,’ he said, ‘what’s -up?’”</p> - -<p>“Was that the young man with the motor bicycle?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. The young man from Cambridge. We explained<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span> -what we were doing and asked him to join us. He declared -he knew nothing of psychic phenomena, had never experimented -with it at all and seemed very doubtful about taking -part in the trial. ‘I don’t think there’s anything in it,’ -he said. ‘We shall just waste our time.’ Indeed I remember -now that he did go out intending to visit a music-hall, -and then he came back and said it was raining. It’s very -important to note that he was not at all eager to join -us and that he was quite uninformed about occult things -because, you see, as I will tell you, we found out presently -that he was a person of exceptional psychic gifts, much -greater psychic gifts than anyone else among us.</p> - -<p>“Well, we arranged ourselves about the table in the usual -manner, thumbs and little fingers touching, and for a time -nothing seemed to happen at all. We found Miss Emily -Rewster was peeping in through the slightly open door, -and perhaps that may have had an unfavourable influence. -I suppose she wondered what we were doing and why we -had asked her sister for a candle. Then Mr. Fenton got -very restive and grumbled to himself and said it was the -silliest way of passing an evening he had ever tried. It was -a little difficult to persuade him to keep silence and persevere. -‘<i>All</i> right,’ said he, with a kind of resentment. -‘Have it your own way.’ And then suddenly came two -violent raps, raps like little pistol shots, not immediately -under the table it was, but as if it was in the air a foot or -so under the table. And then the table began to move. -Slowly at first, shifting along the floor, and then quite -strongly twisting and pushing up against our hands. It -was very weird and impressive, Christina Alberta, very -weird and impressive indeed. It rose nearly two feet I -should think and then Mr. Hockleby broke the circle and -it fell rather heavily, I fancy, and the leg hit his shin. He -uttered an exclamation and stooped to rub his leg, and in -the indistinct light he hit his head on the edge of the table. -It seemed almost a judgment on his scepticism I thought.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span> -We turned up one or two of the lights to attend to him. ‘I -don’t like this,’ said Mr. Fenton. ‘This is a bit too rum -for me.’</p> - -<p>“I asked him to try just once more.</p> - -<p>“‘I don’t like this table riding up like this,’ he said. -‘It’s such a bad example for the chairs. Suppose some of -them start playing cup and ball with us! You might get a -nasty toss from a buck-jumping chair. And besides, it’s a -lot too like a Channel crossing for my taste.’</p> - -<p>“I think we were all a good deal excited by what had -happened, and all the others, even Mr. Hockleby, were -eager to continue.</p> - -<p>“‘Next time I shall <i>press</i> down,’ he said. I think he was -a little suspicious that either his wife or me had something -to do with the phenomena. Evidently spiritualism was a -long-standing dispute between him and his wife. His wife -said she had seen tables move before, but none so actively -as this one had done.</p> - -<p>“Down we sat again. We had hardly waited a minute -before the table began rocking about in the most extraordinary -fashion, and then absolutely flew up so violently that -the elder Miss Solbé was thrown back over that Ottoman -there is there, and I was bumped under my chin. At the -same time there was a perfect volley of cracks, like somebody -cracking his fingers, but ever so much louder. It -was quite a comfort to have the lights up again and see -Mr. Hockleby holding the table down firmly in its proper -place. ‘Damn you,’ he said—quite loudly. ‘Damn you. -Keep down.’ Miss Hockleby and her father picked up -Miss Solbé, who was on the floor in a sort of hysterical fit -of laughter, with her feet waving about.</p> - -<p>“‘I don’t like this,’ said Mr. Fenton. ‘It goes through -one like an electric shock.’</p> - -<p>“He spoke quite simply.</p> - -<p>“The only one of us who had had any experience with -occult phenomena was Mrs. Hockleby, and she had not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span> -done anything of the sort since her marriage to Mr. -Hockleby five or six years before, because of his scepticism. -She said now that it was very evident that some very strong -and resolute spirit was present and was trying to communicate -with us, and she explained a simple and safe -method of getting into communication. We were to reform -the circle round the table and we were to call over the -alphabet, and when we came to the letter the spirit wanted -there would be a rap and so we should be able to arrive -at something definite. There is a sort of code quite well -understood it seems in the spirit world, in which you -convey ‘No’ by one rap and ‘Yes’ by two, and so on.</p> - -<p>“We set to work at this,” said Mr. Preemby. “We asked -if the spirit would like to spell out anything and it answered -with two very loud raps, and then Mr. Hockleby read out -the letters: A B C and so on. When it got to S the spirit -gave a rap so loud it made me jump.”</p> - -<p>“And what did you spell out, Daddy?”</p> - -<p>“A name quite unknown to me then—<span class="allsmcap">SARGON</span>, and then -<span class="allsmcap">KING OF KINGS</span>. We asked: was the spirit that was communicating -with us Sargon? The answer came <i>No</i>. Was -Sargon present? <i>Yes.</i> Then who was our communicant? -<span class="allsmcap">OUJAH.</span> Who was Oujah? <span class="allsmcap">WISE MAN.</span> It was a very slow -process spelling out the words in this way, and by the time -we had got so far we were all very tired. Mr. Fenton in -particular was very tired. He yawned and seemed greatly -exhausted, and said at last he felt so weary and muzzy -that he <i>must</i> go to bed. That was really very natural, -because though none of us realized it at the time he was -the actual medium under Oujah’s control. He went to bed -and we tried to go on without him, but the magic had -departed and we could not get so much as a rap. So we -sat for a time talking all this over. Mr. Hockleby in particular -was greatly flabbergasted, and then the rest of us -went to bed.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span>“Evidently Mr. Fenton made the raps,” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Evidently his presence was necessary for the raps to be -made,” corrected Mr. Preemby. “Quite unconsciously he -was a Mejum.”</p> - -<p>There was a pause.</p> - -<p>“Go on with the story,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>“The next evening was wet again, and as his Spare Part -hadn’t come Mr. Fenton was able to join us once more. -He made some little objection at first because he said he -and his people were all Particular Baptists, and he was -doubtful whether this sort of thing was not Necromancy -and forbidden in the Bible. But I persuaded him out of -that. And this time we spelt out a quite singular message. -It was <span class="allsmcap">AWAKE, SARGON</span>! <span class="allsmcap">ARISE OR BE FOREVER FALLEN!</span></p> - -<p>“Even from the first I had had a feeling that those messages -from Sargon had something to do with me. Now -suddenly conviction came upon me. I asked ‘Is Sargon -present?’ ‘<i>Yes.</i>’ I knew it would be so. ‘Is it anyone -in the circle?’ ‘<i>Yes.</i>’ ‘Is it this gentleman?’—pointing to -Mr. Hockleby. A very loud <i>No</i>. ‘Is it me?’ ‘<i>Yes.</i>’</p> - -<p>“Mr. Hockleby I noted at the time looked annoyed—as -though he felt it was he who ought to be Sargon.</p> - -<p>“Then young Mr. Fenton stood up suddenly. ‘Oh! I -can’t stand any more of this,’ he said. ‘My head feels quite -muzzy. I’m sure this sort of thing is harmful.’ He walked -across the room and sat down suddenly with his hands -hanging over the arms of the chair—it was one of the big -arm-chairs covered in cretonne. We all felt very much -concerned, but as for myself I was all in a daze at the -thought of being this Sargon and being called upon so -openly to rouse myself to action. I did not understand<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span> -fully as yet all that it meant to me, but I did realize that -it meant a very great deal.”</p> - -<p>“But what did you think it meant?” said Christina -Alberta sharply, and her perplexed gaze searched his profile. -His blue eyes stared at things far away beyond the distant -hills, strange things, fantastic empires, secret cities, mystical -traditions, and his brows were knit in the effort to keep his -story together.</p> - -<p>“All in good time,” said Mr. Preemby. “Let me tell my -story in my own way. I was telling you, I think, that -young Mr. Fenton said he felt heavy and strange. Mrs. -Hockleby happily was quite equal to that situation. She -had seen the same thing before. ‘Don’t struggle against -it,’ she said. ‘Let yourself go. Just lean back in your -chair. If you want to lie quiet, do. If you want to say -anything, do. Let the influence work.’ And she turned -to me and whispered ‘trance.’</p> - -<p>“‘What is a trance?’ said Mr. Fenton—just like that. -‘What is a trance?’</p> - -<p>“She began moving her hands in front of his face, ‘making -passes,’ I think they call it. He shut his eyes, gave a sort -of sigh and his head lolled back. We all sat round him -waiting, and presently he began to mutter.</p> - -<p>“At first it was just nonsense. ‘Oojah Woojer Boojer,’ -words like that. Then more distinctly, ‘Oujah the Wise -Man, Sargon’s servant. Oujah comes to serve Sargon. -To awaken him.’ After that he seemed to wander off into -sheer rubbish. ‘Why is a mouse when it spins?’ he whispered -in his own voice and then, ‘That damned Spare -Part.’</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Hockleby said that was quite characteristic of this -sort of trance, and then Mr. Hockleby got a writing-pad -and a pencil to take down anything more that was said.</p> - -<p>“And presently when Mr. Fenton spoke again, he did not -speak in his own voice but in a kind of hoarse whisper -quite different from his usual voice. It was the voice of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span> -this Oujah speaking—Oujah the control. With a slight -accent—Sumerian I suppose.</p> - -<p>“Well, the things he said were very astonishing indeed. -I think that this Oujah was anxious to secure my attention -by convincing me that he knew of things, intimate things -that nobody else could know. At the same time he did not -wish the others to know too clearly what he was aiming at. -How did it go? What can I remember? Mr. Hockleby has -a lot of it written down, but so far I have not had time -to make a copy. ‘Child of the sea and the desert,’ he said, -‘the blue waters and the desert sand.’ Is it too fanciful to -find an allusion to Sheringham in that? ‘Cascades and -great waters and a thing like a wheel on a blue shield.’ -That is more puzzling. But ‘cascades and great waters’ -set me thinking of our big washers. And you remember -the swastika on our blue delivery vans, Christina Alberta? -Is not that oddly suggestive of a thing like a wheel on a -blue shield? The Norse peoples called the swastika the -fire-wheel. ‘Armies with their white garments fluttering, -the long lines drawn out—armies of delivery.’ That again -is queer. One is reminded of armies and also—don’t think -me absurd!—of the drying-ground and the vans. It is like -one thing becoming transparent and your seeing the other -behind it.”</p> - -<p>“Are you sure of the exact phrases, Daddy?”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Hockleby has them written down. If I have not -got them quite right you will be able to read his notes.”</p> - -<p>“The swastika may be a coincidence,” said Christina -Alberta. “Or you may have been drawing it on the edges -of the newspaper. You do sometimes. And he may have -seen it.”</p> - -<p>“That does not account for the blue ground. He laid -great stress on the blue ground. And there were other -things; matters known only to me and your dear mother. -I could not tell you them without telling you everything. -And small things, entirely private to me. The name of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span> -my late grandfather at Diss. Munday his name was. It -is sometimes difficult to argue about things although one -may be absolutely convinced. And all this was mixed up -with broken sentences about a great city and the two -daughters of the western King and the Wise Man. And -also he called me Belshazzar. Belshazzar seemed to drift -in and out of his thoughts. ‘Come again to a world that -has fallen into disorder.’ These are remarkable words. -And then ‘Beware of women; they take the sceptre out of -the hands of the king. But do they know how to rule? -Ask Tutankhamen. Ask the ruins in the desert.’”</p> - -<p>“Pah,” said Christina Alberta. “As though women have -ever had a fair chance!”</p> - -<p>“Well, anyhow, Mr. Hockleby has that written down.... -And it seemed to me that this too applied to me, for -because of my great fondness for your mother I had let so -many years of my life slip away. He said many other -things, Christina Alberta, richly suggestive things. But I -have told you enough for you to understand what has happened. -In the end Mr. Fenton came-to quite suddenly, -much more suddenly than is usual in such cases, Mrs. -Hockleby said. He sat up and yawned and rubbed his -eyes. ‘Oh, Lord!’ he said, ‘what nonsense all this is! I’m -going to bed.’</p> - -<p>“We asked him if he felt exhausted. He said he was. -‘Absolutely fed up,’ were his actual words.</p> - -<p>“We asked him if that was the end of his message.</p> - -<p>“‘What message?’ he said. He had absolutely no -memory of his communications at all. ‘Have I been talking?’ -he asked. ‘This isn’t the sort of thing one ought to -get up to. What sort of things have I been saying? Nothing -objectionable I hope. If so I apologize. I mustn’t do -any more of this sort of thing.’</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Hockleby told him she had never met anyone with -such a promise of great psychic power as he had, before.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span> -He said he was really very sorry to hear it. She said he -owed it to himself to cultivate so rare and strange a gift, -but he said That wouldn’t do for his people at all. The -rain had stopped and he said he thought he would take a -walk down to the Pantiles and back before turning in. -Perfectly simple and natural he was from first to last, -and rather unwilling. And he really did look tired out.”</p> - -<p>“Didn’t he laugh once?” asked Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Why should he? He seemed a little afraid of what he -had transmitted. The next day his Spare Part came. Mrs. -Hockleby did her utmost to try to get him once more in the -afternoon and develop his Communication, but he would -not do so. He was full of questions about the ferry at -Tilbury and the time of high tide. He would not even -give us his name and address. When I spoke of sending -Mr. Hockleby’s notes to the <i>Occult Review</i> he was suddenly -quite alarmed. He said that if his name appeared in connection -with them it might mean a very serious row with -his family. He would not even allow us to put a Mr. F. -from Cambridge. ‘Put quite another name,’ he said, ‘quite -a different name. Put anything you like that does not -point to me, a Mr. Walker, say, from London. Or something -of that sort.’</p> - -<p>“Of course there was nothing for us to do but agree.”</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>“And that was the whole of your communication, -Daddy?”</p> - -<p>“It was only the beginning. Because after that I began -to remember. I began to remember more and more.”</p> - -<p>“Remember?”</p> - -<p>“Things from my other lives. Memories stored up. This -young Mr. Fenton was, so to speak, no more than the -first cut in the curtain of forgetfulness that hung between<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span> -this present life and all my previous existences. Now it -was rent and torn open so that I could see things through -it at a dozen points. Now I begin to realize what I really -was and what I can really be....</p> - -<p>“You know, Christina Alberta, I have never actually -believed I was myself—not even as a schoolboy. And -now it is interesting, I know and understand clearly that -I <i>am</i> somebody else. I have always been somebody else.”</p> - -<p>“But who do you believe you are, Daddy?”</p> - -<p>“So far as I can gather I was first a chief called Porg -in a city called Kleb in the very beginning of the world, -æons and æons ago, and I tamed my people and taught -them many things. Then afterwards I was this Sargon—Sargon -the King of Kings. There is very little about him -here in the Public Library, in the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>; -an upstart who took his name, <i>my</i> name, three thousand -years later, an Assyrian fellow is the Sargon they tell about—he -got mixed up with the Jews and he besieged Samaria—but -I was the original Sargon long before there were Jews -or anything of the sort, long before Abraham and Isaac -and Jacob. And afterwards I was Belshazzar, the last -crown prince of the Babylonians, but that is not very clear. -That remains obscure. Only one part of the record is lit—as -yet. And possibly I have been other people. But the -figure that stands out in my memory now is Sargon. It is -his memories have been returning to me. It is he who has -returned in me.”</p> - -<p>“But Daddy, you don’t really believe all this?”</p> - -<p>“Believe!—I <i>know</i>. Long before this Communication -came to me I had had those intimations,—that assurance -that I was somebody else. <i>Now</i> I see clearly. I can -remember days in Akkadia now just as clearly as I can -remember days in Woodford Wells. I could almost doubt -whether I have ever lived at Woodford Wells; it seems so -far away now. It was when I was in bed the night after -Mr. Fenton had gone that these memories began to come.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span> -I was in bed, and then suddenly I was not in bed—I was -reclining on a couch under a canopy, a canopy of pure -white wool very finely woven and embroidered with -emblems and symbols and suchlike things in golden thread, -and I was upon my state barge upon the Euphrates. Two -King’s daughters, sisters, with slender necks, not unlike -the two Miss Solbés except that they were fairer—and -decidedly younger—<i>much</i> younger—and clad rather more -in accordance with the requirements of a warm climate, -chiefly in woven gold—sat and fanned me with fans of -Eagles’ feathers dyed a royal purple. And at my feet sat -my councillor Prewm, who was oddly enough extremely -like Mr. Hockleby—just the same iron-grey whiskers and -with the same little tufts of hair over his ears. He was -wearing an extremely tall cap of some black woollen substance, -and he was making memoranda with a wooden -style on a tablet of wet clay. It was like writing on a -mud pie. And beyond him were the officers of the boat -on a kind of bridge—they were wearing leather helmets -studded with brass—and then one saw the rowers below, -chained to their oars, and then on either side spread the -broad brown river just crinkled by the breeze. The little -boats fled to make way for us. They had coarse, square -sails, and they lowered them and turned them about all -in precisely the same way at precisely the same time. It -was very pretty to see. Along the banks were little villages -of mud-brick houses and clumps and lines of palm trees; -and everywhere there were primitive contrivances, great -bent poles of wood like giant fishing-rods, for raising water -out of the river for the cultivation of the land. And the -people were all crowded along the water’s edge and bowing -with their hands and foreheads in the water and crying, -‘Sargon the Conqueror, Sargon, King of Kings!’”</p> - -<p>“But Daddy, this was a dream?”</p> - -<p>“How could I dream of things I had never seen nor -heard of before?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span>“One does.”</p> - -<p>“One does <i>not</i>,” he replied with a quiet, invincible -obstinacy. “I remember I was coming back from the -South where I had given peace to a multitude of warring -tribes, Elamites and Perrizites and Jebusites and people of -that sort, and I was returning to my capital. I remember -distinctly many details of the campaign and I know that -with an effort I could recall more in the proper order. -In dreams absurd things happen, dreams when you think -them over afterwards are all at sixes and sevens, but this -is all sane and orderly. One might think, Christina -Alberta, that I had never dreamt dreams and that all these -memories of that previous existence which crowd upon me -now were a deception of my imagination! But I can go -right back as if it was yesterday, and I am surer by far -that I am Sargon than that I am Albert Edward Preemby -your father. The former is my true self, the latter is just -a very simple, unpretending wrapping that for some purpose, -at present inexplicable to me, has hidden me from -the world.”</p> - -<p>He waved his hand with a bolder gesture than was -habitual to him. He sat with his eyes wide open, looking -at unseen things.</p> - -<p>The girl regarded him for some seconds in silence. She -was trying to grasp the full import of this amazing -speech.</p> - -<p>“And <i>this</i> was your Communication?” she said at last.</p> - -<p>“You have to know,” he said. “You have to serve and -help me.”</p> - -<p>(Help him! How could she help him or herself? How -far was this thing going? What was she to do?)</p> - -<p>“Have you told anyone else of this, Daddy?” she asked -abruptly. “Have you told anyone else?”</p> - -<p>He turned his solemn little face towards her.</p> - -<p>“Ah, <i>there</i>,” he said, “we have to be very discreet and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span> -careful—very careful indeed. Here and now is not the -time to proclaim that Sargon, King of Kings, has come -back to the civilization he did so much to found. One -has to be careful, Christina Alberta. There is a spirit of -opposition.</p> - -<p>“For instance, I have told something of my first vision—dream -you may call it if you like—to Mr. Hockleby. I -described the resemblance between himself and Prewm. -He was by no means pleased. His is a seditious, insubordinate -nature. And besides—since then—I have recalled -what happened—on the advice of Oujah—to Prewm....</p> - -<p>“And I have realized since then that, though one may be -convinced oneself, it does not follow that one will convince -other people. It is true that Miss Hockleby and the two -Miss Solbés have asked me to tell them more of my -dreams—they too call them dreams. But their manner -was curious rather than respectful and I have been -extremely reserved with them.”</p> - -<p>“That’s my wise Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, “You -have to think of your dignity.”</p> - -<p>“I have to think of my dignity, certainly. Nevertheless—” -His hands went out in a new amplitude of gesture. “Here -I am and this is my world. My world! I nursed it in its -infancy. I taught it law and obedience. Here I am, the -most ancient of monarchs. Rameses and Nebuchadnezzar, -Greece and Rome, the Kingdoms and Empires, things of -yesterday—interludes while I have been sleeping. And -clearly I have been sleeping. And clearly I have not been -sent back to the world without a mission. This is a great -and crowded world now, Christina Alberta, but it is in a -sad state of disorder. Even the newspapers remark upon -it. People are not happy now. They are not happy as they -were under my rule in Sumeria thousands of years ago. -In the sunshine and abundance of Sumeria.”</p> - -<p>“But what can you <i>do</i>, Daddy?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span>“Dear Princess, my child, that I have to think out. -Nothing hastily; nothing rashly.”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>There came a pause. “One person only seems to have -any belief in me. The younger Miss Solbé—— Did you say -anything, dear?”</p> - -<p>“No. Go on.”</p> - -<p>“I have asked her if she too has had any dreams, any -vague memories of a previous existence. She seems to -have had something confirmatory in a shadowy sort of -way. Very vague intimations. She tells them timidly, -when her sister is not about. But she is under a misapprehension -that her relationship to me was a particularly -close and special one. She was not my Queen. There she -is wrong. It is perhaps natural for her to think so, but I -remember quite distinctly how it was. She was one of the -Twenty Principal Concubines who carried the Eagle fans.”</p> - -<p>“Have you told her that?”</p> - -<p>“Not yet,” said Mr. Preemby. “Not yet. One has to go -discreetly in all these things.”</p> - -<p>Another pause followed. Christina Alberta looked at her -wrist-watch. “My word!” she cried. “We shall be late -for lunch!”</p> - -<p>She noted as they walked back towards the Petunia -Boarding House that his bearing and manner had -undergone a subtle change. He seemed larger and taller -and his face was serener and he held his head higher. He -did not h’rrmp once. He seemed to expect people and -things to get out of his way, and it was as if the path was -a carpet that was being unrolled before his advance. Had -she been able to see herself she would have remarked an -equal change in her own carriage. The dance had gone -out of her paces. She walked like one upon whose -shoulders the responsibilities of life might easily become -overwhelming.</p> - -<p>They were late for lunch and all the other boarders<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span> -were in their places, beginning. Every one turned to look -at Mr. Preemby’s face as they came in, and then they -glanced at one another. “So you’ve come back to us,” -said Mrs. Hockleby to Christina Alberta, meeting her eye.</p> - -<p>“It’s jolly to be back,” said Christina Alberta.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE SIXTH<br> - -<i>Christina Alberta Consults a Wise Man</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">C<small>HRISTINA ALBERTA</small> and Paul Lambone had been great -friends for nearly a year. He liked her and admired -her, and as became his literary line of work, he studied -her. And she liked him and trusted him, and showed off -a good lot when she was with him.</p> - -<p>Paul Lambone wrote novels and short stories and books -of good advice, and he was particularly celebrated for the -pervading wisdom of his novels and the excellence of his -advice. It was his pervading wisdom that had picked him -up out of the general poverty of writers and placed him -in a position of comparative prosperity. Not that his -conduct of his affairs was wise, but that the quality of his -wisdom was extremely saleable. Some writers prosper by -reason of their distinctive passion, some by reason of their -austerity and truth, some by their excellent invention, -and some even by simple good writing, but Paul Lambone -prospered because of his kindness and wisdom. When -you read the stories you always felt that he was really -sorry for the misfortunes and misbehaviour of his characters -and anxious to help them as much as he could. -And when they blundered or sinned he would as often as -not tell you what was the better course they might have -chosen. His book of advice, and particularly his <i>Book -of Everyday Wisdom</i> and his <i>What to Do on a Hundred -and One Occasions</i> sold largely and continually.</p> - -<p>But like that James, King of England, to whom the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span> -Bible was dedicated, Paul Lambone was far wiser in his -thoughts and counsels than in his acts. In small matters -and most of the time his proceedings were foolish or selfish -or indecisive or all of those things. His wisdom did not -reach below the level of his eyes, and his face and body -and arms and legs were given over to the unhappiest -tendencies which were restrained by his general indolence -rather than by any real self-control. He was very well off -chiefly because he was lazy; he asked the highest possible -prices for everything he wrote because that was just as -easy as asking the lowest, and there was always a chance -that the bargain would not come off and then he would be -saved the trouble of correcting his proofs. He accumulated -money because he was too unenterprising to buy things -or incur the responsibility of possessions, and so he just -let a trust invest it for him. His literary reputation was -high because a literary reputation in England and America -depends almost entirely upon apparent reluctance of output. -The terse beauty of his style was mainly due to his -sedulous indisposition to write two words where one would -suffice. And in the comfort and leisure his indolence -accumulated for him, he sat about and talked and was -genially wise and got fatter than was becoming. He tried -to eat less as a preferable alternative to taking exercise, -but in the presence of drink and nourishment his indolence -flagged and failed him. He went about a good deal, and -was always eager for new things because they saved him -from boredom, the malign parent of much needless activity. -He had an expensive little cottage near Rye in -Kent to which he could motor without needless trouble -whenever London bored him, and directly his cottage bored -him he would come back to London. And he visited -people’s houses a lot because it was too troublesome to -resist invitations.</p> - -<p>There were, it must be admitted, limits to the wisdom of -Paul Lambone. It is often more difficult to see what is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span> -near us than what is far away; many a stout fellow who -looks with a clear, discerning eye upon the universe sees -little of his toes, and ignores the intervening difficulty; -and something sub-conscious in Paul Lambone’s mind -obstinately refused to recognize the defective nature of -many of his private acts. He knew he was indolent, but -he would not allow himself to admit that his indolence -was fundamental and vicious. He thought there was a -Paul Lambone in reserve of very great energy. He liked -to think of himself as a man of swift and accurate decisions -who, once aroused, was capable of demoniac energy. -He had spent many an hour in arm-chairs, on garden seats, -and on Downland turf, thinking out his course of action -on various possible occasions of war, business, criminal -attempt or domestic crisis. His favourite heroes in real -life were Napoleon, Julius Cæsar, Lord Kitchener, Lord -Northcliffe, Mr. Ford, and suchlike heroic ants.</p> - -<p>He liked Christina Alberta because of her tremendous -go. She was always up to something; she preferred standing -to sitting, and she kicked her legs about while she -talked to you. He idealized her go; he attributed to her -much more go than she really had. He was secretly -persuaded that her blood must be like a bird’s, a degree -or so above normal. He felt that in imagination she had -much in common with him. He called her the Last -Thing, the Van, the Ultimate Modern Girl, and the Life -Force. He openly professed pity for the unaided single-handed -man who would in accordance with our social laws -presently have to marry her and go her pace and try to -keep her in order.</p> - -<p>She had been to tea with him once or twice. She perceived -his admiration and suspected a certain affection, -and she basked in admiration and affection. She liked his -books and thought he was very like what he thought he -was himself. She told him all sorts of things about herself -just to lift his eyebrows.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span>And he was wise all over her and round and about her, -tremendously wise.</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>It was quite interesting to be rung up by Christina -Alberta and asked if she might come for tea and advice. -“Come along now,” he said. “I’m probably all alone for -tea.”</p> - -<p>And as he replaced the instrument he said: “Now I -wonder what the young woman has been up to! And what -she wants me to do for her.”</p> - -<p>He went back to his sitting-room and spread himself on -his very nice Persian hearthrug, and regarded the pretty -silver kettle that swung over his spirit lamp. “It won’t be -money,” he considered. “She isn’t the sort that tries to get -money....</p> - -<p>“She’s barked her shins on something....</p> - -<p>“Girls nowadays are a lot too plucky—they’re a lot too -plucky altogether.... I hope it’s nothing serious.... -She’s just a kid.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta appeared in due course. Erect as -ever, but nevertheless looking a little dashed and subdued.</p> - -<p>“Uncle,” she said—for that was her theory of their relationship—“I’m -in trouble. You’ve got to give me all -sorts of advice.”</p> - -<p>“Take off that brigand’s cloak,” he said, “and sit down -there and make me some tea. I’ve been watching your -love affair out of the corner of my eye for some time. I’m -not surprised.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta paused with her cloak in her hand and -stared at him. “That’s nothing,” she said. “I can manage -that little affair all right. Such as it is. Don’t you worry -about <i>me</i>, in that respect. Don’t imagine things. But -there is something—something different.” She threw the -cloak over a chair back and came and stood by the silver -tea-tray.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span>“You know my Daddy,” she said, arms akimbo.</p> - -<p>“I never saw a more dissimilar parent.”</p> - -<p>“Well—” She considered how she should put it. “He’s -behaving queerly. So that people may think—people who -don’t know him—that he’s going out of his mind.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Lambone reflected. “Was it ever such a very serious -mind to go out of?”</p> - -<p>“Oh! don’t make jokes. His mind was good enough to -keep him out of trouble, and now something’s happened -and it isn’t. People will think—some of them think -already—he is mad. They may take him away. And -there’s just him and me. It’s serious, Uncle. And I don’t -know what I ought to do. I don’t know enough to know. -I’m scared. I’ve got no friends that I can talk to about it. -None. You’d think I’d have women friends. I haven’t. -I don’t get on with older women. They want to boss me. -Or I think they do. And I irritate them. They know, -they feel—the proper ones—that I don’t—oh! respect their -standards. And the other sort just hate me. Because -I’m young. The girls I know—no good for what I want -just now.”</p> - -<p>“But isn’t there a man,” said Lambone, “on whom you -have a sort of claim?”</p> - -<p>“You know who it is, I suppose?”</p> - -<p>He was frank. “Things rather show.”</p> - -<p>“If you know him—” She left the sentence unfinished.</p> - -<p>“I know the young man only very incidentally,” he -said.</p> - -<p>“I go to Teddy,” said Christina Alberta without any -further reservations. “I went to him as a matter of fact -before I telephoned to you. He hardly listened to what I -had to say. He didn’t bother.” She winced. Suddenly -tears stood in her eyes. “He was just loafing about in his -studio. He kissed me and tried to excite me. He would -hardly listen to what I had to tell him.... That I suppose -is what one gets from a lover.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span>“So it’s got to that,” Paul Lambone reflected with hidden -dismay, and then remarked a little belatedly: “Not every -lover.”</p> - -<p>“Mine—anyhow.”</p> - -<p>“And you came away?”</p> - -<p>“<i>Well!</i> What do <i>you</i> think?”</p> - -<p>“H’m,” said Lambone. “You <i>have</i> barked your shins, -Christina Alberta! More than I thought.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Hell take Teddy!” said Christina Alberta, putting it -on a bit and helping herself by being noisy. “What does -that matter now? I’ve done with Teddy. I was a fool. -Never mind that. The thing is my Daddy. What am I to -do about my Daddy?”</p> - -<p>“Well, first you’ve got to tell me all about it,” said Lambone. -“Because at present, you know, I’ve hardly got -the hang of the trouble. And before you do that you -sit down in that easy chair and I make the tea. No, not -you. Your nerves are on edge and you’ll upset something. -You’ve been having your first dose of adult worry. -Sit down there and don’t say anything for a minute. I’m -glad you came along to me. Very glad.... I liked that -Daddy of yours really. Little innocent-eyed man he was. -Blue eyes. And he was talking—what nonsense <i>was</i> he -talking? About the Lost Atlantis. But it was quite nice -nonsense.... No, don’t interrupt. Just let me recall -my own impression of him until you’ve had your tea.”</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>When the tea was made and Christina Alberta had -sipped a cup and looked more comfortable, Lambone, who -felt he was managing things beautifully, told her she might -begin.</p> - -<p>“He’s getting queer in his mind, but you know that he -isn’t really going out of his mind,” said Lambone. “That’s -it, isn’t it?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span>“That <i>is</i> it,” said Christina Alberta. “You see—” -She paused.</p> - -<p>Lambone sat down in a second arm-chair and sipped his -tea in a leisurely manner. “It’s a little difficult,” he said.</p> - -<p>“You see,” said Christina Alberta, knitting her brows at -the fire, “he’s a person of peculiar imaginativeness. He -always has been. Always. He’s always lived half in a -dream. We’ve been very much together ever since I was -born almost, and from the earliest times I remember his -talks, rambling talks, about the Lost Atlantis, and about -the secrets of the pyramids and Yogis and the Lamas of -Tibet. And astrology. All such wonderful, impossible, -far-off things. The further off the better. Why!—he -almost got me into a dream too. I was a Princess of Far -Atlantis lost in the world. I used to play at that, and -sometimes my play came very near to believing. I could -Princess it for a whole afternoon. Lots of children day-dream -like that.”</p> - -<p>“I did,” said Lambone. “For days together I would be a -great Indian chief, sentenced to death again and again—disguised -as a small preparatory schoolboy. The incongruity -didn’t matter a rap. Everybody does it more or -less for a time.”</p> - -<p>“But he’s gone on doing it all his life. And he’s doing it -now more than ever. He’s lost the last trace of any sense -that it is a dream. And some one played a trick upon -him at Tunbridge Wells. Not realizing what it might -mean for him. They seem to have muddled about with -spiritualism in the evenings while I was in London, table-rapping -and so forth, and a man who had nothing better -to do pretended to have a trance. He told Daddy he was -Sargon the First, Sargon King of Kings he called him, -who was Lord of Akkadia and Sumeria—you know—ages -ago, before Babylon was born or thought of. The man -who did it couldn’t have hit on anything more mischievous -so far as Daddy was concerned. You see he was exactly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span> -ready for it; leaving Woodford Wells where he had spent -half his life in one routine had cut him off, even more -than he was usually cut off, from reality. He was uprooted -already before this idea came to him. And now it’s just -swamping him. It suited him exactly. It—fixed him. -Always before one could get him back—by talking about -my mother or the laundry vans, or something familiar like -that. But now I can’t get him back. I can’t. He’s Sargon, -incognito, come back as Lord of the World, and he believes -that just as firmly as I believe that I am his daughter -Christina Alberta Preemby talking to you now. It’s a -reverie no longer. He’s got his evidence and he believes.”</p> - -<p>“And what does he want to do about it?”</p> - -<p>“All sorts of things. He wants to declare himself Lord -of the World. He says things are in a bad way and he -wants to save them.”</p> - -<p>“They <i>are</i> in a bad way,” said Lambone. “People don’t -begin to know half how bad they are. Still—I suppose -having a delusion about who one is, isn’t Insanity. Does -he want to make some sort of fuss?”</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid, yes.”</p> - -<p>“Soon?”</p> - -<p>“That’s what worries me.</p> - -<p>“You see,” she went on, “I’m afraid he’s going to strike -most people as queer. He’s back at Lonsdale Mews. We -had to come up from Tunbridge Wells yesterday. On a -few hours’ notice. It’s that has upset me. For a couple -of days things went on all right. Practically we were -turned out of the boarding house. There was a frightfully -disagreeable man there, a Mr. Hockleby, and he -seemed to take a violent dislike to Daddy. You know -those unreasonable dislikes people take at times?”</p> - -<p>“A very disagreeable side of human nature. <i>I</i> know. -Why, people have taken dislikes to <i>me</i>!... But go on.”</p> - -<p>“He and his daughter got upset about Daddy’s queerness. -They frightened the Miss Rewsters, the sisters who run<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span> -the place. They said he might break out at any moment, -and either he would have to leave or they would. There -they were all whispering on the stairs and talking of -sending for a policeman and having him taken away. -What could I do? We had to clear out. You see Daddy -had a sort of idea that when he was Sargon Mr. Hockleby -had been alive too and had had to be impaled for seditious -behaviour; and instead of letting bygones be bygones as -one ought to do in such cases, he said something about -it to him, and Mr. Hockleby construed it as a threat. -It’s all so difficult, you see.”</p> - -<p>“He didn’t try to impale him over again, or anything?”</p> - -<p>“No. He doesn’t do things like that. It’s only his imagination -that is doing tremendous things. He isn’t.”</p> - -<p>“And now he’s in London?”</p> - -<p>“He has a sort of idea he’s overlord of the King, and he -wants to go to the King at Buckingham Palace and tell -him about it. He says the King is a thoroughly good man, -thoroughly good; and directly he hears how things are, -he will acknowledge Daddy as his feudal superior and -place him on the throne. Of course if he tries to do anything -of that sort he will be locked up for a certainty. -And he’s written letters to the Prime Minister and the -Lord Chancellor and the President of the United States -and Lenin, and so forth, directing them to wait upon him -for his instructions. But I’ve persuaded him not to post -them till he can have a proper seal made.”</p> - -<p>“Rather like Muhammad’s letters to the potentates,” said -Lambone.</p> - -<p>“He’s thinking, too, of a banner or something of that -sort, but all that’s quite vague. He’s just got the phrase -‘raise my banner.’ I don’t think that matters much yet. -But the Buckingham Palace idea,—something may come -of that.”</p> - -<p>“This is no end interesting,” said Lambone, and walked -across his room and back, and then half sat on the arm<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span> -of his easy chair with his hands deep in his pockets. -“Tell me; is he distraught to look at?”</p> - -<p>“Not a bit of it.”</p> - -<p>“Untidy in his dress?”</p> - -<p>“Neat as ever.”</p> - -<p>“I remember when I saw him how neat he was. Is he—at -all—incoherent? Or does it all hold together?”</p> - -<p>“Absolutely. He’s perfectly logical and coherent. He -talks I think rather better and more clearly than usual.”</p> - -<p>“It’s just one simple delusion? He has no delusions about -having great physical strength or beauty or anything of -that sort?”</p> - -<p>“None. He’s not a bit crazy. He’s just possessed by this -one grand impossible idea.”</p> - -<p>“He’s not throwing away money or anything of that -sort?”</p> - -<p>“Not a bit of it. He’s always been—careful with money.”</p> - -<p>“And he is now?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“Let’s hope that lasts. I don’t see that a man is insane -because he believes he is a King or an Emperor—if some -one tells him he is. After all, George V has no other -grounds for imagining he is a King. The only difference -is that rather more people have told him so. Fancying -yourself a King isn’t lunacy, and behaving in accordance -with that idea isn’t lunacy either. It may be some day, -but it isn’t so yet. No.”</p> - -<p>“But I’m afraid that people will think that it is.... -You see it’s only in the last few days I’ve realized how fond -I am of my father and how horrible it would be for me -if anyone attempted to take him away. I’m afraid of -asylums. Restraint for those who can least understand restraint. -He particularly would go mad in a week, really -mad, if he got into one. That Mr. Hockleby has frightened -me—he’s frightened me. He was so intent and cruel. He -was <i>evil</i> about Daddy—malignant. A nasty man.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span>“Yes, I know,” said Lambone. “Hate.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she said. “Hate.”</p> - -<p>She jumped to her feet and took possession of the -hearthrug, looking with her bobbed hair and short skirts -and manly pose and serious face the most ridiculous and -attractive mixture of fresh youth and mature responsibility -conceivable.</p> - -<p>“You see, I don’t know what they can do with him—whether -they can take him away from me. I’ve never -been much afraid of what might happen before, but I -am now. I don’t know how to take hold of all this. I -thought life was just a lark and people were fools to be -afraid of doing anything. But now I see <i>life’s dangerous</i>. -I’ve never been much afraid of what happened to myself. -But this is different. He’s walking about in a dream of -glory—with absolute wretchedness hanging over him. -Think of it! People getting hold of him! Perhaps hitting -him! An asylum!”</p> - -<p>“About the law on these matters I know very little,” -Lambone reflected. “I doubt if they can do very much -to him without your consent. But I agree about asylums. -From their very nature they must be horrible places, -haunted places. Most of the attendants—hardened. Even -if they start well. Every day at it ... too much for -anyone.... I don’t know how a lunatic is made, a legal -lunatic I mean, or who has a right to take him. Somebody—I -think two doctors—have to certify him or something -of that sort. But, anyhow, I don’t think your father -is a lunatic.”</p> - -<p>“Nor I. But that may not save him.”</p> - -<p>“Something else may. He’s as you say an imaginative—a -super-imaginative man, possessed by a fantastic idea. -Well, isn’t that a case perhaps for a psycho-analyst?”</p> - -<p>“Possibly. Who’d talk him back—to something like he -used to be.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span>“Yes. If such a man as Wilfred Devizes, for example, -could talk to him——”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know much about these people. I’ve read some -Freud of course—and a little Jung.”</p> - -<p>“I know Devizes slightly. We talked at lunch. And I -liked his wife. And if perhaps you could get your father -away into a country cottage. By the by—have you got -any money?”</p> - -<p>“He’s got the cheque-book, but he makes me an allowance. -So far there’s been no money trouble. He signs his -cheques all right.”</p> - -<p>“But he may not presently.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! Of course at any time he may begin putting a -swastika or a royal cipher in the place of his signature, -and then the fat <i>would</i> be in the fire. I shouldn’t know -where to turn. I hadn’t thought of that.”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Lambone.</p> - -<p>For some seconds—it seemed quite a long time to -Christina Alberta—he said nothing more. He sat half -leaning upon the arm of his chair and looked past her at -the fire. She had said what she wanted to say, and now -stood waiting for him to speak. His wisdom told him -that things had to be done in this matter very soon; his -temperament inclined him just to stay in that pleasant -room and say things. Meanwhile she looked about the -room and realized how comfortable a wise man could be. -It was the best furnished room she had ever been in. -The chairs were jolly; there were bound books in the -bookcase, a delightful old Chinese horse on the top of it; -all his tea-things were silver or fine china; there was a -great writing-desk with silver candlesticks; the windows -that gave on Half Moon Street were curtained with a -rich, subtly folding material very pleasing to the eye. -Her eyes came back to his big fat face and his peevish -mouth and fine, meditative eyes.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span>“Something,” he said and sighed, “ought to be done at -once. It isn’t a matter to leave about. He might commit -some indiscretion. And get into trouble.”</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid of that.”</p> - -<p>“Exactly. He’s safe—where you left him?”</p> - -<p>“There’s somebody with him.”</p> - -<p>“Who won’t let anything happen?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“So far, good.”</p> - -<p>“But what am I to do?”</p> - -<p>“What are you to do?” he echoed, and said no more for -some seconds.</p> - -<p>“Well?” she said.</p> - -<p>“What in fact are <i>we</i> to do? I ought to see him. Decidedly. -Yes, I ought to see him.”</p> - -<p>“Then come and see him.”</p> - -<p>“I ought to come and see him. Now.”</p> - -<p>“Then let’s.”</p> - -<p>He nodded. He seemed to be making an intense internal -effort. “Why not?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Well?”</p> - -<p>“And then—then we can broach a visit to Wilfred Devizes. -Generally fix that up. Then our subsequent action -will be determined by what Wilfred Devizes says. The -sooner he sees Devizes the better. It’s a question whether it -wouldn’t be better for you or both of us to see Devizes -first. No. Father first. Then when I’m properly instructed—as -a lawyer would say—Devizes.”</p> - -<p>A great tranquillity descended upon him.</p> - -<p>She could not restrain a faint exclamation of impatience.</p> - -<p>He looked up as if he awakened from profound meditation. -“I’ll come along now,” he said, “to Lonsdale Mews. -I’ll have a talk to your father and then I’ll try to get at -Devizes and fix up some sort of a meeting between them. -That’s what I ought to do. I’ll go along with you now—at -once.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span>“Right-o,” said Christina Alberta, “<i>come</i> along.” She -threw on her cloak and clapped her hat upon her head -in a dozen seconds and stood waiting.</p> - -<p>“I’m ready,” she said.</p> - -<p>“I’ll just change this jacket,” said Lambone; and kept -her waiting a full ten minutes.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>The taxi dropped them at the entrance of the Mews.</p> - -<p>“I suppose it won’t matter our arriving together?” said -Lambone. “He won’t think it’s something preconcerted?”</p> - -<p>“He doesn’t have suspicions of that sort.”</p> - -<p>But when they reached the studio a little surprise awaited -them. Fay Crumb opened the door to them and her eyes -looked paler and her neck longer and her face more absent-minded -than ever.</p> - -<p>“I’m so glad you’ve come at last,” she said in a flat, distraught -voice. “You see—he’s gone!”</p> - -<p>“Gone!”</p> - -<p>“Completely. He’s been away since three. He went out -alone.”</p> - -<p>“But, Fay, you promised!”</p> - -<p>“I know. I could see he was restless and I kept telling -him you’d be back soon. It wasn’t so easy keeping him. -He walked up and down and talked. ‘I must go out to -my people,’ he said. ‘I feel they need me. I must be -about my proper business.’ I didn’t know what to do. I -just hid his hat. I never dreamt he’d go out without his hat—prim -as he is. I just went upstairs for a moment to get -something—I forget what now—but, anyhow, it wasn’t -there, and I may have spent five minutes looking for it—and -meanwhile he slipped out. He left the door open and -I never heard him go. As soon as I knew he’d gone I ran -up the Mews right up into Lonsdale Road and stood about -there.... He’d vanished. I’ve been hoping he’d come<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span> -back every moment since. Before you returned. But! He -hasn’t come back.”</p> - -<p>Her conviction was all too manifest that he would never -come back.</p> - -<p>“I’d have done anything—” she said.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta and Paul Lambone looked at one -another. “This rather puts the lid on,” said Christina -Alberta. “What are we going to do now?”</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>Lambone followed Christina Alberta into the studio and -sat down at once on the simple couch that became Mr. -Preemby’s bed at night. The couch squeaked and submitted. -He stared at the floor and reflected. “I’ve got no -engagements this evening,” he said. “None.”</p> - -<p>“It won’t be much good waiting here for him,” said -Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“I feel in my bones he won’t head back here for hours and -hours,” he said.</p> - -<p>“And meanwhile he may be up to anything!” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Any old lark,” said Lambone.</p> - -<p>“Anything,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Three,” said Lambone and consulted his watch: “it’s -now nearly five. Do you think there is any particular -place, Christina Alberta, more than any other place, where -we might go and look for him? Where, in fact, we ought to -look for him?”</p> - -<p>“But will you come and look for him?”</p> - -<p>“I’m at your service.”</p> - -<p>“It wasn’t in the bond.”</p> - -<p>“I want to. If you won’t walk too fast. I feel I -ought to.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta stood before him with her arms<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span> -akimbo. “I would bet five to one,” she said slowly, “that he -heads for Buckingham Palace and demands an audience—No, -that isn’t how he puts it—offers to give an audience -to his Vassal, the King. He was full of that this morning. -And then—Then I suppose they will lock him up and -have an inquiry into his mental condition.”</p> - -<p>“H’m,” said Lambone, and then, rising to the occasion: -“Let’s go to Buckingham Palace.</p> - -<p>“We’ll go there at once,” he said, and moved slowly doorward. -“We’ll get a taxi.”</p> - -<p>They found a taxi in the King’s Road. Christina Alberta -did not belong to the taxi-ing class, and she was impressed -by a sudden realization that Lambone had all these thousands -of taxi-cabs upon the streets alert to do his bidding. -The taxi dropped them according to instructions at the -foot of the Victoria Memorial which gesticulates in front -of Buckingham Palace, and they stood side by side surveying -that building. “It looks much as usual,” said -Lambone.</p> - -<p>“You didn’t expect him to bend it?” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>“If he made a disturbance they’ve cleared him up very -completely. That flag I suppose means G. R. is at home.... -I wonder—what do we do next?”</p> - -<p>He was rather at a loss. The emotional atmosphere of -this wide-open place was quite different from the emotional -atmosphere of his flat or the Lonsdale Mews. In -the flat and in the Mews the appeal had been for him to -act; the appeal here was not to make himself conspicuous. -He was a man of decorous instincts. A car passed, a -beautiful, big, shining Napier, and he thought the occupants -looked at him as though they recognized him. Lots -of people knew him nowadays and might recognize him. -In his flat, in the studio at Lonsdale Mews, he could foregather -with Christina Alberta without compunction; but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span> -now, in this very conspicuous place, this most conspicuous -place, he had a momentary realization that he and she -didn’t exactly match, he with his finished effect of being a -man about town, a large, distinguished, mature man about -town, and she with her air of excessive youthfulness, her -very short skirts and her hat, like the calyptra of a black -mushroom, pulled over her bobbed hair. People might -think them an incongruous couple. People might wonder -what had brought them together and what he was up to -with her.</p> - -<p>“I suppose we ought to ask some one,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Who?”</p> - -<p>“Oh!—one of those sentinels.”</p> - -<p>“May one speak to the sentinels at the gate? Frankly, -I’m afraid of those tremendous chaps in the busbies. I’d as -soon speak to the Horse Guard in Whitehall. He’d probably -look right over our heads and say nothing. And we -should just dither away from beneath him. I couldn’t -stand that....”</p> - -<p>“But what are we to do?”</p> - -<p>“Nothing rash.”</p> - -<p>“We <i>must</i> ask some one.”</p> - -<p>“Away there on the left towards Victoria there’s what -looks like the real business way in. There’s two policemen. -I’m not afraid of policemen. No. And of course -that man at the corner is a plain-clothes man.”</p> - -<p>“Then let’s ask <i>him</i>!”</p> - -<p>Lambone made no move. “Suppose he hasn’t come here -at all!”</p> - -<p>“I know he meant to do so.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose if he hasn’t come,” said Lambone, “we ought -to wait about here on the chance of his coming.” He felt -extremely like flight at that instant. “There ought to be -seats here.</p> - -<p>“Come along,” he said, with a sudden return to manly -decision, “let’s ask one of those bobbies at the far gate.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>The policeman at the gate to whom they addressed themselves -listened gravely to their inquiries, making no instant -reply. He belonged to that great majority of English -speakers who are engaged upon the improvement of the -word “yes.” His particular idea was to make it long -and purry.</p> - -<p>“Yurrss,” he said breaking presently into speech: -“Yurrss. There was a small gentleman without a ’at on. -Yurrss. He <i>’ad</i> blue eyes. And a moustache? Yurrss, -come to think of it there <i>was</i> a moustache. A rather considerable -moustache. Well, ’e said he wanted to speak to -King George on a rather urgent matter. It always is a -rather urgent matter. Never ‘quite.’ Always ‘rather.’ We -replied, according to formula, ’e’d ’ave to write for’n -’pointment. ‘Perhaps,’ ’e says, ‘You don’t know who I -am?’ They all say that. ‘I guess it’s something important,’ -I says. ‘Not the Ormighty, by any chance,’ I says. -But ’e was ’ere last week and ’e wouldn’ go away and they -’ad to take ’im off in a taxi-cab. You know there <i>was</i> a -chap ’ere, sir—Thursday last or Friday, I forget which—with -a long white beard and ’air all down ’is back. Very -like ’im I should think. Well any’ow this sort of dashed -your gentleman. He kind of mumbled a name.”</p> - -<p>“Not Sargon?” asked Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“It might ’ave been. Any’ow, ‘There is no exceptions,’ I -says. ‘Not even if you was a close relation. We got no -option here. We’re just machines.’ He stood sort of looking -baffled for a time. ‘All this must be altered,’ he said -in a sort of low, earnest voice. ‘It’s the duty of every king -to give audience to every one, every day.’ I says, ‘Very -likely it is, sir. But we policemen aren’t in any position to -’elp it,’ I says, ‘much less alter it.’ So off ’e goes. I kind -of tipped the wink to the detective at the corner and ’e -watched ’im go along the front and then cross over to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span> -monument and stand looking up at the windows. And -then ’e shrugged ’is shoulders and took ’imself off. And -that’s the last I see of ’im.”</p> - -<p>Lambone asked a superfluous question.</p> - -<p>“It might be Piccadilly way,” said the policeman, “it -might be down towards Trafalgar Square. Fact is, sir, I -didn’t notice.”</p> - -<p>It was clear that the conversation was drawing to an end.</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>“So that’s that,” said Lambone. “So far, good. He’s -still at large.”</p> - -<p>He expressed his thanks to the policeman.</p> - -<p>“And now,” he said with an air of bringing out the solution -of a difficult problem very successfully, “all we have -to do is to find him.”</p> - -<p>“But where?”</p> - -<p>“That’s the essence of the problem.”</p> - -<p>He led the way back to the Victoria Memorial and stood -side by side with Christina Alberta beneath that perfect -symbol of the British Empire, the statue of Queen Victoria. -They stared down the Mall to the distant Admiralty Arch, -and for a moment neither of them said a word. It was a -warm and serene October afternoon; the cupolas of Whitehall -and Westminster’s two towers and a brown pile of -mansions were just visible over the trees on the right, -transfigured to beauty by the afternoon glow; the two tall -columns of the Duke of York and Nelson rose over the -trees and buildings to the left; it was in the pause before -the dinner and theatre traffic begins, and only a few taxi-cabs -and a car or so emphasized the breadth of the processional -roadway. Half a dozen windows in the Admiralty -had taken fire already from the sinking sun.</p> - -<p>“I suppose,” said Lambone, “he’s gone down there.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span>Christina Alberta stood with her arms akimbo and her -feet a little apart. “I suppose he has.”</p> - -<p>The wide road ran straight to the distant Admiralty Arch. -And through that remote little opening was Trafalgar -Square and Charing Cross and a radiating tangle of roads -and streets spreading out and beyond and further into the -twilight blue.</p> - -<p>“What will he make for now?”</p> - -<p>“Heaven knows. I’m bankrupt. I haven’t an idea.”</p> - -<p>Neither spoke for a little while.</p> - -<p>“He’s gone,” she said, “just gone,” and that simple and -desolating thought filled her mind.</p> - -<p>But the thoughts of Paul Lambone were more complex -and intricate.</p> - -<p>He perceived that a serious adventure was happening to -him and that he was called upon to exert himself. He had -suddenly been called away from his tea and hot tea-cake to -hunt a slightly demented comparative stranger about -London. He wanted to do it, and he wanted to do it properly -and in a way to impress Christina Alberta. And his -intelligence told him that the best thing he could do would -be to follow upon the probable track of his quarry and -come up with him before he got into mischief. Or while -he was getting into mischief—and interfere and carry him -off. And meanwhile his more exercised lower nature was -exhorting him to leave Christina Alberta to do the pursuing -alone, and go back as straightly as possible to his -ample arm-chair and sit down and think things out. And -then go to his best club to dinner. And in fact quietly and -neatly get out of this unexpected and tiresome business -altogether.</p> - -<p>And then he looked at Christina Alberta and realized that -he could do nothing of the sort. He couldn’t leave her. He -looked at her profile, the profile of a grave child, and an -almost maternal emotion was aroused in him. She looked<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span> -with anxious and perplexed eyes at the blue and limitless -city that had swallowed up her Daddy. The scene was still -warm with the evening sun-glow, but the blue twilight -gathered in the lower eastern sky. Here and there a yellow -pin-point showed that London was beginning to light itself -up. She couldn’t go down that road alone. Absurdly, -preposterously they were linked. The impulse to disentangle -himself was the impulse of a selfish discretion that -was rapidly taking all the happiness out of his life and -leaving security and luxuries in its place. This was a call -to that latent Paul Lambone to <i>act</i>. Even supposing she -was a common, queer little flapper that his imagination had -made into a friend and heroine, was that any reason whatever -why he shouldn’t see her through this trouble that had -come upon her?</p> - -<p>He made his decision.</p> - -<p>“He won’t go back for ages,” he said following up the -problem. “Nobody would on an evening like this.”</p> - -<p>“No,” she said. “But I don’t see that that gives me any -hint of what I ought to do next.”</p> - -<p>“We can keep together and go down towards Trafalgar -Square. We might look along the Embankment. When -we are tired we can get some dinner somewhere. You can -get a sort of dinner almost anywhere I suppose. We shall -want our dinner.... Perhaps it’s not so hopeless a job as -it seems at first. A big job but not a hopeless one. There -are limitations to what he may do. Limitations in himself -I mean. I don’t think he’ll go into uninteresting streets. -His feeling is—spectacular. He’s much more likely to -keep to open spaces and near conspicuous buildings. That -cuts out a lot of streets. And he won’t go far east. In -another hour the city will be shutting up and going home -and putting out its lights. He’ll turn back out of that—westward.”</p> - -<p>“You can spare the time?”</p> - -<p>“I’ve no engagements at all to-night. It was to have been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span> -an ‘off’ night. And this business attracts me. It is interesting -to see just how far we can infer and guess his proceedings. -It’s a curious mental exercise.... Do you -know I think we shall find him!”</p> - -<p>She stood quite still for some moments.</p> - -<p>“It’s awfully good of you to come with me,” she said.</p> - -<p>“I come on one condition.... That you don’t walk -too fast. We’ve never walked much together, Christina -Alberta, but I’ve seen enough of you to know that you -walk abominably fast.”</p> - -<h4>§ 8</h4> - -<p>Every one knows the Café Neptune near Piccadilly Circus -and the various crowd that assembles there. There you -see artists and painters that are scarcely artists, poets and -mere writers, artists’ models and drug-fiends, undergraduates -in arts and medicine who are no better than -they should be, publishers and gay lawyers, Bolsheviks and -White Refugees, American visitors who come to scoff and -remain a prey, stray students from the Far East and Jews -and Jews and Jews—and Jewesses. And hither at about -half-past nine that night came a stout, large, and wearily-distinguished-looking -man accompanied by an attractive -young lady in short skirts and bobbed hair who carried a -large and shapely nose high and sternly, and they threaded -their way among the tables through the smoky atmosphere, -seeking a congenial place. Out of the garrulous confusing -mirk arose a young man with a mop of red hair and protruded -a rampant face and asked in a large whisper: “<i>Have -you found him?</i>”</p> - -<p>“Not a trace,” said Paul Lambone.</p> - -<p>Fay Crumb’s face looked up from the table through a -haze of cigarette smoke.</p> - -<p>“Nor we. <i>We’ve</i> been looking too.”</p> - -<p>“As well here as anywhere,” said the stout man. “Where -have you looked?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span>“Here,” said Harold, “and hereabouts. It seemed a suitable -rendezvous.”</p> - -<p>“We’ve ranged far and wide,” said Lambone. “We’ve done -miles—oh! endless miles. And Christina Alberta has -refused all nourishment—for me as well as for herself. At -last I said, either I sit down and eat or I drop down and -die. May we take these chairs? You have that one, Christina -Alberta. Waiter! It is a case of extreme fatigue. -No—neither Munchner nor Pilsener. I must have champagne. -Bollinger 1914 will do and it must be iced—rather -over-iced, and with it, sandwiches—a very considerable -number of sandwiches of smoked salmon. Yes—a dozen. -Ah!”</p> - -<p>He dropped his wrists on the table. “When I have -had some drink I will talk,” he wheezed and became -silent.</p> - -<p>“When did you leave the Mews?” Christina Alberta asked -Fay.</p> - -<p>“Half-past eight.... Not a sign of him.”</p> - -<p>“Have you been far?” Harold asked Lambone.</p> - -<p>“<i>Far!</i>” said Lambone and for a time was incapable of -more.</p> - -<p>His voice seemed to recede in perspective. “Asking -policemen for a small, hatless man. Over great areas of -London. On and on—from one policeman to another.... -She’s a most determined young woman. God help the -man who wins her love! Not a soul had seen him. But I -can’t talk <i>yet</i>....”</p> - -<p>Harold clawed his chin softly with long artistic fingers. -“It is just possible,” he said slowly, “that he went in somewhere -and bought a hat.”</p> - -<p>“Of course he must have got a hat,” said Fay.</p> - -<p>“It never occurred to either of us that he would do anything -so sane.”</p> - -<p>“We never thought of asking in the hatters’ shops,” said -Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span>“Happily,” said Lambone, and turned to welcome his -refreshment. “That would have been the last straw.”</p> - -<p>“For a long time we were on the trail of another hatless -man,” said Christina Alberta. “We ran him down in the -Essex Road after tracking him all up Pentonville. But he -was just a vegetarian in sandals and a beard. And there -was a report of a hatless man near the Britannia, but that -came to nothing. He seemed just to have come out of his -house somewhere to buy fried fish off a barrow in the -Camden Town High Street.”</p> - -<p>“Extraordinary how a crowd collects when you ask the -simplest questions,” said Lambone with his mouth full of -sandwich. “And how urgently helpful it can be. They -almost forced us up a staircase after that fried-fish man, -who struck me as an extremely pugnacious, suspicious-looking -fellow. The crowd would have it we wanted him, -and he didn’t seem to want in the very least to be wanted. -If I hadn’t had an inspiration something very disagreeable -might have happened. I just said ‘No, it’s not this gentleman, -it’s another of the same name.’”</p> - -<p>“But what did he say?”</p> - -<p>“‘You <i>better</i>,’ he said. But anyhow it satisfied the crowd, -and afterwards we got away quite easily on an omnibus -that took us down to Portland Road Station.”</p> - -<p>The champagne arrived in its ice pail. “Hardly cold, sir, -yet,” said the waiter, feeling the bottle.</p> - -<p>“It’s not a time for fastidiousness,” said Lambone and -took a third sandwich. “You’re not eating, Christina -Alberta. And I insist upon your having at least one -glass of this.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta drank a little and ate mechanically.</p> - -<p>“I wonder if we shall ever see him again,” said Harold. -“London is so vast. So <i>vast</i>! But I always feel that, when -I see anyone go out anywhere. There is a tremendous -courage in going out. London must be full of lost people. -I used to be afraid of London until I discovered the Tubes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span> -and the Underground. I felt I might be sucked up side-streets -to God knows where. And keep on going round -corners into longer and longer streets for ever. I used to -dream of the last street of all—<i>endless</i>. But whenever I get -nervous I just ask for the nearest tube station and there -I am.”</p> - -<p>“He <i>may</i> be back at the studio now,” said Fay.</p> - -<p>Paul Lambone reached his fourth sandwich and his third -glass of champagne with great rapidity. He became more -leisurely in his refreshment.</p> - -<p>“I am disappointed,” he said, “that I didn’t think of the -possibility of his buying a hat. It has disorganized all my -inductions. You see I was so concentrated on what was -going on inside his head that I never troubled about what -might be going on outside it. But a man of his neat and -proper habits—acquired through a lifetime of orderly -living—would get himself a hat almost mechanically.... -We may have passed quite close to him in that.”</p> - -<p>“I should have known him,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“But, until that Pentonville man drew a red herring across -the trail, I am convinced we were close on his footsteps. -You see Christina Alberta insisted upon my asking every -policeman we saw—even men, overworked, irritable, -snappy, <i>rude</i> men controlling the traffic—but at any rate I -chose the route—I inferred the route. You see, my dear -Watson”—he smiled faintly in weary self-approval at -Crumb—“the essential thing in a case like this is to put -yourself in your man’s place, to think his thoughts instead -of your own. That is what I tried—so far as being out of -breath would allow it—to impress on Christina Alberta. -It’s fairly straightforward. Here you have a man convinced, -beautifully and enviably convinced, that he is the -supreme lord of the world, unknown, unrecognized as yet, -but on the eve of his proclamation. Will such a man go -along any street just as easily as any other? Not at all! -He will be elated, expansive, ascendant. Very well; he will<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span> -go up hill and not down. He will choose wide highways -and not narrow ones and tend towards the middle of the -street——”</p> - -<p>“He hasn’t been run over!” cried Christina Alberta -sharply.</p> - -<p>“No. No. He would avoid traffic because that -would hustle him and impair his dignity. Open spaces -would attract him. High buildings, bright lights, the intimations -of any assembly would draw him powerfully. So -he certainly crossed Trafalgar Square from the Admiralty -Arch in a diagonal direction, towards the conspicuous invitation -of the Coliseum.... You see my method?”</p> - -<p>He did not wait for Crumb to answer. “But the more I -think over our missing friend,” he went on, “the more I -admire and envy him. What crawling things we are!—content -to be subjects, units, items, pawns, drops of water -and grains of sand, in the multitudinous, unmeaning muddle -of human affairs. He soars above it. He soars above it -now. He rejects his commonness and inferiority in one -magnificent gesture. <i>His</i> world. The grandeur of it! -Wherever he is to-night and whatever fate overtake him, -he is a happy man. And we sit here, we sit here and -drink—I am ordering another bottle of that wine, Harold, -and I expect you and Mrs. Crumb to abandon that warm -and sticky beer and join me—Waiter! Yes—another, -please—we sit here in this crowded, smoky gathering (<i>look</i> -at ’em!) while he plans the salvation of the world that we -let slide, and lifts his kingly will to God. Glorious exaltation! -Suppose that all of us could be touched——”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta interrupted. “I think we ought to telephone -to the hospitals. I didn’t think before of the possibility -of his being run over. Always he has been a little -careless at crossings.”</p> - -<p>Paul Lambone lifted a deprecating hand and searched in -his mind for some excuse for rest.</p> - -<p>“A little later,” he said after a slight pause, “the hospital<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span> -staffs will be more at leisure. It is their rush hour now—ten -to eleven. Yes, the Rush Hour....”</p> - -<h4>§ 9</h4> - -<p>Teddy Winterton appeared wading through obstructive -seated people. His eye was fixed on Christina Alberta. -“Hullo!” said Lambone in not too cordial greeting, and -glanced at Christina Alberta and back at the new-comer.</p> - -<p>Teddy struggled for an unoccupied chair over which -some lady had thrown a sealskin coat, and captured it with -profuse apologies to the owner of the cloak and squeezed -it in at the end of the table between Harold and Fay, who -barred his way to Christina Alberta. “Have pity on a -lonely man,” he said genially and tried to catch the eye of -Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“You shall have one glass of champagne,” said Lambone -with a slightly forced welcome in his tone.</p> - -<p>“How do, Christina Alberta!” said Teddy forcing her -attention.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta turned to Fay. “Will you come back -with me now,” she said to her, “back to the flat? I must -do that telephoning to the hospitals now or it won’t -be done.”</p> - -<p>Fay looked at her curiously. “It’s serious,” said Christina -Alberta’s eyes, and Fay stood up and struggled with -her coat. Teddy leaped to his feet to assist her. Christina -Alberta had not removed her cloak, and was ready. “I say, -Christina Alberta,” said Teddy. “I want a word with you.”</p> - -<p>“Go on, Fay,” said Christina Alberta, giving her friend a -little dig in the back and pretending not to hear him.</p> - -<p>Teddy followed them out to the Piccadilly pavement. -“Just a word,” he said. Fay was for standing a little way -off, but Christina Alberta would not let that happen.</p> - -<p>“I don’t want a word,” she said.</p> - -<p>“But I might help you.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span>“You might have done. But it’s too late. I never want -to see you again.”</p> - -<p>“Give a fellow a chance.”</p> - -<p>“You’ve had your chance. And tried to take it.”</p> - -<p>“You might at least keep up appearances,” said Teddy.</p> - -<p>“Damn appearances!” said Christina Alberta. “Oh! -<i>Come</i> on, Fay.”</p> - -<p>She gripped her friend’s arm.</p> - -<p>Teddy was left hovering. He hesitated and then went -back into the café to rejoin Crumb and Lambone.</p> - -<p>The two young women went on in silence for a little -while.</p> - -<p>“Anything up?” Fay ventured.</p> - -<p>“Everything’s up,” said Christina Alberta. “I wonder if -there’s a ghost of a chance of finding Daddy at the studio.”</p> - -<p>They made their way to Chelsea without much further -conversation. Fay had never before seen Christina Alberta -looking tired.</p> - -<p>When Fay opened the door Christina Alberta pushed -in past her. “Daddy!” she cried in the dark passage. -“Daddy!”</p> - -<p>Fay clicked on the light. “No,” said Christina Alberta. -“Of course he’s not here. He’s gone. Fay! What am I to -<i>do</i>?”</p> - -<p>Fay’s pale blue eyes became rounder. Christina Alberta, -the valiant, the modern, was in tears.</p> - -<p>“There’s the hospitals,” said Fay, doing her best to be -brisk and cheerful.</p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>BOOK THE SECOND</i><br> -<br> -THE WORLD REJECTS SARGON,<br> -KING OF KINGS</h2> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE FIRST<br> - -<i>Incognito</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">M<small>R. PREEMBY</small> had disappeared from Christina Alberta’s -world. For a time he must disappear almost as -completely from this story. Mr. Preemby fades out. -Taking over his outward likeness we have now to tell of -another and greater person, Sargon the First, the Magnificent -One, King of all Kings, the Inheritor of the Earth.</p> - -<p>It is no doubt a very wonderful and glorious thing to -discover that instead of being the rather obscure widower -of a laundry proprietor with no particular purpose in the -world one is Lord of the Whole World, but it is also, to a -conscientious man anxious to do right, an extremely disturbing -and oppressive discovery. And at first it is natural -that there should be something a little confusing to the -mind in this vast and glittering idea. It was an idea that -carried with it an effect of release and enlargement. For -purposes as yet obscure, he had been caught like a caged -creature in that limited and uninteresting Preemby life. -His imagination had rebelled against its finality; some -deep instinct had warned him that his life was an illusion; -in moments of reverie, and sometimes between sleeping and -waking, there had been intimations of a light and purpose -beyond the apparent reality. Now abruptly, as though a -portal swung open, as though a curtain was drawn, that -light poured upon him dazzlingly. His was no single life -that begins and ends and is done with like an empty song.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span> -His existence was like a thread that shone and vanished and -returned in the unending fabric of being; that was woven -into a purpose. In the past he had been Porg in the city -of Kleb, and he had been Sargon and Belshazzar. Many -others had he been, but those memories still slumbered -under the dark waters of forgetfulness. But the memory -of Sargon shone bright. It was his Sargon self that had -returned and no other of his selves. For some reason that -was still obscure the Power that ruled his life needed him -to be Sargon once again, in this great distressful world of -to-day. Sargon had begun life humbly as an outcast babe -and had risen to restore and rule and extend a mightier -Empire than the old world had ever seen before. Certain -qualities (h’rrmp) had been displayed by Sargon, and because -of these qualities the Power had called upon him -again.</p> - -<p>A whole series of memories was unfolding in his mind. -With an extraordinary convincingness he recalled his youth, -memories of those distant days in Sumeria where the -Power had set him on high. They were so bright and so -pleasing that already they were thrusting his recollections -of Sheringham and Woodford Wells into the background, -making a fading phantom of his Preemby existence. He -had never cherished these latter experiences, never turned -them over in his mind with any pleasure. But his newly-restored -memories were memories to dwell upon. There -were pictures of his early life when he was a foundling, -a mysterious foundling at the court of his predecessor. -(That predecessor’s name still escaped him.) Young -Sargon was a fair and blue-eyed youth, a thing rare in -brown Sumeria, and he had been found floating down the -great river in a little cradle boat of rushes and bitumen, -and he had been taken and adopted by the ruler of the -land. And already as a lad he was pointed out as having -an exceptional wisdom, as being able to do what other men -could not do, he had the genius of the ruler. It was not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span> -that he had great cleverness nor great skill nor strength. -Many of those about him excelled him in these minor -things—in cleverness and memory work in particular, -Prewm, the son of the Grand Vizier, excelled him—but he -had the true, the kingly wisdom beyond them all.</p> - -<p>“The true, the kingly wisdom,” said Mr. Preemby-Sargon -aloud and came into sharp collision with a tall, dark gentleman -hurrying from St. James’s Park towards St. James’s -Palace. “Sorry!” cried Mr. Preemby-Sargon.</p> - -<p>“My fault,” said the tall, dark gentleman. “Late for an -appointment.” And swept on.</p> - -<p>Odd! Where had Mr. Preemby—or Sargon—seen that -face before? Could it be—Something connected it -vaguely with Sheringham and sunlit sand. And then -Sumeria came uppermost and the tall, dark gentleman became -the chieftain of a desert tribe, a desert tribe amidst -the sands.</p> - -<p>The ruffled surface became calm again, and that boyhood -in Sumeria resumed possession of the mirror. Where were -we? Even in those early days men had marked a gravity -in the lad beyond his years. He had avoided puerile games. -In all his lives he had avoided puerile games. No cricketer -even at Sheringham. Modestly but firmly this youth had -raised his voice in the council chamber and his words were -seen to be wisdom. The old men had sat around marvelling. -“He sayeth Sooth,” they said in their antique Sumerian -way. A soothsayer. He was also called the Young -Pathfinder.</p> - -<p>Before Sargon was fifteen the old childless ruler, beset -by enemies, threatened with plots, had marked him. “This -boy might save the state.” Then, while yet only a few -days over eighteen he was given charge of an expedition to -pacify the mountain folk of the north and persuade them -not to ally themselves with the Enemy of the North. He -did more than he was told to do. He went through the -mountain land into the plains beyond, and gave battle to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span> -the Enemy of the North and defeated him and smote him -severely. After that all men perceived that he must be the -new Lord and Master of Sumeria, the successor of his aged -Patron. All applauded with sincerity except Prewm the -Clever (already adorned with precocious sprouting -whiskers) and he applauded with envy in his eyes. And -then came the days of the Succession, and the Inauguration -of the Harem, beautiful days. And after that the birth of -the Princess Royal, his only child, and that great expedition -into the deserts of the south. And more expeditions -and great law-makings, wise laws and wiser, and crowds -of applauding, grateful people and happy villages. Life -became happy universally. Prewm plotted and rebelled -and was dealt with after the simple custom of the time. -That was a regrettable necessity, a thing not to be dwelt -upon. The frontiers spread and the great peace spread; -Russia, Turkey in Europe, Persia, India, Ancient Egypt, -Somaliland, and so on and so forth, were conquered and -made happy. America and Australia and the remains of -Atlantis, still not completely submerged, were discovered. -They were forgotten again afterwards, but they were really -discovered then—and paid tribute. A League of Nations -was established.</p> - -<p>All the world told of the goodness of Sargon and lived -golden days. For Sargon ruled by the light of justice in -his heart. He mitigated the sacrifices in the Temples and -introduced a kind of Protestantism into the creeds and -services. The people made songs praising him. Passing -men and women would run to kiss his hand. Nor did he -deny himself to his people. That confidence was his end. -Came alas! the assassin’s knife, the black assassin, a -madman, a stranger——!</p> - -<p>It was wonderful. He could remember his people -mourning after he was dead.</p> - -<p>The white glove of a policeman against Mr. Preemby-Sargon’s -chest just saved him from stepping in front of a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span> -motor ’bus. He recoiled dexterously. He was in Trafalgar -Square, a great meeting-place, a confluence. Here in the -warm light of the October afternoon was a crowd even -greater than the Sumerian crowds. Here he would observe -them. They were dark crowds, anxious-faced crowds. His -coming back had to do with them. There had been a great -war, much devastation; the world was wounded and unable -to recover. The poor rulers and politicians of this age -had no wisdom, had no instinct for the fundamentally right -thing. Once more a leader and a saviour was required, -one who had the wisdom that counts.</p> - -<p>It was Sargon that walked under the noses of Nelson’s -lions and made his way past the statue of George the -Fourth to the balustrading that commands the square. He -took up his position there for a long survey. He looked -down Whitehall to the great tower of the Houses of Parliament -and Whitehall was full of a golden haze set with a -glitter of traffic. The stream of omnibuses, cars, and -motor vans poured up to mingle with the streams that -came out of Northumberland Avenue and the Strand, and -the joint flow sundered again to the left of him and to -the right away to Pall Mall, across the square there. No -street lamps were lit as yet, but in the rounded bluffs of -building to the left a few windows were warm with lights. -Below, across the square, thin streams of pedestrians flowed -like ants from one point to another and the squat little -station of the Tube Railway perpetually swallowed up -dots and clumps of individuals. Some sort of meeting was -going on at the foot of the Nelson column, a mere knot of -people without evident enthusiasm. Men with white and -red placards about Unemployment were distributing white -handbills and shaking collecting boxes. Immediately underneath -a few poorly-dressed children ran about and played -and squabbled....</p> - -<p>Just a little patch this was in one of his cities. For, you -see, by the lapse of time and the development of his ancient<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span> -empire, he was the rightful owner and ruler of this city -and of every other city in the world.</p> - -<p>And he had come back to heal the swarming world’s -disorders and reinstate the deep peace of old Sumeria -once again.</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>But how to set about this task?</p> - -<p>That was the difficulty. There must be no Half Advent. -He must take hold swiftly and decisively he realized, and -from the balustrading in front of the National Gallery it -looked a large, loose, scattering sort of world to take hold -of. It might refuse to be taken hold of. If he began now, -if he began to shout from this place, it was more than -likely that no one would heed him. He must watch warily -for his opportunity and <i>make no mistakes</i>. It did not -become the Lord and Restorer of the Whole Earth to make -mistakes.</p> - -<p>Now, for example, that had nearly been a mistake at -Buckingham Palace. It had blown over all right but it -might have had serious consequences. People did not -know the Master yet, had no inkling. “They might,” said -Sargon, lapsing into a Preemby homeliness “have run me -in. And a Pretty Fool I should have looked then!”</p> - -<p>There must be no more hasty action of that sort.</p> - -<p>No. Indeed it became him rather to wait for guidance.</p> - -<p>The Power that had brought him back into the world and -awakened him to a sense of his true identity and his -mission, might be trusted presently to send him an enlightened -supporter or so—who would recognize him. Because, -of course, he must resemble the monarch he had been—even -as Hockleby had been recognizably like Prewm. As -he weighed this thought his hand sought his moustache -and he twisted it thoughtfully. It was in effect a disguise. -Meanwhile—? Meanwhile he must see what he could,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span> -determine the mood of the people and learn their particular -needs and distresses. He could go among his people -unsuspected—like Haroun al Raschid, but for a wiser -purpose....</p> - -<p>“Haroun al Raschid,” whispered Sargon and looked up to -Lord Nelson and nodded to him in a friendly way. -“Haroun al Raschid. Would that my pocket was full of -pieces of gold! But of that to-morrow. That man—what -was his name?—Preemby had a bank somewhere.”</p> - -<p>He felt for his breast pocket. The cheque-book was -still there. One signed the cheques “<i>A. E. Preemby</i>”—queer, -but one did. This A. E. Preemby had played the -part of a chrysalis. His hoard remained.</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>In the Strand his Majesty caught a glimpse of his -reflection in a shop window. His hair was a little disordered, -and he disliked to have his hair disordered. He went -into a hat shop that presented itself conveniently and -bought himself a hat.</p> - -<p>He took out his little note-case to pay—a reassuring -thing to do. For in it were no less than seven pound-notes. -He counted them with satisfaction. After paying up at -Tunbridge he had drawn again on his bank. He hesitated -whether he should give largesse to the shopman—and did -not do so.</p> - -<p>It was not another grey felt hat with a black ribbon -he bought; it was an exceptional felt hat with a large brim -such as an artist or a literary personage might have chosen. -It was not the hat that Albert Edward Preemby, the restrained, -the hesitating, would have bought; it was much -more Sargon’s sort of hat. Yet not pure Sargonesque; -there was a touch of disguise about it still, a more manifest -disguise. The brim came down over one’s brow. One<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span> -could see ever and again in shop windows and incidental -mirrors that now a shadow of mystery lay upon those -brooding blue eyes.</p> - -<p>He made his way eastward towards Aldwych and so into -Kingsway, looking now at the shops, now scanning the -faces of the people.</p> - -<p>To-day he was The Unknown. Scarce a soul that gave -him a second glance. But soon would come discovery and -then all this careless jostling crowd would be magnetized -as he passed, would turn with one accord to him. They -would salute and whisper and wonder. And he must be -ready for them, ready to guide their destinies forthwith. -It would not do to stand at a loss and say “Er,” to stand -collecting his thoughts and clear his throat, “H’rrmp.”</p> - -<p>Terrible the responsibility that lay upon him! But he -would not shirk it. What should be his opening words -to them when the moment of revelation came? “First;—Let -there be Peace!” Better words than that one could -not imagine. He muttered to himself; “Peace and not -War among the Nations. Peace and not War among individuals. -Peace in the street—in the workroom—in the shop. -<i>Peace</i>.</p> - -<p>“Love and Peace. I, Sargon the Magnificent, command -it. I, Sargon, have come back after many ages to give -Peace to the Whole World.”</p> - -<p>A shop window drew him. It was a map shop and -prominently displayed in the window was a map of -<i>Europe after the Treaty of Versailles:—Two and Sixpence.</i> -He stood looking at that. It would all have to be altered -again. That was just part of his task. Then he surveyed -the rest of the window. Behind the map of Europe there -hung a wall-map of the world. He would need such a -map of the world; you cannot rule the world without a -map of it. Or you may forget large portions. Or would -a globe be better? Maps are all to be seen at once, and -besides they are more portable. Furthermore, the shop<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span> -did not seem to sell globes and he did not know where -globes were to be bought. He went in and bought the -world map and emerged again on Kingsway after an -interval, with a roll four feet long under his arm. He was -also carrying an ingenious flat-paper planisphere which -had caught his fancy as he stood at the counter. It might -be useful, he felt, for astrological purposes.</p> - -<p>He began to think vaguely of his possible destination. -Whither was he going?</p> - -<p>He was seeking quarters, he was seeking indeed some -lonely hermitage. He had slipped away from the Princess -Royal, who also had come back—rather needlessly he -thought—into this modern world, because it was necessary -for him to be absolutely alone for a time. He had to spend -some days or weeks in spiritual struggle and meditation -and mental purification before his revelation came. Even -she might not minister to him during that period. She -was devoted, but she hampered him. Indeed, she hampered -him greatly. She did not fully understand. Her remarks -and questions were generally disconcerting and sometimes -downright annoying. It was quite probable that the metamorphosis -might never occur with her about. And, besides, -always in the history of great Visitants and marvellous -returns there had been this opening phase of withdrawal -and self-communion. Buddha, Muhammad; they had -all done it. Perhaps he would fast. Perhaps fasting -would be necessary. Perhaps there would be Celestial -Visitants.</p> - -<p>He wished he knew more of the technique of fasting. -Did one just stop having meals or were there ceremonies -and precautions? But of that later. First he had to find -that quiet room, his secret place of final preparation.</p> - -<p>Presently he found himself in the grey squares of -Bloomsbury and every house he passed displayed in its -window a genteel card offering “Apartments” or “Bed and -Breakfast.” Here also were “Private Hotels” and even a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span> -plain “Boarding House.” Well, here no doubt it had to be. -A simple room amidst his unsuspecting people, a simple, -simply furnished room.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>But through all Bloomsbury, to judge by the dark green -and silver cards in its ground-floor windows, was offering -shelter and sustenance to the homeless and the stranger, -the new Lord of the World found it no easy matter to -secure that simple room he needed for his own use. For -more than an hour he was visiting one grey house after -another, knocking, standing on doorsteps, entering passages -laid with immemorial oilcloth, and demanding a -sight of the accommodation offered, inspecting it, asking -prices—and—it became more and more evident—arousing -suspicion. The people stared at his rolled-up map and -his planisphere and seemed to dislike them instinctively. -He had not expected such blunt demands for information; -his vague mysteriousness was swept aside, he found himself -difficult to explain. They wanted to know how he was -occupied and when he would like to move in. None of -them seemed prepared for him to just sit down in his -room there and then. They expected him to go out and -fetch his luggage. It undermined his confidence that -behind him there was no luggage. All these people, he -realized more and more distinctly, would expect him to -produce luggage and might behave unreasonably if he did -not do so. A mere readiness to pay in advance, he -gathered, was not enough for them.</p> - -<p>He had counted upon finding kind and simple people -behind these lodging-house doors, people who would accept -him and look up to him from the first and wonder about -him and his planisphere, speculate about its significance -and gradually realize the marvellous visitant that had come -to them. But the people he saw were not simple people.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span> -Mostly they were dingy, sophisticated people. They -came up out of basements in a mood of sceptical -scrutiny, men in shirt sleeves, morose for the most part -and generally ill-shaven; extremely knowing and anything -but virginal young women, grimy looking older women, -hungrily lean or unwholesomely fat. One had a goitre-like -growth. And always there was something defensive in -their manner.</p> - -<p>And the rooms he saw were even less simple than the -people. His consciousness was invaded by a sense of the -vast moral changes that had happened to the world since -he had ruled the white-robed honesty of his Sumerian -irrigators. Then a room would have a table, a seat or two, -a shelf with a few phials, an image or suchlike religious -object, a clay tablet and a writing style, perhaps, if the -occupant was educated. But these rooms were encumbered -with contradictions. They had windows to let in the light -and dark curtains to keep it out. Sargon’s hidden second -youth in the laundry had made him very sensitive to dirtiness, -and the cotton-lace curtains of those places were -generally very dirty indeed. Electric light was still rare -in “apartments”; mostly they were lit from gas brackets -that descended from the centre of the ceiling and carried -globes of frosted and cut glass. Always there was a considerable -table in the centre and two uneasy arm-chairs. -And there were lumpish sideboards of shiny, liver-coloured -wood and comfortless sofas and incredible ornaments. -Sometimes the rooms, and particularly the bedrooms, had -a meretricious smartness and gaiety with mezzotints of -ladies in the natural state trying to pass themselves off as -allegorical figures or of the Baths in the congested harems -of wealthy, rather than refined, Orientals. The over-mantels -were extraordinary affairs and much loaded with -crockery ornaments, little jars, small gilt-winged angels, -red devils, or encouraging looking ladies in bathing-dresses -that were too tight for them. A common form of decoration<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span> -was to fasten up plates on the wall much as one sees vermin -nailed up on a barn.</p> - -<p>A considerable number of these homes for hire were as -shabby as roadside tramps. One stood out in his memory -as faded and dusty and grey and threadbare beyond the -possibility of reality. His self-absorption was penetrated -by the wonder of who could live and who could have -lived in such quarters. All his life had been amongst -clean and bright surroundings; it was rare that he had -any glimpses of that worn and weary stratum of English -town life in which things are patched indeed, but in -which it is rare for anything to be mended or cleaned and -incredible that anything should be replaced. Even the -air in these rooms seemed long out of date and the glass -over the rusty engravings of the Monarch of the Glen -and the Stag at Bay spotted by remote ancestral flies.</p> - -<p>“Does anyone ever stay here?” asked Sargon of the -shattered-looking lady in charge.</p> - -<p>He did not realize the cruelty of his question until he -had asked it.</p> - -<p>“My last gentleman stayed here fifteen years,” said the -shattered lady. “He was a copying clerk. He died in -hospital this June. Dropsy. He always found this very -satisfactory—<i>very</i> satisfactory. I never knew him complain. -He was a very good friend to me.”</p> - -<p>A great desire for fresh air came upon Sargon. “How -much are these rooms?” he asked. “I must think it over. -Think it over and let you know.”</p> - -<p>She asked her price, the usual price in that street, but -as she led the way down to the door she said: “If it’s too -much—If you made an offer, sir——”</p> - -<p>Despair looked out of her grime-rimmed eyes.</p> - -<p>“I must think about it,” said Sargon and was once more -at large.</p> - -<p>Why did people get so dirty and dismal and broken -down? Surely in Sumeria there were never lives like that!<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span> -It would have to be altered; all this would have to be -altered when the Kingdom came.</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>Then as the twilight deepened Sargon discovered just -the peaceful room he desired. It announced itself hopefully -not by the usual printed card but by a hand-written -tablet saying “A Room to Let,” in a window that had no -lace curtains but little purple ones enhancing rather than -concealing a bare-looking white room lit pleasantly by the -flickering of a fire. There were one or two pictures—real -coloured pictures—hanging on the white wall. Rather -wearily Sargon lifted the knocker and supplemented its -appeal by pressing the electric bell.</p> - -<p>There was no immediate answer, and he knocked a -second time before the door opened. A slender young man -appeared holding a small girl perched on his shoulder. -She regarded Sargon gravely with very dark grey-blue -eyes.</p> - -<p>“Everybody seems to have gone out,” said the slender -young man in a very pleasant voice. “What can I do -for you?”</p> - -<p>“You have a room to let,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“There <i>is</i> a room to let here, yes,” said the slender young -man and his appreciative dark eyes took in the details -of the figure in front of him.</p> - -<p>“Could I see it?”</p> - -<p>“I suppose he might <i>see</i> it, Susan,” the young man hesitated.</p> - -<p>“Of course the gem’s got to see it,” said the small girl. -“If Mrs. Richman was here she’d show it him fast enough, -old stoopid.” And she pulled the slender young man’s -hair—affectionately but very, very hard.</p> - -<p>“You see,” the young man explained. “The landlady is -out. <i>Don’t</i>, Susan. And the landlady’s lady assistant is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span> -out, too. Every one is out—and we’re sort of unofficially -left in charge somehow. Properly, I ought not to have -answered the door.”</p> - -<p>“But I told you to—<i>silly</i>!” said the little girl.</p> - -<p>The young man made no definite move. Instead, he -asked a question. “Is that a map, sir, you are carrying?” -he asked.</p> - -<p>“It is a map of the world,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“Very helpful I should think, sir. And so you found -your way here. Well—The room’s upstairs if you’d -come up. Hold tight, Susan, and try not to strangle me.” -And he led the way up the staircase.</p> - -<p>It was just the usual staircase and hall with oilcloth -and wall-paper to imitate some exceptionally bilious -coarse-grained wood. As they ascended the young lady -ran great risks in her resolution never to take her eyes -off Sargon and his map. She twisted round a complete -circle and forced her bearer to stop on the first landing -and readjust her. “If you pull my hair once more,” said -the slender young man, “I shall put you down and never, -never, never give you a ride again. It’s on the next floor, -sir, if you’d go first.”</p> - -<p>The room appeared delightfully free from unnecessary -furnishings. There was a little plain bed, a table under -the window, and a gas-stove, and the walls were papered -in brown paper, adorned with commonplace but refreshing -Japanese colour prints. There was a recess one side of the -fire-place with three empty shelves painted like the mantelpiece, -a deep blue. The young man had clicked on an -electric light, which was pleasantly shaded.</p> - -<p>“It’s rather plain,” said the young man.</p> - -<p>“I like it,” said Sargon. “I have no use for superfluities.”</p> - -<p>“It used to be my room,” said the young man, “but -now I share the dining-room floor with the people downstairs -and I’ve given this up. It’s rather on my conscience——”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span>“People downstairs—what people downstairs? There -aren’t no People downstairs. It’s Daddy and Mummy -he means,” said the young lady.</p> - -<p>“It’s rather on my conscience,” said the young man, -“that I persuaded Mrs. Richman to alter the furniture. -It isn’t to everybody’s taste.”</p> - -<p>“May I ask,” said Sargon, “how much the room might -be?”</p> - -<p>“Thirty shillings, I <i>believe</i>,” said the young man, “with -breakfasts.”</p> - -<p>Sargon put down his map and the planisphere upon the -table. He felt that he must secure this room or be for -ever defeated.</p> - -<p>“I am willing,” he said, “to take the room. I would pay -for it in advance. And take up my quarters at once. But, -I must warn you, my position in the world is peculiar. -I give no reference, I bring no luggage.”</p> - -<p>“Except of course these charts,” said the young man. -“Haven’t you—for instance—a toothbrush?”</p> - -<p>Sargon thought. “No. I must get myself a toothbrush.”</p> - -<p>“I think it would <i>look</i> better,” said the young man.</p> - -<p>“If necessary,” said Sargon, “I will pay for two weeks in -advance. And I will get myself all necessary things.”</p> - -<p>The young man regarded him with an affectionate expression. -“If it was my room I should let you have it like -a shot,” he said. “But Mrs. Richman is the landlady and -in many respects she’s different from me. Have you—travelled -far, sir?”</p> - -<p>“In space,” said Sargon, “<i>No</i>.”</p> - -<p>“But in time, perhaps?”</p> - -<p>“In time, yes. But I would rather not enter into explanations -at present.”</p> - -<p>The young man’s interest and amusement deepened. He -put Susan down on her feet. “Might I look at your -map?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Willingly,” said Sargon. He unrolled the map on the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span> -table and put his finger on London. “We are here,” he -said.</p> - -<p>“Exactly,” said the young man, helping to hold the map -on the table from which it seemed likely to slip.</p> - -<p>“It is still the most convenient centre in the world,” said -Sargon.</p> - -<p>“For almost any purpose,” said the young man.</p> - -<p>“For mine, yes,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“And that star thing—that must be a great help?”</p> - -<p>“It is,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“I suppose you would—<i>work</i> in the room? It would be -just yourself? There would be no coming and going of -people?”</p> - -<p>“None. While I was here, no one would know me. Afterwards -perhaps. But that does not concern us. Here I -should remain incognito.”</p> - -<p>“Incognito,” the young man repeated, as though he considered -the word. “Of course. Naturally. By the by, -sir, might I ask your name? (If you hit me again, Susan, -I shall do something cruel and dreadful to you.) We’d -have to know your name.”</p> - -<p>“For the time I think Mr.—Mr. Sargon.”</p> - -<p>“Of course,” said the young man, “for the time. Sargon—wasn’t -that an Assyrian king, or does my memory betray -me?”</p> - -<p>“It is not the Assyrian Sargon in this case, it is the Sumerian -Sargon, his predecessor.”</p> - -<p>“Not a word more, sir—I understand. You must be -fatigued after your long journey and I should love—I -should dearly love to let you the room. <i>Wow!</i> Susan, -you go downstairs. Pinching I can’t stand. Come along. -You go down to your own proper room and let’s have no -nonsense about it. <i>Come!</i>”</p> - -<p>Susan backed to the wall and prepared to resist tooth -and nail. “I didn’t <i>mean</i> to pinch, Bobby,” she said. “I -didn’t mean to pinch. Troof and really! I was just feelin’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span> -your trousis. Oh, don’t take me down, Bobby! Don’t take -me down. I <i>will</i> be good! I’ll be awful good. I’ll just stay -here and look at the funny geman. If you take me down, -Bobby——”</p> - -<p>“Now, is this a real reformation, Susan—a conversion, a -change of heart? Will you be a <i>jeune femme rangée</i> and -all that, if I forgive you?”</p> - -<p>“I’ll be anyfing, Bobby dear, flet me stay.”</p> - -<p>“Well! cease to exist then—for all practical purposes and -I’ll forgive you. What can the nice gentleman think of -you, Susan? And you more than five! <i>Bah!</i> We were -saying, Mr. Sargon—? Yes, of course, I was saying that -you ought to take the room. Payment in advance will be -accepted. <i>But</i>—there is that toothbrush. And other small—what -shall I say?—realistic touches. <i>I</i> shouldn’t mind -personally, but I’m only an agent, so to speak. Properly -I am a sort of writer. Properly I ought to be writing a -novel now, but, as you see, Mrs. Richman has left the -house on my hands and my friends downstairs have left -this charming young lady on my hands—Put that tongue -back at once, Susan. Unladylike child!—and here we are! -But as I’m saying, Mrs. Richman is the principal. She -has her fancies about lodgers. It is useless to dispute -about them. She will want a show of luggage. She will -insist. But that is really not an insurmountable difficulty. -This—you will remember the name?—is Nine Midgard -Street. If you go out from here and turn to the left, take -the third to the right and go straight on, you will come to -a main thoroughfare full of ’buses and trams and traffic -and light and noise, and at the corner you will find a shop -where they sell second-hand trunks and bags. Now if you -bought an old, battered, largish bag—and then went across -the road to a chemist’s shop and got those washing things -you need—Oh! and a reserve collar or so at the outfitter’s -next door—You <i>must</i> get such things.... You see the -idea?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span>Sargon stood in front of the unlit gas-stove. “This seems -to be acting a falsehood.”</p> - -<p>“But you must have clean collars sometimes,” protested -the young man.</p> - -<p>“I admit that,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“And then you can settle down here and tell me about -that business of yours. Otherwise, you know, you’ll just -wander about.”</p> - -<p>“Your suggestion is really quite a helpful one,” said -Sargon, getting the thing into focus. “I shall adopt -it.”</p> - -<p>“You won’t lose the way back?”</p> - -<p>“Why should I?”</p> - -<p>“Nine Midgard Street.”</p> - -<p>“I shall remember.”</p> - -<p>“Queer world it is,” said the young man; “isn’t it? How -did you leave the old folks in—Sumeria?”</p> - -<p>“My people were happy,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“Exactly. I’ve been there since. <i>Quite</i> recently. But -the weather wasn’t good and I got knocked about by a -shell and had a nasty time as a wounded prisoner. Hot. -Crowded. No shelter. Nothing cool to drink. But in -your time it was different.”</p> - -<p>“Very,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“And now—by Jove! that kettle is boiling over all by this -time, Susan. Come down to my room, such as it is, and -have a cup of tea, sir. And then you can go out and make -those little arrangements of yours and dig yourself in so -to speak before Mrs. Richman comes back. This, by the -by, is your gas meter. You get gas by the shilling in the -slot arrangement.”</p> - -<p>“You are being very, very helpful to me,” said Sargon. -“It shall not be forgotten when my time comes.”</p> - -<p>“Nothing. It just happened you came into my hands so -to speak. No, Susan, we don’t. You <i>walk</i> downstairs. -Pinching is forgiven but not forgotten. You can leave<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span> -your map, sir—and that star thing—as visible signs of -your occupation. No, Susan—on foot.”</p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>The young man’s room was bookish and rather untidy, -and Susan had been killing toys on the carpet—a china-headed -doll and something or other of yellow painted wood -appeared to be the chief victims. The doll had bled sawdust -profusely. Dark curtains were drawn and a green-shaded -electric light threw all the apartment into darkness -except the floor. There was a gas-fire with a gas-ring on -which a boiling kettle steamed like an excited volcano; -there was a deal table on which was a big pile of letters -address to “<i>Aunt Suzannah</i>” c/o Editor of <i>Wilkins’ Weekly</i>, -and there was a large untidy desk on which was another -litter of letters evidently receiving attention, and in the -midst of the desk a writing-pad, on which reposed a -squeezable tube of liquid glue and a half-mended toy. -The glue oozed upon the face sheet of the writing-pad -beneath these words, written in a beautifully neat handwriting:</p> - -<p class="center">UPS AND DOWNS<br> -<br> -<i>A Pedestrian Novel</i><br> -<br> -<small>BY ROBERT ROOTHING</small><br> -<br> -CHAPTER THE FIRST<br> -<br> -<small>WHICH INTRODUCES OUR HERO</small></p> - -<p>Beyond that the novel did not seem to have progressed.</p> - -<p>With the dexterity of long-established usage Bobby made -tea and produced plum-bread and butter. Meanwhile he -kept a wary eye on Susan who had sat down by the waste-paper -basket and was tearing up paper, and attended to -the remarks and attitudes of his remarkable visitor.</p> - -<p>Sargon already liked this young man enormously. It was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span> -extremely reassuring and encouraging to meet such kindly -acceptance and understanding after the chill and doubt -and ugliness of the previous hour’s experiences. And it -was nice and refreshing to have tea. A sort of grey insecurity, -a threat of suppression that had come over his -mind, vanished in this genial atmosphere. The shrivelled -incognito expanded. The hidden mystery beneath it grew -rich and full once more. This young man—he seemed -ready to believe anything. Sargon walked up and down -with his hands behind his back as if in the profoundest -meditation. He would have muttered a few phrases in -Sumerian, but for some reason he had quite forgotten -that forgotten tongue.</p> - -<p>“And so you write books?” he said regally.</p> - -<p>“Not books,” Bobby answered over his shoulder; he was -now toasting a circle of plum-bread. “Not books <i>yet</i>. -But—it <i>is</i> ridiculous, isn’t it?—I am a bit of a poet and -all that sort of thing, and a journalist of sorts. Just -answers to correspondents—laborious, but a living.” He -indicated the piles of letters on the deal table. “As for -books—I have as a matter of fact <i>started</i> a novel—it’s -on that desk—but that’s only in the last few days. And -it’s so difficult to get a lot of time to oneself to really let -oneself go with it.”</p> - -<p>“Inspiration,” said Sargon understandingly.</p> - -<p>“Well, one must let oneself go a bit, I suppose; particularly -at first. But there’s always something one must do -cropping up to prevent it.”</p> - -<p>“With me also.”</p> - -<p>“No doubt.”</p> - -<p>“That is why,” said Sargon, “I am withdrawing into this -solitude. To collect my forces. In Sumeria it was always -the practice, before any great undertaking, to go out -into the wilderness for a certain tale of days.”</p> - -<p>“If I go out into the wilderness I get so lonely in the -evenings,” said Bobby. “<i>Ssh!</i> That was the front door.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span>He went out upon the staircase and stood listening.</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Richman,” Sargon heard him call.</p> - -<p>“S’me,” said a lady’s voice.</p> - -<p>“Here’s a lodger for the second-floor front.”</p> - -<p>“I bin to the pictures,” said the voice outside. “Mary -and Doug—a fair treat.”</p> - -<p>A corpulent lady in a black bonnet appeared breathing -heavily. She panted a few obvious questions and -Bobby hovered helpfully at Sargon’s elbow to prevent -him making any mistakes. “He’ll pay in advance,” said -Bobby.</p> - -<p>“That’s awright,” said Mrs. Richman. “When will he -move in?”</p> - -<p>“He’s getting his luggage right away,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“I suppose it’s all right,” said Mrs. Richman.</p> - -<p>“I know his people. At least I know about them. I’ve -been in his part of the country. You can be quite sure he’s -all right,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“Well, if <i>you</i> say so,” said Mrs. Richman. “’Ope you’ll -be comfortable, Mr.——”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Sargon.”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Sargon.”</p> - -<p>And after a few rather vague comments on the weather -Mrs. Richman withdrew. “And now,” said Bobby, “I’ll -just unload Susan on her and come with you for that -bag. It’s extraordinary how people lose their way in -London at times.”</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>“I’ve let the second-floor front to a lunatic,” said Bobby, -breaking the news to his ground-floor friends, Mr. and -Mrs. Malmesbury.</p> - -<p>“Oh, <i>Bobby</i>! and with Susan about!” cried Mrs. Malmesbury -reproachfully.</p> - -<p>“But he’s a quite <i>harmless</i> lunatic, Tessy—and he had to -be taken in somewhere.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span>“But a lunatic!” said Mrs. Malmesbury.</p> - -<p>“I only said that for effect,” said Bobby. “He’s really -morbidly sane. I wouldn’t have let him go for anything. -Some day when I really get to work on that novel I’ll -put him in. I <i>must</i> have material, Tessy. And he’s -wonderful.”</p> - -<p>He was preparing supper for the Malmesburys and himself. -He was frying some sausages and potatoes over a gas-ring. -Previously Bobby had done most of the putting of -Susan to bed, and he had sat and told her stories according -to custom until she was fast asleep. Tessy Malmesbury -was out of sorts; she had a neuralgic headache, Billy -Malmesbury had taken her for a walk in Regent’s Park -and she had come home exhausted; things would have -gone to pieces badly if Bobby had not taken them in hand.</p> - -<p>Tessy was never very well nowadays; she was a slight -and fragile little thing and Susan had been a violent and -aggressive child long before she was born. In the long-lost -days before the war when Bobby had seen Tessy -first she had been the lightest, daintiest, most perfect thing -imaginable; he had compared her to a white petal drifting -down through sunlight, and almost written a poem about -her; he had loved her tremendously. But it had seemed -to him impossible to make love to so exquisite a being, -and Billy Malmesbury, who was less scrupulous, had -slipped in front of him and married her; she had not -appreciated the delicacy of not making love to her. And -then came the war and wounds and here they all were -again, fagged and near the thirties, in a world where their -small annuities brought them far less than they had -promised to do. Billy was the junior partner of an -architect and much encumbered with drawing-boards. He -was a large-framed young man with a big, round, good-looking, -slightly astonished face, pleasantly dappled with -freckles. He had a great protective affection for Bobby. -He sat now and designed a new sort of labour-saving<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span> -pantry and, with a sense of infinite protection, let Bobby -get the meal.</p> - -<p>“And now I can tell you,” said Bobby, when at last all -three of them were sitting at table.</p> - -<p>“It’s a little dear of a lunatic,” he said. “If it’s a lunatic -at all.”</p> - -<p>“I hope it isn’t,” said Tessy.</p> - -<p>“He’s quite tidy in his person and he hangs together—mentally -he hangs together—and his eyes aren’t in the -least wild. A leetle too bright and open perhaps. But -he <i>does</i> think the world belongs to him.”</p> - -<p>“Well, Susan does that,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“And so does Billy,” said Tessy.</p> - -<p>“But not quite with the same air of magnificent responsibility. -You see he thinks he’s a certain Mesopotamian -monarch called Sargon—I’ve heard of him because we -had a little dust-up with the Turks round and about his -stamping ground—he thinks he’s this Sargon come again -and come somehow—that bit’s a little difficult—into the -empire of the whole earth. It was Sargon, you know, -who started all these British Lions and Imperial Eagles -in the world. And so he proposes to take possession of -the planet, which is in such a frightful mess——”</p> - -<p>“Hear, hear!” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“And put it in order.”</p> - -<p>“What more simple?” cried Tessy.</p> - -<p>“Exactly. Why haven’t we <i>all</i> thought of that?” said -Billy.</p> - -<p>“But where does he come from?” asked Tessy.</p> - -<p>“Not a sign. He might be a suburban nurseryman or -a small draper or something of that sort. I can’t place -him. One or two phrases he used suggested a house-agent. -But he may have picked them up from advertisements. -And his first proceeding—perfectly rational—was to buy -a map of the world. Naturally if you are going to rule -the world, you ought to have a map of it handy.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span>“Has he any money?”</p> - -<p>“Enough to pay his way. He’s got a small note-case. -That seems to be all right. After we’d got a bag for him—he -hadn’t any luggage, and I thought he’d better buy a bag -to satisfy Mrs. Richman—we sat down upstairs and had -a simple straightforward talk about the world and what -had to be done with it. Most instructive.”</p> - -<p>Bobby helped himself to some more fried potatoes.</p> - -<p>“And what <i>is</i> going to be done with it?”</p> - -<p>“Let me see,” said Bobby; “it’s quite an attractive little -programme. Rather I think on the lines of the Labour -programme. Only simpler and more thorough. The Distinction -of Rich and Poor is to be Abolished Altogether. -Women are to be Freed from all Disadvantages. There is -to be No More War. He gets at the roots of things every -time.”</p> - -<p>“If those are the roots,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“But isn’t the real question how to do it?” asked Tessy, -“Aren’t we all agreed about those things—in theory?”</p> - -<p>“In theory, yes,” said Bobby. “But not in reality. If -every one really wanted to abolish the difference of rich -and poor it would be as easy as pie to find a way. There’s -always a way to everything if you want to do it enough. -But nobody really wants to do these things. Not as we -want meals. All sorts of other things people want, but -wanting to have no rich and poor any more isn’t real -wanting; it is just a matter of pious sentiment. And so it -is about war. We don’t want to be poor and we don’t -want to be hurt or worried by war, but that’s not wanting -to end those things. <i>He</i> wants to end them.”</p> - -<p>“But how’s he going to set about it?” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“That is still a little vague. I think there is to be a sort -of Proclamation. He’s thinking that out upstairs now. He -seems to think that he has to call up some sort of disciples. -Then I think he will go down to Westminster and take -the Speaker’s place on the Woolsack or something of that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span> -sort. It <i>is</i> the Speaker sits on the Woolsack, isn’t it? Or is -it the Lord Chancellor? Anyhow, there are to be demonstrations—on -a large and dignified scale. The people have -forgotten the ancient simple laws, he says. He himself -had forgotten them. But he has remembered them now; -they have come back to him, and presently every one will -remember them, all the great old things, justice, faith, -obedience, mutual service. As it was in Ancient Sumeria. -Dreamland Ancient Sumeria, you know. The dear old -Golden Age. He has come to remind people of the true -things in life—which every one has forgotten. And when -he has reminded them every one will remember. And be -good. And there you are, Tessy! I hope it will affect -Susan—but I don’t feel at all sure. I have a sort of -feeling that Susan could stash up any golden age they -started in about five minutes, but then perhaps I’m a bit -prejudiced about her.”</p> - -<p>“It’s rather wonderful all the same,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“He <i>is</i> rather wonderful. He sits up there and looks at -you with his little round innocent face and tells you all -these things. And, assuming he’s Lord of the World, -they’re perfectly right and proper. He sits with the map of -the world unrolled on the table. I ventured to suggest that -he would require a lot of subordinate rulers and directors. -‘They will come,’ he said. ‘No office, no duty shall be -done henceforth except by the Proper People. That has -been neglected too long. Let every man do that he is -best fitted to do. Then everything will be well.’”</p> - -<p>“And when’s all this to begin?” asked Billy.</p> - -<p>“Any time. I don’t think—” Bobby’s expression became -profoundly judicial. “I don’t think he’ll do anything -for a day or so. I pointed out to him that he ought to -consider his demonstrations very carefully before he makes -them, and he seemed inclined to agree. Some mistake, he -says, has occurred already—I couldn’t find out what. -Apparently to-morrow he is just going to look at London,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span> -quietly but firmly, from the Monument and from the -Dome of Saint Paul’s. And also he wants to observe the -manners of his subjects in the streets and railway stations, -and wherever there is a concourse of people. The scales -have fallen from his eyes, he explains, and now that he -knows that he is Lord of the World he realizes how distressed -and unsatisfactory everybody’s life is—even when -they don’t know it’s unsatisfactory. His own life was -terribly unsatisfactory he says, unreal and frustrated, -until he awoke and realized the greatness of his destiny.”</p> - -<p>“And what was that life of his?” asked Tessy.</p> - -<p>“I tried to get that. And he caught the eager note in -my voice I suppose, and shut up like an oyster. The -draper’s shop perhaps. Or a milk-round. I wonder.”</p> - -<p>“But, Bobby,” cried Billy in the expostulatory tone of one -who remonstrates with wild unreason; “he must come from -<i>somewhere</i>!”</p> - -<p>“Exactly,” said Bobby. “And somewhere must be looking -for him. But you can’t always hurry these things. -And meanwhile I take it it’s our bounden duty to keep -an eye on him and see that he doesn’t bump himself too -hard or fall into the wrong hands.... Until some one -comes along.... Don’t you get up, Tessy, you’re tired.”</p> - -<p>And Bobby jumped to his feet and proceeded to change -the plates and dishes while Billy fell into a profound -meditation upon the problem of the new neighbour -upstairs.</p> - -<p>Presently he smiled and shook his head in kindly -disapproval.</p> - -<p>“This will suit Bobby all right,” he said to Tessy. -“Whenever he ought to be upstairs in his own room getting -on with that novel of his he will be up on the second floor -talking to—what is it?—Sargon.”</p> - -<p>“Accumulating material,” corrected Bobby from the -Welsh dresser where he was turning a tin of peaches out -into a glass dish. “Accumulating evidence.... Not even<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span> -a spider could spin a yarn out of an empty stomach. -Tessy, have you just simply <i>lost</i> the cream or have you -put it away in a new place very carefully for me to guess? -Oh, right-o! I’ve got it.”</p> - -<h4>§ 8</h4> - -<p>Let us be frank about it; Sargon had his doubts.</p> - -<p>Not always. There were times when his fantasy was -bravely alive and carried him high above any shadow of -uncertainty, and he was all that he could have ever wished -to be. Then Mr. Preemby was almost forgotten. But -there were moments, there were phases, when he became -aware of a cold undertow of conviction that he was after -all just Mr. Preemby, Mr. Preemby, formerly of the -Limpid Stream Laundry, making believe, carrying it off -and perhaps presently failing to carry it off. This chill -flow of doubt could even oblige him to reason with himself, -force him into a definite reassurance of himself. He -would debate the whole question, candidly, fairly. Surely -there was no deception, could have been no deception, -about that séance. “Told me things no one but I could -have known,” he would repeat. “I pin my faith to that.”</p> - -<p>He knew that Christina Alberta had not really believed. -It was just because of her revealing scepticism that he had -fled from her. She had asked questions, tearing, rending -questions, and she had said “Um.” It is not proper to say -“Um” to world emperors. If presently he fasted or went -into a trance, he felt sure that she would come and stand -about beside him and say “Um,” and spoil everything. -Well, anyhow, he was away from that for a bit. But to be -away from doubt was not enough. The great discovery -threatened to evaporate. He wanted the comfort of the -disciple. He wanted help and reassurance.</p> - -<p>Bobby had comforted him greatly. While Sargon had -been going from one suspicious lodging-house keeper to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span> -another, the faith of the new Saviour of mankind had -weakened dreadfully. But Bobby from the first had had -something deferential in his manner, had seemed to understand. -His questions had grown more and more intelligent. -Perhaps he was to be the first of the reawakened adherents. -Perhaps presently he would be recognizable as some faithful -servant in that still so largely forgotten past, a trusted -general perhaps or some intimate court official.</p> - -<p>Yet even when Sargon doubted he believed. It is a very -comprehensible paradox. He knew clearly that to be -Sargon was to be real, was to signify and make all the -world signify, was to go back into the past and reach right -out into the future, was to escape altogether from the -shrivelled insignificance of the Preemby life. To be -Sargon was to achieve not only greatness but goodness. -Sargon could give and Sargon could dare. Sargon could -face lions and die for his people, but Preemby could go -round three fields, had been known to go round three fields, -to evade the hostility of a barking terrier. Preemby’s world -was dust and dirt, a mud speck in infinite space, and there -was no life on it but abjection. Preemby was death; -Sargon was rebirth into a world of spacious things. Not -very clearly did Sargon achieve these realizations, but -he felt them throughout his being. Something had happened -to him of inestimable value and truth; he had to -cling to this gift and hold it and keep it or be for ever -fallen. Christina Alberta notwithstanding, the whole world -notwithstanding.</p> - -<p>So he walked up and down his little upper room in Midgard -Street and elaborated his conception of his new rôle -as lord and protector of the whole world. Twilight gave -place to night but he did not turn on the light. He liked -the friendly darkness. All visible things are limiting things, -but the darkness goes out and beyond everything to God. -“I must look,” he said. “I must watch and observe. But -not for too long. There is action. Action gives life. That<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span> -fellow Preemby, poor soul, he could look at things, but -dared he lift a finger? No! Everywhere suffering, everywhere -injustice and disorder, the desert and the wilderness -breaking back in on us and he did nothing. If one does -not call and call aloud, how can one expect an answer? -In this world, vast, terrible—strikes—hoardings—adulteration—profiteers.... -Nevertheless men who once lived -bravely and did their duty.... Who may do it again.... -Once they hear the call. Awake! Remember! -The High Path. Simple Honour. Sargon calls you.... -H’rrmp....”</p> - -<p>He came to a halt at his uncurtained window and looked -out on the plain, flat face of the opposite houses, pierced -here and there by a lit window. Most had the blinds -drawn, but just opposite a woman worked by lamp-light -at a table, sewing something, her needle hand flew out -perpetually and the book and one hand and the cuff of a -reader came also into the picture, the rest of him hidden -behind the curtain. At a bedroom window there was a -looking-glass, and a girl tried on a hat and looked at it this -way and that; then suddenly she vanished, and after a -little interval the light went out.</p> - -<p>“All their scattered lives,” said Sargon, holding out his -arms with a benevolent gesture, “knitted—drawn together -by wisdom and love. A rudder put on the drifting world.”</p> - -<p>Came a knock at the door. “Come in,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>Bobby appeared. “Getting on all right, sir?” he said in -his engaging subaltern manner. He clicked on the electric -light and came into the room. (Cadaverous and pleasant -face he had; surely one would remember presently what -he had been.) “Wondered if you were eating anything -to-night?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“I quite forgot eating,” said Sargon. “Quite. My mind—troubled -by many grave matters. I have much to think -of, much to plan. The hour grows late. The time is near. -I wonder if the serving woman here——?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span>“Only breakfasts,” said Bobby. “Here we are on bed -and breakfast terms strictly. The rest is with ourselves. -For an emergency like this there is nothing so good as the -Rubicon Restaurant. The Grill Room keeps open quite -late. They will do you a chop or a cutlet. Or ham and -eggs. Very good ham and eggs—crisp ham. You go out -from here, turn to the left at the second corner, and go -right down Hampshire Street until you come to it. You’ll -have no difficulty in finding it.”</p> - -<p>The word “crisp” had settled it.</p> - -<p>“I will avail myself,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“And it’s equally easy to find your way back,” said -Bobby with a faint flavour of anxiety in his voice.</p> - -<p>“Have no fear, young man,” said Sargon in a tone of -jolly reassurance. “Have no fear. I’ve found my way in -many climes and under many conditions—the wild -mountains—the trackless desert. Time and space.”</p> - -<p>“Of course,” said Bobby. “I forgot that.</p> - -<p>“Still—London is different,” said Bobby.</p> - -<h4>§ 9</h4> - -<p>The next day at about half-past four in the afternoon a -small but heavily moustached figure, with eyes full of blue -determination, emerged from Saint Paul’s Cathedral and -stood at the top of the steps before the great doors, surveying -the jostling traffic of Ludgate Hill and the Churchyard. -There was a sort of valiant uncertainty in the figure’s pose, -as though it was equally resolved to be up to something, -and uncertain about what it meant to do. London had -been looked at from the top of the Monument and from -the Cathedral dome on a crystal-clear October day, and it -had betrayed an unusual loveliness and greatness under -the golden sunshine. But it had shown itself, too, as a vast -dreamy multitudinousness in which none but those who -are resolute and powerful in action can hope to escape<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span> -being swallowed up. It had stretched away to wide sunlit -stretches that seemed to be the horizon, and then up in -the leaden-blue other stretches had been visible of houses, -of shipping, of distant hills. The vans and carts in the -shadowed streets below had looked like toys; the people -were hats and hurrying legs and feet, curiously proportioned. -And over all an immense dome of kindly cloud-flecked -sky.</p> - -<p>He had walked round the little gallery under the ball, -muttering: “A wilderness. A city that has forgotten....</p> - -<p>“How fair it might be. How great it might be!</p> - -<p>“How fair and great it <i>shall</i> be!”</p> - -<p>And now he had come down again from these high places -and the time had come for him to gather together his -disciples and ministers and inaugurate the New World. -He had to call them. Followers would not come to him -unless he called them; they would wait for him to act, not -know even of what awaited them until he called them, but -when he called them they would surely come.</p> - -<p>It was with an extraordinary sense of power over men’s -destinies that he stood now upon Saint Paul’s steps and -reflected that even now men and women might be passing -by, among these busy men thronging the pavement, among -the people in omnibuses, among the girls clattering away -at their typewriters behind the upstairs windows, over -whose busy, petty, undistinguished lives hung the challenge -of his summons. Yonder perhaps was his Abu Bekr, his -right-hand man, his Peter. Let them wait a little longer. -He waved the traffic onward with a gesture of kindly -encouragement. “Soon now,” he said, “very soon. Go on -while ye may. Even now the sorting of the lots begins.”</p> - -<p>Yet a moment more he stood still and silent, a statuette -of destiny. “And now,” he whispered; “and now....</p> - -<p>“And first——”</p> - -<p>He was no longer troubled by his oblivion of the -Sumerian tongue. In the night he had recovered the gift<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span> -of tongues; he had muttered strange words in the darkness, -and understood.</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” he said, a word common to many tongues, -clearing the way after five thousand years for the return of -the forgotten sounds to a renewed use in the world of men. -“Dadendo Fizzoggo Grandioso Magnificendodidodo—yes,” -he whispered. “The Unveiling of the Countenance. -The First Revelation. Then perhaps they will see.”</p> - -<p>And slowly he descended the steps, his eyes searching the -convergent frontages of the Churchyard for some intimations -of a barber’s shop.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE SECOND<br> - -<i>The Calling of the Disciples</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">T<small>HERE</small> are already wide differences of statement and -opinion about the order and the details of the calling -of the followers of Sargon. Happily we are in a position to -give the circumstances with all the exactitude that may be -necessary, and with an authority that will anticipate vexatious -criticism. It was about half-past six that Sargon -appeared in Cheapside, and the day’s traffic was already -ebbing in that busy city thoroughfare. His countenance -was transformed and shone with that kind of luminosity -that only the most thorough and exhaustive shaving can -give. A youthful smoothness had been restored to it. The -facial mane, the vast moustache, that had veiled it for so -many years from mankind was abandoned, a mess of clippings -and lather now in a barber’s basin. Now the face -was as bare as the young Alexander, a fresh-complexioned, -sincere and innocent countenance speaking clearly with an -unfiltered voice. It was flushed with a natural excitement -as it went along Cheapside scrutinizing the faces of the -foot passengers on a momentous and mystical search. -The blue eyes beneath the brim of the distinguished-looking -hat were alight. Was it to be this man? Was it to be this?</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>The first to be called was a young man of Leytonstone -named Godley, a young man with a large and excessively<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span> -grave grey face and a deliberation of utterance amounting -to an impediment. He was carrying a microscope in a -wooden box. He was a student of biology with a cytological -bias; naturally very polite and temperamentally -disposed to be precise and deliberate in all he said and did. -He was making his way from Liverpool Street station to -the Birkbeck Institute by a circuitous route because he had -nearly an hour in hand before his class began. He stood -poised on the pavement edge at a street-corner waiting for -two vans to pass, when his call came to him.</p> - -<p>He found a very earnest, barefaced little man beside him -whose blue eyes searched his countenance swiftly, and who -then gripped his arm.</p> - -<p>“I think,” said Sargon, “that it is you.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Godley, who was not without a sense of humour, -attempted to reply that it certainly was him, but that -impediment of his, partly natural but greatly developed by -affectation, arrested him about the word “certainly,” and -he was still sawing the air with his profile when Sargon -spoke again.</p> - -<p>“I have need of your help,” said Sargon. “The great -task is beginning.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Godley went through the preliminary convulsions of -explaining that he had the better part of an hour to spare -and that he was willing to give help in any reasonable -matter provided it was first explained to him clearly just -exactly what the matter was. But he could only give help -for a limited time. His engagement with his class at the -Birkbeck was imperative. Sargon paid little heed to the -significance of the various sounds that Mr. Godley was -biting off and swallowing. He led his captive by the arm -and explained, with helpful gestures of his free hand, the -full significance of this call. “You are, I perceive, a young -man of scientific qualifications. They will be needed. I do -not know if you recognize me—your memory may still be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span> -imperfect—but I recall your face, chief among the wise -men of our ancient court. Yes, indeed, chief among our -wise men.”</p> - -<p>“N-no-no-not as-as-assure that I follow you aw-ow-ow -quite,” said the young man. “My my—my aw-ow-ow-work -issferr’ll aw-ow-ow-known as yet.”</p> - -<p>“<i>I</i> know it,” said Sargon boldly. “<i>I</i> know it. I have been -seeking you. Do not be deceived by my plain incognito. -Believe me I have tremendous powers behind me. In a -little while all men will understand. The age of confusion -draws near its end; a new age begins. We are the first two -particles, the very first, in a great crystallization——”</p> - -<p>“Where aaare we g-g-g-oing agg-aggs-aggs-exactly?” -asked the young man.</p> - -<p>“Trust me,” said Sargon bravely. “Keep with me.”</p> - -<p>The young man struggled with some complex question. -But now three fresh individuals came under the magic -attraction of the call and the young man’s question fell in -unheeded chunks. These new adherents were a little -group of men standing at the kerb, about a small, almost -inaudible hurdy-gurdy on which was a placard stating: -“We want Work not Charity; but there is no Work for Us -in this So-called Civilized State.” They were clad in faded -khaki, and were all youths of less than five-and-twenty.</p> - -<p>“Now look at that!” said Sargon. “Is it not time the new -age began?”</p> - -<p>He addressed himself to the man on the right of the -organ-grinder.</p> - -<p>“All this is to be altered here and now,” he said. “I have -work for you to do.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” said the ex-soldier in the accent of a fairly well-educated -man. “What sort of work?”</p> - -<p>“We’re straight,” said the organ-grinder. “We’ll take it. -If it’s work we can do. We ain’t fakers. Wot work is it?”</p> - -<p>“Shillin’ an hour?” said the third.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span>“More than that. Much more than that. And very great -and responsible work. A harvest! A splendid harvest! -You shall be leaders of men. Follow after me.”</p> - -<p>“Far?” asked the man who had spoken first.</p> - -<p>Sargon made a gesture that effectually concealed his own -lack of a definite plan, and led the way.</p> - -<p>“Lead on, Macbeth,” said the organ-grinder, and swung -his hurdy-gurdy into its carrying position on his back. -The two other ex-soldiers exchanged views that it was -all right and that anyhow they’d see what was offered -them. Mr. Godley, keeping abreast of his leader, began -an immense and ultimately futile struggle with a fresh -question.</p> - -<p>The next disciple was not so much called as fell into the -gathering body of Sargonites. He was a tall gentleman of -a rich brown colour with frizzy black hair, and a vast disarming -smile. He was dressed in an almost luminous grey -frock-suit, a pink tie, buttoned shoes with bright yellow -uppers, and a hat as distinguished as Sargon’s own. He -carried a grey alpaca umbrella. He held out a sheet of -paper in a big mahogany hand and emitted in a rich abundant -voice the word “Escuse.” The paper had printed on it -at the head the words, “Lean and Mackay, 329 Leadenhall -Street, E.C.” and below written in ink, “Mr. Kama -Mobamba.”</p> - -<p>Sargon regarded his interlocutor for a moment and then -recognized him. “The Elamite King!” he said.</p> - -<p>“Non spik English,” said the black gentleman. “Portugaish.”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Sargon with a gesture that explained his intention. -“Providence. Follow after me.”</p> - -<p>The coloured gentleman fell in trustfully.</p> - -<p>“Look here!” protested one of the ex-soldiers. “There -ain’t going to be coloured labor on this job?”</p> - -<p>“Peace!” said Sargon. “Very soon everything will be -shown to you.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span>“I don’t think you have any ub-ub-business to mislead -ap-ap-people,” said Mr. Godley, who was becoming more -and more interested in, and perplexed by, Sargon’s proceedings.</p> - -<p>Sargon quickened his pace.</p> - -<p>“This—this gentleman s-s-s-simply wa-wa-wanted tu-tu-tu-tu-to -go to that address,” said Mr. Godley.</p> - -<p>In his eagerness to get the idea home to Sargon he -became a little disregardful of his microscope box which -inflicted a sudden sharp blow on the knee of a passing -gentleman, a business man in a silk hat. The victim cursed -aloud with extraordinary vehemence and stood hopping on -the pavement with his hand to his knee. Then he succumbed -to a passionate impulse to tell Mr. Godley exactly -what he thought of his conduct, his upbringing, and his -type of human being. He joined the followers of Sargon -at a brisk limp, occasionally saying “Hi!” in a breathless -voice. A rather intoxicated man in deep mourning had -witnessed the incident. He came hurrying, with a certain -margin of error, to the side of the angry gentleman in the -silk hat.</p> - -<p>“’Sgraceful salt,” he said. “’Sgraceful! F’want a witness -<i>I</i>’m your man!”</p> - -<p>His general intention was to go forward at the side of the -gentleman in the silk hat, but there were chemically emancipated -factors in his being that drove him sideways. -The resultant was a sinuous course that presently involved -him with a display of oranges in a barrow at the pavement -edge. It was not a serious nor a prolonged contact, but it -involved a certain scattering of oranges in the gutter and -added a new ingredient, a very angry costermonger’s -assistant with a remonstrance and a claim for damages, to -the gathering body of Sargon’s followers.</p> - -<p>The moral of a proverb depends entirely upon the image -chosen, and though a rolling stone gathers no moss, a rolling -snowball grows by what it rolls upon. A small hurrying<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span> -group of people in a London street is a moving body -of the snowball type; its physical pull is considerable; it -appeals to curiosity and the increasing gregariousness of -mankind. Sargon, blue-eyed and exalted, with Mr. Godley -intent and eloquent upon his left hand, and Mr. Kama -Mobamba, tall, silent, smiling, with a shining confidence -upon his ebony face that soon he would be led into the -presence of Messrs. Lean and Mackay, formed the spearhead -of the procession. Behind came the three out-of-work -ex-soldiers, who were now involved in obscure protests -and explanations with the gentleman in the silk hat, and -a smart but rather incomprehensible young newspaper -reporter, who had acquired his native tongue in Oldham, -and had just come up to London to push his fortunes, and -was anxious for something called a “scoop.” He seemed -to think that Sargon might be the “scoop” he sought. Two -ambiguous-looking individuals in caps and neck-wraps -had also fallen in, possibly for nefarious purposes, a vague-faced -young woman of the streets in a weather-worn -magenta hat was asking what was “<i>up</i>” and the intoxicated -man in mourning was explaining as wittily and obscurely -as possible. There was also a fringe of skirmishing juveniles. -And an Eton boy. He was very, very young and -fresh-faced, a scion of one of the oldest and best families -in England and a convinced and fierce Communist. He -had been on his way with a bosom friend to the celebrated -model engine shop in Holborn when Sargon had swept -past him and the inscription on the organ had caught -his eye.</p> - -<p>He was a boy of swift initiatives and with a highly developed -dramatic sense.</p> - -<p>“Sorry, old Fellow,” he said to his friend. “But I feel -the time has come. Unless I’m very much mistaken that -little bunch is the beginning of the Social Revolution, and I -must do my duty.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span>“Oo I <i>say</i>, Rabbit!” said the friend. “Come and buy -that steam-launch first, anyhow.”</p> - -<p>“<i>What’s</i> a model steam-launch?” said Rabbit scornfully, -and turned to follow Sargon.</p> - -<p>He would have liked to have had a swift strong hand-clasp -first, but you can’t do that sort of thing with a chap -who will always keep both hands in his trouser pockets. -He darted off, and his friend followed discreetly in a state -between amusement and dismay, and at such a distance as -seemed to him to exonerate him from any personal complicity -with the social revolution.</p> - -<p>“Where are we going?” asked the young Etonian as he -came up with the hindmost of the out-of-work ex-soldiers.</p> - -<p>“<i>He</i> knows,” said the out-of-work ex-soldier, indicating -Sargon.</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>But that was exactly what our dear Sargon did not know. -By this time he was no longer a convinced and complete -Sargon. A scared and doubting and protesting Preemby -was struggling back into his being.</p> - -<p>Up to the beginning of the calling of the disciples Sargon -had ruled in his own soul assured and unchallenged. But -he had expected his disciples to respond to his call, to -recognize and remember, to be immediately understanding -and helpful. The calling was to have been like the -lighting of a lamp in their minds and the world about -them. He had expected not only his own clear and unquestioning -conviction but accession and reinforcement for -it. And so leaping from soul to soul the restoration of -Humanity, the Empire of Sargon would have spread. For -disciples who made conditions, for disciples who followed, -gesticulating strangely and spluttering and bubbling and -stammering injurious criticisms, for disciples who asked -for a minimum wage, and for disciples who came limping<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span> -after one calling “Hi!” as though one was a cab, Sargon -was totally unprepared.</p> - -<p>Had he called these disciples rashly? Had he been premature -again? Had he made another mistake?</p> - -<p>These were unpleasantly urgent questions for a Master -to solve while he was going briskly to nowhere in particular -about four miles an hour along Holborn with his following -gathering at his heels. Perhaps all leadership is a kind of -flight. In every leader of men perhaps the fugitive has -been latent. In Sargon now it was more than latent; it was -awake and stirring, and its name was Preemby.</p> - -<p>Since first mankind in its slow ascent from mere animalism -became susceptible to Prophets and Great Teachers -and Leaders there must always have been something of -this internal conflict between the greatness of the mission -and something discreetly less, and there must also have -been always something of this clash of the disciples’ -quality and motive with the teacher’s expectations. The -very calling of disciples seems to admit a sense of weakness -on the prophet’s part. Their calling puts him in pledge. -He puts himself in pledge to them. They will, he knows, -hold him to it when he falters; deep gregarious instincts -assure him he will not desert his declaration to them even -when he might desert himself. They desert him—inevitably. -In the whole record of the world there is only one -unvarying, faithful disciple, Abu Bekr. All other disciples -failed and crippled their Masters and misled them. They -deserted or they drove the prophet whither he would not -go. Great things and little things of the same kind follow -the same laws. At the head of that small wedge of commotion -driving along lamp-lit Holborn in the October -twilight went Sargon the Lord and Protector of Mankind, -the Restorer of Faith and Justice, the Magnificent One, -and though he was already aware of an error made and -dangers incurred, he was still resolved to pull a great -occasion by some stupendous gesture out of the jaws of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span> -disaster. And closer than his shadow was Preemby, scared -nearly out of his wits, ready for a desperate headlong bolt -down any side turning, a bolt from explanation, a bolt -from effort, a bolt back to Preembyism and infinite -nothingness.</p> - -<p>Suddenly there came to Sargon a reassuring voice, the -voice of one who had at least seemed to believe and accept.</p> - -<p>There had been a slight altercation with Billy before -Bobby came hurrying across the road. “There he goes!” -said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“That isn’t him,” said Billy. “Where’s his moustache? -He was pretty nearly all moustache.”</p> - -<p>“Shaved,” said Bobby. “I’d swear to him anywhere. A -sort of prance in his walk. It’s our prophet, Billy, and he’s -heading for trouble.”</p> - -<p>“Looks more like a welsher,” said Billy. “Where’d he -get that ecstatic nigger? It’s too rummy for me altogether, -Bobby. You keep out of it. There’s a policeman tacking -on now.”</p> - -<p>Bobby hesitated. “Can’t let him go like that,” he said, -and dodged across the road just as four racing omnibuses -blotted out the Sargonites from Billy’s eyes.</p> - -<p>“Forgive me, but where are you going?” said Bobby, -stooping to Sargon’s grateful ear in spite of a considerable -push from Mr. Godley.</p> - -<p>“I have declared myself,” said Sargon, and straightway -reassurance came. This was the First of the Disciples, -and he had found his way to his Master. Quite clearly -now did Sargon see what he had to do. These first followers -had to be instructed. The Teaching had to begin. -To do that it was necessary to lead them apart out of the -hurry and tumult of the street. A vision came to Sargon -of a long brightly lit table, and an array of disciples -asking questions, and of memorable answers and great -sayings. And straight ahead, glowing, bursting with light, -already a friend, there towered up the inviting mass of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span> -the Rubicon Restaurant, pioneer in the great enterprise -of supplying dinners de luxe at popular prices.</p> - -<p>“Yonder,” said Sargon with a sweeping gesture of the -hand, “we will rest and sit at meat, and I will talk, and all -things shall be explained.”</p> - -<p>The bright vision of a discourse to a gathering of disciples -at a table had so restored the gloriousness of Sargon -that by the time he reached the entrance of the Rubicon -Restaurant, which bulges invitingly at a corner, he had -called two further disciples. One of these acquisitions was -a matchbox-holding beggar of venerable appearance, and -the other a highly intelligent-looking man of perhaps fifty, -lean and thinly bearded, carrying a book on the Doukhobors -and wearing mittens and a tall black felt hat—a -hat of an unusual shape rather like the steam-dome of a -railway engine. This last acquisition was made at the very -door of the Restaurant.</p> - -<p>“Come in here,” said Sargon, seizing his arm, “and take -meat with me. I have things to tell you that will change -your whole life.”</p> - -<p>“This is very <i>suddan</i>,” said the intelligent-looking man, -speaking in the high neighing protesting accent of an -English scholar and gentleman, as he yielded himself to -Sargon’s grip.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>The actual invasion of the Rubicon Restaurant was a -confused and swift affair. Sargon’s mind was clear and -simple now; he had to make that vision of a long white -table with his disciples grouped about him a reality or -incur a great defeat. His following was animated by a -mixture of unequal and incompatible motives, as all followings -are, and it was now swollen to something near -thirty—the exact number is uncertain because it passed -marginally into mere onlookers and passers-by—by the -action of the least worthy of the three out-of-work ex-soldiers,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span> -who had been uttering these magic words, “A -Free Feed!” ever since the Rubicon Restaurant had been -in sight.</p> - -<p>The attention of that challenging individual, the outside -porter, had happened to be distracted by the arrival of -guests in a motor car when the Sargonites came along. -They therefore swept through the outer entrance without -encountering any obstacle other than the rotating door, -which chopped the little crowd into ones and twos before -it reached the entrance hall. Perhaps twenty got into the -entrance hall, that space of marble and mahogany and -hovering cloak-room attendants, before the mechanical incompetence -of the man in deep mourning and his subsequent -extraction by the politely indignant outer porter, the costermonger’s -assistant intervening unhelpfully, jammed the -apparatus. The man with the bruised shin seems to -have fallen out before the restaurant was reached, and -the vague-faced young woman in the magenta had drifted -away at some unnoted moment.</p> - -<p>In the spacious, glittering and observant outer hall a -tendency to dispersal manifested itself. The out-of-work -ex-soldier with the organ, seized by a sudden shyness, made -for the gentleman’s cloak-room to deposit his instrument -and became involved in an argument with his colleagues. -The two ambiguous young men in caps and neck-wraps -seem to have hesitated about the correctness of their costume. -But Sargon held the newly caught gentleman tight, -and the venerable match-seller did not mean to be separated -from his patron in this bright, luxurious, dangerous place. -Mr. Kama Mobamba, tall and smiling and shining, handed -hat and umbrella to an attendant and followed closely -upon the Master, serene in his assurance that these were -the lordly portals of the long sought firm of African traders, -Lean and Mackay. And Mr. Godley, with his natural -passion for explicitness, would not leave Sargon until he -had made it perfectly clear to him why he did not feel<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span> -bound to accompany him further. He came next after the -others into the Large Restaurant, making noises like a -cuckoo clock that has lost control of itself. The reporter -from Oldham was also holding on, though in considerable -doubt now what sort of story he would have to write. The -Eton boy, more than half aware now of his error, and so -disposed to be a little detached also, came into the restaurant -after depositing hat and umbrella without.</p> - -<p>Bobby never came through. He was overtaken and held -up in the entrance hall by Billy. “This isn’t your affair, -Bobby,” said Billy. “This really isn’t your affair.”</p> - -<p>“I can’t make out what he’s up to,” said Bobby. “He’s -bound to get into trouble.”</p> - -<p>“Never mind.”</p> - -<p>“But I do mind.”</p> - -<p>“The management’s scared,” said Billy. “They’re sending -for the police. There’s a crowd gathered outside. Look -at the faces looking in. See that chap peering through the -hole in the glass? Nice thing for Tessy and Susan if we -get into some police-court scrape.”</p> - -<p>“But we can’t leave him to get into a mess here.”</p> - -<p>“But how can we help him?”</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>Within the restaurant Sargon made his supreme and -final effort and encountered swift and overwhelming -defeat. But at any rate he did not run away. He made a -frontal attack on the world he had set out to subdue—as -Sargon. As Sargon, invincibly Sargon, he met disaster.</p> - -<p>Things had not begun to be very brisk yet in the Rubicon -Restaurant. But indeed it is never so brisk in the Rubicon -of an evening as it is at lunch time; it is too far from the -west; pre-eminently a luncheon place. And the hour even -for such briskness as is customary had not yet come. The -neat lines of the little white tables, each with its lamp and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span> -flowers, were only broken here and there by occupants. A -family group going to a circus; a little knot of people going -to a meeting in the Kingsway Hall; three or four couples -of theatre-goers in evening dress; three or four of those -odd couples of a rather inexperienced looking middle-aged -business man and an extremely inexperienced looking -young woman in imperfectly conceived dinner dress who -are to be seen everywhere in London, and a group of three -business men from the north dressed in a canny grey and -dining with a resolute completeness from cocktail to -liqueur, was all the company yet assembled in the body of -the restaurant. There were one or two occupants in the -lower gallery, dimly seen; the upper gallery was unlit. The -atmosphere was still timorous and chilly; even the three -men from the north exacted their tale of London luxury -in a subdued and even furtive manner.</p> - -<p>The staff was still largely unemployed. The head-waiters, -wine-waiters and table-waiters fidgeted serviettes and -glasses, or stood about with that expression of self-astonishment -and melancholy upon their faces habitual to -waiters. A slight hubbub in the entrance hall and the -sound of the smashing of the glass in the rotating door by -the last effort of the man in mourning preceded the entry -of Sargon.</p> - -<p>Every one looked up. The guests forgot their food and -their company manners; the waiters forgot their secret -sorrows. Sargon appeared, an inconspicuous figure, a little -white, almost luminous face, round bright eyes. With one -hand he still gripped his last disciple. With the other he -waved aside the gobbets of speech which Mr. Godley -proffered him. A tall expectant negro face rose like a -shield of ebony and ivory above him. Behind were the -match-seller and other followers, less clearly apprehended.</p> - -<p>A head-waiter faced him. Behind hovered a manager -and a little further off an assistant manager fiddled with -the fruit on the buffet.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span>Sargon released his latest catch and stood forward.</p> - -<p>“Set a table here,” he said with a fine gesture. “Set a -table here for a great company. I have called a following -and must needs discourse with them.”</p> - -<p>“Table, sir,” said the head-waiter. “For ’ow many, sir?”</p> - -<p>“A great company.”</p> - -<p>“Well, sir,” said the head-waiter with an appealing -glance at the manager, “we’d like to ’ave an idea ’ow -many.”</p> - -<p>The manager came up to take control and the assistant -manager deserted his piles of fruit and came up behind -helpfully. Sargon perceived he was against opposition and -gathered all the forces within him. “It is a great company,” -he said. “It must sit at meat with me here and I must discourse -to it. These people yonder may join. Set all the -tables one to another. The day of separate tables and -separate lives is at an end. Let even the tables manifest -the Brotherhood of Man. Under Our Rule. Set them -together.”</p> - -<p>At the words “Brotherhood of Man” one of the three -business men from the north was smitten with understanding. -“It’s a blood-stained Bolshevik,” he said, or words to -that effect. “Shovin’ in here! Of all places!”</p> - -<p>“Oughtn’t to be allowed,” said his friend. “Aren’t we to -have <i>no</i> peace from them?”</p> - -<p>The first business man expressed a general antipathy for -incarmined Bolsheviks and went on eating bread in a -hurried, fussed, irritated manner. “When’s that Fricassee -of Chicken coming?” he said. “They must have dropped it -or something.”</p> - -<p>But the manager’s intelligence had been even quicker -than the business man’s. A swift signal had been given at -the very beginning of Sargon’s speech. The waiter sent to -summon the police had already sped past Billy and Bobby -and the rest of the uncertain crowd in the entrance -hall, draughty now and uneasy because of the broken<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span> -glass in the rotating door that the man in mourning had -broken.</p> - -<p>But Sargon heeded nothing of this byplay. He held on -to the only course that he could see before him, which was -to overwhelm the opposition that gathered against him.</p> - -<p>“We don’t have banquets in this room, sir,” said the -manager, playing for time. “Banquets you can have in the -Syrian Hall or in the Elysian Chamber or in the Great -Masonic or Little Masonic Hall—given due notice and -after proper arrangements, but this is the general public -restaurant. You can’t <i>suddenly</i> give a banquet to an unknown -company or society or something here. We don’t -cater for that. It isn’t done.”</p> - -<p>“It will be done to-night,” said Sargon, with a glance and -intonation and gesture that would have bent all dream -Sumeria to its knees.</p> - -<p>But the managers of European restaurants are made of -sterner stuff, it seems, than were the old Sumerians. “I’m -afraid <i>not</i>, sir,” he said, and stood blandly obstructive.</p> - -<p>“Do you know,” cried Sargon, “who it is with whom you -have to deal?”</p> - -<p>“Not one of our regular customers, sir,” said the manager, -with the apologetic air of one who scores a point perforce.</p> - -<p>“Listen,” said Sargon. “This day is an Epoch. This is -the End and the Beginning of an Age. Men will count -this banquet I shall hold here the sunrise moment of a -new world. I am Sargon, Sargon the Great, Sargon the -Restorer, come to proclaim myself. This multitude of -my followers must be fed and instructed here, fed bodily -and fed spiritually. See to it that your share is done.”</p> - -<p>He made a gesture behind him when he spoke of his -followers, but indeed there was no following behind him -now save that one faithful but deluded African, and that -perplexed but persistent Oldham reporter. The Eton boy -had detached himself completely now. He was sitting at a -table afar off, where he had been joined by his friend, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span> -they conversed in undertones and watched. Even Mr. -Godley with his microscope, and the gentleman with the -book about the Doukhobors, had faded out of this story by -this time, and were going along Holborn exchanging and -interrupting each other’s explanations and surmises about -this singular affair that had so unexpectedly deflected their -high and reasonable progress through life.</p> - -<p>“I can only sus-sas-sas-suppose that-the-fellow-was-mad,” -said Mr. Godley.</p> - -<p>While Sargon’s retinue had melted the manager’s had -gathered. Behind him now stood an array of waiters of -every description, three dozen perhaps of various and yet -uniform waiters, tall waiters and short ones, fat and thin, -hairy and bald, young and old, waiters in aprons and one -in shirt sleeves.</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid you’re creating a disturbance here,” said the -manager. “I’m afraid I must ask you to go, sir.”</p> - -<p>Should he go? Never!</p> - -<p>“Oh, generation of blind and deaf!” he cried, lifting his -voice in an attempt to reach the scattered diners beyond -this lowering crowd of waiting men, “do you not recognize -me? Have you neither memories nor vision? Do you not -see the light that offers itself to you? Can you not hear -the call that thrills throughout the world? The hour for -awakening has come. It is to-day; it is now. You may -cease to be things of habit and servitude, and you may -become masters of a world reborn. Now! This moment. -<i>Will</i> the change with me and the change is upon you! -Sargon calls you, Sargon the Ancient and the Eternal, the -Wise Ruler and the Bold One, calls you to light, to nobility, -to freedom——”</p> - -<p>“’Fraid we can’t let you make speeches here,” said the -manager with hand extended.</p> - -<p>“Let’s chuck ’im out <i>now</i>,” said a short, thick-set waiter.</p> - -<p>“Chuck him out!” said the anti-Bolshevik business man, -standing up and speaking in a voice replete with indignation<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span> -and gathering volume as he went on. “And then bring -us our Fricassee of Chicken. We have been waiting Ten -Minutes for <span class="allsmcap">THAT FRICASSEE OF CHICKEN</span>!”</p> - -<p>And then a voice could be heard saying: “Wot’s it all -<i>about</i>?” and suddenly a policeman stood beside Sargon and -overshadowed him.</p> - -<p>A wave of horror went through his soul, a wave of horror -that was entirely Preemby. Throughout his whole virtuous -life he had never once been in antagonism to the Police. -“Oh, Lord! oh, Lord!” cried this horror in his soul. “What -have I done now? I’m going to be run in!” The blue eyes -grew rounder and he gasped for air, but no one there -perceived how close he came to ignominious collapse. -Preemby shivered and passed. Sargon choked and then -spoke stoutly. “What is this, Officer?” he said. “Would -you lay hands on the Master of the World?”</p> - -<p>“My duty, sir, if he makes a disturbance,” said the policeman. -“Master or no Master.”</p> - -<p>Very rapidly did Sargon adjust himself to this new phase -in his affairs. He was defeated. He was to be led away. -Yes, but he was still Sargon. The Power that ruled him -had thrust him into defeat, but that could only be to try -him. He had not expected this of the Power, but since the -Power willed it, so it had to be.</p> - -<p>“You understand, Officer, what it is you are doing?” he -said, magnificently and gently.</p> - -<p>“Quite, sir. I ’ope you don’t intend to give us any -trouble.”</p> - -<p>A captive! Not thus had he foreseen the revelation of the -Master. He gave one last look at the rich decorations of -the great restaurant in which the opening banquet was to -have taken place. Not here then but in some squalid -police-court it was that the New Empire of Justice and -Brotherhood had to be proclaimed.</p> - -<p>He turned in silence and went out at the policeman’s side -quietly, deep in thought.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>So ended Sargon’s first effort to enter into his Empire. -Unless we count the visit to Buckingham Palace as his first -attempt.</p> - -<p>But before we go on to tell of the unexpected and dreadful -experience that now came upon him, we must record -one or two minor incidents of his capture.</p> - -<p>One is the behaviour of Mr. Kama Mobamba. He -watched the closing incidents in the restaurant with a -growing amazement upon his great bronze face. Had this -little blue-eyed man been, after all, leading him wrong? -When at last Sargon was led away, Mr. Mobamba moved -at first as though still half inclined to follow him. Then he -stood still, frowned reflectingly and fumbled at his ticket-pocket. -With some effort he produced the sheet of paper -that seemed to be his one intelligible link with London; it -was now in a rather crumpled condition. Smoothing it out -with his great hands, he advanced upon the manager with -it extended.</p> - -<p>“What’s this?” said the manager.</p> - -<p>The black gentleman bowed with infinite suavity, still -tending his paper. “Non spik English,” said the black -gentleman. “Portugaish. Lean-a-Kay. Lemonallstree.”</p> - -<p>He was difficult to direct.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile in the entrance hall Bobby tacitly denied all -knowledge of Sargon. He was still hovering there with -Billy, held by a curious half-maternal solicitude. The ex-soldiers -had “mizzled,” to use the expressive word of the -man with the organ, at the appearance of policemen; the -man in mourning and his troubles had been cleared up; -but there were still quite a number of people hanging -about in a state of vague anticipation, and the young reporter -was trying to find some one who understood the rare -and obscure language of Oldham in order to verify his -facts. And there were several policemen; one evidently a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span> -superior officer, a very good-looking man in a peaked cap -and a frogged coat.</p> - -<p>“Here he comes!” said Billy, and Sargon was led out.</p> - -<p>There was a silence as he passed through the hall to the -rotating door. And upon Sargon, it seemed to Bobby, there -rested a hitherto unnoted dignity. He looked neither to -the right nor the left, and his eyes were exceedingly -mournful.</p> - -<p>“But what will they do with him?” asked Bobby.</p> - -<p>“You don’t happen to know him, sir?” asked the superior -officer abruptly.</p> - -<p>“Not a bit!” said Billy, taking the answer out of Bobby’s -mouth. “Never seen him before. We just came in here to -see what was up.”</p> - -<p>And by his silence Bobby acquiesced.</p> - -<p>“I’ve got no power to move you on here,” said the police -officer, and smiled a suggestion of inopportuneness to -Billy, and motioned to his satellites that the business there -was at an end.</p> - -<p>“We’d better go home,” said Billy, interpreting the smile.</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>The three friends sat round a fire in the white room with -the purple curtains, and Bobby poured out his regret that -he had denied Sargon. “They’ve taken him off, Tessy,” he -said for the third time, “and I do not know what they will -do with him.”</p> - -<p>“Discharge him with a caution,” said Billy with a drawing-board -on his knee. “He hadn’t committed very much -of an offence that I can see.”</p> - -<p>“And then?” said Bobby, and meditated on the fire.</p> - -<p>“I shall go round to the police-court and try to pick him -up again afterwards if they let him go,” he said presently.</p> - -<p>“Better leave it all alone,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>But Tessy sat in her arm-chair between Billy and the fire<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span> -and looked at Bobby’s preoccupied profile rather sweetly -out of the warm shadow. And nobody in the world saw -her.</p> - -<p>“They’ll warn him and he’ll come back here of his own -accord, Bobby,” said Tessy comfortingly.</p> - -<p>“Of course he’ll come back,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“Very likely, Tessy,” said Bobby. “But suppose they -don’t.”</p> - -<p>He got up and stood by the fire. “I suppose I ought to go -upstairs and do some work.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose you had,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“How is the novel getting on?” asked Tessy.</p> - -<p>“Not much done yet,” said Bobby. “The Prophet has -disorganized the actual writing. But I’ve learnt a lot of -things that will tell some day. And of course I have to -do all my Aunt Suzannah stuff. Aunt Suzannah gets more -and more popular. You can’t imagine the things they ask -me. It’s all material in the long run. Still—it takes -time.... I suppose they’ve locked him in a beastly little -cell somewhere. And he’s wondering why they don’t see -that he’s truly the great Sargon, come again to this -world.... Billy, the world’s a dangerous place, a dangerous, -unkind place. Why couldn’t they let him rip a bit? -And his poor little map of the Whole World upstairs—he -always called it the Whole World—and his little paper -star-machine, and his poor little empty room and his poor -little empty bed.”</p> - -<p>“I protest,” said Billy, putting his drawing-board aside. -“Bobby, you are a case of morbid overgrowth of the sympathies. -You are a new disease. You are the type case of -Bobbyism. It’s bad enough that you should sympathize -openly with that little devil Susan when I have spanked -her, and so undo all my teaching. It’s bad enough that -you should do about a third of Mrs. Richman’s work -because she needs light and air. I can even understand -something of your emotional relationships with various<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span> -stray cats and pigeons. But when it comes to your being -sorry for a poor little empty lodging-house bed, I draw the -line. Absolutely, Bobby; I draw the line. Poor little -empty bed! It’s—it’s <i>morbid</i>, Bobby.”</p> - -<p>“But of course he was thinking of Sargon,” said Tessy. -“You’ll go to the police-court to-morrow, Bobby?”</p> - -<p>“I’ll go—in spite of Billy. I don’t care if it is a disease. -I’m worried about that little man. I’m afraid. He’s too -round-eyed for this cruel world.”</p> - -<p>And next morning Bobby went. He went to Lemon -Square Court and sat through a frowsty morning and -waited for Sargon who never appeared. He heard all the -morning “drunks” and suchlike come up for judgment, a -case about stolen soda-water syphons, two matrimonial -differences, and all about the wilful smashing of a plate-glass -window with intent to rob, but nothing about Sargon. -The magistrate vanished and the court began to disperse. -He asked questions of a policeman who had never heard of -Sargon and the little trouble at the Rubicon Restaurant. -Had he come to the right court? the policeman asked. -Bobby hurried headlong to Minton Street. Minton Street, -too, it seemed, had never heard of Sargon. It did not -occur to Bobby to ask in either police station. He retired -baffled. He tried to find something about Sargon in the -evening newspapers; there was not a line about the Rubicon -or him. Perhaps he had not been charged! He hurried -back and rushed upstairs full of a vain surmise; the room -was desolate, the window open, the map of the world on -the floor. Had Sargon been spirited out of existence?</p> - -<p>Next day brought neither Sargon nor news of Sargon. -Bobby lay awake of nights.</p> - -<p>After three full days Billy, who had been watching his -friend furtively, remarked in a casual manner: “Why don’t -you go and see the Head Panjandrum at the Lemon Square -Police Station about it? He’d be sure to know if anyone -does.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[216]</span>Shown in to Inspector Mullins, Bobby found himself confronted -by the same good-looking officer he had seen in the -entrance hall of the Rubicon Restaurant. “You’re the -young man who didn’t happen to know anything about -him, three nights ago,” said Inspector Mullins, not answering -Bobby’s questions.</p> - -<p>Bobby explained the situation candidly.</p> - -<p>“Doesn’t help much now,” said the Inspector. “Still it’s -all in order. We took him, in the exercise of our discretion, -to the Workhouse Infirmary—for observation as to his -mental state. Three clear days they keep them there. -Then they’re either certified or let go. Or charged.”</p> - -<p>“Certified?” asked Bobby.</p> - -<p>“As a lunatic,” said Inspector Mullins.</p> - -<p>“And what happened to him?”</p> - -<p>“Usual thing, I suppose. He was a pretty clear case. By -this time he’s a certified lunatic, I suppose, and either at -Cummerdown Hill or on his way there. Or if that’s full—somewhere -else.”</p> - -<p>“Phew!” said Bobby. “Pretty quick.”</p> - -<p>He sat disconcerted. “Can I go and see him at Cummerdown -Hill?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Probably not,” said Inspector Mullins. “Seeing you’re -not a relation.”</p> - -<p>“I’m interested in him.”</p> - -<p>“It isn’t your business.”</p> - -<p>“Exactly. But I like him. And I don’t think he’s exactly -mad.... Seems odd of his people—Do you know anything -about his people? I might go and talk to them about -him.”</p> - -<p>“That’s possible,” said the Inspector. “I don’t know who -they are. You might find out at the Workhouse Infirmary -or they might tell you from Cummerdown. I don’t know. -Very likely <i>they</i> don’t know who his relations are. There’s -all sorts of such stragglers in the world. Possibly he hasn’t -any relations—the sort of relations, I mean, who would<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span> -want to bother about him. My impression is that once a -man or woman is certified and put away it’s rather hard -for an outsider to get through. But, as you say, you can -but try. Sorry I can’t tell you any more. I never saw him -myself at all—except as he went past me. Not my affair.... -Yes, our usual procedure in such a case.... Oh! -no trouble. Good morning.”</p> - -<p>Left sitting squarely, an embodiment of implacable and -indifferent law and rule.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE THIRD<br> - -<i>The Journey of Sargon Underneath the World</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">I<small>T</small> has been said in an earlier chapter that Mr. Preemby, -after his wife’s death, was like some seed which germinates -and thrusts out bold and unexpected things. A -new phase in that belated germination began as he walked -through the London streets beside his captor policeman. -If the thing had happened to Mr. Preemby while he was -still Mr. Preemby, it would have been merely a dreadful, -shameful horror. It would have been an insupportable -experience, a thing to regret, a thing to get through and -conceal and if possible obliterate from record and memory. -If, again, it had happened in the early days of Sargon’s -dreams it would have been an occasion for an immense -dramatic improvisation. He would have thought of the -effect upon the spectators and passers-by, he would have -posed and gesticulated and said profound, memorable -words. But some power of growth had taken possession of -him now and he did none of these things. He posed now -neither to the world without nor to himself within. For -the first time in his life almost he was looking directly at -himself and at what he had done and what had befallen -him, and so full of wonder was he at this ultimate discovery -of reality that he forgot all the vast fabric of make-believe, -imaginative response, and deliberate self-delusion, -up which he had clambered to this new phase of vision.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span> -He walked so quietly through the lit streets that only the -most observant noted he was in charge and that the policeman -was on duty; to the rest he might have been any -casual companion of a home-going policeman.</p> - -<p>One determination had been released in this renascent -mind with an extraordinary strength and clearness, that he -was not, and never would again be, that Albert Edward -Preemby who had launched him into existence. He was a -being called, it mattered not what, in reality, but for his -present purposes, Sargon, Sargon the Magnificent King. -The first concrete visions of Sumeria and his ancient -glories had passed now into the background of his mind. -He had not lost his belief in them at all, but they were now -ancient history to him, and even the revelation at the -boarding house seemed very far away. His ideas had -travelled long distances and gathered much in the past -week. The expectation of an immediate sensational splendour -had been rudely shattered. The Power that had called -him had surprised him exceedingly, but had not overwhelmed -him. He knew quite clearly that he had to be -Sargon who lived not for himself but for the Whole World, -and that to relinquish or deny that was to perish utterly. -It had not seemed to be necessary to him that his own -faith should be tried, but manifestly the Power had determined -that it should be tried. And manifestly he was to be -put through some austere process of preparation before -he entered into his Empire. He was to know what prison -was and to stand a trial. He would be asked to deny -himself.</p> - -<p>What should he say to them? I am not He—I am not -Him—which was it? I am not Him you suppose I am. -He muttered it to himself.</p> - -<p>“Whassay?” said the policeman.</p> - -<p>“Nothing. Is it much further?” asked Sargon.</p> - -<p>It was just round the corner. Sargon found himself in a -little austere room with half a dozen quite amiable but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span> -slightly disrespectful men in uniform. He was asked his -name and address by one who sat at a table. “Sargon,” he -said. “Sargon the First.”</p> - -<p>“No Christian name?”</p> - -<p>“Pre-Christian,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“No given name, I mean,” said the questioner.</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“And the address?”</p> - -<p>“None at present.”</p> - -<p>“Just anywhere?”</p> - -<p>Sargon did not answer.</p> - -<p>“Case for Gifford Street,” said a voice behind him.</p> - -<p>“Memory case or something,” said the man at the table. -“Anyhow, it’s Gifford Street.”</p> - -<p>Sargon reflected. “What’s Gifford Street?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“’Ospital. Where they’ll give you a bit of a rest and -quiet.”</p> - -<p>“But I want to meet a magistrate in open court. I have -a message. I am in no need of rest or quiet.”</p> - -<p>“They’ll tell you all about that at Gifford Street. Buxton, -will you take ’im round?”</p> - -<p>“But I am perfectly well! Why should I go to -hospital?”</p> - -<p>“Routine I suppose,” said the seated policeman and gave -his mind to other things.</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>Queer! Why should it be a hospital? The way the -Power was treating him was a strange way. He had to -submit to the Power; he had to maintain himself Sargon. -Still he could have wished for more explicitness.</p> - -<p>He was so turned inward now that he went along beside -Constable Buxton, not noting the streets nor the traffic -nor the passers-by. Presently they were at a door in a high -wall, within which there were buildings. Then they were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span> -in a little office and a large, grey-faced porter looked at -him and exchanged muttered explanations with the constable. -Then they were going across a wide yard and -through large doors into a corridor where there was an -unoccupied stretcher and two or three nurses in uniform. -They came to a little glazed-in office and Sargon was asked -to sit down on a bench against a wall while there was -telephoning. Constable Buxton hovered down the corridor -as though the task was nearly done.</p> - -<p>A small bright-eyed man in a grey suit came and looked -at Sargon. For some moments they regarded each other -in silence. “Well?” said the man in the grey suit.</p> - -<p>“My name is Sargon. I do not know why I have been -brought here. Is this a hospital? I understand it is. I am -not ill.”</p> - -<p>“You may be ill without knowing it.”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“We just want to have you here for a bit to have a look -at you.”</p> - -<p>Sargon shrugged his shoulders.</p> - -<p>A very big man with exaggerated shoulders and a large, -clean-shaven, intensely self-satisfied looking face appeared. -He had a wide, thin-lipped mouth, protruding grey eyes -and highly oiled and entirely subjugated sandy hair with -an army “quif” on the forehead.</p> - -<p>“Busy evening,” he said. “This is number three.”</p> - -<p>“Pretty full then,” said the small man in grey.</p> - -<p>“Too full,” said Mr. Jordan, “You don’t know where you -are. This <i>’im</i>?” he asked and indicated Sargon by creasing -his thick neck and depressing the corner of his mouth -towards him.</p> - -<p>“This,” said the little man in grey to Sargon, “is Mr. -Jordan. He’s going to show you just where you have to -go and just what you have to do.”</p> - -<p>Immediately, instinctively, Sargon disliked Mr. Jordan. -But he stood up obediently because his idea of submission<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span> -to the Power seemed in some way to overlap and include -this new coercion. Mr. Jordan produced a voice of flat, -oily, insincere amiability. “You come along, Old Chap, -with me,” he said. “We’ll make you comfortable all right -’fyou don’t give no trouble.”</p> - -<p>They went round a corner and up a cheerless stone staircase -that turned back on itself; they came to a landing and -double doors with glass panes in them that opened upon a -very long, dark passage lit by a single very remote light. -And suddenly it appeared to Sargon that behind him and -already distant lay that outer world of freedom, the streets -and the lights, the coming and going of people and things, -the endless chance encounters, the events and the spectacle -of life to which the Power had sent him, and before -him were dark and narrow and dreadful experiences. Why -should he turn his back thus voluntarily on the great outer -world he had come to save? Was this again only another -mistake he was making? He took a step or so away -from Jordan and faced him.</p> - -<p>“No,” he said. “I do not want to go further into this -place. I do not wish it. Let me return. I have disciples -to call and many things to do.”</p> - -<p>The full moon of Jordan’s face displayed incredulous -astonishment that passed into fierceness. “<i>Wot?</i>” he said.</p> - -<p>He left a tremendous pause after “Wot” and then spoke -very rapidly. “None of your tricks <i>’ere</i>, you thundering -old Bastard.” With a swift movement his huge, raw, red -hand gripped Sargon by the upper arm. His thin lips were -retracted to show his teeth; his eyes seemed popping out. -He gripped not to hold but to pinch and compress and -injure, and he dug his fingers in between muscle and bone, -so that Sargon stared at him with dilated eyes and uttered -a sharp, involuntary cry of pain.</p> - -<p>The grip relaxed from the acutely painful to the merely -uncomfortable, and the big face came down close to Sargon’s.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span> -It was manifest that Mr. Jordan had been regaling -himself on cheese and cocoa. “Don’t you try it on, you -Old Fool! Don’t you blooming well try it on. Whatever -it is, don’t you try it on ’ere. You’re right enough to -understand what I say. See? You do exactly wot you’re -told ’ere. You do exactly wot you’re told. You do your -best to avoid givin’ trouble and I’ll do my best ditto. But -if you start doin’ tricks—Gawd ’elp you! See?”</p> - -<p>And he crushed the arm again.</p> - -<p>“Understan’?”</p> - -<p>The blue eyes seemed to assent.</p> - -<p>“Down that passage, blast you!” said Mr. Jordan.</p> - -<p>A distressed and wondering and yet not absolutely abject -Sargon was taken to a wet and untidy bathroom in which -a broken chair, pools of water, great splashings on the wall, -and some crumpled towels in the corner suggested a recent -struggle. There he was made to undress and take a tepid -bath, dried with a towel that had already been in action, -put into a grey nightgown that was doubtfully clean, a -grey shoddy dressing-gown that certainly wasn’t, and a -pair of down-at-heel slippers two sizes too big, and so -garbed, was led by Mr. Jordan, a little propitiated now -by alert obedience, into the ward in which he was to pass -the night.</p> - -<p>A rufous man with very light eyelashes appeared.</p> - -<p>“’Ere ’e is, Mr. ’Iggs,” said Mr. Jordan.</p> - -<p>“I’ve got his bed ready,” said Mr. Higgs. “’Ow many -more of ’em?”</p> - -<p>“Perfec’ shower of ’em,” said Mr. Jordan.</p> - -<p>“Three,” said Mr. Higgs.</p> - -<p>“Well,” said Mr. Jordan. “So long.”</p> - -<p>“So long,” said Mr. Higgs.</p> - -<p>Neither of them addressed the Lord of the Whole World -directly. He might have been a parcel passed from hand -to hand.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>When Sargon entered the Observation Ward of the -Gifford Street Infirmary his sense of having left life, ordinary -current life, far away behind him, beyond these grey -passages and corridors and staircases and glass offices -and high walls and little doors, was enormously reinforced. -Never had he seen anything so emptily bleak and cheerless -as this place. A heartless great dingy room it was, with -green-grey distempered walls discoloured in patches, lit -by a few bare lights that gave neither high-lights nor -shadows. Black night and a greasily lit brick wall stared -in through uncurtained windows. Half-way down the -length of the place projecting pieces of wall suggested -that two former rooms had been thrown into one. The -floor was of polished bare boards. Far off was a table -set against the wall with two or three torn and crumpled -magazines thereon, and at the end an empty fire-place. In -the near half, on either side, there were iron bedsteads -in rows, twenty or thirty perhaps altogether. There was -a foul smell in the air, faint and yet indescribably offensive, -a fæcal smell mixed with a heavy soapy odour.</p> - -<p>Even had it been unoccupied, this cold, large, evil-smelling -room would have seemed a strange inhospitable place -to Sargon. For it had always been the lot of Mr. Preemby, -even in the days of his early poverty, to live snug, to have -carpets, even if they were shabby carpets, under his feet, -and an encumbrance of furniture and silly human pictures -and brackets and things about him on the walls. Here -in this harsh plainness it was as though the fussy, accumulative, -home-making imagination of man had never been.</p> - -<p>But the strange soulless atmosphere of the place was but -the first instant impression of Sargon. It was followed by -a far more vivid and terrible realization, that this place was -inhabited by beings who were only at the first glance men. -Then as one looked again it became clear that they were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[225]</span> -not exactly men, they did not look up at his entry as men -should, or they showed their awareness of him by queer -unnatural movements. Several were in bed; others were -dressed in shabby and untidy clothes and either sat on -their beds or were seated in chairs about the lower part of -the room. One individual only was in motion; a grave-faced -young man who was walking with an appearance of -concentrated method to and fro in a restricted circle in the -far corner of the ward. Another sat and seemed to remove -a perpetually recurrent cobweb from his face by a perpetually -repeated gesture. Two men were jammed behind -the table against the wall and one, a fleshy lout with a -shining pink skin and curling red hair on his bare chest, -was making violent gestures, hammering the table with a -freckled fist, talking in a voice that rose and sank and -occasionally broke into curses while the other, a sallow-complexioned, -cadaverous individual, seemed to be sunken -in profound despair. In one of the beds close at hand a -young man with a shock of black hair and an expression -of fatuous satisfaction, that changed with dramatic suddenness -to triumphant fierceness or insinuating lucidity, -sat up and gesticulated and composed and recited an interminable -poem—something in the manner of Browning. It -was running in this fashion:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="indent2">“God shall smite them</div> -<div class="indent2">And blight them</div> -<div class="indent2">They may prevail but God will requite them</div> -<div class="indent2">Light ’em.</div> -<div class="indent2">Burn ’em to ashes and burn ’em to atoms</div> -<div class="indent2">Atoms!</div> -<div class="indent2">Burning atoms—exactly like stars. See?</div> -<div class="indent2">Stars in the void and all over the place.</div> -<div class="indent2">Atoms galore and God can’t show his face.</div> -<div class="verse">(Triumphant discovery.)</div> -<div class="indent2">He <i>hasn’t</i> a face.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[226]</span> -<div class="indent2">That’s it! That’s it, my Boys!</div> -<div class="indent2">Atheists wrong and theology wrong,</div> -<div class="indent2">Plainly and simply here’s every one wrong!</div> -<div class="indent2">And I have to tell ’em!</div> -<div class="indent2">There’s a God, <i>item</i> one, but he hasn’t a face</div> -<div class="indent2">So he can’t show his face.</div> -<div class="indent2">That’s the kink of it.</div> -<div class="indent2">Naturally every one thinks he’s <i>non est</i></div> -<div class="indent2">But he’s there as I know to my cost;</div> -<div class="indent2">For I’m lost</div> -<div class="indent2">But I’ve shown how it is all the same.</div> -<div class="indent2">No face—what a game!</div> -<div class="indent2">I found God in the void</div> -<div class="indent2">Unmasked and a little annoyed.</div> -<div class="indent2"><i>Quod erat demonstrandum</i> X.L....”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>“There’s your bed,” said Mr. Higgs at Sargon’s elbow, -shoving him slightly.</p> - -<p>Sargon moved a little unwillingly, his puzzled eyes still -on the talker.</p> - -<p>“You’ll hear enough of him before you’re done, Old -Chap,” said Mr. Higgs. “Hop into bed now.”</p> - -<p>Impelled partly by the arm of Mr. Higgs and partly by -his natural disposition to please, Sargon got into bed. Mr. -Higgs assisted him in a rough brotherly fashion. But -before Sargon could pull up the clothes about him, Mr. -Higgs, glancing over his shoulder, became aware of something -that was happening down the room—Sargon could -not see what.</p> - -<p>In an instant the genial authoritativeness of Mr. Higgs -gave way to rage. “Yaaps, you dirty old devil!” said Mr. -Higgs. “You’re at it again!”</p> - -<p>He quitted Sargon and ran down the room very swiftly. -Sargon sat up in bed to see what was happening. Three -or four of the other patients did the same. A very dirty -old man with a face of extreme misery, who was sitting in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[227]</span> -a chair, was seized upon and bumped up and down and hit -several times with great vigour by Mr. Higgs. Then Mr. -Higgs departed and returned, still uttering admonitions, -with a pail and a rag.</p> - -<p>For Mr. Higgs was not only an attendant on the mentally -afflicted but also, on account of economy, the floor-scrubber -and general cleaner of the ward. He had been -trained in the navy to ideals of a speckless brightness and -he scrubbed better than he attended.</p> - -<p>“Lie down there!” cried Mr. Higgs returning up the ward -with his pail. “It ain’t nothing to do with you.”</p> - -<p>The Lord of the World lay down.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>It was an extremely uninteresting ceiling to look at -except for a streak of yellowish stains, but it was better to -look at the ceiling for a time than to look too much at -these distressing people around him. They were distressing -and distracting, and Sargon knew that it was urgently -necessary not to be distracted, but to think over his position -very carefully before anything further happened to -him. All this rush of consequences had been so unexpected, -preposterous and violent since—a few hours ago—he had -surveyed London from the dome of Saint Paul’s and -decided that the moment had come to take hold of his -Lordship of the World, that he perceived he might very -conceivably be overwhelmed. How serene and distant -now was that spectacle of London spread out under the -amber sunshine between its far blue hills and its shining -river, with its dense clusters of shipping and the black ant-currents -of folk below. From that he had come swiftly, -inevitably, to this echoing prison. For prison he saw it -was. He knew quite well that these men around him were -demented men and that he had been seized upon as a -lunatic, but he thought that the Workhouse Observation<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[228]</span> -Ward in which he was, was a lunatic asylum already. In -his wildest imaginations he had never imagined the Power -over all things could treat him thus. The possibility of a -brief interlude in prison, of a severe but very public and -triumphant trial, had entered his mind; but not that he -might be hustled away out of the possibility of any such -appeal. He had to think his position out anew, to discover -what all this monstrous experience was intended to show -and to teach him, and what he had to do to meet this -strange occasion.</p> - -<p>And it was very difficult to do this with a raucous voice -down the room uttering foul threats about the ward -attendant and a great fist beating the table in sudden -storms and with that smooth, fluctuating, unending recitation -nearer at hand, that cosmic poem, now almost -inaudible—so that one strained to catch the words—and -now in high-pitched delight. For long stretches it was -just incoherent jumble and Sargon would hold it almost -completely out of his attention while he pursued his own -perplexities, and then it would rush together into something -that challenged its way to mingle with his inmost -thoughts.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="first">“Filthy old Nature, she drives us amain;</div> -<div class="verse">One goad is lust and the other goad pain.</div> -<div class="verse">And so we get back to old nowhere again.</div> -<div class="verse">Nowhere to start from and nowhere again.</div> -<div class="verse">Want and be hurt, want and be hurt,</div> -<div class="verse">Out of the dirt you came, back to the dirt.</div> -<div class="verse">Hunger for dirt and dirty regretting</div> -<div class="verse">Dirty our feeding and dirty begetting</div> -<div class="verse">Smear yourself, paint yourself, wear a fine shirt</div> -<div class="verse">Put a brave face on it, Yah!—you are dirt.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>“Now is that true?” asked Sargon of himself. Is that -true? Dirt? What is dirt? But no! he must not wander<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[229]</span> -off after this mad raving! What was it he had been thinking -about? He had been asking why had the Power thrust -him into this dreadful place? Why had the Power brought -him to this place? If only the man would stop that improvisation -of his for a little while it might be possible -to think that out. Why had he been given over to the -commands of Jordan and Higgs to live among the madmen -and—sudden fantastic side question!—why had <i>they</i>?</p> - -<p>If only that poem would cease! If only that voice would -fade to silence! It was now mere rubble and rubbish, as -though thought had been broken up with a pickaxe and -loaded in carts and shot down a slope. Don’t listen to it, -Sargon! Don’t listen to it! Concentrate!</p> - -<p>In his endeavour to concentrate, Sargon forgot even -Higgs. He sat up in bed and drew his knees nearly to -his chin and thought.</p> - -<p>He was Sargon; that was the great issue. He had to -remain Sargon. He was probably in this place of trouble -and torment because of the conflict between his being -Sargon and the possibility of his relapsing into Preemby. -The Power had called him to be Sargon and to serve and -suffer for and at last to rule the Whole World, but manifestly -it was not a simple direct call. There was something -working in opposition to this destiny, an Anti-Power, -opposed to the Power, which was trying to put him back -to Preemby and Preembyism, to being little and insignificant, -to living obscurely and to no purpose and so at -last to dying and becoming utterly and finally dead. That -Anti-Power it was that had been permitted to bring him -here, to frighten and torment him, to din mad rhymes -into his ears, to urge upon him in a monotonous persistent -voice that he was dirt and that God was without a face, -and a multitude of suchlike blasphemies. But they were -not true. The Anti-Power might talk and talk—would -God there could be a respite from his talking!—but the -truth was outside this place and greater than this place and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[230]</span> -altogether comprehended it. He was one, Sargon was one, -from the beginning in Sumeria, in many lands and now -here, the same spirit, the ruler who serves; he was one just -as London was one when it was seen from on high up above -there, endlessly multitudinous yet drawn together into a -single personality. And so was the whole world one. To -be Preemby was to be like a wretched little back street -house down below there, swallowed up in the general effect. -Never more could he be Preemby, even if he would. That -was what he had to keep hold of. He could only be -Sargon by denying Preemby—even though he had to face -the pains of death.</p> - -<p>Yet all the while the Anti-Power was insulting life and -himself through that disordered poet and his recitation. -The man had now fallen under the spell of a fascinating -but detestable word, if one may call such a thing a word, -“Tra-la-la.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="first">“Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.</div> -<div class="verse">That is the note of it.</div> -<div class="verse">Get the full gloat of it.</div> -<div class="verse">Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.</div> -<div class="verse">All times and places</div> -<div class="verse">Happy derision for Gods without faces.</div> -<div class="verse">Tra-la-la sunshine or Tra-la-la rain.</div> -<div class="verse">Eat, drink, and kiss ’em and at it again.</div> -<div class="verse">Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.</div> -<div class="verse">Kiss ’em and Kiss ’em and at it again.</div> -<div class="verse">At it again!</div> -<div class="verse">Tra-la-la.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>He varied his recitation with a loud explosive noise made -by his lips on the back of his hand.</p> - -<p>“Pray don’t think me cynical,” he said to Sargon. “It is -just pure Joy de Vive.”</p> - -<p>Sargon could not stand it any longer. This was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[231]</span> -damnable teaching to fling out before the very regenerator -of mankind. He suddenly thrust out a pointing finger. -“You are wrong!” he said loudly and sharply.</p> - -<p>The poet stared for a minute and with a gesture of -salutation said: “Tra-la-la-la.”</p> - -<p>“I tell you life is real,” cried Sargon. “Life is immense. -Life is full of meaning and order. I have come to tell you -and all men so.”</p> - -<p>The poet interrupted smilingly and politely with:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="first">“Tra-la-la</div> -<div class="verse">Tra-la-la</div> -<div class="verse">Life is a hiccup and life is a sneeze</div> -<div class="verse">A smell from a dunghill borne on the breeze</div> -<div class="verse">A thing of no moment—so do as you please!</div> -<div class="verse">Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>He was going on, but Sargon would not hear him. He -lifted his voice to drown his antagonist. “I tell you, you -poor soul! you are utterly wrong and blind,” he said. “For -the light has come to me and understanding is mine. You -are not the lost thing you deem you are, or at least you -need not be. No! I, too, was a lost thing such as you are, a -little while ago. I, too, thought I was a grain, a fragment, a -thing of no account. But the call has come to me, and I -have been called to call others to take part with me in a -new awakening. I have had a vision and I have seen the -world like one who awakens from a long sleep. All things -are joined together and work together and continue for -ever.”</p> - -<p>The poet wrinkled up his nose and waved his hand at -Sargon as who should wave aside some object of offence. -“Tra-la-la,” he shouted.</p> - -<p>“All things I tell you are joined together and work -together——”</p> - -<p>“Tra-la-la,” louder.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[232]</span>“I tell you,” much louder.</p> - -<p>“Shuddup there,” cried the loud and wrathful voice of -Sanity embodied in Mr. Higgs.</p> - -<p>“You’ll have the whole ward jabbering in a minute,” -said Mr. Higgs, approaching and addressing Sargon in -tones of earnest expostulation. “Shud Dup.”</p> - -<p>And after a brief pause of reflection the Lord of the -Whole World obeyed.</p> - -<p>With a gesture of extreme dignity he indicated to Higgs -that his crude demands were conceded.</p> - -<p>“That’s o right,” said Higgs. “<i>You</i> can hold in if you -want to. So you better. <i>He</i> can’t.”</p> - -<p>The poet went on in a soft insinuating undertone -reviling and mocking Sargon’s faith to a refrain of: -“Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.”</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>Sargon sat up in bed, motionless now except that his head -turned slowly to look at the people about him, and silent. -His recent outbreak had in some way assuaged the exasperation -of that endless recitation. It continued, now -crazily persuasive, now strident and vehement, now a mere -babble of words, it flowed past him and over him; it was -now manifestly directed at him, but he was able to disregard -it. He sat up and looked at the people about him -and contemplated the vast dreadful hours that plainly lay -before him.</p> - -<p>He did not look beyond the coming night. That alone -he foresaw as an eternity.</p> - -<p>He knew that this harsh, naked electric light which prized -up his eyelids however tightly he closed them, would be -glaring all night; he knew that because he had noted a -glance that Higgs had directed at the violent man with red -hair. Instantly he knew that Higgs was afraid of that red-haired -man with the shining pink skin and would never<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[233]</span> -dare to have the ward in darkness, never dare to have even -shade in it, whatever the custom or the regulations might -be. And also he understood why ever and again Higgs -went out of the room at the upper end; he went out to -assure himself of the presence of Jordan or some such -other helper, within call. Yes, this light would certainly -keep on all night and the poet seemed as likely to keep on, -and there would be occasional outbreaks of table hammering -and shouting from the red-haired man and from another -man who uttered a sudden flat shout ever and again. And -there would be misadventures of various sorts; noises and -comings and goings. So he might just as well sit up and -think as lie down and make hopeless attempts to slumber. -One could always think. Of course if one was too tired -one would cease thinking onward, one would just think -round and round, but it would be impossible not to go -on waking and thinking. There was no sleeping in this -place. Eyes, ears, nose were all too much offended. Did -anyone ever sleep here, mad or sane?</p> - -<p>There was nothing for him to do, therefore, but to sit up -and think, sit up and think, doze perhaps and think into a -dream, until some unexpected jolt or jar brought him back -to his thinking.</p> - -<p>The longest night must end at last.</p> - -<p>Then suddenly Sargon, between sleeping and waking, saw -something horrible. At least it struck upon his nerves as -horrible. Two beds away from him there lay an extremely -emaciated young man and his head was lifted up. It was -not supported by pillows; it was six inches above the -pillow. It was held up in an attitude that it was painful -to realize. The young man’s face expressed a serenely -proud satisfaction at this fantastic rigidity. It was incredible. -Was there such a thing as an invisible pillow? Or -was this a delusion of Sargon’s eyes, a waking dream?</p> - -<p>In the bed beyond another man was lying down with his -wakeful face towards Sargon. His eyes met Sargon’s.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[234]</span> -Neither man said a word nor made a gesture, but to each -came infinite comfort. For the eyes each encountered were -as sane as his own and each gave support to the other. It -is so, they said. It is strange, but your eyes are not deceiving -you. That is the form of that young man’s affliction.</p> - -<p>Sargon nodded. The other sane man nodded in reply -and then turned over in his bed as a reassured child might -do, to sleep. But could he sleep?</p> - -<p>Sargon’s gaze went round the ward with a new discovery. -Yes, several of these others might be sane—sane as he was—and -caught like himself. There was another man across -the corridor with a little beard, a very, very mournful man, -but he also had sane eyes.</p> - -<p>To-morrow Sargon must go and talk to these others and -tell them about himself and discuss this dreadful situation, -but not now because Higgs would certainly interfere. -Many things had already conspired to annoy Higgs. It -was plain he could be easily irritated and it would be well -not to annoy him further. For the present one must just -sit and think.</p> - -<p>What were the mad and what did madness mean?</p> - -<p>Why had he been lifted up by the Supreme Power, out of -the common acts and imaginations of his daily life, to a -knowledge of his immortal being, why had he been shown -his endless destinies and a vision of the whole world as -his sphere, merely to be cast out of life and light and -freedom forthwith into this grey underworld of the -demented? It could not be that this was for nothing. It -must signify.</p> - -<p>And then the wind of a second question blew across his -mind. The Power that had called him and called him it -would seem only to bring him into this place, had also -brought all these others to this same dreadfulness. <i>Why?</i> -For him it might be a trial but what was it for these others, -whose souls had indeed dissolved and gone? What was the -Power doing with them?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[235]</span>The whole scheme of things in Sargon’s mind began to -shudder and dissolve. If the Power had not done this, then -it must be the Anti-Power had done it. There must be an -Anti-Power as strong almost as the Power then, able to -snatch men out of life into confusion, indignity, and death -for ever. Or else—<i>there was Nothing</i>!</p> - -<p>He sat quite still with his chin on his knuckles and eyes -staring blankly at the last black possibility.</p> - -<p>Was the whole of this call and this mission of his a deception -and a delusion? Had he been cheated at Tunbridge -Wells when the call first came to him to arise and awake? -Were those memories of Sumeria no more than dreams? -Was he indeed just Albert Edward Preemby—gone crazy? -In a crazy, pointless universe of commonplace inanities? -If so he was indeed the most foolish of living men. He had -left his comfort and securities, sound though insignificant; -he had run away from his dear Christina Alberta—to obey -a Power that was nothing more than his own imagination -and to follow a phantom end. For days he had been -shutting Christina Alberta out of his thoughts; she was a -sceptic, an ally of the Anti-Power. Now she came back, -over-valiant and rash, but just a girl. He had left her to -shift for herself, left her beyond reach of his reproofs and -cautions. What was she doing? What evil and danger -might not be overtaking her even now? It had not occurred -to him before that his disappearance might distress -and endanger her. Now he saw plainly that it must -have done so.</p> - -<p>The enemy came and argued frankly with him. “You -have been a fool, Albert Edward Preemby,” said the -enemy. “You have got yourself into a position of great -danger and discomfort, you have deserted your own proper -life for a horror of nothingness. Go back. Go back while -there is still a chance of going back.”</p> - -<p>But could he go back?</p> - -<p>Yes. That could be done. So easily! He could say<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[236]</span> -plainly that now he remembered his proper name. He -could ask to see the doctor or the director or whoever it -was presided over Jordan and Higgs and their colleagues; -he could give his name and the address of the studio and -his bankers’ address and the address of the laundry and -so forth, speaking very plainly and quietly, he could admit -that he had behaved strangely but that the fit was over, -and so he would pass out of these grim shadows back -into the world. It would rejoice the heart of Christina -Alberta....</p> - -<p>He thought of that alert, kind, slightly antagonistic -figure. If only he could see it now! Coming down the -long ward to him, to rescue, to release....</p> - -<p>Then he would be just Preemby again for the rest of his -days, comfortably Preemby, Preemby the bystander, -Preemby the onlooker, the ineffective, speechless man in -the background of the noisy studio. But certain things -would be at an end. He would never go to any museums -again or browse in the dark shadows of book-shops over -dusty forgotten books about vanished cities and enigmatical -symbols. He would think no more of the wonder -and mystery of Atlantis and of the measurements of the -Pyramids and of all the high riddles of the past and the -future. There would be no more wonder in his life at -all, for he had sought to enter into wonder and had found -it delusion. Those things would be old tales and fancies -of things that would never arrive. Past and future would -be dead for him. The days would be dull and empty as -they had never been before. The bladder of his life would -be pricked....</p> - -<p>And the other way lay pain, indignity, rough treatment, -vile food, filthy circumstances, trials that might break him—but -with the Power still beckoning.</p> - -<p>He thought of the things that belonged to Sargon; of the -Power, of cities that were like great single persons, of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[237]</span> -Whole World, of the mystical promise of the stars, of all -these things he must renounce now and be Preemby, -Preemby plain and sensible, to the end of his days, if he -would go out of this place. He sat at it seemed to him for -an immense time, still and brooding, though his answer -was already definite in his mind. And at last he spoke. -“No,” he said in a hoarse voice that was almost a shout. -“I am Sargon, Sargon the servant of God—and the Whole -World is mine!”</p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>Long after midnight Sargon was still sitting up in that -bleak greasy glare amidst the noises and disorder about -him. He had lost all count of time; his watch had been -taken from him. Somewhen in the small hours he was -praying. And at times he wept a little.</p> - -<p>He prayed. Sometimes he made sentences and whispered -them to himself and sometimes the sentences never got to -words but passed through his mind like serpents that are -seen through deep, dark water. “Great is the task thou hast -put upon me. I see now I am not worthy, O Master, to do -the least thing that is required of me. I am not worthy. I -am a petty man and a foolish man and all I have done so -far is folly. But thou hast called me, knowing my folly. -Forgive thou my folly and help thou my faith.” Silent and -still he sat with tears upon his cheeks. “Any punishment -and any trial,” he whispered at last, “only that thou -shouldst not desert me and vanish out of my world.”</p> - -<p>He prayed that the Power would yet make him the -servant of the world and added falteringly and feebly, -“even as it was in the ancient days.”</p> - -<p>For had there even been those ancient days? Sumeria -was now very far away from him, and the white towns and -the blue river and the river galleys had faded and the worshipping -crowds were just a faint smear upon his mind no<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[238]</span> -stranger than the fading memory of a dream. He said -nothing for a time, and then in a very loud whisper he said: -“Help thou my unbelief.”</p> - -<p>Sometimes he prayed in a whisper and sometimes he -prayed silently and sometimes he sat quite still. Higgs -came and looked at him once or twice but did not interfere -with him. The poem in the adjacent bed still went on, but -it had now become a mere rhyming stream of blasphemous -obscenities.</p> - -<p>For a time after he had made an end to his praying, -Sargon must have slept; he must have slept because he -was awakened by the dawn. It did not come gradually; he -awoke to it.</p> - -<p>A cold, shadowless light filled the ward and the electric -lamps that had seemed so bright were just luminous -orange-yellow threads. And Higgs was standing in the -doorway peering intently at the red-haired man, who was -lying with his head on the table as though he were asleep—but -perhaps only pretending to be asleep.</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>It was on the afternoon of the following day that two -strangers came to see Sargon. He was taken to them and -they talked a little with him, and then chiefly with each -other. Higgs was off duty but Jordan hovered in the background.</p> - -<p>Neither of these gentlemen explained their business with -Sargon to him. One of them was a short man in a black -coat; he wore a gold watch-chain and a rich-looking tie -with a jewelled pin; he had a gold pince-nez, a little -pointed nose, a fat, clean-shaven white face, and a mouth -like an oblique spade-thrust in a lump of dough. He spoke -with something between a sniff and a lisp, and he was evidently -rather in a hurry and annoyed at having been called -in to see Sargon. The other was large and grey and worn-looking;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[239]</span> -he impressed Sargon in some indefinable way as -being a medical man who had private troubles. He seemed -to consider himself in charge of the conversation, and would -occasionally refer upon some point of fact to the hovering -Jordan.</p> - -<p>“Understand,” said the pasty-faced man, “you wanted to -give some sort of dinner party to all sorts of people. Eh?—at -the Rubicon. I suppose it came on you sort of sudden -like. Eh?”</p> - -<p>“I wished to confer with certain people,” said Sargon. -“It may have been a mistake on my part.”</p> - -<p>“No doubt it was a mistake, Mr.—Mr.——”</p> - -<p>“Won’t ’ave a Mister to it,” said Jordan from the background. -“Calls ’isself Sargon.”</p> - -<p>The doctor became very acute in his manner. “Now isn’t -that some sort of historical name?” he asked with a sideways -searching look.</p> - -<p>“It is,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“But it isn’t <i>your</i> name, you know.”</p> - -<p>“Possibly not. I mean—It is my only name.”</p> - -<p>“That’s a bit of an answer, that is,” said the pasty-faced -man. “My <i>word</i>!”</p> - -<p>“What is your <i>real</i> name?” asked the doctor persuasively.</p> - -<p>“Sargon.”</p> - -<p>“Not Mr. A. E. Preemby?”</p> - -<p>Sargon started and stared, possibly with a certain wildness -in his eyes. “With God’s help, <i>No</i>!” he said.</p> - -<p>“Was it ever Mr. Preemby?” asked the doctor.</p> - -<p>“That does not matter now. That is of no importance -now.”</p> - -<p>“It may be of <i>some</i> importance,” said the pasty-faced -man.</p> - -<p>“And now you’re a King or a Lord or something and you -own the world?” said the doctor.</p> - -<p>Sargon made no answer. He felt he was in a net.</p> - -<p>The doctor turned to Jordan and beckoned him in a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[240]</span> -whisper. Only one sentence came to Sargon’s ears. “’Iggs -’eard it,” said Mr. Jordan.</p> - -<p>“Aren’t you called Sargon the Magnificent?” asked the -doctor.</p> - -<p>Sargon bent his head in sorrow. “Better were it to call -me Sargon the Unworthy. For in many things I have -failed.”</p> - -<p>The pasty-faced man looked at the doctor. “Haven’t we -had about enough of this?”</p> - -<p>“My conclusions are clear,” said the doctor. “In fact, I -have the certificate ready.”</p> - -<p>“If you’re satisfied, Dr. Manningtree, I am. If I’m to -see those other fellers.”</p> - -<p>“I’ve got all the papers in my room,” said the doctor.</p> - -<p>“Right-o,” said the pasty-faced man.</p> - -<p>“It’s very good of you to come to-day. I wouldn’t have -bothered you until to-morrow but we are really getting -overcrowded here. One chap’s decidedly dangerous. The -attendants here don’t like the look of him. You need -only just see him for a moment. Or any of them. All -clear cases for summary reception orders.”</p> - -<p>They spoke now as if Sargon were not present or as if he -were an inanimate object. And indeed for them he had -become so; he had passed for them already out of the -comity of mankind.</p> - -<p>“Why have you been talking to me?” asked Sargon suddenly -with a vague fear of what had been said and done -developing in his mind.</p> - -<p>The doctor’s manner altered. He spoke to Sargon as one -might speak to a small child. “You’ll be going back to bed -now,” he said. “Jordan!”</p> - -<p>“But I want to know.”</p> - -<p>“Go with Mr. Jordan.”</p> - -<p>“What are these papers you speak about?”</p> - -<p>The doctor turned his back on Sargon without an answer -and the man with the pasty face opened the door to depart.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[241]</span> -Sargon made a step towards them, but Jordan laid hold of -his arm.</p> - -<p>And while Sargon was being steered back to bed, firmly -rather than gently, in the grip of Jordan, the justice and -the doctor filled in and signed the forms that were necessary -to deprive him of nearly every right he possessed as a -human being. For there is no trial by jury and no writ of -habeas-corpus in Britain for the unfortunate charged with -insanity. He may not plead in public and there is no one -to whom he may appeal. He may write complaints but -they will be neglected; his most urgent expostulations -will be disregarded in favour of any dull attendant’s -asseverations. He is handed over to the nearly autocratic -control of under-educated, ill-paid, ill-fed, and overworked -attendants. Every night and every day seems endless -to him at first, and then the nights and days fall into -a sort of routine and become unimportant and pass away -more and more rapidly. He is almost always kept in a -state of bodily discomfort, always rather ill from the ill-prepared -and sometimes tainted food, and much incommoded -by clumsy drugging and particularly by the -administration of violent purgatives. In croton oil alone -are our asylums truly generous. He has excellent reason -for fearing many of his fellow inmates and for a servile -obedience to the attendants in charge of him. A medical -superintendent hovers in the background; a medical staff -with no special training in mental science. They pass -through the wards at the appointed times, avoiding trouble, -seeing as little as possible.</p> - -<p>And, after all, what can they do? They cannot raise the -expenditure upon food or increase the number or salaries -of the attendants. They are appointed to save and not to -spend the ratepayers’ money. The attendants work together -and protect each other; they must hang together; -many of them go in fear of the violent cases. Occasionally, -after due notice, a visiting magistrate will pay a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[242]</span> -formal visit to the asylum. Everything is put in order for -the occasion. The inmate with a grievance dares not -accost him or does not know how to accost him nor how -to frame his complaint. The attendants are at hand to -interrupt, embarrass, and explain. So, with no possibility -of redress, the poor half-lunatic will be roughly handled, -badly fed, and coarsely clothed, and night and day he will -have no other familiar company than the insane. It is -bad enough for the sane to be afflicted by the vagaries, -the violence, the exasperating mechanisms, the incoherences -of the truly demented, but what must it be for those upon -whom the penumbra of that same shadow has fallen? They -have no privacy; no escape from those others; no peace. -Our world herds these discards together out of sight, walls -them up, spends so little upon them that they are neither -properly fed nor properly looked after, and does its brave -hopeful best to forget all about them.</p> - -<p>And our Sargon, who even in the outer world of usage -and freedom was sometimes a little at a loss, must now go -on into this dark underworld. For two days more he will -be kept in the Gifford Street Observation Ward awaiting -the convenience of the authorities; then in the company of -four other prisoners he will be sent to a still bleaker and -more desolate and hopeless confinement within the clustering -buildings and walls and railings of Cummerdown Hill.</p> - -<p>So he passes now for a time out of sight of everyday -mankind, and so also for a time he shall pass out of this -story. It would be insufferable to tell with any fulness his -daily tale of discomfort and indignity.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[243]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>BOOK THE THIRD</i><br> -<br> -THE RESURRECTION OF SARGON,<br> -KING OF KINGS</h2> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[244]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[245]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE FIRST<br> - -<i>Christina Alberta in Search of a Father</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">H<small>ITHERTO</small> Christina Alberta had faced life with a bold, -disdainful, and successful gesture. The discretions -and scruples of others were not for her. She had seen no -reason for their prudent hesitations, their conventions and -restraints. Now for the first time she knew dismay. Her -Daddy had vanished into a world that she suddenly realized -could be immensely cruel. Teddy was rotten, so plainly -rotten that only a fool wrapped up in her own sensations -would have touched him. She lay awake for most of the -night after her Daddy had vanished, biting her hands and -damning Teddy. Lambone the great friend was lazy, incompetent, -and futile. Harold and Fay seemed already a little -tired of her misfortune and vaguely disposed to blame her -for bringing her Daddy to London. She had no one else -to whom she could turn. No one remained to her—except -Christina Alberta herself, feeling a little soiled now and -more than a little afraid. “But what am I to do?” she -asked the night, again and again, in her stuffy but artistic -little bedroom.</p> - -<p>Among the other disadvantages of her position she had -less than a pound of ready money.</p> - -<p>It has to be recorded that for two whole days Christina -Alberta did not even take the obvious step of going to the -police. She had a queer instinctive knowledge of the danger<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[246]</span> -of bringing the police and the social system generally -to bear upon her odd little Daddy. She had an innate -distrust of official human beings. It was Paul Lambone who -induced her to go to the police. He had the grace to -be ashamed of his unhelpfulness, and after an interval of -two clear days he came round to the Lonsdale Mews to -offer his generous but sluggish help once more. He caught -her having tea with Fay.</p> - -<p>“Christina Alberta,” he said, looking a very large comfortable -figure of sorrow, “I’ve been worrying and worrying -about you all the time. I didn’t help enough. I thought -he’d come back of his own accord and that all the fuss was -a little premature. Have you heard anything?”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta was torn between the desire to snap -his head off and the realization that he was, after his -fashion, quite sincerely friendly to her and could be very -useful.</p> - -<p>“<i>Say</i> it!” said Lambone. “You’ll be better, my dear, -after you’ve said it and then we can talk matters over.”</p> - -<p>He got the reassurance of a smile. He brightened visibly. -He was the sort of man who would hate to feel hated -even by a cockroach. “I won’t sit in that chair, thanks,” -he said to Fay. “It’s too comfortable. And at any moment -we may think of something, and I may have to leap up -and act.</p> - -<p>“Spartan,” he said, sitting down.</p> - -<p>“Eh?” said Fay.</p> - -<p>“Spartan. My doctor tells me to say it before every -meal and especially before tea. I don’t know why. Magic -or Coué or something. Are these things cocoanut cakes? -I thought so.... Good they are. And what are we -going to do about it, Christina Alberta?”</p> - -<p>He became sane and helpful and more and more like the -man who wrote <i>What to Do on a Hundred and One Occasions</i>. -He made Christina Alberta admit to bankruptcy,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[247]</span> -and made it clear to her that it was her duty to accept a -loan of twenty-five pounds from him. He then dealt with -the point about reporting the disappearance to the police, -and convinced Christina Alberta upon that. If Mr. -Preemby had fallen into bad hands the sooner the police -looked for him the better. But he did not think that likely; -he was much more inclined to the idea that Preemby had -made a disturbance and been taken up. He guessed he -would be dealt with as a mental case. He had consulted -those useful books <i>The Justice of the Peace</i> and the <i>Encyclopædia -Britannica</i>, and displayed the excellence of his -mental digestion. Christina Alberta perceived that he had -in him the makings of a competent barrister.</p> - -<p>He carried off Christina Alberta in a taxi to Scotland -Yard. “Either they’ll tell us there or tell us where we -shall be told,” he said.</p> - -<p>Fay was impressed by the originality of that. “Now -if it was a lost umbrella,” she said, “I could understand it. -But I’d never have thought of going to Scotland Yard for -a lost father.”</p> - -<p>By six Mr. Preemby had been traced to Gifford Street. -But there was no seeing him at Gifford Street. He had -been certified as a lunatic and he was bound, the attendant -thought but wasn’t quite sure, for Cummerdown Hill. -Paul Lambone tried to be dignified and important and to -prevail over the attendant and extract further information, -but not very successfully. In the end he and Christina -Alberta departed with little more than one immense discouraging -fact. They would not be able to see Mr. -Preemby nor to learn anything very material about his -condition until the next visiting day, whenever that might -be, at Cummerdown Hill. Then if he was “fit to be visited,” -they might go and see him. The attendant was rigid -in his statements and had the air of disliking both Lambone -and Christina Alberta extremely.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[248]</span>As they came away from Gifford Street Christina Alberta -observed that Lambone was angry. She had never seen -him angry before. It was a very transitory phase. There -was an unusual depth of pink in his cheeks.</p> - -<p>“Dog in office,” he said. “Just there to annoy people—anxious -people. One would think ... man in my position ... -certain standing.... Some attention.... -Any other country but this, Man of letters has respect.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta agreed mutely.</p> - -<p>“Manners in a public official—primary.”</p> - -<p>“He was detestable,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Not at the end of my resources,” said Lambone.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta waited.</p> - -<p>“Ought to have gone to Devizes in the first place. Knows -more about mental cases and lunacy law than any other -man in London. Wonderful fellow. I’ll go back to my flat -and I’ll ring him up and make an appointment. Then -he’ll put us wise about the whole business. And I want you -to meet him anyhow. You’ll appreciate Devizes. Come to -think of it, you’re remarkably like him.”</p> - -<p>“How?”</p> - -<p>“Got the Life Force and all that. And physically like -him. Very. The same nose—much the same profile.”</p> - -<p>“It’s a nose more suitable for a man,” said Christina -Alberta. “I suppose <i>he</i> carries it off all right!”</p> - -<p>“It’s a damned good nose, Christina Alberta,” said Lambone. -“It’s a valiant nose. Don’t you break down to any -modesty about it. It was your nose attracted me first to -you. You’ll spike a husband with it yet, and he’ll adore -it and follow it even as you do. Nowadays women have to -be free and individualized; they have got to have features -and distinction. The days of the wanton curl and the swan -neck and complexion have gone. Not that you haven’t the -clearest skin I’ve ever set eyes upon, Christina Alberta.”</p> - -<p>“Tell me some more about Dr. Devizes,” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[249]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>But it wasn’t the next day that Christina Alberta met -Devizes. She put that off for a day and fled down to -Woodford Wells in response to a remarkable communication -from Mr. Sam Widgery.</p> - -<p>The Widgerys had never been correspondents of the -Preembys except in so far as the payment of the dividends -upon Mr. Preemby’s interest in the Limpid Stream -Laundry necessitated letters. There had been a certain -amount of friction in the flotation of the company, and Mr. -Widgery had remained resentful and sought to show as -much by a studied curtness in his communications. But -now came this letter addressed to “Miss Chrissie Preemby.” -“<i>My dear Chrissie</i>,” the letter began.</p> - -<div class="blockquot2"> -<p>“<i>This is a shocking business about your poor father I -can’t tell you how shocked I am I went up post haste to -the workhouse where you had put him as soon as they -wrote to me and got his watch and cheque-book. It is -fortunate they found my address in his pocket or I suppose -I should have been kept in the dark as per usual about all -this he did not know me and denied his own name but -afterwards he said he knew me for a filching commercial -wrogue and would have my ears cut off and threatened me. -I was to be unpailed whatever that may be. I have been -thinking over all this business and since you are not yet of -age I suppose I am a sort of guardian to you and have to -look into your interests at the laundry which is not paying -nearly so well as your father led me to believe. I think -he was already queer at the time and didn’t fully understand -what he was doing and I doubt if all that of his -about preference shares which I never held with really but -did to humour him ought to stand. Luckily there is no -hurry about this has you won’t have to pay anything for -him where he is Mr. Punter says so long as you leave well -alone and we can see about these other things when you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[250]</span> -have got over the first shock of your father’s breakdown. -My wife sends her love and kind sympathy. You must -keep calm and not let these things disturb you too much -because very often it is hereriterary and one cannot be -too careful so leave everything to me and believe me to -remain</i></p> - -<p class="right"><span class="indentright">“<i>Your affectionate cousin</i></span><br> - -“<i>Sam Widgery</i>.”</p> -</div> - -<p>“Rather!” said Christina Alberta and telephoned forthwith -to put off Paul Lambone and Wilfred Devizes and -hurried off with a combatant light in her eye to the Underground -and Liverpool Street Station.</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>When Christina Alberta got down to Woodford Wells it -seemed to her that the laundry was just a little smaller -than it used to be and that a slight tarnish had fallen upon -the bright blue delivery vans. The swastika upon them -had been covered over by paper bills in red lettering -saying: “Under Entirely New Management. Address all -Communications to the Managing Director Samuel Widgery -Esq. By Order.”</p> - -<p>She went up the garden path to the door that had been -home to her for nearly all her life, and it was opened to -her by Sam Widgery himself, who had seen her coming. -“So you came down,” he said, and seemed to hesitate about -admitting her. He was a tallish, stooping man with a large -bare pock-marked face, a dropping nether lip, a large nose -that snored occasionally when he breathed, and furtive -very small brown eyes. He was clad in dark grey ill-fitting -garments, with a frayed collar and a very worn made-up -black satin tie. His waistcoat was mainly unbuttoned and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[251]</span> -he fidgeted with his hands. He looked at Christina Alberta -as though he found her more formidable than he had -thought her.</p> - -<p>“Did you see Daddy?” said Christina Alberta, coming -straight to the point.</p> - -<p>He compressed his mouth and shook his head from side -to side as though he recalled painful things.</p> - -<p>“Was he bad? Was he queer or—<i>dreadful</i>?”</p> - -<p>“Not too loud, my dear,” he said in his husky whispering -voice. “We don’t want <i>every one</i> to hear about your -trouble. Come in here where we can talk properly.”</p> - -<p>He led the way into the little living-room in which her -father had so recently planned the conditions for the conversion -of the laundry into a limited company. The -familiar furniture had been rearranged rather amazingly, -and a large, dark bureau had been placed under the window. -With discreet gestures, Sam Widgery closed the -door and came towards her. “Sit down, Chrissie,” he said, -“and don’t get excited. I was afraid you might come -rushing down here. But of course I was bound to write -to you.”</p> - -<p>“Did you see him?” she repeated.</p> - -<p>“Mad as a hatter,” he said. “They say he made a riot at -the Rubicon Restaurant. Wanted to give a great banquet -there to all the beggars in London.”</p> - -<p>“Did you see him? Was he well? Was he unhappy? -What have they done with him?”</p> - -<p>“You mustn’t <i>pelt</i> me with questions, Chrissie. You -mustn’t let your mind go on at such a pace. I told you in -my letter I went up and saw him. They called him out and -he came to me in a little room.”</p> - -<p>“Where was it? Where was this workhouse?”</p> - -<p>“There you go again. Just sit down and take things -quietly, my girl. I can’t answer all these questions at -once.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[252]</span>“Where was it you saw him? Was it at Gifford Street?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Where else could it be? They was waiting to remove -him.”</p> - -<p>“Where?”</p> - -<p>“Some asylum I suppose?”</p> - -<p>“Cummerdown Hill?”</p> - -<p>“Come to think of it, it <i>was</i> Cummerdown Hill. Yes—they -said Cummerdown Hill. He came out. He looked -much as usual, but more vacant perhaps, until he set eyes -on me and then he gave a sort of start and said, ‘Don’t -know you,’ he said. Like that.”</p> - -<p>“Well, that wasn’t mad. Did he <i>look</i> mad? I suppose -he didn’t want to talk to you—after all the disagreeable -things that have been said.”</p> - -<p>“Very likely. Any’ow I said to him, ‘What! don’t know -<i>me</i>?’ I said; ‘not know old Sam Widgery what you planted -your laundry on?’ Just like that—joking at him like. -Quite kindly but—humorous. ‘I don’t know you,’ he says -and tried to go. ‘Hold hard!’ I said and took him by the -arm. ‘You’re a base, complaining scoundrel,’ he says to -me and sort of tried to push me away. ‘You’d rewin any -laundry!’ he says—him to me, what was in the laundry -business a dozen years before he married your poor -mother. ‘Any ’ow I haven’t your complaint,’ I says, ‘Mr. -Albert Edward Preemby.’ He sort of stiffened. ‘Sargum,’ -he says, ‘if you please....’”</p> - -<p>“Sargon,” Christina Alberta corrected.</p> - -<p>“Maybe. It sounded like ‘Sargum.’ And ‘Sargum’ he -would have it. Mad as a hatter on that. I tried to talk -but what was the good of talking? I couldn’t get anything -plain or straight out of him at all. Started threatening me -with the bastinado—whatever that may be. I asked him -to be decent with his language. ‘I’ve ’ad enough’ I says -to the attendant at last and the attendant took him away. -And so we’re quit of him, Chrissie.”</p> - -<p>“Quit of him!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[253]</span>“Quit of him. What can anyone do?”</p> - -<p>“Everything. Did he look very unhappy? Did he look -frightened or ill-treated?”</p> - -<p>“Why should he? They’re taking proper care of him -and he’s out of harm’s way.”</p> - -<p>“You’re sure he looked—serene?”</p> - -<p>“Bit jaded perhaps. That’s his own internal workings I -expect. But he’s where he ought to be, Chrissie. I feel -that. What we’ve got to do, from what Mr. Punter says, is -to let well alone. There he is with everything he wants, -living on the ratepayers’ money. We’ve got ourselves to -consider. We’ve got to think of that crazy preference-share -idea he’s saddled the laundry with. <i>That’s</i> urgent. -It’s a charge of nearly five hundred a year as things are, -nearly ten pound a week. There isn’t a laundry in London -could stand it.”</p> - -<p>“I shall have to see my Daddy,” said Christina Alberta. -“I don’t believe he <i>is</i> so comfortable. I’ve heard horrid -stories of asylums. Anyhow, I ought to go right away and -see him.”</p> - -<p>“Can’t do that, Chrissie,” said Mr. Widgery, shaking his -large grey face slowly from side to side and watching her -as he spoke. “They don’t have visitors running in and out -of these mad-houses just whenever they want to. Wouldn’t -<i>do</i>, you know. The poor creatures have to be kept quiet -and not excited. I daresay I could give you a letter for -next visiting day——”</p> - -<p>“<i>You!</i> Give <i>me</i> a letter!”</p> - -<p>Mr. Widgery shrugged his shoulders. “It would help -you to get in. But you won’t make anything of him, -Chrissie, even if you see him. And you’ll have to wait for -a visiting day. You must do that.”</p> - -<p>“I want to see him.”</p> - -<p>“Very likely. But regulations are regulations. Meanwhile -there’s all this business muddle we got to put straight. -While he’s in that asylum I think what I ought to do is to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[254]</span> -give you ’n allowance, five pounds a week say, and keep -back the rest until we’re able to get something settled up. -Or four. Or perhaps as you want it—not a definite sum. -I don’t know. I haven’t thought it out yet. You can’t -possibly want to do with all that ten pounds a week with -him off your hands. Then we’ll be able to see where we -stand and everything will be all right again.”</p> - -<p>He paused and scratched his cheek and watched her with -his little sidelong eyes. “See?” he said as if to stimulate -her to speech.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta looked at him in a silence that became -painful. Then she stood up and regarded him—her arms -akimbo and her face alight.</p> - -<p>“I see now,” she said. “You damned old Rascal!”</p> - -<p>Mr. Widgery had nice old-fashioned ideas about young -ladies and ladylike language. He was taken aback. -“Now!” he said. “<i>Now!</i>”</p> - -<p>“Always I should think,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“You mustn’t say things like that, Chrissie. You -mustn’t use words like that. You mustn’t get wrong ideas -about all this. What d’you mean? Old rascal! Something -old rascal! Why? I’m only doing what I got to do. -You aren’t really of age yet, you’re just a mere child legally -speaking, and it falls to <i>me</i> naturally, <i>me</i>, his nearest relative -so to speak, to make such arrangements as have to be -made about his affairs. That’s all. You mustn’t get wrong -ideas about it all and you mustn’t get excited. See?”</p> - -<p>“I called you,” said Christina Alberta, “a damned old -Rascal.”</p> - -<p>He did not meet her eye. He spoke as if he appealed to -the bureau.</p> - -<p>“And does it do you any good to use such horrible expressions? -And does it do me any harm? And does it -alter the fact that whether I like it or not, I’ve got to look -after his property now and see about it and see you don’t -get into any trouble or mischief? All me and your aunt<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[255]</span> -have been thinking about is just what’s right and proper -to be done for you. And then you turn on me like a serpent -and use language——!”</p> - -<p>Words failed Mr. Widgery, and still seeking sympathy -from the bureau, he shrugged his shoulders and threw out -his hands.</p> - -<p>“You’re no relation of his,” said Christina Alberta. “I -guessed when I read your letter that this was the sort of -thing you’d be up to. You’re glad to have him out of the -way because he was such a one for punctual payments. -You think I’m all alone; you think I’m just a girl and that -you can do what you like now with me. You’ve made a -mistake. I’ll make you pay up every penny that’s due on -the laundry and I’ll see you do it more punctually than -ever. And why didn’t you do something to get him out as -soon as you heard they’d taken him?”</p> - -<p>“Now don’t you go getting excited, Chrissie,” said Mr. -Widgery. “Even if I ain’t a blood relation of his, I am of -yours. I’m your next-of-kin and your best friend and I -got to think what’s got to be done about <i>you</i>. I got to act -for <i>you</i>. In spite of bad language and everything. I tell -you he’s right and safe where he is and I’m not going to -have anything done to disturb him. Nothing at all. -There he is and there he’s going to stay, and I’m going to -act as Mr. Punter advised me to act. I’m going to keep -back his dividends as they fall due, and pay you what I -think proper to pay you for your keep and so on and charge -it to him, and I’m going to see you live an orderly sort of life -in future now too, same as my poor cousin Christina would -have wanted you to do. You’ve been knocking about the -world in a perfectly scandalous way and learning to curse -and swear. It can’t go on. That’s how things are, Chrissie, -and the sooner you see them the right way round the -better.”</p> - -<p>The young woman stood speechless while Mr. Widgery -unfolded his intentions.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[256]</span>“Where’s Mrs. Widgery?” she said at last with an effect -of stupendous self-control.</p> - -<p>“Up in the laundry seeing to things. No need to bother -her. We been talking about all this, over and over, and -we’re quite of one mind in the matter. It’s <i>our</i> right to -look after you and it’s <i>our</i> responsibility to look after you, -and we mean to do our duty by you, Chrissie, whether -you like it or not.”</p> - -<p>Unpleasant doubts assailed Christina Alberta. She was -still two months short of one and twenty, and it was quite -conceivable that the law gave this ugly, oily creature all -sorts of preposterous powers of interference with her. Still -it was her style to carry off things with a brave face.</p> - -<p>“All this is just nonsense,” she said. “I’m not going to -have my Daddy put away like this without a word from -me, and I’m not going to let you muddle about with his -property. Everybody in the family knows you’re a crooked -muddler. Mother used to say so. I’m going to see about -him myself, and I’m going to have him sent off to -some special sort of mental nursing place where he can -have proper attention. And that’s what I came to tell -you.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Widgery’s little eyes seemed to weigh and judge her. -“You’re giving yourself high and mighty airs, Chrissie,” he -said, after a little pause. “You’ll do this and you’ll do that. -You’ve got a sort of wrong idea of what you can do in the -world. You haven’t got any money and you haven’t got -any authority, and the sooner you get that into your head -the better.”</p> - -<p>That scared feeling was gaining upon Christina Alberta. -In order to counteract it she deliberately lost her temper. -“I’ll jolly soon show you what I can do and what you -can’t,” she said with a flaming face.</p> - -<p>“Now don’t <i>yew</i> go getting excited,” said Mr. Widgery. -“You of all people shouldn’t get excited.”</p> - -<p>“<i>Excited!</i>” said Christina Alberta; rallying for a repartee, -and then struck by an ugly thought she stopped short and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[257]</span> -stared at the little bright brown eyes in the pock-marked -face. Mutely they answered her mute amazed question. -This was the third or fourth time he had used the word -“excited” and now she knew what he was aiming at. Suddenly -she realized the train of ideas that her Daddy’s -extinction had set going in his head. He also had been -studying the lunacy laws—and dreaming dreams.</p> - -<p>“Exactly,” said Mr. Widgery. “You’ve always been a -queerish sort of girl, Chrissie, and the rackety life you lead -and now this affair has been a strain on you. Must have -been. You’ve got no quiet friends but your aunt and me -and no quiet place to come to but here. Don’t you go flaring -out at me, Chrissie; I mean well by you. I’m not -going to go paying you money to keep you up there in -London. Why!—you might go gettings drugs or anything. -Call me a something rascal if you like. Swear at me as -though you were out of your senses; it won’t alter what I -mean to do. I want you to come down here and rest your -mind and nerves for a time, and let me get in some one to -see you—see what ought to be done about you.... -You’ll thank me for it some day.”</p> - -<p>His big grey face seemed to expand and swim about -before her eyes and the room grew small and dark.</p> - -<p>“It’s my duty to see after you,” he said. “It can’t hurt -you or anyone for us to have advice.”</p> - -<p>In the train from Liverpool Street she had told herself -she had intended to wipe the floor with Mr. Sam Widgery, -but things hardly seemed to be happening like that.</p> - -<p>“Bah!” she cried. “D’you think I’d come back here?”</p> - -<p>“Better than being lost in London, Chrissie,” he said. -“Better than being lost in London. We can’t have you -wandering off in London, same as your father did.”</p> - -<p>She felt that the time had come for her to go, but for a -second or so she could not move to do so. She could not -move because she feared he might do something to detain -her, and if he did she did not know what she would do. -Then she pulled herself up by the feet.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[258]</span>“Well,” she said with a step past him doorward that -turned him on his heel; “I’ve told you what I think of you. -I’d better be getting back to London.”</p> - -<p>In his eyes she saw the thought of obstructing her flash -into being and die. “Won’t you stay and have something,” -he said, “before you go back?”</p> - -<p>“Eat <i>here</i>!” she cried and got to the door.</p> - -<p>Her hand trembled so that it was difficult to turn the -handle. He stood motionless, staring at her with his lower -lip dropping and an expression of doubt upon his face. It -was as if he was not quite sure of himself nor of the -course he meant to pursue. The course he wanted to -pursue was appallingly plain.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>She walked with dignity out of the open front door and -down the garden path. She did not look back, but she -knew his face came up close to the window and watched -her. Never in her whole life had panic come so near to her. -She would have liked to run.</p> - -<p>After the train had started she felt a little safer. “How -the devil can he get at me?” she said aloud to the empty -compartment.</p> - -<p>But she wasn’t at all sure that she couldn’t be got at and -she found herself trying to estimate just how much support -and friendship she might find in her London friends. -Could she, for instance, count upon Mr. Paul Lambone? -If supplies were cut off could she get some sort of job and -keep herself for a time until she could extract her -silly Daddy from the net into which he had fallen? How -would Harold and Fay, perennially hard-up, behave if -supplies ran out? And meanwhile there was Daddy, -wondering why no help came to him—puzzled by what -had happened to him and no doubt getting sillier and -sillier.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[259]</span>Christina Alberta was growing up fast now. Beneath all -her radicalism and rebellion there had always hitherto -been a belief, tacit, sub-conscious, in the rightness and -security and sustaining energy of the social framework. -There is under most youthful rebellion. She had assumed -without thinking very much about it that hospitals were -places of comfort and luxury, doctors in full possession -and use of all existing science, prisons clean and exemplary -places, that though laws might still be unjust that the -administration of the law was untouched by knavery or -weakness. She had had the same confidence in the ultimate -integrity of social life that a little child has in the -invincible safeness of nursery and home. But now she was -awakening to the fact that the whole world was insecure. -It was not that it was a wicked or malignant world, but that -it was an inattentive and casual world. It dreaded bothers. -It would do the meanest, most dangerous, and cruellest -things to escape the pressure of bothers, and it would -refuse to be bothered by any sufferings or evil it could -possibly contrive to ignore. It was a dangerous world, a -world of bothered people in which one might be lost and -forgotten while one was still alive and suffering. It was a -world in which it is not good to be alone, and she was -beginning to feel herself very dangerously alone.</p> - -<p>She had never, she reflected, thought very much of her -family, but now she perceived a family may dissolve away -too soon. She wanted a wall to put her back against if -after all Sam Widgery screwed up his courage to be aggressive; -she wanted some one who would be her very own, -a safe ally, some one she could count upon, some one closer -than law or custom, some one who would go about and -find out exactly what had happened to her if she fell into -disaster, who would refuse to accept her downfall, some -one who would care for her more than he cared for himself -and not be lightly turned away.</p> - -<p><i>Himself?</i> Not <i>herself</i>. In fact, a lover.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[260]</span>“Damn Teddy!” cried Christina Alberta, and knocked a -puff of dust out of the railway cushion with her fist. “He -messes it up.</p> - -<p>“And I knew what he was. I knew all the time exactly -what he was!</p> - -<p>“I’ve got to stick it alone,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“And besides who’d have cared for me, anyhow, with a -nose like mine?”</p> - -<p>“Even if there were such things in the world as lovers -who loved like that! But it’s a world of people who don’t -care. It’s a world of people who haven’t the guts to care. -It’s a dust-heap of a world,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>Her thoughts began to flow into a new region. After all, -wasn’t there something too disagreeably justifiable in the -suggestion that she was—how to put it—<i>queer</i>? Hitherto -Christina Alberta had always regarded herself as a model -of sanity and mental directness—with no fault indeed -except possibly her nose. Now the word “queer” stuck in -her mind like a thorn that has gone right home. She -could not get it out again.</p> - -<p>She had always, she knew, been different. She had -always had a style of her own.</p> - -<p>Most of the people she had met in the world had impressed -her as being colourless, weak in speech and action, -evasive—that was the word, “evasive.” They evaded the -use of all sorts of blunt words, they didn’t know why. -Christina Alberta was all for saying “Damn” and “guts” -and so forth until some one convinced her of some better -reason for avoiding them than merely that they weren’t -used by “nice” people. These others were always not saying -things because they weren’t said and not doing things -because they weren’t done. And for what was said and -what was done, however manifestly preposterous it was,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[261]</span> -they had a sort of terrified imitativeness. They just ran -about being as far as possible somebody else until they -died. Why exist at all then? Why not get out of it and -leave some one else in possession? But, anyhow, they got -through life. They didn’t get into trouble. They supported -one another. And, on the other hand, if you didn’t -evade? You puzzled other people. You left the track. -You were like a train leaving the rails and trying to take -a cross-country short-cut. You hit against—everything.</p> - -<p>Was this evasive life she had always despised really the -sane life? Was ceasing to evade ceasing to be sane? -Sheep, she had read, had a disease called gid; then they -wandered alone and died. Was all this originality and -thinking for oneself and not going with the crowd and so -forth, that had been her pride and glory, just the way out -from the sane life? Originality, eccentricity, queerness, -craziness, madness; was that merely a quantitative scale?</p> - -<p>Was not her Daddy’s queerness this, that after years of -the extremest evasion he had at last tried to break away -to something real and strange? And had she, after her -fashion, been attempting anything else? Was she, too, lop-sided? -Lop-sided in a different direction, perhaps, but lop-sided -none the less. An inherited lop-sidedness?</p> - -<p>Her mind went off at a tangent on the question whether -she had really inherited anything whatever from her -Daddy. Was his queerness her sort of queerness at all? It -ought to be, seeing that they were father and daughter.</p> - -<p>How different they were! For a father and daughter how -amazingly different they were!...</p> - -<p>But were they father and daughter? A much repressed -fantasy came back to her—a fantasy based on the flimsiest -foundations, on chance phrases her mother had used, on -moments of intuition. Once or twice a reverie had arisen -out of these lurking particles of memory and had taken her -by surprise only to be thrust aside again with contempt.</p> - -<p>Blup. Blup. Blup. There came a familiar variation to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[262]</span> -the familiar sounds of the train. Christina Alberta was -running into Liverpool Street Station and her perplexities -were all unsolved.</p> - -<p>The old fantasy lost heart and faded away. What was -the good of such dreams? There she was.</p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>Christina Alberta’s meeting next day with Wilfred -Devizes turned out to be a much more exciting affair than -she or he had expected it to be.</p> - -<p>Acting on the advice of Paul Lambone, she had brought -photographs and a letter or so in her Daddy’s handwriting -with her, and she had thought out what she judged would -be significant things to tell about him. She went in a taxi -with Paul Lambone to Devizes’ house just off Cavendish -Square, and they were shown up at once past a waiting-room -and a consulting-room to a dignified little sitting-room -with an open fire and a table with tea-things and a -great array of bookcases. Devizes came in to them -forthwith.</p> - -<p>She was a little shocked to think that this lank, dark, -shock-headed man could be recognizably like her. He was -younger than she had expected him to be, younger she -thought, than her Daddy or Mr. Lambone, and he wore a -long unbuttoned morning coat. He carried the nose all -right; he was indeed very good-looking.</p> - -<p>“Hullo, Paul,” he said cheerfully. “Is this the young -lady whose father’s been stolen? We’ll have some tea. It’s -Miss——?”</p> - -<p>“Miss Preemby,” said Paul Lambone, “but every one -calls her Christina Alberta.”</p> - -<p>Devizes turned an eye that was by habit and disposition -a scrutinizing eye upon her. He betrayed a faint momentary -surprise and came and shook hands. “Tell me -all about it,” he said. “You don’t think he’s really<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[263]</span> -mad, but only rather exceptional and odd. That’s it, -isn’t it? Lambone tells me he is sane. It’s quite possible. -I’d better go over the state of his mind first, and then we -can discuss the question of the asylum afterwards. I -gather you want to get him under your own care—outside. -That isn’t by any means simple. We’ll have to study the -obstacles. Meanwhile tea.... I’ve been disentangling -the delusions of a perfectly terrible old lady, and I’m -rather deflated. Just tell me all about it in your own -way.”</p> - -<p>“Tell him,” said Paul, settling his shoulders into his -arm-chair, and preparing to interrupt.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta began to unfold her premeditated discourse. -Every now and then Devizes would interrupt her -with a question. He kept his eyes on her, and it seemed to -her even from the beginning that they betrayed something -more than attention to what she was saying. He looked at -her as though he had seen her before and couldn’t quite -remember where. She described her Daddy’s talks to her -when she was a girl, about the Pyramids and the Lost -Atlantis and so forth, and the odd spirit of release and -renewed growth that had followed the death of her mother. -She told of the spiritualistic séance and the coming of -Sargon. Devizes was very keen on various aspects of -the Sargon story. “It was odd that the suggestion fell in -so aptly with Preemby’s mental disposition. What was -that young man up to? I don’t quite understand him.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know. I think he just hit by chance on the -stuff he talked. It was just bad luck that it fitted.”</p> - -<p>“Undergraduate idea of fun?”</p> - -<p>“Undergraduate fun. It might have been Tut-an-ka-man.”</p> - -<p>“But it happened to be Sargon.”</p> - -<p>“He may have been reading some ancient history.”</p> - -<p>“He didn’t, I suppose, know anything about your -father?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[264]</span>“Couldn’t have done. I suppose he thought my—my -Daddy looked a little small and absurd, and I suppose it -appealed to his sense of humour to single him out from the -others and make him a great king. I’d like to have a few -minutes straight talk with that young man.”</p> - -<p>“This you see isn’t a delusion, Devizes. It’s a deception,” -said Paul Lambone.</p> - -<p>“Is he generally coherent,” asked Devizes.</p> - -<p>“Granted his thesis, he’s amazingly coherent,” she said.</p> - -<p>“He doesn’t sometimes become some one else, God or a -millionaire, or anything of that sort?”</p> - -<p>“No. He believes in reincarnation and hints at having -lived other lives, but that’s all.”</p> - -<p>“Thousands of people do that,” said Lambone.</p> - -<p>“And nobody is persecuting him? Nobody makes noises -to trouble him or gets at him with X-rays or anything of -that sort?”</p> - -<p>“Not a shadow of that sort of thing.”</p> - -<p>“The man’s sane. Unless he went mad when he walked -out of your friends’ studio.”</p> - -<p>“I’m for his sanity right out,” said Lambone. “I wish I’d -had a chance to talk to him. There’s something—everybody’s -chattering now about an Inferiority Complex. -Well, isn’t it common for people who have been rather put -upon and deceived and so forth, and who don’t want to -face the facts of life, to take refuge in an assumed personality? -And putting the reveries, the spiritualist séance and -so forth all together, doesn’t it work out on those lines?”</p> - -<p>“He knows he is really, <i>au fond</i>, Preemby?” Devizes -asked.</p> - -<p>“It annoyed him to tell him so,” said Christina Alberta. -“I think one reason why he went away was because I and -my friend, Mrs. Crumb that is, at the studio where we live, -would try to make him be sensible about that. It drove -him away. He knows he is really Preemby and he hates it. -He knows this is all a make-believe.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[265]</span>Paul Lambone took up the discourse. “I do so sympathize -with that. So far from that being insane it’s perfectly -rational. Becoming somebody else greater than oneself is -part of half the religions of the world. All the Mithraists -used to become Mithra. The Serapists, if I remember -rightly, used to become Osiris. We all want to be born -again really. Every one with any sense and humility does. -Into something greater. ‘Who will deliver me from the -body of this death?’ That’s why Christina Alberta’s -Daddy is so tremendously interesting. He’s got imagination; -he’s got originality. He may be a feeble little chap, -but he has that.”</p> - -<p>“Having an exceptional mind isn’t insanity,” said -Devizes, “or else we should put all our poets and artists -in asylums.”</p> - -<p>“Few would come up to that standard,” said Lambone. -“I wish they did.”</p> - -<p>Devizes reflected. “I think I’ve got things clear. He’s -coherent. He’s neat in his dress. He isn’t persecuted. -He’s unselfish in his thoughts, almost romantically so. And -he’s not fattish and lumpish, and he’s never had any sort of -fit. There’s no insane type a properly qualified doctor -could class him under, but then most doctors are altogether -unqualified for mental practice. A stupid doctor might -mistake his imaginations for the splendour of paranoia or -take his abstraction in reverie for <i>dementia præcox</i> or think -he was a masked epileptic. But all these are cases of -mental disease, and your father is probably not diseased at -all. He’s mentally disturbed, but that’s all. The difference -between him and a real lunatic is the difference between a -basketful of fruit that’s been overturned, and a basketful -that’s gone rotten. Overturned fruit gets bruised and rots -very easily—but being overturned isn’t being rotten. What -sort of man is he to look at?”</p> - -<p>“She’s got photographs,” said Lambone.</p> - -<p>“I’d like to see them,” he said, and was given a recent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[266]</span> -one of Mr. Preemby as laundryman. “Too much moustache -by a long way,” he said. “Is there anything—with -some at least of his face uncovered? There’s nothing here -but his eyes.”</p> - -<p>“I thought you’d feel that,” said Lambone. “There’s one -of Mr. Preemby as a young man, taken soon after his wedding -with Mrs. Preemby. Have you got it, Christina -Alberta?... Here we are.... That’s Mrs. Preemby in -the chair. The moustache—in bulk—has yet to come.”</p> - -<p>“He married young?” Devizes asked Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“He must have done,” she said. “I don’t know his exact -age. My mother never told me.”</p> - -<p>Devizes scrutinized the photograph. “Queer,” he said, -and seemed to be searching his memory. “Something -familiar. I’ve met people like this.</p> - -<p>“They were both London people, I suppose,” he said, -looking hard at Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Woodford Wells,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“My father was born at Sheringham,” she added as an -afterthought.</p> - -<p>“Sheringham. That’s queer.” With a manifestly deepened -interest he looked at the couple posed against one of -those rustic backgrounds dear to Victorian photographers. -“Chrissy,” he repeated to himself. “Chrissy. Christina -Alberta. It <i>can’t</i> be.”</p> - -<p>For some moments Dr. Devizes ceased to attend to his -consultants and they remained intently observing him. -He tried to fix his attention on the young man’s face in the -picture, but it was the young woman who sat on the rustic -style that absorbed his interest. Amazing how completely -he had forgotten her face, and how she came back now -incredibly unlike and yet like his memory of her. He -remembered the glasses and the neck and shoulders. And -a sort of stiff defiance. “When were your mother and father -married?” he asked. “How long ago?”</p> - -<p>“Eighteen ninety-nine,” she answered.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[267]</span>“And then you were born straight away?” He asked -the question with an affectation of ease.</p> - -<p>“There was a decent interval,” said Christina Alberta -with a clumsy levity. “I was born in nineteen hundred.”</p> - -<p>“A little, fair, blue-eyed chap with rather an absent-minded -manner. I seem to see him,” Devizes said, and -resumed his examination of the photograph. Nobody -spoke for the better part of a minute. “Good Lord!” -whispered Lambone to himself. Devizes drank a cup of -tea absent-mindedly. “Extraordinary,” he ejaculated. “I -never dreamt of it.”</p> - -<p>“What is?”</p> - -<p>His answer went off at a tangent. “Christina Alberta’s -resemblance to my mother. It’s amazing. It’s been worrying -me ever since I came into the room. It’s been distracting -my attention. I’ve got a little picture....”</p> - -<p>He jumped up and went out of the room. Christina -Alberta, puzzled, excited, turned instantly on Lambone. -“He knew my father and mother,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Apparently,” said Lambone with something defensive in -his voice.</p> - -<p>“<i>Apparently!</i>” she echoed. “But—he <i>knew</i> them! He -<i>knew</i> them well. And—<i>What’s he thinking of?</i>”</p> - -<p>Devizes reappeared holding out a small gold-framed picture. -“Look at that!” he said and handed it to Paul Lambone. -“It might be Christina Alberta. Don’t you see how -like it is? Allowing for that preposterous hair piled upon -her head and the way her dress goes up round her neck.”</p> - -<p>He handed the picture to Christina Alberta and looked -at Lambone in amazed interrogation.</p> - -<p>“It might be me in fancy dress,” Christina Alberta -agreed, with the picture in her hands. There came a long -pause. She looked up and saw the expression of his face. -Her mind gave a fantastic leap, so fantastic that it instantly -leapt back to the point of departure. It was like a flash -of lightning in a night as dark as pitch. She made a great<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[268]</span> -effort to pull the conversation together, to behave as though -her mind had never leapt at all. “But what has all this -to do with my Daddy’s case?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“Nothing directly. Your resemblance to my mother is a -pure coincidence. Pure. But it’s a curious coincidence! -Just for the moment it pulled my attention aside. Forgive -me. I’ve a belief that where there’s resemblance of this -sort there’s a blood relationship. I suppose your mother’s -people—what did you say they were called—Hoskin?”</p> - -<p>“Did I say? I don’t remember. I <i>didn’t</i> say. I didn’t. -Her name was Hossett.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, yes!—Hossett. I suppose that two or three generations -back the Hossetts and Devizes intermarried. And -there we are! Cousins—at we don’t know what remove. -But types go under in a family and then bob up again. It -sort of links us, Christina Alberta, doesn’t it? It gives me -a special interest. I don’t feel now that you’re just any old -patient. Or, rather, just Paul’s friend. I feel linked. Well—That’s -that. Let’s come back to your father. Who -married your mother just when they were starting the -old South African war. He’s always been a dreamy, unobservant -type. As we were saying. Even from the -beginning....”</p> - -<p>He stopped short.</p> - -<p>“Always,” said Christina Alberta, after a long pause.</p> - -<p>“We’ve been into all that,” said Devizes and paused, and -was for a minute entirely at a loss for words. “Yes,” he -said at last.</p> - -<p>Her heart was beating fast and there was a flush of -excitement on her cheeks. Her quick wits had filled in all -the gaps. She understood now—and then again it vanished. -She would have liked to have gone away and -thought it all over at once. But that wouldn’t do. She -must disregard the questions that surged up within her. -Her mind went forward like an obstinate traveller caught -in a whirlwind. Her mother for example. She was trying<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[269]</span> -to recall something about her mother that had long been -stifled in her mind. “Went away and left me to it,” was it? -“Went off and left me to it?” Her mother lying in bed and -wandering. Who had left her to what? That standing -perplexity. That suspicion. That dream. But attend to -him now, Christina Alberta; attend to him! She was -observing him with all her being, and yet she seemed deaf -to what he said.</p> - -<p>He was saying that now that he agreed with them that -Preemby was sane, he could see his way to the real business -before them. It was the old, old story of making lunatics -out of sane people which they encountered in Preemby’s -case. It was the old, old story of making lunatics out of -sane people which they encountered in Preemby’s case. -(He repeated his sentence word for word without apparently -realizing he had said it twice.) All exceptional people -were in danger of being misunderstood, but such a type as -Preemby, original and yet incapable of abstract expression -or philosophical method, which sought fantastic expression -for its feelings and impulses, was particularly liable -to give offence, awaken suspicion and dread and hostility. -It was just these borderland cases he was always trying to -save from asylums, and just such cases that were always -going there. And they were the last people to bring into -contact with real insanity. “To go back to my metaphor, -the basketful of fruit isn’t rotten, is scarcely speckled with -decay, but it is disordered and overturned. A mind is a -delicate thing to knock about. It will rot very easily, and -a mind like your father’s particularly will rot very easily -under asylum conditions. After all this rigmarole I come -to just the conclusion you’ve already reached, that we have -to get Preemby out of Cummerdown Hill and away under -restful conditions as soon as possible. When we’ll comb -out his particular complex and get him into working relations -with the world again. I’m quite sure we can do that -somehow, make his incognito permanent, make him an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[270]</span> -Emperor in exile, restore his proper name, organize a -common daily round for him and get him back more and -more to be a chastened and released Preemby.”</p> - -<p>He paused.</p> - -<p>“That’s it,” said Lambone, roused from a profound -contemplation of the two interesting faces before him.</p> - -<p>“It isn’t easy. Even to get at him isn’t easy. There will -be delays. A careless magistrate and a silly doctor can -make a lunatic in five minutes. It takes no end of time -to unmake one.”</p> - -<p>“That’s what I want to set about doing,” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Naturally,” said Devizes, “and I’m with you.”</p> - -<p>He explained one or two points in lunacy law, began -sketching a scheme of operations, considered the people -to whom she ought to write and the people to whom he -ought to write, and how soon it would be possible to see -Preemby, and give him a word of encouragement. Already -Devizes had had several brushes with lunacy organization; -he was considered a troublesome but dangerous man for a -medical superintendent to be up against. That might -arouse either hostile obstruction or the propitiatory spirit. -They must go carefully.</p> - -<p>Lambone scarcely interrupted now at all. He had ceased -to be acutely interested in Preemby, immured away there -in Cummerdown. He was lost in admiration of the self-control -his astonishing friends displayed. He tried to -imagine what an undertow of strange excitement, of queer -thoughts and confused emotions there must be beneath -their highly intelligent discussion of the case of Mr. -Preemby. They wasted very little attention upon the onlooker. -Christina Alberta’s face was faintly flushed, and -her eyes glowed; Devizes was rather less of a conversationalist -than usual and rather more like a university tutor -with an exceptionally interesting student.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[271]</span>The subject was exhausted at last and the time came to -depart. Devizes came to the door with them.</p> - -<p>“Don’t forget that I’m always round the corner, so to speak,” -he said. “I’m in the telephone directory. And -don’t forget, Christina Alberta, don’t forget I’m your long-lost -cousin, very much at your service.”</p> - -<p>“I won’t forget that,” said Christina Alberta, meeting -his eye.</p> - -<p>A little pause, and then rather stiffly they shook hands.</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>“Am I mad?” said Christina Alberta as soon as she and -Paul Lambone were in the street together. “Am I -dreaming?”</p> - -<p>Lambone was clumsy. “Mad? Dreaming? How?”</p> - -<p>“Oh! don’t pretend not to understand. That he’s my -real father? Don’t pretend! or, please don’t pretend! Is -he or is he not?”</p> - -<p>Lambone did not reply for a moment. “You flash at -things—like a lizard. How could it have happened?”</p> - -<p>“Then you <i>did</i> think?”</p> - -<p>“My dear Christina Alberta, he didn’t know you existed -until he set eyes on you. I’m sure of that.”</p> - -<p>“But then. Wasn’t it plain? He <i>knew them both</i>!”</p> - -<p>“Devizes,” said Lambone, “is ten years younger than I -am. He’s barely forty. He must have been—not more -than eighteen. Nineteen at most. It’s a little difficult.”</p> - -<p>“That makes it easier. You never knew mother. If they -were both young——”</p> - -<p>“It’s just possible,” said Lambone, “there is some other -explanation.”</p> - -<p>“But what?”</p> - -<p>“Can’t imagine. I suppose he was at Sheringham—perhaps -for a holiday—and met her. But——”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[272]</span>“It must have been something casual, a kind of accident. -Mother used to have flashes.... I never quite understood -her. She used to suppress me, and perhaps she was -suppressing herself.... And at the end—she said something. -Someone had left her to it.... Do you know—at -times—I’ve had fancies—suspicions! It seemed as though -she guessed that I was guessing. Now I know—I <i>was</i>. -It’s incredible. And yet it explains a hundred things.”</p> - -<p>“He certainly never knew of you. He’s—amazed.”</p> - -<p>“And what’s going to happen next?”</p> - -<p>“Legally you’re Preemby’s daughter. Nothing can alter -that. All the resemblances and coincidences in the world -won’t alter that.”</p> - -<p>“And all the law in the world won’t alter the facts. -And——”</p> - -<p>She turned on Lambone with a flushed face. “Do you -realize what it means to think you are the daughter of a -certified lunatic? And then find you are not? All last -night I was awake with that unendurable thought.”</p> - -<p>“All night—at your age!”</p> - -<p>“It seemed all night. Last night—I <i>tried</i> to imagine that -something of this sort had happened. Tried—and couldn’t. -Tried to bring back all those old fancies. And here it is! -I might have known. I did know and wouldn’t know.</p> - -<p>“Tell me about this real father of mine. I don’t know -a thing about him. Is he a good man? Is he a bad man? -Has he a wife?”</p> - -<p>“He adored his wife. And so did I. She was one of the -loveliest and cleverest young women I’ve ever known. She -was strong and jolly—and the beastly influenza and pneumonia -got her. In a week. It cut him to ribbons. They’d -had no children. They’d had only four years together. -He’s attractive to women, but I don’t think there’ll be a -second Mrs. Devizes for a long time. I can’t imagine -it. Any other woman! Why! All that house—it’s full of -her presence.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[273]</span>“Yes,” said Christina Alberta, and thought for a time.</p> - -<p>They were detached for a time in crossing Bond Street, -and the pavement was too crowded and Piccadilly was too -congested for them to talk again until they went in St. -James’ Street.</p> - -<p>“Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, “seems ten thousand -miles away. But when I’m over the amazement of this I -expect I’ll get back to him all right. But just for a time—he -must wait.”</p> - -<p>“You’ll come in for a bit?” said Lambone at the corner -of Half Moon Street. “I could give you some dinner.”</p> - -<p>“No, thanks. I’ll walk all the way to Chelsea,” said -Christina Alberta. “I want to think this out by myself. -I want to get alone with this spinning head of mine and -try to slow it down. My life’s gone topsy-turvy. Or it’s -been topsy-turvy and it’s suddenly come right side up. I -don’t know which. Oh!—I don’t know anything. I’ve -got to begin all over again.”</p> - -<p>She shook hands and paused. Lambone waited, for -manifestly she had something to say. She got it out at last.</p> - -<p>“Do you think—he liked me?”</p> - -<p>“He liked you all right, Christina Alberta. Don’t you -worry about that.”</p> - -<h4>§ 8</h4> - -<p>It was a little more than two days before Christina -Alberta, to use her own expression, “got back” to her lost -Daddy.</p> - -<p>Those two days were full of an immense excitement. -Devizes was the most wonderful fact in the world. She -exploded into love for him. She had the most vivid impression -of him, dark and tall, rather grave, watchful and -amazingly understandable. Yet vivid as her impression -was she doubted every detail of it, and wanted to go back -to him and verify it all over again. It was their quality of -mutual understanding that was at once the most delightful<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[274]</span> -and the most incredible aspect of the whole affair. Their -brains no doubt were unlike, as every two individual -brains must be, yet their unlikeness was not a mere accumulation -of accidental difference, but the unlikeness of -two variations of one theme. She could feel his intentions -beneath his words. Her mind had jumped with his realizations -and there must be kinks and turns in her brain, kinks -and turns that just made her difficult and queer for most -people, which would find the completest parallels in his. -She didn’t believe there was a thing in her thoughts and -acts that she would be surprised at his knowing and -comprehending.</p> - -<p>She had never before thought of parentage with any -enthusiasm. She had viewed it rather in the spirit of -Samuel Butler and Bernard Shaw, and conceived of parents -generally in relation to their children as embarrassed hypocrites -with an instinctive disposition towards restraint -and suppression. She had made an exception of her own -particular pair; Daddy had been a great friend anyhow, -though mother for the most part had been a concentrated -incarnate “Don’t.” But she had never realized there might -be something rather intimately interesting in consanguinity. -And then suddenly a door had opened, a man had -come in and sat down and talked to her and discovered -himself the nearest thing in life to her. And she to him. -She wanted to go to him again; she wanted to see more of -him, be with him. But he made no sign and she could -think of no decent excuse for a call upon him. The very -intensity of her desire made her unable to go to him easily. -She wrote the various letters they had agreed she should -write, and then decided to master mental science and -lunacy generally. That and the case of her “Daddy” she -perceived to be her formal link with Devizes.</p> - -<p>She set out for the Reading Room of the British Museum, -for which she had a students’ ticket, and she tried to concentrate -her mind upon the book she had requisitioned,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[275]</span> -instead of letting it wander off into the strangest reveries -about this miraculously discovered blood relation. In the -afternoon she rang up Lambone to be given tea, with the -intention of learning everything that the wise man could -tell her about Devizes and generally turning him over conversationally. -But Lambone was out. The next day the -craving for Devizes was overpowering. She rang him up.</p> - -<p>“May I have some tea?” she asked. “I’ve got nothing -much to say, but I want to see you.”</p> - -<p>“Delighted,” said Devizes.</p> - -<p>When she got to him she found herself shy, and him as -shy as herself. For a little while they made polite conversation; -it might almost have been the conversation of -two people at a formal call in a country town. He called -her “Christina Alberta,” but she called him “Doctor -Devizes,” and he asked her if she played or danced, and -whether she had ever been abroad. She sat in an arm-chair -and he stood over her on the hearthrug. It was clear -that the only way to intimacy lay in a frank treatment -of her Daddy. She felt that if this sort of talk went on -for another minute she would have to scream or throw -her tea-cup in the fire. So she plunged.</p> - -<p>“When did you first know my mother?”</p> - -<p>Devizes’ attitude stiffened, and he smiled faintly at her -boldness. “I was a Cambridge undergraduate reading for -the Natural Science Tripos, and I went down to Sheringham -to read. We—we picked each other up on the beach. -We made love—in a scared, furtive, desperate, ignorant -sort of way. People were primitive in those days—compared -with what they are now.”</p> - -<p>“Daddy wasn’t there.”</p> - -<p>“He came in afterwards.”</p> - -<p>Devizes considered for a moment. He decided that it -wasn’t fair to oblige her to go on questioning him. “My -father,” he said, “was a pretty considerable old bully. He -was Sir George Devizes, the man who invented the Devizes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[276]</span> -biscuit and cured old Alphonso, and he was celebrated for -being rude to his patients. He would smack their stomachs -and tell them they ought to be scooped out. He helped -make Unter Magenbad. He suspected me of being a bit -of a soft, though as a matter of fact I wasn’t, and he generally -had the effect of laying up for a quarrel with me. He -kept me pretty short. He wasn’t particularly nice to my -mother. He used to get at my mother through me. I -didn’t dare to have a scrape of any sort. I was really -afraid of him. If I saw a scrape blowing up my habit and -disposition was to run away.”</p> - -<p>“I see.”</p> - -<p>Devizes considered the implications of that “I see.” -“Not that I ran away from any definite scrape that I knew -of at Sheringham,” he said very carefully.</p> - -<p>“What was my mother like in those days?”</p> - -<p>“A sort of subdued fierceness. A flushed warm face. -She was pretty, you know, and very upright in her carriage. -And she had a swift decision beneath her stiffness. -Her wishes would suddenly crystallize out, and after that -there was no bending her.”</p> - -<p>“I know.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose you do.”</p> - -<p>“She wore glasses then?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes.”</p> - -<p>“Was she fresh then? Was she happy?”</p> - -<p>“A little too fierce to be happy.”</p> - -<p>“Did you—ever—love her?”</p> - -<p>“It is a long time ago, Christina Alberta. There was—seaside -love-making. Why do you cross-examine me like -this?”</p> - -<p>“I want to know. Why”—Christina Alberta had a -momentary terror at her own boldness—“Why didn’t you -marry her?”</p> - -<p>Devizes made no pretence of surprise at the question. -“There was no reason manifest why I should have married<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[277]</span> -her. None at all. I can’t conceive what my father would -have done if I had come back from Sheringham engaged -to a chance acquaintance. And anyhow, why should I -have done anything of the sort?”</p> - -<p>His eyes defied hers.</p> - -<p>“I left her my address,” he added. “She could have -written to me. She never did.”</p> - -<p>“Did a letter go astray?” said Christina Alberta, and -added hastily, “my imagination is running away with me.”</p> - -<p>She hesitated and trembled at the next words she had -resolved to say, but she said them, with a forced offhandedness. -“You see—I might have fancied you as a -father?”</p> - -<p>It produced no catastrophe. He looked her in the face -and then smiled. After that smile she felt that they understood -each other completely, and it was very pleasant to -think that. “Instead of which, you have to adopt me as a -cousin,” he said deliberately. “Cousins it is, Christina -Alberta. It’s the best we can do. We have to put our -heads together and think of your Daddy. He’s our common -concern. I’m interested in that little man. He’s -defended himself against many things by those dreams of -his. Very wilful dreams they may have been. Who -knows? Necessary protective dreams.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta did not speak for a little time. She -nodded. She was glad at their manifest understanding and -yet she was disappointed, though she could not have told -herself what else she had expected. This man a yard away -was the nearest thing in the world to her, and always there -might be this invisible barrier between them. They were -linked by an invisible tie and they were separated by an -unfathomable necessity. Never before in her life had she -known what love could be; she wanted to be free to love -him; she wanted him to love her.</p> - -<p>She realized that she was standing quite still, and that -Devizes was standing just as still upon his hearthrug,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[278]</span> -watching her face. His mouth and eyes were quiet and -serene, but she imagined he must be gripping his hands -together behind him. She had to obey him. There was -nothing for her to do but follow his lead.</p> - -<p>“Daddy’s our common concern,” she said. “I suppose I -shall begin to hear from some of those people to-morrow.”</p> - -<h4>§ 9</h4> - -<p>Christina Alberta got back to her Daddy in a dream.</p> - -<p>It was a queer dream. She was going about the world -with Devizes and they were locked together in such a way -that she and he could never look at each other, but were -always side by side. But also with the sublime incoherence -of dreams they were at the same time great ebony images, -and they sat stiffly side by side like a Pharaoh and his -consort, and they looked over a great space; they were -very big effigies indeed and their profiles were alike. All -through the dream she thought of Devizes and herself as -black. The space before them was sometimes a sandy -desert and sometimes a grey cloudy expanse. Then suddenly -something round and white came bounding into the -midst of this arena and became a little man, a familiar little -blue-eyed man, tied up into a ball with ropes and sorely -maimed, who rolled about and panted and struggled to be -free. Oh! but he struggled pitifully. Christina Alberta’s -heart went out to him, and yet impelled by some tremendous -force within her she rose and Devizes rose beside her -and they marched stiffly forward. She could not help -herself, she could not control the rigid movements of her -hands and feet. They stepped high and forcibly. She -was voiceless, she tried to cry out, “We shall trample upon -him! We shall trample upon him!” but there was no -more than a hoarse inarticulate sound of horror in her -throat....</p> - -<p>They were upon him. She felt the body of her Daddy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[279]</span> -writhe under her. He was like a bladder. His soft, ineffectual -body, with her feet upon him, bent and bulged -about. She forgot there was anything else but her Daddy -and herself. Why had she treated him like this? Devizes -disappeared. Her Daddy was clinging to her knees and -now a crowd of vile figures had appeared and sought -to drag him away. “Save me, Christina Alberta,” he was -pleading, though she heard no sound. “Save me. Save -me! Every day they torture me.” But they dragged him -away and she could not put out her arms to him. Because -she was made of ebony and all of one piece with Devizes.</p> - -<p>Then some one, a bird or a Sphinx with the face and -voice of Lambone, came into the dream. “Listen to your -Daddy,” he said. “Do not despise him or simply pity him. -He has much to teach you. The world will never learn -anything until it will learn from ridiculous people. All -people are ridiculous. I am. I am ridiculous. We learn -in suffering what we teach in song.” She saw that her -Daddy was now sheltering between the paws of the Sphinx, -and that the evil men had vanished.</p> - -<p>She became intensely aware of a revealing absurdity in -her dream. No previous incompatibility had shocked her -at all, and she had never thought that she was dreaming -up to this point. But now she became intensely oppressed -by the idea that the Sphinx was an ancient Egyptian -and classical figure, and that Sargon was a still more -ancient Sumerian. The dream was going wrong. The -periods, the cultures, were mixed. She conveyed this to -Sphinx-Lambone, and he turned his head to answer her, -and immediately the evil figures were back, and taking -advantage of Lambone’s inattention, were dragging her -Daddy away. She tried to call Lambone’s attention to -that, but he said there would be plenty of time to recover -her Daddy when the point about the Sphinx was settled. -He wasn’t a Sphinx, he explained, but a Winged Bull. He -never had been a Sphinx. Or why should he be wearing a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[280]</span> -long curly stone beard? She wanted to argue that it was a -false beard and that he had only just put it on. And anyhow -it was just like him to start an inopportune discussion. -Meanwhile her Daddy was receding into wretchedness. -She became aware of this rapidly and painfully. It was -her Daddy still, but his body was different; it was not a -human body any more, but a basket of fruit overturned. -Unless she did something at once it would go rotten and -be bad for ever.</p> - -<p>She tried to cry out words of comfort and reassurance -to the poor tragic little figure before the dream came to an -end—for now she knew surely that it was a dream. Of -course he was suffering intolerably. Why had she not -written to him or telegraphed to him? Surely they would -give him a letter or a telegram! A profound self-detestation -for her incompetence and negligence, and a -great horror of pain and cruelty came upon her, and she -awoke completely to black night and infinite dismay in her -little hard bed in her stuffy little bedroom in Lonsdale -Mews.</p> - -<h4>§ 10</h4> - -<p>But the impression of her Daddy, desolate and broken-hearted -and in danger, remained with her, terribly vivid. -It clung to her. She got up in the morning anxious and -depressed by it.</p> - -<p>“I am not doing enough for him,” she said. “I am letting -days slip by—and for him they must be days of -despair.”</p> - -<p>“Sure th’ ’Sylums ’nt so ba-s-at,” said Fay. “Sure yr -overrating it.”</p> - -<p>“But to live among lunatics and be classed as a lunatic!”</p> - -<p>“They’ve <i>bans</i> play-them. Foxhill ’Sylum there’s <i>buful</i> -ban. ’Ntainments nors-sorts treats,” said Fay.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta refrained from bad language.</p> - -<p>“You getting ill ove’ all this,” said Fay. “You doing no<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[281]</span> -good ’n Lun. Youffar be’r come dow’ Shore’m. The’s -th’ouse spoilin’. In this las’ bit of fine w’r.”</p> - -<p>For the October weather was holding out that year quite -wonderfully, a succession of calm golden days, and the -Crumbs had been offered the loan of a bungalow on the -beach at Shoreham by a friend who had used it throughout -the summer. They wanted to go down to it before the -weather broke, but going down to it meant leaving Christina -Alberta all alone in the studio, and they did not want -to do that. But they meant to go to Shoreham. Christina -Alberta, now that she had discovered Devizes, could not -endure the thought of getting out of telephone range of -him. London, she argued, was manifestly her proper -centre. She could get down to Cummerdown Hill in an -hour; she could keep in touch with everything. The -Crumbs might go but she <i>must</i> stay.</p> - -<p>Fay would not understand. She pestered.</p> - -<p>About eleven o’clock Christina Alberta went to the Post -Office telephone booth and rang up Devizes.</p> - -<p>“Can’t something be done to hurry things up?” she -asked. “I’ve got Daddy on my nerves. I can’t bear to -think of him there day after day. I’ve been dreaming -of him.”</p> - -<p>“Worrying is no good. We—I’ve got some bad news for -you. So put all your controls on.”</p> - -<p>He paused. Christina Alberta, for all her love of -Devizes, had to restrain her violent desire to snap, “Oh! -what is it?”</p> - -<p>“Visiting day was yesterday. He had one visitor. I suppose -that’s the agreeable relation you described—what -was his name? Wiggles? Mr. Widgery. But your Daddy -can’t be seen again by the outer world for a week. Not -until next Tuesday.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, damn!” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Exactly. I’ll do what I can to arrange some sort of -special access. I got on to the Medical Superintendent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[282]</span> -himself. But he’s queer. He’s evidently quite friendly and -well disposed, but he fences about. He can’t say either -Yes or No. Odd! I’m free to-day in the afternoon, but -I’m tied up to-morrow. I was for going down to see <i>him</i>—the -superintendent I mean, for a talk after lunch. ‘Better in a -day or so,’ he says. Hope there’s nothing wrong that he’s -keeping back. Afterwards he promised me to ring me up -later, and then abruptly he switched off. So hold yourself -ready, there. What’s your telephone number?”</p> - -<p>“Haven’t got one. You must telegraph.”</p> - -<p>“Or I’ll chase round in a taxi and pick you up. Sorry to -hold you up like this, Christina Alberta.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t mind anything so long as it’s getting towards -Daddy.”</p> - -<p>“Right-o,” and the voice was cut off.</p> - -<p>The telegram came after an interval of two hours, two -hours which had been devoted to a rambling dispute with -Fay about the Shoreham difficulty. The message ran as -follows: “<i>Has your father turned up he escaped at dawn -this morning in slippers and dressing-gown and nothing -seen of him since if not appeared meet me Victoria two-seven -for Cummerdown telephone Gerrard 0247 if there.</i>”</p> - -<h4>§ 11</h4> - -<p>But Mr. Preemby did not turn up anywhere. He just -vanished.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta, in a state of incredulous astonishment -at this fresh disappearance, went down with Devizes -to Cummerdown. They found a Medical Superintendent -by no means so amazed as they were. Sargon had been -missing at breakfast time; everything seemed to point -to his just walking out of the Asylum. That sort of thing -had happened before. It showed a certain sleepy negligence -on the part of one or two attendants, and they -would be reprimanded. But as for wonder, the Medical<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[283]</span> -Superintendent refused to wonder. Lunatics often stray -or escape, and unless they are dangerous the authorities -made no great commotion about it. They kept it out of -the newspapers as far as it was possible to do so.</p> - -<p>“This place isn’t Portland,” said the Medical Superintendent. -“They get back all right. I give him a day. He’s -probably coming back now. He may be hiding up a mile -away. I’m chiefly anxious about his catching cold. Pneumonia -is the standard death of a lunatic. But it’s wonderfully -warm for the time of year. I’ve never known such an -October.”</p> - -<p>He was much more desirous to talk to Devizes about -lunacy reform, and convince him that he was a highly progressive -and able Medical Superintendent than to discuss -the special case of Mr. Preemby. “We do what we can,” -he said, “but we’re fixed by the extreme economy we have -to practise. Low-grade attendants and not enough even of -them. The public indifference to lunatics is monstrous. -Everybody—even the people with insane relations—wants -to forget all about them.”</p> - -<p>“But how could Preemby have got out of the grounds?” -asked Devizes. “Aren’t there walls all round?”</p> - -<p>“Like everything else about lunacy law, the back is not -as good as the front,” said the superintendent. “But here -we have got at least a complete wall of sorts all round. -The original building used to be a private mansion with a -walled park. For a time—in the eighteenth century—it -was a boys’ school.”</p> - -<p>He showed them from his window over the roofs of a -clump of outbuildings the limits of the garden and farm -at the back, dropping towards a streamlet and defined by a -roadside wall and old thorn and oak trees. “For my own -part,” said the Medical Superintendent, “I admit the -urgency of very drastic reforms.”</p> - -<p>“I wonder if Cousin Widgery can throw any light on -this,” said Devizes.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[284]</span>“Widgery?”</p> - -<p>“That was his visitor yesterday.”</p> - -<p>“<i>Was</i> it?” said the Medical Superintendent, and reflected -and went to his desk as if to look for a paper. “I -thought it was a different sort of name—rather more like -Goodchild. Perhaps I’ve mixed up the names.”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Sam Widgery,” said Christina Alberta, “would be -the last person who’d want Daddy to get out. He probably -came to make sure that he wouldn’t. He may have come -just for the pleasure of gloating over him. Uncle Sam’s -not a pretty soul. He may have wanted to make sure the -wall went all the way round.”</p> - -<p>The Medical Superintendent forgot his doubt about the -name and the paper and turned with a fresh idea to them. -“You don’t think there was any animus? You don’t think -he may have made for Mr. Widgery? Where does this -Mr. Widgery live?”</p> - -<p>But neither Devizes nor Christina Alberta thought there -was any great possibility of Mr. Preemby beating back to -Woodford Wells.</p> - -<p>“He’s much more likely to go to Canterbury or -Windsor or start straight off for Rome,” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Or Mesopotamia—or the British Museum,” said -Devizes.</p> - -<p>“Or <i>anywhere</i>!” said Christina Alberta with a note of -despair.</p> - -<p>They returned to London completely baffled. Christina -Alberta was for a visit to the Cummerdown Police Station -and for a search in the villages round about, but Devizes -explained that this might do more harm than good. Until -now Christina Alberta had never heard of that one kindly -weakness in the British lunacy laws, the release of the -fourteen days freedom. If the lunatic can get away from -the Asylum and remain at large for that period, he or she<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[285]</span> -becomes legally sane again, and cannot be touched without -a fresh examination and a new certificate. To set the whole -countryside hunting for Preemby might merely lead to his -recapture by the Asylum authorities. And whatever happened -the mystery must not get into the papers.</p> - -<p>“But while we do nothing, he may be lying dead in some -out-of-the-way ditch,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“If he’s dead he won’t mind a little delay in finding him,” -said Devizes.</p> - -<p>No, the only thing was to wait at Lonsdale Mews against -the chance of his returning thither. The Crumbs went off -to Shoreham and Christina Alberta was left alone in the -studio, but after one endless day of it Paul Lambone -thought of a convenient agency called “Universal Aunts,” -and a suitable lady was sent to relieve her from a continuous -vigil.</p> - -<p>One, two, three days passed. There came no sign from -Sargon, no news of any fresh calling of disciples or visits -to the King. He had evaporated. A vision of a little -crumpled-up body in a ditch replaced the tormented figure -in the cell in the distressed imagination of Christina -Alberta. But the mind refuses to go on with a painful -fancy that leads to nothing, and Christina Alberta’s imagination -presently ceased further dealings with her Daddy -until fresh material came to hand. “He will turn up somewhere,” -she repeated feebly, and became a great consumer -of evening papers. “He will turn up somehow.” Her chief -anxiety was that he should not turn up with too tremendous -head-lines. She began to adjust herself like an early -Christian for the Second Coming. The riddle of her -Daddy’s disappearance became a habit of mind, became, -as it were, a frame, a proscenium arch to her current -activities. Beneath it she returned to the urgent and -extraordinary problem of herself and her relationship to -Devizes.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[286]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 12</h4> - -<p>It was manifest that he was almost as excited as she was -at their mutual discovery. The possible proceedings of -Sargon, fantastic as they might prove to be when they -came to light, remained for him as for her a matter of -urgent importance, but the thought of this strange relationship -completely overshadowed it. Each had a reciprocal -desire to get at the other, to discover what magic of sympathy -and understanding might not be latent in their -consanguinity.</p> - -<p>The evening after the Universal Aunt was installed he -took Christina Alberta out to dine with him at a pleasant -little Italian restaurant in the corner of Sloane Square, and -afterwards he came back to the studio with her and talked -until nearly one in the morning. He showed himself shyly -anxious to find out her aims and purposes in life, and -what she was doing and what might be done to let out her -possibilities. He was evidently disposed to shoulder just -as much parental responsibility as he could, subject to the -preservation of appearances and a proper care for the self-respect -of the vanished Sargon. She attracted him and he -liked her. Her feelings for him were more tumultuous and -abundant and indefinite. She didn’t particularly want help -or support from him. The idea of being dependent upon -him for anything repelled rather than attracted her, but -she wanted to get hold of him, to please and satisfy him, -to be better than he had expected and interesting in fresh -ways. She wanted him to like her—to care for her more -than mere liking. She wanted that anxiously and -tremendously.</p> - -<p>She liked a sort of ease and confidence he had with -waiters and cabmen and the common services of life. He -seemed to know just what people would do and they -seemed to know just what he would do; there was no -tension in these matters, no nervous “h’rrmping.” These<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[287]</span> -common attributes of habitual prosperity were so little in -her experience that they seemed a distinction of his; and -they threw a flavour of knowing what he was about, and -being serenely in control over most of the conversation, -when indeed he was as curious and experimental and -emotionally stirred almost as she was. The eyes that met -hers when she talked were steady, friendly, interested, -intimate eyes, and her heart went out to them.</p> - -<p>Over the dinner he talked at first about music. He had -had no music in his education, and now he was discovering -it. A friend of his had been taking him to concerts, and -he had got a pianola, “so as to spell it out at home first.” -But Christina Alberta’s education had missed out music -too, and she hadn’t as yet discovered it. So that topic died -out presently. He tried her about pictures, but there again -she wasn’t particularly interested. They had a little silence.</p> - -<p>He looked across at her and smiled.</p> - -<p>“I’d like to ask you all sorts of questions, Christina -Alberta, if I dared,” he said.</p> - -<p>She blushed—absurdly. “Any questions you like,” she -said.</p> - -<p>“Immense questions,” he said. “For example—generally—what -do you think you are up to?”</p> - -<p>She understood what he meant at once. But she was so -unprepared with an answer that she became evasive.</p> - -<p>“Up to!” she said, playing for time. “I suppose I’m -looking for my lost Daddy.”</p> - -<p>“But what are you up to generally? What are you -doing with your life? Where are you going?”</p> - -<p>“I’m at sea,” she said at last. “Lots of my generation -are, I think. The girls especially. You are older than I -am; I’m only beginning. I don’t want to seem cheeky, -but aren’t you better able to say what <i>you</i> are up to? -Suppose—” Her slightly scared gravity broke into an impudent -smile that Devizes found very congenial—“suppose -you play first?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[288]</span>He considered that. “Perfectly fair,” he said. “I will. -Have another olive. I’m glad you like olives. I do too. -Nobody’s called me to account for a long time. What <i>is</i> -my game? It’s a fair question.”</p> - -<p>But not an easy one evidently.</p> - -<p>“I suppose one ought to begin right back at one’s philosophy,” -he said. “A long story. But I started the idea.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta was greatly elated at her successful -repulse of his projected cross-examination. Instead of -making a display herself she could watch him. She watched -him over the flowers on the table and had to be nudged -by the waiter when he brought the pheasant to her elbow. -“How <i>should</i> one begin?” he plunged. She had heard of -Pragmatism? Yes. She was probably better read in that -sort of thing than he was. He was, he considered, a sort of -Pragmatist. Most modern-minded, intelligent people he -held were Pragmatists as he understood it. Pragmatist? -As he understood it? He met her eye and explained. In -this sense he meant it; we, none of us, had a clear vision -of reality; nobody perhaps would ever do more than -approach reality. What we perceived was just that much -of reality that got through to us, through our very defective -powers of interpretation. “They’ve done this pheasant <i>en -casserole</i> very well,” he broke off. “Three minutes’ truce we -ought to give it. Do you find I’m talking comprehensibly? -I doubt it.”</p> - -<p>“I’m hanging on,” said Christina Alberta....</p> - -<p>“Perhaps I’m beginning rather too far off.”</p> - -<p>Pheasant....</p> - -<p>“To come back to my confession of faith,” he said -presently.... “Mind you, Christina Alberta, you’ve got -to say your bit afterwards.”</p> - -<p>“It won’t be as definite as yours,” she said. “Some of -yours I shall steal. But go on—telling me.”</p> - -<p>“Well, keep hold, Christina Alberta. I feel I’m going to -be at once hesitating and condensed. And I’m not sure of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[289]</span> -what you know or don’t know. If I say I’m an Agnostic -about the nature of the universe, and how it began and -where it ends, does that convey anything to you?”</p> - -<p>“Just what I think,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Well.” He started afresh and got into parenthetical -difficulties. The Pêche Melba came to interrupt and permit -a fresh start. He unfolded a psychologist’s vision of -the world for her inspection, a curious and yet attractive -vision to her. He expressed himself in terms of mind and -understanding. She was used to hearing everything expressed -in terms of labour and material necessity. Life, -he said, was one continuous thing, all life was connected. -He tried to illustrate that. The conscious life of most lower -animals was intensely individual, a lizard, for example, -was just itself, just its instincts and appetites; it received -no teaching and no tradition, it handed on nothing to its -kind. But the higher animals were taught when they were -young, learnt and taught others and communicated with -each other. Men far more than any animal. He had -developed picture-writing, speech, oral tradition, scientific -record. There was now a common mind of the race, a -great growing body of knowledge and interpretations.</p> - -<p>“People like ourselves are just cross-sections of that -flow. Individually we receive it, react to it, change it a -little, and pass away. We are just passing phases of that -increasing mind—which may be for all we can certainly -say, an immortal mind. Does this sound like Greek—or -nonsense to you?”</p> - -<p>“No,” she said, “I think I get the drift of it.” She looked -at his intent face. He wasn’t in the least talking down to -her; he was simply trying to express himself as well as he -possibly could to her. He was treating her like an equal. -Like an equal!</p> - -<p>That was his general philosophy. He was coming to the -question of himself now, he said. He became very earnest -over the coffee cups and ash tray on the swept tablecloth.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[290]</span> -He spread elucidatory hands before her. He was conscientiously -explicit. He saw in himself two phases, or rather -two levels of existence. Roughly speaking, two. They had -links and intermediate stages of course, but they could be -ignored when one just wanted to express the idea. First of -all, he was the old instinctive individual, fearful, greedy, -lustful, jealous, self-assertive. That was the primary self. -He had to attend to that primary self because it carried -all the rest of him, as a rider must see that his horse gets -oats. Deeper lay social instincts and dispositions arising -out of family life. That was the second self, the social -self. Man, he threw out, is a creature that has become more -and more consciously social in the last two or three hundred -thousand years. He has been lengthening his life, -keeping his children with him longer and longer, enlarging -his community from family herds into clans and tribes and -nations. The deep-lying continuity of life was becoming -more apparent and finding more and more definite expression -with this socialization of man. To educate anyone in -the proper sense of the word was to make him more and -more aware of this continuity. The importance of the -passionate feverish self was then reduced. True education -was self-subordination to a greater life, to the social self. -The natural instincts and limitations of the primary self -were in conflict with this wider underflow; education, <i>good</i> -education, tended to correct them.</p> - -<p>“Here am I,” said Devizes, “as we all are, a creature in a -state of internal conflict, quicker, fiercer mortal instincts -at issue with a deeper, calmer, less brightly lit, but finally -stronger drive towards immortal purposes. And I am—how -shall I put it?—I personally am, to the best of my -ability, on the side of the deeper things. My aptitudes and -temperament and opportunities have brought me to psychology—as -a profession. I work to add to the accumulation -of human knowledge and understanding about the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[291]</span> -mind. I work for illumination. My particular work is to -study and cure troubled and tangled minds. I try to -straighten them out and simplify them and illuminate -them. And above all I try to learn from them. I seek the -mental or physical cause of their distresses. I try to set -down as clearly and accessibly as possible, all I observe -and learn. That’s my job. That’s my aim. It gives me a -general direction for my life. All the stuff of my mere -individual existence I try to subordinate to that end. Not -always. My monkey individual gets loose at times and -gibbers on the roof. And at other times it’s rather good -company as a relief from overwork. Vanity and self-indulgence -have their uses. But never mind the monkey now. -I do not want to be a brilliant person; I want to be a vital -part. That’s my essential creed. I want to be the sort of -wheel in the machinery they call a mental expert. As good -a wheel as I can be. That’s what I’m up to in general -terms, Christina Alberta. That’s what I think I am.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Christina Alberta, reflecting profoundly. “Of -course I can’t produce a statement like that. You’ve got -your system—complete.”</p> - -<p>“And finished,” said Devizes. “You’ve got to tell your -story in your own way. At your age—you ought to be with -loose ends to all your convictions.”</p> - -<p>“I wonder if I can tell you any story.”</p> - -<p>“You’ve got to try your best now. It’s only fair play.”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>There was a little silence.</p> - -<p>“It’s wonderful to talk to you like this,” said Christina -Alberta. “It’s wonderful to talk to anyone like this.”</p> - -<p>“I feel that you and I—have to understand each other.”</p> - -<p>She met his grave eyes for a moment. There was a wave -of emotion within her. She could not speak. She reached -out her hand to touch his, and for a moment their hands -were together.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[292]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 13</h4> - -<p>Christina Alberta only got to her confession of faith in -the studio after they had returned thither and relieved -the Universal Aunt. Even then they didn’t settle down -to the business all at once. Devizes walked about and -looked for drawings by Harold; he deduced Harold from -his drawings to a quite remarkable extent, Christina -Alberta thought. He was curious about Fay. “What’s -Mrs. Crumb like?” he asked. “Show me something of -hers, something that seems to give her.”</p> - -<p>It pleased Christina Alberta very much to think that -he was shy with her. She felt that this was a recognition -of her equality. He was respecting her and she was very -eager that she should be respected by him.</p> - -<p>He got to an anchorage at last in the gaily painted seat -by the gas-fire; and Christina Alberta, after flitting about -the room for a time, came and stood before it, shapely -legs wide apart and hands behind her back in an attitude -that would have shocked all her feminine ancestors for -many generations. But it did not shock Devizes; he found -her more and more interesting to watch, and he sat at his -ease and regarded her with a lively admiration. Most of -us get used to our daughters so gradually; they grow up -and we carry the wonder of them as Milo carried his ox; -it isn’t common for a man to get an unexpected daughter -abruptly at the age of twenty-one.</p> - -<p>She said she hadn’t much in the way of metaphysics; -she was a Materialist.</p> - -<p>“No prayers at mother’s knee? Religion of Mother and -Daddy? School prayers and teaching? Church or -chapel?”</p> - -<p>“It all washed out and faded out, I think, as they laid -it on.”</p> - -<p>“No fear of hell? Most of my generation went through -the fear of hell.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[293]</span>“Not a trace of it,” said the New Age.</p> - -<p>“But—a desire for God in the night?”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta paused for a little while. “I have -that,” she said. “It comes—sometimes. I don’t know -whether it’s very important or not important at all.”</p> - -<p>“It’s part,” said Devizes slowly, “of something that has -to do with wanting to be more than a miserable worm—and -disliking meanness—and so forth.”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Do you know more about it?”</p> - -<p>Rather oddly he didn’t answer that. “And how do you -see yourself in relation to mankind—and the animals—and -the stars? What sense of obligation have you? What -do you think the road is along which you have to -go?”</p> - -<p>“H’m,” said Christina Alberta. She considered she was -a Communist, she said, though she didn’t belong to the -Party. But she knew some other young people who did. -She produced some of the phrases of the movement, “the -materialist conception of history” and so forth. He said -he failed to understand and asked rather irritating questions; -she thought controversially. She didn’t realize at -first how widely apart was their phraseology. As they -talked this became apparent. He seemed to have nothing -too good to say for the Communist idea, for wasn’t it just -his own idea of being a part of a greater being of life? -but he seemed to have nothing too bad for practical -Communism. Marxist Communism he said wasn’t a constructive -movement at all; it was merely a solvent. It -had no idea, no plan. Christina Alberta was put on the -defensive. “Enthusiasm for an ideal Communist state -isn’t nearly so important as the question of immediate -Communist tactics in a decaying society,” she recited, in -an almost official tone. That was how her young friends -in the Party talked. But when she talked like this to him -it didn’t seem so effective. He wouldn’t leave her phrases -alone. He wanted to know what she meant by decay in a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[294]</span> -society, whether there had ever been a society not actively -in decay and not also actively in growth, what good tactics -were except in relation to general strategy and whether -there could be any strategy without a clear war-end. She -countered more vigorously than effectively and their manner -became controversial.</p> - -<p>He pressed the difference in their opinions. Communism -for him meant a new spirit, a spirit of science -reorganizing the world upon scientific collective lines, but -the whole temper of party communism was contemporary. -It was saturated with the feelings and ideas of existing -social classes, with the natural resentment of the dispossessed. -It had the angry dogmatism of desperate -people not sure of their grip. It needed more of the -passion of creative self-forgetfulness. Many Communists, -he said, were simply reversed capitalists, egotists without -capital; they wanted revenge and expropriation, and when -they were through with that they would be left with -nothing but social ruins and everything to begin all over -again. And they were suspicious and intolerant because -of their want of internal assurance. They distrusted their -best friends, their proper leaders, scientific men like Keynes -and Soddy.</p> - -<p>“Keynes a Communist!” cried Christina Alberta in derision. -“He doesn’t accept the first scientific fact of the -class war.”</p> - -<p>“It isn’t much of a fact—certainly not a First Scientific -Fact,” he replied. “Keynes builds up slowly a conception -of a scientifically organized exchange system. Most of -your friends in Russia don’t seem capable even of realizing -that such a thing is necessary.”</p> - -<p>“But they do!”</p> - -<p>“Have they shown it?”</p> - -<p>“What do <i>you</i> know of the Russian Bolsheviks?”</p> - -<p>“What do <i>you</i>? You just look at the labels on people.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[295]</span> -Nothing genuine without the red label—and everything -genuine with.”</p> - -<p>She said he saw things from his “bourgeois” standpoint, -and he laughed cheerfully at her social classifications; -there was no bourgeoisie in England, he said; she attempted -some of the stock cynicisms and sarcasms of the -movement but with an unusual lack of conviction. It was -easy for him to criticize, she said, living as he did on -invested capital.</p> - -<p>“It would make it easier,” he smiled. “But really I live -on my fees.”</p> - -<p>“You have invested capital.”</p> - -<p>“Some. I don’t live on it.”</p> - -<p>They had exhausted the dispute for a time. After all -she reflected she hadn’t put up such a bad fight, considering -her age and standing. The momentary glow of -controversial exasperation faded again. They drifted to -the more immediate question in which they were interested, -the question of what she was to do with her life.</p> - -<h4>§ 14</h4> - -<p>“We progress, Christina Alberta,” said Devizes, “but it’s -still generally the rule that a woman’s life is determined -very largely by the character and occupations of—the -leading man in the play. Have you by any chance been -in love yet?”</p> - -<p>She wanted to tell him all the truth about herself, but -some things are untellable. She hesitated and blushed -hotly. “Nowadays,” she said, and stopped. “I’ve some -imagination. I’ve run about London. I’ve perhaps -imagined things——”</p> - -<p>His eyes were very searching for a moment but none the -less kindly.</p> - -<p>“I’ve been in love—in a kind of way,” she admitted.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[296]</span>He nodded with a dreadful effect of complete comprehension.</p> - -<p>“I don’t want to run my life in relation to any man,” -she extended.</p> - -<p>“Clever girls never do. Any more than clever young men -want to spend their lives adoring a goddess.”</p> - -<p>“In any case I don’t see myself becoming a child-producing -housekeeper,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Even if you married. No. I doubt whether you are -that type. But if you are going to reject that easy way—and -it <i>is</i> an easy way, in spite of what people say—if you -are going to be a citizen on your own as a man is, then -you’ve got to do a man’s work, Christina Alberta. There’s -to be none of the Pretty Fanny business you know.”</p> - -<p>“Well, <i>am</i> I?” asked Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“No, I don’t think you are. And in that case, I guess -you want some more education. You’re clever, but you’re -a bit patchy.”</p> - -<p>“I’m good enough to get a job. And then learn.”</p> - -<p>“Learn,” he said. “That’s enough to take you all your -time. I’d rather we agreed it’s got to be a student for two -or three years more. You need have no anxiety about -ways and means. You and I are of the same Clan—a -clan of two practically—and I am the head. I’ll see you -through just as though you were a son. And now, what -sort of work is it to be? Law? Medicine? a general education -for journalism or affairs? Doors open to women now—fresh -doors every day.”</p> - -<p>To that Christina Alberta could speak a little more fully. -She had been thinking out some of these things. She -wanted to know about life and the world as a whole. Could -she have a good year at physical science, biology and -geology chiefly and anthropology? Would that be possible? -And then if she was any good at medical work, -another year at mental science or politics and public -health? “It sounds ambitious I know,” she said.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[297]</span>“Ambitious! It’s an encyclopædia in a year.”</p> - -<p>“But I want to know about all these things.”</p> - -<p>“Naturally.”</p> - -<p>“Could I have longer than that?”</p> - -<p>“You’d have to have longer than that.”</p> - -<p>“It seems to be asking for so much.”</p> - -<p>“It wouldn’t be if you were in trousers. We’ve agreed to -unsex you to that extent. Why shouldn’t you be ambitious?”</p> - -<p>“You think I might do work—scientific work—at last—as -you do?”</p> - -<p>“Why not?”</p> - -<p>“A girl?”</p> - -<p>“You’re the sort of stuff I am, Christina Alberta.”</p> - -<p>“Do you think—some day—I might even come to work—to -work with you?”</p> - -<p>“Kindred minds may follow kindred courses,” he said, -with the completest recognition of their relationship -“Why not?”</p> - -<p>She stood and looked at him with a dark excitement in -her eyes and he had a momentary intimation of all that -he might be to her. Gallant she was and fine and ambitious; -a wonderful life to come out of nothingness into his -own. And she meant this relationship to grow, as well it -might grow, into something very great and deep for both -of them.</p> - -<p>He went off at a tangent to talk of the contrast of men -and women students and of men and women as workers. -“You’ll never run parallel with men, you free women, so -don’t expect it. You’ve got to work out a way that is -similar perhaps but different. Different down to the roots.” -He argued that probably the whole fabric of a man had -its qualities that a woman’s did not possess and vice versa, -down even to a muscular fibre or a nerve tendril. A time -might come when we should be able to put a drop of -blood or a scrap of skin under the microscope or apply<span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[298]</span> -some subtle reagent to it and tell its sex. “A man resists,” -he said. “A man is intractable. He has greater inertia, -physical and mental. That keeps him to his course. Men -compared with women are steadier and stupider. Women -compared with men are quicker and sillier. Bludgeons -and bodkins.”</p> - -<p>He talked of his student days when women medical -students were still rather novel intrusions, and from that -he passed to his father’s prejudices, to his father’s treatment -of his mother and his boyish days. Presently they -were exchanging experiences of childish delusions and -fancies. She forgot how much older and more experienced -he was in the ease of his talk. He told her about himself -because he recognized her right to know about him; he -listened with a friendly eagerness to all she chose to tell -him of her Daddy and herself and about her impressions -and her few adventures in encounter as a suburban student -in London. They shared their delight in Paul Lambone’s -kindly absurdity. Presently it occurred to her to offer -him drink. The Crumbs had left a bottle of beer and -a syphon. But Devizes asked her to make tea and helped -her with the kettle. Meanwhile the mutual exploration -went on. Their friendliness grew richer and deeper as they -talked. She had never before met so intimate and delightful -a curiosity as his. She had had friends before but -no such friendliness; she had had a lover but never -such intimacy.</p> - -<p>It was one o’clock before he went away.</p> - -<p>The talk had ebbed. He sat thoughtful for a moment.</p> - -<p>“I must go,” he said, and stood up. They faced each -other, a little at a loss for parting words.</p> - -<p>“It’s been wonderful to talk to you,” she said.</p> - -<p>“It’s a great thing to have discovered you.”</p> - -<p>Another pause. “It’s a great thing for me,” she said -lamely.</p> - -<p>“We’ll talk—many times,” he said.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[299]</span>He wanted to call her “my dear,” and an absurd shyness -prevented him. And she was aware of that suppression.</p> - -<p>She stood up straight before him in the passage with a -flush on her cheeks and her eyes alight, and he wondered -he had not thought her beautiful from the beginning. -“Good-bye for the time,” he said, and smiled at her gravely -and took and held her hand for a moment.</p> - -<p>“Good night,” she said, and hesitated and then opened -the green door for him and stood and watched him go up -the Mews.</p> - -<p>At the top he turned and waved his hand to her before -he disappeared. “Good night,” she whispered and started, -and looked about her as if she feared that her unspoken -thoughts had been audible.</p> - -<p>Father. Her father!</p> - -<p>So real fathers leave one aglow like this!</p> - -<p>He had left her tense as a violin string on which the bow -rests motionless. Now Daddy, who wasn’t her father, she -would just have hugged and kissed.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[300]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE SECOND<br> - -<i>How Bobby Stole a Lunatic</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">A <small>MAN</small> may be a mental expert and yet fail to take -the most obvious hints in a detective investigation. -The medical superintendent at Cummerdown Hill had -doubted for a moment whether Widgery was the name of -Sargon’s visitor. He had thought it was more like Goodchild. -But since there was no known Goodchild in the -world of Christina Alberta, neither she nor Devizes had -troubled to scrutinize this momentary uncertainty. Nor -had she and Devizes asked themselves why Widgery -should have made a second visit to his cousin. Indeed, -he had not done so. It was a much younger man who -had visited Sargon that Tuesday; he had falsely represented -himself as Sargon’s nephew and given the name of -“Robin Goodchild.” His real name was Robert Roothing, -and he had come for the sole purpose of getting Sargon -out of the asylum as soon as possible, because he could -not endure the thought of his staying there.</p> - -<p>Circumstances had conspired with a natural predisposition -to give Bobby a great horror of all restraint. His -mother, a gentle dark creature, the wife of a large blond -negligent landowner, had died when Bobby was twelve; -and he had been entrusted to the care of a harsh, old-fashioned -aunt—to whom the cupboard seemed a proper -place for discipline. When she discovered that he was -really distressed by it, she sought to break his “cowardice” -by giving him quite liberal doses of it—even when he had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[301]</span> -committed no offence. He went to a school where discipline -was maintained by “keeping-in.” The war eliminated -his father, who died suddenly of over-excitement -while in command of an anti-aircraft gun during an air-raid, -and it led Bobby through some tiresome campaigning -in Mesopotamia and the beleaguerment of Kut to an -extremely unsympathetic Turkish prison. In any case he -would probably have been a free-going easy creature, but -now he had so passionate a hatred of cages that he wanted -to release even canaries. He disliked the iron fences round -the public parks and squares with a propagandist passion, -he wrote articles about them in <i>Wilkins’ Weekly</i> and elsewhere -clamouring for their “liberation,” and he never went -by train if he could help it because of the claustrophobia -that assailed him in the compartment. He would ride a -push-bike except for long distances, and then he would -borrow Billy’s motor bicycle. He did his best to prevent his -craving for the large and open from becoming too conspicuous -or a nuisance to other people, but Tessy and Billy -understood about it and did their best to make things easy -for him.</p> - -<p>It was not only claustrophobia that Bobby had to fight -against. He carried on a secret internal conflict with a -disinclination to act upon most occasions, that he believed -had developed in him as a result of war experiences. Sometimes -it seemed to him to be just indolence, sometimes -fastidiousness, sometimes sheer funk and cowardice. He -could not tell. He had a rankling memory of a case -of cruelty he had witnessed in the prisoners’ camp when he -had stood by and done nothing. He would wake up sometimes -at three o’clock in the morning and say to himself -aloud, “I stood by and I did nothing. Oh God! Oh <i>God</i>! -Oh <span class="smcap">God</span>!” And at times he would walk up and down his -study repeating: “<i>Act!</i> You vegetable! you hiding cur! -Out and act!” Meanwhile he obeyed routines and did -whatever came to his hand. As “Aunt Suzannah” he was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[302]</span> -excellent, indefatigably considerate, lucid, really helpful. -<i>Wilkins’ Weekly</i> was proud of him. He was the backbone -of the paper.</p> - -<p>And now this affair of Sargon’s had twisted him up very -badly between his desire to free the little man, who had -taken an extraordinary hold upon his imagination and -sympathy, and his sense of the immense forces against -which he would have to pit himself if he tried to give him -any help. It was only after a considerable struggle with -himself that he had called at the police station and the -Gifford Street Workhouse. He was afraid of awkward -questions, afraid above all of being “detained.” The workhouse -was a detestable place with high walls and a paved -court and a general effect of sinister seclusion from the -grubby street outside. For the best part of a day after his -Gifford Street visit he hesitated whether he should do -anything more.</p> - -<p>“Bobby’s got a grouch,” Susan told Tessy. “He’s -stoopid. Just sits and says ’E ’as to fink sumpfink over. -What’s he fink fings over for? Said I was to come downstairs -again, there was a good girl.... Meant it.... -Said so.... Puss’d me ’way.... I do-o-n’t fink I -lo-o-o-ove Bobby ’nymore.”</p> - -<p>Great distress. A storm of tears. Tessy was deeply -sympathetic.</p> - -<p>But after tea Bobby was brighter and drew Susan her -“Good night picture” and came down and sat on her bed -and talked her to sleep the same as usual, and Tessy perceived -that the worst of Bobby’s trouble was over.</p> - -<p>At supper Bobby unfolded his plans.</p> - -<p>“I mean to go to Cummerdown Hill to-morrow,” he said -compactly.</p> - -<p>“To see Sargon?” said Tessy understandingly.</p> - -<p>“If I can. But it won’t be visiting day. That’s Tuesday. -I want to look round.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[303]</span>Billy raised his eyebrows and helped himself to butter.</p> - -<p>“But—” said Tessy, and stopped short.</p> - -<p>“Yes?” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“You won’t be able to see him. You don’t know the -name he’s under.”</p> - -<p>“They’ll call him Mr. Sargon,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“His name’s Preemby. He’s a laundryman. They told -me at the workhouse. His people <i>want him to be there</i>!”</p> - -<p>“I can’t stand the thought of it,” said Bobby after a brief -silence.</p> - -<p>“Don’t follow,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“That nice little thing being made into a lunatic. Like -a little blue-eyed bird he was. High walls. Great louting -warders. Sargon, King of Kings.... I’ve got to do -something about it or I shall burst.”</p> - -<p>He looked at once weak and desperate. Tessy reflected. -“You’d better go,” she said.</p> - -<p>“But what good will that do?” said Billy, and was quelled -by a glance from Tessy.</p> - -<p>“If you can lend me the old motor bike and the side-car. -You’re not using it this week-end.”</p> - -<p>“You can take off the side-car,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“I may want it,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“You don’t mean—!” said Billy.</p> - -<p>Bobby came as near to an explosion as he ever did.</p> - -<p>“Oh never mind <i>what</i> I mean. I tell you I’m going down -to Cummerdown to have a look at the place. No doubt -I’m a futile ass, Billy, but I just can’t help myself going. -The poor little beggar’s got no friends. His own family’s -helped to put him away. Families do. It’s an infernal -world. I’ve got to do something. If it’s only to shake ’em -up. If I stay here another day I shall start smacking -Susan.”</p> - -<p>“Somebody ought to,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“If he can only keep away for fourteen days clear——”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[304]</span>“He’s free?” said Tessy.</p> - -<p>“He has to be certified all over again—anyhow,” said -Bobby.</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>Bobby discovered that the village of Cummerdown lies -nearly two miles away from the asylum, and does its best -very successfully to have as little to do with it as possible. -It nestles among trees just off the high-road to Ashford -and Hastings, and has one cramped little inn that gave him -a bleak bedroom and accommodated his machine and side-car -in an open outhouse crowded with two carts and a -Ford and populous with hens. The day was still young, -and after he had deposited the elderly rucksac in which -he had brought his “things” upstairs, he set out with a -walking-stick and an air of detached interest to reconnoitre -the asylum and develop his plans for the rescue of -Sargon. That golden autumn was still holding out; the -pleasant lane he followed to the high-road was patterned -with green and yellow chestnut leaves and the trees overhead -were full of sunshine. It was a reassuring day. It -encouraged him. It took him with a kindly seriousness -and made him feel that rescuing people from lunatic -asylums was the sort of work the sun could shine upon -and nature welcome.</p> - -<p>It had needed a great effort to get down from London. -He had felt then like a midget setting out to attack an -embattled universe. Amidst the Croydon traffic he had -been half-minded to go back, but he had felt that he could -not face Tessy until he had been at least definitely -defeated. It was delightful to note an increased assurance -within himself as he drew nearer to his enterprise. He -felt much more on the scale of the powers he attacked. -After all, what were laws and regulations but just things -patched up by men like himself? What were prison walls -but the slow work of shirking bricklayers and evasive<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[305]</span> -contractors? The attendants and custodians, the superintendents -and so forth he was setting out to circumvent, -were all as fallible as himself. And the thing was urgent -and outrageous, this seizure of a harmless little fantastic, -this frightful imprisonment. It had to be fought. The -world would be intolerable unless such things were -fought.</p> - -<p>Queer world it was! Such beauty on these tree-stems, -such a glow, and the delightfulness of rustling one’s feet -through these leaves! But all that was by the way; the -real business of life was to fight evil things.</p> - -<p>He came out from between the trees and saw the wide -downs opening out before him and the blocked masses -of the asylum with its broad bare grounds and walls, an -eyesore. This was his objective. In that place somewhere -was Sargon, and he had to be released.</p> - -<p>He seated himself on a convenient stile and inspected -that heavy architecture and tried to frame a plan. That -white building in the centre looked like a gaunt Georgian -private house. That was probably the nucleus of the -whole place. Two men were visible in front of it mowing -the grass—patients perhaps. The wall and railings along -the road looked implacable. Two stern-looking lodges -there were, no doubt with a testy janitor lurking within, -and there were iron gates—one open. A van was coming -out, a furniture dealer’s van. For a time Bobby’s mind -ran on the possibility of becoming a tradesman with -parcels or a crate to deliver.... Many difficulties that -way....</p> - -<p>“But why a frontal attack?” said Bobby with an effect -of discovery. The place fell away behind, down-hill. He -would inspect the rear. If he worked round by the open -down to the right, he would probably get on to slopes -commanding a view of the asylum grounds.</p> - -<p>An hour later Bobby was sitting on a heap of flints -by the side of a minor road which ran over the rising<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[306]</span> -ground behind the asylum. He found the rear of the -place much more hopeful and much more interesting than -the front. There were fields with a number of men working -in them, and at one place near the buildings a row of men -seemed to be digging a trench under the supervision of an -attendant. There was quite a lot of movement closer to -the buildings, under a sort of open shed half a dozen men -seemed to be taking exercise by walking up and down. It -vexed Bobby to think that any one of these figures might -be his Sargon. If only he had the elementary common -sense to bring a field-glass, he reproached himself, he might -have been able to make out his little friend’s features. -“No clearness of thought,” he whispered. “No decision.” -A lot of these people seemed to be going about very freely, -carrying gardening implements and so forth. One he noted, -walking about and gesticulating as if he talked to himself; -he was manifestly a patient and quite unattended.</p> - -<p>The wall bounding the asylum on this side had none of -the austerity of the front wall. It seemed to be an old -estate wall; in several places it was covered with ivy and -here and there it was overhung with trees. The ground -dropped away to his right, there was a little stream which -ran out of the asylum grounds at the lowest corner; the -corner was shaded by trees and seemed to be left to the -trees and undergrowth; the stream ran under a low arch -in the wall and went on down a widening valley towards -London. The seclusion and shade of this corner appealed -to Bobby very strongly. It seemed to him exactly the -point at which Sargon ought to be got out of the place. -He decided that presently he would stroll down and examine -its possibilities as precisely as possible. If one could -get Sargon to come down there——</p> - -<p>He found the details difficult. He meant to have a plan -worked out in every detail and to communicate it to Sargon -on the next visiting day, but it was very hard to fit this -plan together. He did not know when it would be most<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[307]</span> -convenient for Sargon to attempt to slip away, whether -this was to be a daylight or a night affair. He saw before -him a great vista of inquiries to be made and suspicious -people to be faced. “Damn!” said Bobby, and for a time -he was again for abandoning the attempt.</p> - -<p>Why couldn’t one go in at these gates, boldly and overwhelmingly, -and say, “There is a sane man here and I -have come to set him free?” A superman might do that, -or an archangel. How splendid it would be to be a sort -of Archangel-Knight-Errant, a great flaming presence of -light and winged power, righting wrongs, reproving -oppressors, liberating every kind of captive creature. -Then one might do things. Bobby lapsed into a childish -day-dream.</p> - -<p>Presently he roused himself, stood up and went down -towards the exit of the stream. The wall struck him as -quite climbable—even by a little old gentleman. The -stream came out meandering among pebbles through a -short tunnel. One could have got into the asylum grounds -or out of them quite easily over the wall by the ivy or -through the culvert. He resolved to come again at twilight -and—just to satisfy himself about his own pluck among -other things—get into the asylum premises and walk -about a little.</p> - -<p>Yes. He would do that.</p> - -<p>He tried to imagine himself assisting Sargon over the -wall. One could get on the top of the wall and reach -down to his hands. A cripple could do it. The motor -bicycle would have to be waiting up there in the lane. -And then? <i>Where would he take him?</i></p> - -<p>This was a new consideration. For a time Bobby’s mind -was appalled and paralyzed by the complexities of his -enterprise. He had not thought of taking him anywhere -in particular.</p> - -<p>The days that intervened before visiting day seemed at -once interminable and frightfully swift. He had been to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[308]</span> -Dymchurch in the summer with the Malmesburys, and -liked the landlady of his lodgings very much; he wired to -her “Can I come with a relation not ill but overworked for -week or so you will remember me last summer Roothing -the Feathers Cummerdown” and had got a reply, “Glad -to see you any time.” So that was all right. But the rest -of the plan failed very largely to materialize. He made -his nocturnal visit to the asylum grounds without misadventure.</p> - -<p>The morning of visiting day found him with half a dozen -plans, and they all had gaps and none seemed much better -or worse than the others. And he had walked round the -asylum grounds at various discreet distances, by night and -day just twenty-three times, not counting loops, returns -and visits to particular points of interest. Fortunately -asylums are much preoccupied with their internal affairs, -and do not keep look-out men upon the battlements. They -do not reckon with rescuers from outside.</p> - -<p>Bobby made his final decision among these conflicting -projects over his breakfast bacon. With a resolute sang-froid -and his nerves all a-tingle, he set out for the asylum -to see Sargon and begin the work of rescue as he had -thought it out. First he had to find out what freedom of -movement was permitted Sargon, when it might be possible -for him to get away to the corner by the culvert, -and he had to arrange a time for that meeting. Then -he would have to provide also for alternative times if -Sargon failed to keep his first appointment. Bobby would -be waiting under the wall and the motor bicycle and side-car -would be hidden among the bushes up by the road. -In a trice Sargon would be over the wall. After that they -could laugh at pursuit. Off they would go to Dymchurch, -and there, safe and untrackable, Sargon would keep -indoors until the fifteen days needed to make him legally -a sane man again had passed. And then Bobby could -find out those relations of his and talk the matter over<span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[309]</span> -with them, and get things on a proper footing. So Bobby -planned it out.</p> - -<p>Just at the lodge gates he decided upon an assumed -name. He wasn’t quite clear why he didn’t give his own -name, but an assumed name seemed to him to be more -in the spirit of the adventure.</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>When Sargon was informed that he was to be visited by -Mr. Robin Goodchild he was in a depressed mood. He -betrayed no surprise at the name. It seemed to him to be -as good as any other name. It might be the name of some -intelligent inquirer or possibly even some precursor of the -release he still hoped for. His spirits rose. He submitted -cheerfully to a searching examination of his personal tidiness, -and he nodded acquiescently to a warning not to -talk about “<i>every</i> blessed thing” he’d seen.</p> - -<p>His spirits rose still more when he saw the dark kindliness -of Bobby’s face. It was the one disciple who had ever -seemed to believe. He held out both his hands in a little -storm of emotion. Whatever sort of muddler Bobby might -be to himself, to Sargon in that moment at least he was -strength and hope.</p> - -<p>The meeting occurred in the reception-room downstairs, -for no one from the outside world may ever penetrate to -the wards and the bleak realities of everyday asylum life. -The reception-room had a baize-covered table in the middle, -a black horsehair sofa and numerous chairs; it was -totally devoid of small movables; there was an A B C -time-table and one or two illustrated weeklies on the -table, and the walls bore brown-spotted steel engravings -of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria in the Highlands and -of Windsor Castle from the Thames. There were three -or four groups, each of two or three people, with their -heads together conversing in tactful undertones; there were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[310]</span> -several women and one little girl; a tearful lady in profound -mourning sat apart by the empty fire-place and no -doubt awaited a patient; two attendants tried hard not -to look as though they were listening as intently as possible -to the conversations going on about them. The patients -present were all in the sanest phase, “fit to be visited.” -There was no madness visible; at most only a little nervous -oddity. Bobby had been watching these other groups -while he waited, and he had been impressed by a certain -quality of furtiveness in their behaviour. The furtiveness -he connected with the alertness of the attendants. One -affected to look out of the window, the other half sat at a -table holding an old <i>Graphic</i>, and ever and again there -would be a quick glance at this patient or that. It had not -occurred to Bobby that his talk to Sargon would be semi-public; -it was a disconcerting interference that would -greatly hamper him in giving his instructions.</p> - -<p>Bobby saw at once that Sargon was very much thinner -than when he had taken his room in Midgard Street. He -looked ill and worn, an effect that was emphasized by the -fact that he was badly shaven and wearing ill-fitting -clothes. His eyes seemed larger and sunken under his -brows and his forehead more definitely lined. Yet if he -looked unhappier he also looked more intelligent. He -seemed more aware of the things about him—less a man -in a dream.</p> - -<p>“I have come to see if I can be of service to you,” said -Bobby, holding out his hands. “Your friends and disciples -are anxious for your welfare.”</p> - -<p>“You have come to see me,” he said, and glanced sideways -at the listening attendant and dropped his voice; -“me—<i>Sargon</i>?”</p> - -<p>Bobby understood that note of doubt and it grieved him. -“You, Sargon, the King out of the Past.”</p> - -<p>“They would have me deny it,” whispered Sargon.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[311]</span>Bobby raised his eyebrows and nodded his head as -who should say, “They’d do <i>anything</i>.”</p> - -<p>The little man’s manner changed. “How is one to -know?” he said. “How is one to know?”</p> - -<p>He sighed. “Nothing seems certain any more.”</p> - -<p>“Can we sit down and talk together?” said Bobby. -“There is much to be said between us.”</p> - -<p>Sargon glanced round. There were two chairs in a corner, -and in that corner they might be a little beyond the -eavesdropper’s range. “I cannot understand this madness,” -said Sargon as they sat down. “I cannot understand this -Riddle that has been set me. Why does the Power, why -does God, permit men to be mad? When they are mad -they are beyond good and evil. What are they? Men still? -What becomes of justice, what becomes of righteousness—when -men go mad?” His voice sank. His eyes became -furtive. “Dreadful things happen here,” he whispered. -“Dreadful things. Quite dreadful things.”</p> - -<p>He ceased. For a little while neither he nor Bobby said -a word.</p> - -<p>“I want to get you out of this,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“Are my friends doing anything?” asked Sargon. “What -is Christina Alberta doing? Is she well?”</p> - -<p>“She is splendid,” he said haphazard. No doubt she was -one of this beastly family of Sargon’s that was content to -leave him here. “I want you to listen to me,” he said.</p> - -<p>But Sargon had things to tell. “Everyone in this place -is always thinking about what their friends outside are -doing for them. The poor souls come and talk to me. -They know I am different from what they are. They -write letters, petitions. I tell them that when God releases -me I will bear them all in mind. Some mock at me. They -have delusions. They think they are kings or emperors -or rich men or great discoverers, and that the world has -plotted against them.... Some are suspicious and cruel....<span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[312]</span> -Darkened souls.... Some have dreadful habits. -You cannot help but see.... Some are badly sunken—degraded—indescribably.... -It is very painful, very painful.”</p> - -<p>The blue eyes stared blankly at unpleasant memories.</p> - -<p>“There can be no doubt that I am Sargon,” he said -abruptly, and looked sharply at Bobby.</p> - -<p>“I call you by no other name,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>The momentary acuteness faded again. “That man -Preemby was unawakened. He was asleep—scarcely -dreaming of life. <i>But I have seen!</i> I have looked at the -world from high places. And from dark places too.... -Sargon. Sargon is a different person.... But it is -difficult.”</p> - -<p>He became silent.</p> - -<p>Bobby felt that they were getting nowhere. In his -anticipations of this conversation he had talked and Sargon -had listened. And there had been no one to overhear. -But this was all unexpected. Anyhow, the plan had to be -told; Sargon had to be instructed in his part. He glanced -warily at the people nearest to them. “There are those -among us,” he said quietly and quickly, “who would set -you free. I want to tell you—” On the spur of the -moment he attempted a code. “When I speak of a city -in Central Asia it will mean this place, the Asylum. Do -you understand?”</p> - -<p>“This place—Central Asia. If I am Sargon.... Everything -is possibly something else. But we are still in -England nevertheless.”</p> - -<p>“In reality. But I want to explain to you.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes. Explain.”</p> - -<p>“I shall speak of great discoveries in Central Asia. That -will mean this.”</p> - -<p><i>Did</i> he understand?</p> - -<p>“<i>Rescue!</i>” whispered Bobby in Sargon’s ear, and glanced -at the attendant and met his eye and was discomposed.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[313]</span>“Tell me about the discoveries,” said Sargon after a little -pause as though he had not heard that whispered word.</p> - -<p>“It is a symbol for this place,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>Sargon looked puzzled. The attendant was watching -their faces now. Perhaps he suspected already. Bobby -flushed hotly and plunged abruptly into an account of -the discoveries of an amazing Russian he called Bobinsky. -Bobinsky had found a walled city with no way out. “Yes,” -said Sargon, interested. The attendant was now looking -away. “Like this place,” said Bobby, and more explicitly; -“I <i>mean</i> this place.” There was a river ran through the -city, the city of confinement, and went out by the lower -part. There it was the helper waited. The rescuers. That -was the place for them to wait. Did he understand? At -that point where the trees grew and the river went out -through the wall. They they waited. There they would -wait until the captive king came to them.</p> - -<p>“It is a curious story,” said Sargon. “What captive king -do you mean?”</p> - -<p>“It is meant for you.”</p> - -<p>“The river you speak of may be the Euphrates,” said -Sargon. “I dream of the Euphrates.”</p> - -<p>He had missed it all! He was out upon some woolgathering -of his own. Euphrates! What had the Euphrates -to do with Central Asia? Or the Asylum?</p> - -<p>“Bother!” said Bobby. “I say— It is a smaller river I -mean, a streamlet—in the grounds here. Don’t you understand?”</p> - -<p>A tall sharp-faced woman in a hat of hard black straw -came near them and sat down. Bobby, as he talked, observed -her out of the corner of his eye. Was she the friend -of a patient or what was she doing here? “I speak in -symbols,” said Bobby, still watching and thinking about -this woman. “This city is your prison.” He caught the -woman exchanging a glance of intelligence with the male -attendant who had moved a couple of yards up the room.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[314]</span> -They knew each other. Then she must be another observer. -“I want no other prison than this,” said Sargon, evidently -quite at cross-purposes. “One prison is enough.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t mean that,” said Bobby. “Can you walk about -here pretty freely?”</p> - -<p>“Not freely,” said Sargon. “No.”</p> - -<p>“If you could come out into the grounds. To-morrow.”</p> - -<p>The woman turned her long sharp foxy nose towards -him, and stared at him with rather stupid green-blue eyes.</p> - -<p>Bobby’s nerve was going to pieces altogether. He was -always more afraid of women than men. This prim -sharp-nosed figure so manifestly listening, and listening -with a faint hostility to all he said, completed his discomfiture. -He tried to improvise a story of lost and -recovered cities that would be crystal clear to Sargon and -yet incomprehensible to the listener. But his invention -faltered at the difficult task. Where the river ran out of -the city, he repeated; he harped upon that idea; where -there were trees and ivy, there the faithful waited. When -was the propitious hour for the Master to steal away to -them? Everything was prepared. When could it be? -When might it be? Fragmentally and mixed with many -irrelevancies Bobby tried to get the import of these suggestions -over to his hearer. Now he would be explicit; now -as the fear of the listener returned, vague and misleading. -He did convey a sense of mystery and intention to Sargon, -that was plain; but he felt he conveyed nothing more. -The time was slipping by. Bobby could have throttled -that infernal woman. More and more did she become -audience to his floundering efforts. He maundered back to -his starting point about Bobinsky. “There is no such -person as Bobinsky,” he threw in.</p> - -<p>“Then how could he explore cities?” asked Sargon, -manifestly more and more perplexed at Bobby’s rigmarole.</p> - -<p>“He is dead,” said Bobby. “He was just a mask.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[315]</span>“Some men are.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t mind about Bobinsky. Could you slip away to -that corner? No, no. She’s looking. Don’t answer.</p> - -<p>“Now <i>answer</i>.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t understand,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>Bobby felt that he was only puzzling Sargon. But what -else was to be done? He could have kicked himself for -not having brought a brief statement of his plan written -plainly on a little piece of paper that he could have slipped -into Sargon’s hand—or pocket. It would have been so -simple. He could have made a map and a drawing. Too -late to do that now.</p> - -<p>Despair came upon Bobby. Everything had gone wrong. -He got up to go and then sat down again to make another -attempt. He felt murderous towards that woman, towards -himself, even towards slow-witted little Sargon.</p> - -<p>“It was very good of you to come and see me,” said -Sargon.</p> - -<p>“<i>Why</i> did you come?...</p> - -<p>“Do you think anything will be done about me?...</p> - -<p>“You will see Christina Alberta? When I saw you first I -thought you had things to tell me—important things. One -lives on such hopes here. Here—when there are no visitors—nothing -happens, nothing pleasant. And one is distressed....</p> - -<p>“I am interested to hear of those cities in Central Asia -of course, but it is a little puzzling. Did you come -specially about them? Or just to see me?</p> - -<p>“You will come again. Even to come down here to this -sitting-room is an event....”</p> - -<p>Then in a swift whisper. “The food is frightful. So -badly cooked. It disagrees with me....”</p> - -<p>“That woman,” said Bobby as he went, “She has spoilt -everything. I can’t stand her.”</p> - -<p>“That woman?” said Sargon, and followed the direction<span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[316]</span> -of Bobby’s eyes. “Poor soul,” he said. “She’s a deaf mute. -She comes to see her brother. The whole family is defective -or insane.”</p> - -<p>A maddened Bobby returned towards his little inn. -Should he chuck the whole thing? Intolerable thought! -He must make fresh plans—fresh plans altogether. He -must begin all over again. The little man was evidently -wretched. But it was going to be harder to get hold of -him than Bobby had thought.</p> - -<p>Bobby had no sleep that night.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>In the night just before daybreak suddenly Sargon woke -up and understood. He understood quite clearly what the -young man had been saying to him. He had said “Rescue!” -Of course he had meant to say “Escape”! That city in -Central Asia was only a parable; he had said as much. -He had been describing a corner of the asylum grounds, -that corner where the stream ran out beyond the work-fields -and the shrubbery where the patients were supposed -not to go. He had been telling of friends who would wait -outside. He had been trying to arrange an hour when -these friends would come there. And Sargon had failed -to understand. He sat up in bed very still.</p> - -<p>It was perfectly clear, but through a sort of dulness that -came upon him at times he had not grasped the drift of -it at the time. The young man had shown irritation, -naturally enough. What would he do now? Would he -try again? Were the friends still waiting?</p> - -<p>Who was this young man? His name was unknown or -forgotten. But he believed. He had said, “I call you by -no other name.” Sargon! And there were these friends -he spoke of, who waited outside for the king. They must -know. How could they know, if there was nothing to be -known? After all, perhaps it was no dream. Perhaps the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[317]</span> -world was awakening.... But he had failed them. He -had not understood.... They waited without....</p> - -<p>How still everything was! A strange unusual stillness. -It was rare for this place to be so bereft of noise. It was -dark and yet not altogether dark. The ward was dimly -lit by a blue-shaded light. The three nearer beds were -unoccupied, and beyond the man who tossed and muttered -almost incessantly lay for a little while at peace. The -man who raved had died three days ago; the man who gave -sudden loud shouts had been taken away to another ward. -Through the open door one could see across the landing -into the little yellow-lit room, where Brand the ward -attendant sat with his arms crossed and chin on his chest -and slept, his patience cards spread out before him. He -seemed to be alone and yet he could sleep like that! Where -could the other man be—the new attendant whose name -Sargon did not know? And yet he felt—some one had just -gone out!</p> - -<p>The uncurtained windows showed the night outside, a -darkness that became translucent, a streak of very black -cloud and five pale stars. Across the lower edge of that -oblong picture one could see indistinctly a tracery of tree -branches and the lumpish head of a young oak still -bearing its leaves, the trees along the first hedge. These -outlines grew distincter as he watched. It was like the slow -development of a photographic plate in the dark-room. -The stars dissolved. Had there been five? There were -three; the other two had dissolved into the pale invading -light.</p> - -<p>Dared one venture on to the landing? If Brand awoke -he could make some natural excuse. He stood well with -Brand. But the other fellow——?</p> - -<p>There was not a trace of him. Where had he gone?...</p> - -<p><i>Do it now!</i>—wisest of maxims.</p> - -<p>Very swiftly Sargon slipped out of bed and put on his -dressing-gown and slippers. Hush! <i>What was that?</i>...<span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[318]</span> -Only some one snoring. Nothing more. He went out and -stood on the landing. Brand slept on like a log.</p> - -<p>The stone staircase was lit and empty and from the open -door to the left downstairs came the harsh breathing of a -sleeper. All the world seemed asleep for once, except -Sargon and those friendly watchers outside the walls. -Far away there were sounds of bawling and raving, but -these were stifled by distance and an intervening door. -They merely made the nearer silence more perceptible.</p> - -<p>Something stirred, a little clicking sound that sent -Sargon’s heart racing. Then a resonant blow. A second -blow. It was nothing; it was the clock downstairs striking -six.</p> - -<p>Very quietly but very resolutely he walked downstairs. -An intuition, an instinct impelled him. He felt and peered -at the door and behold! it was ajar! Unbolted! Unlocked! -Brand’s colleague was abroad upon some errand of his -own. The cold air of freedom blew upon Sargon’s face.</p> - -<p>The door opened and closed softly and Sargon stood -upon the doorstep of the left wing of the asylum, facing -the dim world of a November dawn.</p> - -<p>It was dark but it was clear, a world of ebony outlines -and colourless forms. Everything looked as if it had just -been wiped over with a wet rag. It was cold, but it was -cold without any of the hate and bitterness of wind.</p> - -<p>He crossed the gravel drive and came to a stop and -stood looking about him. The heavy building of the left -wing rose above him, a vast bulk that went up into the -paler darkness of the sky. It receded in perspective and -the central block beyond looked like the ghost of a house. -Here and there were orange-lit windows and others fainter -lit by some remote reflected light. In the lodge to the -left of the gates there was also a light. For where there -is madness there is never perfect sleep.</p> - -<p>But the asylum was as near complete silence that morning -as an asylum can ever be.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[319]</span>He looked and listened. Not a footfall. It would not do -to be found here by that other attendant....</p> - -<p>But the man was snugly away somewhere. No one -would loiter here in this chill air.</p> - -<p>What was it Sargon had to remember?</p> - -<p>The friends and believers were waiting for him. They -were waiting now. Where the river ran out of the city -wall; that was to say where the little streamlet ran out of -the grounds. That would be this way—to the left, where -the fields dropped down-hill. He stepped on to the grass, -for his feet made loud sounds on the gravel. The grass -hissed crisply. It was heavy with white frost and his -footmarks made black blots in the wet silvery grey.</p> - -<p>He walked past and away from the ponderous dark -mass of the asylum into the open, colder air of freedom. -He unlatched and went through the small iron gate in the -iron fencing that separated the trim grass plots of the -front from the cabbage field. It complained a little on its -hinge and he opened and closed it very carefully. He -struck across the field. The path ran before him into a -mist. It came out of the mist to his feet and vanished -behind him. It was as if it went past him while he -marked time. He could not remember whither the path -ran, nor how it lay with regard to the corner he sought. -But every moment things grew clearer.</p> - -<p>Every moment things grew clearer. There had been -something dark and brooding in the sky that hung over -him and seemed to watch him. He had done his best to -ignore the vague presence, because he was afraid of his -own imagination. But suddenly he saw plainly that it -was just the tops of trees showing above the mist. That -must be the line of trees along the hedge parallel to the -asylum front. He must go through these if he wanted to -go down-hill. He left the path and made his way slowly -along a frozen ridge of dug earth. He skirted long rows of -stalky cabbages, black and shrivelled and unkempt they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[320]</span> -looked like Cossack sentinels afoot. They all leant -towards him as though they listened to the sound of him.</p> - -<p>As he drew near the hedge and the trees he heard a sound -like the feet of an army of midgets. It was the drip, drip -of moisture from the trees.</p> - -<p>Far away behind him and quite invisible to him a motor -car scurried along the high-road.</p> - -<p>He had some difficulty in finding a way through the -hedge and a bramble scratched his ankle. He told himself -there was no hurry; the friends waited. Beyond the hedge -the ground went down-hill and the mist grew whiter and -thicker. The daylight was strong enough now to show -the mist dead-white. It veiled the stream altogether.</p> - -<p>He walked slowly. He had no sense of being pursued. -Brand would not go into the ward for an hour yet; he -might not miss him for a long time....</p> - -<p>What a wonderful thing, thought Sargon, is daybreak, -and how little one sees of it! Every day begins with this -miraculous drama and we sleep through it as though it did -not concern us and rouse ourselves only for the trite day. -A little while ago the world had been an inky monochrome -and now it was touched with colour. The sky was blue. -All the stars had gone—but no! not all. One still shone, a -large pale star, the star of Sargon. And the sky about -it was flushed with a faint increasing pinkiness. That -must be the east and that star must be the morning star, -hanging above the outhouse chimneys. Those chimneys -were very distinct. The butt end of the asylum which -had been a black and shapeless monster a little while ago, -had now become a dark purple shape outlined with an -exquisite clearness, eaves and ridges and chimneys and -creasings and window-frames. Four windows shone a fading -orange and two of them suddenly blinked and vanished.</p> - -<p>Would anyone look out of a window there and see him?</p> - -<p>It did not matter. He would go on down towards the -stream. This friendly mist would hide him.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[321]</span>It was wonderful to be in this white mist and yet not in -it. It was always a little way from him. And nevertheless -it wetted him. How crisp the frosted ground was, but -if one kicked through the surface, it was soft.</p> - -<p>Overhead the blueness increased and there was now a -rippled patch of pink cloud.</p> - -<p>He went deeper and deeper into the soft mist. Presently -he was walking on long wet shrivelled grass. When he -turned presently to look back at the asylum it had altogether -disappeared.</p> - -<p><i>What was that?</i> Was it something talking or was it the -beating heart of some busy elfin machine? Listen! Peer! -Think!</p> - -<p>It was the stream.</p> - -<p>Now everything was plain and easy.</p> - -<p>He walked beside the stream. Near at hand trees became -visible, attendant trees with mist about their waists, white-clad -sentinel trees. The dry grass was ranker here. And -what was this, like a denser lower mist within the mist? -This was the wall. Beyond that wall, almost within shouting -distance now, the friends and believers would be -waiting. How discreet they were! Not a murmur, not a -footfall.</p> - -<p>For a long time Sargon stood motionless beside the -culvert beneath the wall. At last he roused himself and -by a great effort and with the help of the ivy he scrambled -to the top of the wall.</p> - -<p>No one waited. Some dim four-footed thing bolted -from the frost-bitten weeds below, and then there was -silence. There was no sign of watchers nor helpers.</p> - -<p>No matter. If it was God’s will they would come.</p> - -<p>He sat very still. He did not feel deserted nor alone. -He was not in the least dismayed. He felt that the Power -who had called him into being was all about him.</p> - -<p>Slowly, steadily the light grew brighter. A little cloud -like a floating feather caught fire very suddenly and then<span class="pagenum" id="Page_322">[322]</span> -another. A great beam of light, like the beam of a searchlight, -only very much broader, appeared slanting to the -north. Then above a whaleback of distant downland came -a knife-edge of dazzling light, an effulgence, like a curved -knife, like a cap, like a dome, a quivering blazing fire-birth. -And then torn clear of the hill and round and red -the November sun had risen.</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>It was full daylight and the mist had dissolved away. -The roofs of the asylum buildings were now visible -over the crest, divested of all magic, bleak and commonplace. -From some point in that direction a dog was -barking.</p> - -<p>It was strange that there should be no one here. That -young man whose name he had never known, had made -it very plain that there were friends in waiting here. -Perhaps they had gone away and would come back -presently.</p> - -<p>Still it did not matter now very much. At any rate he -had seen a sunrise of almost incredible beauty. How good a -thing the sun was! The thing of all visible things that was -most like God.</p> - -<p>Perhaps there were no helpers here at all. Perhaps he had -misunderstood. He was stupid he knew. He misunderstood -more and more. Perhaps presently keepers would -come in search of him and take him back to the asylum. -It might be so that things were decreed. He would not -let it distress him. Life was full of trials and disappointments. -He was feeling now very cold throughout his substance -and tired so that all his energy was gone. With a -start he became aware that there was a man standing up -the slope that overlooked the asylum grounds. He felt -a thrill of renewed vitality. This man was standing quite -still looking down at the asylum. It might be one of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_323">[323]</span> -staff looking for him. Or one of the promised helpers. -One of the promised helpers?</p> - -<p>Sargon was not so calm and apathetic as he had supposed. -He was atremble from head to foot. He was not -shivering with cold but trembling with excitement. He -felt he must end this doubt one way or the other. Could -he catch this man’s eye? He waved a hand. Then he drew -a dirty little pocket-handkerchief from his dressing-gown -pocket and began to wave it. Now! Now it seemed the -man was looking straight down at Sargon.</p> - -<p>He was moving towards Sargon slowly, as if incredulous. -Then he was signalling and running.</p> - -<p>Sargon sat quite still. He knew all along they would -come for him.</p> - -<p>It was Bobby, close at hand now and crying out, “Sargon! -It is you! Sargon!” Sargon did not wait for him. He -turned about and scrambled and dropped off the wall. They -clasped hands. “You have come to fetch me?”</p> - -<p>“I was in despair. I didn’t dream you understood me. -I’m all amazed.... Let me think; what are we to do? -This is splendid. My motor bicycle is in the inn. Nuisance -that. Yes, come along. I must hide you somewhere -and fetch it. Then we will get away. I didn’t think you’d -have no clothes. Clothes? Won’t show much. Cold? -May be cold. I’ll get a rug. There’s a rug in the side-car.”</p> - -<p>He led the way back up the slope, glancing ever and -again at the asylum fields. Sargon trotted beside him, -calmly confident in God and Bobby, with the limitless -docility of one who trusts his servant.</p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>Bobby’s mind was fresh and bright that morning. He -had wandered out to the asylum simply because he could -lie in bed in a fever of regrets no longer. His extreme luck -in encountering Sargon had restored all his confidence in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_324">[324]</span> -himself and in the propitiousness of things. He made his -plans quickly and with decision. It would be impossible -to take Sargon back to the inn and give him coffee. So -soon as he was missed they would surely go to the village. -And every one would note this queer little figure with its -dressing-gown and slippers and scarred ankles. He must -get the little man into hiding somewhere close at hand. -In that small beech-wood just over the next crest. (Pity -he was so scantily clad!) Then the motor bicycle must be -fetched as quickly as possible.</p> - -<p>Sargon was absolutely trustful and obedient. “It is cold I -know,” said Bobby, “but unavoidable. I wish there were -not so many wet dead leaves.”</p> - -<p>“Only be quick and fetch help,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“Don’t stir from here,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>It was not the most perfect hiding-place in the world, a -ditch, a clump of holly on the edge of a bare beech-wood, -but it was all that downland was likely to provide. “So -long,” said Bobby and set off at a smart trot for the inn and -the motor bicycle. He arrived flushed, dishevelled, and -out of breath and found the inn suspicious and reluctant -when he announced that he wanted his bill instantly, refused -any breakfast but a cup of tea and a chunk of -bread and butter, and set about packing his little roll. -There seemed endless things to do, taking an interminable -time. To cap a score of irritating delays the inn was short -of change and had to send out to the village shop. Billy’s -motor bicycle, always a temperamental creature, gave great -trouble with its kick starter. And meanwhile Sargon was -shivering amidst the mud and dead leaves under the dripping -trees or worse, being recaptured and led back into -captivity.</p> - -<p>It was nearly eight before Bobby came back along the -cart-track into sight of the little beech-wood, and his heart -jumped when he saw two heavy-looking men advancing -towards him. He knew them for asylum men at once;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_325">[325]</span> -they had the unmistakable flavour of subaltern authority -that distinguishes prison warders, ex-policemen, time-keepers, -and the keepers of the insane. As he throbbed -near them they came into the middle of the road and made -signs for him to stop. “Hell!” said Bobby, and pulled up.</p> - -<p>They came alongside and without evident hostility.</p> - -<p>“Excuse me, sir,” said one—and Bobby felt better.</p> - -<p>“That large place you see there, sir, is Cummerdown -Asylum. Perhaps you know it, sir?”</p> - -<p>“No. <i>Which</i> is the asylum? All of it?” Bobby felt he -was being really clever and his spirits rose.</p> - -<p>“Yesir.”</p> - -<p>“Damn great place!” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“We’ve got one of our inmates astray this morning. -Harmless little man, he is, and we ventured to stop you -and ask you if you’ve seen him.”</p> - -<p>Bobby had an inspiration. “I believe I have. Was he in -a sort of brown robe and slippers with nothing on his head?”</p> - -<p>“That’s ’im, sir. Where did you see him?”</p> - -<p>Bobby turned round and pointed in the direction from -which he had come. “He was making off along the edge of -a field,” he said. “I saw him not—oh, not five minutes ago. -Mile, or a bit more, away from here. Running he was. -Along a hedge to the right—left I mean—near a chestnut -plantation.”</p> - -<p>“That’s ’im all right, Jim. <i>Where</i> did you say, sir?”</p> - -<p>Bobby’s brilliance increased. “If one of you will sit behind -me and the other get into this contraption—bit of a -load, but we can manage it—I’ll run you back to the very -place. Right away.” And without more ado he set about -turning round. “That’s a real help, sir,” said Jim. “Don’t -mention it,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>Bobby was now at the top of his form. He loaded them in -with helpful words—even the smaller of the two was a -tight fit for the side-car and the other sat like a sack on the -luggage carrier—he took them back a mile and a half until<span class="pagenum" id="Page_326">[326]</span> -he found the suitable hedge by the chestnut tree. He unloaded -them carefully, received their hearty but hasty -thanks with a generous gesture and sent them off at a -smart trot across the fields. “He can’t have a mile’s start,” -he said. “And he wasn’t going particularly fast. Sort of -limping.”</p> - -<p>“That’s ’im,” said Jim.</p> - -<p>Bobby kissed his hand to their retreating backs. “That’s -<i>you</i>,” said Bobby. “God help you both and cleanse your -hearts. And now for Sargon.”</p> - -<p>He buzzed back to the place where he had left Sargon, -turned his machine round again and then looked towards -the corner of the wood by the holly clump where the little -man ought to have been waiting. But there was no sign of -a peeping head. “Queer!” said Bobby, and ran up to the -place where he had left Sargon crouching in the ditch. -Not a sign was there of him. Bobby looked about him, -baffled and frightened. After all, after everything, could -things go wrong now?</p> - -<p>“Sargon,” he called, and then louder, “Sargon!”</p> - -<p>Not a sound, not a rustle came in reply.</p> - -<p>“He’s hidden! Can he have crawled away and fainted? -Exhausted perhaps!”</p> - -<p>Fear touched Bobby with a chilly finger. Had he mistaken -the place perhaps? Had Sargon strayed away in spite -of his promise, or crept back numbed and wretched to the -warmth and shelter of the asylum? Bobby followed the -ditch down to the corner of the wood, and beyond the -corner in the ditch to the right he suddenly beheld a little -old woman, a little old woman sitting bunched in a heap on -a litter of dry straw and fast asleep. She was wearing a -battered black straw hat adorned with a broken black -feather, a small black jacket bodice; a sack was drawn over -her feet and a second sack thrown shawlwise over her -shoulders. She was so crumpled up her face was hidden, -all except one bright red ear, and behind her on the bank<span class="pagenum" id="Page_327">[327]</span> -lay two large stakes tied in the form of a cross. To Bobby -she was the most astonishing of apparitions. It was disconcerting -enough to discover Sargon gone. It was still -more amazing to find him so oddly replaced.</p> - -<p>Bobby stood hesitating for the better part of a minute. -Should he wake the old thing up and ask her about Sargon, -or should he steal away? Nothing, he decided, would be -lost by asking.</p> - -<p>He went close up to her and coughed. “Excuse me, -Madam,” he said.</p> - -<p>The sleeper did not awake.</p> - -<p>Bobby rustled among the leaves, coughed louder, and -asked to be excused again. The sleeper muttered a choking -snore, woke with a start, looked up, and revealed the -face of Sargon. He stared at Bobby without recognition -for a moment and then gave way to an enormous yawn. -While he yawned, his blue eyes gathered intelligence and -understanding. “I was so cold,” he said. “I took these -things from the scarecrow. And the straw was nice and -dry to sit on. Shall we put it all back?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, glorious idea!” cried Bobby, with all his spirits restored. -“It makes an honest woman of you. Can you -walk in that sack? No, we haven’t time to put it back. -Shake it down off your legs and bring it with you. The -side-car isn’t two hundred yards away. You’ll be able to -put it on again then. This is magnificent! This is wonderful! -Certainly we won’t put it back. Off we’ll go, -and when we’ve a good ten miles between us and the -asylum we’ll stop and get some hot coffee and something -to eat.”</p> - -<p>“Hot coffee!” said Sargon, brightening visibly. “And -bacon and eggs?”</p> - -<p>“Hot coffee and bacon and eggs,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“The coffee there is—<i>beastly</i>,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>Bobby helped Sargon into the side-car and raised the -hood over him, erected the wind-screen, and so packed him<span class="pagenum" id="Page_328">[328]</span> -away. He became a quite passable aunt, dimly seen. And -in another minute Bobby had kicked the engine into an -impatient fuss and was in the saddle.</p> - -<p>He felt himself now the cleverest fellow that ever stole a -lunatic. Not that it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to -get a lunatic away. If you knew how.... They quivered -and jolted along the little minor road and so on to the -smooth main highway to Ashford and Folkestone. The -accelerator was urged to do its best. “Good-bye, Cummerdown,” -sang Bobby. “Cummerdown Hill, good-bye!”</p> - -<p>The little old motor bike was going beautifully.</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>They got their breakfast at an inn near a Post Office a -mile or so beyond Offham. Bobby left Sargon dozing in -the side-car and went to send a telegram to Dymchurch -announcing his coming. There was some delay in the Post -Office, as the post-mistress had mislaid her spectacles. -Bobby returned to find the breakfast nearly ready and to -assist Sargon out of his sack and into the little room of the -inn. The landlord was a short, stout man, with a grave -observant face. He watched this emergence of Sargon and -his progress to a chair behind the little white tablecloth, -with silent wonder. Then for a time he hid. Then he -came back into the little room where the table was set. -For some moments he stood regarding Sargon. “Umph!” -he said at last and turned about and went slowly into his -kitchen where some sort of wife seemed to be cooking -things. “’E’s a rummun”; Bobby heard him remark, and so -was prepared for discussion.</p> - -<p>The ham and eggs and coffee were served and received -with eagerness. The landlord stood over them scrutinizing -their reception of his provisions. “Hain’t ’ad no breakfast, -then?” he said.</p> - -<p>“Having it now,” said Bobby, helping himself to mustard.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_329">[329]</span>“Come far?” said the landlord after a thoughtful pause.</p> - -<p>“Fairly,” said Bobby with judgment.</p> - -<p>“Going far?” the landlord tried.</p> - -<p>“So-so,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>The landlord rallied his forces for a great effort. “We -get some rummy customers here at times,” he said.</p> - -<p>“You must attract them,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>The landlord could make nothing of that. He turned -about and said “Umph”—meaningly.</p> - -<p>“Umph,” said Bobby, just saturating it with meaning.</p> - -<p>The landlord made a cunning attempt as they were departing. -“Hope you enjoyed your breakfast,” he said. “I -don’t know rightly whether it’s a lady or a gentleman you -got with you—still——”</p> - -<p>Bobby’s mercurial temperament was far too high just -then. “It’s hermaphrodite,” he said in a confidential -whisper and left the landlord with that.</p> - -<p>But when they had gone a few miles further he told -Sargon he had decided to buy him some socks and a -jacket and trousers at the next shop they saw. “As it is,” -he said, “you are ambiguous. And then we’ll put that hat -and jacket and the sacking by the wayside for anyone who -wants to use them. And I’ll have to send another telegram. -I made a mistake.”</p> - -<p>Bobby’s mental state became more febrile as the day -wore on. He developed a wonderfully circumstantial lie -about a cottage and a fire and how his friend had only -escaped with just a few articles of clothing hastily put on. -“Everything else,” said Bobby, “practically incinerated.” -They were going down to take refuge with a variable relation, -a brother, an uncle, a maiden aunt. As the day -progressed the circumstances of the fire became richer and -more remarkable and the particulars of the escape more -definitely thrilling. Bobby told such lies with great sincerity -and gravity; they were a form of freedom—from -reality.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_330">[330]</span>Sargon himself said very little. For him this adventure -was a severer endurance test than Bobby realized at the -time. For the most part he was either cramped up and -boxed in under the hood and wind-screen and being jolted -and jumped along the hard high-road, or he was hastily -changing some garment by the roadside, or he was sitting -still in the side-car taking refreshment and being lucidly -but perplexingly, and usually quite unnecessarily, explained.</p> - -<h4>§ 8</h4> - -<p>Mrs. Plumer, of Maresett Cottage, Dymchurch, was an -anxious widow woman. She had a kind, serviceable heart, -but it was troubled about many things. She saved and -eked out almost too much. She let most of her rooms in -the summer and some even in the winter, but she hated to -think of the things careless lodgers might do to her furniture. -She liked everything to be in order and lodgers -better looking and better behaved than Mrs. Pringle’s -lodgers or Mrs. Mackinder’s lodgers. She had taken a fancy -to Bobby because he had fitted in nicely when she had had -only one room to spare, and because he had shaved in -cold water instead of calling down as every other man -lodger did—there was no bell in that room—for hot. Also -he talked agreeably when he came in and out and didn’t -want more at meals.</p> - -<p>She was very pleased when he wrote to take her downstairs -living-room and two bedrooms for himself and a -friend for a fortnight. There were few people in Dymchurch -who got “lets” in November. They might come -“any time” after Tuesday.</p> - -<p>She told Mrs. Pringle and Mrs. Mackinder that she was -expecting two young gentlemen, and left them to suppose -that her guests might stay on indefinitely.</p> - -<p>On Wednesday she was excited and rather perplexed by a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_331">[331]</span> -series of telegrams from Bobby. The first said plainly and -distinctly: “<i>Arriving with aunt about four Roothing.</i>” That -disappointed her. She would have infinitely preferred two -gentlemen.</p> - -<p>But within an hour came another wire and this said: -“<i>Error in telegram not aunt uncle sorry Roothing.</i>”</p> - -<p>Now what was one to make of <i>that</i>?</p> - -<p>Presently the child from the Post Office was back again. -“<i>Uncle catching cold fire hot-water bottles whisky.</i>”</p> - -<p>The next sensational telegram announced a delay. “<i>Tyre -trouble not so soon later Roothing.</i>”</p> - -<p>Then came: “<i>Sixish almost certain good fire please -Roothing.</i>”</p> - -<p>“It’s very good of him,” said Mrs. Plumer “to keep me -informed like this. But I hope the old gentleman won’t -be fussy.”</p> - -<p>The fire in the downstairs sitting-room was burning -brightly at six, there was a kettle on the hob, there were -not only tea-things, but whisky, sugar, glasses, and a lemon -on the table and a hot-water bottle in both the beds upstairs -when the fugitives arrived. Mrs. Plumer’s first feelings -at the sight of Sargon were feelings of disappointment. -She had allowed her mind to run away with the idea of a -warm, comfortable uncle with at most a whisky-drinking -cold, an uncle who would be, if not absolutely golden, at -least gilt-edged. She had, if anything, exaggerated her -memories of Mr. Roothing’s geniality. So soon as she -held open her door at the roar and toot of the motor -bicycle, she saw that her anticipations would have to be -modified again. Things were rather indistinct in the -deepening twilight, but she could see that Bobby wasn’t -wearing the full and proper leather costume with gauntlets -and goggles complete, that a real young gentleman would -have worn on such an occasion and which Mrs. Pringle -and Mrs. Mackinder would have respected, and that the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_332">[332]</span> -shape he was extracting from the side-car was not the -shape of a properly-expanded uncle. It looked much more -like a large hen taken out of a small basket on market -day.</p> - -<p>As Sargon came into the light of the living-room, Mrs. -Plumer’s disillusionment deepened and decreased. She -had rarely seen so strange and weather-beaten an outcast. -His blue eyes stared pitifully out of a pale face; his hair, -beneath an unsuitable black felt hat, was greatly disordered. -He was clad chiefly in an excessive pair of trousers which -he clutched nervously to keep up; very full they were with -his dressing-gown tails; his too ample white socks fell like -gaiters over his old felt slippers and betrayed his distressful -ankles. He looked afraid. He stared at her almost as -though he anticipated an unfriendly reaction. And Bobby, -too, standing beside him, looked rough and travel-worn -and eventful, and not at all the self-effacing young gentleman -she had remembered.</p> - -<p>When Bobby saw the swift play of Mrs. Plumer’s expression -he realized that their foothold in this pleasant, restful, -firelit apartment was precarious. Happily a reserve -lie he had thought of, but not hitherto used, came aptly -to his mind.</p> - -<p>“Isn’t it a shame!” he said. “They went off with his -clothes. Even his socks.”</p> - -<p>“They seem to have,” said Mrs. Plumer, “whoever they -were.”</p> - -<p>“Pure hold-up. This side of Ashford. My big bag too.”</p> - -<p>“And where did the gentleman get the clothes he’s -wearing?” she asked. Her tone was unpleasantly sceptical.</p> - -<p>“They exchanged. I’d gone back along the road to see -if I could see anything of the tyre-pump I’d dropped, -never thinking anything of the sort was possible on an -English high-road. (Come and sit by the fire, uncle.) -And when I came back they’d gone and there he was—as -you see him. Imagine my astonishment!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_333">[333]</span>“And you never sent a telegram about it!” said Mrs. -Plumer.</p> - -<p>“Too near home. I’d have got here first, anyhow. Well, -we’ve had adventures enough to-day, anyhow. I’ve never -known such a journey. Thank heaven, we’ve had our tea. -I think the best place for uncle is bed—until we can -arrange some clothes for him. What do you think, Mrs. -Plumer?”</p> - -<p>“After he’s had a good wash,” said Mrs. Plumer. She -was still doubtful, but a sort of kindliness was struggling -to the surface. “Weren’t you afraid when they jumped out -on you, sir!” She asked Sargon directly. His blue eyes -sought Bobby’s for instructions.</p> - -<p>“It was a great shock to him,” said Bobby, “a great -shock. He’s hardly got over it yet.”</p> - -<p>“Hardly got over it yet,” said Sargon in confirmation.</p> - -<p>“Took all your clothes off, they did. It’s shameful,” -said Mrs. Plumer. “And you with a cold coming on.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll get him to bed. Of course, if you’ve got anything -for us to eat we might have it first here. Perhaps just a bit -of toasted cheese or Welsh Rarebit, or something of that -sort, and a good hot grog. Eh, uncle?”</p> - -<p>“Don’t want much to eat,” said Sargon. “No.”</p> - -<p>“I haven’t forgotten that Welsh Rarebit you made for -me, Mrs. Plumer, after I got caught in the rain on the way -from Hythe.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I daresay I could get you a Welsh Rarebit,” said -Mrs. Plumer, softening visibly.</p> - -<p>“Famous,” said Bobby. “Make a new man of him. -And meanwhile I’ll run the old bike round to the shed. -If I may put it in the shed? You’ll be all right here, -uncle?”</p> - -<p>“It’s safe?”</p> - -<p>“Every one’s safe with Mrs. Plumer,” said Bobby, and -held the door open for her to precede him out of the room.</p> - -<p>“I’ll tell you about him to-morrow morning,” he said<span class="pagenum" id="Page_334">[334]</span> -to her confidentially in the passage. “He’s a wonderful -man.”</p> - -<p>“He’s all right?” asked Mrs. Plumer.</p> - -<p>“Right as can be.”</p> - -<p>“He looks that distraught!”</p> - -<p>“He’s a poet,” said Bobby, “besides playing on the -violin,” and so satisfied her completely.</p> - -<p>But he did not feel that he had brought the wonderful -day to a completely successful end until he had got Sargon -washed and brushed and tucked up cosily in Mrs. Plumer’s -bright little best bedroom. “Now we’re anchored,” he -said. He went into his own room and sat down for a time -to invent things about his uncle in case Mrs. Plumer was -desirous of more explicit information when he went downstairs. -He decided to say “He’s eccentric,” in an impressive, -elucidatory way. “And very shy.” His uncle, he would -explain, was suffering from overwork, due to writing an -heroic poem about the Prince of Wales’ journey round the -world. He wanted a complete rest. And sea air. The -more he stayed in bed and indoors the better. He filled in -a few useful details of this story, sat for a little while -twiddling the toes of his boots, and then got up and went -downstairs. He felt sure he could carry it off all right with -Mrs. Plumer. He found her waiting for him. The chief -difficulty he encountered was her conviction that the police -ought to be told of the highway robbery this side of -Ashford at once.</p> - -<p>“H’m,” said Bobby and for a moment he was at a loss. -Then he decided. “I’ve done that already,” he said.</p> - -<p>“But when?”</p> - -<p>“I telephoned from an Automobile Association box. To -the Ashford police. It will be in their district you know. -Not in Romney Marsh. Sharp fellows, the Ashford police. -I had to describe the lost clothes and everything. They -don’t let much get by them.”</p> - -<p>She took it beautifully. After that everything was easy.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_335">[335]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 9</h4> - -<p>The next morning found Sargon developing an evil cold -in his throat and chest. His chest was painful and he was -feverish, red-cheeked, bright-eyed, and short of breath. -Bobby did not care to consult a doctor. He believed that -all doctors constituted a league for the re-incarceration of -escaped lunatics. He imagined secret notices about escapes -being circulated throughout the profession. He motored -to Hythe and got ammoniated quinine, several sorts of -voice jujube, two iodine preparations for the chest, and -suchlike trifles that the chemist recommended. When he -returned about midday the patient looked better and -seemed in less pain. After Bobby had administered quinine -and rubbed his chest and made a generally curative -fuss, he was able and disposed to talk.</p> - -<p>“The pillow all right?” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“Perfect.”</p> - -<p>“You ought to doze for a bit now.”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>Sargon thought. “I shall not have to go back to that -Place again?”</p> - -<p>“I hope not.”</p> - -<p>The flushed face became very earnest. “Promise me not. -Promise me not. I couldn’t endure it.”</p> - -<p>“No need to be anxious,” said Bobby. “Here, you are -quite safe.”</p> - -<p>“And there will be no need to get into that side-car -again?”</p> - -<p>“None.”</p> - -<p>“Never?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“It bumped—horribly.... Where is Christina Alberta?”</p> - -<p>Bobby did not answer for a moment or so.</p> - -<p>“Perhaps I ought to explain. I do not know who Christina<span class="pagenum" id="Page_336">[336]</span> -Alberta is. I took you out of the asylum because I do -not believe you are mad. But I know nothing of your -family. I know nothing about your circumstances at all. -I just couldn’t bear the thought of you in an asylum.”</p> - -<p>Sargon lay in silence for a little while with his blue eyes -on Bobby’s face. “You were sorry for me?”</p> - -<p>“I liked you from the very first moment I saw you in -Midgard Street.”</p> - -<p>“<i>Liked</i> me? But you believed I was Sargon, King of -Kings?”</p> - -<p>“Practically,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“You didn’t. Neither, I suppose, did I.”</p> - -<p>The vague blue eyes left Bobby’s face and stared out of -the window at the sky. “I have been very much confused -in my mind,” said Sargon. “Even now I am not clear. -But I realize I am confused. Christina Alberta is my -daughter. The Princess Royal I called her. In Sumeria. -She is a very dear, bold girl. She is all I have. I left her -and came away from her, and I must have distressed her -greatly.”</p> - -<p>“Then she may not know where you have been?”</p> - -<p>“She may be looking for me.”</p> - -<p>“Where is she?”</p> - -<p>“I have been trying to remember. It was in a studio -somewhere—with peculiar pictures. I never liked those -pictures. A studio in a Mew. It had a name but I cannot -remember its name. It is stupid of me. Probably Christina -Alberta is there with her friends—still wondering what -has become of me.”</p> - -<p>“At the—at the <i>Place</i>, they told me your name was -Preemby.”</p> - -<p>“Albert Edward Preemby.... I wonder.”</p> - -<p>He lay reflecting for a time. “I remember that for a long -time I thought I was Albert Edward Preemby, a small -creature, a little man living a mean life in a laundry. A -laundry with large blue vans. The swastika. You cannot<span class="pagenum" id="Page_337">[337]</span> -imagine what a small, insignificant life it was that this -Preemby led. And then suddenly I thought I could not -possibly be Preemby and also an immortal soul. Either -there was no Preemby, I thought, or there was no God. -There could not possibly be both. It perplexed and -worried me very much. Because there I was—Preemby. -I am not good at thinking—all my thinking goes off into a -kind of dreaming. And then when there came evidence -that seemed satisfactory—perhaps I jumped at what I was -told. But Sargon must have been a great king, a very great -king, and I am small and weak and not very intelligent. -When the keepers and attendants bullied me and ill-treated -me I did not behave as a great king should have behaved, -and when I saw them doing evil things to other—other -patients, I did not interfere. Yet all the time I think I -am something different from the Albert Edward Preemby -I used to be, something more and something better. But -it leaves me confused to think who I am, and I am very -tired. Perhaps, when I have rested a day or two, I may -be better able to think about these things.”</p> - -<p>The faded voice died away. The blue eyes remained -staring tranquilly at the sky.</p> - -<p>Bobby said nothing for a little while. Then he remarked, -“I have seen men ill-treated.”</p> - -<p>And then; “and I am not so slight as you are.”</p> - -<p>He said no more. It did not seem as though Sargon had -heard him. Bobby stood up.</p> - -<p>“You must rest. You are perfectly safe here. If we can -remain unnoted here for two weeks then it will be impossible -ever to send you back to that place again. Are you -comfortable?”</p> - -<p>“It is a beautiful bed,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>But beautiful though the bed was it was not sufficient to -arrest the trouble in Sargon’s aching chest. He seemed -very exhausted that evening. In the night he began coughing; -he coughed so distressingly that Bobby went in to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_338">[338]</span> -him. In the morning he was spiritless and did not want to -eat. Bobby sat in the room downstairs working at the pile -of Aunt Suzannah correspondence that Billy had sent on -to him. He was half-minded to appeal to Tessy to come -down and help with the nursing, but there was no bedroom -available for her. Mrs. Plumer pressed for a doctor -and he put her off. Finally, on her own responsibility, she -brought in a young man who was just starting a practice in -the place. Bobby had a terrifying interview, but the young -doctor betrayed no suspicions. On the whole, he was reassuring. -There was congestion of the lungs but nothing -worse. Sargon must keep very warm and take this and -that. No urgent need for a nurse. Keep him warm and -give him his medicine.</p> - -<p>Late in the evening Bobby went up to say good night -and found Sargon better and more talkative.</p> - -<p>“I have been thinking of Christina Alberta and I should -like to see her. I would like to see her and tell her things I -have been thinking about her. I have been thinking out all -sorts of curious things. Perhaps I am not so much to her -as she may think. But chiefly I want to talk to her about -a young man I dislike. What was he called? When I was -last at Lonsdale Mews, she danced with him.”</p> - -<p>“Lonsdale Mews!”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, of course. I had forgotten. Eight Lonsdale -Mews, Lonsdale Road, Chelsea. But my mind is very confused -and I do not know what I should say to her even if -she came.”</p> - -<p>Bobby wrote down the address forthwith.</p> - -<p>“And this Christina Alberta is all you have?” he -asked.</p> - -<p>“All I have.</p> - -<p>“Twenty. Quite a child really. I ought never to have -left her. But there came a sort of wonder upon me—As -though the world was opening. It made everything else -seem very trivial.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_339">[339]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 10</h4> - -<div class="blockquot2"> -<p>“<i>There came a sort of wonder upon me as though the -world was opening.</i>”</p> -</div> - -<p>Bobby wrote that down also. And he sat very late before -the fire in the ground-floor room thinking that over and -thinking over the message he would have to send to Christina -Alberta in the morning. To-morrow he would have -to explain himself and his extraordinary intervention in -Preemby affairs. It was by no means plain to himself -as yet, and to-morrow he would have to make plain to a -probably very indignant young lady why her father had -so caught his sympathies and fascinated his imagination as -to tempt him to this escapade. He found himself thrown -back on self-analysis. He found himself scrutinizing his -own motives and his own scheme of existence.</p> - -<p>He knew and understood that feeling, “as though the -world was opening” so well. Still better did he know that -feeling of dead emptiness in life out of which it arose. In -his own case he had thought this habitual discontent with -the daily round, this urgency towards something strange -and grandiose, was due to the dislocation of all his expectations -of life by the great war; that it was a subjective -aspect of nervous instability; but in the case of this little -laundryman it could not have been the war that had sent -him out, a sort of emigrant from himself, to find a fantastic -universal kingdom. It must be something more fundamental -than the war accident. It must be a normal disposition -in men towards detachment from safety and comfort.</p> - -<p>He glanced towards the pile of his Aunt Suzannah correspondence -on the table and the next sheet of “copy” for -<i>Wilkins’ Weekly</i> he had distilled therefrom. He rose from -his arm-chair and went back to his work with his wisdom -refreshed. He wrote: “So soon as man’s elementary needs -are satisfied and he is sure of food, clothing and shelter,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_340">[340]</span> -he comes under the sway of a greater imperative; he goes -out to look for trouble. So that I would not discourage -‘Croydon’s’ desire to become a missionary in West Africa -in spite of his religious doubts and his peculiar feeling -about black people. Such a region as Sherborough Island -will probably supply him with a good sustained, sustaining, -and ennobling system of troubles. A white man who has -once challenged the hostility of a West African secret society -will have little leisure for morbid introspection. He -will hardly have a dull moment....”</p> - -<p>He stopped writing. “Reads a little ironical,” he said -“And not quite Aunt Suzannah enough.”</p> - -<p>He reflected. “My mind scampers off from me at times. -Not in the vein to-day.”</p> - -<p>The one thing they must never feel about Aunt Suzannah -was that she could be ironical. No! it wouldn’t do. He -ran his pen through the six sentences he had just written -and pushed the sheet away from him. He drew another -sheet towards him on which he had been composing with -great difficulty a telegram to be sent next morning to -“Preemby, 8 Lonsdale Mews, Chelsea.” He read over -various drafts. The current form ran as follows: “<i>Your -father safe but with severe chest cold care of Roothing -Maresett Cottage Dymchurch desires see you discretion -very necessary return confinement fatal results best station -Hythe and cab could meet you Hythe if wire in time but do -not know you personally am tallish slender dark Roothing.</i>”</p> - -<p>Properly considered it was all right.</p> - -<p>He tried to imagine what sort of girl this Christina -Alberta Preemby would be. She would be blue-eyed of -course and probably very fair; a little taller and rounder -than her father, soft-voiced and rather dreamy. She would -be timid and affectionate, very kind and gentle and a little -incompetent. Perhaps it would be well to meet her at -Hythe so soon as he knew which train she was coming by. -The cab business might be a strain on her. He would have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_341">[341]</span> -to tell her what to do. To a considerable extent now he -had made himself responsible for the fortunes of both these -people. And he liked to think that. He liked to think that -perhaps these might become his own people, more of his -own people than the Malmesburys. Because to be frank -about it with himself he was a little bit of an interpolation -in the Malmesbury household. They liked him; they were -perfect dears to him; but they could do without him. -Even that little devil Susan managed without him; she -liked him and tyrannized over him but he knew he wasn’t -indispensable to her. Here at last might be two people -who couldn’t do without him, who might to an extraordinary -extent become his people.</p> - -<p>Of course he would have to put on a little more appearance -of strength and determination than was actually his -quality. He owed it to them to keep up their confidence -in him so that he might be able to direct them in their -difficulties.</p> - -<p>He would say to her—what would he say to her? “I have -been hasty, I know, but I know something of the strain -that is put upon the sane patient in an asylum. I thought -that the first thing to do was to get your father out of it. -It didn’t occur to me that for a time he might have forgotten -your address. Perhaps I ought to have come to you -before I acted. But then how was I to know there <i>was</i> a -you? Until he told me of your existence. In so many cases -in these asylums the relatives are hostile to release. It is -dreadful to admit it, but it is so.”</p> - -<p>Then rather humorously and quite modestly he would -describe the escape. He was already forgetting the uncertainties -of the visiting-day conversation and the numerous -accidental factors in the meeting by the culvert. But all -history has this knack of eliminating unnecessary detail.</p> - -<p>So he would make his statement. It did not occur to him -that Christina Alberta might be the sort of person who -interrupts speeches with elucidatory questions.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_342">[342]</span>He lit a cigarette, strolled about the room, and came to -rest standing before the fire and looking down on the -glowing coals. He was sure now that Christina Alberta -was blue-eyed, fragile, shy—with a deep sweet vein of -humorous fantasy hidden away in her. Very probably she -concealed a gift for writing. It would be for him perhaps -to discover that and cultivate it and bring it out. Together -they would protect Sargon, already more than half recovered -from the intoxication of his dream. They would -have to soften the humiliations of his complete awakening. -How fortunate and as it were providential it was that he -had been impelled to rescue the little man!—for otherwise -he would never have met Christina Alberta, never won her -timid wealth of love....</p> - -<p>“<i>Eh!</i></p> - -<p>“But this is all damned nonsense!” said Bobby violently, -and threw his cigarette into the fire. “This is just fancy! -I haven’t even <i>seen</i> the girl!”</p> - -<p>He lit his candle, put out Mrs. Plumer’s oil lamp with all -the devices and precautions proper to this dangerous survival -from the Dark Ages, and went up to bed. He stopped -and listened outside Sargon’s door. The patient was asleep -and breathing rather noisily—ever and again choking with -a little cough.</p> - -<p>“I wish the weather had kept warmer,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>When he opened his own bedroom door, the flame of -his candle writhed and flared horizontally, the curtains -streamed into the room and a sheet of paper flapped on -the dressing-table. He put down the candle and went to -shut the window. The wind was rising and there was a -little patter of raindrops on the pane.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_343">[343]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE THIRD<br> - -<i>The Last Phase</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">I<small>T</small> was part of the general unsatisfactoriness of Bobby’s -make-up that he was acutely responsive to meteorological -conditions. That late Indian summer was over now, -and the heavens and the earth and the air between began -to push, hustle, wet, chill, darken, distress and bully him. -Jumbled grey clouds came hurrying across Dymchurch -from Dungeness and the Atlantic, torn, angular, outstretched -clouds with malicious expressions like witches -and warlocks, emitting fierce squirts of rain. Under their -skirts came the waves in long rolling regiments, threatening -from afar, breaking into premature handfuls of foam, -gathering force at last, towering up for a last culminating -thud against the sea-wall and spouting heavenward in -white fountains of suddy water.</p> - -<p>“Face it, man,” said Bobby. “Face it. It’s only Nature. -Brace up to it. Think of this poor girl.”</p> - -<p>He forced himself to do a morning’s walk along the top -of the sea-wall, with his wet trousers flapping against his -legs like flags against their staves.</p> - -<p>“Glorious wind!” he told Sargon when he went in to see -him. “But I wish there was a gleam of sun.”</p> - -<p>“Have you any news from Christina Alberta?” asked -Sargon.</p> - -<p>“There’s hardly time yet for a reply to my wire. But -she’ll surely come,” said Bobby, and went downstairs to -dry his legs at the fire.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_344">[344]</span>He did not expect a summons to Hythe to meet the -young lady very much before half-past twelve. Meanwhile -he went out to the shed and assured himself that the -motor bicycle and side-car were in perfect order for a hasty -journey. Half-past twelve came, one, half-past one. He -had some lunch. He became very restless, and rose and -looked out of the window frequently to see if the messenger -girl was coming with Christina Alberta’s telegram. -About two a large, silent, luxurious-looking, hired Daimler -car appeared outside and stopped at Mrs. Plumer’s gate. -A hatless bobbed head appeared at the window and exchanged -remarks with the driver, who descended and -opened the door. The car emitted a handsome and determined -young woman of advanced appearance, hatless and -short-skirted, and a lean, dark, prosperous-looking man of -thirty-eight or forty in blue serge and a grey felt hat. The -man opened the gate for the girl, and she surveyed the -house as she advanced.</p> - -<p>Bobby realized that Christina Alberta had not kept her -promise to be blue-eyed and fragile. She had betrayed -him. Yet for all her treachery he had built up a sense of -personal relationship with her that gripped him still. He -watched her approach with an excitement he found difficult -to control. He wondered who the devil the dark man -was. A cousin perhaps. She discovered Bobby watching -her from the window and their eyes met.</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>Bobby, with an instinct that is given to young people for -such occasions, perceived that he interested Christina -Alberta extremely. He parleyed with her and Devizes in -Mrs. Plumer’s little downstairs room. He spoke chiefly -to her. Devizes he treated as a secondary figure, a voice -at her elbow. “He’s got a nasty cold on his chest,” he -said. “He’s been asking for Miss Preemby——”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_345">[345]</span>“Christina Alberta,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Christina Alberta a lot. But it was only last night I -could get the address out of him. He’d forgotten it before. -We’ve been here over a day. He caught the cold coming -here.”</p> - -<p>“How did you come here?” Devizes threw in.</p> - -<p>“Motor bicycle,” said Bobby. “But there was a lot of -waiting about before we could get away and it was a cold -raw morning, and he had just his nightgown and dressing-gown -and slippers. So hard to foresee everything.”</p> - -<p>“But how did you come to be rescuing him?”</p> - -<p>Bobby smiled at Devizes. “Somebody had to be rescuing -him.”</p> - -<p>He turned to Christina Alberta again. “Couldn’t bear -the thought of his being under lock and key. He took -a room, you see, in the place where I lodged, and there -was something innocent and—delightful about him. I’ve -a weakness, a sympathy perhaps, with absurdity.... -You ought to go up to him and see him.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, we’d better look at him,” said Devizes.</p> - -<p>(Who the devil was this fellow?)</p> - -<p>Bobby asserted himself. “Christina Alberta first, I -think.”</p> - -<p>He took Christina Alberta up to her daddy and closed -the door on a warm embrace. “And now, Mr. de Vezes, or -whatever you are,” he said to himself on the staircase, -“where do <i>you</i> come in?” He descended and found Devizes -standing very irritatingly upon his hearthrug before his -fire. As he stood there a remote resemblance to Christina -Alberta was perceptible. Bobby had an incoherent recognition -of the fact that in some obscure way Devizes was -responsible for Christina Alberta’s failure to produce blue -eyes. He was a little slow in saying what he intended to -say, and Devizes was able to take the initiative. “Forgive -my blunt impertinence,” he said, “but may I ask who you -are?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_346">[346]</span>“I’m a writer,” said Bobby, refraining from any glance at -the accumulation of Aunt Suzannah material upon the side -table.</p> - -<p>“You’ve finished lunch?” asked Devizes in a disregarded -parenthesis.</p> - -<p>“May I ask the same question of you?” said Bobby, “and -how it is you come to be connected with the Preembys?”</p> - -<p>“I’m a blood relation,” said Devizes, considering it. “On -the mother’s side. A sort of cousin. And I happen to be -a nervous and mental specialist. That’s why I’ve been -brought in to-day.”</p> - -<p>“I see,” said Bobby. “You’ve got no intention of—putting -him back?”</p> - -<p>“None at all. We’re not antagonists, Mr——”</p> - -<p>“Roothing.”</p> - -<p>“We’re on the same side. You did well to get him out. -We were trying to do the same thing by less original -methods. We’re very grateful to you. The lunacy laws -are rather a clumsy and indiscriminating machine. But, -as you probably know, if he keeps clear of them for fourteen -days, they’ll have to begin with him all over again. -He renews his sanity. We’re allies in that. We’ve got to -know each other better. Your intervention—most surprising—strikes -me as being at once eccentric and -courageous. I wish you’d tell me more about it, how you -met him, how they got hold of him, and what set you -thinking of an escape.”</p> - -<p>“H’m,” said Bobby, and came and asserted his right to -half the hearthrug. He had thought of the way in which -he could tell this story—to Christina Alberta—the original -Christina Alberta with the blue eyes. He felt that that -version needed considerable revision, indeed, possibly even -a complete rearrangement, for the present hearer. He was -by no means sure he wanted to tell it to the present hearer. -The man was a doctor and a mental specialist and a distant<span class="pagenum" id="Page_347">[347]</span> -relation, and he was for keeping Sargon out of an asylum, -and that was all to the good, but it still lingered in Bobby’s -mind that he was an interloper. Nevertheless, he made -way for Bobby quite civilly on the hearthrug, and his manner -was attentive and respectful. Bobby embarked upon -a description of Sargon’s first appearance in Midgard -Street.</p> - -<p>Devizes showed himself alert and intelligent. He grasped -the significance of Sargon’s projected visit to the dome of -Saint Paul’s at once. “I’ve no doubt he did it,” said Devizes. -“Neither have I,” said Bobby, “though I’ve not asked -him about it yet.” They pieced together the probable story -of the calling of the disciples before Billy and Bobby had -come upon the procession. “It’s touching,” said Devizes, -“and immense.” Bobby approved these words.</p> - -<p>“You see how he got me,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>A distinct flavour of friendliness for Devizes crept by -imperceptible degrees into Bobby’s mind. Difficulties that -had seemed to threaten his explanation vanished; this man, -he perceived, could understand anything a fellow did. -Devizes made him feel that the extraction of Sargon from -Cummerdown by a perfect stranger was the most simple -and natural thing to do imaginable. Bobby warmed to -his story; his sense of humour took heart of grace, and he -became frank and amusing about his difficulties on the -visiting day. As he was telling of the foxy-faced deaf -mute, Christina Alberta came back again into the downstairs -room.</p> - -<p>“He takes me as a matter of course,” she said. “He -seems weak and drowsy and his chest is bad.” She spoke -more definitely to Devizes. “I think you ought to overhaul -him.”</p> - -<p>“There is a doctor in attendance?” he asked Bobby.</p> - -<p>Bobby explained. Devizes considered. Was Sargon dozing? -Yes. Then let him doze for a bit. Bobby, working<span class="pagenum" id="Page_348">[348]</span> -now a little more consciously for effect, went on with his -story. Christina Alberta regarded him with manifest -approval.</p> - -<p>By tea-time Bobby had adjusted his mind to the existence -of Devizes and the unexpectedness of Christina -Alberta. All that carried over from his state of expectation -was the idea that his relations with Christina -Alberta were to be very profound and intimate. He still -believed that, hidden away in her somewhere, there must be -a blue-eyed, yielding, really feminine person, but it was -very deeply hidden. Meanwhile the superimposed disguise -struck him as agreeable, alert, humorous, and friendly. -Devizes too he saw more and more as a strong, capable, -understanding personality. He had seen Devizes examining -Sargon, and it was clever, confidence-provoking doctoring. -Sargon’s lungs, he said, were badly congested, especially -on the left side; he was on the edge of pneumonia and -without much vitality to fight it. He ought to be kept -in a warmer, less draughty room with a night-nurse available. -Mrs. Plumer had no room for a nurse, and not an -hour away by automobile was Paul Lambone’s excessively -comfortable week-end cottage at Udimore. A little masterly -telephoning and telegraphing and the cottage was -available, fires were alight in the best bedroom, a trained -nurse was on her way to it, and it was all settled for Sargon, -warmly wrapped up and fortified with hot-water bottles, to -go thither. Bobby found himself a mere accessory in this -new system of things; he was to follow next day to Udimore -on his motor bicycle, for there would be room for all of -them in Paul Lambone’s cottage. Apparently Paul Lambone’s -conception of a simple cottage in the wilderness -involved a housekeeper, several servants, and four or five -visitors’ rooms.</p> - -<p>This fellow Devizes carried out all his arrangements with -a smooth competence that gave Bobby no scope for self-assertion. -Sargon and Christina Alberta and Devizes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_349">[349]</span> -would depart at five and get to Udimore by six, by which -time the nurse would be installed. Then Devizes would go -back to London and get there in time to dress for a dinner -he had to attend. On Saturday morning he would be busy -in London, and then he would come back to Udimore and -see if Sargon was recovered enough for the beginnings of -his mental treatment. Perhaps the unknown Paul Lambone -would be there too. He was a lazy person, Bobby -gathered; he’d have to be brought down by Devizes. -Bobby was to stay at Udimore for some days. He made -modest protestations. “No, you’re <i>in</i> it now,” said Devizes -cheerfully and glanced at Christina Alberta. “You’re in -for Sargon like the rest of us. Bring your work with you.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, do come,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>The only reason Bobby had for resisting the invitation -was that it attracted him so much.</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>This “cottage” at Udimore, which struck Bobby as being -a really very pretty and comfortable modern house, and -these three people, Christina Alberta, Devizes and Paul -Lambone, who now grouped themselves round Sargon, -exercised his mind in a quite extraordinary way. They -struck him as being novel and definite to a degree he’d -never met in anyone before, and even the house was fresh -and decisive in its broad white grace, like no house that had -ever before held his attention. It made most of the other -houses he had ever observed seem accidental and aggregatory -and second-hand and wandering in their purpose. -But this house was the work of a clever young architect -who had considered Paul Lambone intelligently, and its -white rough-cast walls sat comfortably on the hill-side -and looked with an honest, entirely detached admiration at -Rye and across the marsh to Winchelsea and the remote -blue sea; and it had seats and arbours and a gazebo for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_350">[350]</span> -sitting about in, and up hill was a walled garden with broad -paths up which you looked from the back of the house -through lead-paned windows. You could watch the sunset -from a number of excellent points of view, but it did not -shine upon any room to weary and blind you. There was -a kind wall to shelter hollyhocks and delphiniums from -the south-west wind, and to bear a plum or so and a pear -and a fig tree. Downstairs was mainly one great rambling -room with a dining recess in one corner and the power of -opening itself out into a loggia, and with conversational -centres about fire-places or windows as the season might -require, but there were several little studies about the -house in which one could be shut off and write. Bookshelves -grew in convenient corners, and the house was -everywhere mysteriously warm from unseen and scarce -suspected radiators. The house was so like Paul Lambone, -and Paul Lambone so much a part of his house that he -seemed to be really no more than its voice and its eyes.</p> - -<p>Paul Lambone was the first successful writer Bobby had -ever met. Bobby knew various needy young writers, tadpole -writers, insecure writers, but this was the first completely -grown-up and established and massively adult writer -he had ever known. The man struck Bobby as being -stupendously secure and free and prosperous. And the -remarkable thing was that he was in no way a great writer, -no Dickens nor Scott nor Hardy; his work wasn’t, after -all, in Bobby’s opinion anything so very remotely above -Bobby’s own efforts. A certain terseness he had at times, -a certain penetration: those were the chief differences. -In Bobby’s imagination the literary and artistic life had -hitherto had an unavoidable flavour of casual adventure, -glorious achievements, maddening difficulties, wild delights -and tragic unhappinesses. Swift, Savage, Goldsmith, -the Carlyles, Balzac, Dumas, Edgar Allan Poe, these had -been his types. But this new bright house was as sound and -comfortable as any country house, and Lambone sat in it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_351">[351]</span> -with as safe a dignity as though he was a provincial banker -or a mine owner or the senior member of some widespread -firm of solicitors. No fears of losing his “job” or “writing -himself out” oppressed him. He said and did exactly what -he thought proper, and the policeman saluted him as he -passed.</p> - -<p>If this sort of thing could spring from the <i>Book of -Everyday Wisdom</i> and Paul’s amiable novels, what -hitherto unsuspected possibilities of accumulation and ease -and security and helpfulness might there not be in Aunt -Suzannah’s kindly responsiveness? It had never before -seemed credible to Bobby that a day might come when he -would be secure and his own master, able to refuse limitations -himself and to release other people from limitations. -All Bobby’s life hitherto had been a matter of direction and -eminent necessity. He had been <i>sent</i> to school and <i>sent</i> to -college. He had been on the eve of being <i>put into</i> the position -of agent upon a friendly estate when the Great War -had seized upon him and the rest of his generation and -drilled him and sent him off to Mesopotamia. And after -the war he had had to do something to supplement his -diminished inheritance. Life had been so indicated and -prescribed for him at every stage, his parents’ existence -had been so entirely directed by a class tradition, that -Bobby’s mind was exceptionally well prepared to be impressed -by Paul Lambone’s freedoms.</p> - -<p>It was curious to note how completely Paul Lambone -arose out of the present-day world, and how completely he -didn’t belong to it. He had all its advantages and so little -of its standard obligations. He had escaped from it with -most of its gifts. He had to go to no court, follow no -seasons, make no calls, and perform no functions. Was he -exceptional in his circumstances altogether, or were there a -lot of people escaping, as he was escaping, prosperously, -from the old decaying social system? a queer sort of new -people who didn’t belong?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_352">[352]</span>Bobby sat on the terrace and looked over the back of his -seat at this extremely new but very sightly and comfortable -cottage of Lambone’s, with this freshly arrived idea -of a new sort of people getting loose in the world and -living unrelated to the old order of things and shaping out -new ways of living, very active in his mind. This house -seemed to embody that idea; it was new and novel, but not -a bit apologetic nor rebellious. It was just breaking out -like a new fashion. It was just arising like a new century. -He had always assumed that revolutions came from below -through the rage of the excluded and the disinherited. He -had thought every one took that for granted. But suppose -revolutions were merely smashes-up that hadn’t very much -to do with real progress either way, and that the new age -dawned anywhere in the social order where people could -get free enough to work out new ideas.</p> - -<p>New ideas!</p> - -<p>Sargon was new, Paul Lambone was new, Devizes new; -before the war there could not have been any such people. -They had grown out of their own past selves; they were as -different from pre-war people as nineteenth-century people -had been different from eighteenth-century people. Newest -of all was this Christina Alberta who had effaced her blue-eyed -predecessor. She was so direct and free in her -thoughts and talk that she made Bobby feel that his own -mind wore a bonnet and flounces. He had gone for two -walks with her, once to Brede and once to Rye, and he -liked her tremendously. Whether he was in love with her -he didn’t yet know. Falling in love with her for anyone -was evidently going to be a quite unconventional, untested, -and difficult series of exercises. Nothing at all like that -unborn normal affair with the non-existent blue-eyed girl.</p> - -<p>She seemed to like him, and particularly the way his hair -grew on his head. She had mentioned it twice and ruffled -it once.</p> - -<p>A queer aspect of the situation was the riddle of how she<span class="pagenum" id="Page_353">[353]</span> -and Sargon and himself came to be the guests of Paul -Lambone with Devizes in attendance. It was just a part -of Paul Lambone’s freedom from prescription that he -should be able to give sanctuary to Sargon and assemble -this odd, unconventional week-end party. But Bobby had -a sense of hidden links and missing clues. Devizes was a -natural enough visitor, of course; he was manifestly Lambone’s -close friend. But their interest in Sargon was -stronger than Bobby could imagine it ought to be. He -was puzzled; he examined all sorts of possibilities in a -gingerly fashion. Some impulse like his own, no doubt, -but not quite the same, lay at the bottom of this—Sargonism.</p> - -<p>Bobby had begun by feeling very hostile to Devizes as an -unexpected intruder on a system of relationships sufficiently -interesting without him. He was glad that he had -to go to London for Friday, and not particularly pleased -by his return on Saturday. Then he found his feelings -changing to a curious respect, mingled with a defensive -element that was almost like fear.</p> - -<p>Devizes was more aware of you than Lambone. He -looked at you, his mind came at you. It had the habit of -coming at people. He was more actively and aggressively -interested in things than Lambone and more self-forgetful. -Lambone observed enough to make bright comments; -Devizes made penetrating observations. Bobby often felt -encumbered with himself; most people he thought were -encumbered with themselves, but Devizes to a conspicuous -degree wasn’t. He was a man of science; a man of -scientific habits. Bobby had known one or two scientific -men before, rather wrapped away from ordinary things, -but the interest that wrapped them was something that -wrapped them away from oneself; one had been concerned -chiefly with stresses in glass and another with the eggs of -echinoderms. You always seemed to be looking at the -backs of these fellows’ heads and smiling at their immense<span class="pagenum" id="Page_354">[354]</span> -preoccupation. But this man Devizes was wrapped up in -the motives and thoughts of people; he didn’t look away -from you; he looked into you. That grew upon Bobby’s -consciousness. Devizes’ eye lacked delicacy.</p> - -<p>He had come down for the week-end chiefly to deal with -Sargon. He went up and had long talks to Sargon. He -was “treating” Sargon. He didn’t go up and talk to Sargon -as man to man, as Bobby would have done. He went up -to a sort of mental jiu-jitsu with Sargon to exercise him -and push him about into new attitudes. Devizes was formidable -enough in himself, but far more formidable as a -portent. He had all the appearance of being a precursor, -the most vigorous precursor—they were all precursors!—of -a new type of human relationships, relationships without -delicate reservations, without rich accumulations of -feeling behind emotions avoided and things unsaid. So it -seemed to Bobby, who didn’t for a moment suspect how -much these people were avoiding and suppressing. Christina -Alberta’s thoughts and speech seemed to him to be -moving about without a stitch on, like the people in some -horrible Utopia by Wells. He compared the vast impalpable -network of “understanding” he and Tessy had woven -between each other.</p> - -<p>“New people,” he whispered, and looked Paul Lambone’s -new house in the face. To him they were stupendously -new, an immense discovery. The war had overstrained -him, he realized, and left him too tired for a time to see -new things. He had been one of the vast multitude of -those who had come out of the war in the expectation of -a trite and obvious old-fashioned millennium, and who -expressed their disappointment by declaring that nothing -had happened except devastation and impoverishment. -They were too jaded at first to observe anything else. But -indeed Bobby now realized the European world had been -travelling faster and faster since the break-up of the armed -peace in 1914; and here were new types, new habits of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_355">[355]</span> -thought, new ideas, new reactions, new morals, new ways of -living. He discovered himself in the advent of a new age, -a new age that was coming so fast that there hadn’t been -time ever to clear the forms and institutions of the old -age away. They weren’t reversed or abolished, they weren’t -overthrown, they were just disregarded. Which was just -why it was possible to get along for a year or so without -noting the tremendous changes everything was undergoing.</p> - -<p>“New People.” Did that apply to Sargon? That was -Sargon’s room: the two long windows between the buttresses. -Was Sargon also an escape from the established -order of relationships into novel things? What was the real -significance of the absurd little man with his preposterous -map of the world and his still more preposterous planisphere, -who wanted to be Lord of the Earth?</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>When Bobby came to talk it over with Sargon it seemed -to him that Devizes had taken the little man completely -to pieces and presented him with the disarticulated portions -of himself. Devizes went back to London on Monday; -he took Christina Alberta with him in his hired -car; but Lambone urged Bobby to stay on for a day or so -to cheer up the patient. Lambone, so far as he could -discover his own intentions, meant to stay on at Udimore -for a week or more and work. Bobby saw Christina Alberta -off, meditated on her for an hour, then gave the rest of -the morning to Aunt Suzannah and the afternoon to -Sargon; and Sargon, who was distinctly better, sat propped -up by two pillows and discussed the dissected structure -of himself.</p> - -<p>“Not a bit fatigued,” said Sargon. “I’m having a tonic -now. Every three hours.”</p> - -<p>He considered his next remark for some moments before -he made it. “Who <i>is</i> this Mr. Paul Lambone?” he asked.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_356">[356]</span> -“It is very hospitable for him to entertain us. Very. -(<i>H’rrmp</i>).... Is he a friend of yours?”</p> - -<p>“He’s quite a well-known writer. He’s a friend of Christina -Alberta’s.”</p> - -<p>“She has so many friends. Young people do nowadays. -And what is this Dr. Devizes?”</p> - -<p>“He is a nervous specialist, and he was consulted—he -was consulted about the possibilities of getting you away -from that—Place.”</p> - -<p>“Nervous specialist. He is a wonderful talker—most -intelligent and (h’rrmp) understanding. I have a curious -feeling that somewhere, somewhen, somehow I have met -him before. In this life—or some other. It is all quite -vague, and he does not seem to have any corresponding -recollection. No. Probably a coincidence of some sort.”</p> - -<p>Bobby saw nothing in the coincidence.</p> - -<p>Sargon shut his eyes for a second or so.</p> - -<p>“We talked of my recent experiences,” he resumed.</p> - -<p>“Naturally,” said Bobby, helping.</p> - -<p>“There has been a lot of confusion about my personality. -It is a trouble more frequent nowadays than it used to be. -Most of my life I have thought that I was a person called -Albert Edward Preemby, a limited person, a most limited -person. Then I had a light. I began to realize that -nobody could really be such a thing as that Albert Edward -Preemby. I began to seek for myself. I had reason—too -long to explain—to suppose that I was Sargon the First, -the great Sumerian, the founder of the first Empire in the -world. Then—then came trouble. You saw something -of it. I grasped at the sceptre—one afternoon—in Holborn—rashly. -Most painful affair. I was sent to that -Place. Yes. It shook me. Humiliations. Hardship. Real—uncleanness. -I doubted whether I wasn’t after all just -that little Preemby. A human rabbit. My faith faltered. -I admit it faltered.”</p> - -<p>He mused painfully for some moments.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_357">[357]</span>Then he laid his hand reassuringly on Bobby’s wrist.</p> - -<p>“I <i>am</i> Sargon,” he said. “Talking to your friend Devizes -has cleared my mind greatly. I <i>am</i> Sargon, but in a rather -different sense from what I had imagined. Preemby was, -as I had supposed, a mere accidental covering. But——”</p> - -<p>The little face puckered with intellectual effort. “I am -not <i>exclusively</i> Sargon. You—you perhaps are still unawakened—but -you are Sargon too. His blood is in our -veins. We are co-heirs. It is fairly easy to understand. -Sargon, regal position. Naturally many wives. Political—biological -necessity. Offspring numerous. They again—positions -of advantage—many children. Next generation, -more. Like a vast expanding beam of intellectual and -moral force. You can prove it—prove it by mathematics. -Dr. Devizes and I—we worked it out on a piece of paper. -We are all descended from Sargon, just as we are all -descended from Cæsar—just as nearly all English and -Americans are descended from William the Conqueror. -Few people realize this. A little arithmetic—it is perfectly -plain. Long before the Christian era the blood of Sargon -was diffused throughout all mankind. His traditions still -more so. We all inherit. Not merely from him—from all -the great kings, from all the noble conquerors. From all -the brave and beautiful women. All the statesmen and -inventors and creators. If not directly from them, from -their fathers and mothers. All that rich wine from the -past is in my veins. And I thought I was just Albert -Edward Preemby! And at Woodford Wells I went for a -silly little walk nearly every afternoon with sixpence in -my pocket to spend and nothing in the world to do! For -twenty years. It seems incredible.”</p> - -<p>The blue eyes sought confirmation from Bobby, who -nodded.</p> - -<p>“There was I walking about Epping Forest in a suit of -clothes I never really liked—a rather exaggerated golfing -suit with baggy knickerbockers that my wife chose for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_358">[358]</span> -me—they seemed to get baggier every year—and I was -quite ignorant that I was the heir of all the ages, and that -the whole earth down to the centre and up to the sky was -mine. And yours. Ours. I had no sense of duty to it; -I hadn’t woke up to self-respect. I wasn’t only Sargon, but -all the men and women who have ever mattered on earth. -I was God’s Everlasting Servant. Instead of which I was -rather timid about horses and strange dogs, and often -when I saw people approaching and thought they were -observing me and speaking about me, I did not know what -to do with my arms and legs, and became quite confused -about them.”</p> - -<p>He paused to smile at the thought of it.</p> - -<p>“It has been interesting to talk to your Dr. Devizes of -the absurdity of that contracted blind littleness in which I -lived so long. We talked of the Great Man I really was, -the Great Men we really were. All the Incorporated -Great Men. You and I, the same. Because in the past -you and I and he were one, and in the future we may -come together again. We have just separated to take hold -of things as the hand separates into thumb and fingers. -We talked of the time when the spirit that is in us made -the first hut, launched the first ship, rode the first horse. -We could not remember those great moments as exact -incidents, but we recalled them—generally. We recalled -a blazing day when a band of men went out across a -sandy desert for the first time, and when a man first stood -upon a glacier. It was—slippery. Then I remembered -watching my people heap up the earth-walls of my first -city. We went out against the robbers of the first herds. -Then Dr. Devizes and I stood in imagination on a sort of -quarter-deck, and watched our men lugging the great oars -of the galley that took us to Iceland and Vinland. We both -saw. We planned the Great Walls of China; I counted our -lateen sails upon our grand canal. You see, I have built a -million wonderful temples and made an innumerable multititude<span class="pagenum" id="Page_359">[359]</span> -of lovely sculptures, paintings, jewels and decorations. -I had forgotten it, but I have. And I have loved a -billion loves—I have indeed—to bring me here. We all -have. We talked it over, your Dr. Devizes and I. I had -not dreamt the millionth part of what I am. When I -thought I was Sargon wholly and solely I still did not -realize my great inheritance and my enormous destiny. -Even now I am only beginning to see that.... It is -preposterous to think that I who have all this past of -efforts and adventures behind me should have been content -to run about Woodford Wells in a ridiculous suit of tweeds -with plus-four breeches that were extremely heavy and uncomfortable—they -tickled me, you know—on hot days. -Yet I did. I did.... Not realizing.... I used to go -on until I could endure it no longer, and then I would have -to stop and scratch behind my knees....</p> - -<p>“Of course, when I called myself Sargon, King of Kings, -and proposed to rule all the world I was—Dr. Devizes -called it—<i>symbolizing</i>. Of course, everybody is really -Sargon, King of Kings, and everybody ought to take hold -of all the world and save it and rule it just as I have -got to do.”</p> - -<p>He had concluded his exposition. He had spread out -his disarticulated parts before Bobby just as Devizes had -returned them to him.</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>“But just what are you going to do?” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“I have been thinking of that.”</p> - -<p>For a little while he continued to think.</p> - -<p>“It becomes all different,” he said, “when one realizes -that one is not the <i>only</i> Sargon. I thought of being a -great king, a great leader, with the rest of the world just -following me. I doubt if I ever felt quite <i>up</i> to a job of -that sort, but I couldn’t see any other way of being<span class="pagenum" id="Page_360">[360]</span> -Sargon and a king. Now I do. I did my best, but even -when I went to Buckingham Palace I realized that the -thing was going to be too big for me. I was telling Dr. -Devizes—I told him, that since he was Sargon and King -just as much as me and that almost anyone might become -Sargon and King, then it wasn’t a case for palaces and -thrones any longer, or for being proclaimed and crowned—such -things were as much out of date as flint implements; -and that the real things was to be just a kingly person and -work with all the other kingly persons in the world to -make the world worthy of our high descent. Anyone who -wakes up to that becomes a kingly person. We can be -active kings even if we remain kings incognito. One can -be a laundryman like I was when I was just Preemby, and -think of nothing but the profits and needs and vanities -and fears of a little laundryman—and how dull it was!—or -one can be a king, the descendant of ten thousand kings, -the joint heir to the inheritance of all human affairs, the -lord of the generations still unborn—who happens to be -living in exile as a laundryman.”</p> - -<p>He paused.</p> - -<p>“I agree with most of that,” said Bobby. “It’s—it’s -attractive.”</p> - -<p>“So far it is as plain as can be. But after that the difficulties -begin. It isn’t enough just to say you are a king. -You have to be a king. You have to <i>do</i>. You can’t be a -king and not do kingly things. But it’s just there that Dr. -Devizes and I—we weren’t so clear. There’s a lot to be -thought out. What is my kingly task? In this frail body—and -what I am? I am not clear. Yet the mere fact that -I am not clear shows clearly where I have to begin. I -have to get clear. I have to get knowledge, find out about -my kingdom. That’s reasonable. I have to learn more -about my great inheritance, our great inheritance, the -history of it, the possibilities of it, the ways of the men -who misrule it. I have to learn about business and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_361">[361]</span> -economics and money; and then when I see it all plain I -have to exert myself and vote and work, and I have to -find out what particular gifts I have and how I may best -give them to our kingdom. Each king must glorify his -particular reign with his particular gift. We agreed about -that.</p> - -<p>“So far I do not know my particular gift. Dr. Devizes -says that so far as he is concerned he must work out -human motives and human relationships; his gift and his -natural interest is for mental science. He has his task -meted out for him, his kingly task. But for me at present -there isn’t that much self-knowledge. I have to begin -lower down and with broader questions. I have to learn -about the universe and about the history of this world-empire -of Sargon’s, and of all the things I have neglected -in my dreams and littleness. I have to go to school again. -To learn how to think harder. I don’t mind the fatigue. -But I am impatient. When I think of all that lies before -me, the reading, the inquiries, the visits to museums and -suchlike places, I want to get up right away and begin. -I have lived so unobservant and irresponsible a life that -I am puzzled how to account for the years I have spent. -I have mooned them away. But I am glad I have awakened -to my kingship before it is too late.</p> - -<p>“I am quite a young man still. I am a little past forty, -but that is nothing. Half of that was childhood and boyhood, -and much of the rest inattention. For all I know I -may live for another forty years. I’m not half through. -And they may be the best years, the full years. I can -spend three or four just learning—learning the round world. -I shall begin to find out politics, and why men and women -are servile and little-minded. I shall begin to realize how -I can extend to those others this great liberation that has -come to me. I shall begin to have a political life. A man -who has no political life is like a rat which lives in a ship -rather than like a man who navigates it. Then within<span class="pagenum" id="Page_362">[362]</span> -that I shall begin to find my own proper life, my particular -task. It is premature, I think, but I am very greatly -drawn to the riddle of madness and asylums. I do not -understand why there is madness. It puzzles and distresses -me, and Dr. Devizes agrees with me that when a -thing puzzles and distresses the mind the thing to do is -to gather all the knowledge and ideas one can about it—scientifically. -Presently it ceases to distress; it interests -and occupies. And when I was in—that Place, I talked -to some of those poor creatures. I was very sorry for them, -I made them promises to help them when my kingdom -came. And now I begin to see what my kingdom is, and -the way in which I must enter in to possess it. Perhaps -in good time I shall learn and spread knowledge about -asylums, and make things better in them so that they will -not simply imprison people but help and cure them.</p> - -<p>“It was Dr. Devizes’ idea, I think—or we may have -worked it out together—that there is a real and important -purpose in madness. It is a sort of simplification, a removal -of checks and controls, and a sort of natural experiment. -The secret things of the mind are laid bare. But -then if poor souls are to suffer that sort of thing to yield -knowledge for others, they ought to be treated properly; -they ought to be cherished and made the utmost use of, -and not handed over to such brutes as we had.... I -can’t tell you. Not yet. Brutes they were.... And in -their sane moments—they all have sane moments, these -lunatics—they ought to be comforted and told.”</p> - -<p>The queer little round face, with its sprouting moustache -and its pale blue eyes, stared at Bobby.</p> - -<p>“When first I saw you,” said Sargon, “I did not realize -in the least how things really were between us. I was still -wrapped up in vaingloriousness; I thought I was a great -prophet and teacher and king, and that all the world had to -obey me. I thought you were going to be the first and -best and nearest of my disciples. But now I know better<span class="pagenum" id="Page_363">[363]</span> -about myself. And about other people. They are here -not to be my followers and disciples but to be my fellow -kings. We have to work together with all the others who -are awakened, for our kingdom and the great progress of -mankind.”</p> - -<p>He went on talking rather to himself than to Bobby.</p> - -<p>“I have always wanted to know things, but now I shall -have the will really to know them. I shall be different -now. It seems incredible that a little while ago I was -bothered about what I should do with my time. Now I -am only eager to get at things, and however long my time -may be I know it will be full. It is astonishing to me -that there has been flying in my kingdom for a dozen -years, and I have never been in an aeroplane. I must look -at the world from an aeroplane. And perhaps I shall need -to go to India and China and suchlike strange and wonderful -countries, because they, too, are a part of my -inheritance. I need to know about them. And jungles -and wildernesses that we have to subjugate; I have to see -them. The beasts are under us; we have to cherish them -or destroy them mercifully as the necessities of our kingdom -may require. It is a terrible thing even to be lord -of a beast. All the beasts, wild or tame, are under our -dominion. And there is science. All the wonderful work -men do in laboratories and their marvellous discoveries -are our care. If I do not understand I may hinder. How -blind I have been to the splendour of my life. When I -think of all these things, I can hardly endure to be here -in bed; I am so impatient to get on with them. But I -suppose I must be patient with these poor wheezing lungs.</p> - -<p>“Patient,” he repeated.</p> - -<p>He looked at his wrist-watch and it had stopped. “Can -you tell me the time? At seven I ought to take some more -of that excellent tonic. It is working wonders in me. But -no! don’t trouble; the nurse will be thinking of it.... -It puts fresh life into me.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_364">[364]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>But Sargon did not live forty years more, nor thirty, nor -twenty. He lived just a day under seven weeks from that -conversation. He stayed in bed for two days after Bobby -returned to London; then Lambone also went and he became -intractable. As his strength returned he bothered -his nurse more and more for books he couldn’t name or -describe, and for volumes of the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>; -and when she declared that seven volumes of that monumental -publication were surely as much as any invalid -could need at one time, he got up and put on his rough -little dressing-gown and came paddling downstairs, -h’rrmping resolutely, to the library. After that he got up -for three days running. A fire was made in the most -bookish corner of the downstairs room and screens put to -keep him warm. But his tonic was driving him, perhaps -it was too stimulating a tonic, and he would not stay in his -protected corner.</p> - -<p>The nurse seems to have been a weak, complaining -character, indisposed to act without authority. She telephoned -through to Devizes in London, but she did not -succeed in making clear to him the gravity of Sargon’s -misbehaviour. The crowning offence came when he -wouldn’t go to bed at seven, but instead slipped out, in -an overcoat and a wrapper indeed but in slippers, upon -the terrace before the house. His bare ankles and legs -were exposed to the cold wind. The slow-moving periodic -beams of light from the lighthouse upon the coast, sweeping -across the phantom hills under the clear starlight, had -drawn him out, those processional lights, and Sirius that -white splendour, and the steadfast sprawling glory of Orion. -It was a clear November night with frost in the air. The -nurse heard him cough and rushed out to him. He was -looking at Sirius through Lambone’s field-glasses and she<span class="pagenum" id="Page_365">[365]</span> -had to drag him in by main force. She lost her temper; -there was an ungracious struggle.</p> - -<p>The next day he was in no state to leave his bed. Yet he -tossed about and exposed his inflamed chest in feeble -attempts to read. “I know nothing,” he complained. For a -while he got better again, and then it is highly probable -that he went to his open window in the night and sat for -a long time wondering at the stars. After that came a -relapse and a week or so of struggle, and then after a -phase of delirium came great weakness, and then one -night, death. He was quite alone when he died.</p> - -<p>Bobby had not expected the death at all. He heard of it -from Christina Alberta with great astonishment. He had -been told nothing of Sargon being worse nor of his misbehaviour; -he had been thinking of him rather enviously -as growing steadily stronger and better and gratifying day -by day a happy and expanding curiosity. He had looked -forward presently to another talk and another phase in -this odd belated adolescence. It was as though an interesting -story had come to an abrupt end in the middle, as -though all its concluding chapters had been torn out -rudely and unreasonably.</p> - -<p>This mood of frustrated sympathy lasted over the cremation -of Sargon at Golders Green. Bobby went to that -queer ceremony. He arrived late with Billy; the coffin -that held the little body stood ready to glide into the -furnace, the Church of England burial service had already -begun. There were very few people in the chapel. Christina -Alberta in the black she had worn for her mother was -in the front seat, as chief mourner, between Paul Lambone -and Devizes. Behind her with an air of earnest support -were Harold and Fay Crumb, astonishingly in deep mourning -and following the service meticulously in two prayer-books. -An unpleasant-looking individual with a very long -pock-marked sheep’s face, small eyes and habitual-looking<span class="pagenum" id="Page_366">[366]</span> -blacks turned round and stared at Bobby as he came in. -He was accompanied by a very large blonde lady who -seemed to have slept in her mourning under a bed. Relations -of the deceased? The air of relationship was unmistakable. -Behind, a young woman and two detached old -ladies seemed to be indulging a simple propensity for -funeral services at large. They completed the congregation.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta looked unusually small and overshadowed -by her two odd men friends. It was a grey day -outside, and the general effect of the gathering was thin -and scattered and damp and chilly. The organ was playing -as Bobby came in, and he thought he had never heard -a less musical organ. The service as it went on sounded -more and more trite and theological and insincere. What -an old second-hand damp mackintosh the Church of England -is, thought Bobby, for a striving soul to wear? But -then what can any religion in the world really be in the face -of normal death? Theologically one should rejoice when -a good man dies, but none of these religions had had the -pluck to brazen it out to that extent. None can get rid -of the effect of confrontation with a blank amazing interrogation. -Was there anything within that coffin there that -heard or cared a jot for those sombre mummeries?</p> - -<p>Bobby’s thoughts converged upon that still thing within -the coffin. The little face would be wearing a waxen unaccustomed -dignity; the round, preposterously innocent blue -eyes would be closed and a little sunken. Where were -those thoughts and hopes, now, that Bobby had listened -to a few weeks since? Sargon had talked of flying, of -visiting India and China, of doing noble work in the world. -He had said that half his life still lay before him. He had -seemed to be opening like a flower on the first sunny morning -of a belated spring. And it was all delusion; the door -of death that had slammed upon him was already closing -then.</p> - -<p>Surely those hopes had been life! In them if in anything<span class="pagenum" id="Page_367">[367]</span> -was something of the life that lives and cannot die. But -was it yonder? No. That in the coffin there was no more -than a photographic impression, a cast garment, the parings -of a nail. There was more of Sargon now in Bobby’s -brain alone, than in that coffin. But Sargon, where was he? -Where were those dreams and desires?</p> - -<p>Bobby became aware of the voice of the officiating clergyman -driving high, like a flying bird, over the welter of his -thoughts: “<i>But some men will say, How are the dead -raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, -that which thou sowest is not quickened unless it die. And -that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall -be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat or any other -grain: But God giveth it a body, as it hath pleased him, -but to every seed its own body....</i>”</p> - -<p>“Queer, tortuous, ingenious fellow that Paul,” thought -Bobby. Now what exactly was he driving at there? Queer -fellow! Bad manners too with his “Thou fool.” A rather -strained analogy this about the seed, “sown in corruption.” -After all a seed was the cleanest, most living bit of vegetable -matter you could have; it had to be sown in clean mould. -Growing plants you manured perhaps, but not seed-boxes. -But there was a queer insistence in the discourse of the -“difference,” the discontinuity, of the new life. What was -to come was to be altogether different from what was -sown. Bobby had never noted that before, never noted -how plainly the apostle insisted that no body, no earthly -sort of body, no personality, ever came back.</p> - -<p>“<i>The glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the -terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and -another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; -for one star differeth from another star in glory.</i>”</p> - -<p>What was the drift of that? Was it translated properly? -What had Paul been up against in Corinth? After all, -why couldn’t the Church speak to one’s living needs instead -of disinterring this Levantine argument? And that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_368">[368]</span> -analogy of the seed; was it after all a good one? Whatever -comes from a seed must itself die again; it is no more -immortal than the plant that came before it. The clergyman -was going too fast, too, to follow him closely. Better -get a prayer-book at home afterwards and read all this.</p> - -<p>“<i>O Grave where is thy sting? O death where is thy victory? -The sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is -in the law.</i>”</p> - -<p>No. There was no following that. It sounded like -nonsense. One just missed the implications. It was like -listening to some one who was too far off to be heard -distinctly but who made eloquent gestures and noises.</p> - -<p>The service came to an embarrassed pause. Everyone -was motionless, arrested.</p> - -<p>“<i>Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live.... -He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he -fleeth as it were a shadow....</i>”</p> - -<p>Set in motion by unseen hands the coffin went gliding -towards the furnace doors which opened to receive it. -There was a deep roar, a sound like a mighty rushing wind, -an elemental and chaotic sound....</p> - -<p>Life is a faint dispersed film upon one little planet, but -flames roar like this and great winds rush and whirl, out -to the remotest star in the unfathomable depths of space. -That deep disorderly tumult is the true voice of lifeless -matter, not of dead matter, for what has never lived cannot -be dead, but of lifeless matter, outside of and beneath and -beyond life.</p> - -<p>Everyone in the chapel seemed still and bowed and -hushed and dwarfed to minute dimensions until the furnace -doors had closed again upon that soulless devouring -clamour.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_369">[369]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE FOURTH<br> - -<i>May at Udimore</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">B<small>OBBY</small> <i>forgot</i> that glimpse of the elemental powers -that the furnace doors had given him altogether, for -such things do not remain naturally in the mind. They -inconvenience life. But the voice of the clergyman hustling -the arguments of St. Paul along, and the scene in the -Crematorium Chapel with the little coffin waiting to be -launched into eternity and the few still black mourners -dotted among the yellow benches came back to him very -vividly when Paul Lambone began to quote and twist those -familiar sentences about the contrast between the corruptible -and the incorruptible and expand a fantastic philosophy -of his own. Bobby had always intended to read that -funeral service over again slowly and judicially, but he -had never done so and he regretted it now very much. It -left him—and Paul of Tarsus—at the mercy of Paul -Lambone, and he knew that Paul Lambone loved ingenious -slight misquotations.</p> - -<p>It was a very warm, serenely still May evening, and -Lambone’s party sat after dinner in the twilight, some -just inside the house and some on deck-chairs upon the -terrace. They looked out over the marsh and over the -still sea. The sky was like the inside of a deep blue globe -on which an ever increasing multitude of starry midges -was alighting, and Rye and Winchelsea crouched low -beneath it, black low lumps with a street light and a window -or so showing minutely. Receding out to sea was a liner -quite brightly lit. With a swift steadiness the beam of the -nearer lighthouse swept the distant flats, came near, lit<span class="pagenum" id="Page_370">[370]</span> -the faces of the talkers, lit the room, called a church tower -and a group of trees into existence and dropped them back -into the darkness and forgot about them and passed on. -And then presently it was coming again, a thin white -streak of light hurrying far away across the levels.</p> - -<p>When one’s attention wandered from the talk one became -aware of an abundance of nightingales. They were -nightingales newly come from the south. One or it might -be two were in the trees close at hand; others remoter -wove a gauze curtain of faint sweet sounds over the visible -universe.</p> - -<p>Bobby sat on the step between the room and the terrace -with his back against a pillar and with his empty coffee-cup -beside him. He had put himself there by the feet of -Christina Alberta, who was deep in a big arm-chair and -very still. Her face was dim except when her cigarette -glowed and showed a red-lit unfamiliar face. And yet -that afternoon she had been the most familiar thing in -the world to him; she had kissed him and pulled his ears -and he had kissed her bare shoulders and clasped her in his -arms. Devizes too was silent and preoccupied. He sat -over against Christina Alberta on the other side of the -opening of the room; and he was so much in the twilight -that except when the lighthouse beam lit his face, only -his shining shoes and socks were clearly visible to Bobby. -There had been times when Bobby had thought that -Devizes was in love with Christina Alberta, and he had -a vague inexplicable feeling that to some extent she was -or had been in love with Devizes. He had a sense of -unfathomed deeps in their relationship, but he did not -know where these deeps lay. If Christina Alberta loved -Devizes she would have said so. Bobby knew of no reason -why she should not. But to-day she had hugged and -kissed Bobby so that it was impossible to believe she loved -anyone else.</p> - -<p>Yet in the last three or four months she had gone about<span class="pagenum" id="Page_371">[371]</span> -with Devizes a lot; Bobby had seen her mind responding -and changing with her talks with this man. She used to -quote him, and she would say things exactly like the things -he said. It had been a great inconvenience and trial to -Bobby, this preoccupation. And then suddenly he found -Devizes wasn’t the lover at all, never could have been a -lover. That day she had proved that up to the hilt. And -now in a state between pride and servitude Bobby sat at -her feet. He sat at her feet and close to her; Devizes in the -darkness was remote, a full three yards away.</p> - -<p>Except for Lambone’s unquenchable flow it had not been -a very talkative party. To-night it was less talkative than -ever. “This is too perfect,” Margaret Means had sighed. -“I can’t talk. I just thank God I am alive,” and she had -nestled into her big deck-chair upon the terrace. This -was the girl—it had suddenly become apparent to Bobby -a fortnight ago in London—whom Devizes intended to -marry. Abruptly she had come upon the scene to destroy -the triangle that had obsessed Bobby’s imagination. A -sweetly pretty fragile thing she was; in the twilight she -seemed as faint and fragrant as nightstock, and she was a -wonderful pianist. Last night she had played for two -hours. Paul’s sister, Miss Lambone, had been evoked -from somewhere in the west of England to come and be -hostess to the engaged couple. Bobby had tried to talk -to Christina Alberta about Margaret, but Christina Alberta -hadn’t wanted to talk about her. “You see,” said Christina -Alberta compactly, “she has opened the whole world of -music to him. That’s what brought them together. She’s -clever; she’s very clear and clever.</p> - -<p>“I’d never heard of her—until you mentioned their engagement.</p> - -<p>“They’ve gone to concerts together and that sort of thing. -He’s known her much longer than he has known me.”</p> - -<p>“When did you first meet Devizes?”</p> - -<p>“About the time my Daddy came to Midgard Street. As<span class="pagenum" id="Page_372">[372]</span> -recently as that. It’s hardly six months. Paul Lambone -took me to him to get advice about Daddy. But <i>they</i> -have been going about—for more than a year. I thought -it was just music that interested them. They’d seemed to -be friends. And I thought he didn’t mean to marry again. -He just suddenly decided.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta reflected. “That’s the way with life, -Bobby. Things accumulate, and then you suddenly -decide.”</p> - -<p>“Had she been undecided? Had she made him wait?”</p> - -<p>“Not her,” said Christina Alberta with a remarkable -hardness in her voice.</p> - -<p>“No,” she said. “<i>He</i> decided.”</p> - -<p>She seemed to feel there was still something to express. -“He just took hold of the situation.”</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>This was Bobby’s second visit to Udimore. Paul Lambone -had suddenly seen fit to gather this party; apparently -on the spur of Devizes’ engagement. In the interval Bobby -had seen Christina Alberta a number of times and developed -an immense sense of relationship to her. It filled his life. -He had always been dreaming things about her from the -time when he anticipated her with blue eyes and a fragile -person, and always she was and did things that tore his -dreams to shreds. This made her profoundly interesting. -More and more he had become dependent upon her for interest. -He wanted to marry her if only to make sure he -wouldn’t lose the interest of her. She had refused—twice. -Without any of the graces proper to the occasion. “No fear, -Bobby,” she said. “It wouldn’t do. I’m not the woman -you take me for.”</p> - -<p>“You never are,” he said. “I don’t mind that.”</p> - -<p>“You’re the dearest companion,” she said. “I like the -way your hair grows.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_373">[373]</span>“Then why not make it yours, and be companions for -ever?”</p> - -<p>“Nothing more frightful,” she said, and so dismissed the -proposal.</p> - -<p>They went about together; they spent much of their -spare time together except for those distressing occasions -when she would suddenly throw him over to go to a theatre -or walk with Devizes. Or to go to Devizes to talk. She -never hesitated to throw him over for Devizes. Yet Bobby -got a lot of her. She didn’t know much about theatres -or music-halls or restaurants or dancing-places or that sort -of thing, and Bobby was discreetly competent in that -province. The Malmesburys felt themselves deserted, and -Susan was vindictive in her resentment at his frequent -absence from her bed-time rituals. Tessy, Bobby declared, -remained his dearest friend; but when he tried to tell her -all about himself in the old, old fashion—which he did when -Christina Alberta was away with Devizes—he naturally -had to tell her all about Christina Alberta. But Tessy -declined in the most emphatic way to be told about Christina -Alberta. It was extremely surprising and disappointing -to Bobby to find out how incapable Tessy was of -appreciating the endless interestingness and charm of -Christina Alberta. It was a blind spot in her mind. She -seemed to assume that Christina Alberta was no better -than she should be, whereas she was much better. It -estranged Bobby and Tessy very much, and it was a great -sorrow to Bobby.</p> - -<p>Because Christina Alberta <i>was</i> good—and interesting—beyond -dispute. She was growing with tremendous rapidity -mentally and in her knowledge of the world. Every -time he met her she seemed more of a person, with richer, -fuller, more commanding ideas. She seemed to be living -every moment of her time. She was working now at the -Royal College of Science under Macbride. She was taking -hold of her new studies there with tremendous enthusiasm.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_374">[374]</span> -She was in love with comparative anatomy. Bobby -had always thought that comparative anatomy was -dry, pedantic stuff about bones, but she declared it lit up -the whole story of life for her. It changed her ideas about -the world and about herself profoundly. “It is the most -romantic stuff I have ever read or thought about,” she said. -“It makes human history seem silly.”</p> - -<p>She took him three times to the Natural History Museum -at South Kensington to show him something of the fine -realizations that stirred her mind. She made it clear to -him how the bones of a wing or the scratches of a flint -could restore the storms and sunlight and passions of ten -million years ago.</p> - -<p>And then suddenly a week ago Christina Alberta had -consented to marry Bobby. She had taken back her two -refusals. But the way she did it made it like everything -else she did, astonishing and disconcerting. She had a -confession to make, and for a time until he could think -it over thoroughly that confession seemed to Bobby to -explain her refusals completely and to clear up everything -about her.</p> - -<p>She got him to take her to Hampton Court. But they -did not go into the gardens because they saw through the -park gates that the chestnuts of Bushey Avenue were in -full blossom; they went instead by the pond and up under -the riotously flowering branches. A belated spring was -coming now in a hurry, warm and brilliant. The trees -were glorious. It was as if a bright green sea was splashing -up warm creamy foam under a shower of cannon shots. -The blue sky hummed with light.</p> - -<p>“The spring has come fast now that it has begun to -come,” she said.</p> - -<p>He felt she had something to say and waited.</p> - -<p>“I never know, Bobby—this year less than ever—whether -spring is the happiest time in the year or the most miserably -restless. Everybody and everything is falling in love.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_375">[375]</span>“I didn’t wait for spring,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“But what of the frogs that can’t find water?” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>“There’s water where there are frogs,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“Everybody is marrying and giving in marriage,” she -said. “I thought—I thought—Dr. Devizes at least was an -inconsolable widower. But the spring tides have caught -even him. They catch everybody.”</p> - -<p>“They’ve caught you?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know. I’m miserable, Bobby, and restless and -all astir.”</p> - -<p>“Then let yourself go.”</p> - -<p>“One aches—alone.”</p> - -<p>“But are you alone?”</p> - -<p>“Fairly.”</p> - -<p>“There’s me.”</p> - -<p>“Bobby dear, what do you want in me?”</p> - -<p>“<i>You.</i> To be with you. To be always about with you. -And to be loved by you.”</p> - -<p>“It’s kind of you.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, nonsense! <i>Kindness!</i>”</p> - -<p>“Listen, Bobby,” she said, and made a long pause.</p> - -<p>Her voice when she spoke had adopted the ease of casual -conversation. “Do you believe in chastity, Bobby? Could -you love a girl who wasn’t—chaste?”</p> - -<p>Bobby winced as if she had struck his face with a whip. -He went white. “What do you mean?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Plainly,” she said.</p> - -<p>For a time neither of them said a word.</p> - -<p>“You have had <i>your</i> experiences,” she thrust. “In France. -They all did.”</p> - -<p>Bobby made no answer to that.</p> - -<p>“Now you know,” she flung at him.</p> - -<p>For a little while the light had gone out of Bobby’s -world.</p> - -<p>“Did you love the man?” he asked.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_376">[376]</span>“If I did I don’t remember it. It was just—curiosity. -And the stir of growing up. And the intolerable sense of -being forbidden. No—I think I was almost—cold-blooded. -I liked the look of him. And then I disliked him.... -But there it is, Bobby. That’s how things are.”</p> - -<p>Bobby weighed his words. “I’d care if it were any girl -but you. You—you’re different. I love you. What has -or hasn’t happened to you doesn’t matter. At least—it -doesn’t matter so much.”</p> - -<p>“You’re sure it doesn’t matter so much?”</p> - -<p>“Quite.”</p> - -<p>“Sure for good?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“From this moment you forget, you begin to forget what -I have told you? As I want to forget it?”</p> - -<p>“It will go soon enough if you want to forget it. It -doesn’t matter at all. I see now, it doesn’t matter at all.”</p> - -<p>“But why on earth do you want to marry me, Bobby? -What is there in me? I’m ugly, rude, greedy, inconsiderate. -I’ve no purity, no devotion.”</p> - -<p>“You’re incessantly interesting. You’re straight, swift, -and endlessly beautiful.”</p> - -<p>“Bobby, truly! Does it look like that to you?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Doesn’t my manner—? Don’t you <i>know</i>?”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she said gravely; “I suppose I know.”</p> - -<p>She came to a stop in front of him with her arms akimbo. -They stood looking at one another, and Bobby winced as -if he was going to cry. Her face was grave and troubled, -and then at the sight of his expression her smile broke -through. Her gravity vanished. She was a different -Christina Alberta. She was suddenly the gayest conceivable -thing to him, confident and impudent.</p> - -<p>“If you were to kiss me, Bobby, right here and now in -Bushey Park, would they lock us up?...”</p> - -<p>Most wonderful it was to Bobby to take her in his arms.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_377">[377]</span> -A new Christina Alberta was revealed to Bobby; Christina -Alberta seen from a distance of six inches or so, an amazingly -beautiful Christina Alberta. One might have thought -she had never lived for anything but being loved by Bobby.</p> - -<p>“You’re learning,” said Christina Alberta after a little -while. “Now do it all over again, Bobby. Nobody seems -to be looking....”</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>Neither Lambone nor Devizes had seemed in the least -surprised at their engagement. Indeed their attitude of -gratified expectation was almost embarrassing. The young -couple had come down to Udimore with Devizes and Miss -Means under the ample protection of Miss Lambone almost -as though they had been appointed for each other -from the beginning of things.</p> - -<p>But at Udimore there were further surprises and perplexities -for Bobby. All day Saturday Christina Alberta -seemed to be not so much in love as in a thoroughly bad -temper. She seemed far more concerned by the fact that -Devizes was going to marry Miss Means than by the -generous devotion that Bobby was prepared to lavish upon -her. She was inattentive to his various little manœuvres -to get isolated with her. The two couples played tennis -after tea until it was time to dress for dinner; she was -badly out of practice and fundamentally unorthodox, and -Margaret played with a smoothness and sweetness that -roused her to a pitch of viciousness only too evident to -Bobby’s fine perceptions. It seemed to Bobby that Devizes -also noted her annoyance, but Miss Means was blissfully -unobservant of anything in the world but Devizes.</p> - -<p>On Sunday morning Christina Alberta carried off Bobby -through the distant cheerfulness of church bells for a walk -to Brede Castle. And she announced to Bobby that she -did not intend to marry him.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_378">[378]</span>Bobby protested. “You don’t love me?”</p> - -<p>“Haven’t I kissed you? Didn’t I hug you? Haven’t I -ruffled your hair?”</p> - -<p>“Then why don’t you want to marry me?”</p> - -<p>“I do not want to marry anyone. I don’t love anybody. -Except of course you. But even you, I can’t marry. I -want to be loved, Bobby, yes. But not to be married.”</p> - -<p>“But why? Not the—the old reason?”</p> - -<p>“No. I took your word about that. But all the same I -don’t want to marry you, Bobby.... I think it’s because -I don’t want to be bound up with anyone’s life. I don’t -want to be a wife. I want to be my free and independent -self. I’ve got to grow. That’s it, Bobby. I want to be free -to grow.”</p> - -<p>Bobby made protesting noises.</p> - -<p>“I don’t want some one seeing me grow all the time. -You’d always be looking at me, Bobby; I know you -would.”</p> - -<p>It was useless of Bobby to say he wouldn’t. He would.</p> - -<p>“I didn’t know that things were going to take me like this -until I fixed to marry you. I wanted to marry you when -I consented—honestly I did. I wanted dreadfully then to -get close to some one, as close as possible, and to be kissed -and told ‘There! There!’ and to keep there. It was a -comfort for me, Bobby. You are a comfort for me. I’d -ache to madness without you. But how close we come -when we love, Bobby, and how far away we are all the -time! How can we know each other when we hardly know -ourselves? When we don’t <i>dare</i> know ourselves?</p> - -<p>“You are such a dear, Bobby. You are so warm and kind -that it seems ungrateful not to give myself to you with -both hands. But I just can’t. I’m not a normal woman -perhaps. Or something has happened to me unawares. -Perhaps life has cheated me out of something.... Oh, I -don’t know, Bobby. I want some one dreadfully; I want -you dreadfully and I don’t want you at all. I’d rather<span class="pagenum" id="Page_379">[379]</span> -be dead than a female thing like Margaret Means. If -<i>that’s</i> marrying——!”</p> - -<p>“But I thought,” said Bobby, “after all that’s happened——”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll wait ten years for you,” said Bobby, “on the chance -of your altering your mind.”</p> - -<p>“You are the dearest comforter,” said Christina Alberta, -and stopped short....</p> - -<p>And suddenly she had put her hands upon his shoulders -and clung to him and broken into a wild passion of weeping.</p> - -<p>“Wetting you instead of wedding you,” she sobbed and -laughed. “Oh, my poor Bobby! you dear lover!”</p> - -<p>She clung to him for a time. Then she detached herself -and stood wiping her eyes, the Christina Alberta he generally -knew, except for the traces of her tears. “If women -can’t control their emotions better,” she said, “they’ll have -to go back to Harems. We can’t have it both ways. But -I <i>won’t</i> marry you. There’s no man in the world I can -marry. I’m going to be a free and independent woman, -Bobby. From now on.”</p> - -<p>“But I don’t understand!” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“It’s not because I don’t want you to love me.”</p> - -<p>He was baffled. “<i>Bobby!</i>” she whispered, and seemed to -glow.</p> - -<p>Bobby took her back into his arms and held her, and -pressed his cheek and ears against hers, and kissed her -and kissed her again, and it seemed to him to mark his -own unworthiness that he should think at such a time that -there were no such wonderful kisses in the world as kisses -flavoured with salt tears.</p> - -<p>And yet she wasn’t going to marry him! She had -snatched herself back from him and nevertheless she was -in his arms.</p> - -<p>He was enormously perplexed at what was happening, -but it was quite clear that the end of his engagement was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_380">[380]</span> -not to be the end of his love-making. Anyhow here was -love. It was so manifestly the time for love. High May -ruled the world. About them there were hawthorn trees -white with blossom and great bushes of elder just breaking -into flower.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>Bobby sat in the gloaming with his friends and thought -of the things that had happened to him that day, thought -of Christina Alberta’s salt tears and the incessant intriguing -strangeness of her ways. He was still immensely -puzzled, but now in a large, restful, contented fashion. -Christina Alberta and he were not to marry it seemed; -nevertheless he had kissed her and embraced her, and he -was free to sit at her feet. For a time he was not even to -humiliate himself by telling these others he was not to -marry her. He said nothing. His thoughts and feelings -were beyond words. Christina Alberta too was darkly -silent. Everyone indeed seemed preoccupied. Talk about -the view and the stars and the coming of the nightingales, -and about migratory birds and lighthouses rambled on for -a time and died away.</p> - -<p>They were all too full for talking. The silence lengthened. -He wondered what would happen if nobody spoke any -more. He thought of Christina Alberta close behind him -and he began to quiver in all his being. The silence was -becoming oppressive. He felt as though he could no longer -change his attitude. Nobody stirred. But Lambone saved -the situation.</p> - -<p>“It is exactly six months ago to-night that Sargon died -upstairs,” said Lambone. He paused and seemed to answer -an unspoken question. “We don’t know when he died -exactly. He just faded out in the night.”</p> - -<p>“I wish I could have known him,” said Margaret Means -after quite a long interval.</p> - -<p>Bobby’s thoughts came round to Sargon. That still<span class="pagenum" id="Page_381">[381]</span> -young woman sitting in the darkness behind him ceased to -dominate his thoughts. He was moved to speak, and had -to cough to clear his throat.</p> - -<p>“I hate to think of his being burnt and scattered,” he said.</p> - -<p>“It’s not so disagreeable,” said Miss Lambone, “as to -think of the body all shut up in the coffin and decaying.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, don’t!” cried Bobby. “It’s death—any death, that I -hate to think of. Now when it is spring time, when the -whole world is so full of life, I remember all he was, the -hopes he had, and they are scattered and dispersed. -Anyhow they are scattered and dispersed, they are not -boxed up and locked up and buried.... When I was -here last he was like a little boy who has just heard of -the world. He was going to fly, going to India and China, -going to learn all about everything and then do all sorts -of splendid things. And there were the beastly bacteria at -work in his lungs and beating his strength down and none -of it was ever to happen.... When first I heard he was -dead I could not believe it.”</p> - -<p>“<i>Is</i> he dead?” said Paul Lambone.</p> - -<p>There was no reply to be made to that.</p> - -<p>Paul adjusted his shoulder-blades a little more comfortably -against the back of the small deep sofa on which -he sat. “The more I think over Sargon the less dead he -seems to me, and the more important he becomes. I don’t -agree with you, Roothing. I don’t find anything futile in -his life. I think he was—symbolically—perfect. I have -thought about him endlessly.”</p> - -<p>“And talked,” said Devizes, “endlessly.”</p> - -<p>“And given you some very helpful ideas for your treatment. -Don’t be ungrateful. You think that Sargon is over. -He has only just begun. You are becoming too professional -with success, Devizes. You begin to take up cases and -work them off and drop them out of your mind. You don’t -go on with them and learn. You don’t sit about and think -about them as I do. I continue to think about Sargon.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_382">[382]</span> -I go on with him because he is still a living being for me. -I have got a new religion from him, the religion of Sargonism. -I declare him prophet of a new dispensation. It is my -latest new religion. There will always be new religions, and -the new religions will always be the only ones that matter. -Religion is a living thing, and what is alive must be continually -dying and be continually born again—differently -but the same.”</p> - -<p>“You believe in immortality, Mr. Lambone,” said Miss -Means. “I wish that I could. But when I try to imagine it -my wits fail me. Sometimes one seems to <i>feel</i> what it -might be. On a night like this perhaps——”</p> - -<p>Her pretty clear voice died away in the stillness as the -trail of a falling star dies away.</p> - -<p>Paul, a large dark lump on the dim pale sofa, went on -speaking. “Immortality,” he said, “is a mystery. One can -only speak of it in dark metaphors. How can we believe -that each of our individual commonplace lives is to have -an endless commonplace sequel? That is incredible nonsense. -Yet we go on living after death nevertheless. When -we die we are changed. All wise teachers have insisted -upon that. As Roothing said, we are not boxed up and -buried and forgotten. Our real death is an escape, and we -escape and become—what did you say?—dispersed. Immortal -life is endless consequence. Our lives are like lines -in a great poem. It is an unfinished and yet it is a perfect -poem. The line begins and ends but it has to be there, -and once it is there, it is there eternally. Nothing could -follow if it was not there. But every star has not the same -glory. Some lives, some lines, stand out as more significant -than the others. They open a new branch of the subject, -they start a new point of view, they express something -fresh. They are geniuses, they are prophets, they are -major stars. Sargon was the last, the latest of these -prophets, and I am his Paul. Not for nothing was I -christened Paul.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_383">[383]</span>“Paul of Tarsus,” said Devizes, “was a man of energy.”</p> - -<p>“There will always be minor differences in such parallels,” -said Lambone.</p> - -<p>“I will tell you my doctrine,” he said.</p> - -<p>He began to talk in that clear miniature voice of his, -which was so like a little mouse running out of the mountain -of his person, of Sargon and his struggles with his -individuality, and of the struggles in every man between -his individual life and something greater that is also in -him. There was a streak of fantasy in what he was saying, -a touch of burlesque in his constant use of theological -and religious phrasing, and withal a profound sincerity. -In every human being, he declared, the little laundryman -battled with the King of Kings. He expanded and amplified -his theme. Ever and again Devizes would cut into the -monologue and talk for a time, not so much to make objections -as to restate and amend and amplify. The others said -little. Margaret Means twice made soft sweet sounds suggestive -of intellectual sensuousness, and once Christina -Alberta said “But—!” very loudly and then “Never mind. -Go on” and relapsed for a long time into a silence that -could be felt. Bobby sat still, sometimes listening intently -and sometimes with his mind spreading out like an uncared-for -stream into a number of parallel channels. The -argument itself was interesting to follow, but moving at the -side of that was the question of the talker’s sincerity. How -much of all this stuff did Lambone mean? How much of -what he said was of a piece with the rest of his observant, -self-indulgent life, his life as a humorous comment on a -universe that was profoundly absurd?</p> - -<p>How easily Lambone played with phrases and ideas for -which men had lived and died! How widely he had read -and thought to bring so many things together! He produced -a great effect of erudition. The Golden Bough he -had at his fingers’ ends. He talked of the sacramental -mysteries of half a dozen cults, from Mithraism to ritual<span class="pagenum" id="Page_384">[384]</span> -sacrifices, of varying ideas of personality that had held and -swayed human life from Fiji to Yucatan. Now he was in -pre-Christian Alexandria, and now among the Chinese -philosophers. The “Superior Person” of Confucius he declared -was merely an example of our way of translating -all Chinese phrases as ridiculously as possible; it meant -really the Higher and Greater Man, the Universal Man, -in whom the inferior egotistical man merged himself. It -was the salvation of the Revivalist everywhere; it was the -Spiritual Man of Pauline Christianity. When the late -Mr. Albert Edward Preemby poured out all his little being -into the personality of Sargon, King of Kings, he was only -doing over again what the saints and mystics, the religious -teachers and fanatics, have done throughout the ages. He -was just the Master under the Bo Tree translated into the -cockney of Woodford Wells.</p> - -<p>Presently Devizes was talking. Devizes was a great -contrast to Lambone. He talked a different language. He -did not seem nearly so clear and clever to Bobby as Lambone -did, but he had an effect of sincerity and solidity of -conviction that Lambone lacked altogether. His interventions -made all that Lambone said seem like a wild and -picturesque parody of something that was otherwise inexpressible. -Both he and Lambone had an air of casting -verbal nets for some truth that still eluded them. And yet -this truth so remotely and imperfectly apprehended was -for each of them the most important thing in life.</p> - -<p>“Stripped of its theological trappings,” Devizes said to -Lambone, “your new religion is simply a statement of this. -That our race has reached, and is now receding, from a -maximum of <i>individuation</i>. That it turns now towards -synthesis and co-operation. It will move back towards -what you call Sargon, the great ruler, and it will swallow -up individual egotistical men in its common aims. As -already scientific work swallows them up. Or good administrative -work. Or art. That is what you are saying.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_385">[385]</span>“Exactly,” said Paul Lambone. “If we <i>must</i> talk your -language, Devizes, and not mine. Art, science, public service, -creative work of every sort, these are parts of what you, -I suppose, would call the race mind, parts of the race life. -Every man who matters is a fresh thought, a fresh idea. -He is himself still, it is true, but his significance is that he -comes out of his past and out of his conditions and he flows -on to further men. This is the new realization that is -changing all the values in human life. It is happening -everywhere. Even in the books and reading of to-day you -can see the thing happening. History now becomes more -important than biography. What made up the whole of -life in the romantic past; the love story, the treasure story, -the career, getting on, making a fortune, the personal deed -and victory, the sacrifices for an individual friend or love -or leader; remains no longer the whole of life and sometimes -not even the leading interest in life. We are passing -into a new way of living, into a new sort of lives, into new -relationships. The world which seemed for a time not to -be changing any more is changing very swiftly ... in its -mental substance.”</p> - -<p>“New sorts of people,” said Bobby softly, and went off -from listening to Lambone’s lucid little voice into a final -recapitulation of the puzzling things Christina Alberta had -said and done that day.</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>Bobby was recalled to the matter of the talk by a movement -in the chair behind him.</p> - -<p>Lambone’s smooth voice was explaining: “So that it does -not matter so much what we achieve as what we contribute. -That cherished personal life which men and women struggle -to round off and make noble and perfect, disappears -from the scheme of things. What matters more and more -is the work one does. What matters less and less is our<span class="pagenum" id="Page_386">[386]</span> -personal romance and our personal honour. Or rather our -honour will go out of us into our work. Our love affairs, -our devotions and private passions, for example, will fall -more and more definitely into a subordination to our -science or whatever our function is. Our romances and -our fame and honour will join our vices among the things -we suppress. There was a time when men lived for a noble -tomb and in order to leave sweet and great memories -behind them; soon it will matter nothing to a man and his -work to know that he will probably die in a ditch—misunderstood. -So long as he gets the work done.”</p> - -<p>“With no last Judgment ever to vindicate him,” said -Devizes.</p> - -<p>“That will not matter in the least to him.”</p> - -<p>“I agree. Some of us begin to feel like that even now.”</p> - -<p>“Even if one has done nothing worth doing,” said Paul -Lambone, and in his voice was that faint quality of the -sigh of one who has crowned a rather difficult and uncertain -card castle, “even if Sargon had died unrescued in his -Asylum and all the world had thought him mad, all the -same he would have escaped, his imagination would have -touched the imagination of the greater life.”</p> - -<p>Came a pause of edification and then a sigh of satisfaction -from Miss Lambone. She never understood in the -least what her brother was talking about, but she adored -him when he talked. Nobody she thought had ever talked -like him, or could possibly talk like him. His voice was so -clear and bright, like the best sort of print. Only sometimes -you wished you had spectacles.</p> - -<p>But now Miss Lambone was to receive a shock. Christina -Alberta suddenly came out of the silence in which she had -been sitting.</p> - -<p>“I don’t believe in this,” said Christina Alberta out of -the depths of her chair.</p> - -<p>Bobby was beginning to know the voice of Christina -Alberta very well; and he knew now that she was terrified<span class="pagenum" id="Page_387">[387]</span> -at having to talk, and at the same time desperately resolved -to get something said. He knew too that she was gripping -hard at the arms of her chair. He glanced at Devizes and -in that instant the lighthouse beam touched his face and -Bobby saw it very intent, watching Christina Alberta -steadily and as if forgetful of all other things. It was intent -and tender and tenderly apprehensive, grave and very pale -in that white illumination. When the light had passed -away Bobby still seemed to see that face, but now conversely -it was a face of ebony.</p> - -<p>“I do not believe in <i>any</i> of this,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>She paused with the effect of marshalling her argument. -“It is theology, I suppose,” she said. “Or mysticism. It is -all an intellectual game that men have played to comfort -themselves. Men rather than women. It makes no real -difference. Tragedy <i>is</i> tragedy, failure <i>is</i> failure, death is -death.”</p> - -<p>“But is there ever complete failure?” asked Lambone.</p> - -<p>“Suppose,” said Christina Alberta, “suppose a man is -thrown into prison and misrepresented to all the world, -suppose he is taken away presently and made to dig his -own grave, and shot at the edge of it and buried and then -lied about for a time and forgotten. It isn’t part of the -race that is murdered, it isn’t a wonderful thing that passes -on; it is a man who has been killed and made away with. -Your mysticism is just an attempt to dodge the desolation -of that. It doesn’t. Such things have happened. They -happen to-day. In Russia. In America. Everywhere. -Men are just wiped out, body and soul, hope and will. -That man and his black personal universe are done with -and over, and there is an end to his business; he is beaten -and wiped out, and all the clever talk upon easy sofas in -the warm twilight will not alter that one jot. It is frustration. -If I am frustrated I am frustrated, if I have desires -and dreams and they are defeated and die, I die. It is -playing with words to say I do not die or that they are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_388">[388]</span> -changed and sublimated and carried on into something -better.”</p> - -<p>“My dear,” said Miss Lambone to Miss Means. “You -are sure you are not feeling cold?” Her voice conveyed a -faint intimation that she would cease to be acutely interested -in the talk if this chit of a girl intervened any -further in the discussion, and that she would begin to do -things with wraps and shawls and break up the meeting.</p> - -<p>“I’m perfectly happy, dear,” Miss Means answered. -“All this—! I wish it could go on for ever.”</p> - -<p>But Christina Alberta disregarded Miss Lambone’s warning. -She had something to say and there was some one -she wanted to say it to, not too pointedly, not too plainly.</p> - -<p>“All this theology, this religion, the new religions that -are only the old ones painted over——”</p> - -<p>“Reborn,” said Paul.</p> - -<p>“Painted over. I don’t want them. But that is not what -I want to say. What I want to say is that you are wrong -about my Daddy, you are quite wrong about him. That I -do know. Mr. Lambone has dressed him up to suit his -own philosophy. He had that philosophy long before he -knew him. And you talked my Daddy over and put Mr. -Lambone’s ideas into him when he was beaten and broken -because they suited his case. They weren’t there before. -I know him and exactly how he thought. I was brought up -on him. He talked to me more than to anyone. And it is -all nonsense to talk of him—his exaltation, as being like -the great soul coming like the tidal sea into the pool of the -little soul. It didn’t. When he said he was Lord of the -World he wanted to be Lord of the World. He didn’t want -to incorporate any other people at all—or be incorporated. -He was just as exclusively himself when he was Sargon as -when he was Albert Edward Preemby. More so.... And -I believe that is how it is with all of us.”</p> - -<p>She went on rather hurriedly, for she knew there were -forces there very ready to silence her.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_389">[389]</span>“I want to be myself and nothing else. I want the world—for -myself. I want to be a goddess in the world. It does -not matter that I am an ugly girl with natural bad manners. -It does not matter that it is impossible. That is what I -want. That is what I am made to want. One may get -moments anyhow. A moment of glory is better than none.... -I believe that sort of thing is what you all want really. -You just persuade yourselves you don’t. And you call that -religion. I don’t believe anyone has ever believed religion -from the beginning. Buddhism, Christianity, this fantastic -Sargonism, this burlesque religion you invent to make an -evening’s talk, they are all consolations and patchings-up—bandages -and wooden legs. People have tried to believe -in such religions no doubt. Broken people. But because -we cannot satisfy the desires of our hearts—why should we -cry ‘Sour grapes’ at them?</p> - -<p>“I don’t want to serve—anything or anybody. I may be -heading for frustration, the universe may be a system of -frustration, but that doesn’t alter the fact that this is how -I feel about it. I may be defeated; it may be certain that I -shall be defeated—but as for bringing a contrite heart out -of the mess and starting again as a good little part of something—I -<i>don’t</i> fink. Oh, I know I beat my hands against a -wall. It’s not my fault. Why don’t we take? Oh, why -don’t we dare?”</p> - -<p>Miss Lambone stirred and rustled.</p> - -<p>The darkness that was Devizes spoke to Christina Alberta, -and Miss Lambone became still.</p> - -<p>“We don’t take and we don’t dare,” he said, “we don’t -defy laws and customs because there are other things in -our lives, <i>in</i> us and not outside us, that are more important -to us. That is why. It pleases Paul to dress up his view -of these things in old mystical phrasing, but what he -says is really an unscientific way of putting psychological -fact. You think you are simple, but you are really complex. -You are the individual but you are the race also. That is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_390">[390]</span> -your nature and mine and everyone’s. The more our -intelligence awakens the more we know that.”</p> - -<p>“But it is the difference that is distinctively me, and not -the general part. The race in me is no more to me than -the ground I walk on. I am Christina Alberta; I am not -Woman or Mankind. As Christina Alberta, I want and I -want and I want. And when the door is slammed upon my -imaginations I cry out against it. Why pretend I give up a -thing because I can’t have it? Why make a glory of renunciation -and letting-go? I hate the idea of self-sacrifice. -What is the good of coming into the world as Christina -Alberta just in order to sacrifice being Christina Alberta? -What is the good of being different if one is not to live a -different life?”</p> - -<p>Unexpectedly Miss Lambone intervened, “The life of a -woman is one long sacrifice,” she said.</p> - -<p>There was a pause.</p> - -<p>“But we have the vote now?” said Christina Alberta -almost flippantly. “Why is a woman’s life sacrifice?”</p> - -<p>“Think of the children we bear,” said Miss Lambone in a -constrained voice.</p> - -<p>“<i>Well!</i>” said Christina Alberta, and suppressed some -scandalous remark.</p> - -<p>“The most astonishing thing about us,” she broke out -again, after a pause; “the most astonishing thing in the -feminine make-up is that hardly any of us <i>do</i> seem to want -children. A lot of us anyhow don’t. Now that I am beginning -to learn something about biology, I realize how marvellous -that is. As a race of creatures specialized for children, -we ought to be eaten up by the desire for children. -As a matter of fact most modern women will do anything -to avoid having children. We dread them. To me they -seem like a swarm of hidden dwarfs, prepared to come -upon me and eat up my whole existence. It’s not simply -I don’t want them; I live in fear of them. Love we <i>may</i> -want. Many of us do. Intensely. We want to love and be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_391">[391]</span> -loved—to get close and near to some one. It’s a delusion I -suppose. One of Nature’s clumsy tricks. It is all a delusion. -He vanishes—he was never there. Under the old conditions -it availed; it got the children Nature wanted. But we -don’t think of children. We don’t want to think about -them. There it is! And anyway children do not take a -woman out of her egotism; they only extend and intensify -it. I have known intelligent girls marry and have children, -and when the baby appeared their minds evaporated. They -became creatures of instinct, messing about with napkins. -I could scream at the thought of it. No, I am an egoist -pure and simple. I am Christina Alberta, and her only. -I am not Sargon. I refuse altogether to mix with that -promiscuous anybody-nobody.”</p> - -<p>“After all that may only be a phase in your development,” -said Devizes.</p> - -<p>“It is the only one I know.”</p> - -<p>“That is evident. But I assure you, Christina Alberta, -that this revolt and distress of yours is a phase. You are -talking rebellion and egoism and anarchism as a healthy -baby screams to get breath into its lungs, and escape from -the stuffiness of old air. The baby doesn’t know why it -screams and no doubt finds some dim little grievance in -its brain——”</p> - -<p>“Go on,” said Christina Alberta. “Chastise me and -chastise me.”</p> - -<p>It seemed to Bobby that there were tears in her voice.</p> - -<p>“No, but you are so young, my dear,” said Devizes.</p> - -<p>My dear!</p> - -<p>“Not so young. Not so actually young,” cried Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>“If I live to be eighty,” said Christina Alberta, “shall I -ever be able to feel more than I am feeling now? Why will -you always treat me like a child nowadays?”</p> - -<p>“Feeling isn’t the only measure,” said Devizes. “Even -now, to-night, you are talking below your beliefs. You<span class="pagenum" id="Page_392">[392]</span> -are not an egoistic adventurer. You take sides on a score -of matters. You insist you are a Communist for example.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! just to smash up things,” said Christina Alberta. -“Just to smash up everything.”</p> - -<p>“No. You say that to-night, but you have told me -differently before. You have a care for the world. You -want to help forward the common interest. You develop -a passion for scientific truth. Well—there’s no way of -fencing in your individuality from other minds in science -or in public affairs. You’re a part by necessity; you can’t -be a complete whole. You find already you can’t keep -away from these things. They will take you more and -more, whether you like it or not, because it is the spirit -of the time. That is what is happening to us all. You -can’t escape. Our work, our part, is the first thing in -our lives. To that, pride must bow now and passion and -romance. We have to slam and lock and bar the door -against all personal passion that might wreck our work. -Bar it and put it out of your mind. As a secondary thing. -Work. Give the greater things a chance to keep you.”</p> - -<p>“That’s all very well.”</p> - -<p>“It’s everything.”</p> - -<p>“Why <i>should</i> they keep me?” came from Christina Alberta, -sullenly and resolutely.</p> - -<p>“I know that this is your faith,” she said. “You told -me all about it. You’ve always told me about it.” Bobby’s -quick ear detected a change in her voice “Do you remember -our first talk together? Do you remember our -talk in Lonsdale Mews? When we dined together at that -Italian place? That night. Just after we had found each -other.”</p> - -<p>Found each other?</p> - -<p>“But I did not know then that your faith meant all the -suppressions and sacrifices and discretions it seems to do. -I thought it was something robust and bold. I did not -understand its—qualifications. But since then we have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_393">[393]</span> -argued about these things and argued. That day at Kew -Gardens. That day when you took me for that walk over -the downs to Shere. We have threshed things out. Why -should we argue again? I am giving in—what can I do -but give in?—and soon I will be a Sargonite with you and -Paul. But not this summer. Not now. This night—This -wonderful first night of summer. To-night I rebel against -any renunciation, any fobbing-off of individuals with -second-best things. I am going to be impossible and -absurd. For the last time. I want the world from the stars -to the bottom of the sea for myself, for my own hungry -self. And all between. The precious things between. The -love.... <i>There!</i>”</p> - -<p>Vague questions appeared and vanished again on the -screen of Bobby’s mind. What had Christina Alberta -renounced? What was she renouncing? What was anyone -renouncing? And had his ears cheated him, or had Devizes -called her, “my dear”? In front of Margaret Means and in -face of all the circumstances of the case it seemed to -Bobby that Devizes was the last person who ought to call -Christina Alberta “my dear.” And what was this about -“fobbing-off”? Was this really a shameless plainness of -speech, an atrocious confession, or something that he misunderstood?</p> - -<p>Miss Lambone stirred uneasily.</p> - -<p>It was as if an evil spirit possessed Christina Alberta. -“Oh, <i>damn</i> renunciation!” she said with bitter gusto.</p> - -<p>They seemed to be sitting for some moments in a profound -silence, and then the nightingale became very audible.</p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>“I think,” said Miss Lambone in the silence, “that it is -getting just a <i>leetle</i> chilly.”</p> - -<p>“It is so beautiful here,” said Miss Means, who was warm -in Miss Lambone’s shawl. “Perfectly beautiful.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_394">[394]</span>“How you can talk of frustration—!” she added, and left -her sentence incomplete.</p> - -<p>“I think,” said Miss Lambone, “that I shall go in and -light the candles. It is too wonderful a night for the electric -lights, far too wonderful. We will just light the candles -and the fire. And perhaps you will play us something -beautiful. These are such marvellous fire-places here that -they blaze up at once. I don’t know if you have noticed -them—a new sort. The fire is all on the hearth—no -draught below, but the shape of the back draws it up.</p> - -<p>“I love a wood fire,” said Miss Lambone, and sighed and -rose slowly and voluminously.</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>Two days later Bobby came into one of the little studies -on the garden side of Paul Lambone’s house. Paul had -found out that Bobby wanted a few days of uninterrupted -thought in which to begin his novel, and had asked him to -stay on after the other guests had returned to London. -It was a perfect room for a writer of Bobby’s temperament; -it had a low writing-table close to the sill of the casemented -window, and on the sill was a silver bowl of forget-me-nots -and white tulips. A little glass-paned door released one -into the garden without one’s having to go back through -the house. The writing-table had everything a fastidious -writer could desire, a pleasant paper-rack and wafers, and -real quill pens, and plenty of elbow room. The chair he -sat in was an arm-chair, immensely comfortable but not -too luxurious; no hint of repose in it but only a completely -loyal support for a working occupant. A garden -path ran up hill from the window, a garden path skirted -by wonderful clusters of pansies. On either side of the -pansies were rose bushes, and though not a rosebud was -showing, yet the fresh green leaves, tinged with ruddy -brown, were very exquisite in the light.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_395">[395]</span>He stood looking up the path for a time and then sat -down and drew the writing-pad towards him. He took one -of those delightful quills, tested the delicious flexibility of -its points, dipped it in the ink and wrote in his very neat -and beautiful handwriting:</p> - -<p class="center"> -UPS AND DOWNS<br> -<br> -<i>A Pedestrian Novel</i><br> -<br> -<small>BY ROBERT ROOTHING</small><br> -<br> -CHAPTER THE FIRST<br> -<br> -<small>WHICH INTRODUCES OUR HERO</small></p> - -<p>He wrote this very readily because it was very familiar -to him. From first to last he had written it on fair fresh -sheets of paper perhaps half a dozen times.</p> - -<p>Then he stopped short and sat quite still with his head on -one side. Then very neatly he corrected “which introduces” -into “in which we introduce.”</p> - -<p>It was nearly two years now since he had first begun his -novel in this fashion, and he was still quite uncertain about -the details of his hero’s introduction. His original intention -about the story still floated pleasantly in the sky of -his mind; a promise of a happy succession of fine, various -and delightful adventures, told easily and good-humouredly; -the fortunes of a kindly, unpretending, not too brave -but brave enough young man, on his way through the -world, to live happily afterwards with a delicious young -woman. “Picaresque” was the magic word. None of these -adventures had as yet assumed a concrete form in his mind. -He felt they would come to him definitely enough one day. -If one sat and mused one half saw them, and that was -assurance enough for him. And so having rewritten his -title page neatly and prettily, he fell into a day-dream and -was presently thinking round and about his Christina -Alberta as a good hero should.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_396">[396]</span>Bobby was always being puzzled by Christina Alberta, -always coming upon something that seemed to clear up -everything, and then being puzzled again. But now it -seemed to him that he really did know the last fact of -importance that was to be known about her. Overnight -Paul Lambone had described how he had taken her to -Devizes to get advice, and how they had blundered upon -the reality of her parentage. He told his story well as a -story-writer should; he gave it dramatic point. Evidently -he told the tale of set intention, because it was time Bobby -knew. Lambone was aware of Christina Alberta’s -engagement. He did not know and nobody but Bobby -knew that she never intended to be married. But this, it -seemed to Bobby, made the understanding of her situation -possible; explained that watchful tenderness of Devizes’ -face suddenly betrayed by the light of his inadvertent -“my dear”; explained her position as though she belonged -to him and Paul Lambone instead of being a rather unaccountable -visitor; excused her vehement jealousy of -Margaret Means, because evidently she had become violently -possessive of her father, and had counted perhaps -upon recognition and being very much with him. No -doubt Margaret Means stood in the way of that. It was -natural for Christina Alberta to want to be with Devizes -and work with him, and natural for her to suspect and -anticipate and resent an intervening personality. Apart -from the magic of kinship it was natural that two such -subtle and abundant personalities should attract each other -greatly. That Devizes should have decided quite abruptly -to marry Margaret Means did not present any difficulties -to Bobby; he was not thinking very closely about Devizes. -Margaret Means was pretty enough for anyone to want to -marry her. There are times, as Bobby knew, when that -sweet prettiness can stab one like an arrow. It had evidently -stabbed and won Devizes. And almost the only -thing that gave Bobby a second thought, but no more than<span class="pagenum" id="Page_397">[397]</span> -a second thought, was Christina Alberta’s fluctuation of -purpose, why she should have consented to marry him and -then have changed her mind so quickly and definitely and -yet have retained him as a lover.</p> - -<p>That resolution not to marry seemed after all just a part -of her immense modernity. Because of all this group of -“new people” in which he found her, she seemed to Bobby -to be in every way the newest. She was the boldest enterprise -in living he had ever met. Her flare of hungry rebel -individuality fascinated him. Where in this world was -she going? Would she win out to this free personal life she -desired or would she fail to find an objective of work and -come upon disappointment and solitude like some creature -that has strayed? The world had terrified Bobby in his -own person greatly; it terrified him still more when he -thought of this valiant little figure going out to challenge it.</p> - -<p>Bobby was naturally, inherently, afraid; his instinct was -for security, protection, kindliness and help. He clung to -his “Aunt Suzannah” job for safety. He didn’t believe -Christina Alberta knew one tenth of the dangers she ran of -insult, defeat, humiliation, neglect, repulse, fatigue and -lonely distress. His imagination presented a tormenting -picture of her away there in dark, confused, immense and -blundering London, as an excessively fragile figure, light -on its feet, shock-head erect, arms akimbo, unaware of -monstrous ambushed dangers. Now that he began to -understand her, he began to understand a great number of -bright-eyed, adventurous, difficult young women he had -met in the last few years, and he had his first dim realization -of the meaning of the deep wide stir among womankind -that had won them votes and a score of unprecedented -freedoms.</p> - -<p>Many of these younger women were doing their work -and holding their own exactly like men. They were painting -and drawing like men, writing criticism like men, writing -plays and novels like men, leading movements, doing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_398">[398]</span> -scientific work, playing a part in politics. Like men? On -reflection—not exactly. No. They still kept different. -But they didn’t do their things in any fashion one could -call womanly. Without adding strange new meanings to -“womanly.” The novels they were writing interested him -immensely. People like Stella Benson wrote books like—anybody; -you could not tell from her work whether she -was a man or a woman. All that again was new. George -Eliot perhaps was a precursor. Perhaps. The former sort -of women’s writings, when they were not “pretty me” books, -were “kindly auntie” books; you heard the petticoats swish -in every page.</p> - -<p>Sexless, these new ones? Bobby weighed the word. The -earlier generation of women who wanted to be emancipated -suppressed sex, suppressed it so fiercely that its -negative presence became the dominant factor in their -lives. They ceased to be positive woman; they became -fantastically negative woman. But this newer multitude -was not so much repressing as forgetting their sex, making -little of it. Christina Alberta had in a way made nothing -of her sex, not by struggling against it, but by making it -cheap for herself as a man makes it cheap for himself—so -that it was a thing of mere intermittent moods and impulses -for her—and she could go on to other things.</p> - -<p>Going on to other things. His imagination recurred to -that little figure resolved to conquer the world for itself in -defiance of every tradition.</p> - -<p>There was a strong urgency in him to start off to London -in pursuit of her, to hover about her, intervene, protect -her and carry her off to security. He knew she wouldn’t -permit that sort of thing to happen anyhow. He’d have to -be just a friend and companion to her, be at hand for her, -and if she did encounter some disaster, stand by her.</p> - -<p>It was a queer thing that he should want to stand by this -unsexed young woman. It was just what one would not -expect; it was part, perhaps, of the immense biological<span class="pagenum" id="Page_399">[399]</span> -changes of the time. In the past the species had needed -half the race specialized for child-bearing and child-rearing; -now plainly it didn’t. The tremendous and worshipful -dignity of wife and mother was not for all women any -longer. That would remain for a certain sort of them to -take up if they would. But a vast multitude of women -were born now to miss that. Some would become pretty -nuisances who would presently cease to be pretty, parasites -on love and the respect for motherhood; shams, simulacra. -Others would break away to a real individual life—a third -sex. Perhaps in the new world there would cease to be two -sexes only; there would be recognized varieties and subdivisions. -So Bobby speculated. For just as there were -women who did not want to bear children, so there were -men who did not want to lord it over wife and children.</p> - -<p>They would want to love all the same. Every individual -of a social species needed love; to fail in that need was to -escape out of social life to lonely futility. “Mutual comfort,” -Bobby quoted. In his past Bobby had dreamt of the -love of children. Even now he remembered as a fact that -he had dreamt particularly of a little girl of his own that -he could protect and explore. But now the thought and -interest of Christina Alberta had blotted that out. It was -extraordinary to him to perceive how possessed he was by -her. He could endure no prospect of life just now unless -it was to include Christina Alberta as its principal fact. -But he’d be no use to her unless she respected him. He -couldn’t hope to stand subordinate to her, any more than -he could hope to be her master. In the latter case she’d -rebel; in the former, she’d despise. They would have to -stand side by side. And since she was clever, able and -resolved to work hard and distinguish herself, he must -word hard and also distinguish himself too. He had to be -her equal and remain and keep himself her equal....</p> - -<p>That, in fact, was why he was going to write a great -novel—not just a novel but a great one.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_400">[400]</span>He looked again at the neatly written page. “Ups and -Downs,” he read. “A Pedestrian Novel.”</p> - -<p>It dawned upon him that there was something profoundly -wrong about that.</p> - -<p>It was to have been a story of wandering about in the -world that is; the story of the happy adventures of a well -tempered mind in a well understood scheme of things. -But Bobby was beginning to realize that there is not, and -there never has been, a world that is; there is only a world -that has been and a world that is to be. “New people,” -whispered Bobby, and dipped a quill in the ink and made -a border of dots round his title. Then suddenly he crossed -out those three words “Ups and Downs” and wrote instead, -“New Country.”</p> - -<p>“That might be the title of any novel that matters,” said -Bobby.</p> - -<p>He mused deeply. Then he altered the sub-title to “The -History of an Explorer.”</p> - -<p>He scratched out “Explorer.”</p> - -<p>“Involuntary traveller,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>Finally he put back “A Pedestrian Novel” as his sub-title....</p> - -<p>He became aware of an intermittent dull tapping, and -following the sound discovered a thrush trying to break -up a snail on the gravel path. But the gravel path was too -fine and soft to give a firm anvil for the beating. “The silly -bird ought to find a brick or a potsherd,” said Bobby and -reflected. “I suppose all the flower-pots are shut up in the -shed....</p> - -<p>“I don’t like to see that bird wasting the morning and -being disappointed....</p> - -<p>“It wouldn’t take a minute....”</p> - -<p>He got up, let himself out by the little glass door beside -the window and went to find a brick. Presently he returned -with it.</p> - -<p>But he did not go back into the study because while<span class="pagenum" id="Page_401">[401]</span> -he had been looking for the brick, he had seen a young -blackbird which had got under the strawberry netting, -and was evidently scared out of its silly wits. So he -went back to see about the blackbird. The minutes passed -and he did not reappear. Perhaps he had found some -other fellow-creature in trouble.</p> - -<p>Presently a little breeze blew into the study through the -open glass door, and lifted the sheet of paper which was to -introduce our hero, and wafted it softly and suggestively -on to the unlit wood fire upon the hearth. There it lay for -a long time.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<div class="transnote"> -<p class="ph1">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:</p> - -<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.</p> - -<p>Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.</p> - -<p>Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.</p> - -<p>No attempt has been made to regularize dialect.</p> -</div></div> - -<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69410 ***</div> -</body> -</html> diff --git a/old/69410-h/images/cover.jpg b/old/69410-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 7ad9a9c..0000000 --- a/old/69410-h/images/cover.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/69410-h/images/coversmall.jpg b/old/69410-h/images/coversmall.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index b134fa1..0000000 --- a/old/69410-h/images/coversmall.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/69410-h/images/i_title.jpg b/old/69410-h/images/i_title.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index c4b7b6b..0000000 --- a/old/69410-h/images/i_title.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/old/69410-0.txt b/old/old/69410-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index df0792c..0000000 --- a/old/old/69410-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,14504 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Christina Alberta's father, by H. G. -Wells - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Christina Alberta's father - -Author: H. G. Wells - -Release Date: November 23, 2022 [eBook #69410] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed - Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was - produced from images generously made available by The - Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTINA ALBERTA'S -FATHER *** - - - - - -CHRISTINA ALBERTA’S FATHER - - - - -Mr. Wells has also written the following novels: - - - THE WHEELS OF CHANCE. - LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM. - KIPPS. - TONO-BUNGAY. - ANN VERONICA. - MR. POLLY. - THE NEW MACHIAVELLI. - MARRIAGE. - THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS. - THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN. - BEALBY. - THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT. - MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH. - THE SOUL OF A BISHOP. - JOAN AND PETER. - THE UNDYING FIRE. - THE SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART. - -The following Fantastic and Imaginative Romances: - - THE TIME MACHINE. - THE WONDERFUL VISIT. - THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU. - THE INVISIBLE MAN. - THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. - THE SLEEPER AWAKES. - THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON. - THE SEA LADY. - THE FOOD OF THE GODS. - IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET. - THE WAR IN THE AIR. - THE WORLD SET FREE. - MEN LIKE GODS. - THE DREAM. - -Numerous Short Stories collected under the following Titles: - - THE STOLEN BACILLUS. - THE PLATTNER STORY. - TALES OF SPACE AND TIME. - TWELVE STORIES AND A DREAM. - -The same Short Stories will also be found in three volumes: - - TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED. - TALES OF WONDER. - TALES OF LIFE AND ADVENTURE. - -A Series of Books on Social, Religious, and Political Questions: - - ANTICIPATIONS (1900). - A MODERN UTOPIA. - THE FUTURE IN AMERICA. - NEW WORLDS FOR OLD. - FIRST AND LAST THINGS. - GOD THE INVISIBLE KING. - THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY. - RUSSIA IN THE SHADOWS. - THE SALVAGING OF CIVILIZATION. - WASHINGTON AND THE RIDDLE OF PEACE. - A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD. - THE STORY OF A GREAT SCHOOLMASTER. - A YEAR OF PROPHESYING. - -And Two Little Books about Children’s Play, called: - - FLOOR GAMES AND LITTLE WARS. - - -_A uniform Atlantic Edition of Mr. Wells’ works is in course of -publication._ - - - - - CHRISTINA ALBERTA’S - FATHER - - BY - H. G. WELLS - - New York - THE MACMILLAN COMPANY - 1925 - _All rights reserved_ - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1925, - BY H. G. WELLS. - - Set up and electrotyped. - Published September, 1925. - Reprinted September 22, 1925. - Reprinted November, 1925. - - - PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY - THE CORNWALL PRESS - - - - -_CONTENTS_ - - - BOOK THE FIRST - - _The Coming of Sargon, King of Kings_ - - PAGE - - CHAPTER THE FIRST - - THE EARLY LIFE OF MR. PREEMBY 11 - - - CHAPTER THE SECOND - - CHRISTINA ALBERTA 28 - - - CHAPTER THE THIRD - - IN LONSDALE MEWS 50 - - - CHAPTER THE FOURTH - - THE PETUNIA BOARDING HOUSE 85 - - - CHAPTER THE FIFTH - - THE SCALES FALL FROM MR. PREEMBY’S EYES 114 - - - CHAPTER THE SIXTH - - CHRISTINA ALBERTA CONSULTS A WISE MAN 132 - - - BOOK THE SECOND - - _The World Rejects Sargon, King of Kings_ - - - CHAPTER THE FIRST - - INCOGNITO 163 - - - CHAPTER THE SECOND - - THE CALLING OF THE DISCIPLES 195 - - - CHAPTER THE THIRD - - THE JOURNEY OF SARGON UNDERNEATH THE WORLD 218 - - - BOOK THE THIRD - - _The Resurrection of Sargon, King of Kings_ - - - CHAPTER THE FIRST - - CHRISTINA ALBERTA IN SEARCH OF A FATHER 245 - - - CHAPTER THE SECOND - - HOW BOBBY STOLE A LUNATIC 300 - - - CHAPTER THE THIRD - - THE LAST PHASE 343 - - - CHAPTER THE FOURTH - - MAY AT UDIMORE 369 - - - - - -CHRISTINA ALBERTA’S FATHER - - - - - _BOOK THE FIRST_ - - THE COMING OF SARGON, KING - OF KINGS - - - - -CHAPTER THE FIRST - -_The Early Life of Mr. Preemby_ - - -§ 1 - -This is the story of a certain Mr. Preemby, a retired laundryman -and widower, who abandoned his active interest in the Limpid Stream -Laundry, in the parish of Saint Simon Unawares, near Woodford -Wells, upon the death of his wife in the year of grace 1920. Some -very remarkable experiences came to him. The story is essentially a -contemporary story: it is a story of London in the age of Sir Arthur -Conan Doyle, broadcasting, and the first Labour peers. The historical -element in it is insignificant and partly erroneous, and the future, -though implicitly present, is substantially ignored. - -Since washing in London, like the milk trade and baking and the linen -drapery and various other branches of commerce, is something rather -specialized and hereditary and a little difficult towards outsiders, -it is necessary to explain that Mr. Preemby was not a laundryman born. -He had little of the spirit and go of a true London laundryman. He -married into laundrying. He met a Miss Hossett at Sheringham in 1899, -an heiress and a young lady of great decision of character; he wooed -and won her and married her, as you will be told, almost without -realizing what he was doing. The Hossetts are big people in the laundry -world, and the Limpid Stream concern, which presently fell into the -capable hands of Mrs. Preemby, was only one of a series of related -and sympathetic businesses in the north, north-east and south-west -districts of London. - -Mr. Preemby, as Miss Hossett’s family came to recognize quite frankly -and explicitly at a very early stage, derived from a less practical -strain than his wife. His father had been an artist of considerable -charm and unpunctuality, a photographic artist, who resided at -Sheringham and made what were called in the eighteen-eighties, -“gem” photographs of the summer visitors to that place. In the -eighteen-eighties he was a well-known Sheringham figure, dark and -handsome and sometimes a little unkempt, wearing a brown velvet jacket -and a large grey soft felt hat. He would fall into conversation with -the visitors upon the beach, and a certain air of distinction about -him would bring a sufficient proportion to his studio to maintain him. -His wife, our Mr. Preemby’s mother, was a patient, underdeveloped -personality, the daughter of a farmer near Diss. When presently Mr. -Preemby senior passed out of his son’s life--he became romantically -entangled with a small variety entertainment in the summer of 1887 and -vanished away with it in the autumn with as little fuss as possible, -never to return to Sheringham--Mrs. Preemby senior became the working -partner in a small lodging-house and died in a year or so’s time, -leaving her furniture, her interest in the lodging-house and her only -son to her cousin and partner, Mrs. Witcherly. - -Young Albert Edward Preemby was then a good-looking, slender youth of -sixteen, with his father’s curliness and his mother’s fair hair and -eyes of horizon blue, dreamy and indisposed for regular employment. -Even as a child he had been given to reverie; at school he would -sit with sums or book neglected before him, looking beyond them at -unknown things; his early experiences in business were disappointing -by reason of this abstraction. After a number of unsuccessful attempts -to exploit his gifts at some favourable point in the complex machinery -of our civilization, he came to rest for several years in the office -of a house-agent and coal-merchant in Norwich to whom his mother was -distantly related. - -Some ancient, remembered, sentimental tie helped Albert Edward to this -appointment and shielded any imperfections in his performance from too -urgent a criticism. He did much better at it than anyone could have -expected. The calling of a house-agent differs from most other callings -in the fact that the necessary driving energy is supplied entirely -by the clientele, and there was something about the letting of the -larger houses that touched the dormant imagination of young Preemby. -He revealed a natural gift for attractive description and was duly -entrusted with the work of collecting particulars from prospective -lessors. He had a quite useful hopefulness. And even the coal proved -unexpectedly interesting so soon as he found that none of it had to be -carried about by him. He could never believe that all the golden scales -one finds in it were pyrites. He cherished a secret dream of a great -commercial enterprise to work cinder heaps for residual gold. He told -no one of this project, he took no steps to realize it, but it warmed -his daily routines with its promise of release and wealth. And when -things were slack in the office in the early afternoon and he was left -in charge, he would go and sit on the coal counter and pick out the -coal samples for the little trays and turn them over and over and view -them from various angles and weigh them in his hand and lapse into the -most splendid visions. - -And if inquirers after houses came in, he would receive them with a -manner almost regal. - -In Norwich he became a member of the Y.M.C.A., but he was interested -in its literary rather than its religious side, and he attended any -political debates available. He never spoke in these debates, but he -sat at the back reflecting that politicians are, after all, no more -than puppets in the hands of the silent rich men who sit behind the -scenes. It was in Norwich, too, that he was able to buy his first -tailor-made suit, of a most becoming grey. When he went to stay with -Mrs. Witcherly at Sheringham for his summer holiday of a fortnight, she -was delighted by the improvement in his appearance and much impressed -by the active hopefulness that had replaced his former lethargy. Upon -the sea front in the afternoon in his grey suit, to anyone who did not -know about him, he might have been almost any sort of prosperous summer -visitor. - -It seems a yesterday, and yet it seems ages ago, that our plump and -short Mr. Preemby was that small blonde young man twirling his stick -and glancing furtively but desirously at the lady bathers in their vast -petticoated bathing-dresses and oilskin caps, as he strolled along -the Sheringham front. That was in the days when motor cars were still -rather a joke, a smell, and a noise and wayside repairs, and flying was -understood to be impossible. Queen Victoria had had her Diamond Jubilee -and nobody thought Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, would ever survive -to be King. The War in South Africa was being arranged for that summer, -to last six months and employ forty thousand men. And it was on the -third day of his grey suit holiday at Sheringham that Mr. Preemby was -run into by his future wife, Miss Hossett, riding on a bicycle, and -thrown against and almost run over by her friend Miss Meeta Pinkey. - -Because, incredible as it may seem to the modern reader, people did -succeed in those distant nineties, before the coming of the more -suitable automobile, in knocking down and running over other people -with the sluggish apparatus, bicycles, horse-drawn vehicles and so -forth, then available. - - -§ 2 - -Miss Meeta Pinkey was an emotional blonde girl, and she fell off her -machine gracefully and naturally into Mr. Preemby’s arms as he was -hurled against her. It would seem to have been the original intention -of Destiny to have made this the beginning of a permanent relationship, -but in this matter Destiny had reckoned without Miss Hossett. Miss -Meeta Pinkey was as ripe for love just then as dry gunpowder is for -a bang, and she was already deeply in love with Mr. Preemby before -she had been replaced securely on her feet. She stood flushed and -round-eyed and breathless, and Mr. Preemby looked quite manly and -handsome after picking up her bicycle with an air of rescue. - -Miss Hossett, after butting against Mr. Preemby, had swerved, -dismounted and stood now prepared for a dispute. The collision -had further loosened the already loose handlebar of the entirely -untrustworthy hired machine she had been riding. It was this looseness -had caused the accident. Her attention seemed divided equally between -this and the possible grievance of Mr. Preemby. “I rang my bell,” she -said. - -She was flushed and erect. She was a round-faced girl with a long, thin -neck, a good bright complexion, glasses on her thin nose and a resolute -thin-lipped mouth. - -“I did all I could to avoid you,” she said. - -“Awkward of me,” said Mr. Preemby disarmingly. “I was lost in a -day-dream.” - -“You aren’t hurt--?” asked Meeta. - -“Startled,” said Mr. Preemby, “especially where the wheel got me. This -place is full of corners.” - -“I’d’ve been over,” said Meeta, “if you hadn’t caught me.” - -Miss Hossett was reassured about any possible conflict with Mr. -Preemby. Evidently he was going to be quite nice about the accident. -“This handlebar was as loose as could be,” she said. “Look at it! You -can twist it about like on a swivel. They ought to be punished for -letting out such machines. Some of these days one of ’em’ll get let in -for Damages. Then they’ll be a bit more careful. Scandalous I call it.” - -“You can’t ride it at all now,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“No,” she agreed. “Have to take it back to them.” - -It seemed only right and proper for Mr. Preemby to wheel the machine -for her back through the town to the hiring place, where Miss Hossett -reproved the hirer, refused to pay anything, and secured the return -of her deposit in a few well-chosen words. Miss Pinkey paid the hire -of her bicycle for a First Hour. It seemed natural after that for -the little party of three to keep together. They kept together with -a faint sense of adventure, and Mr. Preemby behaved as nothing less -than a normal lodger at Miss Witcherly’s establishment and summer -visitor to the seaside. His new-found friends were Londoners, and he -referred himself to Norwich and the management of house property. He -was quite amusing about Sheringham. He said it was “a dear little -backward-forward place,” that it was a real treat to come to for a -breath of sea air. - -“I don’t like regular smart places,” said Mr. Preemby. “I’m too -absent-minded.” - - -§ 3 - -In after years Mr. Preemby would often try to recall the various stages -that led to his marrying Miss Hossett, but there was always a vague -sense that he missed out something, though he knew not what it was nor -where it ought to have come in. - -At first things did not look in the least like his marrying Miss -Hossett. Indeed they did not look like his marrying anyone, and if -the word marriage had been whispered in his ears as the possible -consequence of this encounter he would have been terrified. He -perceived that he was acceptable company to these girls, but it seemed -to him that it was Meeta who formed the link between them and himself. -A fourth person presently joined their company who answered to the -name of Wilfred, and it seemed to Mr. Preemby that the air of mutual -proprietorship between Wilfred and Miss Hossett was unchallengeable. - -The young people wandered in a little party along the sea front until -the sea front came to an end, and there they found a sheltered and -comparatively secluded niche in the brow of the low cliffs and gave -themselves up to the delights of Spooning; and it was Meeta who Spooned -with Mr. Preemby that afternoon and Wilfred who Spooned with Miss -Hossett. Across the gulf of a quarter of a century the memory of Mr. -Preemby was still certain that this was so. - -The fashions of life change from age to age. Knowledge has spread -and refinement increased; and a generation of young people, more -restrained, more sophisticated, or more decisive than their -predecessors has taken possession of the world. This Spooning was an -artless, clumsy dalliance in great favour in those vanished days, a -dalliance that was kept within the bounds of strict decorum--if ever -that became necessary--by cries of “Starp it” or “Starpit, I tell you,” -on the part of the lady. They embraced, they kissed, and put their -silly young heads together and so whiled away the long waiting-time -before love had its way with them. The summer resorts of England were -littered with young people indulging in these poor, silly, undignified -anticipations of love. Mr. Preemby, it became manifest, was a natural -born Spooner. - -“It’s lovely,” said Miss Meeta, “the way you squeeze me.” - -Mr. Preemby squeezed some more and ventured to kiss a hot ear. - -“Go On with you!” said Miss Meeta, in a voice thick with delight. “That -little moustache of yours--it _tickles_.” - -Flushed with encouragement and preoccupied with ideas for further -enterprises, Mr. Preemby did not remark that the affairs of Miss -Hossett and her Wilfred followed a more troubled and less satisfactory -course. Wilfred was not a type that appealed to Mr. Preemby. In -spite of the fact that he was much less neat in his dress than Mr. -Preemby--he had grey flannel trousers, an old fancy vest, a tweed -Norfolk jacket, and low brown shoes with light-coloured socks--he -impressed Mr. Preemby as being consciously a social superior. He was -young--the youngest of the party--and yet dominant. He had large red -hands and big feet, much untidy hair, ill-regulated features that -might later be handsome, and a hoarse guffaw. He viewed Mr. Preemby as -though he knew all about him and thought the worse of him for it, but -did not intend to make any positive trouble for the present about his -existence. He was, Meeta whispered, a medical student at Cambridge, and -his father was a Harley Street physician who had been knighted. He did -not Spoon with any abandonment; he seemed weary of Spooning, he had -perhaps been Spooning for some days, and his conversation with Miss -Hossett went on in subdued contentious tones. He sat a little apart -from her amidst the sand and coarse bluish grass, and her face was -flushed. What they said was inaudible to our intertwined couple. - -“Chris and Wilfred don’t get on together as we do,” Meeta said in a low -voice. “They’re sillies.” - -“He’s like all the men,” said Meeta, “’Sept one perhaps. Want -everything they do and give nothing. - -“He won’t even say they’re engaged,” she said. “Dodged seeing her -father.” - -There was a pause for reflection and then a renewal of endearments. - -“I’m gorne on you,” said Meeta. “I _am_ fair gorne on you. You’ve got -the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. China blue they are.” - - -§ 4 - -So detachedly it was that Mr. Preemby and his future wife passed their -first afternoon together. He remembered it, as he remembered most -actual things, indistinctly, in a setting of hot sand and sunshine, -blue-grey grass and a line of poppies nodding against an intense blue -sky. And then across these opening memories Chris Hossett seemed to -leap at him with flushed cheeks and glowing eyes, magnified by her -glasses. - -Two or three days intervened before that passionate pounce. Mr. -Preemby, in his character of an incidental visitor to Sheringham, was -under no obligation to produce a social background, but Miss Pinkey -introduced him to two large, kindly aunts of a sedentary sort, as a -young man related to Miss Hossett who had saved her from a nasty fall -off a bicycle, and he and she both went to tea with Chris Hossett’s -“people.” Old Mr. Hossett was a very ailing man, excessively fat and -irritable; he had never been the same, whatever the same was, after his -only son had died; and Mrs. Hossett, an energetic lean threat of what -her daughter might become, had to wait on Mr. Hossett hand and foot. -She had spectacles instead of Chris’s glasses, her eyes were careworn -and her complexion was leaden and her neck lean. There were also a -married cousin and his wife, a Mr. and Mrs. Widgery, who seemed to be -under the impression that Mr. Preemby was a relation of Miss Pinkey’s. -Mr. Widgery had a long pock-marked face and the dullest brown eyes -Mr. Preemby had ever seen. There was nothing difficult to eat at tea -and Mr. Preemby got on very well listening to an explanation of the -precariousness of Mr. Hossett’s existence, due to heart trouble, from -Mrs. Hossett and of just how unsatisfactory and distressing it was to -come away and leave the laundry in the hands of a manager. Wilfred did -not come to the tea. He had been asked but he did not come. - -The next day Mr. Preemby met Wilfred on the sea front watching the -girls bathing from a bathing machine. Afterwards all four went for a -walk in search of privacy, and it became evident that Miss Hossett -declined to Spoon further with Wilfred. It was evident that there was -profound trouble between Chris and Wilfred. They scarcely spoke as they -returned towards the town; and before the sea front was reached Wilfred -said “So long” quite suddenly, and turned away and vanished up a road -running inland. Thereupon Wilfred passed out of Mr. Preemby’s world; -Mr. Preemby never knew what became of him and never wanted to know; -and the next day he became aware for the first time of Miss Hossett’s -magnified eyes, regarding him with an interest and a challenge that -made him feel almost uncomfortable. - -Miss Hossett became a serious obstacle to the Spooning of Meeta. The -quartette was now reduced to a trio; and Mr. Preemby found himself -the apex, so to speak, of a triangle, the eternal triangle in an -exceptionally acute form. Whenever Meeta was on the one hand, Chris was -on the other. She called him “Our Teddy”; she pressed upon him; she -went so far as to stroke his hair. Meeta’s endearments faded to some -extent in the presence of this competition, but she made no explicit -objection. - -Deep in the nature of the human male is a fount of polygamous pride. -Mr. Preemby in these novel circumstances was proud and disingenuous. -He believed himself “carrying on” with two girls at once, and it -seemed to him to be a very splendid situation. But indeed it was not -so much a case of carrying on as of being carried off. In the American -world of emotional imaginations there is an ideal called the Cave Man, -much cherished by quiet, unaggressive women because its realization -would involve so little trouble on their own part. The Cave Man is -supposed to seize and grip and carry off and adore. In this simple -love story of Mr. Preemby’s Miss Hossett played the Cave Man’s rôle, -up to the carrying-off point at any rate. On the first occasion of -their being alone together she drew him to her and kissed him on the -mouth with a warmth and an intensity and thoroughness that astonished -and overwhelmed Mr. Preemby. It was quite different from Meeta’s coy -achievements, or anything he had ever met around Norwich. He had not -known that there was such kissing. - -And in the warm summer twilight Mr. Preemby found himself being carried -off to a lonely piece of beach to Spoon with Chris Hossett. The light -of a rising full moon mingled with the afterglow; pebbles shone -out like gems and stars. He carried himself bravely but he was all -atremble. He knew that this time the enterprises would not come from -him. And the Spooning of Chris Hossett was no more like the Spooning of -Meeta than a furnace glow is like the light of the moon. - -“I love you,” said Chris as though that justified anything, and as they -stumbled homeward at an hour that Mr. Preemby called “feefully late,” -she said: “You’re going to marry me aren’t you? You’ve _got_ to marry -me now. And then we can _really_ make love. ’Soften as we like.” - -“I can’t rightly say that I’m exactly in a position to keep a wife just -at present,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“I don’t see that there’s any necessity for me to ask a man to keep -me,” said Miss Hossett. “You’re a wonder, Teddy, anyhow, and I’m going -to marry you. It’s got to be, and there you are.” - -“But _’ow_ can I marry you?” asked Mr. Preemby almost peevishly--for he -was really very tired. - -“One would think to hear you that no one had ever married before,” said -Chris Hossett. “And besides--after this--you _must_.” - -“Mind you I’ve got to go back to Norwich next Tuesday,” said Mr. -Preemby. - -“You ought to have thought of that before,” she said. - -“But I’ll lose my situation.” - -“Naturally father will find you something better. We aren’t poor -people, Teddy. There’s no need to be scared about it....” - -In such terms was Chris Hossett wooed and won by Mr. Preemby. He was -scared, dreadfully scared, but also he was tremendously roused. It -impressed him as being a wildly romantic affair and very terrifying and -a little hard on Meeta Pinkey. But he was bustled along too fast to -think very much about Meeta Pinkey. He was introduced over again to the -Hossett parents next day as their daughter’s affianced husband, and in -secret she gave him three golden sovereigns to buy her an engagement -ring as a surprise. Mrs. Hossett behaved at first as though she -approved of Mr. Preemby and disapproved of the marriage, and then after -what was clearly a stormy scene upstairs with her daughter, she behaved -as though she approved highly of the marriage and thought Mr. Preemby a -very objectionable person. Mr. Hossett would not speak to Mr. Preemby -directly, but he spoke of him to his wife and to imaginary auditors in -Mr. Preemby’s presence as a “scoundrel” who had “got hold” of his girl. -Yet he, too, seemed to regard the marriage as desirable, and no one -made any reply to his _obiter dicta_. - -It was all very puzzling and exalting to Mr. Preemby. He did little -except what he was told to do. He was carried over his marriage as -a man might be carried over a weir. He left any explanation to Mrs. -Witcherly of what was happening for some more favourable occasion. He -went off on Tuesday with his little valise as though he was going back -to Norwich. He wrote a simple letter of regret to the house-agent and -coal-merchant. Private affairs, he said, of an urgent nature prevented -his return to his duties. Mrs. and Miss Hossett went up to London with -him. They all took rooms at a temperance hotel in Bloomsbury, and Mr. -Preemby was married by special licence at St. Martin’s by Trafalgar -Square. - -Then he went down to the Limpid Stream Laundry to live with his -parents-in-law and master the duties of assistant manager, canvasser -and publicity agent. Mr. Hossett never spoke to him and sometimes -talked rather unpleasantly about him when he was in the room, making -accusations that were better ignored, but Mrs. Hossett gradually became -cordial again. And presently Mr. Hossett had a heart seizure and died, -and in the course of a few months Mr. Preemby found himself a father. -When he was first confronted with his daughter and, as it proved, his -only child, he thought her an extremely ugly little red object. He had -never seen a baby at so early a stage before. She had a lot of very -fine moist dark hair which subsequently gave place to a later crop; she -had large indeterminate features and remarkably large feet and hands. -Mr. Preemby had an absurd impression that he had seen her somewhere -before and hadn’t liked her. Then in a day or so she became a quite -ordinary pink baby and wonder gave place to affection. - -She was christened Christina Alberta after her mother and Mr. Preemby. - - -§ 5 - -In time all these experiences mellowed in Mr. Preemby’s memory into a -vague, glorious, romantic, adventurous past. He continued to be rather -dreamy and distraught, but on the whole he made a dutiful, faithful -husband, and he got on very well with his masterful and capable wife. - -She was, he had discovered on his marriage, three years his senior, -and she continued to be in every respect his senior to the day of her -death. But she treated him with proprietary affection; she chose all -his clothes for him, she cultivated his manners and bearing and upheld -him against all other people. She dressed him rather more like a golf -champion than he would have done himself if he had had any say in the -matter. She would not let him have a bicycle for many years, she was -a little exacting about his ways of keeping the laundry accounts, she -fixed his pocket-money at ten shillings a week, and she was disposed -to restrict his opportunities for conversation with feminine members -of the laundry staff. But he made no marked protest against these -slight deviations from the customary obedience of a wife. A tendency -to plumpness manifested itself, and he grew considerable quantities of -blonde moustache without apparent effort. - -Their home was an agreeable one, the more so after Mrs. Hossett had -followed her husband to his resting-place, under a marble crucifix -with a dove and olive branch in relievo at the intersection of the -arms, at Woodford Wells. Mr. Preemby became a great reader, reading -not only romantic novels--he had a great distaste for “realism” in any -form--but ancient history, astronomy, astrology and mystical works. -He became deeply interested in the problem of the pyramids and in the -probable history of the lost continent of Atlantis. Mental science -also attracted him, and the possibility of increasing will-power -very greatly. He would sometimes practise will-power before the -looking-glass in his bedroom when Mrs. Preemby was not about. At -nights he would sometimes will himself to sleep instead of going to -sleep in the usual fashion. He gave a considerable amount of attention -to prophecy and eschatology. He developed views of his own about the -Day of Judgment that might have led to a breach with the Established -Church if Mrs. Preemby had not thought that such a breach would react -unfavourably upon the Laundry. As time went on he accumulated a library -of upwards of a thousand volumes and a very considerable vocabulary. - -His wife viewed these intellectual preoccupations with friendly -sympathy, at times even with pride, but she took little part in them -herself. The Laundry was good enough for her. She loved the Laundry -more and more; loved its piled clean and starched shirts and collars -and its folded and stacked sheets, loved the creak of its machinery and -the suddy bustle of the washing room. She loved to have it all going -on, orderly and right; to feel everything going through the tubs and -washers and wringers, sure and safe; nothing astray, nothing missing -at the end. When she walked about the place voices were hushed and -scrubbing became respectfully assiduous. And she liked making things -pay. - -On Sunday afternoons and on days when the laundry had no need of his -services, Mr. Preemby took long walks. In fine weather he would walk -into Epping Forest or to Ongar or even into the rustic peace of the -Roothings, but in dull weather he would go Londonward. After a while -the trams were extended as far as the present terminus at Woodford and -it became possible to ride very pleasantly right into the heart of -London by way of Seven Sisters Road and Camden Town or, with a little -bit of extra walking, by the Lea Bridge Road and the Angel and Holborn. - -The greatness and multitudinous activities of London stirred slumbering -strands of Mr. Preemby’s imagination. He would go in and lunch at an -Aërated Bread Shop on a scone and butter, with a cup of cocoa and -perhaps a jam-puff, and he would spend hours looking into shop windows -and sometimes even making small purchases. He loved Charing Cross Road -with its book-shops, Tottenham Court Road, Holborn, Clerkenwell, and -the Whitechapel Road, but Piccadilly and Bond Street and Regent Street -seemed costly and lacking in true intellectual interest, and he felt -his baggy tweed knickerbockers and cap a little out of tune in these -smart places. Sometimes he would go to the British Museum and look -very hard at objects connected with the pyramids. Great public events -always drew him to London. If there was a great murder or a great fire -or a Royal Wedding or a Royal Funeral, Mr. Preemby would be sure to be -looking at it where the crowd was thickest, often with a neat packet -of provisions, a sandwich, an orange, or so forth, that Mrs. Preemby -had provided. But he never saw illuminations and fireworks because Mrs. -Preemby liked to have him at home when the day’s work was over. He -enjoyed the Great War of 1914-18 gravely and profoundly. Once he passed -a man who he thought afterwards was almost certainly a German spy. The -thought thrilled him for days. He had given him a good look anyhow. He -attended air raids in plenty, and he saw the Potters Bar Zeppelin shot -down. He was a good four years too old for compulsory military service -when the time came, and Mrs. Preemby would not let him be a special -constable because she thought he might catch cold. - -Mr. Preemby’s work in the counting house was not very onerous, but -he also gave thought and attention to the extension of the business -outside. He invented several attractive circulars. His experience -as a house-agent had trained him to note the existence of large -comfortable-looking houses that might otherwise have escaped his -observation and to ascertain whether they were occupied; he would then -find out whether the Limpid Stream Laundry got the washing from such -establishments, and if not he would send a circular and even follow -it up with a personal letter. He was vaguely observant about the -premises. He would go sometimes and look for quite a long time at the -furnaces or the delivery vans or any new piece of machinery like the -new calendering machine until he got used to it. But if he stood about -where there were girls working, Mrs. Preemby would make some excuse to -get him back into the office because, as she explained, she thought -a man standing about affected the girls’ work unfavourably. He took -in and sometimes read the _British Laundryman_ and the _Dyers’ and -Cleaners’ Gazette_. - -Occasionally he had happy ideas. It was his idea to paint the delivery -vans bright blue and decorate them with a swastika, and to paint -exactly the same colour and design on the front of the laundry and -put it on the bills. But when he wanted to put the van drivers into -swastika caps and blue the clothes baskets, Mrs. Preemby said she -thought the thing had gone far enough. It was also Mr. Preemby who -suggested Ford cars instead of horse vans as early as 1913. This change -was made in 1915. - -And at home with her peaceful interested father and her busy, -occasionally, rather astringent, mother, Christina Alberta grew to -girlhood and womanhood. - - - - -CHAPTER THE SECOND - -_Christina Alberta_ - - -§ 1 - -This story, it was clearly explained in the first paragraph of the -first section of the first chapter, is a story about Mr. Preemby in the -later years, the widower years, of his life. That statement has all the -value of an ordinary commercial guarantee, and on no account shall we -ever wander far from Mr. Preemby. But the life of his daughter was so -closely interwoven with his own during that time that it is necessary -to tell many things about her distinctly and explicitly before we get -our real story properly begun. And even after it has begun, and while -it goes on, and right up to the end, Christina Alberta will continue to -intrude. - -Intrusion was in her nature. She was never what is called an engaging -child. But she always had a great liking for her Daddy and he had the -greatest affection and respect for her. - -She had little or no tact, and there was always something remote -and detached, something of the fairy changeling about her. Even her -personal appearance was tactless. She had a prominent nose which tended -to grow larger, whereas Mrs. Preemby’s nose was small and bright and -pinched between her glasses, and her father’s delicately chiselled and -like some brave little boat shooting a great cascade of moustache; she -was dark and both her parents were fair. As she grew up the magic -forces of adolescence assembled her features into a handsome effect, -but she was never really pretty. Her eyes were brown and bright and -hard. She had her mother’s thin-lipped, resolute mouth and modestly -determined chin. And she had her mother’s clear firm skin and bright -colour. She was a humming, shouting, throwing, punching child with a -tendency not to hear admonitions and an almost instinctive dexterity -in avoiding sudden slaps. She flitted about. She might be up the -drying-ground or she might be under your bed. The only thing to do was -to down and look. - -She danced. Neither Mr. Preemby nor Mrs. Preemby danced, and this -continual jiggeting about perplexed and worried them. A piano or a -distant band would set her dancing or she would dance to her own -humming; she danced to hymn-tunes and on a Sunday. There was a standing -offer from Mr. Preemby of sixpence if ever she sat quiet for five -minutes, but it was never taken up. - -At her first school, a mixed day-school in Buckhurst Hill, she was -first of all extremely unpopular and then extremely popular and then -she was expelled. Afterwards she did fairly well at the Taverners’ -Girls’ School at Woodford, where she was recognized from the first as -a humorist. There was always a difficulty in calling her any other -name than Christina Alberta. People tried all sorts of names but none -of them stuck but “Christina Alberta.” “Babs” and “Baby” and “Bertie” -and “Buss” she was called at home and “Ally” and “Tina,” and at school -they tried “Nosey” and “Suds” and “Feet” and “Preemy” and “Prim.” Also -“Golliwog” because of her hair at hockey. These all came off again, and -left the original name exposed. - -She was quick at her lessons and particularly at history, geography and -drawing, but disrespectful to her teachers; at school hockey she played -forward right with marked success. She could run like the wind, and she -never seemed blown. Her pinch was simply frightful. She could make -sudden grimaces with her nose that gave the weaker sort hysterics. She -was particularly disposed to do this at school prayers. - -Between her mother and herself there was a streak of animosity. It -was not a very broad streak, but it was there. Her mother seemed to -cherish some incommunicable grievance against her. It didn’t prevent -Mrs. Preemby from doing her duty by the child, but it restrained any -real warmth of affection between them. From an early age it was Daddy -got the kisses and got climbed over and pulled about. He returned this -affection. He called her “my own little girl” and would even say at -times that she was a Wonder. He took her for walks with him and told -her many secret things that were in his mind, about the Lost Atlantis -and the Lamas of Tibet and the fundamentals of Astrology preserved -indecipherably in the proportions of the pyramids. He’d often wished, -he said, to have a good look at the pyramids. Sometimes one man saw -things that others didn’t. She would listen intently, although not -always in quite the right spirit. - -He would tell her of the virtue and science of Atlantis. “They walked -about in long white robes,” he said. “More like Bible Characters than -human beings.” - -“Good for the laundries, Daddy,” said Christina Alberta. - -“All we know of astrology is just fragments of what they knew. They -knew the past and future.” - -“Pity they were all drowned,” she remarked without apparent irony. - -“Maybe they weren’t all drowned,” he said darkly. - -“You don’t mean there’s Atlantics about nowadays.” - -“Some may have escaped. Descendants may be nearer than you suppose. Why -you and me, Christina, we may have Atlantic blood!” - -His manner conveyed his conviction. - -“It doesn’t seem to help much,” she said. - -“Helps more than you think. Hidden gifts. Insight. Things like that. -_We_ aren’t common persons, Christina Alberta.” - -For some moments the two of them pursued independent reveries. - -“Still we don’t _know_ we’re Atlantics,” said Christina Alberta. - - -§ 2 - -After she had fought her way to the sixth form in the Taverners’ -School the educational outlook of Christina Alberta was troubled by -dissensions both within the school and without. The staff was divided -about her, her discipline was bad, her class-work rank or vile, but -she passed examinations, and particularly external examinations by -independent examiners, with conspicuous success. There was a general -desire to get her out of the school; but whether that was to be done by -a university scholarship or a simple request to her parents to take her -away, was a question under dispute. The games-mistress was inclined to -regard murder as a third possible course because of the girl’s utter -disregard for style in games, her unsportsmanlike trick of winning -them in irregular and unexpected ways, and her tendency to make drill -and gymnastics an occasion for a low facetiousness far more suitable -for the ordinary class-room. The English and Literature mistress -concurred--although Christina Alberta would spend hours over her essays -working in sentences and paragraphs from Pater and Ruskin and Hazlitt -so that they might pass as her own original constructions. It was not -Christina Alberta’s fault if ever and again these threads of literary -gold were marked in red ink, “Clumsy” or “Might be better expressed” -or “Too flowery.” Only the head-mistress had a really good word for -Christina Alberta. But then the head-mistress, as became her position, -made a specialty of understanding difficult cases. - -And Christina Alberta was always quietly respectful to the -head-mistress, and could produce a better side to her nature with the -most disconcerting alacrity whenever the head-mistress was called in. - -Christina Alberta, as soon as the issue became clear to her, decided -for the scholarship. She reformed almost obtrusively, she became -tidy, she ceased to be humorous, she lost sets of tennis to the -games-mistress like a little sports-woman, and she stopped arguing -and became the sedulous ape of Stevenson for the estranged English -mistress. But it was up-hill work even in the school. There was a -little too much elegant surrender in her reformed tennis and a little -too much parody about her English in velveteen. The possibility that -she would ever join that happy class of girls who go in from the -suburbs to classes in London and lead the higher life beyond parental -inspection and sometimes until quite late in the evening in studios, -laboratories and college lecture-rooms, seemed a very insecure one, -even without reckoning with the quiet but determined opposition of her -mother. - -For Mrs. Preemby was not the woman to like a daughter educated above -her parentage and station. She came to lament her weakness in not -bringing Christina Alberta into the laundry as she herself had been -brought in at the age of fourteen. Then she would have learnt the -business from the ground up, and have qualified herself to help and at -last succeed her mother, even as Mrs. Preemby had helped and succeeded -Mrs. Hossett. But the school with its tennis and music and French and -so forth had turned the girl against this clean and cleansing life. She -was rising seventeen now, and the sooner she abandoned these things -which lead straight to school-teaching, spinsterhood, Italian holidays, -“art” clothes and stuck-up incapacity, the better for her and every one. - -She made a campaign against Christina Alberta’s habit of sitting -about in unladylike attitudes and reading; and when Mr. Preemby took -the unusual and daring course of saying that it was a bit hard on -the girl, and that he didn’t see any harm in a book or so now and -then, Mrs. Preemby took him up to Christina Alberta’s own little room -to see what came of it, and more particularly to see the sort of -pictures she’d stuck up there. Even when he was confronted with a large -photographic reproduction of Michael Angelo’s creation of Adam as the -master had painted that event on the roof of the Sistine Chapel in -Rome, he still made a feeble show of resistance, and said that it was -“Art.” - -“You’d stand anything she did, I believe,” said Mrs. Preemby. “Look at -it. Art! Look at these books! Darwin’s _Origin of Species_! That’s a -nice book for a girl to be prying into.” - -“Very likely she doesn’t see the harm of it,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“_Her!_” said Mrs. Preemby compactly. “And look at this!” - -“This” was Howe’s _Atlas of Biology_. She opened it to display its -large pages crowded with pictures of the detailed dissection of a frog. - -“Reely, my dear!” said Mr. Preemby. “It’s one of her schoolbooks. -There reely isn’t nothing what I should call _improper_ in that. It’s -Science. And, after all, it’s only a frog.” - -“Pretty things they teach at school nowadays. What with your Art and -your Science. Doesn’t leave much to the imagination. Why, when I was a -girl if I’d asked Ma what was inside _any_ animal, she’d have slapped -me and slapped me hard. And rightly. There’s things rightly hid from -us--and hid they ought to be. God shows us as much as is good for us. -More. No need to _open_ animals. And here--here’s a book _in French_!” - -“H’m,” said Mr. Preemby, yielding a little. He took up the lemon-yellow -volume and turned it over in his hand. - -“All this reading!” said Mrs. Preemby and indicated three shelves of -books. - -Mr. Preemby assembled his courage. “You mustn’t expect me to go against -reading, Chris,” he said. “It’s a pleasure and a light. There’s things -in books.... Reely, Chris, I believe you’d be happier if you read a -bit. Christina Alberta is a born reader, whether you like it or not. -She gets it from me, I suppose.” - -Mrs. Preemby started and regarded his flushed opposition; the anger -in her eyes was magnified through her glasses. “It’s wonderful,” she -said after a little pause; “it’s truly wonderful how Christina Alberta -manages to get everything she wants.” - - -§ 3 - -Miss Maltby-Neverson, the head-mistress of the Taverners’ School, -called upon Mrs. Preemby and shook her resolution a good deal. She was -obviously a lady, and the school washing ran in term-time to twenty -pounds a week. She was taken to see the scandalous picture and she -said: “Very beautiful, I’m sure. One of the really Great Paintings in -the world. Pro-foundly religious. It’s the very words of the Bible made -into a picture. What do you find in it to object to, Mrs. Preemby?” - -Whereupon, as if by a trick, the picture ceased to be scandalous and -Mrs. Preemby was ashamed of herself. She saw now there never had been -anything wrong about that picture. - -Miss Maltby-Neverson said that Christina Alberta was a difficult type -but a thoroughly interesting personality, a _real_ personality. She had -a great capacity for affection. - -“I haven’t found that,” said Mrs. Preemby. - -“It is a type I have studied,” said Miss Maltby-Neverson, simply but -conclusively. - -She explained that Christina Alberta was an _active_ type. Left to -herself without employment to _stretch_ her faculties she might -easily get into almost any sort of mischief. Almost any sort. Not -that there was anything wrong in her essentially. It was just energy. -Given good hard work and a scope for ambition, she might become a very -satisfactory woman indeed--possibly even a distinguished woman. - -“I’ve no use for distinguished women,” said Mrs. Preemby shortly. - -“The world has,” said Miss Maltby-Neverson gently. - -“I’m afraid I’m one of the old-fashioned sort,” said Mrs. Preemby. - -“Christina Alberta isn’t.” - -“Let the man be distinguished abroad and the woman distinguished -at home,” said Mrs. Preemby. “I’m sorry to differ from you, Miss -Maltby-Neverson, but one cannot help one’s opinions.” - -“It depends upon ourselves,” said Miss Maltby-Neverson. - -“I’m afraid I like men to rule,” said Mrs. Preemby. “Woman has her -place in the world, and it isn’t man’s.” - -“But I thought Mr. Preemby rather favoured the scholarship idea.” - -Mrs. Preemby was baffled. “He _did_,” she said as though she did not -see clearly what that had to do with the matter. “Give the thing a -trial,” said Miss Maltby-Neverson. “After all, she may not win this -scholarship.” - -But Christina Alberta won it with marks to spare. She took no risks. It -was a biennial scholarship which had been established by a benefactor -of advanced views. It was tenable at the London School of Economics. -As soon as Christina Alberta knew she had secured it she went, without -consulting her mother or anyone, to a hairdresser’s and had her -hair bobbed. To Mrs. Preemby this was almost a worse blow than the -scholarship. She surveyed her shock-headed, handsome-nosed daughter in -her short gymnastic skirts with a qualm of sincere hatred. - -She wished she could make her daughter feel about herself as she -felt about her. “I wish you could only see yourself,” she said with -concentrated bitterness. - -“Oh, _I_ know,” said Christina Alberta. - -“I suppose you’re a judgment on me,” said Mrs. Preemby. - - -§ 4 - -But Christina Alberta had only studied in the London School of -Economics for a year, she was beginning her second year when her mother -obliged her to resign her scholarship. Christina Alberta had stayed -late in London one evening without telling her mother she was going to -do so, she had gone to a discussion of the Population Question at the -New Hope Club in Fitzgerald Street, and she had come home smelling so -strongly of tobacco that her mother had repented of and revoked all her -concessions to modernity there and then. - -She had been waiting for that moment for many months. “This ends it,” -she said as she let her daughter in. - -Christina Alberta found there was no immediate way round or through -that decision. She worked her father and Miss Maltby-Neverson in vain. -But instead of resigning her scholarship right out as she had been -told to do, she played for time and explained her absence by a vague -reference to family trouble. - -Mrs. Preemby in those days was already in very bad health, but this -fact was completely overshadowed in the minds of both her daughter and -her husband by the far more urgent fact that she was now constantly in -a very bad temper. Everything was conspiring to worry her--except Mr. -Preemby, who knew better than to do anything of the sort. - -The closing years of the Great War, and still more so the opening year -of the Disappointing Peace, were years of very great difficulty for -the laundry business. The munitions business put laundry girls above -themselves and there was no doing anything with them. Coal, soap, -everything was at unheard-of prices, and it was impossible to get back -on the customers by raising the charges. People, even the best sort -of people, were giving up cleanliness. Gentlemen of position would -wear their dress-shirts three or four times and make their undervests -and under-pants last a fortnight. Household linen was correspondingly -eked out. People moved about; the new army officers’ wives came and -went, here to-day and gone to-morrow, leaving unpaid bills. Never -had Mrs. Preemby known so many bad debts. Van men came back from the -army so shell-shocked and militarized that they embezzled out of pure -nervousness and habit. Income tax became a nightmare. Outside as -within, Mrs. Preemby’s life was a conflict. She kept the Limpid Stream -Laundry paying all through that awful time because she was a wonder at -management, but she did it at a terrible loss of vitality. - -She became bitterly critical of the unhelpfulness of Mr. Preemby and -her daughter. When they tried to be helpful she criticized their -incapacity. They did more harm than good. - -Meal-times were awful. She would sit flushed and glowering through her -glasses, obviously afflicted by a passionate realization of the world’s -injustice and eating very little. Mr. Preemby’s attempts to start a -cheerful conversation were rarely successful. Even Christina Alberta -was overawed. - -“Things going a little better this morning?” Mr. Preemby would try. - -“Can’t I get rest from business even at my meals?” the poor lady would -complain. - -Or, “Looks like pleasant weather for the Derby.” - -“Pity you can’t go there for all the help you are in the place. I -suppose you haven’t heard what’s happened to van number two.” - -“No!” said Mr. Preemby. - -“You wouldn’t. Hind mudguard smashed. Been done for weeks. And nobody -knows who did it. One would think that that was a man’s business -anyhow. But it’s left for me to find out. And pay for. Like everything -else in the place.” - -“I’d better make inquiries.” - -“I know those inquiries of yours. Better leave the whole thing alone -now. Grin and bear it....” - -The silence of the meal would be restored. - -She seemed to set a high value upon these awful silences. She even -complained that he ate his cheese biscuits audibly. But how else can -one eat cheese biscuits? Christina Alberta was made of sterner stuff -and became controversial. Then her mother would flare out at her -insolence and declare that “one or the other of us” leaves the table. -“I’ll read upstairs,” said Christina Albert. “It isn’t _my_ wish to be -lunching here.” - -Before the abrupt ending of Christina Alberta’s university career she -was present only at breakfast and supper; supper wasn’t nearly as -awful in quality as breakfast, and breakfast could easily be bolted -and got away from; but after the New Hope Club catastrophe, she was -present at all the meals, a sort of lightning-conductor for her father -and something of a restraint upon, and an added exasperation to, her -mother. She took the line of agreeing that if her university career -was to end, then she must go into the laundry business; but she argued -very stoutly that to do that with any hope of success under modern -conditions meant a “proper business training.” If she could not go to -the London School of Economics then she ought to go to Tomlinson’s -Commercial Training School in Chancery Lane and learn book-keeping, -shorthand, typing, business correspondence, précis, commercial French, -and so forth. And after three weeks of painful midday meals this -proposal was adopted under stringent conditions and her season-ticket -to London was renewed. She worked her way very passably through -another winter with Tomlinson’s as her school and most of London as -her playground. She learnt all sorts of things. She added a new set of -friends and acquaintances, some with bobbed hair and some without, of -the most various social origins and associations, to the circle she had -already acquired at the London School of Economics. - -When presently Mrs. Preemby began to speak of a gnawing pain that -oppressed her, both her husband and daughter took it at first as a -new development of her general grievance against them and felt no -particular apprehension about it. Mr. Preemby said he thought she ought -to take advice or see some one about it, but for some days she treated -the suggestion with scorn. If once she got in a doctor, she said, -they’d have to find some one else to look after the laundry. Doctors -put you to bed and give you things to keep you there. Otherwise how -could they get a living? - -Then suddenly she changed. One morning she confessed she felt -“dreadful.” She went back to bed and Mr. Preemby, with strange -premonitions that the world was coming to an end, trotted off for a -doctor. The clinical thermometer showed a temperature mounting above -one hundred and one. “It hurts. My side hurts,” said Mrs. Preemby. -“I’ve had it once before, but not like this.” - -Christina Alberta came home that evening to discover herself capable of -fear, remorse, and tenderness. - -She had some strange moments with her mother in between phases of weak -delirium and insensibility. Mrs. Preemby’s face seemed to have become -smaller and prettier; the feverish flush in her cheeks simulated youth. -She was no longer hard or angry, but rather pathetically friendly. And -Christina Alberta hadn’t seen her in bed for years. - -“Take care of your Daddy,” said Mrs. Preemby. “You owe more to him--and -less to him--than you think. I had to do all I’ve done. Take care of -him. He’s gentle and good and easily persuaded and not to be trusted -alone in the world.... - -“I’ve never been quite all a mother should be to you. But you’ve been -_difficult_, Christina.... I’ve had a great respect for you.... - -“I’m glad you haven’t my eyes. Glasses are a Curse....” - -Anxiety about the laundry occupied a large part of her thoughts. - -“That woman Smithers in the washing room is a thief, and I’d get rid -of the new man Baxandale. I don’t know why I’ve kept Mrs. Smithers on -so long.... Weakness.... I’m not sure about _him_, there’s nothing -positive yet, but I feel he’s not straight.... I’m very much afraid -we’ve let Lady Badger’s account run too long. Nowadays titles--want -watching. I’ve been misled by her. She promised a cheque.... But I -doubt about you two in the laundry altogether. He can’t and you won’t. -_You_ might have done it.... Never mind that now. - -“Sell it as a going concern? The Widgerys might come in. He’s hard, but -he’s straight. Straight enough. They might like to come in.... - -“It’s never entered my head I wasn’t good for twenty years yet.... I -wish the doctor wouldn’t think of operating. It won’t do any good.” - -She repeated many of her phrases. - -“I hate the thought of being opened,” she said. “I suppose--. Like -those frogs in your book.... - -“Packed like a bag.... Never get it back again. Loose bits.... - -“Washing-basket or something to keep it together.” - -Then her mind went off at a tangent to things beyond Christina -Alberta’s understanding. - -“Sneaked off and left me to it.... I wonder what he’s doing now.... -Suppose.... Fancy, if it should be him that had to operate.... -Operate.... - -“Children we were.” - -She seemed to recollect herself and regarded her daughter with a -hard inquiring eye. Some instinct in Christina Alberta told her to -assume an incurious expression. But these words struck upon her mind -and stayed there and germinated like a seed. Children they were, and -he had sneaked off? Queer and yet according with all sorts of other -imponderables. - - -§ 5 - -Mr. Preemby looked unusually small but unusually dignified in his -full mourning. Christina Alberta was also extremely black and shiny. -Her skirts reached for the first time in her life to her ankles; a -sacrifice that she felt would be particularly acceptable to the spirit -of the departed. - -A new thing had come into Christina Alberta’s life--responsibility. She -perceived that for unfathomable reasons she was responsible for Mr. -Preemby. - -It was clear that the sudden death of his wife under the surgeon’s -knife had been a very great blow to him. He did not break down or weep -or give way to paroxysms of grief, but he was enormously still and sad. -His round china-blue eyes and his moustache looked at the world with -a mournful solemnity. The undertaker had rarely met so satisfactory -a widower. “Everything of the best,” said Mr. Preemby. “Whatever she -can have, she must have.” Under the circumstances, the undertaker, who -was a friend of the family, having met both Mr. and Mrs. Preemby at -whist-drives quite frequently, showed commendable moderation. - -“You can’t imagine what all this means to me,” said Mr. Preemby to -Christina Alberta, quite a number of times. “It was a pure love match,” -he said; “pure romance. She had nothing to gain by marrying me. But -neither of us thought of sordid things.” He was silent for a little -while, struggling with intractable memories. He subdued them. “We just -met,” he said, smiling faintly; “and it seemed that it _had_ to be.” - -“Sneaked off and left me”; came a faint whisper in Christina Alberta’s -memory. - - -§ 6 - -There was much to see to in those days of mourning. Christina Alberta -did her best to help, watch and guide Mr. Preemby even as her mother -had desired, but she was surprised to find in him certain entirely -unexpected decisions that had apparently leapt into existence within a -few hours of her mother’s death. One was a clear resolve that he and -she must part company with the laundry either by selling it or letting -it, or, if no means of disposing of it offered, by burning it down or -blowing it up as speedily as possible. He did not discuss this; he -treated it as an unavoidable necessity. He expressed no animosity for -the laundry, he made no hostile criticism of the life he had led there, -but every thought betrayed his fundamental aversion. And also they were -to go away--right away--from Woodford Wells and never return thither. -She had come to much the same decisions on her own account, but she had -not expected to find them in such quiet strength in him. - -He became explicit about the future as they sat at supper on the -evening of the funeral. - -“Your mother’s cousin, Sam Widgery,” he said, “was talking to me.” - -He munched for a moment; his moustache went up and down and his eyes -of china-blue stared out of the window at the sunset sky. “He wants to -take it over.” - -“The laundry?” - -“As a going concern. And he being our nearest relation, so to speak, -I’d as soon he had it as anybody else. Other things being equal.... -Wish I knew what to ask him for it. I don’t want to ask him too -little. So I said I didn’t care to discuss things at a funeral. Said -he’d better come along to-morrow. Their place isn’t doing well. It’s -got sort of embedded in Walthamstow. It would pay him to get out and -let the land go for building. He hasn’t got very much money.... But he -wants this place. He reely wants this place.” - -His blue eyes were the eyes of one who sees visions. - -“I don’t know if they taught you about making companies at the -School of Economics. I’m a child at all that sort of thing. He talks -about partnership or a mortgage or something like that, but what we -want--what we want is a limited company. And what we want is something -like debentures only rather more like preference shares. We want it so -that whatever he draws out of the business we’ve got to draw out more. -Otherwise the company can cut away the security for your debentures -by paying too much dividend on the ordinary shares. _He_’ll have the -ordinary shares. Him and his wife. I don’t say he’d do such a thing -deliberately, but he might very easily be led into doing it. He’s got -to be looked after. We want to fix it so that if he pays more on his -shares than we get on our shares we’d get our interest levelled up. -It’s all very difficult and complicated, Christina Alberta.” - -Christina Alberta regarded Mr. Preemby with a new and deepening -respect. She had never heard him make such a speech before at meals, -but then he had never before been free from interruption and correction. - -“We’ll have to have it fixed up properly by our solicitors,” said Mr. -Preemby. - -“We shan’t be badly off,” he continued, helping himself to cheese. - -“There’s a mortgage or so we’ve got and some houses at Buckhurst Hill. -It’s a curious thing, but your poor dear mother had a sort of faith in -my eye for house property. She often let me guide her. And I always -had a feeling for making some sort of reserve _out_ of the business.... -Very likely Sam Widgery will take over most of the furniture of this -house. It’s a bigger house than his....” - -“Where do you think of going to live, Daddy?” asked Christina Alberta. - -“I don’t rightly know,” said Mr. Preemby after a moment or so of -introspection. “I keep thinking of different places.” - -“London,” she said. “If I could go back to study--before it is too -late.” - -“London,” he said, “it might be.” - -He hesitated over his next suggestion with the hesitation that had -become a habit, so accustomed was he to see his suggestions crumpled -up and flung aside. “Have you ever heard of Boarding Houses, Christina -Alberta?” he asked with an unreal carelessness. “Have you ever thought -it might be possible for us to go and live in Boarding Houses?” - -“In London?” - -“All over the world--almost, there are Boarding Houses. You see, -Christina Alberta, we might get rid of our furniture here, except for -my books and a few little things, and we might put most of that away -for a time--Taylor’s Repository would take care of that for us--and we -might go and live sometimes in a Boarding House here, and sometimes in -a Boarding House there. Then you could study and needn’t keep house, -and I could read and look at things and make memorandums about some -Theories I’ve thought of, and talk to people and hear people talking. -All sorts of people go to Boarding Houses--all sorts of interesting -people. These last nights I’ve been thinking no end about living in -Boarding Houses. I keep on thinking of it, turning it over in my mind. -It would be a new life for me--like beginning again. Life’s been so -regular here. All very well while your poor dear mother was alive, but -now I feel I want distraction. I want to move about and see all sorts -of things and different kinds of people. I want to forget. Why, in -some of these Boarding Houses there’s Chinese and Indians and Russian -princesses, and professors and actors and all sorts of people. Just to -hear them!” - -“There’s Boarding Houses full of students in Bloomsbury.” - -“Every sort,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“One place that attracts me,” said Mr. Preemby, pouring out what -remained of the beer, “is Tumbridge Wells.” - -“Isn’t that sometimes called Tunbridge, Daddy?” - -“Formerly. But now it is always spoken of as Tumbridge Wells. At this -Tumbridge Wells, Christina Alberta, there are hills with names that -point directly to some connection with the ancient Israelites, Mount -Ephraim and Mount Gilboa and so on, and there are a number of curiously -shaped rocks, shaped in the likeness of great toads and prehistoric -monsters and mystical forms and nobody knows whether they are the work -of God’s hand or man’s. I am very anxious to see these things for -myself. They may have a deeper and closer significance for us than is -commonly supposed. There are plenty of Boarding Houses at Tumbridge -Wells--I was told only the other day by a man I met in the Assyrian -room in the British Museum--and some of them are said to be very -comfortable and reasonable indeed.” - -“We might go there for the holidays,” said Christina Alberta, “before -the London session begins.” - -Outside was the summer afterglow, and a dusky peace filled the room. -Father and daughter followed divergent trains of thought. Mr. Preemby -was the first to break the silence. - -“Now that I shall be in mourning, or half mourning, for some time I -have decided to give away all those Harris tweed knickerbocker suits -and stockings of mine. Some poor man might feel the comfort of them--in -winter. I have never really liked those _very_ baggy knickerbockers, -but of course while your poor dear mother was alive her taste was Law -to me. And those caps; they get over your eyes when you’re hot. That -tweed stuff.... It is overrated. When you ride a bicycle or anything it -ravels out with the friction of the seat. Makes you look ridiculous.... -And I think that quite soon I shall get myself one of those soft grey -felt hats--with a black band.” - -“I have always wanted to see you wear one, Daddy,” said Christina -Alberta. - -“It would count as mourning?” - -“Oh! yes, Daddy.” - -Mr. Preemby meditated pleasantly. The girl had common sense. Her advice -was worth having. “As for putting the swastika on your poor dear -mother’s tombstone, perhaps you are right in thinking it is not what -she herself would have chosen. It may be better after all to do as you -suggest and erect a simple cross. After all--it is _her_ tombstone.” - -Whereupon Christina Alberta got up from her chair and went round the -table--almost at a prance, until she remembered things--and kissed him. -For some obscure reason she hated the swastika almost as much as she -loved her Daddy. For her it had become the symbol of silliness, and she -did not like to think of him as silly. Particularly now when for some -obscure reason she was beginning to think of him as ill-used. - - -§ 7 - -There was much to see to before the Preembys could go to Tunbridge -Wells. There had to be quite a number of interviews with Mr. Sam -Widgery at Woodford Wells and afterwards in the dingy offices of -Messrs. Payne and Punter in Lincoln’s Inn. It was clear from the first -to these men of affairs that Mr. Preemby was a child at business, but -as they went on with him they realized that he was an extremely greedy -and intractable child. It was six weeks before Mr. and Mrs. Sam Widgery -could move in, sullenly and resentfully, to the Limpid Stream premises, -and Mr. Preemby and his daughter could go on after a day or so in -London to select a Boarding House at Tunbridge Wells. - -Christina Alberta spent her early days as an orphan struggling against -an unreasonable cheerfulness and a profound sense of release. She found -her father ready to accept almost any explanation of her need to run -up to London for a day and even disposed to be tolerant when she came -home late. She had quite a little world of miscellaneous acquaintances -in London; fellow-students and their friends, fellow-students from the -London School of Economics and fellow-students at Tomlinson’s School -and art students they knew and medical students they knew and girls -from the provinces who had chucked their families and got typing jobs, -and so on to models and chorus girls and vaguely employed rather older -young men of the intellectual class. She met them in and about the -class-rooms and in A.B.C.’s and suchlike places and in the New Hope -Club, where there were even Labour politicians and men who claimed to -be Bolsheviks, and she went to parties and duologues in studios in -high, remote, extraordinary flats. It was tremendous fun, although a -lot of it had to be snatched from the insistent claims and inquiries -of Woodford Wells. And people liked her, they liked Christina Alberta, -laughed at her jokes they did and admired her thundering cheek and -never said anything about her nose. It was much more her natural world -than the Taverners’ School people had ever been. Nobody seemed to mind -that she came out of a laundry; for all they seemed to care about -that sort of thing, she might have come out of a gaol. In between the -excitements of student life she even did some reading. - -In her first grief for her mother she tried not to feel a sense of new -unstinted freedom in regard to all these adventures and experiences. -Her Daddy in his grief, bless him! was smoking much more than he -had ever done before; he was even trying cigars; he had no nose for -tobacco reek in his daughter--or for anything of that sort. He asked -few questions and they were easily answered. Long years of exercise -had made him almost constitutionally acquiescent. Christina Alberta -realized that within very wide limits indeed now she might do anything -she pleased whenever she liked. She realized also that there was no -particular hurry to do anything at all. All the others seemed to be -running about in pairs like knives and forks. It suited her humour to -stay detached. - -And the world had altered. This break-up of the old home, the death of -her mother, the disappearance of every control, except her credulous, -inattentive Daddy, had jerked her forward from childhood to maturity. -Hitherto home had seemed an eternal, indestructible thing, from which -you started out for adventures, to which, whatever happened, you -returned like a sea-rover to rest and where you went to bed and slept -as you had been wont to sleep, secure, unthreatened. Now here the two -of them, Daddy and herself, were in the open; no bolting place at all -for them; anything might happen to them and might insist upon going on -happening. She could now do just anything she pleased, it was true, but -also she realized that now she had to take the unlimited consequences. - -So that in spite of her sense of novel, unbounded freedoms, Christina -Alberta found she did not go up to London any more than she would have -done during her mother’s lifetime. Many of her most attractive friends, -it is true, were away upon their holidays. And she found her father’s -company unusually interesting. Every time she came back to him he -seemed to be slightly enlarged and of a firmer colour and consistency. -He reminded her of Practical Biology (Botanical Section) in the -Taverners’ School, when you take a dried-up bean out of its package -and put it in a jar with water and observe it under the influence of -warmth and moisture. It germinates. And he was germinating. - -Mother had kept him dried up for nearly twenty years, but now he was -germinating and nobody could tell what sort of thing he might become. - - - - -CHAPTER THE THIRD - -_In Lonsdale Mews_ - - -§ 1 - -After a month of deep mourning, Christina Alberta put aside her long -skirts and returned to the more kilt-like garments to which she was -accustomed. She had not been inactive while her father had conducted -his business settlement with Mr. Sam Widgery, and she had worked out -a scheme of living that seemed to promise quite a happy life for her -father and herself. She fell in with the Boarding House idea and with -the project of beginning at Tunbridge Wells. She ceased to struggle -with the fact that he continued to call it quietly but insistently -_Tum_bridge Wells; it seemed to her upon reflection that _Tum_bridge -was really the place he, at any rate, was going to live at. That gentle -departure from exactitude was quite of a piece with his general habit -of living a little askew from actual things. - -But she impressed upon him the view that since their lives were to be -migratory henceforth, and since there were a certain number of books, -unsaleable articles of furniture that Mrs. Widgery would not take over -at a valuation, a number of curiosities--for example, a piece of shell -which he believed to be a fragment of a Great Auk’s Egg, a Rosicrucian -regalia, and a mummified hawk from Egypt which had prophetic qualities, -to consider--there must be a sort of permanent headquarters in -London, at which these objects could be stored and to which he and -she could return from the various Boarding Houses round and about -the earth. And, pursuant to this suggestion, she made inquiries -and worked out an admirable project for sharing some accommodation -with two little friends of hers who practised art, literature, and -picturesque economies in a converted mews in Chelsea. In fact, she -made arrangements with them. She told Mr. Preemby she had made these -arrangements according to his instructions, and after a time it did -come to seem to him that he had given her the instructions upon which -she acted. - -Lonsdale Mews opens out of Lonsdale Road, Chelsea; and there is quite -a noble entrance with large stucco pillars on either side and an arch -over, on which is a design in relievo of Neptune and sea-horses and -the words “Lonsdale Mews.” Inside there had once been stables and -coach-houses, and over each a bedroom and a sitting-room, which was -also, in the more prolific past, generally used as a bedroom, and a -cupboard and a landing and so forth, the little home of the coachman -(and his wife and family) attached to the genteel carriage and horses -below. But the advancement of science and the progress of invention -have abolished gentility, and so reduced the number of coachmen and -carriages in the world that Lonsdale Mews has had to accept other -tenants; and being too narrow down the centre for the coming and -going of automobiles without a great deal of bashing of mudguards and -radiators, has had to paint itself up attractively and fall back upon -art and the intelligenzia. - -Christina Alberta’s two young friends were in possession of one of -these perverted coachmen’s homes, and as they were very inadequately -prepared to pay the rent--it was a quite aristocratic rent--they were -extremely glad to welcome Mr. Preemby and particularly Christina -Alberta as co-tenants. Mr. Preemby was to have the big room downstairs -and there he was to arrange his books and his surplus furnishings and -ornaments and curious objects, and have a sofa that could be made into -an apparent bed when he wanted to sleep in London. And Christina -Alberta was to have a little bedroom for herself behind this wherein a -breezy decorative scheme of orange and bright blue more than made up -for a certain absence of daylight and fresh air. But when the two young -friends had a party or when Mr. Preemby was away they were to have the -use of the big downstairs room, and in the case of a party Christina -Alberta’s room was to be a ladies’ cloak-room. - -The lessors were to retain the use of the upstairs rooms and in the -matter of the kitchen all things therein were to be held in common. -None of this agreement was put into writing and many issues were left -over frankly for future controversy. “We are to be the pigs that pay -the rent,” said Christina Alberta; that was the general idea. “Much -we’ll work out,” said Mr. Harold Crumb. “Much will work itself out. -It’s no good being too definite.” What was definite was that Mr. -Preemby was to pay the rent. - -Mr. Harold Crumb was a red-haired young man, a shock-headed young man -with a rampant profile, dressed in a blue overall, frayed grey trousers -and slippers. He had large freckled hands and he did Black and White, -which Mr. Preemby had supposed to be a whisky but discovered was an -art. Harold lived by attempting to sell drawings for advertisements and -pictured jokes for the weekly papers. His expression was lofty and his -voice constrained and it seemed to Mr. Preemby that he was suffered -rather than met by Mr. Crumb. With Christina Alberta Mr. Crumb seemed -to be on terms of tacit friendship and no word passed between them. -He lifted his hand and twiddled his fingers at her--with a kind of -melancholy. - -Mrs. Crumb was more effusive. She embraced Christina Alberta warmly -and answered to the name of “Fay.” Then she turned to Mr. Preemby and -shook hands with him quite normally. She was a slender young lady -with carelessly bobbed corn-coloured hair, pale-grey eyes and an -absent-minded face. She also was dressed in a blue overall, she wore -oyster-coloured stockings and slippers and possibly other things, and -her business in life, Mr. Preemby learnt, was to review books for -various newspapers and write romantic fiction for bookstall magazines. -Her right forefinger had that indelible inkiness which only the -habitual use of an incontinent fountain-pen can give. There was a big -screen in the downstairs room Mr. Preemby was to have that Mr. Crumb -had made and Mrs. Crumb had covered with the bright mendacious wrappers -of the books she had reviewed. This exercised Mr. Preemby the more -because several of the wrappers were manifestly upside down, and he -could not understand whether this was due to art, carelessness or some -serious mental lapse. - -“We’ll have something to eat,” she told Mr. Preemby, and then they -could settle up things. But she had a surprisingly rapid articulation -and it sounded like, “We’ll ’f sum t’eat ’n’ then we’ll set lup -thins.” It took ten or twelve seconds to come through to Mr. Preemby’s -understanding. Meanwhile she had turned to Christina Alberta. “’Dabit -’f work to do,” she explained. “Bres no’ clear’ d’way. Late las’ ni’. -You be’r loo’ roun’ he’ while Nolly gessomeat an’ Ikn do ’p stairs fore -you see’t.” - -“Right-o,” said Christina Alberta, understanding perfectly. Mr. Preemby -was left stunned, with his lips moving slowly. “So long,” said Harold, -and took some money out of a black Wedgwood tea-pot and went and fell -over things in the passage, and presently went out into the wide world -while Fay vanished upstairs. - -“She’s gone upstairs,” said Mr. Preemby, interpreting slowly, “to do -their rooms. And _he’s_ gone to get some meat. It’s a nice large room, -Christina Alberta--and quite well lit. Quite. - -“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a Mew before,” said Mr. Preemby, -approaching a group of attractive drawings on the wall. - -“In a _what_, Daddy?” - -“In a Mew. Or in a _Studjo_.... I suppose these are Originals.” - -Christina Alberta awaited his reaction to the drawings with a slight -anxiety. - -“Looks like a lot of fruit and human legs and things,” said Mr. -Preemby. “Wonder what they mean? _Summer Night_ it says, and that’s -_Passion in Solitude_. Don’t quite see it, but I suppose it’s -symbolical or something.” He turned his round blue eyes to the room -generally. “I could get a mahogany cabinet for my Curiosities and have -it against the wall _there_--I’d like the sort with glass doors so that -people could see the things--and if there was some shelves put across -that place, it would hold most of my books. There’ll have to be a bed -somewhere, Christina Alberta.” - -“They’ve got a sofa upstairs,” said Christina Alberta, “with an end -that pulls down.” - -“Might go there.” - -“Or under the window.” - -“Of course there’s my clothes,” said Mr. Preemby. “I almost wish -I hadn’t practically promised Sam Widgery your mother’s wardrobe. -Rosewood it is. It has a lot of room in it and it might have gone -against that bit of wall there. The trunk will make a sort of seat if -we get the corners mended. Wonder how that screen would look the other -way up. Books might go behind it. These easels and things I suppose -they’ll take upstairs.... We’ll get things settled all right.” - -Christina Alberta turned about with arms akimbo to follow his -proposals. She perceived that they threatened a considerable -disturbance of the æsthetic balance of the studio. She’d just thought -of a little bed-sofa affair with a bright rug over it. Silly of her -to forget the baggage. But in the end perhaps it might be possible to -arrest a lot of his gear in the passage. The passage was so choked -already that a little more in it hardly seemed to matter. He could -go out and get what things he wanted when he wanted them. She had a -momentary anticipation of him in his shirt and braces, routing in -trunks. - -“Of course,” said Mr. Preemby, “when you said you’d got two little -friends in a _Studjo_, I thought they were two girls. I didn’t think -they were a married couple.” - -“They aren’t so _fearfully_ married,” said Christina Alberta. - -“No,” said Mr. Preemby, and was restrained by modesty from further -speech for some seconds. “Of course,” he said, “if presently a Family -came along--well, we’d have to move out, Christina Alberta.” - -“Never meet families half-way,” said Christina Alberta. “It isn’t very -likely anyhow. You trust Fay.” - -“You never know,” said Mr. Preemby rather weakly, and showed a tendency -to drift back to those ambiguous drawings. - -“About time we had a look at the upstairs rooms, Daddy,” said Christina -Alberta, and went out into the passage to call “Fay!” - -The answer came remotely. “Lo?” - -“Read-_dee_?” - -“Not yet.” - -Christina Alberta found her Daddy back in the illustrated corner with -his head on one side like an inquiring sparrow. For some time nothing -was said. “Of course,” he remarked at last; “it’s Art.” He turned away -with his face pursed up beneath the moustache, humming faintly. She -perceived it was just as much Art as he could stand. - -He ran his hand over the wall and turned intelligent eyes to Christina -Alberta. “It’s just canvas,” he said; “what you pack things in. With -sort of dabs of gold paint. I don’t think I’ve ever seen walls that -wasn’t either done with paper or distemper before. I suppose really one -might put all sorts of things on walls, cloth, bed-ticking, tarpaulin. -Odd how one doesn’t think of things.” - - -§ 2 - -Presently “upstairs” was “read-ee;” Mrs. Harold Crumb was free to -answer questions and make explanations and Mr. Preemby could learn -more of Christina Alberta’s plans for his comfort. Upstairs was more -various but less spacious than downstairs, the beds were dressed-up -rather than disguised as divans and there was more vaguely improper but -highly decorative Art. Like Christina Alberta Mrs. Crumb had not fully -considered Mr. Preemby’s possibilities in the way of luggage, but she -rose to the occasion very well. When Mr. Preemby spoke of the mahogany -cabinet and the wardrobe, she said that it would be quite easy for -Harold to “camouflage” them with very, very bright-coloured paint, and -she thought a lot might be done for Mr. Preemby’s trunks and clothes -by making a curtained alcove in a corner. “Trouble with clothes,” said -Mrs. Crumb, “is when somebody starts charades or dressing up. Nothing -is sacred. Last week, somebody tore my only pyjamas limb from limb.” - -“We’d have to arrange,” said Mr. Preemby, a little uneasily. - -“We’ll have to arrange somehow,” said Mrs. Crumb. - -But before anything could be arranged definitely Harold returned from -his shopping with a large piece of purple beefsteak in a mere loin -cloth of newspaper, and a lettuce and a bundle of small onions in his -hand and two large bottles of beer under his arm, and everybody’s -attention was directed to the preparation of the midday meal. - -“Generally,” said Harold, “we go Out for a meal. There’s quite a decent -aufschnittery and a little Italian place and so forth not five minutes -away in the King’s Road. It’s more fun feeding Out. But we thought -you’d like to see the studio put through its paces.” - -Mr. Preemby in the course of his life had rarely seen meals prepared; -somebody else had always laid a table and said “Dinner’s ready, -Daddy,” or “Supper’s ready, Daddy,” as the case might be, and he -had just sat down, and it was with real interest that he obeyed Mr. -Crumb’s invitation to “come and see how we do it,” and assisted under -direction in the operations. Mr. Crumb, in a few well-chosen words, -introduced the cooking apparatus that clustered around the gas-stove; -the gas-stove was lit explosively, Mr. Preemby handed things and held -things under direction and got in the way a good deal. Christina -Alberta, who seemed used to the job, chopped the onions and dressed a -salad at a small kitchen table close at hand, and the steak got itself -grilled fiercely and flaringly. - -Meanwhile Mrs. Crumb laid a blue-painted table in what was to be -Mr. Preemby’s room with an orange-coloured cloth and a selection of -plates and parts of plates, yellow-glazed mugs with rudely painted -inscriptions in some rustic dialect, “Here’s t’ absent frens” and -the like, several knives and forks, a pewter mug full of cigarettes -and a bunch of sunflowers in a brown-glazed bowl. And at this table -Mr. Preemby presently found himself seated very hot in the face and -liberally splashed with fat from the grilled steak. Nobody said grace, -and the meal began. - -There was a general assumption that Mr. Preemby’s tenancy was settled, -though there were many points upon which he would have liked a clearer -definition. He was particularly anxious to exclude as tactfully as -possible his garments and his specimens from promiscuous use as -properties when these charades occurred, but he did not know quite how -to reopen the subject. And he was preoccupied by a doubt whether his -long nightgowns of Saxony flannel, if they were publicly exposed, might -not be considered old-fashioned by these artistic young people. But -their talk jumped about so that it was difficult to lead up to what he -had to say. He was accustomed, especially when company was present, -to clear his throat “h’rrmp” and waggle his moustache up and down a -little before he spoke, and by the time he was ready to deliver what -he had to say one of the others was away with something else. So that -he hardly said anything but an occasional “h’rrmp” all through the meal. - -The two young ladies did most of the talking. Harold seemed moody, -making an occasional correction or comment upon his wife’s remarks and -eating most of the steak with the pained expression of one who has -tender teeth and is used to better food. Once he asked Mr. Preemby -if he really cared for Good Music, and once if he had been to see -the Iberian dancers last year, but neither of these inquiries led to -a sustained conversation. “H’rrmp. No-oh,” said Mr. Preemby. “Not -exactly. Not particularly,” and in the second case, “No-oh, I didn’t.” - -Mrs. Crumb talked brightly of various newspaper jobs she had got and -how she had been asked to do a children’s corner in the _Patriotic -News_ and whether she would accept the offer--Mr. Preemby thought the -editors and newspaper proprietors she mentioned seemed a depraved -lot--but mainly the talk concerned the movements and readjustments of a -large circle of friends. After the meal there was coffee, and Harold, -with an air of resignation, went and washed up. - -There were many little things awaiting attention at the laundry, and -after two or three cigarettes Mr. Preemby decided, “It’s time for us -to be going, Christina Alberta.” “We’ll work it out all right,” said -Harold on their departure. - -There were intervals of meditation as Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta -returned in the train from Liverpool Street to Woodford Wells. “It’s -not what I’ve been accustomed to,” said Mr. Preemby. “It’s all very -different from the way your mother used to manage things.... Less -orderly.... Of course I could keep my clothes locked up in my trunk.” - -“You’ll do all right. They’re perfect Dears. _She_ loves you -tremendously already,” said Christina Alberta. - - -§ 3 - -But before she went to sleep that night Christina Alberta experienced -compunction. She felt compunction about these arrangements she was -making for her Daddy. She doubted whether he would be truly comfortable -and happy in that studio in Lonsdale Mews, and able to lead the life of -steadfast curiosity he anticipated with so much quiet pleasure--ever -humming to himself about it and working his moustache and saying -“h’rrmp,” when he was not otherwise engaged. - -This story, it cannot be too often reiterated, is the story of Mr. -Preemby who became, as we shall tell in due course, Sargon, King of -Kings. But Christina Alberta has got herself hatched into this story -very much like a young cuckoo in a wagtail’s nest and it is impossible -to ignore her. She was virtually in control of him and she had the -egotism of her sex and age. - -She had also a pitiless conscience. It was almost the only thing -she could not manage in her life. It managed her. It was a large, -crystalline conscience with no foundations and no relationships; it -just flooded by itself in her being; it was her gravitational centre -and the rest of her could not get away from it. - -When Christina Alberta went up for examination and judgment before -Christina Alberta there was no nonsense in the proceedings, a fearful -frankness; it was cards on the table, everything in evidence, no -etiquette, not a stitch on, X-rays if necessary. These examinations -were all the more terrible because they were done in what was -practically an empty room, without screens, curtains, standards or -general beliefs of any sort. It is appalling to think of the drapery -and function that was absent from Christina Alberta’s court of -conscience. In the first place Christina Alberta was completely and -explicitly irreligious. In the next she was theoretically anti-social -and amoral. She did not believe in respectability, Christian morality, -the institution of the family, the capitalist system, or the British -Empire. She would say so with extreme plainness and considerable detail -except when her parent was about. Prevalent winds of sentiment did not -stir her. She did not find the Prince of Wales ravishing nor _Punch_ -funny. She thought modern dancing tiresome, though she did it very -well, and Wimbledon tennis and tennis-talk an intolerable bore. She -favoured Bolshevism because everybody she disliked abused it and she -hoped for a world-wide social revolution of an entirely destructive and -cleansing type. What was to follow this revolution Christina Alberta, -with the happy confidence of youth, did not seem to mind. - -It is not for us to speculate here why a young woman born and bred -between Woodford Wells and central London in the opening years of the -twentieth century should confront the world with a mind so entirely -swept and void of positive and restraining convictions; we put the -fact on record. And if she had been sustained by all the beliefs in -Christendom and a sure and certain respect for every detail of the -social code, whatever that code may be, she could not have confronted -the world with a more cheerful confidence, nor with a stronger -persuasion that Christina Alberta had to behave, in some undefined -fashion, well. Christina Alberta had to be Christina Alberta, clear and -sound, or the court of conscience made things plain and hard for her. - -“Christina Alberta,” the court would say, “you are the dirtiest, -filthiest little thing that ever streaked the dust of life. How do you -propose to get clean again?” - -Or, “Christina Alberta, you have been lying again. You’ll lie to _me_ -next. First it was laziness made you lie and now it is cowardice. What -are you going to make of yourself, Christina Alberta?” - -There came a time when the court had to address Christina Alberta -in this fashion: “Your nose, Christina Alberta, is large beyond -comparison. It will probably go on growing all your life--as noses -often do. Yet you are setting yourself out to charm and fascinate Teddy -Winterton. You go to places where you think you will meet him. You fuss -and preen yourself like any female idiot. You dream all sorts of things -about him, disgraceful things. You are soppy on this young man in spite -of the fact that you know he is--no sort of good. You like him to touch -you. You sit and look at him foolishly and you gloat. Does he gloat -on you? Isn’t it time you considered where you are going, Christina -Alberta?” - - * * * * * - -And now the court was in full session and the charge, the charge for -which there was no defence, was that she was going to take her absurd, -unprotected Daddy and entrust him and his foolishness and his silly -books and his ridiculous treasures and all his dreams and desires to -the insecure and unsympathetic studio of the Crumbs, not because of any -vague and general hunger for London, though that was in the background, -but because that studio was frequented by the all too seductive Teddy, -because there she had met him and danced wildly with him and been -suddenly and astonishingly kissed by him and kissed him. And then he -had beguiled her to learn a dance with him and had got her to come to -tea with him at his studio to meet his sister--who hadn’t turned up. -And there had been other meetings. He was impudent and provocative -and evasive. All her being was in a state of high excitement about -him. Coldly and exactly now the court unfolded the operations of her -mind to her; showed how the thought of Teddy, always present and never -admitted, had guided her decision to harbour with the Crumbs. Only -now did she come to confession and clear vision. “You have lied to -yourself, Christina Alberta,” said the court; “and that is the worst -sort of lie. What are you going to do about it?” - -“I can’t let the Crumbs down now. They count upon us.” - -“You are in a mess, Christina Alberta. You are in a worse mess than -we thought you were. _Soppy_ you are about Teddy Winterton. Why not -call things by their right names? You are in love. Perhaps something -frightful has happened to you. Little rabbits run about the hedges and -every day is like every other day for them; they waggle their little -noses and wiggle their little tails and do what they like with their -paws. Until one day there is a ping and the snare snaps on the little -furry foot and everything you try to do after that is different. The -snare holds your movements and you must just dance round it and squeal -if you like, till the man comes along. Is that what has happened to -you? And for Teddy! Teddy, with that open, lying face!” - -“No,” said Christina Alberta, “I don’t love him. I don’t love him. -I’ve been silly and soppy and adrift. I am no more worthy to be called -Christina Alberta. But it hasn’t got me yet and it shan’t get me. I’ll -pull Daddy out of it and myself out of it; I vow and swear....” - -“H’m,” said the court. - - -§ 4 - -It seemed to Mr. Preemby that the first evening he spent in his new -quarters in Lonsdale Mews was the most eventful evening in his life. -Impressions crowded upon each other. Insomnia was not among his habits, -but when at last he lay upon his shake-up bed he was kept awake for -most of what was left of the night (it was the frayed piece with the -bleak dawn in the middle of it) trying to get these same impressions -sorted out, impressions about his new surroundings, impressions about -Christina Alberta, impressions of new and unprecedented personalities, -a marmalade of impressions. - -Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta arrived at the studio according to -plan about half-past three, but the Picton van which had started that -morning with Mr. Preemby’s bags and trunks and the crates of books -and curiosities and the late Mrs. Preemby’s roomy wardrobe, which had -after all been rescued from the clutches of Sam Widgery, did not arrive -until it was nearly six. Unfortunately the furniture dealer in Brompton -Road from whom Mr. Preemby had purchased a specimen-cabinet and a long -low walnut bookcase had delivered these articles the day before, and -all the animosity of the modern artist towards self-assertive wood -had been aroused in Harold. He and Fay and a friend or so who had -dropped in, had sat up quite late painting these new pieces a deep -ultramarine blue with stars and splashes of gold like the paper they -put around the necks of Ayala, Tsarist and suchlike champagnes. When -Mr. Preemby saw their handiwork he could scarcely believe it was the -same specimen-cabinet and bookcase. - -“I suppose one could get it off again,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“But see how they are assimilated by the room,” said Harold in high -expostulation. - -“I mean if we moved at any time,” said Mr. Preemby. “I know it’s -art, and it goes with the things here very nicely, but there’s -neighbourhoods I wouldn’t like to move into--not with these things as -they are. You don’t know what people’s imaginations are like.” - -Matters went a little tediously until the arrival of the Picton van. -The sofa-bed was arranged and rearranged. The bed things, blankets, -sheets and pillow-cases, were to be put in a bundle on the top of Mr. -Preemby’s flat trunk behind the book-wrapper screen. “We shall have to -find some other place for the bottled beer,” said Harold. “It’s too -hot in the kitchen and too dangerous in the passage. But I’ve an idea -we might have it in the scullery under the sink, with a cloth over it -and water dripping on the cloth. Evaporation. I’ll see about it.” - -Mr. Preemby was surprised by a yawn. “I suppose you’d like to have some -tea,” said Fay suddenly, and she and Christina Alberta prepared some. - -Harold was obviously in a strained and nervous state. Mr. Preemby’s -patient little figure, sitting about hands on knees, waiting for -Picton’s van, looking at things with innocent eyes and saying “h’rrmp” -had much the same effect of nervous dislocation upon Harold that the -mild and patient camel has on a horse. Harold chafed and pranced. He -walked about and went upstairs and out and returned; he smoked endless -cigarettes and pressed endless cigarettes upon Mr. Preemby; he made -recondite remarks in a strained voice. “All this is like something out -of Dostoievsky,” he said to Mr. Preemby. “In a different scheme of -colouring of course. Different, but the same. Don’t you think so, Mr. -Preemby?” - -Mr. Preemby nodded his head in a sympathetic, humorous, not too -explicit manner. “H’rrmp,” he said. “It _is_ a bit like that.” - -“Things will work themselves out,” said Harold. “Things will work -themselves out. You know that poem of Ruby Parham’s.” He cleared his -throat. “It is called ‘Waiting,’” he said. “It goes like this--” - -His eyes became fixed and glazed; his voice gathered volume, so that -the words seemed more than life-sized. - - “After every minute - “Comes another minute - “And then, rest assured, - “Another. - “Like drops from a ledge in the rain. - “You may not want to go on; - “But _they_ will, - “Oh! endlessly - “Taking your life away, death, not final and complete, - “But death in the midst of life, - “Particles of death, - “Death by attrition. - “Drip on Old Death--in life! - “Slow, dull, implacable, unendurable! - “Drip on.” - -“That ‘Drip on’ is great. But perhaps you don’t like modern poetry?” - -“I don’t _mind_ it,” said Mr. Preemby genially. - -“Of course, nothing of a really destructive nature _can_ have happened -to that van,” said Mr. Crumb in a pessimistic tone. - -When Picton’s van arrived and the roomy wardrobe began its destructive -march through the passage, Mr. Crumb called suddenly upon his maker in -a loud distressful voice and vanished for the better part of an hour. - -Christina Alberta was torn between a sympathetic understanding of -Harold’s state of mind and the fear that her Daddy might perceive the -unfavourable reaction he produced in Harold and be hurt by it. She and -Fay became brightly helpful with the unpacking. “If I might have one of -those blue pinafores of Mr. Crumb’s to put on,” said Mr. Preemby, “I’d -be glad. These black things of mine show every mark.” - -Mr. Crumb’s overall reached far below Mr. Preemby’s knees and somehow -justified his calling it a pinafore. It brought out something -endearingly infantile in his appearance that appealed to the maternal -instinct lurking in Mrs. Crumb. She struggled with a persuasion that he -was really a little boy of nine who had been naughty and grown a big -moustache and that she had to take care of him and restrain him and -generally tell him not to. The books were put in the bookshelves as Mr. -Preemby said, “just anyhow”; they could be sorted up later, but the -curiosities and specimens took longer and had to be “put out” more or -less in the cabinet. There were not only real curiosities and specimens -but many little things that Mr. Preemby had accumulated because they -looked like curiosities and specimens. There was, for instance, a piece -of one of the laundry delivery van mudguards so bent by a collision as -to resemble a human torso in the most striking fashion; there was the -almost complete skull of an unknown mammal, probably a fallow deer, -picked up in Epping Forest, there was a potato, now rather shrivelled, -in which it was possible to detect thirty-seven distinct human faces -and--specimen of an entirely different quality--a large flint in which -there were no less than fifty-five. Ages ago some primordial Preemby -had discovered and loved that very same flint and had brought out the -likenesses by chipping an eye here or a nostril there; but Mr. Preemby -did not suspect the help of that remote and perhaps ancestral hand. -Even in waking life Mr. Preemby saw faces in everything. What he would -have been like with a high temperature it is impossible to imagine. - -Christina Alberta’s anxiety about her father’s reception by the Crumbs -diminished as she saw his virtual conquest of Fay. Fay treated him -firmly but indulgently, and they lost a good deal of time while she -tried to see all the fifty-five faces of the wonderful flint. They had -to start and start again, but always they lost count about “Twen-tee” -or “Twen-tee-one.” The question would arise whether they were counting -one of the faces over again. - -Harold returned in a moody state and could be heard, all too -distinctly, kicking Mr. Preemby’s packing cases in the hall, but Fay -went out to him with a lofty sleep-walking expression in her pale eyes, -and the concussions ceased, and presently Harold came downstairs again -looking almost handsome in nankeen trousers, a blue jacket with big -silver buttons and a voluminous black tie, and was quite nice to Mr. -Preemby. - -“You won’t mind my touching that wardrobe of yours up a bit?” he said. -“It damps us off, as it is. Kind of reproaches us. One of us has to be -altered, you see, it or me, and either I paint it or else I get a silk -hat with a deep mourning band and a gold-handled umbrella--which would -cost no end of money. Whereas I _have_ the paint.” - -“If you can get the paint off again,” said Mr. Preemby. “You see if I -was to move--_back_.... It’s all right to have all this paint in a Mew. -But out of a Mew....” - -“Exactly,” said Harold. “My idea is to make a little pink house of it -with windows and so on. Something very simple. Rather like the scenery -of a Russian Sketch. _Chauve Souris_ sort of stuff. Conventional to the -_n_^{th}. And we might put up placards at the corner of it according to -what is going on. Make a bit of an institution of it.” - -“So long as it makes things agreeable,” said Mr. Preemby. - -He found his hair being ruffled affectionately. “Dear little Daddy!” -said Christina Alberta. - - -§ 5 - -But now appeared a new-comer and life was made uncomfortable and -complicated for Christina Alberta again by the presence of Mr. Teddy -Winterton’s candid insincerity. His graceful body, his movements, his -voice, stirred her senses as she hated them to be stirred; his quiet -impudence invaded her sense of humour; he wounded her pride and she -longed to be even with him. She had no power over him and he behaved -as if he owned her. She was always letting him go just a little too -far. When he was about her nose cast a shadow that reached to her -horizon. He stood now in the doorway--trousers of one pattern of tweed, -waistcoat of another, Norfolk jacket of a third extensively unbuttoned -in the accepted student style, and he watched Mr. Preemby carry his -collection of roc’s bones, found near Staines, across the studio on a -tea-tray. His eyes were round with surprise and amusement; his mouth -said noiselessly, “What is it?” - -Christina Alberta was not going to have her Daddy laughed at by any -Teddy Winterton. “Mr. Winterton,” she said. “This is my father.” - -“I’ll just get rid of my bones,” said Mr. Preemby, “and then I’ll shake -hands.” - -“We’ll just finish up Mr. Preemby’s things and then we’ll all go round -to Poppinetti’s to get some dinner,” said Fay. “There’s hardly anything -left to unpack now.” - -“Just one or two Antediluvium bones,” said Mr. Preemby. - -Teddy seized upon one. “This,” he said, inspecting it, “is a fossil -rhinoceros thigh-bone from the Crag.” - -“It’s an Antediluvium horse,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“Forgive me! It’s a rhinoceros bone!” - -“Horses had rhinoceros bones in those days,” said Mr. Preemby. “And the -rhinoceroses--! They were incredible. If I had one I shouldn’t have -anywhere to put it.” - -Mr. Preemby was extracted from his overall and restored to the black -coat and the grey felt hat with the black band. He became one of a -straggling party that went out of Lonsdale Mews to a little Italian -restaurant in the King’s Road. Three neighbours of the Crumbs mixed -themselves up with the party, a very quiet man with silver hair and a -young man and a dusky girl. - -Mr. Preemby was much impressed by the novelty of thus going out for -dinner, and expatiated on its advantages to the silver-haired man who -seemed to be the quiet sort of listening man that Mr. Preemby liked to -meet. “You see you don’t have to _cook_ the meal and you don’t have to -lay the table and afterwards naturally there isn’t any washing up. But -I expect it comes more expensive.” - -The silver-haired man nodded intelligently. “Exactly,” he said. - -Harold Crumb overheard this. “Expensive,” he said, “it isn’t. No. -Every other crime Poppinetti can commit, but that is barred by the -circumstances of his clientele. He feeds us on stolen pigeons, his -_dinde_ is guinea-pig, his beef, _a l’omnibus_: what he minces God -knows; what he puts into his ravioli makes even the Lord God repent -of his extreme creativeness. But you see, you don’t _think_ about his -ravioli, you eat ’em, and they’re damned good. There are always flowers -on the table and an effect of inexpensive refinement. You will see. You -will see.” - -Mr. Preemby saw. Poppinetti was a small man but carefully modelled -on Caruso, and he received his large party with the deference of a -diplomatist and the effusion of a geyser. He was particularly gracious -to Mr. Preemby, bowing profoundly to him, and saluting him with great -richness subsequently whenever he caught his eye. He seemed to Mr. -Preemby to spend the rest of their time together going to remoter and -remoter parts of the restaurant in order to catch Mr. Preemby’s eye and -bow and smile to him from greater and greater distances. Mr. Preemby -had curious doubts whether he wasn’t being mistaken for somebody else. - -Signor Poppinetti, with an air of peculiar favour, guided the party -to a long, unattractive table near the centre of the restaurant and -took their conflicting orders with the gestures of a conductor guiding -an orchestra through a difficult passage. Mr. Preemby was passive but -observant; he presently found himself eating macaroni and drinking a -rough red wine with a name that sounded to his London tuned ears like a -challenge. Chianti. - -Harold Crumb showed great earnestness in the matter of macaroni. “In -order to taste macaroni,” he assured Mr. Preemby, “it is necessary to -fill the mouth absolutely full, good measure, pressed in and running -over. To cut up macaroni with your fork as you are doing, is as awful -as to cut an oyster. It--it devitalizes it.” - -“I like it cut up,” said Mr. Preemby with unexpected firmness. And he -cut up some more. - -“Otherwise,” he said in a confidential aside to the silver-haired man, -“I can’t help thinking it’s earthworms.” - -“Exactly. Exactly,” said the silver-haired man. - -Harold exemplified generously. His rampant face riding over a -squirming mouthful of macaroni was like St. George and the Dragon on -an English sovereign. He whistled as he ate. Long snakes of macaroni -hung thoughtful for a moment and then, drawn by some incomprehensible -fascination, fled into him. Teddy Winterton and one of the new-comers -from the studio next door emulated him. Christina Alberta and Fay -showed the furtive dexterity of the female. But Mr. Preemby was glad -when macaroni was over, even though it raised the problem of eating an -egg on spinach with a fork. - -But he was not really troubled in his mind as a younger man might have -been. He had the _savoir-faire_ of middle-age. This restaurant dinner -was on the whole a bright and agreeable experience for him. He liked -even the corrosive taste of the Chianti. This Chianti you drank out -of quite largish tumblers because it was almost as cheap and light as -beer. It did not intoxicate, but it warmed the mind, and it cast a -pleasant and convincing indistinctness over the universe so that the -Tunbridges all became Tumbridges without any question, and the secret -dreams and convictions of the heart became certain knowledge. Presently -Mr. Preemby found himself able and willing to tell things and hint much -more important things about his collections to the white-haired man and -also to the dark, untidy girl who was sitting on his other side, and -who came from the other studio and about whose name he had no idea, and -presently to others; and when the bird came--it was a bird new to Mr. -Preemby, and called, he gathered, _rabbkey_ or _turkit_--most of the -party was talking in the loud, confused, explosive way these young -people affected about the lost _Atlantis_. - -He had never spoken so freely before upon this topic. At home he had -always been restrained by the late Mrs. Preemby’s genuine lack of -interest. And even now he was not prepared for positive statements -or for an encounter with sceptical arguments about that great lost -continent of the Golden Age. Atlantis had been the scene and substance -of his secret reveries for many years; he knew his knowledge of it was -of a different order from common knowledge, more intuitive, mystical, -profound. From the outset his manner was defensive, discreet and -obscure, as of one willing but not permitted to speak. - -How did he know that there had been this lost continent? - -“H’rrmp,” he said with the faint smile of peculiar knowledge; “studied -it for years.” - -“What is the evidence?” asked the untidy young lady. - -“So abundant. Impossible to retail it. Convincing. Of various sorts. -Plato has much about it. Unfinished fragment. Many books have been -written. Many inscriptions in Egypt.” - -“What sort of people were they?” asked the untidy girl. - -“Very wonderful people, young lady,” said Mr. Preemby. “H’rrmp. Very -wonderful people.” - -“Philosophy, no end I suppose?” asked the young man from the next -studio with his mouth full. - -“What we know--a mere remnant,” said Mr. Preemby. “Mere remnant.” - -“How did they dress?” - -“H’rrmp. Robes. White robes--extremely dignified. Blue--azure--when -justice was administered. Plato tells us that much.” - -“Could they fly?” - -“They understood it. It was not made a practice of.” - -“Motor cars? All that sort of thing?” - -“If they wanted to. There was less motoring--more meditation. We -live--age of transition. H’rrmp.” - -“And then it all went phut?” said the young man from the next studio. -“Submerged and all that. What a lesson!” - -“That need not have happened,” said Mr. Preemby darkly. - -Mr. Preemby became dimly aware of scepticism. “There’s not an atom of -evidence that there ever was a continent in the Atlantic,” Mr. Teddy -Winterton was saying to Christina Alberta; “within thirty million years -of anything human. The ocean troughs go right back to the Mesozoic age.” - -Mr. Preemby would have noticed this remark but the untidy girl asked -him suddenly if he did not think that the swastika was a symbol derived -from Atlantis. He said he was quite certain it was. She asked what it -meant exactly; she had always been curious about its significance: -and he became guarded and mysterious. She wanted moreover to know -things about the costume of that lost world, about its social customs, -about its religion. Were women citizens? She was certainly the most -intelligent about it of all the company. The silver-haired man seemed -to be faintly amused. - -The rest of the company wandered off into a discussion of the -possibility of going to the Chelsea Arts Ball in the character of -a party from the Lost Atlantis. Many of their ideas Mr. Preemby -thought trivial and undignified. “Leaves us unlimited scope,” said -Harold Crumb. “We could invent weapons--have wings if we liked. Magic -carbuncles on our shields--illuminated. Mysterious books and tablets. -And a sort of peculiar wailing, drumming music; Mya, mya, mya.” - -He pursed up his face and made a curious mooing noise with it to convey -his intention, twiddling his fingers to assist the effect. - -It was no good protesting against such imaginative ignorance. But to -the dark, untidy girl and to the acquiescent man with silvery hair Mr. -Preemby continued to be quietly oracular and communicative from behind -his moustache. - -“But how are these things known?” the dark girl persisted. “There is -nothing in the British Museum.” - -“You forget,” said Mr. Preemby. “H’rrmp, the Freemasons. There are -Inner Groups--traditions. Thank you. Just half a glass more. Oh! you’ve -filled it! Thank you.” - -As he talked he was aware of something going on between Christina -Alberta and Winterton. At first it seemed not to matter in the -slightest degree, but to be just part of the general unusualness of the -gathering, and then it seemed to matter a great deal. He saw Christina -Alberta’s little fist resting on the table, and suddenly Winterton’s -hand enveloped it. She snatched her hand away. Then something was -whispered and her hand came back. In another moment the hands were five -inches apart and it was as if nothing had ever happened between them. - -He would probably have forgotten the momentary invasion of his -attention by Christina Alberta if something else had not occurred -at the phase of dessert. Poppinetti’s idea of dessert was a sort -of lottery of walnuts--if you found a sound one you won--masses of -compressed and damaged dates and a few defiant apples. There was a -great crackling. The company was littering the table with walnut -shells, and the green, black and yellow corruption they had contained, -when this second incident caught Mr. Preemby’s eye. He saw Teddy -Winterton run his hand very softly along Christina Alberta’s forearm. -And her arm was not withdrawn. - -Every one was talking just then and for a moment it seemed -to Mr. Preemby that he alone had seen, and then he caught an -observant expression on the face of the silver-haired man. It was -all very confusing, and this Chianti--though it was really not -intoxicating--made everything swimmy, but Mr. Preemby knew somehow -that the silver-haired man had also seen that furtive familiarity, and -that he too didn’t quite approve of it. - -Ought one to take notice? Ought one to say anything? Perhaps -afterwards. Perhaps when they were alone together, he might ask her -quietly, “Are you and that young man Winterton engaged?” - -“A bit too much,” said Mr. Preemby quietly, meeting the eye of the -silver-haired man. “I don’t like that sort of thing.” - -“Quite,” said the silver-haired man. - -“I shall speak to her.” - -“You’re right there,” said the silver-haired man warmly. A very -sensible fellow. - -A great rustle and a scraping of chairs. Poppinetti, figuring upon an -accounts-pad, came to collect the money. “I’ll pay for us, Daddy,” said -Christina Alberta, “and we’ll settle up afterwards.” - -Poppinetti bowing. Poppinetti on Mr. Preemby’s right and on Mr. -Preemby’s left; several Poppinettis bowing. A great activity of -Poppinettis handing hats and so forth. Poppinettis whichever way -you turned. The restaurant rotating slightly. Was this Chianti -perhaps stronger than Mr. Preemby had been led to believe? A number -of Poppinettis opening a number of doors and saying polite things. -Difficult to choose a door. Right the first time. Out into the street. -People going by. Taxis. No more Poppinettis. But a girl ought not to -let a young man stroke her arm at dinner, when anyone might see it -happen. It wasn’t correct. Something had to be said. Something tactful. - -Mr. Preemby became aware that he was walking next to Mrs. Crumb. “It -was lovely to hear you talking about the New Atlantis,” she said. “I -wish I had been sitting nearer.” - -“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby. - -Something very nice about Mrs. Crumb. What was it? Not so _fearfully_ -married, but married quite enough. - - -§ 6 - -Mr. Preemby thought they were going back for coffee and a little talk -and then bed; he had no idea of the immense amount of evening still -before him. He knew nothing as yet of the capacity for sitting up late -and getting lively in the small hours possessed by this new world of -young people into which Christina Alberta had led him. - -And in a sort of hectic discontinuous way they were lively for hours. -It became vaguely evident to Mr. Preemby that there was a periodic -“day” set apart by Mrs. Crumb for evening gatherings in the studio, -and that this evening he had chosen for his settling down was such -an evening. Fresh people dropped in. One it seemed was a portentous -arrival, he came in quite soon after the return from Poppinetti’s; he -was very fat and broad, a white-faced man of forty or so, rather short -of breath, with exceedingly intelligent eyes under a broad forehead and -a rather loose, peevish mouth. He carried himself with the involuntary -self-consciousness of a man who thinks he is pointed out. His name -it seemed was Paul Lambone, and he had written all sorts of things. -Everybody treated him with a faint deference. He greeted Christina -Alberta with great warmth. - -“How’s the newest Van?” he said, shaking her hand as though he liked -it, and speaking with a singularly small voice for so ample a person. -“How’s the last step in Advance?” - -“You’ve got to meet my father,” said Christina Alberta. - -“Has it got a father? I thought it just growed like Topsy--out of -Nietzsche and Bernard Shaw and all the rest of them.” - -“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby. - -Mr. Lambone turned to him. “What a Handful a daughter is!” he said, and -bowed slightly towards Christina Alberta, “even the best of them.” - -Mr. Preemby replied after the manner of the parents in Woodford Wells. -“She’s a good daughter to me, sir.” - -“Yes, but they aren’t like sons.” - -“You have sons, sir, I presume.” - -“Only dream children. I’ve not had your courage to realize things. I’ve -married a hundred times in theory and here I am just a sort of bachelor -uncle to everybody. Poking in among the younger people and observing -their behaviour with”--his intelligent eyes looked quietly over his -garrulous mouth at Christina Alberta--“terror and admiration.” - -Two other visitors appeared in the doorway and Mr. Lambone turned -from Mr. Preemby to greet them as soon as Fay had done her welcome, -a fierce-looking young man with an immense head of black hair and a -little lady like a china doll dressed to remind one of Watteau. - -Conversation became general and Mr. Preemby receded into the background -of events. - -He found himself side by side with his friend with the silver hair, -against his bookcase. “I didn’t expect a party,” he said. - -“I thought so too.” - -“I only got here this afternoon. The vans came late and lots of my -things are still to be unpacked.” - -The silver-haired man nodded sympathetically. “Often the case,” he -murmured. - -Every one was talking loudly. It was difficult to hear. It was confused -sort of talking, and whenever two or three seemed to be interested in -what they were saying, Fay Crumb went and interrupted them as a good -hostess should. Other people, only vaguely apprehended by Mr. Preemby, -got into the studio somehow. There was a red-haired young lady with a -tremendous decolletage; behind you could see almost to her waist. He -h’rrmp’d at it and thought of saying something about it, something cold -and quiet, to the silver-haired man. But he didn’t. He couldn’t think -of anything sufficiently cold and quiet to say. - -Fay Crumb came and asked whether he would like some whisky or beer. -“Not on the top of that nice Chianti, thank you,” said Mr. Preemby. - -The conversation seemed to get noisier and noisier. In one corner -Harold Crumb could be heard quoting the poems of Vachel Lindsay. Then -Mr. Lambone came up and seemed to want to talk about the Lost Atlantis, -but Mr. Preemby was shy of talking about the Lost Atlantis with Mr. -Lambone. “Getting on all right, Daddy?” said Christina Alberta, -drifting by and not waiting for any answer but an “h’rrmp.” - -There appeared three young people with a gramophone they explained they -had just bought, and Fay discovered that the beer had been forgotten -and sent Harold out to borrow some from a neighbour. These new-comers -made no very profound impression on Mr. Preemby’s now jaded mind, -except that one of them, the owner of the gramophone, a very fair young -man with a long, intelligent nose, was wearing the big horn of the -gramophone as a headdress, and that he meant to have that gramophone -going whatever else might occur. - -The music was dance-music, jazz for the most part and a few waltzes, -and it revived Mr. Preemby considerably. He sat up and beat time with -the leg-bones of a roc, and presently two or three couples were dancing -on the studio floor. Curious dancing, Mr. Preemby thought; almost -like walking--jiggety walking with sudden terrific back-swipes of the -legs. There was an interruption when Harold returned with the borrowed -beer--bringing its lenders with it. Then there was a general clamour -for Christina Alberta and Teddy to “do” their dance. Teddy was quite -willing but Christina Alberta seemed reluctant, and when Mr. Preemby -saw the dance he was not surprised. - -“H’rrmp,” he said, and stroked his moustache and looked at the -silver-haired man. - -It really was too familiar altogether; for some moments the principals -vanished upstairs, and came back altered. For some reason Teddy had -adopted a cloth cap and a red neck-wrap; he was, in fact, being an -Apache, and the bearing of Christina Alberta had become very proud and -spirited with her arms akimbo. - -Every one backed against the walls to clear a dancing floor. At the -beginning it wasn’t so bad. But presently this Mr. Teddy was pitching -Christina Alberta about, throwing her over his shoulder, taking hold -of her, bending her backward, holding her almost upside down, both -legs in the air and her hands dragging on the ground. And she was red -and excited and seemed to like these violent familiarities. There was -a kind of undesirable suitability between them for such purposes. She -and Teddy looked into each other’s eyes with a sort of intimacy and yet -with a sort of fierce defiance. At one point in the extraordinary dance -she had to smack his face, a good hard smack, nicely timed. She did it -with a spirit that made every one applaud. Whereupon he smiled and took -her nice little neck in his hands and strangled her with great realism. - -Then the gramophone had its death rattle and the dance was over. - -Mr. Preemby’s throat had not troubled him much since dinner, but now he -said “h’rrmp” repeatedly. - -They wanted Christina Alberta, bright and panting and shock-headed, to -repeat the performance, but she wouldn’t. She had had a glimpse of the -solemn dismay and perplexity upon her Daddy’s face. - -The people from the studio next door were the next to give a display: -they obliged with an imitation of a Russian imitation of a peasant -dance from Saratoff. There was a gramophone record that was not quite -the proper music, but it would do. That dance really amused Mr. -Preemby. The young man went down quite close to the floor and kicked -out his feet with the greatest agility and the girl was as wooden as -a doll. Every one clapped hands in time to the music, and so did Mr. -Preemby. - -And then came a further irruption. Five people in fancy dress demanding -beer. They impressed Mr. Preemby as strange and bright-coloured, but -totally uninteresting. One wore a red coxcomb and was dressed as a -jester in cap and bells. The others just wore tights and bright things -that signified nothing at all. They had been at some party given by -somebody or other for the “Young people.” They announced with shouts, -“They shut down at midnight. Yes, they shut down at midnight. When the -young people go to bed.” - -It was only too manifest that No. 8 Lonsdale Mews meant to do nothing -of the sort. - -Beer. Mr. Preemby declined. The last of the beer. Cigarettes. Much -smoke. The last of the whisky. More gramophone, more dancing and Harold -Crumb’s voice loose again in recitation. Beer or whisky had thickened -it. But there were countervailing noises. Movement. A circle was -cleared. Not more dancing! No. Feats of strength and dexterity with -chairs, performed chiefly by Teddy Winterton, the gramophone owner, and -Harold. This stunting stopped presently and the company flowed back -towards the middle of the room. Talk Mr. Preemby could not follow; -phrases he could not understand. Nobody taking the slightest notice of -him. - -A sense of weariness and futility and desolation came upon him. How -differently were the evenings of the past spent by the good wise people -of the lost Atlantis! Philosophical discourse they had, the lute, the -lyre. Elevated thoughts. - -He caught sight of Mrs. Crumb yawning furtively. Suddenly, stupendously -he yawned. And yawned again. - -“Yaaw,” he said to Paul Lambone who was at his side. - -“Proyawaw--Prolly thiswe sitting on my beawawd.” - -“You live here?” said Mr. Lambone. - -“Come to-day. Christina Albyawawawter arranged it.” - -“The devil she did!” said Mr. Lambone, and looked across the studio at -her. For some moments he seemed lost in thought. - -“Very remarkable young woman that daughter of yours,” he said. “Makes -me feel old-fashioned.” - -He looked at the wrist-watch he wore, “Half-past one,” he said. “I’ll -start the Go....” - - -§ 7 - -Mr. Preemby heard a few sentences of the parting between Teddy -Winterton and Christina Alberta. “Yes or no?” said Teddy. - -“_No_,” said Christina Alberta with emphasis. - -“Not a bit of it,” said Teddy. - -“I don’t want to,” she said. - -“But you _do_.” - -“Oh, go to the devil!” - -“Not as if there were risks.” - -“I shan’t come. It’s preposterous.” - -“I shall wait all the same.” - -“You may wait.” - -“Little Chrissy Hesitation. Anything to please you.” - - -§ 8 - -It took until past two o’clock for the Go Paul Lambone had started to -remove the last of the company. - -“All hands to the bedmaking,” cried Fay. “It isn’t always like this, -Mr. Preemby.” - -“Confess I feel tired,” said Mr. Preemby. “Had a long day of it.” - -Christina Alberta regarded him with belated compunction. “It just -happened like this,” she said. - -“Not used to such late hours,” said Mr. Preemby, sitting on his bed -when at last it was made, and he did a yawn that almost dislocated his -jaw. - -“Night,” said Fay, yawning also. - -“We’ll turn in,” said Harold. “So long, Mr. Preemby.” The yawning -seized upon Harold also. What a face he had! - -“Goo-i.” - -“Gawooi-i.” - -The door closed upon them. - -There was much to say to Christina Alberta, but it was too late and Mr. -Preemby was too weary to say it now And also he had no idea what it was -he ought to say. - -A casual remark fell out, “I liked that man with the white hair,” he -said. - -“Did you?” said Christina Alberta absently. - -“He was intelligent. He took a great interest in the Lost Atlantis.” - -“He’s stone deaf,” said Christina Alberta, “and he’s ashamed of -it--poor dear.” - -“Oh!” said Mr. Preemby. - -“All this is going to be rather noisy for you, Daddy,” she said, coming -to what she had in mind. - -“It _is_ a bit ramshackle,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“We ought to go to Tunbridge Wells quite soon and look round there.” - -“To-morrow,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“Not to-morrow.” - -“Why not?” - -“The next day,” said Christina Alberta. “I’m not quite sure about -to-morrow. I’d sort of half promised to go somewhere else--. But it -doesn’t matter very much really.” - -“I’d like to go to Tumbridge Wells to-morrow,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“Why not?” said Christina Alberta as if to herself, and hesitated. - -Se walked to the door and came back. “Good night, little Daddy,” she -said. - -“Are we going then? To-morrow?” - -“No.... Yes.... I don’t know. I _had_ planned to do something -to-morrow. Important in a kind of way.... We’ll go to-morrow, Daddy.” - -She walked away from him with her arms akimbo and stared at those queer -pictures. - -She spun round on her feet. “I can’t go to-morrow,” she said. - -“Yes, I will,” she contradicted. - -“Oh, hell!” she cried, in a most unaccountable and unladylike way. “I -don’t know what to _do_!” - -Mr. Preemby looked at her with grave and weary eyes. This was a new -Christina Alberta to him. She ought not to swear. She did _not_ ought -to swear. She’d caught it up from these people. She didn’t know what it -meant. He must talk to her--to-morrow. About that and one or two other -things. But Heavens! how tired he was! - -“You--” He yawned. “You must take care of yourself, Christina Alberta,” -he said. - -“I’ll do that all right, Daddy. Trust me.” - -She came and sat down beside him on his little half-fictitious bed. “We -can’t decide to-night, Daddy. We’re too tired. We’ll settle to-morrow. -Have to see what the weather’s like for one thing. Wouldn’t do to -walk about Tunbridge if it was wet. We’ll decide about everything -to-morrow--when our heads are cool. Why! you dear little Daddy! It’s -just upon half-past two.” - -She put her arm round his shoulders and kissed him on the top of his -head and the lobe of his ear. He loved her to touch him and kiss him. -He did not understand in the least how much he loved her to kiss him. - -“Dear _tired_ little Daddy,” she said in her softest voice: “You are -ever so kind to me. Good night.” - -She had gone. - -For some time Mr. Preemby sat quite motionless in a state of almost -immobile thought. - -The floor of the studio was littered with burnt matches and cigarette -ends and the air smelt of stale smoke and beer. On the blue-painted -table stood an empty beer-bottle and two or three glasses containing -dregs of beer and cigarette ash. - -It was all very different from Woodford Wells,--very different indeed. - -But it was Experience. - -Mr. Preemby bestirred himself to undress. - -That night-shirt of Saxony flannel had still to be unpacked. - - -§ 9 - -In the morning Christina Alberta was still restless and quite undecided -about going to Tunbridge Wells, though the weather was perfectly fine. -About half-past eleven she disappeared, and after a light lunch with -Fay--Harold was out also--it became evident to Mr. Preemby that the -visit to Tunbridge Wells was postponed for the day. So he went to -South Kensington to look at the Museums there. He did not go into them -actually, he just looked at them and at the colleges and buildings -generally. It was a preliminary reconnaissance. - -The Museums were quite good to look at. Larger, more extensive, than -the British Museum. Probably they contained--all sorts of things. - -Christina Alberta reappeared in the studio about half-past six -looking very bright and exalted. There was something about her subtly -triumphant. - -She offered no explanation of her disappearance. She was full of the -visit to Tunbridge on the morrow. They must catch a train soon after -nine and have a good long day. She was unusually affectionate to her -Daddy. - -Harold was out for the evening and Fay had some reviewing to do, so -they had quite a quiet and domestic evening. Mr. Preemby read with a -varying attention a nice deep confusing book he had found in the room -upstairs called _Fantasia of the Unconscious_ about the Lost Atlantis -and similar things. - - - - -CHAPTER THE FOURTH - -_The Petunia Boarding House_ - - -§ 1 - -Most places in the world have sister cities and twins and parallels, -but Tunbridge Wells is Tunbridge Wells, and there is nothing really -like it upon our planet. Not that it is in any way strange or -fantastic, but because of its brightly delicate distinction. It is -clean and open, and just pleasantly absurd. It is not more than -thirty miles from London, as the crow flies, but the North Downs six -miles away dismiss with a serene and gracious gesture all thoughts of -London from the mind. It is away from the main line out of London, -inconvenient for season-ticket holders; there is no direct route for -the hurrying motorist over those saving Downs; to Dover and Kent -generally he goes to the east of it, and to Brighton he goes to the -west--if he survive the hills of Westerham and Sevenoaks. Rich men’s -estates encircle it with accessible parks. Eridge, Bayham, Penshurst -Park, Knole and the like protect it from overmuch breeding of little -villa residences. There it lies, on a rare piece of rocky soil, dry -underfoot, airy and wholesome, with its friendly Common in the midst of -it; its Spa of evil-tasting beneficent waters as the Stuart princesses -drank them, its Pantiles and its Pump Room, much as Dr. Johnson knew -the place. Mount Sion and Mount Ephraim, Beulah Road and something -evangelical in the air, remind the light-minded visitor that London in -the past was a Puritan city. Many a serious liver has been touched -and found grace at Tunbridge Wells. Many a light liver has found fresh -strength there. And thither came Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta -seeking a boarding house--and they could have sought it in no more -favourable locality. - -They set about the search in a systematic way as became a couple, one -of whom had been partially trained for sociological research at the -London School of Economics and partially trained for business at the -Tomlinson School. Mr. Preemby had been for beginning with a general -look-round, just walking round and looking quietly at things for a bit, -but Christina Alberta consulted all the agents in order, and bought -a map and guide to the town and sat down on a seat on the Common and -planned the operations that led quite readily and easily to the Petunia -Boarding House. - -In the guide Mr. Preemby read with approval some very promising words. -“Listen to this, my dear,” he said. “H’rrmp. ‘General Characteristics. -Emphasis might very well be laid on the character enjoyed by Tunbridge -Wells as a magnet for high-class residents and visitors. The town is -never overrun with trippers, nor are its streets ever defiled by the -vulgar or the inane. Its inhabitants are composed, for the most part, -of well-to-do people who naturally create a social atmosphere tinged by -culture and refinement.’” - -“_Tinged_ is a jolly good word for it, I expect,” said Christina -Alberta. - -“I think my instinct has guided me aright to this place,” said Mr. -Preemby. - -The Petunia Boarding House looks obliquely upon the Common from where -Petunia Road runs into the quaint and pleasant High Street. It has -not the towering magnificence of the Wellington, the Royal Mount -Ephraim, the Marlborough, or their fellows, which face the sun so -bravely from the hill-crest above the Common, but it is a house of -dignified comfort. The steps, the portico, the ample hall, the name in -letters of gold on black, made Mr. Preemby say h’rrmp several times. -An excessively chubby maid in a very, very tight black dress and a cap -and apron, came and looked at Mr. and Miss Preemby with a distraught -evasive expression, answered some preliminary questions incoherently, -and said she would call Miss Emily Rewster--Miss Margaret was out. -Thereupon Miss Emily Rewster, who had been hovering attentively behind -a bead curtain, thrust it aside and came ingratiatingly into the -foreground. She was a little high-coloured old lady, with an air of -genteel _savoir-faire_; she had a lace cap and wore a great deal of -lace and several flounces, and she had the most frankly dyed chestnut -hair that Christina Alberta had ever seen. “Was it just for a week or -so Mr. Preemby wanted to come, or something--perheps--more permanent?” - -Explanations were exchanged. Mr. Preemby was to be “more permanent”; -Christina Alberta intermittent--and rather a difficulty. The existence -of headquarters in Chelsea was revealed discreetly, but not the fact -that they were in a Mews. - -Miss Emily Rewster thought Christina Alberta could be fitted in if she -wasn’t too particular about having the same room, or exactly the same -sort of room every time she came. “We have to menage,” said Miss Emily -Rewster. - -“So long as the window opens,” said Christina Alberta. - -The rooms exhibited were very satisfactory, (h’rrmp) very satisfactory. -A glimpse of a bathroom was given. “You say when you want one,” said -Miss Emily Rewster. There was a dining-room with separate tables, and -there were flowers on every table, very refined and pleasant, and there -was a large drawing-room with a piano and a great number of arm-chairs -and sofas wearing flounces so like the flounces of Miss Emily Rewster, -and antimacassars so like her cap, and with so entirely her air of -accommodating receptiveness that it seemed as though they must be -at least her cousins who had joined her in the enterprise. The piano -wore a sort of lace bed-spread, and there were polished tables bearing -majolica pots of aspidistra on mats and little less serious tables for -use, and there was a low bookcase with books in it and a great heap -of illustrated papers on the top. The hall expanded at the back into -a rather modernish lounge where two ladies were having tea; and there -was also a smoking-room, where, said Miss Emily Rewster to Christina -Alberta rather coyly, “the gentlemen smoke.” - -“We’ve been very full this season,” said Miss Emily Rewster, “very -full. We’ve had nearly thirty sitting at dinner. But of course the -season is drawing in now. Just at present we’re down to nine at -breakfast and seven at dinner; two gentlemen in business here. But -people come and people go. I’ve had two inquiries by post to-day. One -an invalid lady and her sister. They think of drinking the waters. And -there are Birds of Passage as well as Regulars. Just for a night or -so. Motor families. They take us _en route_. That’s where we have an -advantage in being so close to the shops.” - -She beamed intimately at Mr. Preemby. “Often my sister or I pop out at -the last moment and get in things ourselves. When every one else is -busy. We don’t mind any little trouble if it makes people comfortable.” - -“We’ve been on the separate table system ever since the war,” said Miss -Emily Rewster. “So much more pleasant. You can keep yourself Quate to -yourself if you wish, or you can be Friendly. People often Speak in the -Drawing-room or in the Smoking-room. And they bow. Sometimes people get -Quate friendly. Play Games. Get up Excursions together. Quate Pleasant.” - -Christina Alberta asked an obvious question. - -“Very pleasant people indeed,” said Miss Emily. “Very pleasant people. -A retired gentleman and his wife and her stepdaughter and two retired -maiden ladies and a gentleman and his lady who has been in a forest in -Burmah and so on.” - -Christina Alberta restrained a ribald impulse to ask what a “retired -gentleman” or a “retired maiden lady” really meant. - -“I’ve always been attracted to Tumbridge Wells,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“_Royal_ Tunbridge Wells _if_ you please,” said Miss Emily radiantly. -“The ‘Royal’ was added in nineteen nine, you know, by gracious command -of his Majesty.” - -“I didn’t know,” said Mr. Preemby with profound respect, and tried it -over; “_Royal_ Tumbridge Wells.” - -“Makes it rather a mouthful,” said Christina Alberta. - -“A very pleasant mouthful for Us, I can assure you,” said Miss Emily -loyally. - -The Petunia Boarding House seemed so satisfactory to Mr. Preemby that -it was arranged that he should return the next day but one, bringing -with him some clothes and other luggage, and that Christina Alberta -was to come and stay with him for a few days--there was a little room -upstairs she could have--and then she would go back to London and her -studies and take her chance of coming again when there was a room for -her. - - -§ 2 - -In the train back to London Mr. Preemby rehearsed these arrangements -and made his plans. - -“I shall come down here the day after to-morrow, after I have put my -collections in order at the Mew. I shall put the best things so that -they can be seen through the glass of the cabinet, but I think I shall -lock them up, and I shall bring down a few necessary books, and then -when I have quite settled in I shall go and have a good look at these -celebrated Rocks here.” - -“We could come down in the morning,” said Christina Alberta, “and go -and look at them in the afternoon.” - -“Not the same afternoon,” said Mr. Preemby. “No. I want my mind to -be quite fresh and open when I look at the Rocks. I think it will be -best to see them quite early--after a night’s sleep. When there are no -other visitors. I think--I think, Christina Alberta, that for the first -time I’d better go to them quite alone. Without you. Sometimes you say -things, Christina Alberta--you don’t mean to say them of course--but -they put me out....” - -Christina Alberta reflected. “What do you expect to find at these -Rocks, Daddy?” - -Mr. Preemby waved his moustache and the rest of his face slowly from -side to side. “I go with an Open Mind,” he said. “Perhaps all of -Atlantis was not lost. Some of it may be hidden. There are legends -preserved by the philosopher Plato. Partly in cipher. Who knows? It may -be here. It may be in Africa. A plan. A sign. The toad rock must be -most singular. In the British Museum there is a toad rock from Central -America....” - -He mused pleasantly for a time. - -“I shall take a note-book,” he said, “and several coloured pencils.” - -He continued to meditate. His next remark came after an interval of -three or four minutes, and was a surprise for Christina Alberta. - -“I hope, my dear,” said Mr. Preemby, “that among all these artists and -people you are not getting Ram Shackle. - -“I should be sorry to think you were getting Ram Shackle,” said Mr. -Preemby. - -“But Daddy, what makes you think I may be getting--Ram Shackle?” asked -Christina Alberta. - -“One or two little things I saw at the Mew,” said Mr. Preemby. “Just -one or two little things. You’ve got to be careful, Christina Alberta. -A girl has to take care of herself. And your friends--decidedly Ram -Shackle. Don’t mind my making a remark about them, Christina Alberta. -Just a word in season.” - -Christina Alberta’s answer came after a little interval, and without -her usual confident ring. “Don’t you worry about me, Daddy,” she said. -“I’m all right.” - -Mr. Preemby seemed about to change the subject. Then he remarked, “I -don’t like that feller, Teddy Winterton. He’s too familiar.” - -“I don’t like him either,” said Christina Alberta. “He _is_ too -familiar.” - -“That’s all right,” said Mr. Preemby. “I thought you didn’t notice,” -and relapsed into meditation. - -But this sudden and unprecedented intervention in her personal affairs -made Christian Alberta thoughtful for all the rest of the way to -London. Ever and again she glanced furtively at her Daddy. - -He seemed to have forgotten her. - -But it was dreadfully true. Teddy Winterton had become--altogether--too -familiar. - - -§ 3 - -In all ages competent observers have noted the erratic unexpectedness -of destiny, and now Christina Alberta was to add her own small -experience to this ever accumulating testimony. It seemed to her that -in planting him out in the wholesome quiet of Royal Tunbridge Wells -she was securing for her Daddy the very best possible conditions for -a happy and harmless life. There had, indeed, been a notable change -in the little man since her mother’s death, a release of will, a new -freedom of expression, a disposition to comment and even form judgments -upon things about him. She had herself likened it to the germination -of a seed brought out of a suppressing aridity into moisture and the -light, but she had not followed up that comparison so far as to -speculate what efflorescences might arise out of this belated unfolding -of his initiatives. That here, of all places, he would meet just the -stimulus that was needed for the most fantastic expansions of his -imaginative life, that for him Tunbridge Wells should prove the way -out of this everyday world of ours into what was to be for him an -altogether more wonderful and satisfactory existence, never entered her -head. - -For three days, until a fretting urgency for events carried her back -to London, she stayed in the Petunia Boarding House, and for all those -three days there was no intimation of the great change in his mind -that impended. On the whole he seemed unusually dull and quiet during -those three days. He liked Tunbridge Wells very much, he said, but he -was greatly disappointed by the High Rocks and by the Toad Rock when -he came to examine them. He even doubted whether they were not “simply -natural.” This was a terrible concession. He tried hard to believe that -the Toad Rock was like one of the big Maya carvings of a toad from -Yucatan, a cast of which he had seen in the British Museum, but it was -evident that with all the will possible he could not manage so great -an act of faith. All the decoration, he declared, all the inscription -had been obliterated, and then, making the great blonde moustache -bristle like a clothes-brush: “There never were any decorations or -inscriptions. Never.” - -It was clear to Christina Alberta that he must have evolved very -extraordinary expectations, indeed, to be so much cast down. She found -herself very interested in the riddle of what was fermenting in his -mind. It seemed to her as if he had regarded Tunbridge Wells as a -sort of Poste Restante at which some letter of supreme importance had -awaited him. And there was no letter. - -“But what did you expect, little Daddy?” said Christina Alberta, when -on the afternoon of the first day he took her to the Toad Rock to see -for herself how ordinary and insignificant a rock it was. “Did you -expect some wonderful carvings?” - -“I expected--something for me. Something significant.” - -“For you?” - -“Yes, for me. And every one. About Life and the Mysteries. I had grown -a sort of feeling there would be something there. _Now_--I don’t know -where to turn.” - -“But what sort of thing, what significance did you expect?” - -“Isn’t Life a Riddle, Christina Alberta? Haven’t you noticed that? Do -you think it is just nothing but studios and dances and excursions and -char-à-bancs and meal-times and harvest?” he said. “Obviously there is -something more in it than that. Obviously. All that is just a Veil. -Outward Showing. H’rrmp. And I don’t know what is behind it, and I am -just a plain boarder--in a boarding house--and my life is passing away. -Very difficult. H’rrmp. Almost impossible. It worries me exceedingly. -Somewhere there must be a clue.” - -“But that’s how we _all_ feel, Daddy,” cried Christina Alberta. - -“Things can’t be what they seem,” said Mr. Preemby, waving his hand -with a gesture of contemptuous dismissal towards Rusthall Village, -public house, lamp-posts, a policeman, a dog, a grocer’s delivery van -and three passing automobiles. “That at any rate is obvious. It would -be too absurd. Infinite space; stars and so forth. Just for running -about in--between meals....” - -Now who would have thought, Christina Alberta reflected, that this sort -of thing was going on in his head? Who would have thought it? - -“Either I am a Reincarnation,” said Mr. Preemby, “or I am not. And if -I am not, then I want to know what all this business of the world is -about. Symbolical it _must_ be, Christina Alberta. But of what? - -“All those years at the Laundry I knew that that life wasn’t -real. A period of rest and preparation. Your dear mother thought -differently--we never discussed it, h’rrmp, but it was so.” - -Christina Alberta could find no adequate comment and they went on in -silence for some time. When they spoke again it was to discuss how they -could get round to the High Rocks Hotel for tea. - - -§ 4 - -Mr. Preemby was evidently depressed and more than a little aggrieved, -but he had none of the comprehensive despondency of your melancholic -type. Concurrently he was quite actively interested in the boarding -house, and the fellow boarders he encountered there. It was a novel -experience for him to be in a boarding house. During his married -life he had always spent his holidays with Mrs. Preemby in seaside -apartments, so that she could supervise the provisioning properly, and -detect, expose and rectify errors and extortion. They had taken drives -inland during these vacations, or camped on the beach while Mr. Preemby -and Christina Alberta had made sandcastles or pottered among rocks, and -Mrs. Preemby had sat in a folding-chair and pined for the Laundry. If -the weather was bad they kept in their apartments, where Mr. Preemby -and Christina Alberta could read books while Mrs. Preemby could pine -for the Laundry almost as well as she could on the beach. But deep -in Mr. Preemby’s heart there had always been a craving for such a -collective, promiscuous life as a boarding house affords. - -They had made the acquaintance of the second Miss Rewster, Miss -Margaret Rewster, on their arrival with the luggage. She was a taller, -more anxious and less richly belaced variation of her sister. They -both, Mr. Preemby discovered, had a peculiar hovering quality. They -seemed always hovering behind bead curtains or down passages, or -looking over from staircase landings or peeping round doors; poor -dears! they were dreadfully anxious not to interfere with their guests, -but they were equally anxious that everything should be all right. At -meal-times they operated with the joints and dishes behind a screen, -and the chubby maid carried round the plates and vegetables. And -whenever Mr. Preemby looked at the screen he found either Miss Margaret -Rewster peeping over the top of it at him or Miss Emily Rewster peeping -round the end. It made him quite nervous with his forks and spoons. -When he dropped his serviette he hoped that would pass unobserved, but -Miss Emily noted it at once and sent the chubby maid to pick it up for -him. - -Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta came down to dinner as soon as Miss -Margaret had sounded the second gong, and so they were the first to be -seated and could survey their fellow-guests at an advantage. Christina -Alberta was quietly observant, but Mr. Preemby said “h’rrmp” at each -fresh arrival. The next to appear were two Birds of Passage, a young -man in Hudibrastic golfing knickerbockers, and a lady, presumably his -wife, in a bright yellow sporting jumper, who were motoring about Kent; -they made strenuous attempts to seize a table in the window which was -already reserved for Petunia Regulars and were subdued with difficulty, -but perfect dignity, by Miss Emily. They then consulted loudly about -wine--the young man called the lady “Old Thing,” and “Old Top,” forms -of expression new and interesting to Mr. Preemby, and she called him -“Badger”--and the chubby maid produced a card of wines that could be -sent out for. The young man read out the names and prices of wines and -made his selection almost as though he were a curate officiating in a -very large cathedral. His wife, to follow out that comparison, made the -responses. “Chablis such as we should get here might be too sweet,” he -proclaimed. - -“It might be too sweet?” - -“What of a Pommard, Old Top?” - -“Why _not_ a Pommard, Badger?” - -“The Beaune is a shilling cheaper and just as likely to be good--or -bad.” - -“Just as likely.” - -The chubby maid flew out of the room, list in hand, with her thumb on -the wine he had chosen. - -Meanwhile under cover of this hubbub the two ladies Mr. Preemby -had seen at tea in the lounge on the occasion of his first visit, -percolated unobtrusively to a table near the window. They were -obviously sisters, both rather slender and tall with small, round, -bright-coloured faces on stalk-like necks; they had sharp little noses, -and one of them wore tortoiseshell spectacles. A gentleman with a white -moustache, larger and nobler even than Mr. Preemby’s, accompanied by a -small alert-looking wife, was the next to appear. Possibly this was the -gentleman who had been in a forest in Burmah. The small alert-looking -wife bowed to the slender ladies, who became agitated like reeds in a -wind. The gentleman took no notice of them, grunted as he sat down, -produced glasses and read the menu. - -“Tomato soup _again_!” he said. - -“It’s usually very nice tomato soup,” said his wife. - -“But Three Times Running!” he said. “It favours acidity. I don’t _like_ -tomato soup.” - -The table in the bow window was occupied by three people who drifted -in separately. First came a little, thin, dark lady in grey, carrying -a bead work-bag, then a little dark, bald man with large side-whiskers -whom she addressed as father, and then a plump, healthy-looking wife -with a radiant manner who swept in and distributed greetings. - -“Did you get your walk, Major Bone?” she said to the gentleman from the -Burmese forest. - -“Just to Rusthall Common and back,” said Major Bone, speaking thickly -through his moustache and soup. “Just to Rusthall Common.” - -“And you got a char-à-banc to Crohamhurst, Miss Solbé?” The two sisters -answered in unison. “Oh! we had a _lovely_ ride.” - -“So picturesque,” said the one with spectacles. - -“So open and pleasant,” said the one without spectacles. - -“Did you see the sea?” - -“Oh, plainly!” said the one with spectacles. - -“Ever so far away,” said the one without. - -“Just as if the sky had a steel edge,” said the one with spectacles. - -“Exactly like a leetle silver line,” said the one without. - -“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby. - -Small portions of fish followed the tomato soup, and were consumed -in comparative silence. There was a little burst of scarcely audible -conversation at the window table. - -“Now is _this_ the same fish as we had yesterday?” asked the wife. - -“It is a very similar fish,” said the gentleman with whiskers. - -“The menu simply says, ‘Fish,’” said the stepdaughter. - -“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“I think our back tyres were too tight to-day, Old Top,” said the -man in plus fours, in a very loud, clear voice. “I felt the road -dreadfully.” - -“I felt the road dreadfully,” said the lady in the yellow jumper. - -“I must let them down a little to-morrow morning.” - -“It would be better.” - -“To-morrow morning will do. I won’t trouble to-night.” - -“Much better to-morrow morning, Badger. You’re tired to-night after all -that bumping. You’d make your hands dirty.” - -Silence and active business with knives and forks. - -“Porruck hasn’t written about that,” said the Major from the forest. - -“Very likely he’s busy,” said his wife. - -Silence. - -“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby. - -Christina Alberta searched her mind for some conversational opening -that would give her father a reasonable opportunity to make an -acceptable reply, but she could think of nothing that was neither -too disconcerting nor too dangerous. She met his eye and he had the -expression of one who holds out against a strain. - -Fish gave place to lamb. - -“I thought that road from Sittingbourne was just awful,” said the -motoring gentleman. - -“It was _just_ awful,” responded his wife. - -Christina Alberta saw her father’s face working. He was going to say -something. “H’rrmp. To-morrow, if it is fine, I think we will go for a -walk in the morning.” - -The knives and forks were hushed. Everybody was listening. - -“I’d love a walk to-morrow, Daddy,” said Christina Alberta. “I should -think there were some jolly walks about this place.” - -“Exactly,” said Mr. Preemby. “Very probably. The Guide Book is very -reassuring. H’rrmp.” - -He had the dignified expression of a man who has carried off a -difficult duty. - -Resumption of activity with knives and forks. - -“Hard to tell this lamb from mutton,” said Major Bone, “if it wasn’t -for the mint sauce.” - -“Peas are never so nice as they are from your own garden,” said the -wife of the whiskered gentleman to her stepdaughter. - -“It’s late for peas,” said the stepdaughter. - -The two Miss Solbés and the motoring gentleman began talking at the -same time. Mrs. Bone expressed the idea that it was hard to get good -lamb nowadays. Taking courage from this sudden swirl of conversation -Mr. Preemby was emboldened to remark to Christina Alberta that he had -always been attracted to Tumbridge Wells. He felt the air was a strong -air. It gave him an appetite. - -“You must be careful not to get fat,” said Christina Alberta. - -The outburst of active human exchanges came to an end. Baked apple and -custard were consumed in comparative silence. The chubby maid came to -ask Mr. Preemby whether he would like his coffee in the lounge or the -smoking-room. “The lounge I think,” said Mr. Preemby. “H’rrmp. The -lounge.” - -The Misses Solbé, bearing glasses containing sugar and lemon juice, -flitted from the room. The people from the window table followed. -The function of dinner was completed. They found themselves alone -in the lounge. Most of the people seemed to have drifted into the -sitting-room. The gentleman from the forests of Burmah went by towards -the smoking-room, carrying a large cigar which had an air of also -coming from the forests of Burmah. It did not look like a cigar that -had been rolled or filled; it looked like a cigar of old gnarled wood -that had been hewn from a branching tree. A straw came out of the end -of it.... - -Christina Alberta stood and contemplated a vast void of time, two hours -it might be, before she could decently go to bed. “Oh! this is the -Life!” she said. - -“Extremely comfortable,” said Mr. Preemby, sitting down with much -creaking in a basket arm-chair. - -Christina Alberta sat on a glass-topped table and lit a cigarette. She -saw those two hours stretching before her, and she wanted to scream. - -The chubby maid brought coffee and seemed gently surprised at Christina -Alberta’s cigarette. Whisperings off stage. Then Miss Emily became -dimly visible through the bead curtain at the end of the passage, -hovering. She vanished again and Christina Alberta finished her -cigarette in peace. Mr. Preemby drank up his coffee. Pause. Christina -Alberta swung her legs rhythmically. Then she slid off the table to her -feet. - -“Daddy,” she said, “let’s go into the sitting-room and see if anything -is happening there.” - - -§ 5 - -In the Boarding Houses of the past the common dining-table was the -social centre where people met and mind clashed upon and polished mind. -But the spirit of aloofness, the separate table system, has changed -all that, and now it is in the smoking-room or the sitting-room that -the vestiges of social intercourse, advances, retreats, coquettings, -exchanges, games and jests are to be found. But the company of the -Petunia Boarding House was not in a state of social fusion. The only -coalescence was a conversation. The wife of the gentleman from the -Burmese forests had secured an arm-chair by the side of the fire-place, -and she was describing in a low whisper the numerous servants she -had had in Burmah, to the cheerful wife and the younger Miss Solbé -who was knitting. The Miss Solbé with the spectacles had fortified -herself behind a table on the other side of the fire and was engaged -meticulously with a very elaborate Patience. The gentleman with the -side-whiskers sat rigidly on one of the sofas, behind a copy of the -_Times_, while his daughter sat at a table close at hand and also -threaded her way through a Patience. The Birds of Passage, after -inquiries about movies and music-halls, had gone out. - -Nobody took the slightest notice of Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta. -The two stood for some moments in the middle of the room, and then -panic came upon Mr. Preemby. A dishonourable panic so that he threw his -daughter to these silent, motionless wolves. - -“H’rrmp,” he said. “I think my dear, I will go to the smoking-room. -I think I will go and smoke. There are some illustrated papers over -there on the bookcase for you if you care to look at them.” - -Christina Alberta walked over to the low bookcase and Mr. Preemby -departed, h’rrmping. - -She stood pretending an interest in the illustrated jokes and in -the portraits of actresses and society people in the _Sketch_ and -_Tatler_. Out of the tail of her eye she surveyed those fellow-guests -of hers, and with a negligent ear she collected the gist of Mrs. Bone’s -dissertation upon the servant question in Burmah. “They will plant the -whole family upon you if they can--uncles and cousins even. Before you -know where you are.... - -“Of course a white woman is a Little Queen out there.... - -“The chief fault of the cooking from my point of view, was the way it -upset Major Bone. His stomach ... far more delicate than a woman’s.” - -“He looks so stout and strong,” said Miss Solbé. - -“In everything but that. In everything. But the Curries they used to -make----” - -She sank her voice, and the heads of the younger Miss Solbé and the -pleasant mannered lady closed in upon her for the rich particulars. - -What a Lot they were! Christina Alberta reflected. And they were -living beings! The astonishing thing to Christina Alberta was that -they were alive. And being alive and having presumably been a cause -of considerable trouble, distress, emotion and hope to various people -before they were got alive, they were now all in the most resolute way -avoiding anything that with the extremest stretch of civility could -be spoken of as living. Their hours, their days were passing; a few -thousand days more perhaps for each of them, a few score thousand -hours. Then there would be no more chance of living for ever. And -instead of filling up this scanty allowance of hours and days with -every possible sensation and every possible effort and accomplishment, -here they were, gathered into a sort of magic box of atmosphere in -which nothing could possibly be done. By anyone.... - -Christina Alberta felt like a moth caught under a glass. Well, for a -day or so, she had an excuse, little Daddy must be settled. But then? -Nothing could be done here. Neither joy nor sorrow nor sin nor creative -effort--because even Miss Solbé’s knitting was being knitted to a -prescription on a dirty cutting of printed paper. Everything they were -employed upon was an evasion, everything. Even the whispered delicate -hints of the diuretic, dyspeptic, infuriating and wildly aphrodisiac -effects of Burmah Curry upon Major Bone in his younger days that were -being handed out by his good lady to her intent hearers, were just a -substitution of second-hand knowledge for realities. - -And this Patience! Would she, Christina Alberta asked herself, would -she ever come to play Patiences in Boarding Houses? Was it credible -that some day she also would come to sit voluntarily in such an -atmosphere? - -“Rather sell matches in a gutter,” whispered Christina Alberta. - -What a marvellous thing is Man! What ingenuities he has! what powers -and capabilities! He invents paper and perfects printing! He develops -the most beautiful methods of colour printing. He makes cardboard like -silk and ivory out of rags and vegetable pulp. And all it would seem, -that human beings, hanging for a little while in life between the -nothingness before death and the nothingness after death, should fiddle -away long hours in a feeble, fuddled conflict with the permutations -of duplicate sets of four differently coloured thirteens! Cards! -The marvel of cards! All over the world millions of people drawing -nearer to death and nothingness were pursuing the chances of the four -thirteens: bridge, whist, nap, skat, a hundred forms of it. Directly -they could get in out of the wet and dark, they sat down to that -sort of thing, to the cards shining under the still lamps, to being -endlessly surprised, delighted, indignant and despondent by chances -that anyone who chose to sit down to it could work out and tabulate in -a week! - -“Getting it out, dear?” said the younger Miss Solbé. - -“The spades are _Wicked_ to-night,” said the Miss Solbé with the -glasses. - -“Mine is going rather well,” said the daughter of the gentleman with -the whiskers. - -“Does your daughter play _Miss Milligan_?” asked the younger Solbé -sister. - -“_Eight-eights_,” said the comfortable wife. “_Miss Milligan_ is too -much for her.” - -“Well, it _is_ a Beast you know,” said the stepdaughter. “You never -know where you are with it.” - -“Patience is Patience,” said the elder Miss Solbé. “Nowadays I often -get it out. But not when the spades come as they’ve done to-night, both -twos in the top row, and no aces till the last round but one.” - -Christina Alberta thought it was time to change from the _Sketch_ to -the _Tatler_. She tried to do this with careless ease and flopped a -dozen papers on the floor. “Oh, _Damn_!” said Christina Alberta to a -great stillness. She struggled to pick up and replace the disordered -sheets. For a time every one seemed to be regarding her. Then Mrs. Bone -took up her discourse again. - -“And you can’t imagine their obstinacy,” she said. “They are _wilfully_ -ignorant. When you show them, _then_ they won’t do it. I took my -cook-boy in hand for a time--boy I call him, but he was quite a -middle-aged man--and I said to him, ‘just let me show you some plain -English cookery, a boiled fowl with nice white sauce, a few plain -potatoes and vegetables--quite plain with the natural flavour left -in--the sort of food that builds up these brave young Englishmen you -see.’ Of course I’m not a good cook myself, but anyhow I knew more -of English cooking than he did. But we never got further than the -plain boiled fowl. He expressed the most violent disapproval--really -violent I mean--of the whole proceedings. As I took hold of the things -and got to work he began to behave in the most extraordinary way. He -tried _not_ to follow what I was doing. Tried not to. He said that if -he cooked a fowl like that he would lose caste, lose his position in -the local guild of cooks, be perpetually defiled and outcast. _Why_, -he would not say. When I persisted he rushed up and down pulling at -his black hair--a black madman, his eyes rolling frightfully. I could -never make out what there was in a plain boiled fowl to cause such -excitement. ‘This in my kitchen,’ he said. ‘This in _my_ kitchen!’ - -“There I stood quietly boiling my fowl while all this pother went on. -He hovered about me. He talked--fortunately in his own language. I -even caught him pretending to be sick behind my back. Then he came and -implored me to desist--with tears in his great brown eyes. He tried -to say things in English. The Major always says that he was simply -swearing, but I believe the wretched man really did believe that if he -was to boil a fowl in the plain, wholesome, simple way nice people in -England do it daily, he would be hung in the air, and the great jays of -Burmah would come and peck--ahem!” - -She cast a side glance at Christina Alberta, apparently lost in the -_Sketch_, and lowered her voice. - -“Peck at his _entrails_, just his insides you know, for a Thousand, -Thousand Years.” - -Sensation. - -“You never know What Ideas Easterners will get into their Heads,” said -the younger Miss Solbé. “East is East, and West is West.” - -But now Christina Alberta’s attention was distracted by another set -of phenomena. She had discovered that the thin, bald gentleman with -side-whiskers, rigid behind his _Times_, was not really reading that -interesting vestige of the British constitution at all. His gaze was -not directed to the edge of his paper, but beyond it. He was staring -from behind that ambush and round the corner of his glasses in a -strange, hard-eyed way, without passion or admiration, at the upper -part of Christina Alberta’s black-stockinged legs as they delivered -their last challenge to human censure before disappearing beneath her -all too exiguous but extremely comfortable skirt. And also she was -realizing that a furtive but intense scrutiny of her bobbed hair was -disorganizing the Patience of the whiskered gentleman’s daughter very -seriously, and that it was also interfering with the proper laying out -of a second and different sort of Patience by the elder Miss Solbé. And -suddenly, to her extreme annoyance, Christina Alberta found a flush -of indignation mantling her cheek, and a combative tingle passing -down the backbone of her straight little body. “Why the devil,” Miss -Preemby asked herself, “why the devil shouldn’t a girl cut her hair -to save trouble and bother, and wear clothes in which she can walk -about?” Anyhow, a mop of well-washed hair was ten times better than -those feeble, aimless interweavings of pigtails and fringes and scraps -and ends. And as for showing one’s legs and body; why shouldn’t one -show one’s legs and body? It was just a part of the universal evasion -of life by these people that had got most of their bodies hidden -away, tied up in a sort of bundle. Do they ever venture to look at -themselves? Those Solbé girls, once upon a time, they must have been -jolly little girls with an amused interest in their stalky little legs, -before they said Shush! and put them away. - -Christina Alberta’s speculative vein took charge for a time. What -becomes of legs that are put away and never looked at and encouraged? -Do they get etiolated and queer, dead-white and funny-shaped and -afraid of the light? And after you’ve really packed your body away -and forgotten it, nothing is left of you but a head sticking out and -hands that wave about and feet with hidden and distorted toes; and you -go about between meal-times and take trips in chars-à-bancs to see -what every one sees and feel what every one feels, and you play games -by rule and example according to your age and energy, and become more -and more addicted to Patience until you are ready to cover yourself up -in bed for the last time of all and die. Evasion! And the fuss they -had caused getting born! The fuss, the morality and marriages and -everything that was necessary before these vacuous lives were begotten! - -But it was all evasion, and the life shown in these _Tatlers_ -and _Sketches_ was evasion just as much. Just as much. All these -photographs of the pushful pretty, the actresses for sale and the -daughters who had to be sold, looked at you with just your own -question in their eyes: “Is this the Life?” The unending photographs -of Lady Diana This, and Lady Marjorie That, and Mr. So-and-So and a -Friend of the Duke of York or the Duchess of Shonts, at dog-shows, at -horse-shows, at race meetings, at royal inaugurations and the like, -were inevitably suggestive of obstinate doubts that were in need of a -perennial reassurance. The photographs of people playing tennis and -suchlike games were livelier, but there, too, if you care to look at -it, were evasions. Evasions. Evasions. - -Christina Alberta turned over the back numbers of the _Sketch_ without -looking at the pictures before her eyes. - -What was this Life she and these people and every one by games and -jokes and meetings and ceremonies and elaborate disregards and -concealments were all evading? What was this great thing outside, -this something like a huge, terrible, attractive and compelling black -monster, beyond the lights, beyond the movements and appearances, that -called to her and challenged her to come? - -One might evade the call of it by playing Patience and games perhaps. -One might evade it by living by rule or custom. People seemed to do -so. A time might come when that call to Christina Alberta to be -Christina Alberta to the uttermost and fulfil her mysterious mission -to that immense being beyond the lights might no longer distress her -life. She had thought that in a certain recklessness and violence with -herself she might fight her way out to the call. She had made love now. -Anyhow, she hadn’t evaded _that_. But--was it going to matter as much -as she had thought it would matter? She and her little friends were -playing desperate games with the material of love in a world where Dr. -Marie Stopes and Mr. D. H. Lawrence were twin stars, and it was just -something you went through--and came out much as you had been before. -More restless, perhaps, but no further on. It left you just where you -had been, face to face with the unsolved darkness and that mysterious, -distressing, unanswerable call to come out of it all and really live -and die. - -She had made love.... Queer it had been.... - -These furtive people were watching and watching her, reading her -thoughts, perhaps, penetrating her.... - -Christina Alberta shut her copy of the _Sketch_ with something of a -snap, and walked out of the drawing-room with a serene expression. She -shut the door behind her and went downstairs to find what had happened -to her father in the smoking-room. - -“I’m leaving the best part of the talk behind me,” reflected Christina -Alberta. - - -§ 6 - -She found that her father and the gentleman from the forests of Burmah, -after a very prolonged and brilliant “h’rrmping” match, had settled -down to conversation. But unhappily the conversation was unsuitable for -her. - -“Siam, Cambodia, Tonquin, the country is full of such temples. They -take you there and show you them.” - -“Wonderful,” said Mr. Preemby. “Wonderful. And you do not think the -carvings you speak of--? Some high symbolism?” - -Both gentlemen became aware of Christina Alberta, attentive and -hovering. - -“Symbolism,” said the arboreal gentleman, “Symbolism,” and had -complicated pharyngeal difficulties. “Heathenish indecency. Difficult -to discuss.... Presence of young lady.... H’rrmp.” - -“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby. “Had you come down to say good night, my -dear? We are having a rather--rather technical talk.” - -“Sounds like it, Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, and went round and sat -on the arm of his chair for a moment. - -“Good night, little Daddy,” she said. - -Reflective moment. - -“I think this Tumbridge is going to suit me,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“I hope it will, little Daddy. Good night.” - - -§ 7 - -Christina Alberta’s first evening at the Petunia Boarding House has -been described with some particularity because it is a sample of all -the still and uneventful evenings that seemed to lie before Mr. Preemby -there. It impressed her as an unfathomable enormity of uneventfulness -in which nothing harmful or disturbing could conceivably occur to him. -The last remote possibility of imaginative disturbance seemed to remove -itself next day when Mrs. Bone announced to the whiskered gentleman’s -wife that she and her husband were off to Bath on the morrow: they -were in luck it seemed; they had got the exact rooms for the winter in -the exact boarding house they had always had their eyes on. “Tunbridge -seems so bleak,” she said. “After Burmah.” - -The dinner was like the previous dinner; the Birds of Passage had gone -and Mr. Preemby astonished himself, Christina Alberta, the chubby maid -and the assembled company by demanding whether it was possible to send -out (h’rrmp) for a bottle or flask of Chianti. “It’s an Italian wine,” -said Mr. Preemby to inform and help the chubby maid in her inquiries. -But there was no Chianti on the wine-list supplied, and after a -conversation markedly reminiscent of that of the Birds of Passage -overnight, the Preemby table was stocked with a bottle of Australian -Burgundy and, at Christina Alberta’s request, a bottle of mineral water. - -After this display of initiative, self-assertion and social derring-do, -Mr. Preemby did little but h’rrmp throughout the rest of the meal. - -The subsequent life of the drawing-room was also vacantly similar -to the previous evening. Christina Alberta got her possibly illegal -cigarette in the lounge, indeed she smoked two, and Miss Margaret -Rewster looked at her through the bead curtain near the office and -Miss Emily had a sniff from the landing upstairs, though nothing was -said. And then Mr. Preemby followed Major Bone into the smoking-room -to gather whatever further information he could about the temple -decorations and religious customs of the peoples of further India. -He was inclined to think Major Bone rather biased by evangelical -prejudice. But Major Bone was not even indignant about Eastern -religions that night. He wanted to talk about Bath, and he talked about -Bath. He told Mr. Preemby in very great detail about a remarkable -occurrence at Bath. He had met a gentleman named Bone, a gentleman -much of his own age and appearance, a Captain Bone who had also once -been in Burmah. He detailed various extremely dramatic conversations -between himself and the other Bone, occasionally going back and -correcting himself. They had made the most elaborate comparison of -their genealogies, and it did not appear that they were even remotely -related. “Most curious coincidence that has ever occurred to me,” said -Major Bone. “In Bath. In nineteen-eh-nine.” - -In the drawing-room Patience prevailed and Mrs. Bone was talking about -Bath. The cheerful wife of the whiskered gentleman said “Deavning” to -Christina Alberta quite suddenly. - -“Oh! Good evening,” said Christina Alberta. - -“You had a walk to-day?” - -“We’ve been to see the Toad Rock and the High Rock and Eridge Park.” - -“Quite a nice walk,” said the cheerful lady, and restored her attention -to Mrs. Bone. Christina Alberta gathered she was to be noticed, but not -made a pet of. - -There was nothing for it but to go through the _Tatlers_ and _Sketches_ -again. This time the pictures were exhausted, but there were reviews of -books and one or two short stories. Christina Alberta read them all. - -When she went to say good night to her Daddy she had come to a -decision. “Daddy,” she said, “on Thursday, that’s the day after -to-morrow, I must go back to London. There are some lectures beginning.” - -Mr. Preemby made no effective opposition. - -The third evening was in countenance like the second except that the -Bones had gone and that Christina Alberta was sustained by the thought -that next day she would pass from the vacuities of Tunbridge to the -tangled riddles of London. And there was a Bird of Passage present, an -untidy young man of the student type with a lot of hair imperfectly -controlled by unguents whose motor bicycle had broken down just outside -Tunbridge Wells. He lived somewhere away in the north, it seemed, in -Northumberland; he would have to wait in Tunbridge for two or three -days while some broken part of his machine was replaced from Coventry; -he had taken refuge in the Petunia Boarding House and it was jolly hard -luck on him. He couldn’t budget for a trip to London; he would just -have to sit down in Tunbridge. He was a Cambridge undergraduate and a -geologist; he had a bag of specimens on his machine. These facts he -conveyed across the width of the room to Mr. Preemby in the course of a -rather one-sided conversation. - -From the first Christina Alberta did not like this young gentleman from -Cambridge. He was like a younger, cruder Teddy Winterton, with impudent -bad manners instead of impudent good manners, and with neither bodily -grace nor good looks. And while he spoke to Mr. Preemby he glanced at -her. But she had no inkling of the part he might play in the life of -her Daddy and herself. - -When she and her Daddy went into the lounge for coffee and her -cigarette, the young man came and placed himself at an adjacent table -and initiated some more conversation. Was Tunbridge Wells an amusing -place? Was there any chance of his getting any golf or tennis? - -“There are a number of delightful walks,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“Not much fun alone,” said the young man. - -“There are the pleasures of observation,” said Mr. Preemby. - -“All this country has been pretty well worked over,” said the young man -of science. “Is there a Museum here?” - -Mr. Preemby did not know. - -“There ought to be a Museum in every town.” - -Presently the coffee and the cigarettes were finished. This evening Mr. -Preemby was for the drawing-room. Major Bone had gone, the smoking-room -had no attractions, and Mr. Preemby had exchanged a few amiable words -with the gentleman with whiskers and hoped to follow them up. Christina -Alberta went with him. At the sight of the old _Tatlers_ and _Sketches_ -she remembered she had bought a book in the High Street that day, a -second-hand copy of Rousseau’s _Confessions_. She went off to get -it. She found the young gentleman from Cambridge still sitting in the -lounge smoking cigarettes. - -“Pretty gloomy here,” he said. - -“Oh! _I_ don’t know,” said Christina Alberta with an open mind, pausing -before him. - -“Nothing much doing--what?” - -“It’s not a Gala Night.” - -“I’m stranded.” - -“You must bear up.” - -“S’pose you wouldn’t be disposed to come out for a bit and forage -around for some fun?” said the young man from Cambridge, taking his -courage in both hands. - -“Sorry,” said Christina Alberta conclusively, and turned to go on. - -“No offence?” said the young man from Cambridge. - -“Nice of you to think of me,” said Christina Alberta who would rather -have been thought utterly shameless than the least bit prudish. “Good -hunting.” - -And the young man from Cambridge perceived that he was dismissed. - -Christina Alberta went into the drawing-room for another tremendous -bout of nothingness. But anyhow she had got Rousseau to read, and -to-morrow she would be in London. - -About the Rousseau--? She had always wanted to know how she stood -towards Rousseau. - -He carried her on to ten o’clock. But she didn’t think much of -Rousseau. He ought to have known a few of the New Hope Club girls. -They’d have shown him. - - -§ 8 - -For three weeks Christina Alberta did not return to Tunbridge Wells, -and when she returned she had passed through a variety of experiences -that will have their due effect upon the course of this story. This -story is the story of Mr. Preemby, and we have little sympathy with -that modern sort of novel which will not let a girl alone but must -follow her up into the most private and intimate affairs. Christina -Alberta was perplexed and worried and would have hated the pursuit -of such a searchlight. Suffice it that events had crowded so closely -upon her that for whole days together she thought scarcely at all of -her possibly quite lonely little Daddy at Tunbridge Wells. Then came a -letter that brought her bustling down. - -“I think it only right to tell you,” said the letter, “that Very -Important Communications indeed have been made to me _of the Utmost -Importance_, and that I ought to tell you about them. They seem to -alter all our lives. I know you are immearced in your studies, but -these Communications are so Important that I want to talk them over -with you soon. I would come up to the Studio to tell you about it all, -but very likely Mr. Crumb might be in and I would much prefer to tell -you here on the Common amid more congenial surroundings. Some of it you -will find almost unbeleavable.” - -“Communications?” said Christina Alberta, re-reading the letter. -“Communications?” - -She went down to Tunbridge Wells that afternoon. - - - - -CHAPTER THE FIFTH - -_The Scales Fall from Mr. Preemby’s Eyes_ - - -§ 1 - -“The scales,” said Mr. Preemby, “have fallen from my eyes.” - -He had chosen a seat upon the Common which commanded an extensive view -of the town, the town crowned by the green cupolas of the Opera House -and lying as though the houses had been shot out of a cart down the -long incline to the Pantiles. Beyond were the wide distances of the -Kentish hill country, blue and remote. - -Christina Alberta waited for more. - -“This experience,” said Mr. Preemby, speaking with an occasional -h’rrmp; “all these experiences--difficult to relate. Naturally I think -you are of a sceptical disposition--taking after your dear mother. She -was very sceptical. Of psychic phenomena in particular. She said it was -Nonsense. And when your dear mother said a thing was Nonsense, then it -was Nonsense. It only made things disagreeable if you argued it was -anything else. As for myself--always the open mind. No dogma either -way. I just refrained.” - -“But, Daddy, have you been having psychic experiences? How could you -have psychic experiences down here?” - -“Let me tell you the story in due order. I want you to see it as I saw -it--in due order.” - -“How did it begin?” - -Mr. Preemby held up a propitiatory hand. “Please! In my own way,” he -said. - -Christina Alberta bit her lips and scrutinized the tranquil resolution -of his profile. There was no hurrying him; he had to tell his tale as -he had prepared it. - -“I do not think,” said Mr. Preemby, “that mine is a very credulous sort -of mind. It is true I am not given to argument. I do not _say_ very -much. But I think and observe. I think and observe and I have a kind of -gift for judging people. I do not think I am a very easy man to deceive. - -“And it is to be noted that I started the whole affair. It began at my -suggestion. I do not know what put it into my head, but I do know that -it was me started the whole thing going. - -“You know, after your departure our little band at the Petunia Boarding -House was reduced to just six persons, not counting the young gentleman -from Cambridge who was, as Miss Rewster says, a Bird of Passage. -Naturally the six of us felt rather drawn together. There were the two -Miss Solbés, both very intelligent young ladies, and there were Mr. -Hockleby and Mrs. Hockleby, and Miss Hockleby, and there was me. We -were drawn together at lunch after you had gone off--it was a little -showery and we had a fire in the drawing-room and Miss Solbé, the -one with the glasses, tried to show me one of her Patiences. We got -into quite an interesting argument about whether it was possible to -_will_ which card would turn up next. I have always inclined to the -view that for certain people, people with the necessary gift, it was -possible to do so, but Mr. Hockleby showed himself extremely sceptical -in the matter. He said that if there was a card on the top of the -pack ready to turn up, and if one willed that a different card should -turn up, then that meant that one had really by sheer will force to -re-manufacture two of the cards in the pack, make them over again, each -into the other, make them blank, reprint them and everything. But I -tried to explain to him that this is not philosophically sound because -of predestination. If you were predestined to will that such a card -should be on the top of the pack, then that card was also predestined -to be there. He argued----” - -“But is it necessary to tell me all this, Daddy, before we get to your -psychic experience?” - -“It is just to illustrate the fact that Mr. Hockleby was an extremely -sceptical person.” - -“Was that young man from Cambridge present at the discussions?” - -“No-oh. No. He was not. He had probably gone down to the Garage to see -if his Spare Part had come. He was always going down to the Garage to -see about his Spare Part.” - - -§ 2 - -Mr. Preemby h’rrmped and began a new section of his narrative. - -“It was in the evening after dinner,” he said, “that things really -began. I went into the smoking-room--to smoke--and afterwards I went -into the drawing-room, and when I went into the drawing-room I had no -more thought of occult phenomena, Christina Alberta, than I had of -flying over the moon. But as I came into the drawing-room I saw Miss -Solbé looking at her Patience cards which she had just put out, and -the way she was holding her hands on the table reminded me of the way -I had read that people put their hands together on the table when they -were trying experiments in table-turning. And almost without thinking I -said: ‘Why, Miss Solbé, the way you are holding your hands is just the -way they do when they are going to do table-turning!’ I said it just -like that. - -“Mr. Hockleby was reading his paper at the time--the _Times_, I think, -but it may have been the _Morning Post_--but he put it down when he -heard me say that and he looked over his glasses at me and said, ‘You -don’t believe in that sort of thing, Mr. Preemby, surely?’ - -“His wife was sitting with her back to me and from the way she spoke -I think she must have been eating some sort of sweet or lozenge at the -time. ‘_I_ do,’ she said. ‘We did it at home dozens of times before I -was married.’ - -“And I don’t know what put it into my head, Christina Alberta; it -seemed almost as though it was something behind myself that did it, or -it may have been a sort of antagonism I have always felt about that -man Hockleby; but anyhow, I said, ‘I’d really like to try some of this -table-turning.’ - -“The younger Miss Solbé, she’s really quite a charming young lady when -you get to know her, and it seems she has been reading a little occult -literature lately----” - -“How old is she, Daddy?” asked Christina Alberta, regarding him with a -look of novel suspicion. - -“I don’t think she can be very much more than thirty-two or three. -Thirty-four at the outside. And really quite well-read, quite -well-read. Well, anyhow, she said she would like to try it. And Miss -Hockleby, evidently she had been brought up on strictly sceptical lines -by her father, she was curious too. So to cut a long story short, -we tried it. Only Mr. Hockleby objected and Mrs. Hockleby overruled -that. She was the only one among us who had ever seen anything of the -sort before, and so it was she who arranged things and told us what -to do. We chose a very solid table, the one that usually has the big -aspidistra on it, and while we were turning out the light----” - -“But why did you do that, Daddy?” - -“One always does that,” said Mr. Preemby. “It makes the atmosphere more -favourable. We lit a candle which Miss Margaret Rewster got for us and -turned out all the electric lights; and while we were doing this, in -came young Mr. Charles Fenton and said--_what_ did he say? A peculiar -expression. Ah, yes! ‘Gollys,’ he said, ‘what’s up?’” - -“Was that the young man with the motor bicycle?” - -“Yes. The young man from Cambridge. We explained what we were doing -and asked him to join us. He declared he knew nothing of psychic -phenomena, had never experimented with it at all and seemed very -doubtful about taking part in the trial. ‘I don’t think there’s -anything in it,’ he said. ‘We shall just waste our time.’ Indeed I -remember now that he did go out intending to visit a music-hall, and -then he came back and said it was raining. It’s very important to -note that he was not at all eager to join us and that he was quite -uninformed about occult things because, you see, as I will tell you, we -found out presently that he was a person of exceptional psychic gifts, -much greater psychic gifts than anyone else among us. - -“Well, we arranged ourselves about the table in the usual manner, -thumbs and little fingers touching, and for a time nothing seemed to -happen at all. We found Miss Emily Rewster was peeping in through the -slightly open door, and perhaps that may have had an unfavourable -influence. I suppose she wondered what we were doing and why we had -asked her sister for a candle. Then Mr. Fenton got very restive and -grumbled to himself and said it was the silliest way of passing an -evening he had ever tried. It was a little difficult to persuade him -to keep silence and persevere. ‘_All_ right,’ said he, with a kind of -resentment. ‘Have it your own way.’ And then suddenly came two violent -raps, raps like little pistol shots, not immediately under the table it -was, but as if it was in the air a foot or so under the table. And then -the table began to move. Slowly at first, shifting along the floor, and -then quite strongly twisting and pushing up against our hands. It was -very weird and impressive, Christina Alberta, very weird and impressive -indeed. It rose nearly two feet I should think and then Mr. Hockleby -broke the circle and it fell rather heavily, I fancy, and the leg hit -his shin. He uttered an exclamation and stooped to rub his leg, and -in the indistinct light he hit his head on the edge of the table. It -seemed almost a judgment on his scepticism I thought. We turned up one -or two of the lights to attend to him. ‘I don’t like this,’ said Mr. -Fenton. ‘This is a bit too rum for me.’ - -“I asked him to try just once more. - -“‘I don’t like this table riding up like this,’ he said. ‘It’s such a -bad example for the chairs. Suppose some of them start playing cup and -ball with us! You might get a nasty toss from a buck-jumping chair. And -besides, it’s a lot too like a Channel crossing for my taste.’ - -“I think we were all a good deal excited by what had happened, and all -the others, even Mr. Hockleby, were eager to continue. - -“‘Next time I shall _press_ down,’ he said. I think he was a little -suspicious that either his wife or me had something to do with the -phenomena. Evidently spiritualism was a long-standing dispute between -him and his wife. His wife said she had seen tables move before, but -none so actively as this one had done. - -“Down we sat again. We had hardly waited a minute before the table -began rocking about in the most extraordinary fashion, and then -absolutely flew up so violently that the elder Miss Solbé was thrown -back over that Ottoman there is there, and I was bumped under my chin. -At the same time there was a perfect volley of cracks, like somebody -cracking his fingers, but ever so much louder. It was quite a comfort -to have the lights up again and see Mr. Hockleby holding the table down -firmly in its proper place. ‘Damn you,’ he said--quite loudly. ‘Damn -you. Keep down.’ Miss Hockleby and her father picked up Miss Solbé, who -was on the floor in a sort of hysterical fit of laughter, with her feet -waving about. - -“‘I don’t like this,’ said Mr. Fenton. ‘It goes through one like an -electric shock.’ - -“He spoke quite simply. - -“The only one of us who had had any experience with occult phenomena -was Mrs. Hockleby, and she had not done anything of the sort since -her marriage to Mr. Hockleby five or six years before, because of -his scepticism. She said now that it was very evident that some very -strong and resolute spirit was present and was trying to communicate -with us, and she explained a simple and safe method of getting into -communication. We were to reform the circle round the table and we -were to call over the alphabet, and when we came to the letter the -spirit wanted there would be a rap and so we should be able to arrive -at something definite. There is a sort of code quite well understood -it seems in the spirit world, in which you convey ‘No’ by one rap and -‘Yes’ by two, and so on. - -“We set to work at this,” said Mr. Preemby. “We asked if the spirit -would like to spell out anything and it answered with two very loud -raps, and then Mr. Hockleby read out the letters: A B C and so on. When -it got to S the spirit gave a rap so loud it made me jump.” - -“And what did you spell out, Daddy?” - -“A name quite unknown to me then--SARGON, and then KING OF KINGS. We -asked: was the spirit that was communicating with us Sargon? The answer -came _No_. Was Sargon present? _Yes._ Then who was our communicant? -OUJAH. Who was Oujah? WISE MAN. It was a very slow process spelling -out the words in this way, and by the time we had got so far we were -all very tired. Mr. Fenton in particular was very tired. He yawned and -seemed greatly exhausted, and said at last he felt so weary and muzzy -that he _must_ go to bed. That was really very natural, because though -none of us realized it at the time he was the actual medium under -Oujah’s control. He went to bed and we tried to go on without him, but -the magic had departed and we could not get so much as a rap. So we -sat for a time talking all this over. Mr. Hockleby in particular was -greatly flabbergasted, and then the rest of us went to bed.” - -“Evidently Mr. Fenton made the raps,” said Christina Alberta. - -“Evidently his presence was necessary for the raps to be made,” -corrected Mr. Preemby. “Quite unconsciously he was a Mejum.” - -There was a pause. - -“Go on with the story,” said Christina Alberta. - - -§ 3 - -“The next evening was wet again, and as his Spare Part hadn’t come Mr. -Fenton was able to join us once more. He made some little objection at -first because he said he and his people were all Particular Baptists, -and he was doubtful whether this sort of thing was not Necromancy and -forbidden in the Bible. But I persuaded him out of that. And this time -we spelt out a quite singular message. It was AWAKE, SARGON! ARISE OR -BE FOREVER FALLEN! - -“Even from the first I had had a feeling that those messages from -Sargon had something to do with me. Now suddenly conviction came upon -me. I asked ‘Is Sargon present?’ ‘_Yes._’ I knew it would be so. ‘Is it -anyone in the circle?’ ‘_Yes._’ ‘Is it this gentleman?’--pointing to -Mr. Hockleby. A very loud _No_. ‘Is it me?’ ‘_Yes._’ - -“Mr. Hockleby I noted at the time looked annoyed--as though he felt it -was he who ought to be Sargon. - -“Then young Mr. Fenton stood up suddenly. ‘Oh! I can’t stand any more -of this,’ he said. ‘My head feels quite muzzy. I’m sure this sort of -thing is harmful.’ He walked across the room and sat down suddenly with -his hands hanging over the arms of the chair--it was one of the big -arm-chairs covered in cretonne. We all felt very much concerned, but -as for myself I was all in a daze at the thought of being this Sargon -and being called upon so openly to rouse myself to action. I did not -understand fully as yet all that it meant to me, but I did realize -that it meant a very great deal.” - -“But what did you think it meant?” said Christina Alberta sharply, and -her perplexed gaze searched his profile. His blue eyes stared at things -far away beyond the distant hills, strange things, fantastic empires, -secret cities, mystical traditions, and his brows were knit in the -effort to keep his story together. - -“All in good time,” said Mr. Preemby. “Let me tell my story in my -own way. I was telling you, I think, that young Mr. Fenton said he -felt heavy and strange. Mrs. Hockleby happily was quite equal to that -situation. She had seen the same thing before. ‘Don’t struggle against -it,’ she said. ‘Let yourself go. Just lean back in your chair. If -you want to lie quiet, do. If you want to say anything, do. Let the -influence work.’ And she turned to me and whispered ‘trance.’ - -“‘What is a trance?’ said Mr. Fenton--just like that. ‘What is a -trance?’ - -“She began moving her hands in front of his face, ‘making passes,’ I -think they call it. He shut his eyes, gave a sort of sigh and his head -lolled back. We all sat round him waiting, and presently he began to -mutter. - -“At first it was just nonsense. ‘Oojah Woojer Boojer,’ words like that. -Then more distinctly, ‘Oujah the Wise Man, Sargon’s servant. Oujah -comes to serve Sargon. To awaken him.’ After that he seemed to wander -off into sheer rubbish. ‘Why is a mouse when it spins?’ he whispered in -his own voice and then, ‘That damned Spare Part.’ - -“Mrs. Hockleby said that was quite characteristic of this sort of -trance, and then Mr. Hockleby got a writing-pad and a pencil to take -down anything more that was said. - -“And presently when Mr. Fenton spoke again, he did not speak in his own -voice but in a kind of hoarse whisper quite different from his usual -voice. It was the voice of this Oujah speaking--Oujah the control. -With a slight accent--Sumerian I suppose. - -“Well, the things he said were very astonishing indeed. I think that -this Oujah was anxious to secure my attention by convincing me that he -knew of things, intimate things that nobody else could know. At the -same time he did not wish the others to know too clearly what he was -aiming at. How did it go? What can I remember? Mr. Hockleby has a lot -of it written down, but so far I have not had time to make a copy. -‘Child of the sea and the desert,’ he said, ‘the blue waters and the -desert sand.’ Is it too fanciful to find an allusion to Sheringham in -that? ‘Cascades and great waters and a thing like a wheel on a blue -shield.’ That is more puzzling. But ‘cascades and great waters’ set -me thinking of our big washers. And you remember the swastika on our -blue delivery vans, Christina Alberta? Is not that oddly suggestive of -a thing like a wheel on a blue shield? The Norse peoples called the -swastika the fire-wheel. ‘Armies with their white garments fluttering, -the long lines drawn out--armies of delivery.’ That again is queer. -One is reminded of armies and also--don’t think me absurd!--of the -drying-ground and the vans. It is like one thing becoming transparent -and your seeing the other behind it.” - -“Are you sure of the exact phrases, Daddy?” - -“Mr. Hockleby has them written down. If I have not got them quite right -you will be able to read his notes.” - -“The swastika may be a coincidence,” said Christina Alberta. “Or -you may have been drawing it on the edges of the newspaper. You do -sometimes. And he may have seen it.” - -“That does not account for the blue ground. He laid great stress on -the blue ground. And there were other things; matters known only to -me and your dear mother. I could not tell you them without telling -you everything. And small things, entirely private to me. The name -of my late grandfather at Diss. Munday his name was. It is sometimes -difficult to argue about things although one may be absolutely -convinced. And all this was mixed up with broken sentences about a -great city and the two daughters of the western King and the Wise Man. -And also he called me Belshazzar. Belshazzar seemed to drift in and out -of his thoughts. ‘Come again to a world that has fallen into disorder.’ -These are remarkable words. And then ‘Beware of women; they take the -sceptre out of the hands of the king. But do they know how to rule? Ask -Tutankhamen. Ask the ruins in the desert.’” - -“Pah,” said Christina Alberta. “As though women have ever had a fair -chance!” - -“Well, anyhow, Mr. Hockleby has that written down.... And it seemed to -me that this too applied to me, for because of my great fondness for -your mother I had let so many years of my life slip away. He said many -other things, Christina Alberta, richly suggestive things. But I have -told you enough for you to understand what has happened. In the end Mr. -Fenton came-to quite suddenly, much more suddenly than is usual in such -cases, Mrs. Hockleby said. He sat up and yawned and rubbed his eyes. -‘Oh, Lord!’ he said, ‘what nonsense all this is! I’m going to bed.’ - -“We asked him if he felt exhausted. He said he was. ‘Absolutely fed -up,’ were his actual words. - -“We asked him if that was the end of his message. - -“‘What message?’ he said. He had absolutely no memory of his -communications at all. ‘Have I been talking?’ he asked. ‘This isn’t the -sort of thing one ought to get up to. What sort of things have I been -saying? Nothing objectionable I hope. If so I apologize. I mustn’t do -any more of this sort of thing.’ - -“Mrs. Hockleby told him she had never met anyone with such a promise -of great psychic power as he had, before. He said he was really very -sorry to hear it. She said he owed it to himself to cultivate so rare -and strange a gift, but he said That wouldn’t do for his people at -all. The rain had stopped and he said he thought he would take a walk -down to the Pantiles and back before turning in. Perfectly simple and -natural he was from first to last, and rather unwilling. And he really -did look tired out.” - -“Didn’t he laugh once?” asked Christina Alberta. - -“Why should he? He seemed a little afraid of what he had transmitted. -The next day his Spare Part came. Mrs. Hockleby did her utmost to try -to get him once more in the afternoon and develop his Communication, -but he would not do so. He was full of questions about the ferry at -Tilbury and the time of high tide. He would not even give us his name -and address. When I spoke of sending Mr. Hockleby’s notes to the -_Occult Review_ he was suddenly quite alarmed. He said that if his name -appeared in connection with them it might mean a very serious row with -his family. He would not even allow us to put a Mr. F. from Cambridge. -‘Put quite another name,’ he said, ‘quite a different name. Put -anything you like that does not point to me, a Mr. Walker, say, from -London. Or something of that sort.’ - -“Of course there was nothing for us to do but agree.” - - -§ 4 - -“And that was the whole of your communication, Daddy?” - -“It was only the beginning. Because after that I began to remember. I -began to remember more and more.” - -“Remember?” - -“Things from my other lives. Memories stored up. This young Mr. -Fenton was, so to speak, no more than the first cut in the curtain of -forgetfulness that hung between this present life and all my previous -existences. Now it was rent and torn open so that I could see things -through it at a dozen points. Now I begin to realize what I really was -and what I can really be.... - -“You know, Christina Alberta, I have never actually believed I was -myself--not even as a schoolboy. And now it is interesting, I know -and understand clearly that I _am_ somebody else. I have always been -somebody else.” - -“But who do you believe you are, Daddy?” - -“So far as I can gather I was first a chief called Porg in a city -called Kleb in the very beginning of the world, æons and æons ago, -and I tamed my people and taught them many things. Then afterwards I -was this Sargon--Sargon the King of Kings. There is very little about -him here in the Public Library, in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_; an -upstart who took his name, _my_ name, three thousand years later, an -Assyrian fellow is the Sargon they tell about--he got mixed up with the -Jews and he besieged Samaria--but I was the original Sargon long before -there were Jews or anything of the sort, long before Abraham and Isaac -and Jacob. And afterwards I was Belshazzar, the last crown prince of -the Babylonians, but that is not very clear. That remains obscure. Only -one part of the record is lit--as yet. And possibly I have been other -people. But the figure that stands out in my memory now is Sargon. It -is his memories have been returning to me. It is he who has returned in -me.” - -“But Daddy, you don’t really believe all this?” - -“Believe!--I _know_. Long before this Communication came to me I had -had those intimations,--that assurance that I was somebody else. _Now_ -I see clearly. I can remember days in Akkadia now just as clearly as -I can remember days in Woodford Wells. I could almost doubt whether -I have ever lived at Woodford Wells; it seems so far away now. It -was when I was in bed the night after Mr. Fenton had gone that these -memories began to come. I was in bed, and then suddenly I was not in -bed--I was reclining on a couch under a canopy, a canopy of pure white -wool very finely woven and embroidered with emblems and symbols and -suchlike things in golden thread, and I was upon my state barge upon -the Euphrates. Two King’s daughters, sisters, with slender necks, not -unlike the two Miss Solbés except that they were fairer--and decidedly -younger--_much_ younger--and clad rather more in accordance with the -requirements of a warm climate, chiefly in woven gold--sat and fanned -me with fans of Eagles’ feathers dyed a royal purple. And at my feet -sat my councillor Prewm, who was oddly enough extremely like Mr. -Hockleby--just the same iron-grey whiskers and with the same little -tufts of hair over his ears. He was wearing an extremely tall cap of -some black woollen substance, and he was making memoranda with a wooden -style on a tablet of wet clay. It was like writing on a mud pie. And -beyond him were the officers of the boat on a kind of bridge--they were -wearing leather helmets studded with brass--and then one saw the rowers -below, chained to their oars, and then on either side spread the broad -brown river just crinkled by the breeze. The little boats fled to make -way for us. They had coarse, square sails, and they lowered them and -turned them about all in precisely the same way at precisely the same -time. It was very pretty to see. Along the banks were little villages -of mud-brick houses and clumps and lines of palm trees; and everywhere -there were primitive contrivances, great bent poles of wood like giant -fishing-rods, for raising water out of the river for the cultivation of -the land. And the people were all crowded along the water’s edge and -bowing with their hands and foreheads in the water and crying, ‘Sargon -the Conqueror, Sargon, King of Kings!’” - -“But Daddy, this was a dream?” - -“How could I dream of things I had never seen nor heard of before?” - -“One does.” - -“One does _not_,” he replied with a quiet, invincible obstinacy. “I -remember I was coming back from the South where I had given peace to -a multitude of warring tribes, Elamites and Perrizites and Jebusites -and people of that sort, and I was returning to my capital. I remember -distinctly many details of the campaign and I know that with an effort -I could recall more in the proper order. In dreams absurd things -happen, dreams when you think them over afterwards are all at sixes and -sevens, but this is all sane and orderly. One might think, Christina -Alberta, that I had never dreamt dreams and that all these memories of -that previous existence which crowd upon me now were a deception of my -imagination! But I can go right back as if it was yesterday, and I am -surer by far that I am Sargon than that I am Albert Edward Preemby your -father. The former is my true self, the latter is just a very simple, -unpretending wrapping that for some purpose, at present inexplicable to -me, has hidden me from the world.” - -He waved his hand with a bolder gesture than was habitual to him. He -sat with his eyes wide open, looking at unseen things. - -The girl regarded him for some seconds in silence. She was trying to -grasp the full import of this amazing speech. - -“And _this_ was your Communication?” she said at last. - -“You have to know,” he said. “You have to serve and help me.” - -(Help him! How could she help him or herself? How far was this thing -going? What was she to do?) - -“Have you told anyone else of this, Daddy?” she asked abruptly. “Have -you told anyone else?” - -He turned his solemn little face towards her. - -“Ah, _there_,” he said, “we have to be very discreet and careful--very -careful indeed. Here and now is not the time to proclaim that Sargon, -King of Kings, has come back to the civilization he did so much to -found. One has to be careful, Christina Alberta. There is a spirit of -opposition. - -“For instance, I have told something of my first vision--dream you -may call it if you like--to Mr. Hockleby. I described the resemblance -between himself and Prewm. He was by no means pleased. His is a -seditious, insubordinate nature. And besides--since then--I have -recalled what happened--on the advice of Oujah--to Prewm.... - -“And I have realized since then that, though one may be convinced -oneself, it does not follow that one will convince other people. It is -true that Miss Hockleby and the two Miss Solbés have asked me to tell -them more of my dreams--they too call them dreams. But their manner was -curious rather than respectful and I have been extremely reserved with -them.” - -“That’s my wise Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, “You have to think of -your dignity.” - -“I have to think of my dignity, certainly. Nevertheless--” His hands -went out in a new amplitude of gesture. “Here I am and this is my -world. My world! I nursed it in its infancy. I taught it law and -obedience. Here I am, the most ancient of monarchs. Rameses and -Nebuchadnezzar, Greece and Rome, the Kingdoms and Empires, things of -yesterday--interludes while I have been sleeping. And clearly I have -been sleeping. And clearly I have not been sent back to the world -without a mission. This is a great and crowded world now, Christina -Alberta, but it is in a sad state of disorder. Even the newspapers -remark upon it. People are not happy now. They are not happy as they -were under my rule in Sumeria thousands of years ago. In the sunshine -and abundance of Sumeria.” - -“But what can you _do_, Daddy?” - -“Dear Princess, my child, that I have to think out. Nothing hastily; -nothing rashly.” - -“No,” said Christina Alberta. - -There came a pause. “One person only seems to have any belief in me. -The younger Miss Solbé---- Did you say anything, dear?” - -“No. Go on.” - -“I have asked her if she too has had any dreams, any vague memories of -a previous existence. She seems to have had something confirmatory in -a shadowy sort of way. Very vague intimations. She tells them timidly, -when her sister is not about. But she is under a misapprehension that -her relationship to me was a particularly close and special one. She -was not my Queen. There she is wrong. It is perhaps natural for her to -think so, but I remember quite distinctly how it was. She was one of -the Twenty Principal Concubines who carried the Eagle fans.” - -“Have you told her that?” - -“Not yet,” said Mr. Preemby. “Not yet. One has to go discreetly in all -these things.” - -Another pause followed. Christina Alberta looked at her wrist-watch. -“My word!” she cried. “We shall be late for lunch!” - -She noted as they walked back towards the Petunia Boarding House that -his bearing and manner had undergone a subtle change. He seemed larger -and taller and his face was serener and he held his head higher. He -did not h’rrmp once. He seemed to expect people and things to get out -of his way, and it was as if the path was a carpet that was being -unrolled before his advance. Had she been able to see herself she -would have remarked an equal change in her own carriage. The dance had -gone out of her paces. She walked like one upon whose shoulders the -responsibilities of life might easily become overwhelming. - -They were late for lunch and all the other boarders were in their -places, beginning. Every one turned to look at Mr. Preemby’s face as -they came in, and then they glanced at one another. “So you’ve come -back to us,” said Mrs. Hockleby to Christina Alberta, meeting her eye. - -“It’s jolly to be back,” said Christina Alberta. - - - - -CHAPTER THE SIXTH - -_Christina Alberta Consults a Wise Man_ - - -§ 1 - -Christina Alberta and Paul Lambone had been great friends for nearly a -year. He liked her and admired her, and as became his literary line of -work, he studied her. And she liked him and trusted him, and showed off -a good lot when she was with him. - -Paul Lambone wrote novels and short stories and books of good advice, -and he was particularly celebrated for the pervading wisdom of his -novels and the excellence of his advice. It was his pervading wisdom -that had picked him up out of the general poverty of writers and placed -him in a position of comparative prosperity. Not that his conduct of -his affairs was wise, but that the quality of his wisdom was extremely -saleable. Some writers prosper by reason of their distinctive passion, -some by reason of their austerity and truth, some by their excellent -invention, and some even by simple good writing, but Paul Lambone -prospered because of his kindness and wisdom. When you read the stories -you always felt that he was really sorry for the misfortunes and -misbehaviour of his characters and anxious to help them as much as he -could. And when they blundered or sinned he would as often as not tell -you what was the better course they might have chosen. His book of -advice, and particularly his _Book of Everyday Wisdom_ and his _What to -Do on a Hundred and One Occasions_ sold largely and continually. - -But like that James, King of England, to whom the Bible was dedicated, -Paul Lambone was far wiser in his thoughts and counsels than in his -acts. In small matters and most of the time his proceedings were -foolish or selfish or indecisive or all of those things. His wisdom -did not reach below the level of his eyes, and his face and body and -arms and legs were given over to the unhappiest tendencies which -were restrained by his general indolence rather than by any real -self-control. He was very well off chiefly because he was lazy; he -asked the highest possible prices for everything he wrote because -that was just as easy as asking the lowest, and there was always a -chance that the bargain would not come off and then he would be saved -the trouble of correcting his proofs. He accumulated money because he -was too unenterprising to buy things or incur the responsibility of -possessions, and so he just let a trust invest it for him. His literary -reputation was high because a literary reputation in England and -America depends almost entirely upon apparent reluctance of output. The -terse beauty of his style was mainly due to his sedulous indisposition -to write two words where one would suffice. And in the comfort and -leisure his indolence accumulated for him, he sat about and talked -and was genially wise and got fatter than was becoming. He tried to -eat less as a preferable alternative to taking exercise, but in the -presence of drink and nourishment his indolence flagged and failed -him. He went about a good deal, and was always eager for new things -because they saved him from boredom, the malign parent of much needless -activity. He had an expensive little cottage near Rye in Kent to which -he could motor without needless trouble whenever London bored him, and -directly his cottage bored him he would come back to London. And he -visited people’s houses a lot because it was too troublesome to resist -invitations. - -There were, it must be admitted, limits to the wisdom of Paul Lambone. -It is often more difficult to see what is near us than what is far -away; many a stout fellow who looks with a clear, discerning eye upon -the universe sees little of his toes, and ignores the intervening -difficulty; and something sub-conscious in Paul Lambone’s mind -obstinately refused to recognize the defective nature of many of his -private acts. He knew he was indolent, but he would not allow himself -to admit that his indolence was fundamental and vicious. He thought -there was a Paul Lambone in reserve of very great energy. He liked to -think of himself as a man of swift and accurate decisions who, once -aroused, was capable of demoniac energy. He had spent many an hour -in arm-chairs, on garden seats, and on Downland turf, thinking out -his course of action on various possible occasions of war, business, -criminal attempt or domestic crisis. His favourite heroes in real life -were Napoleon, Julius Cæsar, Lord Kitchener, Lord Northcliffe, Mr. -Ford, and suchlike heroic ants. - -He liked Christina Alberta because of her tremendous go. She was always -up to something; she preferred standing to sitting, and she kicked her -legs about while she talked to you. He idealized her go; he attributed -to her much more go than she really had. He was secretly persuaded that -her blood must be like a bird’s, a degree or so above normal. He felt -that in imagination she had much in common with him. He called her the -Last Thing, the Van, the Ultimate Modern Girl, and the Life Force. He -openly professed pity for the unaided single-handed man who would in -accordance with our social laws presently have to marry her and go her -pace and try to keep her in order. - -She had been to tea with him once or twice. She perceived his -admiration and suspected a certain affection, and she basked in -admiration and affection. She liked his books and thought he was very -like what he thought he was himself. She told him all sorts of things -about herself just to lift his eyebrows. - -And he was wise all over her and round and about her, tremendously wise. - - -§ 2 - -It was quite interesting to be rung up by Christina Alberta and asked -if she might come for tea and advice. “Come along now,” he said. “I’m -probably all alone for tea.” - -And as he replaced the instrument he said: “Now I wonder what the young -woman has been up to! And what she wants me to do for her.” - -He went back to his sitting-room and spread himself on his very nice -Persian hearthrug, and regarded the pretty silver kettle that swung -over his spirit lamp. “It won’t be money,” he considered. “She isn’t -the sort that tries to get money.... - -“She’s barked her shins on something.... - -“Girls nowadays are a lot too plucky--they’re a lot too plucky -altogether.... I hope it’s nothing serious.... She’s just a kid.” - -Christina Alberta appeared in due course. Erect as ever, but -nevertheless looking a little dashed and subdued. - -“Uncle,” she said--for that was her theory of their relationship--“I’m -in trouble. You’ve got to give me all sorts of advice.” - -“Take off that brigand’s cloak,” he said, “and sit down there and make -me some tea. I’ve been watching your love affair out of the corner of -my eye for some time. I’m not surprised.” - -Christina Alberta paused with her cloak in her hand and stared at him. -“That’s nothing,” she said. “I can manage that little affair all right. -Such as it is. Don’t you worry about _me_, in that respect. Don’t -imagine things. But there is something--something different.” She threw -the cloak over a chair back and came and stood by the silver tea-tray. - -“You know my Daddy,” she said, arms akimbo. - -“I never saw a more dissimilar parent.” - -“Well--” She considered how she should put it. “He’s behaving queerly. -So that people may think--people who don’t know him--that he’s going -out of his mind.” - -Mr. Lambone reflected. “Was it ever such a very serious mind to go out -of?” - -“Oh! don’t make jokes. His mind was good enough to keep him out of -trouble, and now something’s happened and it isn’t. People will -think--some of them think already--he is mad. They may take him away. -And there’s just him and me. It’s serious, Uncle. And I don’t know what -I ought to do. I don’t know enough to know. I’m scared. I’ve got no -friends that I can talk to about it. None. You’d think I’d have women -friends. I haven’t. I don’t get on with older women. They want to boss -me. Or I think they do. And I irritate them. They know, they feel--the -proper ones--that I don’t--oh! respect their standards. And the other -sort just hate me. Because I’m young. The girls I know--no good for -what I want just now.” - -“But isn’t there a man,” said Lambone, “on whom you have a sort of -claim?” - -“You know who it is, I suppose?” - -He was frank. “Things rather show.” - -“If you know him--” She left the sentence unfinished. - -“I know the young man only very incidentally,” he said. - -“I go to Teddy,” said Christina Alberta without any further -reservations. “I went to him as a matter of fact before I telephoned to -you. He hardly listened to what I had to say. He didn’t bother.” She -winced. Suddenly tears stood in her eyes. “He was just loafing about in -his studio. He kissed me and tried to excite me. He would hardly listen -to what I had to tell him.... That I suppose is what one gets from a -lover.” - -“So it’s got to that,” Paul Lambone reflected with hidden dismay, and -then remarked a little belatedly: “Not every lover.” - -“Mine--anyhow.” - -“And you came away?” - -“_Well!_ What do _you_ think?” - -“H’m,” said Lambone. “You _have_ barked your shins, Christina Alberta! -More than I thought.” - -“Oh, Hell take Teddy!” said Christina Alberta, putting it on a bit and -helping herself by being noisy. “What does that matter now? I’ve done -with Teddy. I was a fool. Never mind that. The thing is my Daddy. What -am I to do about my Daddy?” - -“Well, first you’ve got to tell me all about it,” said Lambone. -“Because at present, you know, I’ve hardly got the hang of the trouble. -And before you do that you sit down in that easy chair and I make the -tea. No, not you. Your nerves are on edge and you’ll upset something. -You’ve been having your first dose of adult worry. Sit down there and -don’t say anything for a minute. I’m glad you came along to me. Very -glad.... I liked that Daddy of yours really. Little innocent-eyed man -he was. Blue eyes. And he was talking--what nonsense _was_ he talking? -About the Lost Atlantis. But it was quite nice nonsense.... No, don’t -interrupt. Just let me recall my own impression of him until you’ve had -your tea.” - - -§ 3 - -When the tea was made and Christina Alberta had sipped a cup and looked -more comfortable, Lambone, who felt he was managing things beautifully, -told her she might begin. - -“He’s getting queer in his mind, but you know that he isn’t really -going out of his mind,” said Lambone. “That’s it, isn’t it?” - -“That _is_ it,” said Christina Alberta. “You see--” She paused. - -Lambone sat down in a second arm-chair and sipped his tea in a -leisurely manner. “It’s a little difficult,” he said. - -“You see,” said Christina Alberta, knitting her brows at the fire, -“he’s a person of peculiar imaginativeness. He always has been. Always. -He’s always lived half in a dream. We’ve been very much together ever -since I was born almost, and from the earliest times I remember his -talks, rambling talks, about the Lost Atlantis, and about the secrets -of the pyramids and Yogis and the Lamas of Tibet. And astrology. -All such wonderful, impossible, far-off things. The further off the -better. Why!--he almost got me into a dream too. I was a Princess of -Far Atlantis lost in the world. I used to play at that, and sometimes -my play came very near to believing. I could Princess it for a whole -afternoon. Lots of children day-dream like that.” - -“I did,” said Lambone. “For days together I would be a great Indian -chief, sentenced to death again and again--disguised as a small -preparatory schoolboy. The incongruity didn’t matter a rap. Everybody -does it more or less for a time.” - -“But he’s gone on doing it all his life. And he’s doing it now more -than ever. He’s lost the last trace of any sense that it is a dream. -And some one played a trick upon him at Tunbridge Wells. Not realizing -what it might mean for him. They seem to have muddled about with -spiritualism in the evenings while I was in London, table-rapping and -so forth, and a man who had nothing better to do pretended to have a -trance. He told Daddy he was Sargon the First, Sargon King of Kings he -called him, who was Lord of Akkadia and Sumeria--you know--ages ago, -before Babylon was born or thought of. The man who did it couldn’t have -hit on anything more mischievous so far as Daddy was concerned. You see -he was exactly ready for it; leaving Woodford Wells where he had spent -half his life in one routine had cut him off, even more than he was -usually cut off, from reality. He was uprooted already before this idea -came to him. And now it’s just swamping him. It suited him exactly. -It--fixed him. Always before one could get him back--by talking about -my mother or the laundry vans, or something familiar like that. But -now I can’t get him back. I can’t. He’s Sargon, incognito, come back -as Lord of the World, and he believes that just as firmly as I believe -that I am his daughter Christina Alberta Preemby talking to you now. -It’s a reverie no longer. He’s got his evidence and he believes.” - -“And what does he want to do about it?” - -“All sorts of things. He wants to declare himself Lord of the World. He -says things are in a bad way and he wants to save them.” - -“They _are_ in a bad way,” said Lambone. “People don’t begin to know -half how bad they are. Still--I suppose having a delusion about who one -is, isn’t Insanity. Does he want to make some sort of fuss?” - -“I’m afraid, yes.” - -“Soon?” - -“That’s what worries me. - -“You see,” she went on, “I’m afraid he’s going to strike most people -as queer. He’s back at Lonsdale Mews. We had to come up from Tunbridge -Wells yesterday. On a few hours’ notice. It’s that has upset me. For a -couple of days things went on all right. Practically we were turned out -of the boarding house. There was a frightfully disagreeable man there, -a Mr. Hockleby, and he seemed to take a violent dislike to Daddy. You -know those unreasonable dislikes people take at times?” - -“A very disagreeable side of human nature. _I_ know. Why, people have -taken dislikes to _me_!... But go on.” - -“He and his daughter got upset about Daddy’s queerness. They frightened -the Miss Rewsters, the sisters who run the place. They said he might -break out at any moment, and either he would have to leave or they -would. There they were all whispering on the stairs and talking of -sending for a policeman and having him taken away. What could I do? We -had to clear out. You see Daddy had a sort of idea that when he was -Sargon Mr. Hockleby had been alive too and had had to be impaled for -seditious behaviour; and instead of letting bygones be bygones as one -ought to do in such cases, he said something about it to him, and Mr. -Hockleby construed it as a threat. It’s all so difficult, you see.” - -“He didn’t try to impale him over again, or anything?” - -“No. He doesn’t do things like that. It’s only his imagination that is -doing tremendous things. He isn’t.” - -“And now he’s in London?” - -“He has a sort of idea he’s overlord of the King, and he wants to go to -the King at Buckingham Palace and tell him about it. He says the King -is a thoroughly good man, thoroughly good; and directly he hears how -things are, he will acknowledge Daddy as his feudal superior and place -him on the throne. Of course if he tries to do anything of that sort -he will be locked up for a certainty. And he’s written letters to the -Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor and the President of the United -States and Lenin, and so forth, directing them to wait upon him for his -instructions. But I’ve persuaded him not to post them till he can have -a proper seal made.” - -“Rather like Muhammad’s letters to the potentates,” said Lambone. - -“He’s thinking, too, of a banner or something of that sort, but all -that’s quite vague. He’s just got the phrase ‘raise my banner.’ I don’t -think that matters much yet. But the Buckingham Palace idea,--something -may come of that.” - -“This is no end interesting,” said Lambone, and walked across his room -and back, and then half sat on the arm of his easy chair with his -hands deep in his pockets. “Tell me; is he distraught to look at?” - -“Not a bit of it.” - -“Untidy in his dress?” - -“Neat as ever.” - -“I remember when I saw him how neat he was. Is he--at all--incoherent? -Or does it all hold together?” - -“Absolutely. He’s perfectly logical and coherent. He talks I think -rather better and more clearly than usual.” - -“It’s just one simple delusion? He has no delusions about having great -physical strength or beauty or anything of that sort?” - -“None. He’s not a bit crazy. He’s just possessed by this one grand -impossible idea.” - -“He’s not throwing away money or anything of that sort?” - -“Not a bit of it. He’s always been--careful with money.” - -“And he is now?” - -“Yes.” - -“Let’s hope that lasts. I don’t see that a man is insane because he -believes he is a King or an Emperor--if some one tells him he is. After -all, George V has no other grounds for imagining he is a King. The -only difference is that rather more people have told him so. Fancying -yourself a King isn’t lunacy, and behaving in accordance with that idea -isn’t lunacy either. It may be some day, but it isn’t so yet. No.” - -“But I’m afraid that people will think that it is.... You see it’s -only in the last few days I’ve realized how fond I am of my father and -how horrible it would be for me if anyone attempted to take him away. -I’m afraid of asylums. Restraint for those who can least understand -restraint. He particularly would go mad in a week, really mad, if he -got into one. That Mr. Hockleby has frightened me--he’s frightened me. -He was so intent and cruel. He was _evil_ about Daddy--malignant. A -nasty man.” - -“Yes, I know,” said Lambone. “Hate.” - -“Yes,” she said. “Hate.” - -She jumped to her feet and took possession of the hearthrug, looking -with her bobbed hair and short skirts and manly pose and serious face -the most ridiculous and attractive mixture of fresh youth and mature -responsibility conceivable. - -“You see, I don’t know what they can do with him--whether they can take -him away from me. I’ve never been much afraid of what might happen -before, but I am now. I don’t know how to take hold of all this. I -thought life was just a lark and people were fools to be afraid of -doing anything. But now I see _life’s dangerous_. I’ve never been much -afraid of what happened to myself. But this is different. He’s walking -about in a dream of glory--with absolute wretchedness hanging over -him. Think of it! People getting hold of him! Perhaps hitting him! An -asylum!” - -“About the law on these matters I know very little,” Lambone reflected. -“I doubt if they can do very much to him without your consent. But -I agree about asylums. From their very nature they must be horrible -places, haunted places. Most of the attendants--hardened. Even if they -start well. Every day at it ... too much for anyone.... I don’t know -how a lunatic is made, a legal lunatic I mean, or who has a right -to take him. Somebody--I think two doctors--have to certify him or -something of that sort. But, anyhow, I don’t think your father is a -lunatic.” - -“Nor I. But that may not save him.” - -“Something else may. He’s as you say an imaginative--a -super-imaginative man, possessed by a fantastic idea. Well, isn’t that -a case perhaps for a psycho-analyst?” - -“Possibly. Who’d talk him back--to something like he used to be.” - -“Yes. If such a man as Wilfred Devizes, for example, could talk to -him----” - -“I don’t know much about these people. I’ve read some Freud of -course--and a little Jung.” - -“I know Devizes slightly. We talked at lunch. And I liked his wife. And -if perhaps you could get your father away into a country cottage. By -the by--have you got any money?” - -“He’s got the cheque-book, but he makes me an allowance. So far there’s -been no money trouble. He signs his cheques all right.” - -“But he may not presently.” - -“Oh! Of course at any time he may begin putting a swastika or a royal -cipher in the place of his signature, and then the fat _would_ be in -the fire. I shouldn’t know where to turn. I hadn’t thought of that.” - -“No,” said Lambone. - -For some seconds--it seemed quite a long time to Christina Alberta--he -said nothing more. He sat half leaning upon the arm of his chair and -looked past her at the fire. She had said what she wanted to say, and -now stood waiting for him to speak. His wisdom told him that things -had to be done in this matter very soon; his temperament inclined him -just to stay in that pleasant room and say things. Meanwhile she looked -about the room and realized how comfortable a wise man could be. It was -the best furnished room she had ever been in. The chairs were jolly; -there were bound books in the bookcase, a delightful old Chinese horse -on the top of it; all his tea-things were silver or fine china; there -was a great writing-desk with silver candlesticks; the windows that -gave on Half Moon Street were curtained with a rich, subtly folding -material very pleasing to the eye. Her eyes came back to his big fat -face and his peevish mouth and fine, meditative eyes. - -“Something,” he said and sighed, “ought to be done at once. It isn’t a -matter to leave about. He might commit some indiscretion. And get into -trouble.” - -“I’m afraid of that.” - -“Exactly. He’s safe--where you left him?” - -“There’s somebody with him.” - -“Who won’t let anything happen?” - -“Yes.” - -“So far, good.” - -“But what am I to do?” - -“What are you to do?” he echoed, and said no more for some seconds. - -“Well?” she said. - -“What in fact are _we_ to do? I ought to see him. Decidedly. Yes, I -ought to see him.” - -“Then come and see him.” - -“I ought to come and see him. Now.” - -“Then let’s.” - -He nodded. He seemed to be making an intense internal effort. “Why -not?” he asked. - -“Well?” - -“And then--then we can broach a visit to Wilfred Devizes. Generally fix -that up. Then our subsequent action will be determined by what Wilfred -Devizes says. The sooner he sees Devizes the better. It’s a question -whether it wouldn’t be better for you or both of us to see Devizes -first. No. Father first. Then when I’m properly instructed--as a lawyer -would say--Devizes.” - -A great tranquillity descended upon him. - -She could not restrain a faint exclamation of impatience. - -He looked up as if he awakened from profound meditation. “I’ll come -along now,” he said, “to Lonsdale Mews. I’ll have a talk to your father -and then I’ll try to get at Devizes and fix up some sort of a meeting -between them. That’s what I ought to do. I’ll go along with you now--at -once.” - -“Right-o,” said Christina Alberta, “_come_ along.” She threw on her -cloak and clapped her hat upon her head in a dozen seconds and stood -waiting. - -“I’m ready,” she said. - -“I’ll just change this jacket,” said Lambone; and kept her waiting a -full ten minutes. - - -§ 4 - -The taxi dropped them at the entrance of the Mews. - -“I suppose it won’t matter our arriving together?” said Lambone. “He -won’t think it’s something preconcerted?” - -“He doesn’t have suspicions of that sort.” - -But when they reached the studio a little surprise awaited them. Fay -Crumb opened the door to them and her eyes looked paler and her neck -longer and her face more absent-minded than ever. - -“I’m so glad you’ve come at last,” she said in a flat, distraught -voice. “You see--he’s gone!” - -“Gone!” - -“Completely. He’s been away since three. He went out alone.” - -“But, Fay, you promised!” - -“I know. I could see he was restless and I kept telling him you’d be -back soon. It wasn’t so easy keeping him. He walked up and down and -talked. ‘I must go out to my people,’ he said. ‘I feel they need me. -I must be about my proper business.’ I didn’t know what to do. I just -hid his hat. I never dreamt he’d go out without his hat--prim as he -is. I just went upstairs for a moment to get something--I forget what -now--but, anyhow, it wasn’t there, and I may have spent five minutes -looking for it--and meanwhile he slipped out. He left the door open and -I never heard him go. As soon as I knew he’d gone I ran up the Mews -right up into Lonsdale Road and stood about there.... He’d vanished. -I’ve been hoping he’d come back every moment since. Before you -returned. But! He hasn’t come back.” - -Her conviction was all too manifest that he would never come back. - -“I’d have done anything--” she said. - -Christina Alberta and Paul Lambone looked at one another. “This rather -puts the lid on,” said Christina Alberta. “What are we going to do now?” - - -§ 5 - -Lambone followed Christina Alberta into the studio and sat down at once -on the simple couch that became Mr. Preemby’s bed at night. The couch -squeaked and submitted. He stared at the floor and reflected. “I’ve got -no engagements this evening,” he said. “None.” - -“It won’t be much good waiting here for him,” said Christina Alberta. - -“I feel in my bones he won’t head back here for hours and hours,” he -said. - -“And meanwhile he may be up to anything!” said Christina Alberta. - -“Any old lark,” said Lambone. - -“Anything,” said Christina Alberta. - -“Three,” said Lambone and consulted his watch: “it’s now nearly five. -Do you think there is any particular place, Christina Alberta, more -than any other place, where we might go and look for him? Where, in -fact, we ought to look for him?” - -“But will you come and look for him?” - -“I’m at your service.” - -“It wasn’t in the bond.” - -“I want to. If you won’t walk too fast. I feel I ought to.” - -Christina Alberta stood before him with her arms akimbo. “I would bet -five to one,” she said slowly, “that he heads for Buckingham Palace and -demands an audience--No, that isn’t how he puts it--offers to give an -audience to his Vassal, the King. He was full of that this morning. And -then--Then I suppose they will lock him up and have an inquiry into his -mental condition.” - -“H’m,” said Lambone, and then, rising to the occasion: “Let’s go to -Buckingham Palace. - -“We’ll go there at once,” he said, and moved slowly doorward. “We’ll -get a taxi.” - -They found a taxi in the King’s Road. Christina Alberta did not -belong to the taxi-ing class, and she was impressed by a sudden -realization that Lambone had all these thousands of taxi-cabs upon the -streets alert to do his bidding. The taxi dropped them according to -instructions at the foot of the Victoria Memorial which gesticulates in -front of Buckingham Palace, and they stood side by side surveying that -building. “It looks much as usual,” said Lambone. - -“You didn’t expect him to bend it?” said Christina Alberta. - -“If he made a disturbance they’ve cleared him up very completely. That -flag I suppose means G. R. is at home.... I wonder--what do we do next?” - -He was rather at a loss. The emotional atmosphere of this wide-open -place was quite different from the emotional atmosphere of his flat or -the Lonsdale Mews. In the flat and in the Mews the appeal had been for -him to act; the appeal here was not to make himself conspicuous. He was -a man of decorous instincts. A car passed, a beautiful, big, shining -Napier, and he thought the occupants looked at him as though they -recognized him. Lots of people knew him nowadays and might recognize -him. In his flat, in the studio at Lonsdale Mews, he could foregather -with Christina Alberta without compunction; but now, in this very -conspicuous place, this most conspicuous place, he had a momentary -realization that he and she didn’t exactly match, he with his finished -effect of being a man about town, a large, distinguished, mature man -about town, and she with her air of excessive youthfulness, her very -short skirts and her hat, like the calyptra of a black mushroom, pulled -over her bobbed hair. People might think them an incongruous couple. -People might wonder what had brought them together and what he was up -to with her. - -“I suppose we ought to ask some one,” she said. - -“Who?” - -“Oh!--one of those sentinels.” - -“May one speak to the sentinels at the gate? Frankly, I’m afraid of -those tremendous chaps in the busbies. I’d as soon speak to the Horse -Guard in Whitehall. He’d probably look right over our heads and say -nothing. And we should just dither away from beneath him. I couldn’t -stand that....” - -“But what are we to do?” - -“Nothing rash.” - -“We _must_ ask some one.” - -“Away there on the left towards Victoria there’s what looks like -the real business way in. There’s two policemen. I’m not afraid of -policemen. No. And of course that man at the corner is a plain-clothes -man.” - -“Then let’s ask _him_!” - -Lambone made no move. “Suppose he hasn’t come here at all!” - -“I know he meant to do so.” - -“I suppose if he hasn’t come,” said Lambone, “we ought to wait about -here on the chance of his coming.” He felt extremely like flight at -that instant. “There ought to be seats here. - -“Come along,” he said, with a sudden return to manly decision, “let’s -ask one of those bobbies at the far gate.” - - -§ 6 - -The policeman at the gate to whom they addressed themselves listened -gravely to their inquiries, making no instant reply. He belonged to -that great majority of English speakers who are engaged upon the -improvement of the word “yes.” His particular idea was to make it long -and purry. - -“Yurrss,” he said breaking presently into speech: “Yurrss. There was -a small gentleman without a ’at on. Yurrss. He _’ad_ blue eyes. And -a moustache? Yurrss, come to think of it there _was_ a moustache. A -rather considerable moustache. Well, ’e said he wanted to speak to King -George on a rather urgent matter. It always is a rather urgent matter. -Never ‘quite.’ Always ‘rather.’ We replied, according to formula, ’e’d -’ave to write for’n ’pointment. ‘Perhaps,’ ’e says, ‘You don’t know who -I am?’ They all say that. ‘I guess it’s something important,’ I says. -‘Not the Ormighty, by any chance,’ I says. But ’e was ’ere last week -and ’e wouldn’ go away and they ’ad to take ’im off in a taxi-cab. You -know there _was_ a chap ’ere, sir--Thursday last or Friday, I forget -which--with a long white beard and ’air all down ’is back. Very like -’im I should think. Well any’ow this sort of dashed your gentleman. He -kind of mumbled a name.” - -“Not Sargon?” asked Christina Alberta. - -“It might ’ave been. Any’ow, ‘There is no exceptions,’ I says. ‘Not -even if you was a close relation. We got no option here. We’re just -machines.’ He stood sort of looking baffled for a time. ‘All this must -be altered,’ he said in a sort of low, earnest voice. ‘It’s the duty -of every king to give audience to every one, every day.’ I says, ‘Very -likely it is, sir. But we policemen aren’t in any position to ’elp it,’ -I says, ‘much less alter it.’ So off ’e goes. I kind of tipped the -wink to the detective at the corner and ’e watched ’im go along the -front and then cross over to the monument and stand looking up at the -windows. And then ’e shrugged ’is shoulders and took ’imself off. And -that’s the last I see of ’im.” - -Lambone asked a superfluous question. - -“It might be Piccadilly way,” said the policeman, “it might be down -towards Trafalgar Square. Fact is, sir, I didn’t notice.” - -It was clear that the conversation was drawing to an end. - - -§ 7 - -“So that’s that,” said Lambone. “So far, good. He’s still at large.” - -He expressed his thanks to the policeman. - -“And now,” he said with an air of bringing out the solution of a -difficult problem very successfully, “all we have to do is to find him.” - -“But where?” - -“That’s the essence of the problem.” - -He led the way back to the Victoria Memorial and stood side by side -with Christina Alberta beneath that perfect symbol of the British -Empire, the statue of Queen Victoria. They stared down the Mall to the -distant Admiralty Arch, and for a moment neither of them said a word. -It was a warm and serene October afternoon; the cupolas of Whitehall -and Westminster’s two towers and a brown pile of mansions were just -visible over the trees on the right, transfigured to beauty by the -afternoon glow; the two tall columns of the Duke of York and Nelson -rose over the trees and buildings to the left; it was in the pause -before the dinner and theatre traffic begins, and only a few taxi-cabs -and a car or so emphasized the breadth of the processional roadway. -Half a dozen windows in the Admiralty had taken fire already from the -sinking sun. - -“I suppose,” said Lambone, “he’s gone down there.” - -Christina Alberta stood with her arms akimbo and her feet a little -apart. “I suppose he has.” - -The wide road ran straight to the distant Admiralty Arch. And through -that remote little opening was Trafalgar Square and Charing Cross and -a radiating tangle of roads and streets spreading out and beyond and -further into the twilight blue. - -“What will he make for now?” - -“Heaven knows. I’m bankrupt. I haven’t an idea.” - -Neither spoke for a little while. - -“He’s gone,” she said, “just gone,” and that simple and desolating -thought filled her mind. - -But the thoughts of Paul Lambone were more complex and intricate. - -He perceived that a serious adventure was happening to him and that -he was called upon to exert himself. He had suddenly been called -away from his tea and hot tea-cake to hunt a slightly demented -comparative stranger about London. He wanted to do it, and he wanted -to do it properly and in a way to impress Christina Alberta. And his -intelligence told him that the best thing he could do would be to -follow upon the probable track of his quarry and come up with him -before he got into mischief. Or while he was getting into mischief--and -interfere and carry him off. And meanwhile his more exercised lower -nature was exhorting him to leave Christina Alberta to do the pursuing -alone, and go back as straightly as possible to his ample arm-chair and -sit down and think things out. And then go to his best club to dinner. -And in fact quietly and neatly get out of this unexpected and tiresome -business altogether. - -And then he looked at Christina Alberta and realized that he could do -nothing of the sort. He couldn’t leave her. He looked at her profile, -the profile of a grave child, and an almost maternal emotion was -aroused in him. She looked with anxious and perplexed eyes at the blue -and limitless city that had swallowed up her Daddy. The scene was still -warm with the evening sun-glow, but the blue twilight gathered in the -lower eastern sky. Here and there a yellow pin-point showed that London -was beginning to light itself up. She couldn’t go down that road alone. -Absurdly, preposterously they were linked. The impulse to disentangle -himself was the impulse of a selfish discretion that was rapidly taking -all the happiness out of his life and leaving security and luxuries in -its place. This was a call to that latent Paul Lambone to _act_. Even -supposing she was a common, queer little flapper that his imagination -had made into a friend and heroine, was that any reason whatever why he -shouldn’t see her through this trouble that had come upon her? - -He made his decision. - -“He won’t go back for ages,” he said following up the problem. “Nobody -would on an evening like this.” - -“No,” she said. “But I don’t see that that gives me any hint of what I -ought to do next.” - -“We can keep together and go down towards Trafalgar Square. We might -look along the Embankment. When we are tired we can get some dinner -somewhere. You can get a sort of dinner almost anywhere I suppose. We -shall want our dinner.... Perhaps it’s not so hopeless a job as it -seems at first. A big job but not a hopeless one. There are limitations -to what he may do. Limitations in himself I mean. I don’t think he’ll -go into uninteresting streets. His feeling is--spectacular. He’s much -more likely to keep to open spaces and near conspicuous buildings. That -cuts out a lot of streets. And he won’t go far east. In another hour -the city will be shutting up and going home and putting out its lights. -He’ll turn back out of that--westward.” - -“You can spare the time?” - -“I’ve no engagements at all to-night. It was to have been an ‘off’ -night. And this business attracts me. It is interesting to see just -how far we can infer and guess his proceedings. It’s a curious mental -exercise.... Do you know I think we shall find him!” - -She stood quite still for some moments. - -“It’s awfully good of you to come with me,” she said. - -“I come on one condition.... That you don’t walk too fast. We’ve never -walked much together, Christina Alberta, but I’ve seen enough of you to -know that you walk abominably fast.” - - -§ 8 - -Every one knows the Café Neptune near Piccadilly Circus and the various -crowd that assembles there. There you see artists and painters that -are scarcely artists, poets and mere writers, artists’ models and -drug-fiends, undergraduates in arts and medicine who are no better -than they should be, publishers and gay lawyers, Bolsheviks and White -Refugees, American visitors who come to scoff and remain a prey, stray -students from the Far East and Jews and Jews and Jews--and Jewesses. -And hither at about half-past nine that night came a stout, large, and -wearily-distinguished-looking man accompanied by an attractive young -lady in short skirts and bobbed hair who carried a large and shapely -nose high and sternly, and they threaded their way among the tables -through the smoky atmosphere, seeking a congenial place. Out of the -garrulous confusing mirk arose a young man with a mop of red hair and -protruded a rampant face and asked in a large whisper: “_Have you found -him?_” - -“Not a trace,” said Paul Lambone. - -Fay Crumb’s face looked up from the table through a haze of cigarette -smoke. - -“Nor we. _We’ve_ been looking too.” - -“As well here as anywhere,” said the stout man. “Where have you -looked?” - -“Here,” said Harold, “and hereabouts. It seemed a suitable rendezvous.” - -“We’ve ranged far and wide,” said Lambone. “We’ve done miles--oh! -endless miles. And Christina Alberta has refused all nourishment--for -me as well as for herself. At last I said, either I sit down and eat -or I drop down and die. May we take these chairs? You have that one, -Christina Alberta. Waiter! It is a case of extreme fatigue. No--neither -Munchner nor Pilsener. I must have champagne. Bollinger 1914 will do -and it must be iced--rather over-iced, and with it, sandwiches--a very -considerable number of sandwiches of smoked salmon. Yes--a dozen. Ah!” - -He dropped his wrists on the table. “When I have had some drink I will -talk,” he wheezed and became silent. - -“When did you leave the Mews?” Christina Alberta asked Fay. - -“Half-past eight.... Not a sign of him.” - -“Have you been far?” Harold asked Lambone. - -“_Far!_” said Lambone and for a time was incapable of more. - -His voice seemed to recede in perspective. “Asking policemen for a -small, hatless man. Over great areas of London. On and on--from one -policeman to another.... She’s a most determined young woman. God help -the man who wins her love! Not a soul had seen him. But I can’t talk -_yet_....” - -Harold clawed his chin softly with long artistic fingers. “It is just -possible,” he said slowly, “that he went in somewhere and bought a hat.” - -“Of course he must have got a hat,” said Fay. - -“It never occurred to either of us that he would do anything so sane.” - -“We never thought of asking in the hatters’ shops,” said Christina -Alberta. - -“Happily,” said Lambone, and turned to welcome his refreshment. “That -would have been the last straw.” - -“For a long time we were on the trail of another hatless man,” said -Christina Alberta. “We ran him down in the Essex Road after tracking -him all up Pentonville. But he was just a vegetarian in sandals and -a beard. And there was a report of a hatless man near the Britannia, -but that came to nothing. He seemed just to have come out of his house -somewhere to buy fried fish off a barrow in the Camden Town High -Street.” - -“Extraordinary how a crowd collects when you ask the simplest -questions,” said Lambone with his mouth full of sandwich. “And how -urgently helpful it can be. They almost forced us up a staircase -after that fried-fish man, who struck me as an extremely pugnacious, -suspicious-looking fellow. The crowd would have it we wanted him, and -he didn’t seem to want in the very least to be wanted. If I hadn’t had -an inspiration something very disagreeable might have happened. I just -said ‘No, it’s not this gentleman, it’s another of the same name.’” - -“But what did he say?” - -“‘You _better_,’ he said. But anyhow it satisfied the crowd, and -afterwards we got away quite easily on an omnibus that took us down to -Portland Road Station.” - -The champagne arrived in its ice pail. “Hardly cold, sir, yet,” said -the waiter, feeling the bottle. - -“It’s not a time for fastidiousness,” said Lambone and took a third -sandwich. “You’re not eating, Christina Alberta. And I insist upon your -having at least one glass of this.” - -Christina Alberta drank a little and ate mechanically. - -“I wonder if we shall ever see him again,” said Harold. “London is -so vast. So _vast_! But I always feel that, when I see anyone go -out anywhere. There is a tremendous courage in going out. London -must be full of lost people. I used to be afraid of London until I -discovered the Tubes and the Underground. I felt I might be sucked -up side-streets to God knows where. And keep on going round corners -into longer and longer streets for ever. I used to dream of the last -street of all--_endless_. But whenever I get nervous I just ask for the -nearest tube station and there I am.” - -“He _may_ be back at the studio now,” said Fay. - -Paul Lambone reached his fourth sandwich and his third glass of -champagne with great rapidity. He became more leisurely in his -refreshment. - -“I am disappointed,” he said, “that I didn’t think of the possibility -of his buying a hat. It has disorganized all my inductions. You see I -was so concentrated on what was going on inside his head that I never -troubled about what might be going on outside it. But a man of his neat -and proper habits--acquired through a lifetime of orderly living--would -get himself a hat almost mechanically.... We may have passed quite -close to him in that.” - -“I should have known him,” said Christina Alberta. - -“But, until that Pentonville man drew a red herring across the trail, I -am convinced we were close on his footsteps. You see Christina Alberta -insisted upon my asking every policeman we saw--even men, overworked, -irritable, snappy, _rude_ men controlling the traffic--but at any rate -I chose the route--I inferred the route. You see, my dear Watson”--he -smiled faintly in weary self-approval at Crumb--“the essential thing -in a case like this is to put yourself in your man’s place, to think -his thoughts instead of your own. That is what I tried--so far as being -out of breath would allow it--to impress on Christina Alberta. It’s -fairly straightforward. Here you have a man convinced, beautifully and -enviably convinced, that he is the supreme lord of the world, unknown, -unrecognized as yet, but on the eve of his proclamation. Will such a -man go along any street just as easily as any other? Not at all! He -will be elated, expansive, ascendant. Very well; he will go up hill -and not down. He will choose wide highways and not narrow ones and tend -towards the middle of the street----” - -“He hasn’t been run over!” cried Christina Alberta sharply. - -“No. No. He would avoid traffic because that would hustle him and -impair his dignity. Open spaces would attract him. High buildings, -bright lights, the intimations of any assembly would draw him -powerfully. So he certainly crossed Trafalgar Square from the Admiralty -Arch in a diagonal direction, towards the conspicuous invitation of the -Coliseum.... You see my method?” - -He did not wait for Crumb to answer. “But the more I think over our -missing friend,” he went on, “the more I admire and envy him. What -crawling things we are!--content to be subjects, units, items, pawns, -drops of water and grains of sand, in the multitudinous, unmeaning -muddle of human affairs. He soars above it. He soars above it now. He -rejects his commonness and inferiority in one magnificent gesture. -_His_ world. The grandeur of it! Wherever he is to-night and whatever -fate overtake him, he is a happy man. And we sit here, we sit here -and drink--I am ordering another bottle of that wine, Harold, and I -expect you and Mrs. Crumb to abandon that warm and sticky beer and -join me--Waiter! Yes--another, please--we sit here in this crowded, -smoky gathering (_look_ at ’em!) while he plans the salvation of the -world that we let slide, and lifts his kingly will to God. Glorious -exaltation! Suppose that all of us could be touched----” - -Christina Alberta interrupted. “I think we ought to telephone to the -hospitals. I didn’t think before of the possibility of his being run -over. Always he has been a little careless at crossings.” - -Paul Lambone lifted a deprecating hand and searched in his mind for -some excuse for rest. - -“A little later,” he said after a slight pause, “the hospital staffs -will be more at leisure. It is their rush hour now--ten to eleven. Yes, -the Rush Hour....” - - -§ 9 - -Teddy Winterton appeared wading through obstructive seated people. His -eye was fixed on Christina Alberta. “Hullo!” said Lambone in not too -cordial greeting, and glanced at Christina Alberta and back at the -new-comer. - -Teddy struggled for an unoccupied chair over which some lady had thrown -a sealskin coat, and captured it with profuse apologies to the owner of -the cloak and squeezed it in at the end of the table between Harold and -Fay, who barred his way to Christina Alberta. “Have pity on a lonely -man,” he said genially and tried to catch the eye of Christina Alberta. - -“You shall have one glass of champagne,” said Lambone with a slightly -forced welcome in his tone. - -“How do, Christina Alberta!” said Teddy forcing her attention. - -Christina Alberta turned to Fay. “Will you come back with me now,” -she said to her, “back to the flat? I must do that telephoning to the -hospitals now or it won’t be done.” - -Fay looked at her curiously. “It’s serious,” said Christina Alberta’s -eyes, and Fay stood up and struggled with her coat. Teddy leaped to his -feet to assist her. Christina Alberta had not removed her cloak, and -was ready. “I say, Christina Alberta,” said Teddy. “I want a word with -you.” - -“Go on, Fay,” said Christina Alberta, giving her friend a little dig in -the back and pretending not to hear him. - -Teddy followed them out to the Piccadilly pavement. “Just a word,” he -said. Fay was for standing a little way off, but Christina Alberta -would not let that happen. - -“I don’t want a word,” she said. - -“But I might help you.” - -“You might have done. But it’s too late. I never want to see you again.” - -“Give a fellow a chance.” - -“You’ve had your chance. And tried to take it.” - -“You might at least keep up appearances,” said Teddy. - -“Damn appearances!” said Christina Alberta. “Oh! _Come_ on, Fay.” - -She gripped her friend’s arm. - -Teddy was left hovering. He hesitated and then went back into the café -to rejoin Crumb and Lambone. - -The two young women went on in silence for a little while. - -“Anything up?” Fay ventured. - -“Everything’s up,” said Christina Alberta. “I wonder if there’s a ghost -of a chance of finding Daddy at the studio.” - -They made their way to Chelsea without much further conversation. Fay -had never before seen Christina Alberta looking tired. - -When Fay opened the door Christina Alberta pushed in past her. “Daddy!” -she cried in the dark passage. “Daddy!” - -Fay clicked on the light. “No,” said Christina Alberta. “Of course he’s -not here. He’s gone. Fay! What am I to _do_?” - -Fay’s pale blue eyes became rounder. Christina Alberta, the valiant, -the modern, was in tears. - -“There’s the hospitals,” said Fay, doing her best to be brisk and -cheerful. - - - - -_BOOK THE SECOND_ - -THE WORLD REJECTS SARGON, KING OF KINGS - - - - -CHAPTER THE FIRST - -_Incognito_ - - -§ 1 - -Mr. Preemby had disappeared from Christina Alberta’s world. For a time -he must disappear almost as completely from this story. Mr. Preemby -fades out. Taking over his outward likeness we have now to tell of -another and greater person, Sargon the First, the Magnificent One, King -of all Kings, the Inheritor of the Earth. - -It is no doubt a very wonderful and glorious thing to discover that -instead of being the rather obscure widower of a laundry proprietor -with no particular purpose in the world one is Lord of the Whole -World, but it is also, to a conscientious man anxious to do right, -an extremely disturbing and oppressive discovery. And at first it is -natural that there should be something a little confusing to the mind -in this vast and glittering idea. It was an idea that carried with it -an effect of release and enlargement. For purposes as yet obscure, he -had been caught like a caged creature in that limited and uninteresting -Preemby life. His imagination had rebelled against its finality; some -deep instinct had warned him that his life was an illusion; in moments -of reverie, and sometimes between sleeping and waking, there had been -intimations of a light and purpose beyond the apparent reality. Now -abruptly, as though a portal swung open, as though a curtain was drawn, -that light poured upon him dazzlingly. His was no single life that -begins and ends and is done with like an empty song. His existence -was like a thread that shone and vanished and returned in the unending -fabric of being; that was woven into a purpose. In the past he had -been Porg in the city of Kleb, and he had been Sargon and Belshazzar. -Many others had he been, but those memories still slumbered under the -dark waters of forgetfulness. But the memory of Sargon shone bright. -It was his Sargon self that had returned and no other of his selves. -For some reason that was still obscure the Power that ruled his life -needed him to be Sargon once again, in this great distressful world of -to-day. Sargon had begun life humbly as an outcast babe and had risen -to restore and rule and extend a mightier Empire than the old world -had ever seen before. Certain qualities (h’rrmp) had been displayed by -Sargon, and because of these qualities the Power had called upon him -again. - -A whole series of memories was unfolding in his mind. With an -extraordinary convincingness he recalled his youth, memories of those -distant days in Sumeria where the Power had set him on high. They -were so bright and so pleasing that already they were thrusting his -recollections of Sheringham and Woodford Wells into the background, -making a fading phantom of his Preemby existence. He had never -cherished these latter experiences, never turned them over in his -mind with any pleasure. But his newly-restored memories were memories -to dwell upon. There were pictures of his early life when he was a -foundling, a mysterious foundling at the court of his predecessor. -(That predecessor’s name still escaped him.) Young Sargon was a fair -and blue-eyed youth, a thing rare in brown Sumeria, and he had been -found floating down the great river in a little cradle boat of rushes -and bitumen, and he had been taken and adopted by the ruler of the -land. And already as a lad he was pointed out as having an exceptional -wisdom, as being able to do what other men could not do, he had the -genius of the ruler. It was not that he had great cleverness nor great -skill nor strength. Many of those about him excelled him in these minor -things--in cleverness and memory work in particular, Prewm, the son of -the Grand Vizier, excelled him--but he had the true, the kingly wisdom -beyond them all. - -“The true, the kingly wisdom,” said Mr. Preemby-Sargon aloud and -came into sharp collision with a tall, dark gentleman hurrying from -St. James’s Park towards St. James’s Palace. “Sorry!” cried Mr. -Preemby-Sargon. - -“My fault,” said the tall, dark gentleman. “Late for an appointment.” -And swept on. - -Odd! Where had Mr. Preemby--or Sargon--seen that face before? Could it -be--Something connected it vaguely with Sheringham and sunlit sand. And -then Sumeria came uppermost and the tall, dark gentleman became the -chieftain of a desert tribe, a desert tribe amidst the sands. - -The ruffled surface became calm again, and that boyhood in Sumeria -resumed possession of the mirror. Where were we? Even in those early -days men had marked a gravity in the lad beyond his years. He had -avoided puerile games. In all his lives he had avoided puerile games. -No cricketer even at Sheringham. Modestly but firmly this youth had -raised his voice in the council chamber and his words were seen to be -wisdom. The old men had sat around marvelling. “He sayeth Sooth,” they -said in their antique Sumerian way. A soothsayer. He was also called -the Young Pathfinder. - -Before Sargon was fifteen the old childless ruler, beset by enemies, -threatened with plots, had marked him. “This boy might save the state.” -Then, while yet only a few days over eighteen he was given charge of an -expedition to pacify the mountain folk of the north and persuade them -not to ally themselves with the Enemy of the North. He did more than -he was told to do. He went through the mountain land into the plains -beyond, and gave battle to the Enemy of the North and defeated him and -smote him severely. After that all men perceived that he must be the -new Lord and Master of Sumeria, the successor of his aged Patron. All -applauded with sincerity except Prewm the Clever (already adorned with -precocious sprouting whiskers) and he applauded with envy in his eyes. -And then came the days of the Succession, and the Inauguration of the -Harem, beautiful days. And after that the birth of the Princess Royal, -his only child, and that great expedition into the deserts of the -south. And more expeditions and great law-makings, wise laws and wiser, -and crowds of applauding, grateful people and happy villages. Life -became happy universally. Prewm plotted and rebelled and was dealt with -after the simple custom of the time. That was a regrettable necessity, -a thing not to be dwelt upon. The frontiers spread and the great -peace spread; Russia, Turkey in Europe, Persia, India, Ancient Egypt, -Somaliland, and so on and so forth, were conquered and made happy. -America and Australia and the remains of Atlantis, still not completely -submerged, were discovered. They were forgotten again afterwards, but -they were really discovered then--and paid tribute. A League of Nations -was established. - -All the world told of the goodness of Sargon and lived golden days. For -Sargon ruled by the light of justice in his heart. He mitigated the -sacrifices in the Temples and introduced a kind of Protestantism into -the creeds and services. The people made songs praising him. Passing -men and women would run to kiss his hand. Nor did he deny himself to -his people. That confidence was his end. Came alas! the assassin’s -knife, the black assassin, a madman, a stranger----! - -It was wonderful. He could remember his people mourning after he was -dead. - -The white glove of a policeman against Mr. Preemby-Sargon’s chest -just saved him from stepping in front of a motor ’bus. He recoiled -dexterously. He was in Trafalgar Square, a great meeting-place, a -confluence. Here in the warm light of the October afternoon was a crowd -even greater than the Sumerian crowds. Here he would observe them. -They were dark crowds, anxious-faced crowds. His coming back had to do -with them. There had been a great war, much devastation; the world was -wounded and unable to recover. The poor rulers and politicians of this -age had no wisdom, had no instinct for the fundamentally right thing. -Once more a leader and a saviour was required, one who had the wisdom -that counts. - -It was Sargon that walked under the noses of Nelson’s lions and made -his way past the statue of George the Fourth to the balustrading that -commands the square. He took up his position there for a long survey. -He looked down Whitehall to the great tower of the Houses of Parliament -and Whitehall was full of a golden haze set with a glitter of traffic. -The stream of omnibuses, cars, and motor vans poured up to mingle with -the streams that came out of Northumberland Avenue and the Strand, and -the joint flow sundered again to the left of him and to the right away -to Pall Mall, across the square there. No street lamps were lit as yet, -but in the rounded bluffs of building to the left a few windows were -warm with lights. Below, across the square, thin streams of pedestrians -flowed like ants from one point to another and the squat little -station of the Tube Railway perpetually swallowed up dots and clumps -of individuals. Some sort of meeting was going on at the foot of the -Nelson column, a mere knot of people without evident enthusiasm. Men -with white and red placards about Unemployment were distributing white -handbills and shaking collecting boxes. Immediately underneath a few -poorly-dressed children ran about and played and squabbled.... - -Just a little patch this was in one of his cities. For, you see, by the -lapse of time and the development of his ancient empire, he was the -rightful owner and ruler of this city and of every other city in the -world. - -And he had come back to heal the swarming world’s disorders and -reinstate the deep peace of old Sumeria once again. - - -§ 2 - -But how to set about this task? - -That was the difficulty. There must be no Half Advent. He must take -hold swiftly and decisively he realized, and from the balustrading in -front of the National Gallery it looked a large, loose, scattering -sort of world to take hold of. It might refuse to be taken hold of. -If he began now, if he began to shout from this place, it was more -than likely that no one would heed him. He must watch warily for his -opportunity and _make no mistakes_. It did not become the Lord and -Restorer of the Whole Earth to make mistakes. - -Now, for example, that had nearly been a mistake at Buckingham Palace. -It had blown over all right but it might have had serious consequences. -People did not know the Master yet, had no inkling. “They might,” said -Sargon, lapsing into a Preemby homeliness “have run me in. And a Pretty -Fool I should have looked then!” - -There must be no more hasty action of that sort. - -No. Indeed it became him rather to wait for guidance. - -The Power that had brought him back into the world and awakened him -to a sense of his true identity and his mission, might be trusted -presently to send him an enlightened supporter or so--who would -recognize him. Because, of course, he must resemble the monarch he -had been--even as Hockleby had been recognizably like Prewm. As he -weighed this thought his hand sought his moustache and he twisted it -thoughtfully. It was in effect a disguise. Meanwhile--? Meanwhile he -must see what he could, determine the mood of the people and learn -their particular needs and distresses. He could go among his people -unsuspected--like Haroun al Raschid, but for a wiser purpose.... - -“Haroun al Raschid,” whispered Sargon and looked up to Lord Nelson -and nodded to him in a friendly way. “Haroun al Raschid. Would that -my pocket was full of pieces of gold! But of that to-morrow. That -man--what was his name?--Preemby had a bank somewhere.” - -He felt for his breast pocket. The cheque-book was still there. One -signed the cheques “_A. E. Preemby_”--queer, but one did. This A. E. -Preemby had played the part of a chrysalis. His hoard remained. - - -§ 3 - -In the Strand his Majesty caught a glimpse of his reflection in a shop -window. His hair was a little disordered, and he disliked to have -his hair disordered. He went into a hat shop that presented itself -conveniently and bought himself a hat. - -He took out his little note-case to pay--a reassuring thing to do. -For in it were no less than seven pound-notes. He counted them with -satisfaction. After paying up at Tunbridge he had drawn again on his -bank. He hesitated whether he should give largesse to the shopman--and -did not do so. - -It was not another grey felt hat with a black ribbon he bought; it -was an exceptional felt hat with a large brim such as an artist or a -literary personage might have chosen. It was not the hat that Albert -Edward Preemby, the restrained, the hesitating, would have bought; it -was much more Sargon’s sort of hat. Yet not pure Sargonesque; there -was a touch of disguise about it still, a more manifest disguise. The -brim came down over one’s brow. One could see ever and again in shop -windows and incidental mirrors that now a shadow of mystery lay upon -those brooding blue eyes. - -He made his way eastward towards Aldwych and so into Kingsway, looking -now at the shops, now scanning the faces of the people. - -To-day he was The Unknown. Scarce a soul that gave him a second glance. -But soon would come discovery and then all this careless jostling -crowd would be magnetized as he passed, would turn with one accord to -him. They would salute and whisper and wonder. And he must be ready -for them, ready to guide their destinies forthwith. It would not do -to stand at a loss and say “Er,” to stand collecting his thoughts and -clear his throat, “H’rrmp.” - -Terrible the responsibility that lay upon him! But he would not -shirk it. What should be his opening words to them when the moment -of revelation came? “First;--Let there be Peace!” Better words than -that one could not imagine. He muttered to himself; “Peace and not War -among the Nations. Peace and not War among individuals. Peace in the -street--in the workroom--in the shop. _Peace_. - -“Love and Peace. I, Sargon the Magnificent, command it. I, Sargon, have -come back after many ages to give Peace to the Whole World.” - -A shop window drew him. It was a map shop and prominently displayed in -the window was a map of _Europe after the Treaty of Versailles:--Two -and Sixpence._ He stood looking at that. It would all have to be -altered again. That was just part of his task. Then he surveyed the -rest of the window. Behind the map of Europe there hung a wall-map of -the world. He would need such a map of the world; you cannot rule the -world without a map of it. Or you may forget large portions. Or would a -globe be better? Maps are all to be seen at once, and besides they are -more portable. Furthermore, the shop did not seem to sell globes and -he did not know where globes were to be bought. He went in and bought -the world map and emerged again on Kingsway after an interval, with a -roll four feet long under his arm. He was also carrying an ingenious -flat-paper planisphere which had caught his fancy as he stood at the -counter. It might be useful, he felt, for astrological purposes. - -He began to think vaguely of his possible destination. Whither was he -going? - -He was seeking quarters, he was seeking indeed some lonely hermitage. -He had slipped away from the Princess Royal, who also had come -back--rather needlessly he thought--into this modern world, because -it was necessary for him to be absolutely alone for a time. He had -to spend some days or weeks in spiritual struggle and meditation and -mental purification before his revelation came. Even she might not -minister to him during that period. She was devoted, but she hampered -him. Indeed, she hampered him greatly. She did not fully understand. -Her remarks and questions were generally disconcerting and sometimes -downright annoying. It was quite probable that the metamorphosis might -never occur with her about. And, besides, always in the history of -great Visitants and marvellous returns there had been this opening -phase of withdrawal and self-communion. Buddha, Muhammad; they had all -done it. Perhaps he would fast. Perhaps fasting would be necessary. -Perhaps there would be Celestial Visitants. - -He wished he knew more of the technique of fasting. Did one just stop -having meals or were there ceremonies and precautions? But of that -later. First he had to find that quiet room, his secret place of final -preparation. - -Presently he found himself in the grey squares of Bloomsbury and -every house he passed displayed in its window a genteel card offering -“Apartments” or “Bed and Breakfast.” Here also were “Private Hotels” -and even a plain “Boarding House.” Well, here no doubt it had to be. A -simple room amidst his unsuspecting people, a simple, simply furnished -room. - - -§ 4 - -But through all Bloomsbury, to judge by the dark green and silver cards -in its ground-floor windows, was offering shelter and sustenance to the -homeless and the stranger, the new Lord of the World found it no easy -matter to secure that simple room he needed for his own use. For more -than an hour he was visiting one grey house after another, knocking, -standing on doorsteps, entering passages laid with immemorial oilcloth, -and demanding a sight of the accommodation offered, inspecting -it, asking prices--and--it became more and more evident--arousing -suspicion. The people stared at his rolled-up map and his planisphere -and seemed to dislike them instinctively. He had not expected such -blunt demands for information; his vague mysteriousness was swept -aside, he found himself difficult to explain. They wanted to know -how he was occupied and when he would like to move in. None of them -seemed prepared for him to just sit down in his room there and then. -They expected him to go out and fetch his luggage. It undermined his -confidence that behind him there was no luggage. All these people, he -realized more and more distinctly, would expect him to produce luggage -and might behave unreasonably if he did not do so. A mere readiness to -pay in advance, he gathered, was not enough for them. - -He had counted upon finding kind and simple people behind these -lodging-house doors, people who would accept him and look up to him -from the first and wonder about him and his planisphere, speculate -about its significance and gradually realize the marvellous visitant -that had come to them. But the people he saw were not simple people. -Mostly they were dingy, sophisticated people. They came up out of -basements in a mood of sceptical scrutiny, men in shirt sleeves, morose -for the most part and generally ill-shaven; extremely knowing and -anything but virginal young women, grimy looking older women, hungrily -lean or unwholesomely fat. One had a goitre-like growth. And always -there was something defensive in their manner. - -And the rooms he saw were even less simple than the people. His -consciousness was invaded by a sense of the vast moral changes that had -happened to the world since he had ruled the white-robed honesty of his -Sumerian irrigators. Then a room would have a table, a seat or two, a -shelf with a few phials, an image or suchlike religious object, a clay -tablet and a writing style, perhaps, if the occupant was educated. -But these rooms were encumbered with contradictions. They had windows -to let in the light and dark curtains to keep it out. Sargon’s hidden -second youth in the laundry had made him very sensitive to dirtiness, -and the cotton-lace curtains of those places were generally very -dirty indeed. Electric light was still rare in “apartments”; mostly -they were lit from gas brackets that descended from the centre of the -ceiling and carried globes of frosted and cut glass. Always there -was a considerable table in the centre and two uneasy arm-chairs. -And there were lumpish sideboards of shiny, liver-coloured wood and -comfortless sofas and incredible ornaments. Sometimes the rooms, and -particularly the bedrooms, had a meretricious smartness and gaiety with -mezzotints of ladies in the natural state trying to pass themselves -off as allegorical figures or of the Baths in the congested harems -of wealthy, rather than refined, Orientals. The over-mantels were -extraordinary affairs and much loaded with crockery ornaments, little -jars, small gilt-winged angels, red devils, or encouraging looking -ladies in bathing-dresses that were too tight for them. A common form -of decoration was to fasten up plates on the wall much as one sees -vermin nailed up on a barn. - -A considerable number of these homes for hire were as shabby as -roadside tramps. One stood out in his memory as faded and dusty -and grey and threadbare beyond the possibility of reality. His -self-absorption was penetrated by the wonder of who could live and who -could have lived in such quarters. All his life had been amongst clean -and bright surroundings; it was rare that he had any glimpses of that -worn and weary stratum of English town life in which things are patched -indeed, but in which it is rare for anything to be mended or cleaned -and incredible that anything should be replaced. Even the air in these -rooms seemed long out of date and the glass over the rusty engravings -of the Monarch of the Glen and the Stag at Bay spotted by remote -ancestral flies. - -“Does anyone ever stay here?” asked Sargon of the shattered-looking -lady in charge. - -He did not realize the cruelty of his question until he had asked it. - -“My last gentleman stayed here fifteen years,” said the shattered lady. -“He was a copying clerk. He died in hospital this June. Dropsy. He -always found this very satisfactory--_very_ satisfactory. I never knew -him complain. He was a very good friend to me.” - -A great desire for fresh air came upon Sargon. “How much are these -rooms?” he asked. “I must think it over. Think it over and let you -know.” - -She asked her price, the usual price in that street, but as she led the -way down to the door she said: “If it’s too much--If you made an offer, -sir----” - -Despair looked out of her grime-rimmed eyes. - -“I must think about it,” said Sargon and was once more at large. - -Why did people get so dirty and dismal and broken down? Surely in -Sumeria there were never lives like that! It would have to be altered; -all this would have to be altered when the Kingdom came. - - -§ 5 - -Then as the twilight deepened Sargon discovered just the peaceful -room he desired. It announced itself hopefully not by the usual -printed card but by a hand-written tablet saying “A Room to Let,” in -a window that had no lace curtains but little purple ones enhancing -rather than concealing a bare-looking white room lit pleasantly by the -flickering of a fire. There were one or two pictures--real coloured -pictures--hanging on the white wall. Rather wearily Sargon lifted the -knocker and supplemented its appeal by pressing the electric bell. - -There was no immediate answer, and he knocked a second time before the -door opened. A slender young man appeared holding a small girl perched -on his shoulder. She regarded Sargon gravely with very dark grey-blue -eyes. - -“Everybody seems to have gone out,” said the slender young man in a -very pleasant voice. “What can I do for you?” - -“You have a room to let,” said Sargon. - -“There _is_ a room to let here, yes,” said the slender young man and -his appreciative dark eyes took in the details of the figure in front -of him. - -“Could I see it?” - -“I suppose he might _see_ it, Susan,” the young man hesitated. - -“Of course the gem’s got to see it,” said the small girl. “If Mrs. -Richman was here she’d show it him fast enough, old stoopid.” And she -pulled the slender young man’s hair--affectionately but very, very hard. - -“You see,” the young man explained. “The landlady is out. _Don’t_, -Susan. And the landlady’s lady assistant is out, too. Every one is -out--and we’re sort of unofficially left in charge somehow. Properly, I -ought not to have answered the door.” - -“But I told you to--_silly_!” said the little girl. - -The young man made no definite move. Instead, he asked a question. “Is -that a map, sir, you are carrying?” he asked. - -“It is a map of the world,” said Sargon. - -“Very helpful I should think, sir. And so you found your way here. -Well--The room’s upstairs if you’d come up. Hold tight, Susan, and try -not to strangle me.” And he led the way up the staircase. - -It was just the usual staircase and hall with oilcloth and wall-paper -to imitate some exceptionally bilious coarse-grained wood. As they -ascended the young lady ran great risks in her resolution never to take -her eyes off Sargon and his map. She twisted round a complete circle -and forced her bearer to stop on the first landing and readjust her. -“If you pull my hair once more,” said the slender young man, “I shall -put you down and never, never, never give you a ride again. It’s on the -next floor, sir, if you’d go first.” - -The room appeared delightfully free from unnecessary furnishings. There -was a little plain bed, a table under the window, and a gas-stove, and -the walls were papered in brown paper, adorned with commonplace but -refreshing Japanese colour prints. There was a recess one side of the -fire-place with three empty shelves painted like the mantelpiece, a -deep blue. The young man had clicked on an electric light, which was -pleasantly shaded. - -“It’s rather plain,” said the young man. - -“I like it,” said Sargon. “I have no use for superfluities.” - -“It used to be my room,” said the young man, “but now I share the -dining-room floor with the people downstairs and I’ve given this up. -It’s rather on my conscience----” - -“People downstairs--what people downstairs? There aren’t no People -downstairs. It’s Daddy and Mummy he means,” said the young lady. - -“It’s rather on my conscience,” said the young man, “that I persuaded -Mrs. Richman to alter the furniture. It isn’t to everybody’s taste.” - -“May I ask,” said Sargon, “how much the room might be?” - -“Thirty shillings, I _believe_,” said the young man, “with breakfasts.” - -Sargon put down his map and the planisphere upon the table. He felt -that he must secure this room or be for ever defeated. - -“I am willing,” he said, “to take the room. I would pay for it in -advance. And take up my quarters at once. But, I must warn you, my -position in the world is peculiar. I give no reference, I bring no -luggage.” - -“Except of course these charts,” said the young man. “Haven’t you--for -instance--a toothbrush?” - -Sargon thought. “No. I must get myself a toothbrush.” - -“I think it would _look_ better,” said the young man. - -“If necessary,” said Sargon, “I will pay for two weeks in advance. And -I will get myself all necessary things.” - -The young man regarded him with an affectionate expression. “If it -was my room I should let you have it like a shot,” he said. “But Mrs. -Richman is the landlady and in many respects she’s different from me. -Have you--travelled far, sir?” - -“In space,” said Sargon, “_No_.” - -“But in time, perhaps?” - -“In time, yes. But I would rather not enter into explanations at -present.” - -The young man’s interest and amusement deepened. He put Susan down on -her feet. “Might I look at your map?” he asked. - -“Willingly,” said Sargon. He unrolled the map on the table and put his -finger on London. “We are here,” he said. - -“Exactly,” said the young man, helping to hold the map on the table -from which it seemed likely to slip. - -“It is still the most convenient centre in the world,” said Sargon. - -“For almost any purpose,” said the young man. - -“For mine, yes,” said Sargon. - -“And that star thing--that must be a great help?” - -“It is,” said Sargon. - -“I suppose you would--_work_ in the room? It would be just yourself? -There would be no coming and going of people?” - -“None. While I was here, no one would know me. Afterwards perhaps. But -that does not concern us. Here I should remain incognito.” - -“Incognito,” the young man repeated, as though he considered the word. -“Of course. Naturally. By the by, sir, might I ask your name? (If you -hit me again, Susan, I shall do something cruel and dreadful to you.) -We’d have to know your name.” - -“For the time I think Mr.--Mr. Sargon.” - -“Of course,” said the young man, “for the time. Sargon--wasn’t that an -Assyrian king, or does my memory betray me?” - -“It is not the Assyrian Sargon in this case, it is the Sumerian Sargon, -his predecessor.” - -“Not a word more, sir--I understand. You must be fatigued after your -long journey and I should love--I should dearly love to let you the -room. _Wow!_ Susan, you go downstairs. Pinching I can’t stand. Come -along. You go down to your own proper room and let’s have no nonsense -about it. _Come!_” - -Susan backed to the wall and prepared to resist tooth and nail. “I -didn’t _mean_ to pinch, Bobby,” she said. “I didn’t mean to pinch. -Troof and really! I was just feelin’ your trousis. Oh, don’t take me -down, Bobby! Don’t take me down. I _will_ be good! I’ll be awful good. -I’ll just stay here and look at the funny geman. If you take me down, -Bobby----” - -“Now, is this a real reformation, Susan--a conversion, a change of -heart? Will you be a _jeune femme rangée_ and all that, if I forgive -you?” - -“I’ll be anyfing, Bobby dear, flet me stay.” - -“Well! cease to exist then--for all practical purposes and I’ll forgive -you. What can the nice gentleman think of you, Susan? And you more -than five! _Bah!_ We were saying, Mr. Sargon--? Yes, of course, I was -saying that you ought to take the room. Payment in advance will be -accepted. _But_--there is that toothbrush. And other small--what shall -I say?--realistic touches. _I_ shouldn’t mind personally, but I’m -only an agent, so to speak. Properly I am a sort of writer. Properly -I ought to be writing a novel now, but, as you see, Mrs. Richman has -left the house on my hands and my friends downstairs have left this -charming young lady on my hands--Put that tongue back at once, Susan. -Unladylike child!--and here we are! But as I’m saying, Mrs. Richman -is the principal. She has her fancies about lodgers. It is useless to -dispute about them. She will want a show of luggage. She will insist. -But that is really not an insurmountable difficulty. This--you will -remember the name?--is Nine Midgard Street. If you go out from here and -turn to the left, take the third to the right and go straight on, you -will come to a main thoroughfare full of ’buses and trams and traffic -and light and noise, and at the corner you will find a shop where they -sell second-hand trunks and bags. Now if you bought an old, battered, -largish bag--and then went across the road to a chemist’s shop and -got those washing things you need--Oh! and a reserve collar or so at -the outfitter’s next door--You _must_ get such things.... You see the -idea?” - -Sargon stood in front of the unlit gas-stove. “This seems to be acting -a falsehood.” - -“But you must have clean collars sometimes,” protested the young man. - -“I admit that,” said Sargon. - -“And then you can settle down here and tell me about that business of -yours. Otherwise, you know, you’ll just wander about.” - -“Your suggestion is really quite a helpful one,” said Sargon, getting -the thing into focus. “I shall adopt it.” - -“You won’t lose the way back?” - -“Why should I?” - -“Nine Midgard Street.” - -“I shall remember.” - -“Queer world it is,” said the young man; “isn’t it? How did you leave -the old folks in--Sumeria?” - -“My people were happy,” said Sargon. - -“Exactly. I’ve been there since. _Quite_ recently. But the weather -wasn’t good and I got knocked about by a shell and had a nasty time as -a wounded prisoner. Hot. Crowded. No shelter. Nothing cool to drink. -But in your time it was different.” - -“Very,” said Sargon. - -“And now--by Jove! that kettle is boiling over all by this time, Susan. -Come down to my room, such as it is, and have a cup of tea, sir. And -then you can go out and make those little arrangements of yours and -dig yourself in so to speak before Mrs. Richman comes back. This, by -the by, is your gas meter. You get gas by the shilling in the slot -arrangement.” - -“You are being very, very helpful to me,” said Sargon. “It shall not be -forgotten when my time comes.” - -“Nothing. It just happened you came into my hands so to speak. No, -Susan, we don’t. You _walk_ downstairs. Pinching is forgiven but not -forgotten. You can leave your map, sir--and that star thing--as -visible signs of your occupation. No, Susan--on foot.” - - -§ 6 - -The young man’s room was bookish and rather untidy, and Susan had been -killing toys on the carpet--a china-headed doll and something or other -of yellow painted wood appeared to be the chief victims. The doll had -bled sawdust profusely. Dark curtains were drawn and a green-shaded -electric light threw all the apartment into darkness except the floor. -There was a gas-fire with a gas-ring on which a boiling kettle steamed -like an excited volcano; there was a deal table on which was a big -pile of letters address to “_Aunt Suzannah_” c/o Editor of _Wilkins’ -Weekly_, and there was a large untidy desk on which was another litter -of letters evidently receiving attention, and in the midst of the desk -a writing-pad, on which reposed a squeezable tube of liquid glue and a -half-mended toy. The glue oozed upon the face sheet of the writing-pad -beneath these words, written in a beautifully neat handwriting: - - UPS AND DOWNS - - _A Pedestrian Novel_ - - BY ROBERT ROOTHING - - CHAPTER THE FIRST - - WHICH INTRODUCES OUR HERO - -Beyond that the novel did not seem to have progressed. - -With the dexterity of long-established usage Bobby made tea and -produced plum-bread and butter. Meanwhile he kept a wary eye on Susan -who had sat down by the waste-paper basket and was tearing up paper, -and attended to the remarks and attitudes of his remarkable visitor. - -Sargon already liked this young man enormously. It was extremely -reassuring and encouraging to meet such kindly acceptance and -understanding after the chill and doubt and ugliness of the previous -hour’s experiences. And it was nice and refreshing to have tea. A sort -of grey insecurity, a threat of suppression that had come over his -mind, vanished in this genial atmosphere. The shrivelled incognito -expanded. The hidden mystery beneath it grew rich and full once more. -This young man--he seemed ready to believe anything. Sargon walked -up and down with his hands behind his back as if in the profoundest -meditation. He would have muttered a few phrases in Sumerian, but for -some reason he had quite forgotten that forgotten tongue. - -“And so you write books?” he said regally. - -“Not books,” Bobby answered over his shoulder; he was now toasting a -circle of plum-bread. “Not books _yet_. But--it _is_ ridiculous, isn’t -it?--I am a bit of a poet and all that sort of thing, and a journalist -of sorts. Just answers to correspondents--laborious, but a living.” He -indicated the piles of letters on the deal table. “As for books--I have -as a matter of fact _started_ a novel--it’s on that desk--but that’s -only in the last few days. And it’s so difficult to get a lot of time -to oneself to really let oneself go with it.” - -“Inspiration,” said Sargon understandingly. - -“Well, one must let oneself go a bit, I suppose; particularly at first. -But there’s always something one must do cropping up to prevent it.” - -“With me also.” - -“No doubt.” - -“That is why,” said Sargon, “I am withdrawing into this solitude. To -collect my forces. In Sumeria it was always the practice, before any -great undertaking, to go out into the wilderness for a certain tale of -days.” - -“If I go out into the wilderness I get so lonely in the evenings,” said -Bobby. “_Ssh!_ That was the front door.” - -He went out upon the staircase and stood listening. - -“Mrs. Richman,” Sargon heard him call. - -“S’me,” said a lady’s voice. - -“Here’s a lodger for the second-floor front.” - -“I bin to the pictures,” said the voice outside. “Mary and Doug--a fair -treat.” - -A corpulent lady in a black bonnet appeared breathing heavily. She -panted a few obvious questions and Bobby hovered helpfully at Sargon’s -elbow to prevent him making any mistakes. “He’ll pay in advance,” said -Bobby. - -“That’s awright,” said Mrs. Richman. “When will he move in?” - -“He’s getting his luggage right away,” said Bobby. - -“I suppose it’s all right,” said Mrs. Richman. - -“I know his people. At least I know about them. I’ve been in his part -of the country. You can be quite sure he’s all right,” said Bobby. - -“Well, if _you_ say so,” said Mrs. Richman. “’Ope you’ll be -comfortable, Mr.----” - -“Mr. Sargon.” - -“Mr. Sargon.” - -And after a few rather vague comments on the weather Mrs. Richman -withdrew. “And now,” said Bobby, “I’ll just unload Susan on her and -come with you for that bag. It’s extraordinary how people lose their -way in London at times.” - - -§ 7 - -“I’ve let the second-floor front to a lunatic,” said Bobby, breaking -the news to his ground-floor friends, Mr. and Mrs. Malmesbury. - -“Oh, _Bobby_! and with Susan about!” cried Mrs. Malmesbury -reproachfully. - -“But he’s a quite _harmless_ lunatic, Tessy--and he had to be taken in -somewhere.” - -“But a lunatic!” said Mrs. Malmesbury. - -“I only said that for effect,” said Bobby. “He’s really morbidly sane. -I wouldn’t have let him go for anything. Some day when I really get to -work on that novel I’ll put him in. I _must_ have material, Tessy. And -he’s wonderful.” - -He was preparing supper for the Malmesburys and himself. He was frying -some sausages and potatoes over a gas-ring. Previously Bobby had done -most of the putting of Susan to bed, and he had sat and told her -stories according to custom until she was fast asleep. Tessy Malmesbury -was out of sorts; she had a neuralgic headache, Billy Malmesbury had -taken her for a walk in Regent’s Park and she had come home exhausted; -things would have gone to pieces badly if Bobby had not taken them in -hand. - -Tessy was never very well nowadays; she was a slight and fragile little -thing and Susan had been a violent and aggressive child long before -she was born. In the long-lost days before the war when Bobby had -seen Tessy first she had been the lightest, daintiest, most perfect -thing imaginable; he had compared her to a white petal drifting down -through sunlight, and almost written a poem about her; he had loved -her tremendously. But it had seemed to him impossible to make love to -so exquisite a being, and Billy Malmesbury, who was less scrupulous, -had slipped in front of him and married her; she had not appreciated -the delicacy of not making love to her. And then came the war and -wounds and here they all were again, fagged and near the thirties, in a -world where their small annuities brought them far less than they had -promised to do. Billy was the junior partner of an architect and much -encumbered with drawing-boards. He was a large-framed young man with a -big, round, good-looking, slightly astonished face, pleasantly dappled -with freckles. He had a great protective affection for Bobby. He sat -now and designed a new sort of labour-saving pantry and, with a sense -of infinite protection, let Bobby get the meal. - -“And now I can tell you,” said Bobby, when at last all three of them -were sitting at table. - -“It’s a little dear of a lunatic,” he said. “If it’s a lunatic at all.” - -“I hope it isn’t,” said Tessy. - -“He’s quite tidy in his person and he hangs together--mentally he hangs -together--and his eyes aren’t in the least wild. A leetle too bright -and open perhaps. But he _does_ think the world belongs to him.” - -“Well, Susan does that,” said Billy. - -“And so does Billy,” said Tessy. - -“But not quite with the same air of magnificent responsibility. You see -he thinks he’s a certain Mesopotamian monarch called Sargon--I’ve heard -of him because we had a little dust-up with the Turks round and about -his stamping ground--he thinks he’s this Sargon come again and come -somehow--that bit’s a little difficult--into the empire of the whole -earth. It was Sargon, you know, who started all these British Lions and -Imperial Eagles in the world. And so he proposes to take possession of -the planet, which is in such a frightful mess----” - -“Hear, hear!” said Billy. - -“And put it in order.” - -“What more simple?” cried Tessy. - -“Exactly. Why haven’t we _all_ thought of that?” said Billy. - -“But where does he come from?” asked Tessy. - -“Not a sign. He might be a suburban nurseryman or a small draper or -something of that sort. I can’t place him. One or two phrases he -used suggested a house-agent. But he may have picked them up from -advertisements. And his first proceeding--perfectly rational--was to -buy a map of the world. Naturally if you are going to rule the world, -you ought to have a map of it handy.” - -“Has he any money?” - -“Enough to pay his way. He’s got a small note-case. That seems to be -all right. After we’d got a bag for him--he hadn’t any luggage, and -I thought he’d better buy a bag to satisfy Mrs. Richman--we sat down -upstairs and had a simple straightforward talk about the world and what -had to be done with it. Most instructive.” - -Bobby helped himself to some more fried potatoes. - -“And what _is_ going to be done with it?” - -“Let me see,” said Bobby; “it’s quite an attractive little programme. -Rather I think on the lines of the Labour programme. Only simpler and -more thorough. The Distinction of Rich and Poor is to be Abolished -Altogether. Women are to be Freed from all Disadvantages. There is to -be No More War. He gets at the roots of things every time.” - -“If those are the roots,” said Billy. - -“But isn’t the real question how to do it?” asked Tessy, “Aren’t we all -agreed about those things--in theory?” - -“In theory, yes,” said Bobby. “But not in reality. If every one really -wanted to abolish the difference of rich and poor it would be as easy -as pie to find a way. There’s always a way to everything if you want -to do it enough. But nobody really wants to do these things. Not as we -want meals. All sorts of other things people want, but wanting to have -no rich and poor any more isn’t real wanting; it is just a matter of -pious sentiment. And so it is about war. We don’t want to be poor and -we don’t want to be hurt or worried by war, but that’s not wanting to -end those things. _He_ wants to end them.” - -“But how’s he going to set about it?” said Billy. - -“That is still a little vague. I think there is to be a sort of -Proclamation. He’s thinking that out upstairs now. He seems to -think that he has to call up some sort of disciples. Then I think -he will go down to Westminster and take the Speaker’s place on the -Woolsack or something of that sort. It _is_ the Speaker sits on the -Woolsack, isn’t it? Or is it the Lord Chancellor? Anyhow, there are -to be demonstrations--on a large and dignified scale. The people have -forgotten the ancient simple laws, he says. He himself had forgotten -them. But he has remembered them now; they have come back to him, and -presently every one will remember them, all the great old things, -justice, faith, obedience, mutual service. As it was in Ancient -Sumeria. Dreamland Ancient Sumeria, you know. The dear old Golden -Age. He has come to remind people of the true things in life--which -every one has forgotten. And when he has reminded them every one will -remember. And be good. And there you are, Tessy! I hope it will affect -Susan--but I don’t feel at all sure. I have a sort of feeling that -Susan could stash up any golden age they started in about five minutes, -but then perhaps I’m a bit prejudiced about her.” - -“It’s rather wonderful all the same,” said Billy. - -“He _is_ rather wonderful. He sits up there and looks at you with -his little round innocent face and tells you all these things. And, -assuming he’s Lord of the World, they’re perfectly right and proper. -He sits with the map of the world unrolled on the table. I ventured -to suggest that he would require a lot of subordinate rulers and -directors. ‘They will come,’ he said. ‘No office, no duty shall be done -henceforth except by the Proper People. That has been neglected too -long. Let every man do that he is best fitted to do. Then everything -will be well.’” - -“And when’s all this to begin?” asked Billy. - -“Any time. I don’t think--” Bobby’s expression became profoundly -judicial. “I don’t think he’ll do anything for a day or so. I pointed -out to him that he ought to consider his demonstrations very carefully -before he makes them, and he seemed inclined to agree. Some mistake, -he says, has occurred already--I couldn’t find out what. Apparently -to-morrow he is just going to look at London, quietly but firmly, -from the Monument and from the Dome of Saint Paul’s. And also he wants -to observe the manners of his subjects in the streets and railway -stations, and wherever there is a concourse of people. The scales -have fallen from his eyes, he explains, and now that he knows that he -is Lord of the World he realizes how distressed and unsatisfactory -everybody’s life is--even when they don’t know it’s unsatisfactory. His -own life was terribly unsatisfactory he says, unreal and frustrated, -until he awoke and realized the greatness of his destiny.” - -“And what was that life of his?” asked Tessy. - -“I tried to get that. And he caught the eager note in my voice I -suppose, and shut up like an oyster. The draper’s shop perhaps. Or a -milk-round. I wonder.” - -“But, Bobby,” cried Billy in the expostulatory tone of one who -remonstrates with wild unreason; “he must come from _somewhere_!” - -“Exactly,” said Bobby. “And somewhere must be looking for him. But -you can’t always hurry these things. And meanwhile I take it it’s -our bounden duty to keep an eye on him and see that he doesn’t bump -himself too hard or fall into the wrong hands.... Until some one comes -along.... Don’t you get up, Tessy, you’re tired.” - -And Bobby jumped to his feet and proceeded to change the plates and -dishes while Billy fell into a profound meditation upon the problem of -the new neighbour upstairs. - -Presently he smiled and shook his head in kindly disapproval. - -“This will suit Bobby all right,” he said to Tessy. “Whenever he ought -to be upstairs in his own room getting on with that novel of his he -will be up on the second floor talking to--what is it?--Sargon.” - -“Accumulating material,” corrected Bobby from the Welsh dresser where -he was turning a tin of peaches out into a glass dish. “Accumulating -evidence.... Not even a spider could spin a yarn out of an empty -stomach. Tessy, have you just simply _lost_ the cream or have you put -it away in a new place very carefully for me to guess? Oh, right-o! -I’ve got it.” - - -§ 8 - -Let us be frank about it; Sargon had his doubts. - -Not always. There were times when his fantasy was bravely alive and -carried him high above any shadow of uncertainty, and he was all that -he could have ever wished to be. Then Mr. Preemby was almost forgotten. -But there were moments, there were phases, when he became aware of a -cold undertow of conviction that he was after all just Mr. Preemby, -Mr. Preemby, formerly of the Limpid Stream Laundry, making believe, -carrying it off and perhaps presently failing to carry it off. This -chill flow of doubt could even oblige him to reason with himself, force -him into a definite reassurance of himself. He would debate the whole -question, candidly, fairly. Surely there was no deception, could have -been no deception, about that séance. “Told me things no one but I -could have known,” he would repeat. “I pin my faith to that.” - -He knew that Christina Alberta had not really believed. It was just -because of her revealing scepticism that he had fled from her. She had -asked questions, tearing, rending questions, and she had said “Um.” It -is not proper to say “Um” to world emperors. If presently he fasted or -went into a trance, he felt sure that she would come and stand about -beside him and say “Um,” and spoil everything. Well, anyhow, he was -away from that for a bit. But to be away from doubt was not enough. The -great discovery threatened to evaporate. He wanted the comfort of the -disciple. He wanted help and reassurance. - -Bobby had comforted him greatly. While Sargon had been going from one -suspicious lodging-house keeper to another, the faith of the new -Saviour of mankind had weakened dreadfully. But Bobby from the first -had had something deferential in his manner, had seemed to understand. -His questions had grown more and more intelligent. Perhaps he was to -be the first of the reawakened adherents. Perhaps presently he would -be recognizable as some faithful servant in that still so largely -forgotten past, a trusted general perhaps or some intimate court -official. - -Yet even when Sargon doubted he believed. It is a very comprehensible -paradox. He knew clearly that to be Sargon was to be real, was to -signify and make all the world signify, was to go back into the past -and reach right out into the future, was to escape altogether from -the shrivelled insignificance of the Preemby life. To be Sargon was -to achieve not only greatness but goodness. Sargon could give and -Sargon could dare. Sargon could face lions and die for his people, but -Preemby could go round three fields, had been known to go round three -fields, to evade the hostility of a barking terrier. Preemby’s world -was dust and dirt, a mud speck in infinite space, and there was no -life on it but abjection. Preemby was death; Sargon was rebirth into -a world of spacious things. Not very clearly did Sargon achieve these -realizations, but he felt them throughout his being. Something had -happened to him of inestimable value and truth; he had to cling to this -gift and hold it and keep it or be for ever fallen. Christina Alberta -notwithstanding, the whole world notwithstanding. - -So he walked up and down his little upper room in Midgard Street and -elaborated his conception of his new rôle as lord and protector of -the whole world. Twilight gave place to night but he did not turn on -the light. He liked the friendly darkness. All visible things are -limiting things, but the darkness goes out and beyond everything to -God. “I must look,” he said. “I must watch and observe. But not for -too long. There is action. Action gives life. That fellow Preemby, -poor soul, he could look at things, but dared he lift a finger? No! -Everywhere suffering, everywhere injustice and disorder, the desert -and the wilderness breaking back in on us and he did nothing. If one -does not call and call aloud, how can one expect an answer? In this -world, vast, terrible--strikes--hoardings--adulteration--profiteers.... -Nevertheless men who once lived bravely and did their duty.... Who may -do it again.... Once they hear the call. Awake! Remember! The High -Path. Simple Honour. Sargon calls you.... H’rrmp....” - -He came to a halt at his uncurtained window and looked out on the -plain, flat face of the opposite houses, pierced here and there by a -lit window. Most had the blinds drawn, but just opposite a woman worked -by lamp-light at a table, sewing something, her needle hand flew out -perpetually and the book and one hand and the cuff of a reader came -also into the picture, the rest of him hidden behind the curtain. At a -bedroom window there was a looking-glass, and a girl tried on a hat and -looked at it this way and that; then suddenly she vanished, and after a -little interval the light went out. - -“All their scattered lives,” said Sargon, holding out his arms with -a benevolent gesture, “knitted--drawn together by wisdom and love. A -rudder put on the drifting world.” - -Came a knock at the door. “Come in,” said Sargon. - -Bobby appeared. “Getting on all right, sir?” he said in his engaging -subaltern manner. He clicked on the electric light and came into the -room. (Cadaverous and pleasant face he had; surely one would remember -presently what he had been.) “Wondered if you were eating anything -to-night?” he asked. - -“I quite forgot eating,” said Sargon. “Quite. My mind--troubled by many -grave matters. I have much to think of, much to plan. The hour grows -late. The time is near. I wonder if the serving woman here----?” - -“Only breakfasts,” said Bobby. “Here we are on bed and breakfast terms -strictly. The rest is with ourselves. For an emergency like this there -is nothing so good as the Rubicon Restaurant. The Grill Room keeps open -quite late. They will do you a chop or a cutlet. Or ham and eggs. Very -good ham and eggs--crisp ham. You go out from here, turn to the left at -the second corner, and go right down Hampshire Street until you come to -it. You’ll have no difficulty in finding it.” - -The word “crisp” had settled it. - -“I will avail myself,” said Sargon. - -“And it’s equally easy to find your way back,” said Bobby with a faint -flavour of anxiety in his voice. - -“Have no fear, young man,” said Sargon in a tone of jolly reassurance. -“Have no fear. I’ve found my way in many climes and under many -conditions--the wild mountains--the trackless desert. Time and space.” - -“Of course,” said Bobby. “I forgot that. - -“Still--London is different,” said Bobby. - - -§ 9 - -The next day at about half-past four in the afternoon a small but -heavily moustached figure, with eyes full of blue determination, -emerged from Saint Paul’s Cathedral and stood at the top of the steps -before the great doors, surveying the jostling traffic of Ludgate Hill -and the Churchyard. There was a sort of valiant uncertainty in the -figure’s pose, as though it was equally resolved to be up to something, -and uncertain about what it meant to do. London had been looked at from -the top of the Monument and from the Cathedral dome on a crystal-clear -October day, and it had betrayed an unusual loveliness and greatness -under the golden sunshine. But it had shown itself, too, as a vast -dreamy multitudinousness in which none but those who are resolute and -powerful in action can hope to escape being swallowed up. It had -stretched away to wide sunlit stretches that seemed to be the horizon, -and then up in the leaden-blue other stretches had been visible of -houses, of shipping, of distant hills. The vans and carts in the -shadowed streets below had looked like toys; the people were hats and -hurrying legs and feet, curiously proportioned. And over all an immense -dome of kindly cloud-flecked sky. - -He had walked round the little gallery under the ball, muttering: “A -wilderness. A city that has forgotten.... - -“How fair it might be. How great it might be! - -“How fair and great it _shall_ be!” - -And now he had come down again from these high places and the time -had come for him to gather together his disciples and ministers and -inaugurate the New World. He had to call them. Followers would not come -to him unless he called them; they would wait for him to act, not know -even of what awaited them until he called them, but when he called them -they would surely come. - -It was with an extraordinary sense of power over men’s destinies that -he stood now upon Saint Paul’s steps and reflected that even now men -and women might be passing by, among these busy men thronging the -pavement, among the people in omnibuses, among the girls clattering -away at their typewriters behind the upstairs windows, over whose busy, -petty, undistinguished lives hung the challenge of his summons. Yonder -perhaps was his Abu Bekr, his right-hand man, his Peter. Let them wait -a little longer. He waved the traffic onward with a gesture of kindly -encouragement. “Soon now,” he said, “very soon. Go on while ye may. -Even now the sorting of the lots begins.” - -Yet a moment more he stood still and silent, a statuette of destiny. -“And now,” he whispered; “and now.... - -“And first----” - -He was no longer troubled by his oblivion of the Sumerian tongue. -In the night he had recovered the gift of tongues; he had muttered -strange words in the darkness, and understood. - -“H’rrmp,” he said, a word common to many tongues, clearing the way -after five thousand years for the return of the forgotten sounds -to a renewed use in the world of men. “Dadendo Fizzoggo Grandioso -Magnificendodidodo--yes,” he whispered. “The Unveiling of the -Countenance. The First Revelation. Then perhaps they will see.” - -And slowly he descended the steps, his eyes searching the convergent -frontages of the Churchyard for some intimations of a barber’s shop. - - - - -CHAPTER THE SECOND - -_The Calling of the Disciples_ - - -§ 1 - -There are already wide differences of statement and opinion about -the order and the details of the calling of the followers of Sargon. -Happily we are in a position to give the circumstances with all the -exactitude that may be necessary, and with an authority that will -anticipate vexatious criticism. It was about half-past six that Sargon -appeared in Cheapside, and the day’s traffic was already ebbing in that -busy city thoroughfare. His countenance was transformed and shone with -that kind of luminosity that only the most thorough and exhaustive -shaving can give. A youthful smoothness had been restored to it. The -facial mane, the vast moustache, that had veiled it for so many years -from mankind was abandoned, a mess of clippings and lather now in a -barber’s basin. Now the face was as bare as the young Alexander, a -fresh-complexioned, sincere and innocent countenance speaking clearly -with an unfiltered voice. It was flushed with a natural excitement as -it went along Cheapside scrutinizing the faces of the foot passengers -on a momentous and mystical search. The blue eyes beneath the brim of -the distinguished-looking hat were alight. Was it to be this man? Was -it to be this? - - -§ 2 - -The first to be called was a young man of Leytonstone named Godley, -a young man with a large and excessively grave grey face and a -deliberation of utterance amounting to an impediment. He was carrying -a microscope in a wooden box. He was a student of biology with a -cytological bias; naturally very polite and temperamentally disposed to -be precise and deliberate in all he said and did. He was making his way -from Liverpool Street station to the Birkbeck Institute by a circuitous -route because he had nearly an hour in hand before his class began. He -stood poised on the pavement edge at a street-corner waiting for two -vans to pass, when his call came to him. - -He found a very earnest, barefaced little man beside him whose blue -eyes searched his countenance swiftly, and who then gripped his arm. - -“I think,” said Sargon, “that it is you.” - -Mr. Godley, who was not without a sense of humour, attempted to reply -that it certainly was him, but that impediment of his, partly natural -but greatly developed by affectation, arrested him about the word -“certainly,” and he was still sawing the air with his profile when -Sargon spoke again. - -“I have need of your help,” said Sargon. “The great task is beginning.” - -Mr. Godley went through the preliminary convulsions of explaining that -he had the better part of an hour to spare and that he was willing to -give help in any reasonable matter provided it was first explained to -him clearly just exactly what the matter was. But he could only give -help for a limited time. His engagement with his class at the Birkbeck -was imperative. Sargon paid little heed to the significance of the -various sounds that Mr. Godley was biting off and swallowing. He led -his captive by the arm and explained, with helpful gestures of his free -hand, the full significance of this call. “You are, I perceive, a young -man of scientific qualifications. They will be needed. I do not know -if you recognize me--your memory may still be imperfect--but I recall -your face, chief among the wise men of our ancient court. Yes, indeed, -chief among our wise men.” - -“N-no-no-not as-as-assure that I follow you aw-ow-ow quite,” said the -young man. “My my--my aw-ow-ow-work issferr’ll aw-ow-ow-known as yet.” - -“_I_ know it,” said Sargon boldly. “_I_ know it. I have been seeking -you. Do not be deceived by my plain incognito. Believe me I have -tremendous powers behind me. In a little while all men will understand. -The age of confusion draws near its end; a new age begins. We are the -first two particles, the very first, in a great crystallization----” - -“Where aaare we g-g-g-oing agg-aggs-aggs-exactly?” asked the young man. - -“Trust me,” said Sargon bravely. “Keep with me.” - -The young man struggled with some complex question. But now three -fresh individuals came under the magic attraction of the call and the -young man’s question fell in unheeded chunks. These new adherents were -a little group of men standing at the kerb, about a small, almost -inaudible hurdy-gurdy on which was a placard stating: “We want Work -not Charity; but there is no Work for Us in this So-called Civilized -State.” They were clad in faded khaki, and were all youths of less than -five-and-twenty. - -“Now look at that!” said Sargon. “Is it not time the new age began?” - -He addressed himself to the man on the right of the organ-grinder. - -“All this is to be altered here and now,” he said. “I have work for you -to do.” - -“Oh!” said the ex-soldier in the accent of a fairly well-educated man. -“What sort of work?” - -“We’re straight,” said the organ-grinder. “We’ll take it. If it’s work -we can do. We ain’t fakers. Wot work is it?” - -“Shillin’ an hour?” said the third. - -“More than that. Much more than that. And very great and responsible -work. A harvest! A splendid harvest! You shall be leaders of men. -Follow after me.” - -“Far?” asked the man who had spoken first. - -Sargon made a gesture that effectually concealed his own lack of a -definite plan, and led the way. - -“Lead on, Macbeth,” said the organ-grinder, and swung his hurdy-gurdy -into its carrying position on his back. The two other ex-soldiers -exchanged views that it was all right and that anyhow they’d see what -was offered them. Mr. Godley, keeping abreast of his leader, began an -immense and ultimately futile struggle with a fresh question. - -The next disciple was not so much called as fell into the gathering -body of Sargonites. He was a tall gentleman of a rich brown colour with -frizzy black hair, and a vast disarming smile. He was dressed in an -almost luminous grey frock-suit, a pink tie, buttoned shoes with bright -yellow uppers, and a hat as distinguished as Sargon’s own. He carried -a grey alpaca umbrella. He held out a sheet of paper in a big mahogany -hand and emitted in a rich abundant voice the word “Escuse.” The -paper had printed on it at the head the words, “Lean and Mackay, 329 -Leadenhall Street, E.C.” and below written in ink, “Mr. Kama Mobamba.” - -Sargon regarded his interlocutor for a moment and then recognized him. -“The Elamite King!” he said. - -“Non spik English,” said the black gentleman. “Portugaish.” - -“No,” said Sargon with a gesture that explained his intention. -“Providence. Follow after me.” - -The coloured gentleman fell in trustfully. - -“Look here!” protested one of the ex-soldiers. “There ain’t going to be -coloured labor on this job?” - -“Peace!” said Sargon. “Very soon everything will be shown to you.” - -“I don’t think you have any ub-ub-business to mislead ap-ap-people,” -said Mr. Godley, who was becoming more and more interested in, and -perplexed by, Sargon’s proceedings. - -Sargon quickened his pace. - -“This--this gentleman s-s-s-simply wa-wa-wanted tu-tu-tu-tu-to go to -that address,” said Mr. Godley. - -In his eagerness to get the idea home to Sargon he became a little -disregardful of his microscope box which inflicted a sudden sharp -blow on the knee of a passing gentleman, a business man in a silk -hat. The victim cursed aloud with extraordinary vehemence and stood -hopping on the pavement with his hand to his knee. Then he succumbed -to a passionate impulse to tell Mr. Godley exactly what he thought of -his conduct, his upbringing, and his type of human being. He joined -the followers of Sargon at a brisk limp, occasionally saying “Hi!” -in a breathless voice. A rather intoxicated man in deep mourning had -witnessed the incident. He came hurrying, with a certain margin of -error, to the side of the angry gentleman in the silk hat. - -“’Sgraceful salt,” he said. “’Sgraceful! F’want a witness _I_’m your -man!” - -His general intention was to go forward at the side of the gentleman -in the silk hat, but there were chemically emancipated factors in his -being that drove him sideways. The resultant was a sinuous course that -presently involved him with a display of oranges in a barrow at the -pavement edge. It was not a serious nor a prolonged contact, but it -involved a certain scattering of oranges in the gutter and added a new -ingredient, a very angry costermonger’s assistant with a remonstrance -and a claim for damages, to the gathering body of Sargon’s followers. - -The moral of a proverb depends entirely upon the image chosen, and -though a rolling stone gathers no moss, a rolling snowball grows -by what it rolls upon. A small hurrying group of people in a -London street is a moving body of the snowball type; its physical -pull is considerable; it appeals to curiosity and the increasing -gregariousness of mankind. Sargon, blue-eyed and exalted, with Mr. -Godley intent and eloquent upon his left hand, and Mr. Kama Mobamba, -tall, silent, smiling, with a shining confidence upon his ebony face -that soon he would be led into the presence of Messrs. Lean and -Mackay, formed the spearhead of the procession. Behind came the three -out-of-work ex-soldiers, who were now involved in obscure protests -and explanations with the gentleman in the silk hat, and a smart but -rather incomprehensible young newspaper reporter, who had acquired his -native tongue in Oldham, and had just come up to London to push his -fortunes, and was anxious for something called a “scoop.” He seemed to -think that Sargon might be the “scoop” he sought. Two ambiguous-looking -individuals in caps and neck-wraps had also fallen in, possibly for -nefarious purposes, a vague-faced young woman of the streets in a -weather-worn magenta hat was asking what was “_up_” and the intoxicated -man in mourning was explaining as wittily and obscurely as possible. -There was also a fringe of skirmishing juveniles. And an Eton boy. He -was very, very young and fresh-faced, a scion of one of the oldest and -best families in England and a convinced and fierce Communist. He had -been on his way with a bosom friend to the celebrated model engine shop -in Holborn when Sargon had swept past him and the inscription on the -organ had caught his eye. - -He was a boy of swift initiatives and with a highly developed dramatic -sense. - -“Sorry, old Fellow,” he said to his friend. “But I feel the time has -come. Unless I’m very much mistaken that little bunch is the beginning -of the Social Revolution, and I must do my duty.” - -“Oo I _say_, Rabbit!” said the friend. “Come and buy that steam-launch -first, anyhow.” - -“_What’s_ a model steam-launch?” said Rabbit scornfully, and turned to -follow Sargon. - -He would have liked to have had a swift strong hand-clasp first, but -you can’t do that sort of thing with a chap who will always keep both -hands in his trouser pockets. He darted off, and his friend followed -discreetly in a state between amusement and dismay, and at such a -distance as seemed to him to exonerate him from any personal complicity -with the social revolution. - -“Where are we going?” asked the young Etonian as he came up with the -hindmost of the out-of-work ex-soldiers. - -“_He_ knows,” said the out-of-work ex-soldier, indicating Sargon. - - -§ 3 - -But that was exactly what our dear Sargon did not know. By this time he -was no longer a convinced and complete Sargon. A scared and doubting -and protesting Preemby was struggling back into his being. - -Up to the beginning of the calling of the disciples Sargon had ruled -in his own soul assured and unchallenged. But he had expected his -disciples to respond to his call, to recognize and remember, to be -immediately understanding and helpful. The calling was to have been -like the lighting of a lamp in their minds and the world about them. -He had expected not only his own clear and unquestioning conviction -but accession and reinforcement for it. And so leaping from soul to -soul the restoration of Humanity, the Empire of Sargon would have -spread. For disciples who made conditions, for disciples who followed, -gesticulating strangely and spluttering and bubbling and stammering -injurious criticisms, for disciples who asked for a minimum wage, and -for disciples who came limping after one calling “Hi!” as though one -was a cab, Sargon was totally unprepared. - -Had he called these disciples rashly? Had he been premature again? Had -he made another mistake? - -These were unpleasantly urgent questions for a Master to solve while -he was going briskly to nowhere in particular about four miles an hour -along Holborn with his following gathering at his heels. Perhaps all -leadership is a kind of flight. In every leader of men perhaps the -fugitive has been latent. In Sargon now it was more than latent; it was -awake and stirring, and its name was Preemby. - -Since first mankind in its slow ascent from mere animalism became -susceptible to Prophets and Great Teachers and Leaders there must -always have been something of this internal conflict between the -greatness of the mission and something discreetly less, and there -must also have been always something of this clash of the disciples’ -quality and motive with the teacher’s expectations. The very calling -of disciples seems to admit a sense of weakness on the prophet’s part. -Their calling puts him in pledge. He puts himself in pledge to them. -They will, he knows, hold him to it when he falters; deep gregarious -instincts assure him he will not desert his declaration to them even -when he might desert himself. They desert him--inevitably. In the whole -record of the world there is only one unvarying, faithful disciple, Abu -Bekr. All other disciples failed and crippled their Masters and misled -them. They deserted or they drove the prophet whither he would not go. -Great things and little things of the same kind follow the same laws. -At the head of that small wedge of commotion driving along lamp-lit -Holborn in the October twilight went Sargon the Lord and Protector of -Mankind, the Restorer of Faith and Justice, the Magnificent One, and -though he was already aware of an error made and dangers incurred, he -was still resolved to pull a great occasion by some stupendous gesture -out of the jaws of disaster. And closer than his shadow was Preemby, -scared nearly out of his wits, ready for a desperate headlong bolt down -any side turning, a bolt from explanation, a bolt from effort, a bolt -back to Preembyism and infinite nothingness. - -Suddenly there came to Sargon a reassuring voice, the voice of one who -had at least seemed to believe and accept. - -There had been a slight altercation with Billy before Bobby came -hurrying across the road. “There he goes!” said Bobby. - -“That isn’t him,” said Billy. “Where’s his moustache? He was pretty -nearly all moustache.” - -“Shaved,” said Bobby. “I’d swear to him anywhere. A sort of prance in -his walk. It’s our prophet, Billy, and he’s heading for trouble.” - -“Looks more like a welsher,” said Billy. “Where’d he get that ecstatic -nigger? It’s too rummy for me altogether, Bobby. You keep out of it. -There’s a policeman tacking on now.” - -Bobby hesitated. “Can’t let him go like that,” he said, and dodged -across the road just as four racing omnibuses blotted out the -Sargonites from Billy’s eyes. - -“Forgive me, but where are you going?” said Bobby, stooping to Sargon’s -grateful ear in spite of a considerable push from Mr. Godley. - -“I have declared myself,” said Sargon, and straightway reassurance -came. This was the First of the Disciples, and he had found his way to -his Master. Quite clearly now did Sargon see what he had to do. These -first followers had to be instructed. The Teaching had to begin. To do -that it was necessary to lead them apart out of the hurry and tumult -of the street. A vision came to Sargon of a long brightly lit table, -and an array of disciples asking questions, and of memorable answers -and great sayings. And straight ahead, glowing, bursting with light, -already a friend, there towered up the inviting mass of the Rubicon -Restaurant, pioneer in the great enterprise of supplying dinners de -luxe at popular prices. - -“Yonder,” said Sargon with a sweeping gesture of the hand, “we will -rest and sit at meat, and I will talk, and all things shall be -explained.” - -The bright vision of a discourse to a gathering of disciples at a table -had so restored the gloriousness of Sargon that by the time he reached -the entrance of the Rubicon Restaurant, which bulges invitingly at a -corner, he had called two further disciples. One of these acquisitions -was a matchbox-holding beggar of venerable appearance, and the other -a highly intelligent-looking man of perhaps fifty, lean and thinly -bearded, carrying a book on the Doukhobors and wearing mittens and -a tall black felt hat--a hat of an unusual shape rather like the -steam-dome of a railway engine. This last acquisition was made at the -very door of the Restaurant. - -“Come in here,” said Sargon, seizing his arm, “and take meat with me. I -have things to tell you that will change your whole life.” - -“This is very _suddan_,” said the intelligent-looking man, speaking -in the high neighing protesting accent of an English scholar and -gentleman, as he yielded himself to Sargon’s grip. - - -§ 4 - -The actual invasion of the Rubicon Restaurant was a confused and swift -affair. Sargon’s mind was clear and simple now; he had to make that -vision of a long white table with his disciples grouped about him -a reality or incur a great defeat. His following was animated by a -mixture of unequal and incompatible motives, as all followings are, -and it was now swollen to something near thirty--the exact number -is uncertain because it passed marginally into mere onlookers and -passers-by--by the action of the least worthy of the three out-of-work -ex-soldiers, who had been uttering these magic words, “A Free Feed!” -ever since the Rubicon Restaurant had been in sight. - -The attention of that challenging individual, the outside porter, had -happened to be distracted by the arrival of guests in a motor car when -the Sargonites came along. They therefore swept through the outer -entrance without encountering any obstacle other than the rotating -door, which chopped the little crowd into ones and twos before it -reached the entrance hall. Perhaps twenty got into the entrance hall, -that space of marble and mahogany and hovering cloak-room attendants, -before the mechanical incompetence of the man in deep mourning and -his subsequent extraction by the politely indignant outer porter, the -costermonger’s assistant intervening unhelpfully, jammed the apparatus. -The man with the bruised shin seems to have fallen out before the -restaurant was reached, and the vague-faced young woman in the magenta -had drifted away at some unnoted moment. - -In the spacious, glittering and observant outer hall a tendency to -dispersal manifested itself. The out-of-work ex-soldier with the organ, -seized by a sudden shyness, made for the gentleman’s cloak-room to -deposit his instrument and became involved in an argument with his -colleagues. The two ambiguous young men in caps and neck-wraps seem to -have hesitated about the correctness of their costume. But Sargon held -the newly caught gentleman tight, and the venerable match-seller did -not mean to be separated from his patron in this bright, luxurious, -dangerous place. Mr. Kama Mobamba, tall and smiling and shining, handed -hat and umbrella to an attendant and followed closely upon the Master, -serene in his assurance that these were the lordly portals of the long -sought firm of African traders, Lean and Mackay. And Mr. Godley, with -his natural passion for explicitness, would not leave Sargon until -he had made it perfectly clear to him why he did not feel bound to -accompany him further. He came next after the others into the Large -Restaurant, making noises like a cuckoo clock that has lost control -of itself. The reporter from Oldham was also holding on, though in -considerable doubt now what sort of story he would have to write. The -Eton boy, more than half aware now of his error, and so disposed to be -a little detached also, came into the restaurant after depositing hat -and umbrella without. - -Bobby never came through. He was overtaken and held up in the entrance -hall by Billy. “This isn’t your affair, Bobby,” said Billy. “This -really isn’t your affair.” - -“I can’t make out what he’s up to,” said Bobby. “He’s bound to get into -trouble.” - -“Never mind.” - -“But I do mind.” - -“The management’s scared,” said Billy. “They’re sending for the police. -There’s a crowd gathered outside. Look at the faces looking in. See -that chap peering through the hole in the glass? Nice thing for Tessy -and Susan if we get into some police-court scrape.” - -“But we can’t leave him to get into a mess here.” - -“But how can we help him?” - - -§ 5 - -Within the restaurant Sargon made his supreme and final effort and -encountered swift and overwhelming defeat. But at any rate he did not -run away. He made a frontal attack on the world he had set out to -subdue--as Sargon. As Sargon, invincibly Sargon, he met disaster. - -Things had not begun to be very brisk yet in the Rubicon Restaurant. -But indeed it is never so brisk in the Rubicon of an evening as it is -at lunch time; it is too far from the west; pre-eminently a luncheon -place. And the hour even for such briskness as is customary had not yet -come. The neat lines of the little white tables, each with its lamp -and flowers, were only broken here and there by occupants. A family -group going to a circus; a little knot of people going to a meeting in -the Kingsway Hall; three or four couples of theatre-goers in evening -dress; three or four of those odd couples of a rather inexperienced -looking middle-aged business man and an extremely inexperienced looking -young woman in imperfectly conceived dinner dress who are to be seen -everywhere in London, and a group of three business men from the north -dressed in a canny grey and dining with a resolute completeness from -cocktail to liqueur, was all the company yet assembled in the body of -the restaurant. There were one or two occupants in the lower gallery, -dimly seen; the upper gallery was unlit. The atmosphere was still -timorous and chilly; even the three men from the north exacted their -tale of London luxury in a subdued and even furtive manner. - -The staff was still largely unemployed. The head-waiters, wine-waiters -and table-waiters fidgeted serviettes and glasses, or stood about with -that expression of self-astonishment and melancholy upon their faces -habitual to waiters. A slight hubbub in the entrance hall and the sound -of the smashing of the glass in the rotating door by the last effort of -the man in mourning preceded the entry of Sargon. - -Every one looked up. The guests forgot their food and their company -manners; the waiters forgot their secret sorrows. Sargon appeared, -an inconspicuous figure, a little white, almost luminous face, round -bright eyes. With one hand he still gripped his last disciple. With the -other he waved aside the gobbets of speech which Mr. Godley proffered -him. A tall expectant negro face rose like a shield of ebony and ivory -above him. Behind were the match-seller and other followers, less -clearly apprehended. - -A head-waiter faced him. Behind hovered a manager and a little further -off an assistant manager fiddled with the fruit on the buffet. - -Sargon released his latest catch and stood forward. - -“Set a table here,” he said with a fine gesture. “Set a table here for -a great company. I have called a following and must needs discourse -with them.” - -“Table, sir,” said the head-waiter. “For ’ow many, sir?” - -“A great company.” - -“Well, sir,” said the head-waiter with an appealing glance at the -manager, “we’d like to ’ave an idea ’ow many.” - -The manager came up to take control and the assistant manager deserted -his piles of fruit and came up behind helpfully. Sargon perceived he -was against opposition and gathered all the forces within him. “It is a -great company,” he said. “It must sit at meat with me here and I must -discourse to it. These people yonder may join. Set all the tables one -to another. The day of separate tables and separate lives is at an end. -Let even the tables manifest the Brotherhood of Man. Under Our Rule. -Set them together.” - -At the words “Brotherhood of Man” one of the three business men from -the north was smitten with understanding. “It’s a blood-stained -Bolshevik,” he said, or words to that effect. “Shovin’ in here! Of all -places!” - -“Oughtn’t to be allowed,” said his friend. “Aren’t we to have _no_ -peace from them?” - -The first business man expressed a general antipathy for incarmined -Bolsheviks and went on eating bread in a hurried, fussed, irritated -manner. “When’s that Fricassee of Chicken coming?” he said. “They must -have dropped it or something.” - -But the manager’s intelligence had been even quicker than the business -man’s. A swift signal had been given at the very beginning of Sargon’s -speech. The waiter sent to summon the police had already sped past -Billy and Bobby and the rest of the uncertain crowd in the entrance -hall, draughty now and uneasy because of the broken glass in the -rotating door that the man in mourning had broken. - -But Sargon heeded nothing of this byplay. He held on to the only course -that he could see before him, which was to overwhelm the opposition -that gathered against him. - -“We don’t have banquets in this room, sir,” said the manager, playing -for time. “Banquets you can have in the Syrian Hall or in the Elysian -Chamber or in the Great Masonic or Little Masonic Hall--given due -notice and after proper arrangements, but this is the general public -restaurant. You can’t _suddenly_ give a banquet to an unknown company -or society or something here. We don’t cater for that. It isn’t done.” - -“It will be done to-night,” said Sargon, with a glance and intonation -and gesture that would have bent all dream Sumeria to its knees. - -But the managers of European restaurants are made of sterner stuff, it -seems, than were the old Sumerians. “I’m afraid _not_, sir,” he said, -and stood blandly obstructive. - -“Do you know,” cried Sargon, “who it is with whom you have to deal?” - -“Not one of our regular customers, sir,” said the manager, with the -apologetic air of one who scores a point perforce. - -“Listen,” said Sargon. “This day is an Epoch. This is the End and the -Beginning of an Age. Men will count this banquet I shall hold here the -sunrise moment of a new world. I am Sargon, Sargon the Great, Sargon -the Restorer, come to proclaim myself. This multitude of my followers -must be fed and instructed here, fed bodily and fed spiritually. See to -it that your share is done.” - -He made a gesture behind him when he spoke of his followers, but indeed -there was no following behind him now save that one faithful but -deluded African, and that perplexed but persistent Oldham reporter. The -Eton boy had detached himself completely now. He was sitting at a table -afar off, where he had been joined by his friend, and they conversed -in undertones and watched. Even Mr. Godley with his microscope, and -the gentleman with the book about the Doukhobors, had faded out of -this story by this time, and were going along Holborn exchanging and -interrupting each other’s explanations and surmises about this singular -affair that had so unexpectedly deflected their high and reasonable -progress through life. - -“I can only sus-sas-sas-suppose that-the-fellow-was-mad,” said Mr. -Godley. - -While Sargon’s retinue had melted the manager’s had gathered. Behind -him now stood an array of waiters of every description, three dozen -perhaps of various and yet uniform waiters, tall waiters and short -ones, fat and thin, hairy and bald, young and old, waiters in aprons -and one in shirt sleeves. - -“I’m afraid you’re creating a disturbance here,” said the manager. “I’m -afraid I must ask you to go, sir.” - -Should he go? Never! - -“Oh, generation of blind and deaf!” he cried, lifting his voice in an -attempt to reach the scattered diners beyond this lowering crowd of -waiting men, “do you not recognize me? Have you neither memories nor -vision? Do you not see the light that offers itself to you? Can you not -hear the call that thrills throughout the world? The hour for awakening -has come. It is to-day; it is now. You may cease to be things of habit -and servitude, and you may become masters of a world reborn. Now! This -moment. _Will_ the change with me and the change is upon you! Sargon -calls you, Sargon the Ancient and the Eternal, the Wise Ruler and the -Bold One, calls you to light, to nobility, to freedom----” - -“’Fraid we can’t let you make speeches here,” said the manager with -hand extended. - -“Let’s chuck ’im out _now_,” said a short, thick-set waiter. - -“Chuck him out!” said the anti-Bolshevik business man, standing up and -speaking in a voice replete with indignation and gathering volume as -he went on. “And then bring us our Fricassee of Chicken. We have been -waiting Ten Minutes for THAT FRICASSEE OF CHICKEN!” - -And then a voice could be heard saying: “Wot’s it all _about_?” and -suddenly a policeman stood beside Sargon and overshadowed him. - -A wave of horror went through his soul, a wave of horror that was -entirely Preemby. Throughout his whole virtuous life he had never once -been in antagonism to the Police. “Oh, Lord! oh, Lord!” cried this -horror in his soul. “What have I done now? I’m going to be run in!” -The blue eyes grew rounder and he gasped for air, but no one there -perceived how close he came to ignominious collapse. Preemby shivered -and passed. Sargon choked and then spoke stoutly. “What is this, -Officer?” he said. “Would you lay hands on the Master of the World?” - -“My duty, sir, if he makes a disturbance,” said the policeman. “Master -or no Master.” - -Very rapidly did Sargon adjust himself to this new phase in his -affairs. He was defeated. He was to be led away. Yes, but he was still -Sargon. The Power that ruled him had thrust him into defeat, but that -could only be to try him. He had not expected this of the Power, but -since the Power willed it, so it had to be. - -“You understand, Officer, what it is you are doing?” he said, -magnificently and gently. - -“Quite, sir. I ’ope you don’t intend to give us any trouble.” - -A captive! Not thus had he foreseen the revelation of the Master. He -gave one last look at the rich decorations of the great restaurant in -which the opening banquet was to have taken place. Not here then but -in some squalid police-court it was that the New Empire of Justice and -Brotherhood had to be proclaimed. - -He turned in silence and went out at the policeman’s side quietly, deep -in thought. - - -§ 6 - -So ended Sargon’s first effort to enter into his Empire. Unless we -count the visit to Buckingham Palace as his first attempt. - -But before we go on to tell of the unexpected and dreadful experience -that now came upon him, we must record one or two minor incidents of -his capture. - -One is the behaviour of Mr. Kama Mobamba. He watched the closing -incidents in the restaurant with a growing amazement upon his great -bronze face. Had this little blue-eyed man been, after all, leading him -wrong? When at last Sargon was led away, Mr. Mobamba moved at first as -though still half inclined to follow him. Then he stood still, frowned -reflectingly and fumbled at his ticket-pocket. With some effort he -produced the sheet of paper that seemed to be his one intelligible link -with London; it was now in a rather crumpled condition. Smoothing it -out with his great hands, he advanced upon the manager with it extended. - -“What’s this?” said the manager. - -The black gentleman bowed with infinite suavity, still tending his -paper. “Non spik English,” said the black gentleman. “Portugaish. -Lean-a-Kay. Lemonallstree.” - -He was difficult to direct. - -Meanwhile in the entrance hall Bobby tacitly denied all knowledge of -Sargon. He was still hovering there with Billy, held by a curious -half-maternal solicitude. The ex-soldiers had “mizzled,” to use the -expressive word of the man with the organ, at the appearance of -policemen; the man in mourning and his troubles had been cleared up; -but there were still quite a number of people hanging about in a state -of vague anticipation, and the young reporter was trying to find some -one who understood the rare and obscure language of Oldham in order to -verify his facts. And there were several policemen; one evidently a -superior officer, a very good-looking man in a peaked cap and a frogged -coat. - -“Here he comes!” said Billy, and Sargon was led out. - -There was a silence as he passed through the hall to the rotating door. -And upon Sargon, it seemed to Bobby, there rested a hitherto unnoted -dignity. He looked neither to the right nor the left, and his eyes were -exceedingly mournful. - -“But what will they do with him?” asked Bobby. - -“You don’t happen to know him, sir?” asked the superior officer -abruptly. - -“Not a bit!” said Billy, taking the answer out of Bobby’s mouth. “Never -seen him before. We just came in here to see what was up.” - -And by his silence Bobby acquiesced. - -“I’ve got no power to move you on here,” said the police officer, and -smiled a suggestion of inopportuneness to Billy, and motioned to his -satellites that the business there was at an end. - -“We’d better go home,” said Billy, interpreting the smile. - - -§ 7 - -The three friends sat round a fire in the white room with the purple -curtains, and Bobby poured out his regret that he had denied Sargon. -“They’ve taken him off, Tessy,” he said for the third time, “and I do -not know what they will do with him.” - -“Discharge him with a caution,” said Billy with a drawing-board on his -knee. “He hadn’t committed very much of an offence that I can see.” - -“And then?” said Bobby, and meditated on the fire. - -“I shall go round to the police-court and try to pick him up again -afterwards if they let him go,” he said presently. - -“Better leave it all alone,” said Billy. - -But Tessy sat in her arm-chair between Billy and the fire and looked -at Bobby’s preoccupied profile rather sweetly out of the warm shadow. -And nobody in the world saw her. - -“They’ll warn him and he’ll come back here of his own accord, Bobby,” -said Tessy comfortingly. - -“Of course he’ll come back,” said Billy. - -“Very likely, Tessy,” said Bobby. “But suppose they don’t.” - -He got up and stood by the fire. “I suppose I ought to go upstairs and -do some work.” - -“I suppose you had,” said Billy. - -“How is the novel getting on?” asked Tessy. - -“Not much done yet,” said Bobby. “The Prophet has disorganized the -actual writing. But I’ve learnt a lot of things that will tell some -day. And of course I have to do all my Aunt Suzannah stuff. Aunt -Suzannah gets more and more popular. You can’t imagine the things they -ask me. It’s all material in the long run. Still--it takes time.... -I suppose they’ve locked him in a beastly little cell somewhere. And -he’s wondering why they don’t see that he’s truly the great Sargon, -come again to this world.... Billy, the world’s a dangerous place, a -dangerous, unkind place. Why couldn’t they let him rip a bit? And his -poor little map of the Whole World upstairs--he always called it the -Whole World--and his little paper star-machine, and his poor little -empty room and his poor little empty bed.” - -“I protest,” said Billy, putting his drawing-board aside. “Bobby, -you are a case of morbid overgrowth of the sympathies. You are a new -disease. You are the type case of Bobbyism. It’s bad enough that you -should sympathize openly with that little devil Susan when I have -spanked her, and so undo all my teaching. It’s bad enough that you -should do about a third of Mrs. Richman’s work because she needs -light and air. I can even understand something of your emotional -relationships with various stray cats and pigeons. But when it comes -to your being sorry for a poor little empty lodging-house bed, I draw -the line. Absolutely, Bobby; I draw the line. Poor little empty bed! -It’s--it’s _morbid_, Bobby.” - -“But of course he was thinking of Sargon,” said Tessy. “You’ll go to -the police-court to-morrow, Bobby?” - -“I’ll go--in spite of Billy. I don’t care if it is a disease. I’m -worried about that little man. I’m afraid. He’s too round-eyed for this -cruel world.” - -And next morning Bobby went. He went to Lemon Square Court and sat -through a frowsty morning and waited for Sargon who never appeared. He -heard all the morning “drunks” and suchlike come up for judgment, a -case about stolen soda-water syphons, two matrimonial differences, and -all about the wilful smashing of a plate-glass window with intent to -rob, but nothing about Sargon. The magistrate vanished and the court -began to disperse. He asked questions of a policeman who had never -heard of Sargon and the little trouble at the Rubicon Restaurant. Had -he come to the right court? the policeman asked. Bobby hurried headlong -to Minton Street. Minton Street, too, it seemed, had never heard of -Sargon. It did not occur to Bobby to ask in either police station. He -retired baffled. He tried to find something about Sargon in the evening -newspapers; there was not a line about the Rubicon or him. Perhaps he -had not been charged! He hurried back and rushed upstairs full of a -vain surmise; the room was desolate, the window open, the map of the -world on the floor. Had Sargon been spirited out of existence? - -Next day brought neither Sargon nor news of Sargon. Bobby lay awake of -nights. - -After three full days Billy, who had been watching his friend -furtively, remarked in a casual manner: “Why don’t you go and see the -Head Panjandrum at the Lemon Square Police Station about it? He’d be -sure to know if anyone does.” - -Shown in to Inspector Mullins, Bobby found himself confronted by the -same good-looking officer he had seen in the entrance hall of the -Rubicon Restaurant. “You’re the young man who didn’t happen to know -anything about him, three nights ago,” said Inspector Mullins, not -answering Bobby’s questions. - -Bobby explained the situation candidly. - -“Doesn’t help much now,” said the Inspector. “Still it’s all in order. -We took him, in the exercise of our discretion, to the Workhouse -Infirmary--for observation as to his mental state. Three clear days -they keep them there. Then they’re either certified or let go. Or -charged.” - -“Certified?” asked Bobby. - -“As a lunatic,” said Inspector Mullins. - -“And what happened to him?” - -“Usual thing, I suppose. He was a pretty clear case. By this time he’s -a certified lunatic, I suppose, and either at Cummerdown Hill or on his -way there. Or if that’s full--somewhere else.” - -“Phew!” said Bobby. “Pretty quick.” - -He sat disconcerted. “Can I go and see him at Cummerdown Hill?” he -asked. - -“Probably not,” said Inspector Mullins. “Seeing you’re not a relation.” - -“I’m interested in him.” - -“It isn’t your business.” - -“Exactly. But I like him. And I don’t think he’s exactly mad.... Seems -odd of his people--Do you know anything about his people? I might go -and talk to them about him.” - -“That’s possible,” said the Inspector. “I don’t know who they are. -You might find out at the Workhouse Infirmary or they might tell you -from Cummerdown. I don’t know. Very likely _they_ don’t know who his -relations are. There’s all sorts of such stragglers in the world. -Possibly he hasn’t any relations--the sort of relations, I mean, who -would want to bother about him. My impression is that once a man or -woman is certified and put away it’s rather hard for an outsider to get -through. But, as you say, you can but try. Sorry I can’t tell you any -more. I never saw him myself at all--except as he went past me. Not my -affair.... Yes, our usual procedure in such a case.... Oh! no trouble. -Good morning.” - -Left sitting squarely, an embodiment of implacable and indifferent law -and rule. - - - - -CHAPTER THE THIRD - -_The Journey of Sargon Underneath the World_ - - -§ 1 - -It has been said in an earlier chapter that Mr. Preemby, after his -wife’s death, was like some seed which germinates and thrusts out bold -and unexpected things. A new phase in that belated germination began as -he walked through the London streets beside his captor policeman. If -the thing had happened to Mr. Preemby while he was still Mr. Preemby, -it would have been merely a dreadful, shameful horror. It would have -been an insupportable experience, a thing to regret, a thing to get -through and conceal and if possible obliterate from record and memory. -If, again, it had happened in the early days of Sargon’s dreams it -would have been an occasion for an immense dramatic improvisation. He -would have thought of the effect upon the spectators and passers-by, he -would have posed and gesticulated and said profound, memorable words. -But some power of growth had taken possession of him now and he did -none of these things. He posed now neither to the world without nor to -himself within. For the first time in his life almost he was looking -directly at himself and at what he had done and what had befallen him, -and so full of wonder was he at this ultimate discovery of reality that -he forgot all the vast fabric of make-believe, imaginative response, -and deliberate self-delusion, up which he had clambered to this new -phase of vision. He walked so quietly through the lit streets that -only the most observant noted he was in charge and that the policeman -was on duty; to the rest he might have been any casual companion of a -home-going policeman. - -One determination had been released in this renascent mind with an -extraordinary strength and clearness, that he was not, and never -would again be, that Albert Edward Preemby who had launched him into -existence. He was a being called, it mattered not what, in reality, -but for his present purposes, Sargon, Sargon the Magnificent King. -The first concrete visions of Sumeria and his ancient glories had -passed now into the background of his mind. He had not lost his belief -in them at all, but they were now ancient history to him, and even -the revelation at the boarding house seemed very far away. His ideas -had travelled long distances and gathered much in the past week. The -expectation of an immediate sensational splendour had been rudely -shattered. The Power that had called him had surprised him exceedingly, -but had not overwhelmed him. He knew quite clearly that he had to be -Sargon who lived not for himself but for the Whole World, and that to -relinquish or deny that was to perish utterly. It had not seemed to be -necessary to him that his own faith should be tried, but manifestly the -Power had determined that it should be tried. And manifestly he was to -be put through some austere process of preparation before he entered -into his Empire. He was to know what prison was and to stand a trial. -He would be asked to deny himself. - -What should he say to them? I am not He--I am not Him--which was it? I -am not Him you suppose I am. He muttered it to himself. - -“Whassay?” said the policeman. - -“Nothing. Is it much further?” asked Sargon. - -It was just round the corner. Sargon found himself in a little austere -room with half a dozen quite amiable but slightly disrespectful men in -uniform. He was asked his name and address by one who sat at a table. -“Sargon,” he said. “Sargon the First.” - -“No Christian name?” - -“Pre-Christian,” said Sargon. - -“No given name, I mean,” said the questioner. - -“No.” - -“And the address?” - -“None at present.” - -“Just anywhere?” - -Sargon did not answer. - -“Case for Gifford Street,” said a voice behind him. - -“Memory case or something,” said the man at the table. “Anyhow, it’s -Gifford Street.” - -Sargon reflected. “What’s Gifford Street?” he asked. - -“’Ospital. Where they’ll give you a bit of a rest and quiet.” - -“But I want to meet a magistrate in open court. I have a message. I am -in no need of rest or quiet.” - -“They’ll tell you all about that at Gifford Street. Buxton, will you -take ’im round?” - -“But I am perfectly well! Why should I go to hospital?” - -“Routine I suppose,” said the seated policeman and gave his mind to -other things. - - -§ 2 - -Queer! Why should it be a hospital? The way the Power was treating him -was a strange way. He had to submit to the Power; he had to maintain -himself Sargon. Still he could have wished for more explicitness. - -He was so turned inward now that he went along beside Constable Buxton, -not noting the streets nor the traffic nor the passers-by. Presently -they were at a door in a high wall, within which there were buildings. -Then they were in a little office and a large, grey-faced porter -looked at him and exchanged muttered explanations with the constable. -Then they were going across a wide yard and through large doors into -a corridor where there was an unoccupied stretcher and two or three -nurses in uniform. They came to a little glazed-in office and Sargon -was asked to sit down on a bench against a wall while there was -telephoning. Constable Buxton hovered down the corridor as though the -task was nearly done. - -A small bright-eyed man in a grey suit came and looked at Sargon. For -some moments they regarded each other in silence. “Well?” said the man -in the grey suit. - -“My name is Sargon. I do not know why I have been brought here. Is this -a hospital? I understand it is. I am not ill.” - -“You may be ill without knowing it.” - -“No.” - -“We just want to have you here for a bit to have a look at you.” - -Sargon shrugged his shoulders. - -A very big man with exaggerated shoulders and a large, clean-shaven, -intensely self-satisfied looking face appeared. He had a wide, -thin-lipped mouth, protruding grey eyes and highly oiled and entirely -subjugated sandy hair with an army “quif” on the forehead. - -“Busy evening,” he said. “This is number three.” - -“Pretty full then,” said the small man in grey. - -“Too full,” said Mr. Jordan, “You don’t know where you are. This -_’im_?” he asked and indicated Sargon by creasing his thick neck and -depressing the corner of his mouth towards him. - -“This,” said the little man in grey to Sargon, “is Mr. Jordan. He’s -going to show you just where you have to go and just what you have to -do.” - -Immediately, instinctively, Sargon disliked Mr. Jordan. But he stood -up obediently because his idea of submission to the Power seemed in -some way to overlap and include this new coercion. Mr. Jordan produced -a voice of flat, oily, insincere amiability. “You come along, Old Chap, -with me,” he said. “We’ll make you comfortable all right ’fyou don’t -give no trouble.” - -They went round a corner and up a cheerless stone staircase that -turned back on itself; they came to a landing and double doors with -glass panes in them that opened upon a very long, dark passage lit by -a single very remote light. And suddenly it appeared to Sargon that -behind him and already distant lay that outer world of freedom, the -streets and the lights, the coming and going of people and things, the -endless chance encounters, the events and the spectacle of life to -which the Power had sent him, and before him were dark and narrow and -dreadful experiences. Why should he turn his back thus voluntarily on -the great outer world he had come to save? Was this again only another -mistake he was making? He took a step or so away from Jordan and faced -him. - -“No,” he said. “I do not want to go further into this place. I do not -wish it. Let me return. I have disciples to call and many things to do.” - -The full moon of Jordan’s face displayed incredulous astonishment that -passed into fierceness. “_Wot?_” he said. - -He left a tremendous pause after “Wot” and then spoke very rapidly. -“None of your tricks _’ere_, you thundering old Bastard.” With a swift -movement his huge, raw, red hand gripped Sargon by the upper arm. His -thin lips were retracted to show his teeth; his eyes seemed popping -out. He gripped not to hold but to pinch and compress and injure, and -he dug his fingers in between muscle and bone, so that Sargon stared at -him with dilated eyes and uttered a sharp, involuntary cry of pain. - -The grip relaxed from the acutely painful to the merely uncomfortable, -and the big face came down close to Sargon’s. It was manifest that Mr. -Jordan had been regaling himself on cheese and cocoa. “Don’t you try it -on, you Old Fool! Don’t you blooming well try it on. Whatever it is, -don’t you try it on ’ere. You’re right enough to understand what I say. -See? You do exactly wot you’re told ’ere. You do exactly wot you’re -told. You do your best to avoid givin’ trouble and I’ll do my best -ditto. But if you start doin’ tricks--Gawd ’elp you! See?” - -And he crushed the arm again. - -“Understan’?” - -The blue eyes seemed to assent. - -“Down that passage, blast you!” said Mr. Jordan. - -A distressed and wondering and yet not absolutely abject Sargon was -taken to a wet and untidy bathroom in which a broken chair, pools -of water, great splashings on the wall, and some crumpled towels in -the corner suggested a recent struggle. There he was made to undress -and take a tepid bath, dried with a towel that had already been in -action, put into a grey nightgown that was doubtfully clean, a grey -shoddy dressing-gown that certainly wasn’t, and a pair of down-at-heel -slippers two sizes too big, and so garbed, was led by Mr. Jordan, a -little propitiated now by alert obedience, into the ward in which he -was to pass the night. - -A rufous man with very light eyelashes appeared. - -“’Ere ’e is, Mr. ’Iggs,” said Mr. Jordan. - -“I’ve got his bed ready,” said Mr. Higgs. “’Ow many more of ’em?” - -“Perfec’ shower of ’em,” said Mr. Jordan. - -“Three,” said Mr. Higgs. - -“Well,” said Mr. Jordan. “So long.” - -“So long,” said Mr. Higgs. - -Neither of them addressed the Lord of the Whole World directly. He -might have been a parcel passed from hand to hand. - - -§ 3 - -When Sargon entered the Observation Ward of the Gifford Street -Infirmary his sense of having left life, ordinary current life, -far away behind him, beyond these grey passages and corridors and -staircases and glass offices and high walls and little doors, was -enormously reinforced. Never had he seen anything so emptily bleak and -cheerless as this place. A heartless great dingy room it was, with -green-grey distempered walls discoloured in patches, lit by a few bare -lights that gave neither high-lights nor shadows. Black night and a -greasily lit brick wall stared in through uncurtained windows. Half-way -down the length of the place projecting pieces of wall suggested that -two former rooms had been thrown into one. The floor was of polished -bare boards. Far off was a table set against the wall with two or -three torn and crumpled magazines thereon, and at the end an empty -fire-place. In the near half, on either side, there were iron bedsteads -in rows, twenty or thirty perhaps altogether. There was a foul smell -in the air, faint and yet indescribably offensive, a fæcal smell mixed -with a heavy soapy odour. - -Even had it been unoccupied, this cold, large, evil-smelling room would -have seemed a strange inhospitable place to Sargon. For it had always -been the lot of Mr. Preemby, even in the days of his early poverty, to -live snug, to have carpets, even if they were shabby carpets, under -his feet, and an encumbrance of furniture and silly human pictures -and brackets and things about him on the walls. Here in this harsh -plainness it was as though the fussy, accumulative, home-making -imagination of man had never been. - -But the strange soulless atmosphere of the place was but the first -instant impression of Sargon. It was followed by a far more vivid and -terrible realization, that this place was inhabited by beings who -were only at the first glance men. Then as one looked again it became -clear that they were not exactly men, they did not look up at his -entry as men should, or they showed their awareness of him by queer -unnatural movements. Several were in bed; others were dressed in shabby -and untidy clothes and either sat on their beds or were seated in -chairs about the lower part of the room. One individual only was in -motion; a grave-faced young man who was walking with an appearance of -concentrated method to and fro in a restricted circle in the far corner -of the ward. Another sat and seemed to remove a perpetually recurrent -cobweb from his face by a perpetually repeated gesture. Two men were -jammed behind the table against the wall and one, a fleshy lout with a -shining pink skin and curling red hair on his bare chest, was making -violent gestures, hammering the table with a freckled fist, talking -in a voice that rose and sank and occasionally broke into curses -while the other, a sallow-complexioned, cadaverous individual, seemed -to be sunken in profound despair. In one of the beds close at hand -a young man with a shock of black hair and an expression of fatuous -satisfaction, that changed with dramatic suddenness to triumphant -fierceness or insinuating lucidity, sat up and gesticulated and -composed and recited an interminable poem--something in the manner of -Browning. It was running in this fashion: - - “God shall smite them - And blight them - They may prevail but God will requite them - Light ’em. - Burn ’em to ashes and burn ’em to atoms - Atoms! - Burning atoms--exactly like stars. See? - Stars in the void and all over the place. - Atoms galore and God can’t show his face. - (Triumphant discovery.) - He _hasn’t_ a face. - That’s it! That’s it, my Boys! - Atheists wrong and theology wrong, - Plainly and simply here’s every one wrong! - And I have to tell ’em! - There’s a God, _item_ one, but he hasn’t a face - So he can’t show his face. - That’s the kink of it. - Naturally every one thinks he’s _non est_ - But he’s there as I know to my cost; - For I’m lost - But I’ve shown how it is all the same. - No face--what a game! - I found God in the void - Unmasked and a little annoyed. - _Quod erat demonstrandum_ X.L....” - -“There’s your bed,” said Mr. Higgs at Sargon’s elbow, shoving him -slightly. - -Sargon moved a little unwillingly, his puzzled eyes still on the talker. - -“You’ll hear enough of him before you’re done, Old Chap,” said Mr. -Higgs. “Hop into bed now.” - -Impelled partly by the arm of Mr. Higgs and partly by his natural -disposition to please, Sargon got into bed. Mr. Higgs assisted him in -a rough brotherly fashion. But before Sargon could pull up the clothes -about him, Mr. Higgs, glancing over his shoulder, became aware of -something that was happening down the room--Sargon could not see what. - -In an instant the genial authoritativeness of Mr. Higgs gave way to -rage. “Yaaps, you dirty old devil!” said Mr. Higgs. “You’re at it -again!” - -He quitted Sargon and ran down the room very swiftly. Sargon sat up in -bed to see what was happening. Three or four of the other patients did -the same. A very dirty old man with a face of extreme misery, who was -sitting in a chair, was seized upon and bumped up and down and hit -several times with great vigour by Mr. Higgs. Then Mr. Higgs departed -and returned, still uttering admonitions, with a pail and a rag. - -For Mr. Higgs was not only an attendant on the mentally afflicted but -also, on account of economy, the floor-scrubber and general cleaner -of the ward. He had been trained in the navy to ideals of a speckless -brightness and he scrubbed better than he attended. - -“Lie down there!” cried Mr. Higgs returning up the ward with his pail. -“It ain’t nothing to do with you.” - -The Lord of the World lay down. - - -§ 4 - -It was an extremely uninteresting ceiling to look at except for a -streak of yellowish stains, but it was better to look at the ceiling -for a time than to look too much at these distressing people around -him. They were distressing and distracting, and Sargon knew that it -was urgently necessary not to be distracted, but to think over his -position very carefully before anything further happened to him. All -this rush of consequences had been so unexpected, preposterous and -violent since--a few hours ago--he had surveyed London from the dome of -Saint Paul’s and decided that the moment had come to take hold of his -Lordship of the World, that he perceived he might very conceivably be -overwhelmed. How serene and distant now was that spectacle of London -spread out under the amber sunshine between its far blue hills and -its shining river, with its dense clusters of shipping and the black -ant-currents of folk below. From that he had come swiftly, inevitably, -to this echoing prison. For prison he saw it was. He knew quite well -that these men around him were demented men and that he had been seized -upon as a lunatic, but he thought that the Workhouse Observation -Ward in which he was, was a lunatic asylum already. In his wildest -imaginations he had never imagined the Power over all things could -treat him thus. The possibility of a brief interlude in prison, of a -severe but very public and triumphant trial, had entered his mind; but -not that he might be hustled away out of the possibility of any such -appeal. He had to think his position out anew, to discover what all -this monstrous experience was intended to show and to teach him, and -what he had to do to meet this strange occasion. - -And it was very difficult to do this with a raucous voice down the room -uttering foul threats about the ward attendant and a great fist beating -the table in sudden storms and with that smooth, fluctuating, unending -recitation nearer at hand, that cosmic poem, now almost inaudible--so -that one strained to catch the words--and now in high-pitched delight. -For long stretches it was just incoherent jumble and Sargon would -hold it almost completely out of his attention while he pursued his -own perplexities, and then it would rush together into something that -challenged its way to mingle with his inmost thoughts. - - “Filthy old Nature, she drives us amain; - One goad is lust and the other goad pain. - And so we get back to old nowhere again. - Nowhere to start from and nowhere again. - Want and be hurt, want and be hurt, - Out of the dirt you came, back to the dirt. - Hunger for dirt and dirty regretting - Dirty our feeding and dirty begetting - Smear yourself, paint yourself, wear a fine shirt - Put a brave face on it, Yah!--you are dirt.” - -“Now is that true?” asked Sargon of himself. Is that true? Dirt? What -is dirt? But no! he must not wander off after this mad raving! What -was it he had been thinking about? He had been asking why had the Power -thrust him into this dreadful place? Why had the Power brought him to -this place? If only the man would stop that improvisation of his for a -little while it might be possible to think that out. Why had he been -given over to the commands of Jordan and Higgs to live among the madmen -and--sudden fantastic side question!--why had _they_? - -If only that poem would cease! If only that voice would fade to -silence! It was now mere rubble and rubbish, as though thought had been -broken up with a pickaxe and loaded in carts and shot down a slope. -Don’t listen to it, Sargon! Don’t listen to it! Concentrate! - -In his endeavour to concentrate, Sargon forgot even Higgs. He sat up in -bed and drew his knees nearly to his chin and thought. - -He was Sargon; that was the great issue. He had to remain Sargon. -He was probably in this place of trouble and torment because of the -conflict between his being Sargon and the possibility of his relapsing -into Preemby. The Power had called him to be Sargon and to serve and -suffer for and at last to rule the Whole World, but manifestly it was -not a simple direct call. There was something working in opposition -to this destiny, an Anti-Power, opposed to the Power, which was -trying to put him back to Preemby and Preembyism, to being little and -insignificant, to living obscurely and to no purpose and so at last to -dying and becoming utterly and finally dead. That Anti-Power it was -that had been permitted to bring him here, to frighten and torment -him, to din mad rhymes into his ears, to urge upon him in a monotonous -persistent voice that he was dirt and that God was without a face, -and a multitude of suchlike blasphemies. But they were not true. The -Anti-Power might talk and talk--would God there could be a respite from -his talking!--but the truth was outside this place and greater than -this place and altogether comprehended it. He was one, Sargon was one, -from the beginning in Sumeria, in many lands and now here, the same -spirit, the ruler who serves; he was one just as London was one when it -was seen from on high up above there, endlessly multitudinous yet drawn -together into a single personality. And so was the whole world one. -To be Preemby was to be like a wretched little back street house down -below there, swallowed up in the general effect. Never more could he -be Preemby, even if he would. That was what he had to keep hold of. He -could only be Sargon by denying Preemby--even though he had to face the -pains of death. - -Yet all the while the Anti-Power was insulting life and himself through -that disordered poet and his recitation. The man had now fallen under -the spell of a fascinating but detestable word, if one may call such a -thing a word, “Tra-la-la.” - - “Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la. - That is the note of it. - Get the full gloat of it. - Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la. - All times and places - Happy derision for Gods without faces. - Tra-la-la sunshine or Tra-la-la rain. - Eat, drink, and kiss ’em and at it again. - Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la. - Kiss ’em and Kiss ’em and at it again. - At it again! - Tra-la-la.” - -He varied his recitation with a loud explosive noise made by his lips -on the back of his hand. - -“Pray don’t think me cynical,” he said to Sargon. “It is just pure Joy -de Vive.” - -Sargon could not stand it any longer. This was damnable teaching to -fling out before the very regenerator of mankind. He suddenly thrust -out a pointing finger. “You are wrong!” he said loudly and sharply. - -The poet stared for a minute and with a gesture of salutation said: -“Tra-la-la-la.” - -“I tell you life is real,” cried Sargon. “Life is immense. Life is full -of meaning and order. I have come to tell you and all men so.” - -The poet interrupted smilingly and politely with: - - “Tra-la-la - Tra-la-la - Life is a hiccup and life is a sneeze - A smell from a dunghill borne on the breeze - A thing of no moment--so do as you please! - Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.” - -He was going on, but Sargon would not hear him. He lifted his voice to -drown his antagonist. “I tell you, you poor soul! you are utterly wrong -and blind,” he said. “For the light has come to me and understanding is -mine. You are not the lost thing you deem you are, or at least you need -not be. No! I, too, was a lost thing such as you are, a little while -ago. I, too, thought I was a grain, a fragment, a thing of no account. -But the call has come to me, and I have been called to call others to -take part with me in a new awakening. I have had a vision and I have -seen the world like one who awakens from a long sleep. All things are -joined together and work together and continue for ever.” - -The poet wrinkled up his nose and waved his hand at Sargon as who -should wave aside some object of offence. “Tra-la-la,” he shouted. - -“All things I tell you are joined together and work together----” - -“Tra-la-la,” louder. - -“I tell you,” much louder. - -“Shuddup there,” cried the loud and wrathful voice of Sanity embodied -in Mr. Higgs. - -“You’ll have the whole ward jabbering in a minute,” said Mr. Higgs, -approaching and addressing Sargon in tones of earnest expostulation. -“Shud Dup.” - -And after a brief pause of reflection the Lord of the Whole World -obeyed. - -With a gesture of extreme dignity he indicated to Higgs that his crude -demands were conceded. - -“That’s o right,” said Higgs. “_You_ can hold in if you want to. So you -better. _He_ can’t.” - -The poet went on in a soft insinuating undertone reviling and mocking -Sargon’s faith to a refrain of: “Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.” - - -§ 5 - -Sargon sat up in bed, motionless now except that his head turned slowly -to look at the people about him, and silent. His recent outbreak had -in some way assuaged the exasperation of that endless recitation. It -continued, now crazily persuasive, now strident and vehement, now a -mere babble of words, it flowed past him and over him; it was now -manifestly directed at him, but he was able to disregard it. He sat up -and looked at the people about him and contemplated the vast dreadful -hours that plainly lay before him. - -He did not look beyond the coming night. That alone he foresaw as an -eternity. - -He knew that this harsh, naked electric light which prized up his -eyelids however tightly he closed them, would be glaring all night; he -knew that because he had noted a glance that Higgs had directed at the -violent man with red hair. Instantly he knew that Higgs was afraid of -that red-haired man with the shining pink skin and would never dare -to have the ward in darkness, never dare to have even shade in it, -whatever the custom or the regulations might be. And also he understood -why ever and again Higgs went out of the room at the upper end; he went -out to assure himself of the presence of Jordan or some such other -helper, within call. Yes, this light would certainly keep on all night -and the poet seemed as likely to keep on, and there would be occasional -outbreaks of table hammering and shouting from the red-haired man and -from another man who uttered a sudden flat shout ever and again. And -there would be misadventures of various sorts; noises and comings and -goings. So he might just as well sit up and think as lie down and make -hopeless attempts to slumber. One could always think. Of course if one -was too tired one would cease thinking onward, one would just think -round and round, but it would be impossible not to go on waking and -thinking. There was no sleeping in this place. Eyes, ears, nose were -all too much offended. Did anyone ever sleep here, mad or sane? - -There was nothing for him to do, therefore, but to sit up and think, -sit up and think, doze perhaps and think into a dream, until some -unexpected jolt or jar brought him back to his thinking. - -The longest night must end at last. - -Then suddenly Sargon, between sleeping and waking, saw something -horrible. At least it struck upon his nerves as horrible. Two beds away -from him there lay an extremely emaciated young man and his head was -lifted up. It was not supported by pillows; it was six inches above the -pillow. It was held up in an attitude that it was painful to realize. -The young man’s face expressed a serenely proud satisfaction at this -fantastic rigidity. It was incredible. Was there such a thing as an -invisible pillow? Or was this a delusion of Sargon’s eyes, a waking -dream? - -In the bed beyond another man was lying down with his wakeful face -towards Sargon. His eyes met Sargon’s. Neither man said a word nor -made a gesture, but to each came infinite comfort. For the eyes each -encountered were as sane as his own and each gave support to the other. -It is so, they said. It is strange, but your eyes are not deceiving -you. That is the form of that young man’s affliction. - -Sargon nodded. The other sane man nodded in reply and then turned over -in his bed as a reassured child might do, to sleep. But could he sleep? - -Sargon’s gaze went round the ward with a new discovery. Yes, several of -these others might be sane--sane as he was--and caught like himself. -There was another man across the corridor with a little beard, a very, -very mournful man, but he also had sane eyes. - -To-morrow Sargon must go and talk to these others and tell them about -himself and discuss this dreadful situation, but not now because Higgs -would certainly interfere. Many things had already conspired to annoy -Higgs. It was plain he could be easily irritated and it would be well -not to annoy him further. For the present one must just sit and think. - -What were the mad and what did madness mean? - -Why had he been lifted up by the Supreme Power, out of the common acts -and imaginations of his daily life, to a knowledge of his immortal -being, why had he been shown his endless destinies and a vision of the -whole world as his sphere, merely to be cast out of life and light and -freedom forthwith into this grey underworld of the demented? It could -not be that this was for nothing. It must signify. - -And then the wind of a second question blew across his mind. The -Power that had called him and called him it would seem only to bring -him into this place, had also brought all these others to this same -dreadfulness. _Why?_ For him it might be a trial but what was it for -these others, whose souls had indeed dissolved and gone? What was the -Power doing with them? - -The whole scheme of things in Sargon’s mind began to shudder and -dissolve. If the Power had not done this, then it must be the -Anti-Power had done it. There must be an Anti-Power as strong almost -as the Power then, able to snatch men out of life into confusion, -indignity, and death for ever. Or else--_there was Nothing_! - -He sat quite still with his chin on his knuckles and eyes staring -blankly at the last black possibility. - -Was the whole of this call and this mission of his a deception and a -delusion? Had he been cheated at Tunbridge Wells when the call first -came to him to arise and awake? Were those memories of Sumeria no more -than dreams? Was he indeed just Albert Edward Preemby--gone crazy? In -a crazy, pointless universe of commonplace inanities? If so he was -indeed the most foolish of living men. He had left his comfort and -securities, sound though insignificant; he had run away from his dear -Christina Alberta--to obey a Power that was nothing more than his own -imagination and to follow a phantom end. For days he had been shutting -Christina Alberta out of his thoughts; she was a sceptic, an ally of -the Anti-Power. Now she came back, over-valiant and rash, but just a -girl. He had left her to shift for herself, left her beyond reach of -his reproofs and cautions. What was she doing? What evil and danger -might not be overtaking her even now? It had not occurred to him before -that his disappearance might distress and endanger her. Now he saw -plainly that it must have done so. - -The enemy came and argued frankly with him. “You have been a fool, -Albert Edward Preemby,” said the enemy. “You have got yourself into a -position of great danger and discomfort, you have deserted your own -proper life for a horror of nothingness. Go back. Go back while there -is still a chance of going back.” - -But could he go back? - -Yes. That could be done. So easily! He could say plainly that now -he remembered his proper name. He could ask to see the doctor or the -director or whoever it was presided over Jordan and Higgs and their -colleagues; he could give his name and the address of the studio and -his bankers’ address and the address of the laundry and so forth, -speaking very plainly and quietly, he could admit that he had behaved -strangely but that the fit was over, and so he would pass out of -these grim shadows back into the world. It would rejoice the heart of -Christina Alberta.... - -He thought of that alert, kind, slightly antagonistic figure. If only -he could see it now! Coming down the long ward to him, to rescue, to -release.... - -Then he would be just Preemby again for the rest of his days, -comfortably Preemby, Preemby the bystander, Preemby the onlooker, the -ineffective, speechless man in the background of the noisy studio. But -certain things would be at an end. He would never go to any museums -again or browse in the dark shadows of book-shops over dusty forgotten -books about vanished cities and enigmatical symbols. He would think no -more of the wonder and mystery of Atlantis and of the measurements of -the Pyramids and of all the high riddles of the past and the future. -There would be no more wonder in his life at all, for he had sought to -enter into wonder and had found it delusion. Those things would be old -tales and fancies of things that would never arrive. Past and future -would be dead for him. The days would be dull and empty as they had -never been before. The bladder of his life would be pricked.... - -And the other way lay pain, indignity, rough treatment, vile food, -filthy circumstances, trials that might break him--but with the Power -still beckoning. - -He thought of the things that belonged to Sargon; of the Power, of -cities that were like great single persons, of the Whole World, of the -mystical promise of the stars, of all these things he must renounce -now and be Preemby, Preemby plain and sensible, to the end of his -days, if he would go out of this place. He sat at it seemed to him for -an immense time, still and brooding, though his answer was already -definite in his mind. And at last he spoke. “No,” he said in a hoarse -voice that was almost a shout. “I am Sargon, Sargon the servant of -God--and the Whole World is mine!” - - -§ 6 - -Long after midnight Sargon was still sitting up in that bleak greasy -glare amidst the noises and disorder about him. He had lost all count -of time; his watch had been taken from him. Somewhen in the small hours -he was praying. And at times he wept a little. - -He prayed. Sometimes he made sentences and whispered them to himself -and sometimes the sentences never got to words but passed through his -mind like serpents that are seen through deep, dark water. “Great is -the task thou hast put upon me. I see now I am not worthy, O Master, -to do the least thing that is required of me. I am not worthy. I am a -petty man and a foolish man and all I have done so far is folly. But -thou hast called me, knowing my folly. Forgive thou my folly and help -thou my faith.” Silent and still he sat with tears upon his cheeks. -“Any punishment and any trial,” he whispered at last, “only that thou -shouldst not desert me and vanish out of my world.” - -He prayed that the Power would yet make him the servant of the world -and added falteringly and feebly, “even as it was in the ancient days.” - -For had there even been those ancient days? Sumeria was now very far -away from him, and the white towns and the blue river and the river -galleys had faded and the worshipping crowds were just a faint smear -upon his mind no stranger than the fading memory of a dream. He said -nothing for a time, and then in a very loud whisper he said: “Help thou -my unbelief.” - -Sometimes he prayed in a whisper and sometimes he prayed silently -and sometimes he sat quite still. Higgs came and looked at him once -or twice but did not interfere with him. The poem in the adjacent -bed still went on, but it had now become a mere rhyming stream of -blasphemous obscenities. - -For a time after he had made an end to his praying, Sargon must have -slept; he must have slept because he was awakened by the dawn. It did -not come gradually; he awoke to it. - -A cold, shadowless light filled the ward and the electric lamps that -had seemed so bright were just luminous orange-yellow threads. And -Higgs was standing in the doorway peering intently at the red-haired -man, who was lying with his head on the table as though he were -asleep--but perhaps only pretending to be asleep. - - -§ 7 - -It was on the afternoon of the following day that two strangers came to -see Sargon. He was taken to them and they talked a little with him, and -then chiefly with each other. Higgs was off duty but Jordan hovered in -the background. - -Neither of these gentlemen explained their business with Sargon to him. -One of them was a short man in a black coat; he wore a gold watch-chain -and a rich-looking tie with a jewelled pin; he had a gold pince-nez, a -little pointed nose, a fat, clean-shaven white face, and a mouth like -an oblique spade-thrust in a lump of dough. He spoke with something -between a sniff and a lisp, and he was evidently rather in a hurry and -annoyed at having been called in to see Sargon. The other was large and -grey and worn-looking; he impressed Sargon in some indefinable way as -being a medical man who had private troubles. He seemed to consider -himself in charge of the conversation, and would occasionally refer -upon some point of fact to the hovering Jordan. - -“Understand,” said the pasty-faced man, “you wanted to give some sort -of dinner party to all sorts of people. Eh?--at the Rubicon. I suppose -it came on you sort of sudden like. Eh?” - -“I wished to confer with certain people,” said Sargon. “It may have -been a mistake on my part.” - -“No doubt it was a mistake, Mr.--Mr.----” - -“Won’t ’ave a Mister to it,” said Jordan from the background. “Calls -’isself Sargon.” - -The doctor became very acute in his manner. “Now isn’t that some sort -of historical name?” he asked with a sideways searching look. - -“It is,” said Sargon. - -“But it isn’t _your_ name, you know.” - -“Possibly not. I mean--It is my only name.” - -“That’s a bit of an answer, that is,” said the pasty-faced man. “My -_word_!” - -“What is your _real_ name?” asked the doctor persuasively. - -“Sargon.” - -“Not Mr. A. E. Preemby?” - -Sargon started and stared, possibly with a certain wildness in his -eyes. “With God’s help, _No_!” he said. - -“Was it ever Mr. Preemby?” asked the doctor. - -“That does not matter now. That is of no importance now.” - -“It may be of _some_ importance,” said the pasty-faced man. - -“And now you’re a King or a Lord or something and you own the world?” -said the doctor. - -Sargon made no answer. He felt he was in a net. - -The doctor turned to Jordan and beckoned him in a whisper. Only one -sentence came to Sargon’s ears. “’Iggs ’eard it,” said Mr. Jordan. - -“Aren’t you called Sargon the Magnificent?” asked the doctor. - -Sargon bent his head in sorrow. “Better were it to call me Sargon the -Unworthy. For in many things I have failed.” - -The pasty-faced man looked at the doctor. “Haven’t we had about enough -of this?” - -“My conclusions are clear,” said the doctor. “In fact, I have the -certificate ready.” - -“If you’re satisfied, Dr. Manningtree, I am. If I’m to see those other -fellers.” - -“I’ve got all the papers in my room,” said the doctor. - -“Right-o,” said the pasty-faced man. - -“It’s very good of you to come to-day. I wouldn’t have bothered you -until to-morrow but we are really getting overcrowded here. One chap’s -decidedly dangerous. The attendants here don’t like the look of him. -You need only just see him for a moment. Or any of them. All clear -cases for summary reception orders.” - -They spoke now as if Sargon were not present or as if he were an -inanimate object. And indeed for them he had become so; he had passed -for them already out of the comity of mankind. - -“Why have you been talking to me?” asked Sargon suddenly with a vague -fear of what had been said and done developing in his mind. - -The doctor’s manner altered. He spoke to Sargon as one might speak to a -small child. “You’ll be going back to bed now,” he said. “Jordan!” - -“But I want to know.” - -“Go with Mr. Jordan.” - -“What are these papers you speak about?” - -The doctor turned his back on Sargon without an answer and the man with -the pasty face opened the door to depart. Sargon made a step towards -them, but Jordan laid hold of his arm. - -And while Sargon was being steered back to bed, firmly rather than -gently, in the grip of Jordan, the justice and the doctor filled in and -signed the forms that were necessary to deprive him of nearly every -right he possessed as a human being. For there is no trial by jury -and no writ of habeas-corpus in Britain for the unfortunate charged -with insanity. He may not plead in public and there is no one to whom -he may appeal. He may write complaints but they will be neglected; -his most urgent expostulations will be disregarded in favour of any -dull attendant’s asseverations. He is handed over to the nearly -autocratic control of under-educated, ill-paid, ill-fed, and overworked -attendants. Every night and every day seems endless to him at first, -and then the nights and days fall into a sort of routine and become -unimportant and pass away more and more rapidly. He is almost always -kept in a state of bodily discomfort, always rather ill from the -ill-prepared and sometimes tainted food, and much incommoded by clumsy -drugging and particularly by the administration of violent purgatives. -In croton oil alone are our asylums truly generous. He has excellent -reason for fearing many of his fellow inmates and for a servile -obedience to the attendants in charge of him. A medical superintendent -hovers in the background; a medical staff with no special training in -mental science. They pass through the wards at the appointed times, -avoiding trouble, seeing as little as possible. - -And, after all, what can they do? They cannot raise the expenditure -upon food or increase the number or salaries of the attendants. -They are appointed to save and not to spend the ratepayers’ money. -The attendants work together and protect each other; they must hang -together; many of them go in fear of the violent cases. Occasionally, -after due notice, a visiting magistrate will pay a formal visit to the -asylum. Everything is put in order for the occasion. The inmate with a -grievance dares not accost him or does not know how to accost him nor -how to frame his complaint. The attendants are at hand to interrupt, -embarrass, and explain. So, with no possibility of redress, the poor -half-lunatic will be roughly handled, badly fed, and coarsely clothed, -and night and day he will have no other familiar company than the -insane. It is bad enough for the sane to be afflicted by the vagaries, -the violence, the exasperating mechanisms, the incoherences of the -truly demented, but what must it be for those upon whom the penumbra -of that same shadow has fallen? They have no privacy; no escape from -those others; no peace. Our world herds these discards together out of -sight, walls them up, spends so little upon them that they are neither -properly fed nor properly looked after, and does its brave hopeful best -to forget all about them. - -And our Sargon, who even in the outer world of usage and freedom was -sometimes a little at a loss, must now go on into this dark underworld. -For two days more he will be kept in the Gifford Street Observation -Ward awaiting the convenience of the authorities; then in the company -of four other prisoners he will be sent to a still bleaker and more -desolate and hopeless confinement within the clustering buildings and -walls and railings of Cummerdown Hill. - -So he passes now for a time out of sight of everyday mankind, and -so also for a time he shall pass out of this story. It would be -insufferable to tell with any fulness his daily tale of discomfort and -indignity. - - - - -_BOOK THE THIRD_ - -THE RESURRECTION OF SARGON, KING OF KINGS - - - - -CHAPTER THE FIRST - -_Christina Alberta in Search of a Father_ - - -§ 1 - -Hitherto Christina Alberta had faced life with a bold, disdainful, and -successful gesture. The discretions and scruples of others were not -for her. She had seen no reason for their prudent hesitations, their -conventions and restraints. Now for the first time she knew dismay. Her -Daddy had vanished into a world that she suddenly realized could be -immensely cruel. Teddy was rotten, so plainly rotten that only a fool -wrapped up in her own sensations would have touched him. She lay awake -for most of the night after her Daddy had vanished, biting her hands -and damning Teddy. Lambone the great friend was lazy, incompetent, and -futile. Harold and Fay seemed already a little tired of her misfortune -and vaguely disposed to blame her for bringing her Daddy to London. She -had no one else to whom she could turn. No one remained to her--except -Christina Alberta herself, feeling a little soiled now and more than a -little afraid. “But what am I to do?” she asked the night, again and -again, in her stuffy but artistic little bedroom. - -Among the other disadvantages of her position she had less than a pound -of ready money. - -It has to be recorded that for two whole days Christina Alberta did -not even take the obvious step of going to the police. She had a queer -instinctive knowledge of the danger of bringing the police and the -social system generally to bear upon her odd little Daddy. She had -an innate distrust of official human beings. It was Paul Lambone who -induced her to go to the police. He had the grace to be ashamed of his -unhelpfulness, and after an interval of two clear days he came round to -the Lonsdale Mews to offer his generous but sluggish help once more. He -caught her having tea with Fay. - -“Christina Alberta,” he said, looking a very large comfortable figure -of sorrow, “I’ve been worrying and worrying about you all the time. I -didn’t help enough. I thought he’d come back of his own accord and that -all the fuss was a little premature. Have you heard anything?” - -Christina Alberta was torn between the desire to snap his head off -and the realization that he was, after his fashion, quite sincerely -friendly to her and could be very useful. - -“_Say_ it!” said Lambone. “You’ll be better, my dear, after you’ve said -it and then we can talk matters over.” - -He got the reassurance of a smile. He brightened visibly. He was the -sort of man who would hate to feel hated even by a cockroach. “I won’t -sit in that chair, thanks,” he said to Fay. “It’s too comfortable. And -at any moment we may think of something, and I may have to leap up and -act. - -“Spartan,” he said, sitting down. - -“Eh?” said Fay. - -“Spartan. My doctor tells me to say it before every meal and especially -before tea. I don’t know why. Magic or Coué or something. Are these -things cocoanut cakes? I thought so.... Good they are. And what are we -going to do about it, Christina Alberta?” - -He became sane and helpful and more and more like the man who wrote -_What to Do on a Hundred and One Occasions_. He made Christina Alberta -admit to bankruptcy, and made it clear to her that it was her duty to -accept a loan of twenty-five pounds from him. He then dealt with the -point about reporting the disappearance to the police, and convinced -Christina Alberta upon that. If Mr. Preemby had fallen into bad hands -the sooner the police looked for him the better. But he did not think -that likely; he was much more inclined to the idea that Preemby had -made a disturbance and been taken up. He guessed he would be dealt with -as a mental case. He had consulted those useful books _The Justice -of the Peace_ and the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, and displayed the -excellence of his mental digestion. Christina Alberta perceived that he -had in him the makings of a competent barrister. - -He carried off Christina Alberta in a taxi to Scotland Yard. “Either -they’ll tell us there or tell us where we shall be told,” he said. - -Fay was impressed by the originality of that. “Now if it was a lost -umbrella,” she said, “I could understand it. But I’d never have thought -of going to Scotland Yard for a lost father.” - -By six Mr. Preemby had been traced to Gifford Street. But there was no -seeing him at Gifford Street. He had been certified as a lunatic and he -was bound, the attendant thought but wasn’t quite sure, for Cummerdown -Hill. Paul Lambone tried to be dignified and important and to prevail -over the attendant and extract further information, but not very -successfully. In the end he and Christina Alberta departed with little -more than one immense discouraging fact. They would not be able to see -Mr. Preemby nor to learn anything very material about his condition -until the next visiting day, whenever that might be, at Cummerdown -Hill. Then if he was “fit to be visited,” they might go and see him. -The attendant was rigid in his statements and had the air of disliking -both Lambone and Christina Alberta extremely. - -As they came away from Gifford Street Christina Alberta observed that -Lambone was angry. She had never seen him angry before. It was a very -transitory phase. There was an unusual depth of pink in his cheeks. - -“Dog in office,” he said. “Just there to annoy people--anxious people. -One would think ... man in my position ... certain standing.... Some -attention.... Any other country but this, Man of letters has respect.” - -Christina Alberta agreed mutely. - -“Manners in a public official--primary.” - -“He was detestable,” said Christina Alberta. - -“Not at the end of my resources,” said Lambone. - -Christina Alberta waited. - -“Ought to have gone to Devizes in the first place. Knows more about -mental cases and lunacy law than any other man in London. Wonderful -fellow. I’ll go back to my flat and I’ll ring him up and make an -appointment. Then he’ll put us wise about the whole business. And I -want you to meet him anyhow. You’ll appreciate Devizes. Come to think -of it, you’re remarkably like him.” - -“How?” - -“Got the Life Force and all that. And physically like him. Very. The -same nose--much the same profile.” - -“It’s a nose more suitable for a man,” said Christina Alberta. “I -suppose _he_ carries it off all right!” - -“It’s a damned good nose, Christina Alberta,” said Lambone. “It’s a -valiant nose. Don’t you break down to any modesty about it. It was -your nose attracted me first to you. You’ll spike a husband with it -yet, and he’ll adore it and follow it even as you do. Nowadays women -have to be free and individualized; they have got to have features -and distinction. The days of the wanton curl and the swan neck and -complexion have gone. Not that you haven’t the clearest skin I’ve ever -set eyes upon, Christina Alberta.” - -“Tell me some more about Dr. Devizes,” said Christina Alberta. - - -§ 2 - -But it wasn’t the next day that Christina Alberta met Devizes. She put -that off for a day and fled down to Woodford Wells in response to a -remarkable communication from Mr. Sam Widgery. - -The Widgerys had never been correspondents of the Preembys except in so -far as the payment of the dividends upon Mr. Preemby’s interest in the -Limpid Stream Laundry necessitated letters. There had been a certain -amount of friction in the flotation of the company, and Mr. Widgery had -remained resentful and sought to show as much by a studied curtness -in his communications. But now came this letter addressed to “Miss -Chrissie Preemby.” “_My dear Chrissie_,” the letter began. - -“_This is a shocking business about your poor father I can’t tell you -how shocked I am I went up post haste to the workhouse where you had -put him as soon as they wrote to me and got his watch and cheque-book. -It is fortunate they found my address in his pocket or I suppose I -should have been kept in the dark as per usual about all this he did -not know me and denied his own name but afterwards he said he knew -me for a filching commercial wrogue and would have my ears cut off -and threatened me. I was to be unpailed whatever that may be. I have -been thinking over all this business and since you are not yet of age -I suppose I am a sort of guardian to you and have to look into your -interests at the laundry which is not paying nearly so well as your -father led me to believe. I think he was already queer at the time and -didn’t fully understand what he was doing and I doubt if all that of -his about preference shares which I never held with really but did to -humour him ought to stand. Luckily there is no hurry about this has you -won’t have to pay anything for him where he is Mr. Punter says so long -as you leave well alone and we can see about these other things when -you have got over the first shock of your father’s breakdown. My wife -sends her love and kind sympathy. You must keep calm and not let these -things disturb you too much because very often it is hereriterary and -one cannot be too careful so leave everything to me and believe me to -remain_ - - “_Your affectionate cousin_ - - “_Sam Widgery_.” - -“Rather!” said Christina Alberta and telephoned forthwith to put off -Paul Lambone and Wilfred Devizes and hurried off with a combatant light -in her eye to the Underground and Liverpool Street Station. - - -§ 3 - -When Christina Alberta got down to Woodford Wells it seemed to her -that the laundry was just a little smaller than it used to be and -that a slight tarnish had fallen upon the bright blue delivery vans. -The swastika upon them had been covered over by paper bills in -red lettering saying: “Under Entirely New Management. Address all -Communications to the Managing Director Samuel Widgery Esq. By Order.” - -She went up the garden path to the door that had been home to her for -nearly all her life, and it was opened to her by Sam Widgery himself, -who had seen her coming. “So you came down,” he said, and seemed to -hesitate about admitting her. He was a tallish, stooping man with -a large bare pock-marked face, a dropping nether lip, a large nose -that snored occasionally when he breathed, and furtive very small -brown eyes. He was clad in dark grey ill-fitting garments, with a -frayed collar and a very worn made-up black satin tie. His waistcoat -was mainly unbuttoned and he fidgeted with his hands. He looked at -Christina Alberta as though he found her more formidable than he had -thought her. - -“Did you see Daddy?” said Christina Alberta, coming straight to the -point. - -He compressed his mouth and shook his head from side to side as though -he recalled painful things. - -“Was he bad? Was he queer or--_dreadful_?” - -“Not too loud, my dear,” he said in his husky whispering voice. “We -don’t want _every one_ to hear about your trouble. Come in here where -we can talk properly.” - -He led the way into the little living-room in which her father had so -recently planned the conditions for the conversion of the laundry into -a limited company. The familiar furniture had been rearranged rather -amazingly, and a large, dark bureau had been placed under the window. -With discreet gestures, Sam Widgery closed the door and came towards -her. “Sit down, Chrissie,” he said, “and don’t get excited. I was -afraid you might come rushing down here. But of course I was bound to -write to you.” - -“Did you see him?” she repeated. - -“Mad as a hatter,” he said. “They say he made a riot at the Rubicon -Restaurant. Wanted to give a great banquet there to all the beggars in -London.” - -“Did you see him? Was he well? Was he unhappy? What have they done with -him?” - -“You mustn’t _pelt_ me with questions, Chrissie. You mustn’t let your -mind go on at such a pace. I told you in my letter I went up and saw -him. They called him out and he came to me in a little room.” - -“Where was it? Where was this workhouse?” - -“There you go again. Just sit down and take things quietly, my girl. I -can’t answer all these questions at once.” - -“Where was it you saw him? Was it at Gifford Street?” - -“Yes. Where else could it be? They was waiting to remove him.” - -“Where?” - -“Some asylum I suppose?” - -“Cummerdown Hill?” - -“Come to think of it, it _was_ Cummerdown Hill. Yes--they said -Cummerdown Hill. He came out. He looked much as usual, but more vacant -perhaps, until he set eyes on me and then he gave a sort of start and -said, ‘Don’t know you,’ he said. Like that.” - -“Well, that wasn’t mad. Did he _look_ mad? I suppose he didn’t want to -talk to you--after all the disagreeable things that have been said.” - -“Very likely. Any’ow I said to him, ‘What! don’t know _me_?’ I said; -‘not know old Sam Widgery what you planted your laundry on?’ Just like -that--joking at him like. Quite kindly but--humorous. ‘I don’t know -you,’ he says and tried to go. ‘Hold hard!’ I said and took him by the -arm. ‘You’re a base, complaining scoundrel,’ he says to me and sort of -tried to push me away. ‘You’d rewin any laundry!’ he says--him to me, -what was in the laundry business a dozen years before he married your -poor mother. ‘Any ’ow I haven’t your complaint,’ I says, ‘Mr. Albert -Edward Preemby.’ He sort of stiffened. ‘Sargum,’ he says, ‘if you -please....’” - -“Sargon,” Christina Alberta corrected. - -“Maybe. It sounded like ‘Sargum.’ And ‘Sargum’ he would have it. Mad -as a hatter on that. I tried to talk but what was the good of talking? -I couldn’t get anything plain or straight out of him at all. Started -threatening me with the bastinado--whatever that may be. I asked him to -be decent with his language. ‘I’ve ’ad enough’ I says to the attendant -at last and the attendant took him away. And so we’re quit of him, -Chrissie.” - -“Quit of him!” - -“Quit of him. What can anyone do?” - -“Everything. Did he look very unhappy? Did he look frightened or -ill-treated?” - -“Why should he? They’re taking proper care of him and he’s out of -harm’s way.” - -“You’re sure he looked--serene?” - -“Bit jaded perhaps. That’s his own internal workings I expect. But he’s -where he ought to be, Chrissie. I feel that. What we’ve got to do, from -what Mr. Punter says, is to let well alone. There he is with everything -he wants, living on the ratepayers’ money. We’ve got ourselves to -consider. We’ve got to think of that crazy preference-share idea he’s -saddled the laundry with. _That’s_ urgent. It’s a charge of nearly five -hundred a year as things are, nearly ten pound a week. There isn’t a -laundry in London could stand it.” - -“I shall have to see my Daddy,” said Christina Alberta. “I don’t -believe he _is_ so comfortable. I’ve heard horrid stories of asylums. -Anyhow, I ought to go right away and see him.” - -“Can’t do that, Chrissie,” said Mr. Widgery, shaking his large grey -face slowly from side to side and watching her as he spoke. “They don’t -have visitors running in and out of these mad-houses just whenever they -want to. Wouldn’t _do_, you know. The poor creatures have to be kept -quiet and not excited. I daresay I could give you a letter for next -visiting day----” - -“_You!_ Give _me_ a letter!” - -Mr. Widgery shrugged his shoulders. “It would help you to get in. But -you won’t make anything of him, Chrissie, even if you see him. And -you’ll have to wait for a visiting day. You must do that.” - -“I want to see him.” - -“Very likely. But regulations are regulations. Meanwhile there’s all -this business muddle we got to put straight. While he’s in that asylum -I think what I ought to do is to give you ’n allowance, five pounds -a week say, and keep back the rest until we’re able to get something -settled up. Or four. Or perhaps as you want it--not a definite sum. I -don’t know. I haven’t thought it out yet. You can’t possibly want to do -with all that ten pounds a week with him off your hands. Then we’ll be -able to see where we stand and everything will be all right again.” - -He paused and scratched his cheek and watched her with his little -sidelong eyes. “See?” he said as if to stimulate her to speech. - -Christina Alberta looked at him in a silence that became painful. Then -she stood up and regarded him--her arms akimbo and her face alight. - -“I see now,” she said. “You damned old Rascal!” - -Mr. Widgery had nice old-fashioned ideas about young ladies and -ladylike language. He was taken aback. “Now!” he said. “_Now!_” - -“Always I should think,” said Christina Alberta. - -“You mustn’t say things like that, Chrissie. You mustn’t use words like -that. You mustn’t get wrong ideas about all this. What d’you mean? Old -rascal! Something old rascal! Why? I’m only doing what I got to do. You -aren’t really of age yet, you’re just a mere child legally speaking, -and it falls to _me_ naturally, _me_, his nearest relative so to speak, -to make such arrangements as have to be made about his affairs. That’s -all. You mustn’t get wrong ideas about it all and you mustn’t get -excited. See?” - -“I called you,” said Christina Alberta, “a damned old Rascal.” - -He did not meet her eye. He spoke as if he appealed to the bureau. - -“And does it do you any good to use such horrible expressions? And does -it do me any harm? And does it alter the fact that whether I like it or -not, I’ve got to look after his property now and see about it and see -you don’t get into any trouble or mischief? All me and your aunt have -been thinking about is just what’s right and proper to be done for you. -And then you turn on me like a serpent and use language----!” - -Words failed Mr. Widgery, and still seeking sympathy from the bureau, -he shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands. - -“You’re no relation of his,” said Christina Alberta. “I guessed when I -read your letter that this was the sort of thing you’d be up to. You’re -glad to have him out of the way because he was such a one for punctual -payments. You think I’m all alone; you think I’m just a girl and that -you can do what you like now with me. You’ve made a mistake. I’ll make -you pay up every penny that’s due on the laundry and I’ll see you do it -more punctually than ever. And why didn’t you do something to get him -out as soon as you heard they’d taken him?” - -“Now don’t you go getting excited, Chrissie,” said Mr. Widgery. “Even -if I ain’t a blood relation of his, I am of yours. I’m your next-of-kin -and your best friend and I got to think what’s got to be done about -_you_. I got to act for _you_. In spite of bad language and everything. -I tell you he’s right and safe where he is and I’m not going to have -anything done to disturb him. Nothing at all. There he is and there -he’s going to stay, and I’m going to act as Mr. Punter advised me to -act. I’m going to keep back his dividends as they fall due, and pay you -what I think proper to pay you for your keep and so on and charge it to -him, and I’m going to see you live an orderly sort of life in future -now too, same as my poor cousin Christina would have wanted you to do. -You’ve been knocking about the world in a perfectly scandalous way and -learning to curse and swear. It can’t go on. That’s how things are, -Chrissie, and the sooner you see them the right way round the better.” - -The young woman stood speechless while Mr. Widgery unfolded his -intentions. - -“Where’s Mrs. Widgery?” she said at last with an effect of stupendous -self-control. - -“Up in the laundry seeing to things. No need to bother her. We been -talking about all this, over and over, and we’re quite of one mind -in the matter. It’s _our_ right to look after you and it’s _our_ -responsibility to look after you, and we mean to do our duty by you, -Chrissie, whether you like it or not.” - -Unpleasant doubts assailed Christina Alberta. She was still two months -short of one and twenty, and it was quite conceivable that the law -gave this ugly, oily creature all sorts of preposterous powers of -interference with her. Still it was her style to carry off things with -a brave face. - -“All this is just nonsense,” she said. “I’m not going to have my Daddy -put away like this without a word from me, and I’m not going to let you -muddle about with his property. Everybody in the family knows you’re -a crooked muddler. Mother used to say so. I’m going to see about him -myself, and I’m going to have him sent off to some special sort of -mental nursing place where he can have proper attention. And that’s -what I came to tell you.” - -Mr. Widgery’s little eyes seemed to weigh and judge her. “You’re giving -yourself high and mighty airs, Chrissie,” he said, after a little -pause. “You’ll do this and you’ll do that. You’ve got a sort of wrong -idea of what you can do in the world. You haven’t got any money and you -haven’t got any authority, and the sooner you get that into your head -the better.” - -That scared feeling was gaining upon Christina Alberta. In order to -counteract it she deliberately lost her temper. “I’ll jolly soon show -you what I can do and what you can’t,” she said with a flaming face. - -“Now don’t _yew_ go getting excited,” said Mr. Widgery. “You of all -people shouldn’t get excited.” - -“_Excited!_” said Christina Alberta; rallying for a repartee, and then -struck by an ugly thought she stopped short and stared at the little -bright brown eyes in the pock-marked face. Mutely they answered her -mute amazed question. This was the third or fourth time he had used the -word “excited” and now she knew what he was aiming at. Suddenly she -realized the train of ideas that her Daddy’s extinction had set going -in his head. He also had been studying the lunacy laws--and dreaming -dreams. - -“Exactly,” said Mr. Widgery. “You’ve always been a queerish sort of -girl, Chrissie, and the rackety life you lead and now this affair has -been a strain on you. Must have been. You’ve got no quiet friends but -your aunt and me and no quiet place to come to but here. Don’t you go -flaring out at me, Chrissie; I mean well by you. I’m not going to go -paying you money to keep you up there in London. Why!--you might go -gettings drugs or anything. Call me a something rascal if you like. -Swear at me as though you were out of your senses; it won’t alter what -I mean to do. I want you to come down here and rest your mind and -nerves for a time, and let me get in some one to see you--see what -ought to be done about you.... You’ll thank me for it some day.” - -His big grey face seemed to expand and swim about before her eyes and -the room grew small and dark. - -“It’s my duty to see after you,” he said. “It can’t hurt you or anyone -for us to have advice.” - -In the train from Liverpool Street she had told herself she had -intended to wipe the floor with Mr. Sam Widgery, but things hardly -seemed to be happening like that. - -“Bah!” she cried. “D’you think I’d come back here?” - -“Better than being lost in London, Chrissie,” he said. “Better than -being lost in London. We can’t have you wandering off in London, same -as your father did.” - -She felt that the time had come for her to go, but for a second or so -she could not move to do so. She could not move because she feared he -might do something to detain her, and if he did she did not know what -she would do. Then she pulled herself up by the feet. - -“Well,” she said with a step past him doorward that turned him on his -heel; “I’ve told you what I think of you. I’d better be getting back to -London.” - -In his eyes she saw the thought of obstructing her flash into being and -die. “Won’t you stay and have something,” he said, “before you go back?” - -“Eat _here_!” she cried and got to the door. - -Her hand trembled so that it was difficult to turn the handle. He -stood motionless, staring at her with his lower lip dropping and an -expression of doubt upon his face. It was as if he was not quite sure -of himself nor of the course he meant to pursue. The course he wanted -to pursue was appallingly plain. - - -§ 4 - -She walked with dignity out of the open front door and down the garden -path. She did not look back, but she knew his face came up close to the -window and watched her. Never in her whole life had panic come so near -to her. She would have liked to run. - -After the train had started she felt a little safer. “How the devil can -he get at me?” she said aloud to the empty compartment. - -But she wasn’t at all sure that she couldn’t be got at and she found -herself trying to estimate just how much support and friendship she -might find in her London friends. Could she, for instance, count upon -Mr. Paul Lambone? If supplies were cut off could she get some sort -of job and keep herself for a time until she could extract her silly -Daddy from the net into which he had fallen? How would Harold and Fay, -perennially hard-up, behave if supplies ran out? And meanwhile there -was Daddy, wondering why no help came to him--puzzled by what had -happened to him and no doubt getting sillier and sillier. - -Christina Alberta was growing up fast now. Beneath all her radicalism -and rebellion there had always hitherto been a belief, tacit, -sub-conscious, in the rightness and security and sustaining energy -of the social framework. There is under most youthful rebellion. She -had assumed without thinking very much about it that hospitals were -places of comfort and luxury, doctors in full possession and use of -all existing science, prisons clean and exemplary places, that though -laws might still be unjust that the administration of the law was -untouched by knavery or weakness. She had had the same confidence in -the ultimate integrity of social life that a little child has in the -invincible safeness of nursery and home. But now she was awakening to -the fact that the whole world was insecure. It was not that it was a -wicked or malignant world, but that it was an inattentive and casual -world. It dreaded bothers. It would do the meanest, most dangerous, and -cruellest things to escape the pressure of bothers, and it would refuse -to be bothered by any sufferings or evil it could possibly contrive -to ignore. It was a dangerous world, a world of bothered people in -which one might be lost and forgotten while one was still alive and -suffering. It was a world in which it is not good to be alone, and she -was beginning to feel herself very dangerously alone. - -She had never, she reflected, thought very much of her family, but now -she perceived a family may dissolve away too soon. She wanted a wall to -put her back against if after all Sam Widgery screwed up his courage -to be aggressive; she wanted some one who would be her very own, a -safe ally, some one she could count upon, some one closer than law -or custom, some one who would go about and find out exactly what had -happened to her if she fell into disaster, who would refuse to accept -her downfall, some one who would care for her more than he cared for -himself and not be lightly turned away. - -_Himself?_ Not _herself_. In fact, a lover. - -“Damn Teddy!” cried Christina Alberta, and knocked a puff of dust out -of the railway cushion with her fist. “He messes it up. - -“And I knew what he was. I knew all the time exactly what he was! - -“I’ve got to stick it alone,” said Christina Alberta. - -“And besides who’d have cared for me, anyhow, with a nose like mine?” - -“Even if there were such things in the world as lovers who loved like -that! But it’s a world of people who don’t care. It’s a world of people -who haven’t the guts to care. It’s a dust-heap of a world,” said -Christina Alberta. - - -§ 5 - -Her thoughts began to flow into a new region. After all, wasn’t there -something too disagreeably justifiable in the suggestion that she -was--how to put it--_queer_? Hitherto Christina Alberta had always -regarded herself as a model of sanity and mental directness--with no -fault indeed except possibly her nose. Now the word “queer” stuck in -her mind like a thorn that has gone right home. She could not get it -out again. - -She had always, she knew, been different. She had always had a style of -her own. - -Most of the people she had met in the world had impressed her as being -colourless, weak in speech and action, evasive--that was the word, -“evasive.” They evaded the use of all sorts of blunt words, they didn’t -know why. Christina Alberta was all for saying “Damn” and “guts” and so -forth until some one convinced her of some better reason for avoiding -them than merely that they weren’t used by “nice” people. These others -were always not saying things because they weren’t said and not doing -things because they weren’t done. And for what was said and what was -done, however manifestly preposterous it was, they had a sort of -terrified imitativeness. They just ran about being as far as possible -somebody else until they died. Why exist at all then? Why not get out -of it and leave some one else in possession? But, anyhow, they got -through life. They didn’t get into trouble. They supported one another. -And, on the other hand, if you didn’t evade? You puzzled other people. -You left the track. You were like a train leaving the rails and trying -to take a cross-country short-cut. You hit against--everything. - -Was this evasive life she had always despised really the sane life? Was -ceasing to evade ceasing to be sane? Sheep, she had read, had a disease -called gid; then they wandered alone and died. Was all this originality -and thinking for oneself and not going with the crowd and so forth, -that had been her pride and glory, just the way out from the sane life? -Originality, eccentricity, queerness, craziness, madness; was that -merely a quantitative scale? - -Was not her Daddy’s queerness this, that after years of the extremest -evasion he had at last tried to break away to something real and -strange? And had she, after her fashion, been attempting anything else? -Was she, too, lop-sided? Lop-sided in a different direction, perhaps, -but lop-sided none the less. An inherited lop-sidedness? - -Her mind went off at a tangent on the question whether she had really -inherited anything whatever from her Daddy. Was his queerness her sort -of queerness at all? It ought to be, seeing that they were father and -daughter. - -How different they were! For a father and daughter how amazingly -different they were!... - -But were they father and daughter? A much repressed fantasy came back -to her--a fantasy based on the flimsiest foundations, on chance phrases -her mother had used, on moments of intuition. Once or twice a reverie -had arisen out of these lurking particles of memory and had taken her -by surprise only to be thrust aside again with contempt. - -Blup. Blup. Blup. There came a familiar variation to the familiar -sounds of the train. Christina Alberta was running into Liverpool -Street Station and her perplexities were all unsolved. - -The old fantasy lost heart and faded away. What was the good of such -dreams? There she was. - - -§ 6 - -Christina Alberta’s meeting next day with Wilfred Devizes turned out to -be a much more exciting affair than she or he had expected it to be. - -Acting on the advice of Paul Lambone, she had brought photographs and a -letter or so in her Daddy’s handwriting with her, and she had thought -out what she judged would be significant things to tell about him. She -went in a taxi with Paul Lambone to Devizes’ house just off Cavendish -Square, and they were shown up at once past a waiting-room and a -consulting-room to a dignified little sitting-room with an open fire -and a table with tea-things and a great array of bookcases. Devizes -came in to them forthwith. - -She was a little shocked to think that this lank, dark, shock-headed -man could be recognizably like her. He was younger than she had -expected him to be, younger she thought, than her Daddy or Mr. Lambone, -and he wore a long unbuttoned morning coat. He carried the nose all -right; he was indeed very good-looking. - -“Hullo, Paul,” he said cheerfully. “Is this the young lady whose -father’s been stolen? We’ll have some tea. It’s Miss----?” - -“Miss Preemby,” said Paul Lambone, “but every one calls her Christina -Alberta.” - -Devizes turned an eye that was by habit and disposition a scrutinizing -eye upon her. He betrayed a faint momentary surprise and came and shook -hands. “Tell me all about it,” he said. “You don’t think he’s really -mad, but only rather exceptional and odd. That’s it, isn’t it? Lambone -tells me he is sane. It’s quite possible. I’d better go over the state -of his mind first, and then we can discuss the question of the asylum -afterwards. I gather you want to get him under your own care--outside. -That isn’t by any means simple. We’ll have to study the obstacles. -Meanwhile tea.... I’ve been disentangling the delusions of a perfectly -terrible old lady, and I’m rather deflated. Just tell me all about it -in your own way.” - -“Tell him,” said Paul, settling his shoulders into his arm-chair, and -preparing to interrupt. - -Christina Alberta began to unfold her premeditated discourse. Every now -and then Devizes would interrupt her with a question. He kept his eyes -on her, and it seemed to her even from the beginning that they betrayed -something more than attention to what she was saying. He looked at her -as though he had seen her before and couldn’t quite remember where. -She described her Daddy’s talks to her when she was a girl, about the -Pyramids and the Lost Atlantis and so forth, and the odd spirit of -release and renewed growth that had followed the death of her mother. -She told of the spiritualistic séance and the coming of Sargon. Devizes -was very keen on various aspects of the Sargon story. “It was odd that -the suggestion fell in so aptly with Preemby’s mental disposition. What -was that young man up to? I don’t quite understand him.” - -“I don’t know. I think he just hit by chance on the stuff he talked. It -was just bad luck that it fitted.” - -“Undergraduate idea of fun?” - -“Undergraduate fun. It might have been Tut-an-ka-man.” - -“But it happened to be Sargon.” - -“He may have been reading some ancient history.” - -“He didn’t, I suppose, know anything about your father?” - -“Couldn’t have done. I suppose he thought my--my Daddy looked a little -small and absurd, and I suppose it appealed to his sense of humour to -single him out from the others and make him a great king. I’d like to -have a few minutes straight talk with that young man.” - -“This you see isn’t a delusion, Devizes. It’s a deception,” said Paul -Lambone. - -“Is he generally coherent,” asked Devizes. - -“Granted his thesis, he’s amazingly coherent,” she said. - -“He doesn’t sometimes become some one else, God or a millionaire, or -anything of that sort?” - -“No. He believes in reincarnation and hints at having lived other -lives, but that’s all.” - -“Thousands of people do that,” said Lambone. - -“And nobody is persecuting him? Nobody makes noises to trouble him or -gets at him with X-rays or anything of that sort?” - -“Not a shadow of that sort of thing.” - -“The man’s sane. Unless he went mad when he walked out of your friends’ -studio.” - -“I’m for his sanity right out,” said Lambone. “I wish I’d had a chance -to talk to him. There’s something--everybody’s chattering now about -an Inferiority Complex. Well, isn’t it common for people who have -been rather put upon and deceived and so forth, and who don’t want -to face the facts of life, to take refuge in an assumed personality? -And putting the reveries, the spiritualist séance and so forth all -together, doesn’t it work out on those lines?” - -“He knows he is really, _au fond_, Preemby?” Devizes asked. - -“It annoyed him to tell him so,” said Christina Alberta. “I think one -reason why he went away was because I and my friend, Mrs. Crumb that -is, at the studio where we live, would try to make him be sensible -about that. It drove him away. He knows he is really Preemby and he -hates it. He knows this is all a make-believe.” - -Paul Lambone took up the discourse. “I do so sympathize with that. So -far from that being insane it’s perfectly rational. Becoming somebody -else greater than oneself is part of half the religions of the world. -All the Mithraists used to become Mithra. The Serapists, if I remember -rightly, used to become Osiris. We all want to be born again really. -Every one with any sense and humility does. Into something greater. -‘Who will deliver me from the body of this death?’ That’s why Christina -Alberta’s Daddy is so tremendously interesting. He’s got imagination; -he’s got originality. He may be a feeble little chap, but he has that.” - -“Having an exceptional mind isn’t insanity,” said Devizes, “or else we -should put all our poets and artists in asylums.” - -“Few would come up to that standard,” said Lambone. “I wish they did.” - -Devizes reflected. “I think I’ve got things clear. He’s coherent. He’s -neat in his dress. He isn’t persecuted. He’s unselfish in his thoughts, -almost romantically so. And he’s not fattish and lumpish, and he’s -never had any sort of fit. There’s no insane type a properly qualified -doctor could class him under, but then most doctors are altogether -unqualified for mental practice. A stupid doctor might mistake his -imaginations for the splendour of paranoia or take his abstraction in -reverie for _dementia præcox_ or think he was a masked epileptic. But -all these are cases of mental disease, and your father is probably -not diseased at all. He’s mentally disturbed, but that’s all. The -difference between him and a real lunatic is the difference between a -basketful of fruit that’s been overturned, and a basketful that’s gone -rotten. Overturned fruit gets bruised and rots very easily--but being -overturned isn’t being rotten. What sort of man is he to look at?” - -“She’s got photographs,” said Lambone. - -“I’d like to see them,” he said, and was given a recent one of Mr. -Preemby as laundryman. “Too much moustache by a long way,” he said. -“Is there anything--with some at least of his face uncovered? There’s -nothing here but his eyes.” - -“I thought you’d feel that,” said Lambone. “There’s one of Mr. Preemby -as a young man, taken soon after his wedding with Mrs. Preemby. Have -you got it, Christina Alberta?... Here we are.... That’s Mrs. Preemby -in the chair. The moustache--in bulk--has yet to come.” - -“He married young?” Devizes asked Christina Alberta. - -“He must have done,” she said. “I don’t know his exact age. My mother -never told me.” - -Devizes scrutinized the photograph. “Queer,” he said, and seemed to be -searching his memory. “Something familiar. I’ve met people like this. - -“They were both London people, I suppose,” he said, looking hard at -Christina Alberta. - -“Woodford Wells,” said Christina Alberta. - -“My father was born at Sheringham,” she added as an afterthought. - -“Sheringham. That’s queer.” With a manifestly deepened interest he -looked at the couple posed against one of those rustic backgrounds -dear to Victorian photographers. “Chrissy,” he repeated to himself. -“Chrissy. Christina Alberta. It _can’t_ be.” - -For some moments Dr. Devizes ceased to attend to his consultants and -they remained intently observing him. He tried to fix his attention on -the young man’s face in the picture, but it was the young woman who sat -on the rustic style that absorbed his interest. Amazing how completely -he had forgotten her face, and how she came back now incredibly unlike -and yet like his memory of her. He remembered the glasses and the neck -and shoulders. And a sort of stiff defiance. “When were your mother and -father married?” he asked. “How long ago?” - -“Eighteen ninety-nine,” she answered. - -“And then you were born straight away?” He asked the question with an -affectation of ease. - -“There was a decent interval,” said Christina Alberta with a clumsy -levity. “I was born in nineteen hundred.” - -“A little, fair, blue-eyed chap with rather an absent-minded manner. -I seem to see him,” Devizes said, and resumed his examination of -the photograph. Nobody spoke for the better part of a minute. “Good -Lord!” whispered Lambone to himself. Devizes drank a cup of tea -absent-mindedly. “Extraordinary,” he ejaculated. “I never dreamt of it.” - -“What is?” - -His answer went off at a tangent. “Christina Alberta’s resemblance -to my mother. It’s amazing. It’s been worrying me ever since I came -into the room. It’s been distracting my attention. I’ve got a little -picture....” - -He jumped up and went out of the room. Christina Alberta, puzzled, -excited, turned instantly on Lambone. “He knew my father and mother,” -she said. - -“Apparently,” said Lambone with something defensive in his voice. - -“_Apparently!_” she echoed. “But--he _knew_ them! He _knew_ them well. -And--_What’s he thinking of?_” - -Devizes reappeared holding out a small gold-framed picture. “Look at -that!” he said and handed it to Paul Lambone. “It might be Christina -Alberta. Don’t you see how like it is? Allowing for that preposterous -hair piled upon her head and the way her dress goes up round her neck.” - -He handed the picture to Christina Alberta and looked at Lambone in -amazed interrogation. - -“It might be me in fancy dress,” Christina Alberta agreed, with the -picture in her hands. There came a long pause. She looked up and -saw the expression of his face. Her mind gave a fantastic leap, so -fantastic that it instantly leapt back to the point of departure. It -was like a flash of lightning in a night as dark as pitch. She made a -great effort to pull the conversation together, to behave as though -her mind had never leapt at all. “But what has all this to do with my -Daddy’s case?” she asked. - -“Nothing directly. Your resemblance to my mother is a pure coincidence. -Pure. But it’s a curious coincidence! Just for the moment it pulled -my attention aside. Forgive me. I’ve a belief that where there’s -resemblance of this sort there’s a blood relationship. I suppose your -mother’s people--what did you say they were called--Hoskin?” - -“Did I say? I don’t remember. I _didn’t_ say. I didn’t. Her name was -Hossett.” - -“Ah, yes!--Hossett. I suppose that two or three generations back the -Hossetts and Devizes intermarried. And there we are! Cousins--at we -don’t know what remove. But types go under in a family and then bob up -again. It sort of links us, Christina Alberta, doesn’t it? It gives me -a special interest. I don’t feel now that you’re just any old patient. -Or, rather, just Paul’s friend. I feel linked. Well--That’s that. -Let’s come back to your father. Who married your mother just when they -were starting the old South African war. He’s always been a dreamy, -unobservant type. As we were saying. Even from the beginning....” - -He stopped short. - -“Always,” said Christina Alberta, after a long pause. - -“We’ve been into all that,” said Devizes and paused, and was for a -minute entirely at a loss for words. “Yes,” he said at last. - -Her heart was beating fast and there was a flush of excitement on her -cheeks. Her quick wits had filled in all the gaps. She understood -now--and then again it vanished. She would have liked to have gone -away and thought it all over at once. But that wouldn’t do. She must -disregard the questions that surged up within her. Her mind went -forward like an obstinate traveller caught in a whirlwind. Her mother -for example. She was trying to recall something about her mother that -had long been stifled in her mind. “Went away and left me to it,” -was it? “Went off and left me to it?” Her mother lying in bed and -wandering. Who had left her to what? That standing perplexity. That -suspicion. That dream. But attend to him now, Christina Alberta; attend -to him! She was observing him with all her being, and yet she seemed -deaf to what he said. - -He was saying that now that he agreed with them that Preemby was -sane, he could see his way to the real business before them. It was -the old, old story of making lunatics out of sane people which they -encountered in Preemby’s case. It was the old, old story of making -lunatics out of sane people which they encountered in Preemby’s case. -(He repeated his sentence word for word without apparently realizing -he had said it twice.) All exceptional people were in danger of being -misunderstood, but such a type as Preemby, original and yet incapable -of abstract expression or philosophical method, which sought fantastic -expression for its feelings and impulses, was particularly liable to -give offence, awaken suspicion and dread and hostility. It was just -these borderland cases he was always trying to save from asylums, and -just such cases that were always going there. And they were the last -people to bring into contact with real insanity. “To go back to my -metaphor, the basketful of fruit isn’t rotten, is scarcely speckled -with decay, but it is disordered and overturned. A mind is a delicate -thing to knock about. It will rot very easily, and a mind like your -father’s particularly will rot very easily under asylum conditions. -After all this rigmarole I come to just the conclusion you’ve already -reached, that we have to get Preemby out of Cummerdown Hill and away -under restful conditions as soon as possible. When we’ll comb out his -particular complex and get him into working relations with the world -again. I’m quite sure we can do that somehow, make his incognito -permanent, make him an Emperor in exile, restore his proper name, -organize a common daily round for him and get him back more and more to -be a chastened and released Preemby.” - -He paused. - -“That’s it,” said Lambone, roused from a profound contemplation of the -two interesting faces before him. - -“It isn’t easy. Even to get at him isn’t easy. There will be delays. -A careless magistrate and a silly doctor can make a lunatic in five -minutes. It takes no end of time to unmake one.” - -“That’s what I want to set about doing,” said Christina Alberta. - -“Naturally,” said Devizes, “and I’m with you.” - -He explained one or two points in lunacy law, began sketching a scheme -of operations, considered the people to whom she ought to write and the -people to whom he ought to write, and how soon it would be possible -to see Preemby, and give him a word of encouragement. Already Devizes -had had several brushes with lunacy organization; he was considered -a troublesome but dangerous man for a medical superintendent to be -up against. That might arouse either hostile obstruction or the -propitiatory spirit. They must go carefully. - -Lambone scarcely interrupted now at all. He had ceased to be acutely -interested in Preemby, immured away there in Cummerdown. He was lost -in admiration of the self-control his astonishing friends displayed. -He tried to imagine what an undertow of strange excitement, of queer -thoughts and confused emotions there must be beneath their highly -intelligent discussion of the case of Mr. Preemby. They wasted very -little attention upon the onlooker. Christina Alberta’s face was -faintly flushed, and her eyes glowed; Devizes was rather less of a -conversationalist than usual and rather more like a university tutor -with an exceptionally interesting student. - -The subject was exhausted at last and the time came to depart. Devizes -came to the door with them. - -“Don’t forget that I’m always round the corner, so to speak,” he said. -“I’m in the telephone directory. And don’t forget, Christina Alberta, -don’t forget I’m your long-lost cousin, very much at your service.” - -“I won’t forget that,” said Christina Alberta, meeting his eye. - -A little pause, and then rather stiffly they shook hands. - - -§ 7 - -“Am I mad?” said Christina Alberta as soon as she and Paul Lambone were -in the street together. “Am I dreaming?” - -Lambone was clumsy. “Mad? Dreaming? How?” - -“Oh! don’t pretend not to understand. That he’s my real father? Don’t -pretend! or, please don’t pretend! Is he or is he not?” - -Lambone did not reply for a moment. “You flash at things--like a -lizard. How could it have happened?” - -“Then you _did_ think?” - -“My dear Christina Alberta, he didn’t know you existed until he set -eyes on you. I’m sure of that.” - -“But then. Wasn’t it plain? He _knew them both_!” - -“Devizes,” said Lambone, “is ten years younger than I am. He’s barely -forty. He must have been--not more than eighteen. Nineteen at most. -It’s a little difficult.” - -“That makes it easier. You never knew mother. If they were both -young----” - -“It’s just possible,” said Lambone, “there is some other explanation.” - -“But what?” - -“Can’t imagine. I suppose he was at Sheringham--perhaps for a -holiday--and met her. But----” - -“It must have been something casual, a kind of accident. Mother used to -have flashes.... I never quite understood her. She used to suppress me, -and perhaps she was suppressing herself.... And at the end--she said -something. Someone had left her to it.... Do you know--at times--I’ve -had fancies--suspicions! It seemed as though she guessed that I was -guessing. Now I know--I _was_. It’s incredible. And yet it explains a -hundred things.” - -“He certainly never knew of you. He’s--amazed.” - -“And what’s going to happen next?” - -“Legally you’re Preemby’s daughter. Nothing can alter that. All the -resemblances and coincidences in the world won’t alter that.” - -“And all the law in the world won’t alter the facts. And----” - -She turned on Lambone with a flushed face. “Do you realize what it -means to think you are the daughter of a certified lunatic? And then -find you are not? All last night I was awake with that unendurable -thought.” - -“All night--at your age!” - -“It seemed all night. Last night--I _tried_ to imagine that something -of this sort had happened. Tried--and couldn’t. Tried to bring back all -those old fancies. And here it is! I might have known. I did know and -wouldn’t know. - -“Tell me about this real father of mine. I don’t know a thing about -him. Is he a good man? Is he a bad man? Has he a wife?” - -“He adored his wife. And so did I. She was one of the loveliest and -cleverest young women I’ve ever known. She was strong and jolly--and -the beastly influenza and pneumonia got her. In a week. It cut him to -ribbons. They’d had no children. They’d had only four years together. -He’s attractive to women, but I don’t think there’ll be a second Mrs. -Devizes for a long time. I can’t imagine it. Any other woman! Why! All -that house--it’s full of her presence.” - -“Yes,” said Christina Alberta, and thought for a time. - -They were detached for a time in crossing Bond Street, and the pavement -was too crowded and Piccadilly was too congested for them to talk again -until they went in St. James’ Street. - -“Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, “seems ten thousand miles away. But -when I’m over the amazement of this I expect I’ll get back to him all -right. But just for a time--he must wait.” - -“You’ll come in for a bit?” said Lambone at the corner of Half Moon -Street. “I could give you some dinner.” - -“No, thanks. I’ll walk all the way to Chelsea,” said Christina -Alberta. “I want to think this out by myself. I want to get alone with -this spinning head of mine and try to slow it down. My life’s gone -topsy-turvy. Or it’s been topsy-turvy and it’s suddenly come right side -up. I don’t know which. Oh!--I don’t know anything. I’ve got to begin -all over again.” - -She shook hands and paused. Lambone waited, for manifestly she had -something to say. She got it out at last. - -“Do you think--he liked me?” - -“He liked you all right, Christina Alberta. Don’t you worry about that.” - - -§ 8 - -It was a little more than two days before Christina Alberta, to use her -own expression, “got back” to her lost Daddy. - -Those two days were full of an immense excitement. Devizes was the -most wonderful fact in the world. She exploded into love for him. She -had the most vivid impression of him, dark and tall, rather grave, -watchful and amazingly understandable. Yet vivid as her impression -was she doubted every detail of it, and wanted to go back to him and -verify it all over again. It was their quality of mutual understanding -that was at once the most delightful and the most incredible aspect -of the whole affair. Their brains no doubt were unlike, as every -two individual brains must be, yet their unlikeness was not a mere -accumulation of accidental difference, but the unlikeness of two -variations of one theme. She could feel his intentions beneath his -words. Her mind had jumped with his realizations and there must be -kinks and turns in her brain, kinks and turns that just made her -difficult and queer for most people, which would find the completest -parallels in his. She didn’t believe there was a thing in her thoughts -and acts that she would be surprised at his knowing and comprehending. - -She had never before thought of parentage with any enthusiasm. She -had viewed it rather in the spirit of Samuel Butler and Bernard Shaw, -and conceived of parents generally in relation to their children -as embarrassed hypocrites with an instinctive disposition towards -restraint and suppression. She had made an exception of her own -particular pair; Daddy had been a great friend anyhow, though mother -for the most part had been a concentrated incarnate “Don’t.” But -she had never realized there might be something rather intimately -interesting in consanguinity. And then suddenly a door had opened, a -man had come in and sat down and talked to her and discovered himself -the nearest thing in life to her. And she to him. She wanted to go to -him again; she wanted to see more of him, be with him. But he made no -sign and she could think of no decent excuse for a call upon him. The -very intensity of her desire made her unable to go to him easily. She -wrote the various letters they had agreed she should write, and then -decided to master mental science and lunacy generally. That and the -case of her “Daddy” she perceived to be her formal link with Devizes. - -She set out for the Reading Room of the British Museum, for which she -had a students’ ticket, and she tried to concentrate her mind upon -the book she had requisitioned, instead of letting it wander off -into the strangest reveries about this miraculously discovered blood -relation. In the afternoon she rang up Lambone to be given tea, with -the intention of learning everything that the wise man could tell her -about Devizes and generally turning him over conversationally. But -Lambone was out. The next day the craving for Devizes was overpowering. -She rang him up. - -“May I have some tea?” she asked. “I’ve got nothing much to say, but I -want to see you.” - -“Delighted,” said Devizes. - -When she got to him she found herself shy, and him as shy as herself. -For a little while they made polite conversation; it might almost have -been the conversation of two people at a formal call in a country town. -He called her “Christina Alberta,” but she called him “Doctor Devizes,” -and he asked her if she played or danced, and whether she had ever been -abroad. She sat in an arm-chair and he stood over her on the hearthrug. -It was clear that the only way to intimacy lay in a frank treatment -of her Daddy. She felt that if this sort of talk went on for another -minute she would have to scream or throw her tea-cup in the fire. So -she plunged. - -“When did you first know my mother?” - -Devizes’ attitude stiffened, and he smiled faintly at her boldness. “I -was a Cambridge undergraduate reading for the Natural Science Tripos, -and I went down to Sheringham to read. We--we picked each other up on -the beach. We made love--in a scared, furtive, desperate, ignorant sort -of way. People were primitive in those days--compared with what they -are now.” - -“Daddy wasn’t there.” - -“He came in afterwards.” - -Devizes considered for a moment. He decided that it wasn’t fair to -oblige her to go on questioning him. “My father,” he said, “was a -pretty considerable old bully. He was Sir George Devizes, the man -who invented the Devizes biscuit and cured old Alphonso, and he -was celebrated for being rude to his patients. He would smack their -stomachs and tell them they ought to be scooped out. He helped make -Unter Magenbad. He suspected me of being a bit of a soft, though as a -matter of fact I wasn’t, and he generally had the effect of laying up -for a quarrel with me. He kept me pretty short. He wasn’t particularly -nice to my mother. He used to get at my mother through me. I didn’t -dare to have a scrape of any sort. I was really afraid of him. If I saw -a scrape blowing up my habit and disposition was to run away.” - -“I see.” - -Devizes considered the implications of that “I see.” “Not that I ran -away from any definite scrape that I knew of at Sheringham,” he said -very carefully. - -“What was my mother like in those days?” - -“A sort of subdued fierceness. A flushed warm face. She was pretty, you -know, and very upright in her carriage. And she had a swift decision -beneath her stiffness. Her wishes would suddenly crystallize out, and -after that there was no bending her.” - -“I know.” - -“I suppose you do.” - -“She wore glasses then?” - -“Oh, yes.” - -“Was she fresh then? Was she happy?” - -“A little too fierce to be happy.” - -“Did you--ever--love her?” - -“It is a long time ago, Christina Alberta. There was--seaside -love-making. Why do you cross-examine me like this?” - -“I want to know. Why”--Christina Alberta had a momentary terror at her -own boldness--“Why didn’t you marry her?” - -Devizes made no pretence of surprise at the question. “There was no -reason manifest why I should have married her. None at all. I can’t -conceive what my father would have done if I had come back from -Sheringham engaged to a chance acquaintance. And anyhow, why should I -have done anything of the sort?” - -His eyes defied hers. - -“I left her my address,” he added. “She could have written to me. She -never did.” - -“Did a letter go astray?” said Christina Alberta, and added hastily, -“my imagination is running away with me.” - -She hesitated and trembled at the next words she had resolved to say, -but she said them, with a forced offhandedness. “You see--I might have -fancied you as a father?” - -It produced no catastrophe. He looked her in the face and then smiled. -After that smile she felt that they understood each other completely, -and it was very pleasant to think that. “Instead of which, you have to -adopt me as a cousin,” he said deliberately. “Cousins it is, Christina -Alberta. It’s the best we can do. We have to put our heads together and -think of your Daddy. He’s our common concern. I’m interested in that -little man. He’s defended himself against many things by those dreams -of his. Very wilful dreams they may have been. Who knows? Necessary -protective dreams.” - -Christina Alberta did not speak for a little time. She nodded. She was -glad at their manifest understanding and yet she was disappointed, -though she could not have told herself what else she had expected. This -man a yard away was the nearest thing in the world to her, and always -there might be this invisible barrier between them. They were linked by -an invisible tie and they were separated by an unfathomable necessity. -Never before in her life had she known what love could be; she wanted -to be free to love him; she wanted him to love her. - -She realized that she was standing quite still, and that Devizes was -standing just as still upon his hearthrug, watching her face. His -mouth and eyes were quiet and serene, but she imagined he must be -gripping his hands together behind him. She had to obey him. There was -nothing for her to do but follow his lead. - -“Daddy’s our common concern,” she said. “I suppose I shall begin to -hear from some of those people to-morrow.” - - -§ 9 - -Christina Alberta got back to her Daddy in a dream. - -It was a queer dream. She was going about the world with Devizes and -they were locked together in such a way that she and he could never -look at each other, but were always side by side. But also with -the sublime incoherence of dreams they were at the same time great -ebony images, and they sat stiffly side by side like a Pharaoh and -his consort, and they looked over a great space; they were very big -effigies indeed and their profiles were alike. All through the dream -she thought of Devizes and herself as black. The space before them was -sometimes a sandy desert and sometimes a grey cloudy expanse. Then -suddenly something round and white came bounding into the midst of this -arena and became a little man, a familiar little blue-eyed man, tied up -into a ball with ropes and sorely maimed, who rolled about and panted -and struggled to be free. Oh! but he struggled pitifully. Christina -Alberta’s heart went out to him, and yet impelled by some tremendous -force within her she rose and Devizes rose beside her and they marched -stiffly forward. She could not help herself, she could not control the -rigid movements of her hands and feet. They stepped high and forcibly. -She was voiceless, she tried to cry out, “We shall trample upon him! -We shall trample upon him!” but there was no more than a hoarse -inarticulate sound of horror in her throat.... - -They were upon him. She felt the body of her Daddy writhe under her. -He was like a bladder. His soft, ineffectual body, with her feet upon -him, bent and bulged about. She forgot there was anything else but -her Daddy and herself. Why had she treated him like this? Devizes -disappeared. Her Daddy was clinging to her knees and now a crowd of -vile figures had appeared and sought to drag him away. “Save me, -Christina Alberta,” he was pleading, though she heard no sound. “Save -me. Save me! Every day they torture me.” But they dragged him away and -she could not put out her arms to him. Because she was made of ebony -and all of one piece with Devizes. - -Then some one, a bird or a Sphinx with the face and voice of Lambone, -came into the dream. “Listen to your Daddy,” he said. “Do not despise -him or simply pity him. He has much to teach you. The world will never -learn anything until it will learn from ridiculous people. All people -are ridiculous. I am. I am ridiculous. We learn in suffering what we -teach in song.” She saw that her Daddy was now sheltering between the -paws of the Sphinx, and that the evil men had vanished. - -She became intensely aware of a revealing absurdity in her dream. No -previous incompatibility had shocked her at all, and she had never -thought that she was dreaming up to this point. But now she became -intensely oppressed by the idea that the Sphinx was an ancient Egyptian -and classical figure, and that Sargon was a still more ancient -Sumerian. The dream was going wrong. The periods, the cultures, were -mixed. She conveyed this to Sphinx-Lambone, and he turned his head to -answer her, and immediately the evil figures were back, and taking -advantage of Lambone’s inattention, were dragging her Daddy away. She -tried to call Lambone’s attention to that, but he said there would be -plenty of time to recover her Daddy when the point about the Sphinx -was settled. He wasn’t a Sphinx, he explained, but a Winged Bull. He -never had been a Sphinx. Or why should he be wearing a long curly -stone beard? She wanted to argue that it was a false beard and that -he had only just put it on. And anyhow it was just like him to start -an inopportune discussion. Meanwhile her Daddy was receding into -wretchedness. She became aware of this rapidly and painfully. It was -her Daddy still, but his body was different; it was not a human body -any more, but a basket of fruit overturned. Unless she did something at -once it would go rotten and be bad for ever. - -She tried to cry out words of comfort and reassurance to the poor -tragic little figure before the dream came to an end--for now she knew -surely that it was a dream. Of course he was suffering intolerably. Why -had she not written to him or telegraphed to him? Surely they would -give him a letter or a telegram! A profound self-detestation for her -incompetence and negligence, and a great horror of pain and cruelty -came upon her, and she awoke completely to black night and infinite -dismay in her little hard bed in her stuffy little bedroom in Lonsdale -Mews. - - -§ 10 - -But the impression of her Daddy, desolate and broken-hearted and in -danger, remained with her, terribly vivid. It clung to her. She got up -in the morning anxious and depressed by it. - -“I am not doing enough for him,” she said. “I am letting days slip -by--and for him they must be days of despair.” - -“Sure th’ ’Sylums ’nt so ba-s-at,” said Fay. “Sure yr overrating it.” - -“But to live among lunatics and be classed as a lunatic!” - -“They’ve _bans_ play-them. Foxhill ’Sylum there’s _buful_ ban. -’Ntainments nors-sorts treats,” said Fay. - -Christina Alberta refrained from bad language. - -“You getting ill ove’ all this,” said Fay. “You doing no good ’n Lun. -Youffar be’r come dow’ Shore’m. The’s th’ouse spoilin’. In this las’ -bit of fine w’r.” - -For the October weather was holding out that year quite wonderfully, -a succession of calm golden days, and the Crumbs had been offered the -loan of a bungalow on the beach at Shoreham by a friend who had used it -throughout the summer. They wanted to go down to it before the weather -broke, but going down to it meant leaving Christina Alberta all alone -in the studio, and they did not want to do that. But they meant to go -to Shoreham. Christina Alberta, now that she had discovered Devizes, -could not endure the thought of getting out of telephone range of -him. London, she argued, was manifestly her proper centre. She could -get down to Cummerdown Hill in an hour; she could keep in touch with -everything. The Crumbs might go but she _must_ stay. - -Fay would not understand. She pestered. - -About eleven o’clock Christina Alberta went to the Post Office -telephone booth and rang up Devizes. - -“Can’t something be done to hurry things up?” she asked. “I’ve got -Daddy on my nerves. I can’t bear to think of him there day after day. -I’ve been dreaming of him.” - -“Worrying is no good. We--I’ve got some bad news for you. So put all -your controls on.” - -He paused. Christina Alberta, for all her love of Devizes, had to -restrain her violent desire to snap, “Oh! what is it?” - -“Visiting day was yesterday. He had one visitor. I suppose that’s the -agreeable relation you described--what was his name? Wiggles? Mr. -Widgery. But your Daddy can’t be seen again by the outer world for a -week. Not until next Tuesday.” - -“Oh, damn!” said Christina Alberta. - -“Exactly. I’ll do what I can to arrange some sort of special access. -I got on to the Medical Superintendent himself. But he’s queer. He’s -evidently quite friendly and well disposed, but he fences about. He -can’t say either Yes or No. Odd! I’m free to-day in the afternoon, -but I’m tied up to-morrow. I was for going down to see _him_--the -superintendent I mean, for a talk after lunch. ‘Better in a day or so,’ -he says. Hope there’s nothing wrong that he’s keeping back. Afterwards -he promised me to ring me up later, and then abruptly he switched off. -So hold yourself ready, there. What’s your telephone number?” - -“Haven’t got one. You must telegraph.” - -“Or I’ll chase round in a taxi and pick you up. Sorry to hold you up -like this, Christina Alberta.” - -“I don’t mind anything so long as it’s getting towards Daddy.” - -“Right-o,” and the voice was cut off. - -The telegram came after an interval of two hours, two hours which -had been devoted to a rambling dispute with Fay about the Shoreham -difficulty. The message ran as follows: “_Has your father turned up he -escaped at dawn this morning in slippers and dressing-gown and nothing -seen of him since if not appeared meet me Victoria two-seven for -Cummerdown telephone Gerrard 0247 if there._” - - -§ 11 - -But Mr. Preemby did not turn up anywhere. He just vanished. - -Christina Alberta, in a state of incredulous astonishment at this -fresh disappearance, went down with Devizes to Cummerdown. They found -a Medical Superintendent by no means so amazed as they were. Sargon -had been missing at breakfast time; everything seemed to point to -his just walking out of the Asylum. That sort of thing had happened -before. It showed a certain sleepy negligence on the part of one or -two attendants, and they would be reprimanded. But as for wonder, the -Medical Superintendent refused to wonder. Lunatics often stray or -escape, and unless they are dangerous the authorities made no great -commotion about it. They kept it out of the newspapers as far as it was -possible to do so. - -“This place isn’t Portland,” said the Medical Superintendent. “They get -back all right. I give him a day. He’s probably coming back now. He may -be hiding up a mile away. I’m chiefly anxious about his catching cold. -Pneumonia is the standard death of a lunatic. But it’s wonderfully warm -for the time of year. I’ve never known such an October.” - -He was much more desirous to talk to Devizes about lunacy reform, -and convince him that he was a highly progressive and able Medical -Superintendent than to discuss the special case of Mr. Preemby. “We -do what we can,” he said, “but we’re fixed by the extreme economy we -have to practise. Low-grade attendants and not enough even of them. -The public indifference to lunatics is monstrous. Everybody--even the -people with insane relations--wants to forget all about them.” - -“But how could Preemby have got out of the grounds?” asked Devizes. -“Aren’t there walls all round?” - -“Like everything else about lunacy law, the back is not as good as -the front,” said the superintendent. “But here we have got at least -a complete wall of sorts all round. The original building used to be -a private mansion with a walled park. For a time--in the eighteenth -century--it was a boys’ school.” - -He showed them from his window over the roofs of a clump of -outbuildings the limits of the garden and farm at the back, dropping -towards a streamlet and defined by a roadside wall and old thorn and -oak trees. “For my own part,” said the Medical Superintendent, “I admit -the urgency of very drastic reforms.” - -“I wonder if Cousin Widgery can throw any light on this,” said Devizes. - -“Widgery?” - -“That was his visitor yesterday.” - -“_Was_ it?” said the Medical Superintendent, and reflected and went to -his desk as if to look for a paper. “I thought it was a different sort -of name--rather more like Goodchild. Perhaps I’ve mixed up the names.” - -“Mr. Sam Widgery,” said Christina Alberta, “would be the last person -who’d want Daddy to get out. He probably came to make sure that he -wouldn’t. He may have come just for the pleasure of gloating over him. -Uncle Sam’s not a pretty soul. He may have wanted to make sure the wall -went all the way round.” - -The Medical Superintendent forgot his doubt about the name and the -paper and turned with a fresh idea to them. “You don’t think there was -any animus? You don’t think he may have made for Mr. Widgery? Where -does this Mr. Widgery live?” - -But neither Devizes nor Christina Alberta thought there was any great -possibility of Mr. Preemby beating back to Woodford Wells. - -“He’s much more likely to go to Canterbury or Windsor or start straight -off for Rome,” said Christina Alberta. - -“Or Mesopotamia--or the British Museum,” said Devizes. - -“Or _anywhere_!” said Christina Alberta with a note of despair. - -They returned to London completely baffled. Christina Alberta was -for a visit to the Cummerdown Police Station and for a search in the -villages round about, but Devizes explained that this might do more -harm than good. Until now Christina Alberta had never heard of that one -kindly weakness in the British lunacy laws, the release of the fourteen -days freedom. If the lunatic can get away from the Asylum and remain -at large for that period, he or she becomes legally sane again, and -cannot be touched without a fresh examination and a new certificate. To -set the whole countryside hunting for Preemby might merely lead to his -recapture by the Asylum authorities. And whatever happened the mystery -must not get into the papers. - -“But while we do nothing, he may be lying dead in some out-of-the-way -ditch,” said Christina Alberta. - -“If he’s dead he won’t mind a little delay in finding him,” said -Devizes. - -No, the only thing was to wait at Lonsdale Mews against the chance of -his returning thither. The Crumbs went off to Shoreham and Christina -Alberta was left alone in the studio, but after one endless day of it -Paul Lambone thought of a convenient agency called “Universal Aunts,” -and a suitable lady was sent to relieve her from a continuous vigil. - -One, two, three days passed. There came no sign from Sargon, no news -of any fresh calling of disciples or visits to the King. He had -evaporated. A vision of a little crumpled-up body in a ditch replaced -the tormented figure in the cell in the distressed imagination of -Christina Alberta. But the mind refuses to go on with a painful fancy -that leads to nothing, and Christina Alberta’s imagination presently -ceased further dealings with her Daddy until fresh material came to -hand. “He will turn up somewhere,” she repeated feebly, and became a -great consumer of evening papers. “He will turn up somehow.” Her chief -anxiety was that he should not turn up with too tremendous head-lines. -She began to adjust herself like an early Christian for the Second -Coming. The riddle of her Daddy’s disappearance became a habit of -mind, became, as it were, a frame, a proscenium arch to her current -activities. Beneath it she returned to the urgent and extraordinary -problem of herself and her relationship to Devizes. - - -§ 12 - -It was manifest that he was almost as excited as she was at their -mutual discovery. The possible proceedings of Sargon, fantastic as -they might prove to be when they came to light, remained for him -as for her a matter of urgent importance, but the thought of this -strange relationship completely overshadowed it. Each had a reciprocal -desire to get at the other, to discover what magic of sympathy and -understanding might not be latent in their consanguinity. - -The evening after the Universal Aunt was installed he took Christina -Alberta out to dine with him at a pleasant little Italian restaurant in -the corner of Sloane Square, and afterwards he came back to the studio -with her and talked until nearly one in the morning. He showed himself -shyly anxious to find out her aims and purposes in life, and what she -was doing and what might be done to let out her possibilities. He was -evidently disposed to shoulder just as much parental responsibility as -he could, subject to the preservation of appearances and a proper care -for the self-respect of the vanished Sargon. She attracted him and he -liked her. Her feelings for him were more tumultuous and abundant and -indefinite. She didn’t particularly want help or support from him. The -idea of being dependent upon him for anything repelled rather than -attracted her, but she wanted to get hold of him, to please and satisfy -him, to be better than he had expected and interesting in fresh ways. -She wanted him to like her--to care for her more than mere liking. She -wanted that anxiously and tremendously. - -She liked a sort of ease and confidence he had with waiters and cabmen -and the common services of life. He seemed to know just what people -would do and they seemed to know just what he would do; there was -no tension in these matters, no nervous “h’rrmping.” These common -attributes of habitual prosperity were so little in her experience -that they seemed a distinction of his; and they threw a flavour of -knowing what he was about, and being serenely in control over most of -the conversation, when indeed he was as curious and experimental and -emotionally stirred almost as she was. The eyes that met hers when she -talked were steady, friendly, interested, intimate eyes, and her heart -went out to them. - -Over the dinner he talked at first about music. He had had no music -in his education, and now he was discovering it. A friend of his had -been taking him to concerts, and he had got a pianola, “so as to spell -it out at home first.” But Christina Alberta’s education had missed -out music too, and she hadn’t as yet discovered it. So that topic died -out presently. He tried her about pictures, but there again she wasn’t -particularly interested. They had a little silence. - -He looked across at her and smiled. - -“I’d like to ask you all sorts of questions, Christina Alberta, if I -dared,” he said. - -She blushed--absurdly. “Any questions you like,” she said. - -“Immense questions,” he said. “For example--generally--what do you -think you are up to?” - -She understood what he meant at once. But she was so unprepared with an -answer that she became evasive. - -“Up to!” she said, playing for time. “I suppose I’m looking for my lost -Daddy.” - -“But what are you up to generally? What are you doing with your life? -Where are you going?” - -“I’m at sea,” she said at last. “Lots of my generation are, I think. -The girls especially. You are older than I am; I’m only beginning. -I don’t want to seem cheeky, but aren’t you better able to say what -_you_ are up to? Suppose--” Her slightly scared gravity broke into an -impudent smile that Devizes found very congenial--“suppose you play -first?” - -He considered that. “Perfectly fair,” he said. “I will. Have another -olive. I’m glad you like olives. I do too. Nobody’s called me to -account for a long time. What _is_ my game? It’s a fair question.” - -But not an easy one evidently. - -“I suppose one ought to begin right back at one’s philosophy,” he said. -“A long story. But I started the idea.” - -Christina Alberta was greatly elated at her successful repulse of his -projected cross-examination. Instead of making a display herself she -could watch him. She watched him over the flowers on the table and had -to be nudged by the waiter when he brought the pheasant to her elbow. -“How _should_ one begin?” he plunged. She had heard of Pragmatism? Yes. -She was probably better read in that sort of thing than he was. He was, -he considered, a sort of Pragmatist. Most modern-minded, intelligent -people he held were Pragmatists as he understood it. Pragmatist? As he -understood it? He met her eye and explained. In this sense he meant it; -we, none of us, had a clear vision of reality; nobody perhaps would -ever do more than approach reality. What we perceived was just that -much of reality that got through to us, through our very defective -powers of interpretation. “They’ve done this pheasant _en casserole_ -very well,” he broke off. “Three minutes’ truce we ought to give it. Do -you find I’m talking comprehensibly? I doubt it.” - -“I’m hanging on,” said Christina Alberta.... - -“Perhaps I’m beginning rather too far off.” - -Pheasant.... - -“To come back to my confession of faith,” he said presently.... “Mind -you, Christina Alberta, you’ve got to say your bit afterwards.” - -“It won’t be as definite as yours,” she said. “Some of yours I shall -steal. But go on--telling me.” - -“Well, keep hold, Christina Alberta. I feel I’m going to be at once -hesitating and condensed. And I’m not sure of what you know or don’t -know. If I say I’m an Agnostic about the nature of the universe, and -how it began and where it ends, does that convey anything to you?” - -“Just what I think,” said Christina Alberta. - -“Well.” He started afresh and got into parenthetical difficulties. The -Pêche Melba came to interrupt and permit a fresh start. He unfolded a -psychologist’s vision of the world for her inspection, a curious and -yet attractive vision to her. He expressed himself in terms of mind and -understanding. She was used to hearing everything expressed in terms of -labour and material necessity. Life, he said, was one continuous thing, -all life was connected. He tried to illustrate that. The conscious -life of most lower animals was intensely individual, a lizard, for -example, was just itself, just its instincts and appetites; it received -no teaching and no tradition, it handed on nothing to its kind. But -the higher animals were taught when they were young, learnt and taught -others and communicated with each other. Men far more than any animal. -He had developed picture-writing, speech, oral tradition, scientific -record. There was now a common mind of the race, a great growing body -of knowledge and interpretations. - -“People like ourselves are just cross-sections of that flow. -Individually we receive it, react to it, change it a little, and pass -away. We are just passing phases of that increasing mind--which may be -for all we can certainly say, an immortal mind. Does this sound like -Greek--or nonsense to you?” - -“No,” she said, “I think I get the drift of it.” She looked at his -intent face. He wasn’t in the least talking down to her; he was simply -trying to express himself as well as he possibly could to her. He was -treating her like an equal. Like an equal! - -That was his general philosophy. He was coming to the question of -himself now, he said. He became very earnest over the coffee cups -and ash tray on the swept tablecloth. He spread elucidatory hands -before her. He was conscientiously explicit. He saw in himself two -phases, or rather two levels of existence. Roughly speaking, two. -They had links and intermediate stages of course, but they could be -ignored when one just wanted to express the idea. First of all, he was -the old instinctive individual, fearful, greedy, lustful, jealous, -self-assertive. That was the primary self. He had to attend to that -primary self because it carried all the rest of him, as a rider -must see that his horse gets oats. Deeper lay social instincts and -dispositions arising out of family life. That was the second self, the -social self. Man, he threw out, is a creature that has become more -and more consciously social in the last two or three hundred thousand -years. He has been lengthening his life, keeping his children with him -longer and longer, enlarging his community from family herds into clans -and tribes and nations. The deep-lying continuity of life was becoming -more apparent and finding more and more definite expression with this -socialization of man. To educate anyone in the proper sense of the word -was to make him more and more aware of this continuity. The importance -of the passionate feverish self was then reduced. True education was -self-subordination to a greater life, to the social self. The natural -instincts and limitations of the primary self were in conflict with -this wider underflow; education, _good_ education, tended to correct -them. - -“Here am I,” said Devizes, “as we all are, a creature in a state of -internal conflict, quicker, fiercer mortal instincts at issue with a -deeper, calmer, less brightly lit, but finally stronger drive towards -immortal purposes. And I am--how shall I put it?--I personally am, to -the best of my ability, on the side of the deeper things. My aptitudes -and temperament and opportunities have brought me to psychology--as a -profession. I work to add to the accumulation of human knowledge and -understanding about the mind. I work for illumination. My particular -work is to study and cure troubled and tangled minds. I try to -straighten them out and simplify them and illuminate them. And above -all I try to learn from them. I seek the mental or physical cause -of their distresses. I try to set down as clearly and accessibly as -possible, all I observe and learn. That’s my job. That’s my aim. It -gives me a general direction for my life. All the stuff of my mere -individual existence I try to subordinate to that end. Not always. My -monkey individual gets loose at times and gibbers on the roof. And at -other times it’s rather good company as a relief from overwork. Vanity -and self-indulgence have their uses. But never mind the monkey now. I -do not want to be a brilliant person; I want to be a vital part. That’s -my essential creed. I want to be the sort of wheel in the machinery -they call a mental expert. As good a wheel as I can be. That’s what I’m -up to in general terms, Christina Alberta. That’s what I think I am.” - -“Yes,” said Christina Alberta, reflecting profoundly. “Of course I -can’t produce a statement like that. You’ve got your system--complete.” - -“And finished,” said Devizes. “You’ve got to tell your story in your -own way. At your age--you ought to be with loose ends to all your -convictions.” - -“I wonder if I can tell you any story.” - -“You’ve got to try your best now. It’s only fair play.” - -“Yes.” - -There was a little silence. - -“It’s wonderful to talk to you like this,” said Christina Alberta. -“It’s wonderful to talk to anyone like this.” - -“I feel that you and I--have to understand each other.” - -She met his grave eyes for a moment. There was a wave of emotion within -her. She could not speak. She reached out her hand to touch his, and -for a moment their hands were together. - - -§ 13 - -Christina Alberta only got to her confession of faith in the studio -after they had returned thither and relieved the Universal Aunt. Even -then they didn’t settle down to the business all at once. Devizes -walked about and looked for drawings by Harold; he deduced Harold from -his drawings to a quite remarkable extent, Christina Alberta thought. -He was curious about Fay. “What’s Mrs. Crumb like?” he asked. “Show me -something of hers, something that seems to give her.” - -It pleased Christina Alberta very much to think that he was shy with -her. She felt that this was a recognition of her equality. He was -respecting her and she was very eager that she should be respected by -him. - -He got to an anchorage at last in the gaily painted seat by the -gas-fire; and Christina Alberta, after flitting about the room for -a time, came and stood before it, shapely legs wide apart and hands -behind her back in an attitude that would have shocked all her feminine -ancestors for many generations. But it did not shock Devizes; he found -her more and more interesting to watch, and he sat at his ease and -regarded her with a lively admiration. Most of us get used to our -daughters so gradually; they grow up and we carry the wonder of them -as Milo carried his ox; it isn’t common for a man to get an unexpected -daughter abruptly at the age of twenty-one. - -She said she hadn’t much in the way of metaphysics; she was a -Materialist. - -“No prayers at mother’s knee? Religion of Mother and Daddy? School -prayers and teaching? Church or chapel?” - -“It all washed out and faded out, I think, as they laid it on.” - -“No fear of hell? Most of my generation went through the fear of hell.” - -“Not a trace of it,” said the New Age. - -“But--a desire for God in the night?” - -Christina Alberta paused for a little while. “I have that,” she said. -“It comes--sometimes. I don’t know whether it’s very important or not -important at all.” - -“It’s part,” said Devizes slowly, “of something that has to do with -wanting to be more than a miserable worm--and disliking meanness--and -so forth.” - -“Yes. Do you know more about it?” - -Rather oddly he didn’t answer that. “And how do you see yourself in -relation to mankind--and the animals--and the stars? What sense of -obligation have you? What do you think the road is along which you have -to go?” - -“H’m,” said Christina Alberta. She considered she was a Communist, she -said, though she didn’t belong to the Party. But she knew some other -young people who did. She produced some of the phrases of the movement, -“the materialist conception of history” and so forth. He said he failed -to understand and asked rather irritating questions; she thought -controversially. She didn’t realize at first how widely apart was their -phraseology. As they talked this became apparent. He seemed to have -nothing too good to say for the Communist idea, for wasn’t it just his -own idea of being a part of a greater being of life? but he seemed to -have nothing too bad for practical Communism. Marxist Communism he -said wasn’t a constructive movement at all; it was merely a solvent. -It had no idea, no plan. Christina Alberta was put on the defensive. -“Enthusiasm for an ideal Communist state isn’t nearly so important as -the question of immediate Communist tactics in a decaying society,” she -recited, in an almost official tone. That was how her young friends in -the Party talked. But when she talked like this to him it didn’t seem -so effective. He wouldn’t leave her phrases alone. He wanted to know -what she meant by decay in a society, whether there had ever been a -society not actively in decay and not also actively in growth, what -good tactics were except in relation to general strategy and whether -there could be any strategy without a clear war-end. She countered more -vigorously than effectively and their manner became controversial. - -He pressed the difference in their opinions. Communism for him meant a -new spirit, a spirit of science reorganizing the world upon scientific -collective lines, but the whole temper of party communism was -contemporary. It was saturated with the feelings and ideas of existing -social classes, with the natural resentment of the dispossessed. It -had the angry dogmatism of desperate people not sure of their grip. -It needed more of the passion of creative self-forgetfulness. Many -Communists, he said, were simply reversed capitalists, egotists without -capital; they wanted revenge and expropriation, and when they were -through with that they would be left with nothing but social ruins -and everything to begin all over again. And they were suspicious and -intolerant because of their want of internal assurance. They distrusted -their best friends, their proper leaders, scientific men like Keynes -and Soddy. - -“Keynes a Communist!” cried Christina Alberta in derision. “He doesn’t -accept the first scientific fact of the class war.” - -“It isn’t much of a fact--certainly not a First Scientific Fact,” he -replied. “Keynes builds up slowly a conception of a scientifically -organized exchange system. Most of your friends in Russia don’t seem -capable even of realizing that such a thing is necessary.” - -“But they do!” - -“Have they shown it?” - -“What do _you_ know of the Russian Bolsheviks?” - -“What do _you_? You just look at the labels on people. Nothing genuine -without the red label--and everything genuine with.” - -She said he saw things from his “bourgeois” standpoint, and he laughed -cheerfully at her social classifications; there was no bourgeoisie -in England, he said; she attempted some of the stock cynicisms and -sarcasms of the movement but with an unusual lack of conviction. It -was easy for him to criticize, she said, living as he did on invested -capital. - -“It would make it easier,” he smiled. “But really I live on my fees.” - -“You have invested capital.” - -“Some. I don’t live on it.” - -They had exhausted the dispute for a time. After all she reflected she -hadn’t put up such a bad fight, considering her age and standing. The -momentary glow of controversial exasperation faded again. They drifted -to the more immediate question in which they were interested, the -question of what she was to do with her life. - - -§ 14 - -“We progress, Christina Alberta,” said Devizes, “but it’s still -generally the rule that a woman’s life is determined very largely by -the character and occupations of--the leading man in the play. Have you -by any chance been in love yet?” - -She wanted to tell him all the truth about herself, but some things are -untellable. She hesitated and blushed hotly. “Nowadays,” she said, and -stopped. “I’ve some imagination. I’ve run about London. I’ve perhaps -imagined things----” - -His eyes were very searching for a moment but none the less kindly. - -“I’ve been in love--in a kind of way,” she admitted. - -He nodded with a dreadful effect of complete comprehension. - -“I don’t want to run my life in relation to any man,” she extended. - -“Clever girls never do. Any more than clever young men want to spend -their lives adoring a goddess.” - -“In any case I don’t see myself becoming a child-producing -housekeeper,” she said. - -“Even if you married. No. I doubt whether you are that type. But if you -are going to reject that easy way--and it _is_ an easy way, in spite of -what people say--if you are going to be a citizen on your own as a man -is, then you’ve got to do a man’s work, Christina Alberta. There’s to -be none of the Pretty Fanny business you know.” - -“Well, _am_ I?” asked Christina Alberta. - -“No, I don’t think you are. And in that case, I guess you want some -more education. You’re clever, but you’re a bit patchy.” - -“I’m good enough to get a job. And then learn.” - -“Learn,” he said. “That’s enough to take you all your time. I’d rather -we agreed it’s got to be a student for two or three years more. You -need have no anxiety about ways and means. You and I are of the same -Clan--a clan of two practically--and I am the head. I’ll see you -through just as though you were a son. And now, what sort of work is it -to be? Law? Medicine? a general education for journalism or affairs? -Doors open to women now--fresh doors every day.” - -To that Christina Alberta could speak a little more fully. She had been -thinking out some of these things. She wanted to know about life and -the world as a whole. Could she have a good year at physical science, -biology and geology chiefly and anthropology? Would that be possible? -And then if she was any good at medical work, another year at mental -science or politics and public health? “It sounds ambitious I know,” -she said. - -“Ambitious! It’s an encyclopædia in a year.” - -“But I want to know about all these things.” - -“Naturally.” - -“Could I have longer than that?” - -“You’d have to have longer than that.” - -“It seems to be asking for so much.” - -“It wouldn’t be if you were in trousers. We’ve agreed to unsex you to -that extent. Why shouldn’t you be ambitious?” - -“You think I might do work--scientific work--at last--as you do?” - -“Why not?” - -“A girl?” - -“You’re the sort of stuff I am, Christina Alberta.” - -“Do you think--some day--I might even come to work--to work with you?” - -“Kindred minds may follow kindred courses,” he said, with the -completest recognition of their relationship “Why not?” - -She stood and looked at him with a dark excitement in her eyes and he -had a momentary intimation of all that he might be to her. Gallant she -was and fine and ambitious; a wonderful life to come out of nothingness -into his own. And she meant this relationship to grow, as well it might -grow, into something very great and deep for both of them. - -He went off at a tangent to talk of the contrast of men and women -students and of men and women as workers. “You’ll never run parallel -with men, you free women, so don’t expect it. You’ve got to work out -a way that is similar perhaps but different. Different down to the -roots.” He argued that probably the whole fabric of a man had its -qualities that a woman’s did not possess and vice versa, down even to -a muscular fibre or a nerve tendril. A time might come when we should -be able to put a drop of blood or a scrap of skin under the microscope -or apply some subtle reagent to it and tell its sex. “A man resists,” -he said. “A man is intractable. He has greater inertia, physical and -mental. That keeps him to his course. Men compared with women are -steadier and stupider. Women compared with men are quicker and sillier. -Bludgeons and bodkins.” - -He talked of his student days when women medical students were still -rather novel intrusions, and from that he passed to his father’s -prejudices, to his father’s treatment of his mother and his boyish -days. Presently they were exchanging experiences of childish delusions -and fancies. She forgot how much older and more experienced he was in -the ease of his talk. He told her about himself because he recognized -her right to know about him; he listened with a friendly eagerness -to all she chose to tell him of her Daddy and herself and about -her impressions and her few adventures in encounter as a suburban -student in London. They shared their delight in Paul Lambone’s kindly -absurdity. Presently it occurred to her to offer him drink. The Crumbs -had left a bottle of beer and a syphon. But Devizes asked her to make -tea and helped her with the kettle. Meanwhile the mutual exploration -went on. Their friendliness grew richer and deeper as they talked. She -had never before met so intimate and delightful a curiosity as his. She -had had friends before but no such friendliness; she had had a lover -but never such intimacy. - -It was one o’clock before he went away. - -The talk had ebbed. He sat thoughtful for a moment. - -“I must go,” he said, and stood up. They faced each other, a little at -a loss for parting words. - -“It’s been wonderful to talk to you,” she said. - -“It’s a great thing to have discovered you.” - -Another pause. “It’s a great thing for me,” she said lamely. - -“We’ll talk--many times,” he said. - -He wanted to call her “my dear,” and an absurd shyness prevented him. -And she was aware of that suppression. - -She stood up straight before him in the passage with a flush on her -cheeks and her eyes alight, and he wondered he had not thought her -beautiful from the beginning. “Good-bye for the time,” he said, and -smiled at her gravely and took and held her hand for a moment. - -“Good night,” she said, and hesitated and then opened the green door -for him and stood and watched him go up the Mews. - -At the top he turned and waved his hand to her before he disappeared. -“Good night,” she whispered and started, and looked about her as if she -feared that her unspoken thoughts had been audible. - -Father. Her father! - -So real fathers leave one aglow like this! - -He had left her tense as a violin string on which the bow rests -motionless. Now Daddy, who wasn’t her father, she would just have -hugged and kissed. - - - - -CHAPTER THE SECOND - -_How Bobby Stole a Lunatic_ - - -§ 1 - -A man may be a mental expert and yet fail to take the most obvious -hints in a detective investigation. The medical superintendent at -Cummerdown Hill had doubted for a moment whether Widgery was the name -of Sargon’s visitor. He had thought it was more like Goodchild. But -since there was no known Goodchild in the world of Christina Alberta, -neither she nor Devizes had troubled to scrutinize this momentary -uncertainty. Nor had she and Devizes asked themselves why Widgery -should have made a second visit to his cousin. Indeed, he had not done -so. It was a much younger man who had visited Sargon that Tuesday; he -had falsely represented himself as Sargon’s nephew and given the name -of “Robin Goodchild.” His real name was Robert Roothing, and he had -come for the sole purpose of getting Sargon out of the asylum as soon -as possible, because he could not endure the thought of his staying -there. - -Circumstances had conspired with a natural predisposition to give Bobby -a great horror of all restraint. His mother, a gentle dark creature, -the wife of a large blond negligent landowner, had died when Bobby was -twelve; and he had been entrusted to the care of a harsh, old-fashioned -aunt--to whom the cupboard seemed a proper place for discipline. When -she discovered that he was really distressed by it, she sought to break -his “cowardice” by giving him quite liberal doses of it--even when -he had committed no offence. He went to a school where discipline -was maintained by “keeping-in.” The war eliminated his father, who -died suddenly of over-excitement while in command of an anti-aircraft -gun during an air-raid, and it led Bobby through some tiresome -campaigning in Mesopotamia and the beleaguerment of Kut to an extremely -unsympathetic Turkish prison. In any case he would probably have been -a free-going easy creature, but now he had so passionate a hatred of -cages that he wanted to release even canaries. He disliked the iron -fences round the public parks and squares with a propagandist passion, -he wrote articles about them in _Wilkins’ Weekly_ and elsewhere -clamouring for their “liberation,” and he never went by train if he -could help it because of the claustrophobia that assailed him in the -compartment. He would ride a push-bike except for long distances, and -then he would borrow Billy’s motor bicycle. He did his best to prevent -his craving for the large and open from becoming too conspicuous or a -nuisance to other people, but Tessy and Billy understood about it and -did their best to make things easy for him. - -It was not only claustrophobia that Bobby had to fight against. He -carried on a secret internal conflict with a disinclination to act -upon most occasions, that he believed had developed in him as a result -of war experiences. Sometimes it seemed to him to be just indolence, -sometimes fastidiousness, sometimes sheer funk and cowardice. He -could not tell. He had a rankling memory of a case of cruelty he had -witnessed in the prisoners’ camp when he had stood by and done nothing. -He would wake up sometimes at three o’clock in the morning and say -to himself aloud, “I stood by and I did nothing. Oh God! Oh _God_! -Oh GOD!” And at times he would walk up and down his study repeating: -“_Act!_ You vegetable! you hiding cur! Out and act!” Meanwhile he -obeyed routines and did whatever came to his hand. As “Aunt Suzannah” -he was excellent, indefatigably considerate, lucid, really helpful. -_Wilkins’ Weekly_ was proud of him. He was the backbone of the paper. - -And now this affair of Sargon’s had twisted him up very badly between -his desire to free the little man, who had taken an extraordinary hold -upon his imagination and sympathy, and his sense of the immense forces -against which he would have to pit himself if he tried to give him any -help. It was only after a considerable struggle with himself that he -had called at the police station and the Gifford Street Workhouse. He -was afraid of awkward questions, afraid above all of being “detained.” -The workhouse was a detestable place with high walls and a paved court -and a general effect of sinister seclusion from the grubby street -outside. For the best part of a day after his Gifford Street visit he -hesitated whether he should do anything more. - -“Bobby’s got a grouch,” Susan told Tessy. “He’s stoopid. Just sits and -says ’E ’as to fink sumpfink over. What’s he fink fings over for? Said -I was to come downstairs again, there was a good girl.... Meant it.... -Said so.... Puss’d me ’way.... I do-o-n’t fink I lo-o-o-ove Bobby -’nymore.” - -Great distress. A storm of tears. Tessy was deeply sympathetic. - -But after tea Bobby was brighter and drew Susan her “Good night -picture” and came down and sat on her bed and talked her to sleep the -same as usual, and Tessy perceived that the worst of Bobby’s trouble -was over. - -At supper Bobby unfolded his plans. - -“I mean to go to Cummerdown Hill to-morrow,” he said compactly. - -“To see Sargon?” said Tessy understandingly. - -“If I can. But it won’t be visiting day. That’s Tuesday. I want to look -round.” - -Billy raised his eyebrows and helped himself to butter. - -“But--” said Tessy, and stopped short. - -“Yes?” said Bobby. - -“You won’t be able to see him. You don’t know the name he’s under.” - -“They’ll call him Mr. Sargon,” said Billy. - -“His name’s Preemby. He’s a laundryman. They told me at the workhouse. -His people _want him to be there_!” - -“I can’t stand the thought of it,” said Bobby after a brief silence. - -“Don’t follow,” said Billy. - -“That nice little thing being made into a lunatic. Like a little -blue-eyed bird he was. High walls. Great louting warders. Sargon, King -of Kings.... I’ve got to do something about it or I shall burst.” - -He looked at once weak and desperate. Tessy reflected. “You’d better -go,” she said. - -“But what good will that do?” said Billy, and was quelled by a glance -from Tessy. - -“If you can lend me the old motor bike and the side-car. You’re not -using it this week-end.” - -“You can take off the side-car,” said Billy. - -“I may want it,” said Bobby. - -“You don’t mean--!” said Billy. - -Bobby came as near to an explosion as he ever did. - -“Oh never mind _what_ I mean. I tell you I’m going down to Cummerdown -to have a look at the place. No doubt I’m a futile ass, Billy, but I -just can’t help myself going. The poor little beggar’s got no friends. -His own family’s helped to put him away. Families do. It’s an infernal -world. I’ve got to do something. If it’s only to shake ’em up. If I -stay here another day I shall start smacking Susan.” - -“Somebody ought to,” said Billy. - -“If he can only keep away for fourteen days clear----” - -“He’s free?” said Tessy. - -“He has to be certified all over again--anyhow,” said Bobby. - - -§ 2 - -Bobby discovered that the village of Cummerdown lies nearly two miles -away from the asylum, and does its best very successfully to have as -little to do with it as possible. It nestles among trees just off the -high-road to Ashford and Hastings, and has one cramped little inn that -gave him a bleak bedroom and accommodated his machine and side-car in -an open outhouse crowded with two carts and a Ford and populous with -hens. The day was still young, and after he had deposited the elderly -rucksac in which he had brought his “things” upstairs, he set out with -a walking-stick and an air of detached interest to reconnoitre the -asylum and develop his plans for the rescue of Sargon. That golden -autumn was still holding out; the pleasant lane he followed to the -high-road was patterned with green and yellow chestnut leaves and the -trees overhead were full of sunshine. It was a reassuring day. It -encouraged him. It took him with a kindly seriousness and made him feel -that rescuing people from lunatic asylums was the sort of work the sun -could shine upon and nature welcome. - -It had needed a great effort to get down from London. He had felt then -like a midget setting out to attack an embattled universe. Amidst the -Croydon traffic he had been half-minded to go back, but he had felt -that he could not face Tessy until he had been at least definitely -defeated. It was delightful to note an increased assurance within -himself as he drew nearer to his enterprise. He felt much more on -the scale of the powers he attacked. After all, what were laws and -regulations but just things patched up by men like himself? What were -prison walls but the slow work of shirking bricklayers and evasive -contractors? The attendants and custodians, the superintendents and -so forth he was setting out to circumvent, were all as fallible as -himself. And the thing was urgent and outrageous, this seizure of a -harmless little fantastic, this frightful imprisonment. It had to be -fought. The world would be intolerable unless such things were fought. - -Queer world it was! Such beauty on these tree-stems, such a glow, and -the delightfulness of rustling one’s feet through these leaves! But all -that was by the way; the real business of life was to fight evil things. - -He came out from between the trees and saw the wide downs opening out -before him and the blocked masses of the asylum with its broad bare -grounds and walls, an eyesore. This was his objective. In that place -somewhere was Sargon, and he had to be released. - -He seated himself on a convenient stile and inspected that heavy -architecture and tried to frame a plan. That white building in the -centre looked like a gaunt Georgian private house. That was probably -the nucleus of the whole place. Two men were visible in front of it -mowing the grass--patients perhaps. The wall and railings along the -road looked implacable. Two stern-looking lodges there were, no doubt -with a testy janitor lurking within, and there were iron gates--one -open. A van was coming out, a furniture dealer’s van. For a time -Bobby’s mind ran on the possibility of becoming a tradesman with -parcels or a crate to deliver.... Many difficulties that way.... - -“But why a frontal attack?” said Bobby with an effect of discovery. The -place fell away behind, down-hill. He would inspect the rear. If he -worked round by the open down to the right, he would probably get on to -slopes commanding a view of the asylum grounds. - -An hour later Bobby was sitting on a heap of flints by the side of a -minor road which ran over the rising ground behind the asylum. He -found the rear of the place much more hopeful and much more interesting -than the front. There were fields with a number of men working in them, -and at one place near the buildings a row of men seemed to be digging -a trench under the supervision of an attendant. There was quite a lot -of movement closer to the buildings, under a sort of open shed half -a dozen men seemed to be taking exercise by walking up and down. It -vexed Bobby to think that any one of these figures might be his Sargon. -If only he had the elementary common sense to bring a field-glass, he -reproached himself, he might have been able to make out his little -friend’s features. “No clearness of thought,” he whispered. “No -decision.” A lot of these people seemed to be going about very freely, -carrying gardening implements and so forth. One he noted, walking about -and gesticulating as if he talked to himself; he was manifestly a -patient and quite unattended. - -The wall bounding the asylum on this side had none of the austerity of -the front wall. It seemed to be an old estate wall; in several places -it was covered with ivy and here and there it was overhung with trees. -The ground dropped away to his right, there was a little stream which -ran out of the asylum grounds at the lowest corner; the corner was -shaded by trees and seemed to be left to the trees and undergrowth; the -stream ran under a low arch in the wall and went on down a widening -valley towards London. The seclusion and shade of this corner appealed -to Bobby very strongly. It seemed to him exactly the point at which -Sargon ought to be got out of the place. He decided that presently -he would stroll down and examine its possibilities as precisely as -possible. If one could get Sargon to come down there---- - -He found the details difficult. He meant to have a plan worked out -in every detail and to communicate it to Sargon on the next visiting -day, but it was very hard to fit this plan together. He did not know -when it would be most convenient for Sargon to attempt to slip away, -whether this was to be a daylight or a night affair. He saw before -him a great vista of inquiries to be made and suspicious people to be -faced. “Damn!” said Bobby, and for a time he was again for abandoning -the attempt. - -Why couldn’t one go in at these gates, boldly and overwhelmingly, and -say, “There is a sane man here and I have come to set him free?” A -superman might do that, or an archangel. How splendid it would be to be -a sort of Archangel-Knight-Errant, a great flaming presence of light -and winged power, righting wrongs, reproving oppressors, liberating -every kind of captive creature. Then one might do things. Bobby lapsed -into a childish day-dream. - -Presently he roused himself, stood up and went down towards the exit of -the stream. The wall struck him as quite climbable--even by a little -old gentleman. The stream came out meandering among pebbles through -a short tunnel. One could have got into the asylum grounds or out of -them quite easily over the wall by the ivy or through the culvert. He -resolved to come again at twilight and--just to satisfy himself about -his own pluck among other things--get into the asylum premises and walk -about a little. - -Yes. He would do that. - -He tried to imagine himself assisting Sargon over the wall. One could -get on the top of the wall and reach down to his hands. A cripple could -do it. The motor bicycle would have to be waiting up there in the lane. -And then? _Where would he take him?_ - -This was a new consideration. For a time Bobby’s mind was appalled and -paralyzed by the complexities of his enterprise. He had not thought of -taking him anywhere in particular. - -The days that intervened before visiting day seemed at once -interminable and frightfully swift. He had been to Dymchurch in the -summer with the Malmesburys, and liked the landlady of his lodgings -very much; he wired to her “Can I come with a relation not ill but -overworked for week or so you will remember me last summer Roothing the -Feathers Cummerdown” and had got a reply, “Glad to see you any time.” -So that was all right. But the rest of the plan failed very largely to -materialize. He made his nocturnal visit to the asylum grounds without -misadventure. - -The morning of visiting day found him with half a dozen plans, and they -all had gaps and none seemed much better or worse than the others. And -he had walked round the asylum grounds at various discreet distances, -by night and day just twenty-three times, not counting loops, returns -and visits to particular points of interest. Fortunately asylums are -much preoccupied with their internal affairs, and do not keep look-out -men upon the battlements. They do not reckon with rescuers from outside. - -Bobby made his final decision among these conflicting projects over -his breakfast bacon. With a resolute sang-froid and his nerves all -a-tingle, he set out for the asylum to see Sargon and begin the work of -rescue as he had thought it out. First he had to find out what freedom -of movement was permitted Sargon, when it might be possible for him to -get away to the corner by the culvert, and he had to arrange a time for -that meeting. Then he would have to provide also for alternative times -if Sargon failed to keep his first appointment. Bobby would be waiting -under the wall and the motor bicycle and side-car would be hidden among -the bushes up by the road. In a trice Sargon would be over the wall. -After that they could laugh at pursuit. Off they would go to Dymchurch, -and there, safe and untrackable, Sargon would keep indoors until the -fifteen days needed to make him legally a sane man again had passed. -And then Bobby could find out those relations of his and talk the -matter over with them, and get things on a proper footing. So Bobby -planned it out. - -Just at the lodge gates he decided upon an assumed name. He wasn’t -quite clear why he didn’t give his own name, but an assumed name seemed -to him to be more in the spirit of the adventure. - - -§ 3 - -When Sargon was informed that he was to be visited by Mr. Robin -Goodchild he was in a depressed mood. He betrayed no surprise at the -name. It seemed to him to be as good as any other name. It might be -the name of some intelligent inquirer or possibly even some precursor -of the release he still hoped for. His spirits rose. He submitted -cheerfully to a searching examination of his personal tidiness, and he -nodded acquiescently to a warning not to talk about “_every_ blessed -thing” he’d seen. - -His spirits rose still more when he saw the dark kindliness of Bobby’s -face. It was the one disciple who had ever seemed to believe. He held -out both his hands in a little storm of emotion. Whatever sort of -muddler Bobby might be to himself, to Sargon in that moment at least he -was strength and hope. - -The meeting occurred in the reception-room downstairs, for no one -from the outside world may ever penetrate to the wards and the -bleak realities of everyday asylum life. The reception-room had a -baize-covered table in the middle, a black horsehair sofa and numerous -chairs; it was totally devoid of small movables; there was an A B C -time-table and one or two illustrated weeklies on the table, and the -walls bore brown-spotted steel engravings of Prince Albert and Queen -Victoria in the Highlands and of Windsor Castle from the Thames. There -were three or four groups, each of two or three people, with their -heads together conversing in tactful undertones; there were several -women and one little girl; a tearful lady in profound mourning sat -apart by the empty fire-place and no doubt awaited a patient; two -attendants tried hard not to look as though they were listening as -intently as possible to the conversations going on about them. The -patients present were all in the sanest phase, “fit to be visited.” -There was no madness visible; at most only a little nervous oddity. -Bobby had been watching these other groups while he waited, and he had -been impressed by a certain quality of furtiveness in their behaviour. -The furtiveness he connected with the alertness of the attendants. -One affected to look out of the window, the other half sat at a -table holding an old _Graphic_, and ever and again there would be a -quick glance at this patient or that. It had not occurred to Bobby -that his talk to Sargon would be semi-public; it was a disconcerting -interference that would greatly hamper him in giving his instructions. - -Bobby saw at once that Sargon was very much thinner than when he had -taken his room in Midgard Street. He looked ill and worn, an effect -that was emphasized by the fact that he was badly shaven and wearing -ill-fitting clothes. His eyes seemed larger and sunken under his brows -and his forehead more definitely lined. Yet if he looked unhappier he -also looked more intelligent. He seemed more aware of the things about -him--less a man in a dream. - -“I have come to see if I can be of service to you,” said Bobby, holding -out his hands. “Your friends and disciples are anxious for your -welfare.” - -“You have come to see me,” he said, and glanced sideways at the -listening attendant and dropped his voice; “me--_Sargon_?” - -Bobby understood that note of doubt and it grieved him. “You, Sargon, -the King out of the Past.” - -“They would have me deny it,” whispered Sargon. - -Bobby raised his eyebrows and nodded his head as who should say, -“They’d do _anything_.” - -The little man’s manner changed. “How is one to know?” he said. “How is -one to know?” - -He sighed. “Nothing seems certain any more.” - -“Can we sit down and talk together?” said Bobby. “There is much to be -said between us.” - -Sargon glanced round. There were two chairs in a corner, and in that -corner they might be a little beyond the eavesdropper’s range. “I -cannot understand this madness,” said Sargon as they sat down. “I -cannot understand this Riddle that has been set me. Why does the Power, -why does God, permit men to be mad? When they are mad they are beyond -good and evil. What are they? Men still? What becomes of justice, what -becomes of righteousness--when men go mad?” His voice sank. His eyes -became furtive. “Dreadful things happen here,” he whispered. “Dreadful -things. Quite dreadful things.” - -He ceased. For a little while neither he nor Bobby said a word. - -“I want to get you out of this,” said Bobby. - -“Are my friends doing anything?” asked Sargon. “What is Christina -Alberta doing? Is she well?” - -“She is splendid,” he said haphazard. No doubt she was one of this -beastly family of Sargon’s that was content to leave him here. “I want -you to listen to me,” he said. - -But Sargon had things to tell. “Everyone in this place is always -thinking about what their friends outside are doing for them. The poor -souls come and talk to me. They know I am different from what they are. -They write letters, petitions. I tell them that when God releases me I -will bear them all in mind. Some mock at me. They have delusions. They -think they are kings or emperors or rich men or great discoverers, and -that the world has plotted against them.... Some are suspicious and -cruel.... Darkened souls.... Some have dreadful habits. You cannot -help but see.... Some are badly sunken--degraded--indescribably.... It -is very painful, very painful.” - -The blue eyes stared blankly at unpleasant memories. - -“There can be no doubt that I am Sargon,” he said abruptly, and looked -sharply at Bobby. - -“I call you by no other name,” said Bobby. - -The momentary acuteness faded again. “That man Preemby was unawakened. -He was asleep--scarcely dreaming of life. _But I have seen!_ I have -looked at the world from high places. And from dark places too.... -Sargon. Sargon is a different person.... But it is difficult.” - -He became silent. - -Bobby felt that they were getting nowhere. In his anticipations of this -conversation he had talked and Sargon had listened. And there had been -no one to overhear. But this was all unexpected. Anyhow, the plan had -to be told; Sargon had to be instructed in his part. He glanced warily -at the people nearest to them. “There are those among us,” he said -quietly and quickly, “who would set you free. I want to tell you--” On -the spur of the moment he attempted a code. “When I speak of a city in -Central Asia it will mean this place, the Asylum. Do you understand?” - -“This place--Central Asia. If I am Sargon.... Everything is possibly -something else. But we are still in England nevertheless.” - -“In reality. But I want to explain to you.” - -“Yes, yes. Explain.” - -“I shall speak of great discoveries in Central Asia. That will mean -this.” - -_Did_ he understand? - -“_Rescue!_” whispered Bobby in Sargon’s ear, and glanced at the -attendant and met his eye and was discomposed. - -“Tell me about the discoveries,” said Sargon after a little pause as -though he had not heard that whispered word. - -“It is a symbol for this place,” said Bobby. - -Sargon looked puzzled. The attendant was watching their faces now. -Perhaps he suspected already. Bobby flushed hotly and plunged abruptly -into an account of the discoveries of an amazing Russian he called -Bobinsky. Bobinsky had found a walled city with no way out. “Yes,” said -Sargon, interested. The attendant was now looking away. “Like this -place,” said Bobby, and more explicitly; “I _mean_ this place.” There -was a river ran through the city, the city of confinement, and went -out by the lower part. There it was the helper waited. The rescuers. -That was the place for them to wait. Did he understand? At that point -where the trees grew and the river went out through the wall. They they -waited. There they would wait until the captive king came to them. - -“It is a curious story,” said Sargon. “What captive king do you mean?” - -“It is meant for you.” - -“The river you speak of may be the Euphrates,” said Sargon. “I dream of -the Euphrates.” - -He had missed it all! He was out upon some woolgathering of his own. -Euphrates! What had the Euphrates to do with Central Asia? Or the -Asylum? - -“Bother!” said Bobby. “I say-- It is a smaller river I mean, a -streamlet--in the grounds here. Don’t you understand?” - -A tall sharp-faced woman in a hat of hard black straw came near them -and sat down. Bobby, as he talked, observed her out of the corner of -his eye. Was she the friend of a patient or what was she doing here? “I -speak in symbols,” said Bobby, still watching and thinking about this -woman. “This city is your prison.” He caught the woman exchanging a -glance of intelligence with the male attendant who had moved a couple -of yards up the room. They knew each other. Then she must be another -observer. “I want no other prison than this,” said Sargon, evidently -quite at cross-purposes. “One prison is enough.” - -“I don’t mean that,” said Bobby. “Can you walk about here pretty -freely?” - -“Not freely,” said Sargon. “No.” - -“If you could come out into the grounds. To-morrow.” - -The woman turned her long sharp foxy nose towards him, and stared at -him with rather stupid green-blue eyes. - -Bobby’s nerve was going to pieces altogether. He was always more -afraid of women than men. This prim sharp-nosed figure so manifestly -listening, and listening with a faint hostility to all he said, -completed his discomfiture. He tried to improvise a story of lost -and recovered cities that would be crystal clear to Sargon and yet -incomprehensible to the listener. But his invention faltered at the -difficult task. Where the river ran out of the city, he repeated; -he harped upon that idea; where there were trees and ivy, there the -faithful waited. When was the propitious hour for the Master to steal -away to them? Everything was prepared. When could it be? When might -it be? Fragmentally and mixed with many irrelevancies Bobby tried to -get the import of these suggestions over to his hearer. Now he would -be explicit; now as the fear of the listener returned, vague and -misleading. He did convey a sense of mystery and intention to Sargon, -that was plain; but he felt he conveyed nothing more. The time was -slipping by. Bobby could have throttled that infernal woman. More and -more did she become audience to his floundering efforts. He maundered -back to his starting point about Bobinsky. “There is no such person as -Bobinsky,” he threw in. - -“Then how could he explore cities?” asked Sargon, manifestly more and -more perplexed at Bobby’s rigmarole. - -“He is dead,” said Bobby. “He was just a mask.” - -“Some men are.” - -“Don’t mind about Bobinsky. Could you slip away to that corner? No, no. -She’s looking. Don’t answer. - -“Now _answer_.” - -“I don’t understand,” said Sargon. - -Bobby felt that he was only puzzling Sargon. But what else was to be -done? He could have kicked himself for not having brought a brief -statement of his plan written plainly on a little piece of paper that -he could have slipped into Sargon’s hand--or pocket. It would have been -so simple. He could have made a map and a drawing. Too late to do that -now. - -Despair came upon Bobby. Everything had gone wrong. He got up to go and -then sat down again to make another attempt. He felt murderous towards -that woman, towards himself, even towards slow-witted little Sargon. - -“It was very good of you to come and see me,” said Sargon. - -“_Why_ did you come?... - -“Do you think anything will be done about me?... - -“You will see Christina Alberta? When I saw you first I thought you -had things to tell me--important things. One lives on such hopes here. -Here--when there are no visitors--nothing happens, nothing pleasant. -And one is distressed.... - -“I am interested to hear of those cities in Central Asia of course, but -it is a little puzzling. Did you come specially about them? Or just to -see me? - -“You will come again. Even to come down here to this sitting-room is an -event....” - -Then in a swift whisper. “The food is frightful. So badly cooked. It -disagrees with me....” - -“That woman,” said Bobby as he went, “She has spoilt everything. I -can’t stand her.” - -“That woman?” said Sargon, and followed the direction of Bobby’s eyes. -“Poor soul,” he said. “She’s a deaf mute. She comes to see her brother. -The whole family is defective or insane.” - -A maddened Bobby returned towards his little inn. Should he chuck the -whole thing? Intolerable thought! He must make fresh plans--fresh plans -altogether. He must begin all over again. The little man was evidently -wretched. But it was going to be harder to get hold of him than Bobby -had thought. - -Bobby had no sleep that night. - - -§ 4 - -In the night just before daybreak suddenly Sargon woke up and -understood. He understood quite clearly what the young man had been -saying to him. He had said “Rescue!” Of course he had meant to say -“Escape”! That city in Central Asia was only a parable; he had said -as much. He had been describing a corner of the asylum grounds, -that corner where the stream ran out beyond the work-fields and the -shrubbery where the patients were supposed not to go. He had been -telling of friends who would wait outside. He had been trying to -arrange an hour when these friends would come there. And Sargon had -failed to understand. He sat up in bed very still. - -It was perfectly clear, but through a sort of dulness that came upon -him at times he had not grasped the drift of it at the time. The young -man had shown irritation, naturally enough. What would he do now? Would -he try again? Were the friends still waiting? - -Who was this young man? His name was unknown or forgotten. But he -believed. He had said, “I call you by no other name.” Sargon! And there -were these friends he spoke of, who waited outside for the king. They -must know. How could they know, if there was nothing to be known? After -all, perhaps it was no dream. Perhaps the world was awakening.... But -he had failed them. He had not understood.... They waited without.... - -How still everything was! A strange unusual stillness. It was rare for -this place to be so bereft of noise. It was dark and yet not altogether -dark. The ward was dimly lit by a blue-shaded light. The three nearer -beds were unoccupied, and beyond the man who tossed and muttered almost -incessantly lay for a little while at peace. The man who raved had died -three days ago; the man who gave sudden loud shouts had been taken away -to another ward. Through the open door one could see across the landing -into the little yellow-lit room, where Brand the ward attendant sat -with his arms crossed and chin on his chest and slept, his patience -cards spread out before him. He seemed to be alone and yet he could -sleep like that! Where could the other man be--the new attendant whose -name Sargon did not know? And yet he felt--some one had just gone out! - -The uncurtained windows showed the night outside, a darkness that -became translucent, a streak of very black cloud and five pale stars. -Across the lower edge of that oblong picture one could see indistinctly -a tracery of tree branches and the lumpish head of a young oak still -bearing its leaves, the trees along the first hedge. These outlines -grew distincter as he watched. It was like the slow development of a -photographic plate in the dark-room. The stars dissolved. Had there -been five? There were three; the other two had dissolved into the pale -invading light. - -Dared one venture on to the landing? If Brand awoke he could make some -natural excuse. He stood well with Brand. But the other fellow----? - -There was not a trace of him. Where had he gone?... - -_Do it now!_--wisest of maxims. - -Very swiftly Sargon slipped out of bed and put on his dressing-gown and -slippers. Hush! _What was that?_... Only some one snoring. Nothing -more. He went out and stood on the landing. Brand slept on like a log. - -The stone staircase was lit and empty and from the open door to the -left downstairs came the harsh breathing of a sleeper. All the world -seemed asleep for once, except Sargon and those friendly watchers -outside the walls. Far away there were sounds of bawling and raving, -but these were stifled by distance and an intervening door. They merely -made the nearer silence more perceptible. - -Something stirred, a little clicking sound that sent Sargon’s heart -racing. Then a resonant blow. A second blow. It was nothing; it was the -clock downstairs striking six. - -Very quietly but very resolutely he walked downstairs. An intuition, an -instinct impelled him. He felt and peered at the door and behold! it -was ajar! Unbolted! Unlocked! Brand’s colleague was abroad upon some -errand of his own. The cold air of freedom blew upon Sargon’s face. - -The door opened and closed softly and Sargon stood upon the doorstep of -the left wing of the asylum, facing the dim world of a November dawn. - -It was dark but it was clear, a world of ebony outlines and colourless -forms. Everything looked as if it had just been wiped over with a -wet rag. It was cold, but it was cold without any of the hate and -bitterness of wind. - -He crossed the gravel drive and came to a stop and stood looking -about him. The heavy building of the left wing rose above him, a vast -bulk that went up into the paler darkness of the sky. It receded in -perspective and the central block beyond looked like the ghost of a -house. Here and there were orange-lit windows and others fainter lit -by some remote reflected light. In the lodge to the left of the gates -there was also a light. For where there is madness there is never -perfect sleep. - -But the asylum was as near complete silence that morning as an asylum -can ever be. - -He looked and listened. Not a footfall. It would not do to be found -here by that other attendant.... - -But the man was snugly away somewhere. No one would loiter here in this -chill air. - -What was it Sargon had to remember? - -The friends and believers were waiting for him. They were waiting now. -Where the river ran out of the city wall; that was to say where the -little streamlet ran out of the grounds. That would be this way--to the -left, where the fields dropped down-hill. He stepped on to the grass, -for his feet made loud sounds on the gravel. The grass hissed crisply. -It was heavy with white frost and his footmarks made black blots in the -wet silvery grey. - -He walked past and away from the ponderous dark mass of the asylum into -the open, colder air of freedom. He unlatched and went through the -small iron gate in the iron fencing that separated the trim grass plots -of the front from the cabbage field. It complained a little on its -hinge and he opened and closed it very carefully. He struck across the -field. The path ran before him into a mist. It came out of the mist to -his feet and vanished behind him. It was as if it went past him while -he marked time. He could not remember whither the path ran, nor how it -lay with regard to the corner he sought. But every moment things grew -clearer. - -Every moment things grew clearer. There had been something dark and -brooding in the sky that hung over him and seemed to watch him. He had -done his best to ignore the vague presence, because he was afraid of -his own imagination. But suddenly he saw plainly that it was just the -tops of trees showing above the mist. That must be the line of trees -along the hedge parallel to the asylum front. He must go through these -if he wanted to go down-hill. He left the path and made his way slowly -along a frozen ridge of dug earth. He skirted long rows of stalky -cabbages, black and shrivelled and unkempt they looked like Cossack -sentinels afoot. They all leant towards him as though they listened to -the sound of him. - -As he drew near the hedge and the trees he heard a sound like the feet -of an army of midgets. It was the drip, drip of moisture from the trees. - -Far away behind him and quite invisible to him a motor car scurried -along the high-road. - -He had some difficulty in finding a way through the hedge and a bramble -scratched his ankle. He told himself there was no hurry; the friends -waited. Beyond the hedge the ground went down-hill and the mist grew -whiter and thicker. The daylight was strong enough now to show the mist -dead-white. It veiled the stream altogether. - -He walked slowly. He had no sense of being pursued. Brand would not go -into the ward for an hour yet; he might not miss him for a long time.... - -What a wonderful thing, thought Sargon, is daybreak, and how little -one sees of it! Every day begins with this miraculous drama and we -sleep through it as though it did not concern us and rouse ourselves -only for the trite day. A little while ago the world had been an inky -monochrome and now it was touched with colour. The sky was blue. All -the stars had gone--but no! not all. One still shone, a large pale -star, the star of Sargon. And the sky about it was flushed with a faint -increasing pinkiness. That must be the east and that star must be the -morning star, hanging above the outhouse chimneys. Those chimneys were -very distinct. The butt end of the asylum which had been a black and -shapeless monster a little while ago, had now become a dark purple -shape outlined with an exquisite clearness, eaves and ridges and -chimneys and creasings and window-frames. Four windows shone a fading -orange and two of them suddenly blinked and vanished. - -Would anyone look out of a window there and see him? - -It did not matter. He would go on down towards the stream. This -friendly mist would hide him. - -It was wonderful to be in this white mist and yet not in it. It was -always a little way from him. And nevertheless it wetted him. How crisp -the frosted ground was, but if one kicked through the surface, it was -soft. - -Overhead the blueness increased and there was now a rippled patch of -pink cloud. - -He went deeper and deeper into the soft mist. Presently he was walking -on long wet shrivelled grass. When he turned presently to look back at -the asylum it had altogether disappeared. - -_What was that?_ Was it something talking or was it the beating heart -of some busy elfin machine? Listen! Peer! Think! - -It was the stream. - -Now everything was plain and easy. - -He walked beside the stream. Near at hand trees became visible, -attendant trees with mist about their waists, white-clad sentinel -trees. The dry grass was ranker here. And what was this, like a denser -lower mist within the mist? This was the wall. Beyond that wall, almost -within shouting distance now, the friends and believers would be -waiting. How discreet they were! Not a murmur, not a footfall. - -For a long time Sargon stood motionless beside the culvert beneath the -wall. At last he roused himself and by a great effort and with the help -of the ivy he scrambled to the top of the wall. - -No one waited. Some dim four-footed thing bolted from the frost-bitten -weeds below, and then there was silence. There was no sign of watchers -nor helpers. - -No matter. If it was God’s will they would come. - -He sat very still. He did not feel deserted nor alone. He was not in -the least dismayed. He felt that the Power who had called him into -being was all about him. - -Slowly, steadily the light grew brighter. A little cloud like a -floating feather caught fire very suddenly and then another. A great -beam of light, like the beam of a searchlight, only very much broader, -appeared slanting to the north. Then above a whaleback of distant -downland came a knife-edge of dazzling light, an effulgence, like a -curved knife, like a cap, like a dome, a quivering blazing fire-birth. -And then torn clear of the hill and round and red the November sun had -risen. - - -§ 5 - -It was full daylight and the mist had dissolved away. The roofs of -the asylum buildings were now visible over the crest, divested of all -magic, bleak and commonplace. From some point in that direction a dog -was barking. - -It was strange that there should be no one here. That young man whose -name he had never known, had made it very plain that there were friends -in waiting here. Perhaps they had gone away and would come back -presently. - -Still it did not matter now very much. At any rate he had seen a -sunrise of almost incredible beauty. How good a thing the sun was! The -thing of all visible things that was most like God. - -Perhaps there were no helpers here at all. Perhaps he had -misunderstood. He was stupid he knew. He misunderstood more and more. -Perhaps presently keepers would come in search of him and take him back -to the asylum. It might be so that things were decreed. He would not -let it distress him. Life was full of trials and disappointments. He -was feeling now very cold throughout his substance and tired so that -all his energy was gone. With a start he became aware that there was a -man standing up the slope that overlooked the asylum grounds. He felt a -thrill of renewed vitality. This man was standing quite still looking -down at the asylum. It might be one of the staff looking for him. Or -one of the promised helpers. One of the promised helpers? - -Sargon was not so calm and apathetic as he had supposed. He was -atremble from head to foot. He was not shivering with cold but -trembling with excitement. He felt he must end this doubt one way or -the other. Could he catch this man’s eye? He waved a hand. Then he drew -a dirty little pocket-handkerchief from his dressing-gown pocket and -began to wave it. Now! Now it seemed the man was looking straight down -at Sargon. - -He was moving towards Sargon slowly, as if incredulous. Then he was -signalling and running. - -Sargon sat quite still. He knew all along they would come for him. - -It was Bobby, close at hand now and crying out, “Sargon! It is you! -Sargon!” Sargon did not wait for him. He turned about and scrambled and -dropped off the wall. They clasped hands. “You have come to fetch me?” - -“I was in despair. I didn’t dream you understood me. I’m all amazed.... -Let me think; what are we to do? This is splendid. My motor bicycle is -in the inn. Nuisance that. Yes, come along. I must hide you somewhere -and fetch it. Then we will get away. I didn’t think you’d have no -clothes. Clothes? Won’t show much. Cold? May be cold. I’ll get a rug. -There’s a rug in the side-car.” - -He led the way back up the slope, glancing ever and again at the asylum -fields. Sargon trotted beside him, calmly confident in God and Bobby, -with the limitless docility of one who trusts his servant. - - -§ 6 - -Bobby’s mind was fresh and bright that morning. He had wandered out to -the asylum simply because he could lie in bed in a fever of regrets no -longer. His extreme luck in encountering Sargon had restored all his -confidence in himself and in the propitiousness of things. He made his -plans quickly and with decision. It would be impossible to take Sargon -back to the inn and give him coffee. So soon as he was missed they -would surely go to the village. And every one would note this queer -little figure with its dressing-gown and slippers and scarred ankles. -He must get the little man into hiding somewhere close at hand. In that -small beech-wood just over the next crest. (Pity he was so scantily -clad!) Then the motor bicycle must be fetched as quickly as possible. - -Sargon was absolutely trustful and obedient. “It is cold I know,” said -Bobby, “but unavoidable. I wish there were not so many wet dead leaves.” - -“Only be quick and fetch help,” said Sargon. - -“Don’t stir from here,” said Bobby. - -It was not the most perfect hiding-place in the world, a ditch, a -clump of holly on the edge of a bare beech-wood, but it was all that -downland was likely to provide. “So long,” said Bobby and set off at -a smart trot for the inn and the motor bicycle. He arrived flushed, -dishevelled, and out of breath and found the inn suspicious and -reluctant when he announced that he wanted his bill instantly, refused -any breakfast but a cup of tea and a chunk of bread and butter, and -set about packing his little roll. There seemed endless things to -do, taking an interminable time. To cap a score of irritating delays -the inn was short of change and had to send out to the village shop. -Billy’s motor bicycle, always a temperamental creature, gave great -trouble with its kick starter. And meanwhile Sargon was shivering -amidst the mud and dead leaves under the dripping trees or worse, being -recaptured and led back into captivity. - -It was nearly eight before Bobby came back along the cart-track into -sight of the little beech-wood, and his heart jumped when he saw two -heavy-looking men advancing towards him. He knew them for asylum men -at once; they had the unmistakable flavour of subaltern authority -that distinguishes prison warders, ex-policemen, time-keepers, and the -keepers of the insane. As he throbbed near them they came into the -middle of the road and made signs for him to stop. “Hell!” said Bobby, -and pulled up. - -They came alongside and without evident hostility. - -“Excuse me, sir,” said one--and Bobby felt better. - -“That large place you see there, sir, is Cummerdown Asylum. Perhaps you -know it, sir?” - -“No. _Which_ is the asylum? All of it?” Bobby felt he was being really -clever and his spirits rose. - -“Yesir.” - -“Damn great place!” said Bobby. - -“We’ve got one of our inmates astray this morning. Harmless little man, -he is, and we ventured to stop you and ask you if you’ve seen him.” - -Bobby had an inspiration. “I believe I have. Was he in a sort of brown -robe and slippers with nothing on his head?” - -“That’s ’im, sir. Where did you see him?” - -Bobby turned round and pointed in the direction from which he had -come. “He was making off along the edge of a field,” he said. “I saw -him not--oh, not five minutes ago. Mile, or a bit more, away from -here. Running he was. Along a hedge to the right--left I mean--near a -chestnut plantation.” - -“That’s ’im all right, Jim. _Where_ did you say, sir?” - -Bobby’s brilliance increased. “If one of you will sit behind me and -the other get into this contraption--bit of a load, but we can manage -it--I’ll run you back to the very place. Right away.” And without more -ado he set about turning round. “That’s a real help, sir,” said Jim. -“Don’t mention it,” said Bobby. - -Bobby was now at the top of his form. He loaded them in with helpful -words--even the smaller of the two was a tight fit for the side-car and -the other sat like a sack on the luggage carrier--he took them back -a mile and a half until he found the suitable hedge by the chestnut -tree. He unloaded them carefully, received their hearty but hasty -thanks with a generous gesture and sent them off at a smart trot across -the fields. “He can’t have a mile’s start,” he said. “And he wasn’t -going particularly fast. Sort of limping.” - -“That’s ’im,” said Jim. - -Bobby kissed his hand to their retreating backs. “That’s _you_,” said -Bobby. “God help you both and cleanse your hearts. And now for Sargon.” - -He buzzed back to the place where he had left Sargon, turned his -machine round again and then looked towards the corner of the wood by -the holly clump where the little man ought to have been waiting. But -there was no sign of a peeping head. “Queer!” said Bobby, and ran up to -the place where he had left Sargon crouching in the ditch. Not a sign -was there of him. Bobby looked about him, baffled and frightened. After -all, after everything, could things go wrong now? - -“Sargon,” he called, and then louder, “Sargon!” - -Not a sound, not a rustle came in reply. - -“He’s hidden! Can he have crawled away and fainted? Exhausted perhaps!” - -Fear touched Bobby with a chilly finger. Had he mistaken the place -perhaps? Had Sargon strayed away in spite of his promise, or crept -back numbed and wretched to the warmth and shelter of the asylum? -Bobby followed the ditch down to the corner of the wood, and beyond -the corner in the ditch to the right he suddenly beheld a little old -woman, a little old woman sitting bunched in a heap on a litter of -dry straw and fast asleep. She was wearing a battered black straw hat -adorned with a broken black feather, a small black jacket bodice; a -sack was drawn over her feet and a second sack thrown shawlwise over -her shoulders. She was so crumpled up her face was hidden, all except -one bright red ear, and behind her on the bank lay two large stakes -tied in the form of a cross. To Bobby she was the most astonishing of -apparitions. It was disconcerting enough to discover Sargon gone. It -was still more amazing to find him so oddly replaced. - -Bobby stood hesitating for the better part of a minute. Should he wake -the old thing up and ask her about Sargon, or should he steal away? -Nothing, he decided, would be lost by asking. - -He went close up to her and coughed. “Excuse me, Madam,” he said. - -The sleeper did not awake. - -Bobby rustled among the leaves, coughed louder, and asked to be excused -again. The sleeper muttered a choking snore, woke with a start, looked -up, and revealed the face of Sargon. He stared at Bobby without -recognition for a moment and then gave way to an enormous yawn. While -he yawned, his blue eyes gathered intelligence and understanding. “I -was so cold,” he said. “I took these things from the scarecrow. And the -straw was nice and dry to sit on. Shall we put it all back?” - -“Oh, glorious idea!” cried Bobby, with all his spirits restored. “It -makes an honest woman of you. Can you walk in that sack? No, we haven’t -time to put it back. Shake it down off your legs and bring it with you. -The side-car isn’t two hundred yards away. You’ll be able to put it on -again then. This is magnificent! This is wonderful! Certainly we won’t -put it back. Off we’ll go, and when we’ve a good ten miles between us -and the asylum we’ll stop and get some hot coffee and something to eat.” - -“Hot coffee!” said Sargon, brightening visibly. “And bacon and eggs?” - -“Hot coffee and bacon and eggs,” said Bobby. - -“The coffee there is--_beastly_,” said Sargon. - -Bobby helped Sargon into the side-car and raised the hood over him, -erected the wind-screen, and so packed him away. He became a quite -passable aunt, dimly seen. And in another minute Bobby had kicked the -engine into an impatient fuss and was in the saddle. - -He felt himself now the cleverest fellow that ever stole a lunatic. Not -that it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to get a lunatic away. -If you knew how.... They quivered and jolted along the little minor -road and so on to the smooth main highway to Ashford and Folkestone. -The accelerator was urged to do its best. “Good-bye, Cummerdown,” sang -Bobby. “Cummerdown Hill, good-bye!” - -The little old motor bike was going beautifully. - - -§ 7 - -They got their breakfast at an inn near a Post Office a mile or so -beyond Offham. Bobby left Sargon dozing in the side-car and went -to send a telegram to Dymchurch announcing his coming. There was -some delay in the Post Office, as the post-mistress had mislaid her -spectacles. Bobby returned to find the breakfast nearly ready and to -assist Sargon out of his sack and into the little room of the inn. -The landlord was a short, stout man, with a grave observant face. He -watched this emergence of Sargon and his progress to a chair behind the -little white tablecloth, with silent wonder. Then for a time he hid. -Then he came back into the little room where the table was set. For -some moments he stood regarding Sargon. “Umph!” he said at last and -turned about and went slowly into his kitchen where some sort of wife -seemed to be cooking things. “’E’s a rummun”; Bobby heard him remark, -and so was prepared for discussion. - -The ham and eggs and coffee were served and received with eagerness. -The landlord stood over them scrutinizing their reception of his -provisions. “Hain’t ’ad no breakfast, then?” he said. - -“Having it now,” said Bobby, helping himself to mustard. - -“Come far?” said the landlord after a thoughtful pause. - -“Fairly,” said Bobby with judgment. - -“Going far?” the landlord tried. - -“So-so,” said Bobby. - -The landlord rallied his forces for a great effort. “We get some rummy -customers here at times,” he said. - -“You must attract them,” said Bobby. - -The landlord could make nothing of that. He turned about and said -“Umph”--meaningly. - -“Umph,” said Bobby, just saturating it with meaning. - -The landlord made a cunning attempt as they were departing. “Hope you -enjoyed your breakfast,” he said. “I don’t know rightly whether it’s a -lady or a gentleman you got with you--still----” - -Bobby’s mercurial temperament was far too high just then. “It’s -hermaphrodite,” he said in a confidential whisper and left the landlord -with that. - -But when they had gone a few miles further he told Sargon he had -decided to buy him some socks and a jacket and trousers at the next -shop they saw. “As it is,” he said, “you are ambiguous. And then we’ll -put that hat and jacket and the sacking by the wayside for anyone who -wants to use them. And I’ll have to send another telegram. I made a -mistake.” - -Bobby’s mental state became more febrile as the day wore on. He -developed a wonderfully circumstantial lie about a cottage and a -fire and how his friend had only escaped with just a few articles of -clothing hastily put on. “Everything else,” said Bobby, “practically -incinerated.” They were going down to take refuge with a variable -relation, a brother, an uncle, a maiden aunt. As the day progressed -the circumstances of the fire became richer and more remarkable and -the particulars of the escape more definitely thrilling. Bobby told -such lies with great sincerity and gravity; they were a form of -freedom--from reality. - -Sargon himself said very little. For him this adventure was a severer -endurance test than Bobby realized at the time. For the most part he -was either cramped up and boxed in under the hood and wind-screen and -being jolted and jumped along the hard high-road, or he was hastily -changing some garment by the roadside, or he was sitting still in the -side-car taking refreshment and being lucidly but perplexingly, and -usually quite unnecessarily, explained. - - -§ 8 - -Mrs. Plumer, of Maresett Cottage, Dymchurch, was an anxious widow -woman. She had a kind, serviceable heart, but it was troubled about -many things. She saved and eked out almost too much. She let most of -her rooms in the summer and some even in the winter, but she hated to -think of the things careless lodgers might do to her furniture. She -liked everything to be in order and lodgers better looking and better -behaved than Mrs. Pringle’s lodgers or Mrs. Mackinder’s lodgers. She -had taken a fancy to Bobby because he had fitted in nicely when she had -had only one room to spare, and because he had shaved in cold water -instead of calling down as every other man lodger did--there was no -bell in that room--for hot. Also he talked agreeably when he came in -and out and didn’t want more at meals. - -She was very pleased when he wrote to take her downstairs living-room -and two bedrooms for himself and a friend for a fortnight. There were -few people in Dymchurch who got “lets” in November. They might come -“any time” after Tuesday. - -She told Mrs. Pringle and Mrs. Mackinder that she was expecting two -young gentlemen, and left them to suppose that her guests might stay on -indefinitely. - -On Wednesday she was excited and rather perplexed by a series of -telegrams from Bobby. The first said plainly and distinctly: “_Arriving -with aunt about four Roothing._” That disappointed her. She would have -infinitely preferred two gentlemen. - -But within an hour came another wire and this said: “_Error in telegram -not aunt uncle sorry Roothing._” - -Now what was one to make of _that_? - -Presently the child from the Post Office was back again. “_Uncle -catching cold fire hot-water bottles whisky._” - -The next sensational telegram announced a delay. “_Tyre trouble not so -soon later Roothing._” - -Then came: “_Sixish almost certain good fire please Roothing._” - -“It’s very good of him,” said Mrs. Plumer “to keep me informed like -this. But I hope the old gentleman won’t be fussy.” - -The fire in the downstairs sitting-room was burning brightly at six, -there was a kettle on the hob, there were not only tea-things, but -whisky, sugar, glasses, and a lemon on the table and a hot-water bottle -in both the beds upstairs when the fugitives arrived. Mrs. Plumer’s -first feelings at the sight of Sargon were feelings of disappointment. -She had allowed her mind to run away with the idea of a warm, -comfortable uncle with at most a whisky-drinking cold, an uncle who -would be, if not absolutely golden, at least gilt-edged. She had, if -anything, exaggerated her memories of Mr. Roothing’s geniality. So soon -as she held open her door at the roar and toot of the motor bicycle, -she saw that her anticipations would have to be modified again. Things -were rather indistinct in the deepening twilight, but she could see -that Bobby wasn’t wearing the full and proper leather costume with -gauntlets and goggles complete, that a real young gentleman would have -worn on such an occasion and which Mrs. Pringle and Mrs. Mackinder -would have respected, and that the shape he was extracting from the -side-car was not the shape of a properly-expanded uncle. It looked much -more like a large hen taken out of a small basket on market day. - -As Sargon came into the light of the living-room, Mrs. Plumer’s -disillusionment deepened and decreased. She had rarely seen so strange -and weather-beaten an outcast. His blue eyes stared pitifully out of a -pale face; his hair, beneath an unsuitable black felt hat, was greatly -disordered. He was clad chiefly in an excessive pair of trousers -which he clutched nervously to keep up; very full they were with his -dressing-gown tails; his too ample white socks fell like gaiters -over his old felt slippers and betrayed his distressful ankles. He -looked afraid. He stared at her almost as though he anticipated an -unfriendly reaction. And Bobby, too, standing beside him, looked rough -and travel-worn and eventful, and not at all the self-effacing young -gentleman she had remembered. - -When Bobby saw the swift play of Mrs. Plumer’s expression he realized -that their foothold in this pleasant, restful, firelit apartment was -precarious. Happily a reserve lie he had thought of, but not hitherto -used, came aptly to his mind. - -“Isn’t it a shame!” he said. “They went off with his clothes. Even his -socks.” - -“They seem to have,” said Mrs. Plumer, “whoever they were.” - -“Pure hold-up. This side of Ashford. My big bag too.” - -“And where did the gentleman get the clothes he’s wearing?” she asked. -Her tone was unpleasantly sceptical. - -“They exchanged. I’d gone back along the road to see if I could see -anything of the tyre-pump I’d dropped, never thinking anything of the -sort was possible on an English high-road. (Come and sit by the fire, -uncle.) And when I came back they’d gone and there he was--as you see -him. Imagine my astonishment!” - -“And you never sent a telegram about it!” said Mrs. Plumer. - -“Too near home. I’d have got here first, anyhow. Well, we’ve had -adventures enough to-day, anyhow. I’ve never known such a journey. -Thank heaven, we’ve had our tea. I think the best place for uncle is -bed--until we can arrange some clothes for him. What do you think, Mrs. -Plumer?” - -“After he’s had a good wash,” said Mrs. Plumer. She was still doubtful, -but a sort of kindliness was struggling to the surface. “Weren’t you -afraid when they jumped out on you, sir!” She asked Sargon directly. -His blue eyes sought Bobby’s for instructions. - -“It was a great shock to him,” said Bobby, “a great shock. He’s hardly -got over it yet.” - -“Hardly got over it yet,” said Sargon in confirmation. - -“Took all your clothes off, they did. It’s shameful,” said Mrs. Plumer. -“And you with a cold coming on.” - -“We’ll get him to bed. Of course, if you’ve got anything for us to -eat we might have it first here. Perhaps just a bit of toasted cheese -or Welsh Rarebit, or something of that sort, and a good hot grog. Eh, -uncle?” - -“Don’t want much to eat,” said Sargon. “No.” - -“I haven’t forgotten that Welsh Rarebit you made for me, Mrs. Plumer, -after I got caught in the rain on the way from Hythe.” - -“Well, I daresay I could get you a Welsh Rarebit,” said Mrs. Plumer, -softening visibly. - -“Famous,” said Bobby. “Make a new man of him. And meanwhile I’ll run -the old bike round to the shed. If I may put it in the shed? You’ll be -all right here, uncle?” - -“It’s safe?” - -“Every one’s safe with Mrs. Plumer,” said Bobby, and held the door open -for her to precede him out of the room. - -“I’ll tell you about him to-morrow morning,” he said to her -confidentially in the passage. “He’s a wonderful man.” - -“He’s all right?” asked Mrs. Plumer. - -“Right as can be.” - -“He looks that distraught!” - -“He’s a poet,” said Bobby, “besides playing on the violin,” and so -satisfied her completely. - -But he did not feel that he had brought the wonderful day to a -completely successful end until he had got Sargon washed and brushed -and tucked up cosily in Mrs. Plumer’s bright little best bedroom. “Now -we’re anchored,” he said. He went into his own room and sat down for a -time to invent things about his uncle in case Mrs. Plumer was desirous -of more explicit information when he went downstairs. He decided to -say “He’s eccentric,” in an impressive, elucidatory way. “And very -shy.” His uncle, he would explain, was suffering from overwork, due to -writing an heroic poem about the Prince of Wales’ journey round the -world. He wanted a complete rest. And sea air. The more he stayed in -bed and indoors the better. He filled in a few useful details of this -story, sat for a little while twiddling the toes of his boots, and -then got up and went downstairs. He felt sure he could carry it off -all right with Mrs. Plumer. He found her waiting for him. The chief -difficulty he encountered was her conviction that the police ought to -be told of the highway robbery this side of Ashford at once. - -“H’m,” said Bobby and for a moment he was at a loss. Then he decided. -“I’ve done that already,” he said. - -“But when?” - -“I telephoned from an Automobile Association box. To the Ashford -police. It will be in their district you know. Not in Romney Marsh. -Sharp fellows, the Ashford police. I had to describe the lost clothes -and everything. They don’t let much get by them.” - -She took it beautifully. After that everything was easy. - - -§ 9 - -The next morning found Sargon developing an evil cold in his throat -and chest. His chest was painful and he was feverish, red-cheeked, -bright-eyed, and short of breath. Bobby did not care to consult a -doctor. He believed that all doctors constituted a league for the -re-incarceration of escaped lunatics. He imagined secret notices about -escapes being circulated throughout the profession. He motored to Hythe -and got ammoniated quinine, several sorts of voice jujube, two iodine -preparations for the chest, and suchlike trifles that the chemist -recommended. When he returned about midday the patient looked better -and seemed in less pain. After Bobby had administered quinine and -rubbed his chest and made a generally curative fuss, he was able and -disposed to talk. - -“The pillow all right?” said Bobby. - -“Perfect.” - -“You ought to doze for a bit now.” - -“Yes.” - -Sargon thought. “I shall not have to go back to that Place again?” - -“I hope not.” - -The flushed face became very earnest. “Promise me not. Promise me not. -I couldn’t endure it.” - -“No need to be anxious,” said Bobby. “Here, you are quite safe.” - -“And there will be no need to get into that side-car again?” - -“None.” - -“Never?” - -“No.” - -“It bumped--horribly.... Where is Christina Alberta?” - -Bobby did not answer for a moment or so. - -“Perhaps I ought to explain. I do not know who Christina Alberta is. I -took you out of the asylum because I do not believe you are mad. But I -know nothing of your family. I know nothing about your circumstances at -all. I just couldn’t bear the thought of you in an asylum.” - -Sargon lay in silence for a little while with his blue eyes on Bobby’s -face. “You were sorry for me?” - -“I liked you from the very first moment I saw you in Midgard Street.” - -“_Liked_ me? But you believed I was Sargon, King of Kings?” - -“Practically,” said Bobby. - -“You didn’t. Neither, I suppose, did I.” - -The vague blue eyes left Bobby’s face and stared out of the window at -the sky. “I have been very much confused in my mind,” said Sargon. -“Even now I am not clear. But I realize I am confused. Christina -Alberta is my daughter. The Princess Royal I called her. In Sumeria. -She is a very dear, bold girl. She is all I have. I left her and came -away from her, and I must have distressed her greatly.” - -“Then she may not know where you have been?” - -“She may be looking for me.” - -“Where is she?” - -“I have been trying to remember. It was in a studio somewhere--with -peculiar pictures. I never liked those pictures. A studio in a Mew. It -had a name but I cannot remember its name. It is stupid of me. Probably -Christina Alberta is there with her friends--still wondering what has -become of me.” - -“At the--at the _Place_, they told me your name was Preemby.” - -“Albert Edward Preemby.... I wonder.” - -He lay reflecting for a time. “I remember that for a long time I -thought I was Albert Edward Preemby, a small creature, a little man -living a mean life in a laundry. A laundry with large blue vans. The -swastika. You cannot imagine what a small, insignificant life it was -that this Preemby led. And then suddenly I thought I could not possibly -be Preemby and also an immortal soul. Either there was no Preemby, I -thought, or there was no God. There could not possibly be both. It -perplexed and worried me very much. Because there I was--Preemby. I am -not good at thinking--all my thinking goes off into a kind of dreaming. -And then when there came evidence that seemed satisfactory--perhaps -I jumped at what I was told. But Sargon must have been a great king, -a very great king, and I am small and weak and not very intelligent. -When the keepers and attendants bullied me and ill-treated me I did not -behave as a great king should have behaved, and when I saw them doing -evil things to other--other patients, I did not interfere. Yet all the -time I think I am something different from the Albert Edward Preemby -I used to be, something more and something better. But it leaves me -confused to think who I am, and I am very tired. Perhaps, when I have -rested a day or two, I may be better able to think about these things.” - -The faded voice died away. The blue eyes remained staring tranquilly at -the sky. - -Bobby said nothing for a little while. Then he remarked, “I have seen -men ill-treated.” - -And then; “and I am not so slight as you are.” - -He said no more. It did not seem as though Sargon had heard him. Bobby -stood up. - -“You must rest. You are perfectly safe here. If we can remain unnoted -here for two weeks then it will be impossible ever to send you back to -that place again. Are you comfortable?” - -“It is a beautiful bed,” said Sargon. - -But beautiful though the bed was it was not sufficient to arrest -the trouble in Sargon’s aching chest. He seemed very exhausted that -evening. In the night he began coughing; he coughed so distressingly -that Bobby went in to him. In the morning he was spiritless and did -not want to eat. Bobby sat in the room downstairs working at the pile -of Aunt Suzannah correspondence that Billy had sent on to him. He was -half-minded to appeal to Tessy to come down and help with the nursing, -but there was no bedroom available for her. Mrs. Plumer pressed for -a doctor and he put her off. Finally, on her own responsibility, she -brought in a young man who was just starting a practice in the place. -Bobby had a terrifying interview, but the young doctor betrayed no -suspicions. On the whole, he was reassuring. There was congestion of -the lungs but nothing worse. Sargon must keep very warm and take this -and that. No urgent need for a nurse. Keep him warm and give him his -medicine. - -Late in the evening Bobby went up to say good night and found Sargon -better and more talkative. - -“I have been thinking of Christina Alberta and I should like to see -her. I would like to see her and tell her things I have been thinking -about her. I have been thinking out all sorts of curious things. -Perhaps I am not so much to her as she may think. But chiefly I want to -talk to her about a young man I dislike. What was he called? When I was -last at Lonsdale Mews, she danced with him.” - -“Lonsdale Mews!” - -“Yes, yes, of course. I had forgotten. Eight Lonsdale Mews, Lonsdale -Road, Chelsea. But my mind is very confused and I do not know what I -should say to her even if she came.” - -Bobby wrote down the address forthwith. - -“And this Christina Alberta is all you have?” he asked. - -“All I have. - -“Twenty. Quite a child really. I ought never to have left her. But -there came a sort of wonder upon me--As though the world was opening. -It made everything else seem very trivial.” - - -§ 10 - -“_There came a sort of wonder upon me as though the world was opening._” - -Bobby wrote that down also. And he sat very late before the fire in -the ground-floor room thinking that over and thinking over the message -he would have to send to Christina Alberta in the morning. To-morrow -he would have to explain himself and his extraordinary intervention -in Preemby affairs. It was by no means plain to himself as yet, and -to-morrow he would have to make plain to a probably very indignant -young lady why her father had so caught his sympathies and fascinated -his imagination as to tempt him to this escapade. He found himself -thrown back on self-analysis. He found himself scrutinizing his own -motives and his own scheme of existence. - -He knew and understood that feeling, “as though the world was opening” -so well. Still better did he know that feeling of dead emptiness -in life out of which it arose. In his own case he had thought this -habitual discontent with the daily round, this urgency towards -something strange and grandiose, was due to the dislocation of all his -expectations of life by the great war; that it was a subjective aspect -of nervous instability; but in the case of this little laundryman it -could not have been the war that had sent him out, a sort of emigrant -from himself, to find a fantastic universal kingdom. It must be -something more fundamental than the war accident. It must be a normal -disposition in men towards detachment from safety and comfort. - -He glanced towards the pile of his Aunt Suzannah correspondence on -the table and the next sheet of “copy” for _Wilkins’ Weekly_ he had -distilled therefrom. He rose from his arm-chair and went back to his -work with his wisdom refreshed. He wrote: “So soon as man’s elementary -needs are satisfied and he is sure of food, clothing and shelter, he -comes under the sway of a greater imperative; he goes out to look for -trouble. So that I would not discourage ‘Croydon’s’ desire to become -a missionary in West Africa in spite of his religious doubts and his -peculiar feeling about black people. Such a region as Sherborough -Island will probably supply him with a good sustained, sustaining, and -ennobling system of troubles. A white man who has once challenged the -hostility of a West African secret society will have little leisure for -morbid introspection. He will hardly have a dull moment....” - -He stopped writing. “Reads a little ironical,” he said “And not quite -Aunt Suzannah enough.” - -He reflected. “My mind scampers off from me at times. Not in the vein -to-day.” - -The one thing they must never feel about Aunt Suzannah was that she -could be ironical. No! it wouldn’t do. He ran his pen through the six -sentences he had just written and pushed the sheet away from him. He -drew another sheet towards him on which he had been composing with -great difficulty a telegram to be sent next morning to “Preemby, 8 -Lonsdale Mews, Chelsea.” He read over various drafts. The current form -ran as follows: “_Your father safe but with severe chest cold care of -Roothing Maresett Cottage Dymchurch desires see you discretion very -necessary return confinement fatal results best station Hythe and cab -could meet you Hythe if wire in time but do not know you personally am -tallish slender dark Roothing._” - -Properly considered it was all right. - -He tried to imagine what sort of girl this Christina Alberta Preemby -would be. She would be blue-eyed of course and probably very fair; -a little taller and rounder than her father, soft-voiced and rather -dreamy. She would be timid and affectionate, very kind and gentle and -a little incompetent. Perhaps it would be well to meet her at Hythe -so soon as he knew which train she was coming by. The cab business -might be a strain on her. He would have to tell her what to do. To -a considerable extent now he had made himself responsible for the -fortunes of both these people. And he liked to think that. He liked to -think that perhaps these might become his own people, more of his own -people than the Malmesburys. Because to be frank about it with himself -he was a little bit of an interpolation in the Malmesbury household. -They liked him; they were perfect dears to him; but they could do -without him. Even that little devil Susan managed without him; she -liked him and tyrannized over him but he knew he wasn’t indispensable -to her. Here at last might be two people who couldn’t do without him, -who might to an extraordinary extent become his people. - -Of course he would have to put on a little more appearance of strength -and determination than was actually his quality. He owed it to them to -keep up their confidence in him so that he might be able to direct them -in their difficulties. - -He would say to her--what would he say to her? “I have been hasty, I -know, but I know something of the strain that is put upon the sane -patient in an asylum. I thought that the first thing to do was to get -your father out of it. It didn’t occur to me that for a time he might -have forgotten your address. Perhaps I ought to have come to you before -I acted. But then how was I to know there _was_ a you? Until he told me -of your existence. In so many cases in these asylums the relatives are -hostile to release. It is dreadful to admit it, but it is so.” - -Then rather humorously and quite modestly he would describe the escape. -He was already forgetting the uncertainties of the visiting-day -conversation and the numerous accidental factors in the meeting by the -culvert. But all history has this knack of eliminating unnecessary -detail. - -So he would make his statement. It did not occur to him that Christina -Alberta might be the sort of person who interrupts speeches with -elucidatory questions. - -He lit a cigarette, strolled about the room, and came to rest standing -before the fire and looking down on the glowing coals. He was sure -now that Christina Alberta was blue-eyed, fragile, shy--with a deep -sweet vein of humorous fantasy hidden away in her. Very probably she -concealed a gift for writing. It would be for him perhaps to discover -that and cultivate it and bring it out. Together they would protect -Sargon, already more than half recovered from the intoxication of his -dream. They would have to soften the humiliations of his complete -awakening. How fortunate and as it were providential it was that he had -been impelled to rescue the little man!--for otherwise he would never -have met Christina Alberta, never won her timid wealth of love.... - -“_Eh!_ - -“But this is all damned nonsense!” said Bobby violently, and threw his -cigarette into the fire. “This is just fancy! I haven’t even _seen_ the -girl!” - -He lit his candle, put out Mrs. Plumer’s oil lamp with all the devices -and precautions proper to this dangerous survival from the Dark Ages, -and went up to bed. He stopped and listened outside Sargon’s door. The -patient was asleep and breathing rather noisily--ever and again choking -with a little cough. - -“I wish the weather had kept warmer,” said Bobby. - -When he opened his own bedroom door, the flame of his candle writhed -and flared horizontally, the curtains streamed into the room and a -sheet of paper flapped on the dressing-table. He put down the candle -and went to shut the window. The wind was rising and there was a little -patter of raindrops on the pane. - - - - -CHAPTER THE THIRD - -_The Last Phase_ - - -§ 1 - -It was part of the general unsatisfactoriness of Bobby’s make-up that -he was acutely responsive to meteorological conditions. That late -Indian summer was over now, and the heavens and the earth and the -air between began to push, hustle, wet, chill, darken, distress and -bully him. Jumbled grey clouds came hurrying across Dymchurch from -Dungeness and the Atlantic, torn, angular, outstretched clouds with -malicious expressions like witches and warlocks, emitting fierce -squirts of rain. Under their skirts came the waves in long rolling -regiments, threatening from afar, breaking into premature handfuls of -foam, gathering force at last, towering up for a last culminating thud -against the sea-wall and spouting heavenward in white fountains of -suddy water. - -“Face it, man,” said Bobby. “Face it. It’s only Nature. Brace up to it. -Think of this poor girl.” - -He forced himself to do a morning’s walk along the top of the sea-wall, -with his wet trousers flapping against his legs like flags against -their staves. - -“Glorious wind!” he told Sargon when he went in to see him. “But I wish -there was a gleam of sun.” - -“Have you any news from Christina Alberta?” asked Sargon. - -“There’s hardly time yet for a reply to my wire. But she’ll surely -come,” said Bobby, and went downstairs to dry his legs at the fire. - -He did not expect a summons to Hythe to meet the young lady very much -before half-past twelve. Meanwhile he went out to the shed and assured -himself that the motor bicycle and side-car were in perfect order for a -hasty journey. Half-past twelve came, one, half-past one. He had some -lunch. He became very restless, and rose and looked out of the window -frequently to see if the messenger girl was coming with Christina -Alberta’s telegram. About two a large, silent, luxurious-looking, -hired Daimler car appeared outside and stopped at Mrs. Plumer’s gate. -A hatless bobbed head appeared at the window and exchanged remarks -with the driver, who descended and opened the door. The car emitted a -handsome and determined young woman of advanced appearance, hatless and -short-skirted, and a lean, dark, prosperous-looking man of thirty-eight -or forty in blue serge and a grey felt hat. The man opened the gate for -the girl, and she surveyed the house as she advanced. - -Bobby realized that Christina Alberta had not kept her promise to be -blue-eyed and fragile. She had betrayed him. Yet for all her treachery -he had built up a sense of personal relationship with her that gripped -him still. He watched her approach with an excitement he found -difficult to control. He wondered who the devil the dark man was. A -cousin perhaps. She discovered Bobby watching her from the window and -their eyes met. - - -§ 2 - -Bobby, with an instinct that is given to young people for such -occasions, perceived that he interested Christina Alberta extremely. He -parleyed with her and Devizes in Mrs. Plumer’s little downstairs room. -He spoke chiefly to her. Devizes he treated as a secondary figure, a -voice at her elbow. “He’s got a nasty cold on his chest,” he said. -“He’s been asking for Miss Preemby----” - -“Christina Alberta,” said Christina Alberta. - -“Christina Alberta a lot. But it was only last night I could get the -address out of him. He’d forgotten it before. We’ve been here over a -day. He caught the cold coming here.” - -“How did you come here?” Devizes threw in. - -“Motor bicycle,” said Bobby. “But there was a lot of waiting about -before we could get away and it was a cold raw morning, and he had -just his nightgown and dressing-gown and slippers. So hard to foresee -everything.” - -“But how did you come to be rescuing him?” - -Bobby smiled at Devizes. “Somebody had to be rescuing him.” - -He turned to Christina Alberta again. “Couldn’t bear the thought of his -being under lock and key. He took a room, you see, in the place where -I lodged, and there was something innocent and--delightful about him. -I’ve a weakness, a sympathy perhaps, with absurdity.... You ought to go -up to him and see him.” - -“Yes, we’d better look at him,” said Devizes. - -(Who the devil was this fellow?) - -Bobby asserted himself. “Christina Alberta first, I think.” - -He took Christina Alberta up to her daddy and closed the door on a -warm embrace. “And now, Mr. de Vezes, or whatever you are,” he said -to himself on the staircase, “where do _you_ come in?” He descended -and found Devizes standing very irritatingly upon his hearthrug before -his fire. As he stood there a remote resemblance to Christina Alberta -was perceptible. Bobby had an incoherent recognition of the fact that -in some obscure way Devizes was responsible for Christina Alberta’s -failure to produce blue eyes. He was a little slow in saying what he -intended to say, and Devizes was able to take the initiative. “Forgive -my blunt impertinence,” he said, “but may I ask who you are?” - -“I’m a writer,” said Bobby, refraining from any glance at the -accumulation of Aunt Suzannah material upon the side table. - -“You’ve finished lunch?” asked Devizes in a disregarded parenthesis. - -“May I ask the same question of you?” said Bobby, “and how it is you -come to be connected with the Preembys?” - -“I’m a blood relation,” said Devizes, considering it. “On the mother’s -side. A sort of cousin. And I happen to be a nervous and mental -specialist. That’s why I’ve been brought in to-day.” - -“I see,” said Bobby. “You’ve got no intention of--putting him back?” - -“None at all. We’re not antagonists, Mr----” - -“Roothing.” - -“We’re on the same side. You did well to get him out. We were trying -to do the same thing by less original methods. We’re very grateful to -you. The lunacy laws are rather a clumsy and indiscriminating machine. -But, as you probably know, if he keeps clear of them for fourteen -days, they’ll have to begin with him all over again. He renews his -sanity. We’re allies in that. We’ve got to know each other better. Your -intervention--most surprising--strikes me as being at once eccentric -and courageous. I wish you’d tell me more about it, how you met him, -how they got hold of him, and what set you thinking of an escape.” - -“H’m,” said Bobby, and came and asserted his right to half the -hearthrug. He had thought of the way in which he could tell this -story--to Christina Alberta--the original Christina Alberta with the -blue eyes. He felt that that version needed considerable revision, -indeed, possibly even a complete rearrangement, for the present hearer. -He was by no means sure he wanted to tell it to the present hearer. The -man was a doctor and a mental specialist and a distant relation, and -he was for keeping Sargon out of an asylum, and that was all to the -good, but it still lingered in Bobby’s mind that he was an interloper. -Nevertheless, he made way for Bobby quite civilly on the hearthrug, -and his manner was attentive and respectful. Bobby embarked upon a -description of Sargon’s first appearance in Midgard Street. - -Devizes showed himself alert and intelligent. He grasped the -significance of Sargon’s projected visit to the dome of Saint Paul’s at -once. “I’ve no doubt he did it,” said Devizes. “Neither have I,” said -Bobby, “though I’ve not asked him about it yet.” They pieced together -the probable story of the calling of the disciples before Billy and -Bobby had come upon the procession. “It’s touching,” said Devizes, “and -immense.” Bobby approved these words. - -“You see how he got me,” said Bobby. - -A distinct flavour of friendliness for Devizes crept by imperceptible -degrees into Bobby’s mind. Difficulties that had seemed to threaten his -explanation vanished; this man, he perceived, could understand anything -a fellow did. Devizes made him feel that the extraction of Sargon from -Cummerdown by a perfect stranger was the most simple and natural thing -to do imaginable. Bobby warmed to his story; his sense of humour took -heart of grace, and he became frank and amusing about his difficulties -on the visiting day. As he was telling of the foxy-faced deaf mute, -Christina Alberta came back again into the downstairs room. - -“He takes me as a matter of course,” she said. “He seems weak and -drowsy and his chest is bad.” She spoke more definitely to Devizes. “I -think you ought to overhaul him.” - -“There is a doctor in attendance?” he asked Bobby. - -Bobby explained. Devizes considered. Was Sargon dozing? Yes. Then let -him doze for a bit. Bobby, working now a little more consciously for -effect, went on with his story. Christina Alberta regarded him with -manifest approval. - -By tea-time Bobby had adjusted his mind to the existence of Devizes -and the unexpectedness of Christina Alberta. All that carried over -from his state of expectation was the idea that his relations with -Christina Alberta were to be very profound and intimate. He still -believed that, hidden away in her somewhere, there must be a blue-eyed, -yielding, really feminine person, but it was very deeply hidden. -Meanwhile the superimposed disguise struck him as agreeable, alert, -humorous, and friendly. Devizes too he saw more and more as a strong, -capable, understanding personality. He had seen Devizes examining -Sargon, and it was clever, confidence-provoking doctoring. Sargon’s -lungs, he said, were badly congested, especially on the left side; he -was on the edge of pneumonia and without much vitality to fight it. He -ought to be kept in a warmer, less draughty room with a night-nurse -available. Mrs. Plumer had no room for a nurse, and not an hour away by -automobile was Paul Lambone’s excessively comfortable week-end cottage -at Udimore. A little masterly telephoning and telegraphing and the -cottage was available, fires were alight in the best bedroom, a trained -nurse was on her way to it, and it was all settled for Sargon, warmly -wrapped up and fortified with hot-water bottles, to go thither. Bobby -found himself a mere accessory in this new system of things; he was -to follow next day to Udimore on his motor bicycle, for there would -be room for all of them in Paul Lambone’s cottage. Apparently Paul -Lambone’s conception of a simple cottage in the wilderness involved a -housekeeper, several servants, and four or five visitors’ rooms. - -This fellow Devizes carried out all his arrangements with a smooth -competence that gave Bobby no scope for self-assertion. Sargon and -Christina Alberta and Devizes would depart at five and get to Udimore -by six, by which time the nurse would be installed. Then Devizes would -go back to London and get there in time to dress for a dinner he had -to attend. On Saturday morning he would be busy in London, and then -he would come back to Udimore and see if Sargon was recovered enough -for the beginnings of his mental treatment. Perhaps the unknown Paul -Lambone would be there too. He was a lazy person, Bobby gathered; he’d -have to be brought down by Devizes. Bobby was to stay at Udimore for -some days. He made modest protestations. “No, you’re _in_ it now,” said -Devizes cheerfully and glanced at Christina Alberta. “You’re in for -Sargon like the rest of us. Bring your work with you.” - -“Yes, do come,” said Christina Alberta. - -The only reason Bobby had for resisting the invitation was that it -attracted him so much. - - -§ 3 - -This “cottage” at Udimore, which struck Bobby as being a really very -pretty and comfortable modern house, and these three people, Christina -Alberta, Devizes and Paul Lambone, who now grouped themselves round -Sargon, exercised his mind in a quite extraordinary way. They struck -him as being novel and definite to a degree he’d never met in anyone -before, and even the house was fresh and decisive in its broad white -grace, like no house that had ever before held his attention. It made -most of the other houses he had ever observed seem accidental and -aggregatory and second-hand and wandering in their purpose. But this -house was the work of a clever young architect who had considered Paul -Lambone intelligently, and its white rough-cast walls sat comfortably -on the hill-side and looked with an honest, entirely detached -admiration at Rye and across the marsh to Winchelsea and the remote -blue sea; and it had seats and arbours and a gazebo for sitting about -in, and up hill was a walled garden with broad paths up which you -looked from the back of the house through lead-paned windows. You could -watch the sunset from a number of excellent points of view, but it did -not shine upon any room to weary and blind you. There was a kind wall -to shelter hollyhocks and delphiniums from the south-west wind, and to -bear a plum or so and a pear and a fig tree. Downstairs was mainly one -great rambling room with a dining recess in one corner and the power -of opening itself out into a loggia, and with conversational centres -about fire-places or windows as the season might require, but there -were several little studies about the house in which one could be shut -off and write. Bookshelves grew in convenient corners, and the house -was everywhere mysteriously warm from unseen and scarce suspected -radiators. The house was so like Paul Lambone, and Paul Lambone so much -a part of his house that he seemed to be really no more than its voice -and its eyes. - -Paul Lambone was the first successful writer Bobby had ever met. -Bobby knew various needy young writers, tadpole writers, insecure -writers, but this was the first completely grown-up and established -and massively adult writer he had ever known. The man struck Bobby as -being stupendously secure and free and prosperous. And the remarkable -thing was that he was in no way a great writer, no Dickens nor Scott -nor Hardy; his work wasn’t, after all, in Bobby’s opinion anything so -very remotely above Bobby’s own efforts. A certain terseness he had -at times, a certain penetration: those were the chief differences. In -Bobby’s imagination the literary and artistic life had hitherto had -an unavoidable flavour of casual adventure, glorious achievements, -maddening difficulties, wild delights and tragic unhappinesses. Swift, -Savage, Goldsmith, the Carlyles, Balzac, Dumas, Edgar Allan Poe, -these had been his types. But this new bright house was as sound and -comfortable as any country house, and Lambone sat in it with as safe -a dignity as though he was a provincial banker or a mine owner or -the senior member of some widespread firm of solicitors. No fears of -losing his “job” or “writing himself out” oppressed him. He said and -did exactly what he thought proper, and the policeman saluted him as he -passed. - -If this sort of thing could spring from the _Book of Everyday Wisdom_ -and Paul’s amiable novels, what hitherto unsuspected possibilities of -accumulation and ease and security and helpfulness might there not be -in Aunt Suzannah’s kindly responsiveness? It had never before seemed -credible to Bobby that a day might come when he would be secure and his -own master, able to refuse limitations himself and to release other -people from limitations. All Bobby’s life hitherto had been a matter -of direction and eminent necessity. He had been _sent_ to school and -_sent_ to college. He had been on the eve of being _put into_ the -position of agent upon a friendly estate when the Great War had seized -upon him and the rest of his generation and drilled him and sent him -off to Mesopotamia. And after the war he had had to do something to -supplement his diminished inheritance. Life had been so indicated -and prescribed for him at every stage, his parents’ existence had -been so entirely directed by a class tradition, that Bobby’s mind was -exceptionally well prepared to be impressed by Paul Lambone’s freedoms. - -It was curious to note how completely Paul Lambone arose out of the -present-day world, and how completely he didn’t belong to it. He had -all its advantages and so little of its standard obligations. He had -escaped from it with most of its gifts. He had to go to no court, -follow no seasons, make no calls, and perform no functions. Was he -exceptional in his circumstances altogether, or were there a lot -of people escaping, as he was escaping, prosperously, from the old -decaying social system? a queer sort of new people who didn’t belong? - -Bobby sat on the terrace and looked over the back of his seat at this -extremely new but very sightly and comfortable cottage of Lambone’s, -with this freshly arrived idea of a new sort of people getting loose in -the world and living unrelated to the old order of things and shaping -out new ways of living, very active in his mind. This house seemed to -embody that idea; it was new and novel, but not a bit apologetic nor -rebellious. It was just breaking out like a new fashion. It was just -arising like a new century. He had always assumed that revolutions came -from below through the rage of the excluded and the disinherited. He -had thought every one took that for granted. But suppose revolutions -were merely smashes-up that hadn’t very much to do with real progress -either way, and that the new age dawned anywhere in the social order -where people could get free enough to work out new ideas. - -New ideas! - -Sargon was new, Paul Lambone was new, Devizes new; before the war -there could not have been any such people. They had grown out of -their own past selves; they were as different from pre-war people as -nineteenth-century people had been different from eighteenth-century -people. Newest of all was this Christina Alberta who had effaced her -blue-eyed predecessor. She was so direct and free in her thoughts and -talk that she made Bobby feel that his own mind wore a bonnet and -flounces. He had gone for two walks with her, once to Brede and once -to Rye, and he liked her tremendously. Whether he was in love with her -he didn’t yet know. Falling in love with her for anyone was evidently -going to be a quite unconventional, untested, and difficult series -of exercises. Nothing at all like that unborn normal affair with the -non-existent blue-eyed girl. - -She seemed to like him, and particularly the way his hair grew on his -head. She had mentioned it twice and ruffled it once. - -A queer aspect of the situation was the riddle of how she and Sargon -and himself came to be the guests of Paul Lambone with Devizes -in attendance. It was just a part of Paul Lambone’s freedom from -prescription that he should be able to give sanctuary to Sargon and -assemble this odd, unconventional week-end party. But Bobby had a -sense of hidden links and missing clues. Devizes was a natural enough -visitor, of course; he was manifestly Lambone’s close friend. But their -interest in Sargon was stronger than Bobby could imagine it ought -to be. He was puzzled; he examined all sorts of possibilities in a -gingerly fashion. Some impulse like his own, no doubt, but not quite -the same, lay at the bottom of this--Sargonism. - -Bobby had begun by feeling very hostile to Devizes as an unexpected -intruder on a system of relationships sufficiently interesting without -him. He was glad that he had to go to London for Friday, and not -particularly pleased by his return on Saturday. Then he found his -feelings changing to a curious respect, mingled with a defensive -element that was almost like fear. - -Devizes was more aware of you than Lambone. He looked at you, his -mind came at you. It had the habit of coming at people. He was more -actively and aggressively interested in things than Lambone and more -self-forgetful. Lambone observed enough to make bright comments; -Devizes made penetrating observations. Bobby often felt encumbered -with himself; most people he thought were encumbered with themselves, -but Devizes to a conspicuous degree wasn’t. He was a man of science; -a man of scientific habits. Bobby had known one or two scientific men -before, rather wrapped away from ordinary things, but the interest that -wrapped them was something that wrapped them away from oneself; one had -been concerned chiefly with stresses in glass and another with the eggs -of echinoderms. You always seemed to be looking at the backs of these -fellows’ heads and smiling at their immense preoccupation. But this -man Devizes was wrapped up in the motives and thoughts of people; he -didn’t look away from you; he looked into you. That grew upon Bobby’s -consciousness. Devizes’ eye lacked delicacy. - -He had come down for the week-end chiefly to deal with Sargon. He went -up and had long talks to Sargon. He was “treating” Sargon. He didn’t -go up and talk to Sargon as man to man, as Bobby would have done. He -went up to a sort of mental jiu-jitsu with Sargon to exercise him -and push him about into new attitudes. Devizes was formidable enough -in himself, but far more formidable as a portent. He had all the -appearance of being a precursor, the most vigorous precursor--they were -all precursors!--of a new type of human relationships, relationships -without delicate reservations, without rich accumulations of feeling -behind emotions avoided and things unsaid. So it seemed to Bobby, -who didn’t for a moment suspect how much these people were avoiding -and suppressing. Christina Alberta’s thoughts and speech seemed to -him to be moving about without a stitch on, like the people in some -horrible Utopia by Wells. He compared the vast impalpable network of -“understanding” he and Tessy had woven between each other. - -“New people,” he whispered, and looked Paul Lambone’s new house in the -face. To him they were stupendously new, an immense discovery. The -war had overstrained him, he realized, and left him too tired for a -time to see new things. He had been one of the vast multitude of those -who had come out of the war in the expectation of a trite and obvious -old-fashioned millennium, and who expressed their disappointment -by declaring that nothing had happened except devastation and -impoverishment. They were too jaded at first to observe anything else. -But indeed Bobby now realized the European world had been travelling -faster and faster since the break-up of the armed peace in 1914; and -here were new types, new habits of thought, new ideas, new reactions, -new morals, new ways of living. He discovered himself in the advent of -a new age, a new age that was coming so fast that there hadn’t been -time ever to clear the forms and institutions of the old age away. They -weren’t reversed or abolished, they weren’t overthrown, they were just -disregarded. Which was just why it was possible to get along for a year -or so without noting the tremendous changes everything was undergoing. - -“New People.” Did that apply to Sargon? That was Sargon’s room: the two -long windows between the buttresses. Was Sargon also an escape from the -established order of relationships into novel things? What was the real -significance of the absurd little man with his preposterous map of the -world and his still more preposterous planisphere, who wanted to be -Lord of the Earth? - - -§ 4 - -When Bobby came to talk it over with Sargon it seemed to him that -Devizes had taken the little man completely to pieces and presented -him with the disarticulated portions of himself. Devizes went back to -London on Monday; he took Christina Alberta with him in his hired car; -but Lambone urged Bobby to stay on for a day or so to cheer up the -patient. Lambone, so far as he could discover his own intentions, meant -to stay on at Udimore for a week or more and work. Bobby saw Christina -Alberta off, meditated on her for an hour, then gave the rest of the -morning to Aunt Suzannah and the afternoon to Sargon; and Sargon, who -was distinctly better, sat propped up by two pillows and discussed the -dissected structure of himself. - -“Not a bit fatigued,” said Sargon. “I’m having a tonic now. Every three -hours.” - -He considered his next remark for some moments before he made it. “Who -_is_ this Mr. Paul Lambone?” he asked. “It is very hospitable for him -to entertain us. Very. (_H’rrmp_).... Is he a friend of yours?” - -“He’s quite a well-known writer. He’s a friend of Christina Alberta’s.” - -“She has so many friends. Young people do nowadays. And what is this -Dr. Devizes?” - -“He is a nervous specialist, and he was consulted--he was consulted -about the possibilities of getting you away from that--Place.” - -“Nervous specialist. He is a wonderful talker--most intelligent and -(h’rrmp) understanding. I have a curious feeling that somewhere, -somewhen, somehow I have met him before. In this life--or some other. -It is all quite vague, and he does not seem to have any corresponding -recollection. No. Probably a coincidence of some sort.” - -Bobby saw nothing in the coincidence. - -Sargon shut his eyes for a second or so. - -“We talked of my recent experiences,” he resumed. - -“Naturally,” said Bobby, helping. - -“There has been a lot of confusion about my personality. It is a -trouble more frequent nowadays than it used to be. Most of my life -I have thought that I was a person called Albert Edward Preemby, a -limited person, a most limited person. Then I had a light. I began -to realize that nobody could really be such a thing as that Albert -Edward Preemby. I began to seek for myself. I had reason--too long to -explain--to suppose that I was Sargon the First, the great Sumerian, -the founder of the first Empire in the world. Then--then came trouble. -You saw something of it. I grasped at the sceptre--one afternoon--in -Holborn--rashly. Most painful affair. I was sent to that Place. Yes. It -shook me. Humiliations. Hardship. Real--uncleanness. I doubted whether -I wasn’t after all just that little Preemby. A human rabbit. My faith -faltered. I admit it faltered.” - -He mused painfully for some moments. - -Then he laid his hand reassuringly on Bobby’s wrist. - -“I _am_ Sargon,” he said. “Talking to your friend Devizes has cleared -my mind greatly. I _am_ Sargon, but in a rather different sense from -what I had imagined. Preemby was, as I had supposed, a mere accidental -covering. But----” - -The little face puckered with intellectual effort. “I am not -_exclusively_ Sargon. You--you perhaps are still unawakened--but you -are Sargon too. His blood is in our veins. We are co-heirs. It is -fairly easy to understand. Sargon, regal position. Naturally many -wives. Political--biological necessity. Offspring numerous. They -again--positions of advantage--many children. Next generation, more. -Like a vast expanding beam of intellectual and moral force. You can -prove it--prove it by mathematics. Dr. Devizes and I--we worked it out -on a piece of paper. We are all descended from Sargon, just as we are -all descended from Cæsar--just as nearly all English and Americans are -descended from William the Conqueror. Few people realize this. A little -arithmetic--it is perfectly plain. Long before the Christian era the -blood of Sargon was diffused throughout all mankind. His traditions -still more so. We all inherit. Not merely from him--from all the great -kings, from all the noble conquerors. From all the brave and beautiful -women. All the statesmen and inventors and creators. If not directly -from them, from their fathers and mothers. All that rich wine from the -past is in my veins. And I thought I was just Albert Edward Preemby! -And at Woodford Wells I went for a silly little walk nearly every -afternoon with sixpence in my pocket to spend and nothing in the world -to do! For twenty years. It seems incredible.” - -The blue eyes sought confirmation from Bobby, who nodded. - -“There was I walking about Epping Forest in a suit of clothes I -never really liked--a rather exaggerated golfing suit with baggy -knickerbockers that my wife chose for me--they seemed to get baggier -every year--and I was quite ignorant that I was the heir of all the -ages, and that the whole earth down to the centre and up to the sky was -mine. And yours. Ours. I had no sense of duty to it; I hadn’t woke up -to self-respect. I wasn’t only Sargon, but all the men and women who -have ever mattered on earth. I was God’s Everlasting Servant. Instead -of which I was rather timid about horses and strange dogs, and often -when I saw people approaching and thought they were observing me and -speaking about me, I did not know what to do with my arms and legs, and -became quite confused about them.” - -He paused to smile at the thought of it. - -“It has been interesting to talk to your Dr. Devizes of the absurdity -of that contracted blind littleness in which I lived so long. We talked -of the Great Man I really was, the Great Men we really were. All the -Incorporated Great Men. You and I, the same. Because in the past you -and I and he were one, and in the future we may come together again. We -have just separated to take hold of things as the hand separates into -thumb and fingers. We talked of the time when the spirit that is in -us made the first hut, launched the first ship, rode the first horse. -We could not remember those great moments as exact incidents, but we -recalled them--generally. We recalled a blazing day when a band of men -went out across a sandy desert for the first time, and when a man first -stood upon a glacier. It was--slippery. Then I remembered watching my -people heap up the earth-walls of my first city. We went out against -the robbers of the first herds. Then Dr. Devizes and I stood in -imagination on a sort of quarter-deck, and watched our men lugging the -great oars of the galley that took us to Iceland and Vinland. We both -saw. We planned the Great Walls of China; I counted our lateen sails -upon our grand canal. You see, I have built a million wonderful temples -and made an innumerable multititude of lovely sculptures, paintings, -jewels and decorations. I had forgotten it, but I have. And I have -loved a billion loves--I have indeed--to bring me here. We all have. We -talked it over, your Dr. Devizes and I. I had not dreamt the millionth -part of what I am. When I thought I was Sargon wholly and solely I -still did not realize my great inheritance and my enormous destiny. -Even now I am only beginning to see that.... It is preposterous to -think that I who have all this past of efforts and adventures behind me -should have been content to run about Woodford Wells in a ridiculous -suit of tweeds with plus-four breeches that were extremely heavy and -uncomfortable--they tickled me, you know--on hot days. Yet I did. I -did.... Not realizing.... I used to go on until I could endure it no -longer, and then I would have to stop and scratch behind my knees.... - -“Of course, when I called myself Sargon, King of Kings, and proposed -to rule all the world I was--Dr. Devizes called it--_symbolizing_. Of -course, everybody is really Sargon, King of Kings, and everybody ought -to take hold of all the world and save it and rule it just as I have -got to do.” - -He had concluded his exposition. He had spread out his disarticulated -parts before Bobby just as Devizes had returned them to him. - - -§ 5 - -“But just what are you going to do?” said Bobby. - -“I have been thinking of that.” - -For a little while he continued to think. - -“It becomes all different,” he said, “when one realizes that one is not -the _only_ Sargon. I thought of being a great king, a great leader, -with the rest of the world just following me. I doubt if I ever felt -quite _up_ to a job of that sort, but I couldn’t see any other way of -being Sargon and a king. Now I do. I did my best, but even when I went -to Buckingham Palace I realized that the thing was going to be too big -for me. I was telling Dr. Devizes--I told him, that since he was Sargon -and King just as much as me and that almost anyone might become Sargon -and King, then it wasn’t a case for palaces and thrones any longer, or -for being proclaimed and crowned--such things were as much out of date -as flint implements; and that the real things was to be just a kingly -person and work with all the other kingly persons in the world to make -the world worthy of our high descent. Anyone who wakes up to that -becomes a kingly person. We can be active kings even if we remain kings -incognito. One can be a laundryman like I was when I was just Preemby, -and think of nothing but the profits and needs and vanities and fears -of a little laundryman--and how dull it was!--or one can be a king, the -descendant of ten thousand kings, the joint heir to the inheritance -of all human affairs, the lord of the generations still unborn--who -happens to be living in exile as a laundryman.” - -He paused. - -“I agree with most of that,” said Bobby. “It’s--it’s attractive.” - -“So far it is as plain as can be. But after that the difficulties -begin. It isn’t enough just to say you are a king. You have to be a -king. You have to _do_. You can’t be a king and not do kingly things. -But it’s just there that Dr. Devizes and I--we weren’t so clear. -There’s a lot to be thought out. What is my kingly task? In this frail -body--and what I am? I am not clear. Yet the mere fact that I am not -clear shows clearly where I have to begin. I have to get clear. I have -to get knowledge, find out about my kingdom. That’s reasonable. I have -to learn more about my great inheritance, our great inheritance, the -history of it, the possibilities of it, the ways of the men who misrule -it. I have to learn about business and economics and money; and then -when I see it all plain I have to exert myself and vote and work, and I -have to find out what particular gifts I have and how I may best give -them to our kingdom. Each king must glorify his particular reign with -his particular gift. We agreed about that. - -“So far I do not know my particular gift. Dr. Devizes says that so -far as he is concerned he must work out human motives and human -relationships; his gift and his natural interest is for mental science. -He has his task meted out for him, his kingly task. But for me at -present there isn’t that much self-knowledge. I have to begin lower -down and with broader questions. I have to learn about the universe -and about the history of this world-empire of Sargon’s, and of all the -things I have neglected in my dreams and littleness. I have to go to -school again. To learn how to think harder. I don’t mind the fatigue. -But I am impatient. When I think of all that lies before me, the -reading, the inquiries, the visits to museums and suchlike places, I -want to get up right away and begin. I have lived so unobservant and -irresponsible a life that I am puzzled how to account for the years I -have spent. I have mooned them away. But I am glad I have awakened to -my kingship before it is too late. - -“I am quite a young man still. I am a little past forty, but that is -nothing. Half of that was childhood and boyhood, and much of the rest -inattention. For all I know I may live for another forty years. I’m -not half through. And they may be the best years, the full years. I -can spend three or four just learning--learning the round world. I -shall begin to find out politics, and why men and women are servile -and little-minded. I shall begin to realize how I can extend to those -others this great liberation that has come to me. I shall begin to have -a political life. A man who has no political life is like a rat which -lives in a ship rather than like a man who navigates it. Then within -that I shall begin to find my own proper life, my particular task. -It is premature, I think, but I am very greatly drawn to the riddle -of madness and asylums. I do not understand why there is madness. It -puzzles and distresses me, and Dr. Devizes agrees with me that when a -thing puzzles and distresses the mind the thing to do is to gather all -the knowledge and ideas one can about it--scientifically. Presently it -ceases to distress; it interests and occupies. And when I was in--that -Place, I talked to some of those poor creatures. I was very sorry for -them, I made them promises to help them when my kingdom came. And now I -begin to see what my kingdom is, and the way in which I must enter in -to possess it. Perhaps in good time I shall learn and spread knowledge -about asylums, and make things better in them so that they will not -simply imprison people but help and cure them. - -“It was Dr. Devizes’ idea, I think--or we may have worked it out -together--that there is a real and important purpose in madness. It -is a sort of simplification, a removal of checks and controls, and a -sort of natural experiment. The secret things of the mind are laid -bare. But then if poor souls are to suffer that sort of thing to -yield knowledge for others, they ought to be treated properly; they -ought to be cherished and made the utmost use of, and not handed over -to such brutes as we had.... I can’t tell you. Not yet. Brutes they -were.... And in their sane moments--they all have sane moments, these -lunatics--they ought to be comforted and told.” - -The queer little round face, with its sprouting moustache and its pale -blue eyes, stared at Bobby. - -“When first I saw you,” said Sargon, “I did not realize in the -least how things really were between us. I was still wrapped up in -vaingloriousness; I thought I was a great prophet and teacher and -king, and that all the world had to obey me. I thought you were going -to be the first and best and nearest of my disciples. But now I know -better about myself. And about other people. They are here not to be -my followers and disciples but to be my fellow kings. We have to work -together with all the others who are awakened, for our kingdom and the -great progress of mankind.” - -He went on talking rather to himself than to Bobby. - -“I have always wanted to know things, but now I shall have the will -really to know them. I shall be different now. It seems incredible -that a little while ago I was bothered about what I should do with my -time. Now I am only eager to get at things, and however long my time -may be I know it will be full. It is astonishing to me that there -has been flying in my kingdom for a dozen years, and I have never -been in an aeroplane. I must look at the world from an aeroplane. And -perhaps I shall need to go to India and China and suchlike strange and -wonderful countries, because they, too, are a part of my inheritance. -I need to know about them. And jungles and wildernesses that we have -to subjugate; I have to see them. The beasts are under us; we have -to cherish them or destroy them mercifully as the necessities of -our kingdom may require. It is a terrible thing even to be lord of -a beast. All the beasts, wild or tame, are under our dominion. And -there is science. All the wonderful work men do in laboratories and -their marvellous discoveries are our care. If I do not understand I -may hinder. How blind I have been to the splendour of my life. When I -think of all these things, I can hardly endure to be here in bed; I am -so impatient to get on with them. But I suppose I must be patient with -these poor wheezing lungs. - -“Patient,” he repeated. - -He looked at his wrist-watch and it had stopped. “Can you tell me the -time? At seven I ought to take some more of that excellent tonic. It -is working wonders in me. But no! don’t trouble; the nurse will be -thinking of it.... It puts fresh life into me.” - - -§ 6 - -But Sargon did not live forty years more, nor thirty, nor twenty. He -lived just a day under seven weeks from that conversation. He stayed -in bed for two days after Bobby returned to London; then Lambone also -went and he became intractable. As his strength returned he bothered -his nurse more and more for books he couldn’t name or describe, and for -volumes of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_; and when she declared that -seven volumes of that monumental publication were surely as much as any -invalid could need at one time, he got up and put on his rough little -dressing-gown and came paddling downstairs, h’rrmping resolutely, to -the library. After that he got up for three days running. A fire was -made in the most bookish corner of the downstairs room and screens put -to keep him warm. But his tonic was driving him, perhaps it was too -stimulating a tonic, and he would not stay in his protected corner. - -The nurse seems to have been a weak, complaining character, indisposed -to act without authority. She telephoned through to Devizes in London, -but she did not succeed in making clear to him the gravity of Sargon’s -misbehaviour. The crowning offence came when he wouldn’t go to bed at -seven, but instead slipped out, in an overcoat and a wrapper indeed but -in slippers, upon the terrace before the house. His bare ankles and -legs were exposed to the cold wind. The slow-moving periodic beams of -light from the lighthouse upon the coast, sweeping across the phantom -hills under the clear starlight, had drawn him out, those processional -lights, and Sirius that white splendour, and the steadfast sprawling -glory of Orion. It was a clear November night with frost in the air. -The nurse heard him cough and rushed out to him. He was looking at -Sirius through Lambone’s field-glasses and she had to drag him in by -main force. She lost her temper; there was an ungracious struggle. - -The next day he was in no state to leave his bed. Yet he tossed about -and exposed his inflamed chest in feeble attempts to read. “I know -nothing,” he complained. For a while he got better again, and then it -is highly probable that he went to his open window in the night and sat -for a long time wondering at the stars. After that came a relapse and a -week or so of struggle, and then after a phase of delirium came great -weakness, and then one night, death. He was quite alone when he died. - -Bobby had not expected the death at all. He heard of it from Christina -Alberta with great astonishment. He had been told nothing of Sargon -being worse nor of his misbehaviour; he had been thinking of him rather -enviously as growing steadily stronger and better and gratifying day by -day a happy and expanding curiosity. He had looked forward presently to -another talk and another phase in this odd belated adolescence. It was -as though an interesting story had come to an abrupt end in the middle, -as though all its concluding chapters had been torn out rudely and -unreasonably. - -This mood of frustrated sympathy lasted over the cremation of Sargon -at Golders Green. Bobby went to that queer ceremony. He arrived late -with Billy; the coffin that held the little body stood ready to glide -into the furnace, the Church of England burial service had already -begun. There were very few people in the chapel. Christina Alberta in -the black she had worn for her mother was in the front seat, as chief -mourner, between Paul Lambone and Devizes. Behind her with an air -of earnest support were Harold and Fay Crumb, astonishingly in deep -mourning and following the service meticulously in two prayer-books. -An unpleasant-looking individual with a very long pock-marked sheep’s -face, small eyes and habitual-looking blacks turned round and stared -at Bobby as he came in. He was accompanied by a very large blonde -lady who seemed to have slept in her mourning under a bed. Relations -of the deceased? The air of relationship was unmistakable. Behind, -a young woman and two detached old ladies seemed to be indulging a -simple propensity for funeral services at large. They completed the -congregation. - -Christina Alberta looked unusually small and overshadowed by her two -odd men friends. It was a grey day outside, and the general effect of -the gathering was thin and scattered and damp and chilly. The organ -was playing as Bobby came in, and he thought he had never heard a less -musical organ. The service as it went on sounded more and more trite -and theological and insincere. What an old second-hand damp mackintosh -the Church of England is, thought Bobby, for a striving soul to wear? -But then what can any religion in the world really be in the face of -normal death? Theologically one should rejoice when a good man dies, -but none of these religions had had the pluck to brazen it out to that -extent. None can get rid of the effect of confrontation with a blank -amazing interrogation. Was there anything within that coffin there that -heard or cared a jot for those sombre mummeries? - -Bobby’s thoughts converged upon that still thing within the coffin. The -little face would be wearing a waxen unaccustomed dignity; the round, -preposterously innocent blue eyes would be closed and a little sunken. -Where were those thoughts and hopes, now, that Bobby had listened to -a few weeks since? Sargon had talked of flying, of visiting India and -China, of doing noble work in the world. He had said that half his life -still lay before him. He had seemed to be opening like a flower on the -first sunny morning of a belated spring. And it was all delusion; the -door of death that had slammed upon him was already closing then. - -Surely those hopes had been life! In them if in anything was something -of the life that lives and cannot die. But was it yonder? No. That in -the coffin there was no more than a photographic impression, a cast -garment, the parings of a nail. There was more of Sargon now in Bobby’s -brain alone, than in that coffin. But Sargon, where was he? Where were -those dreams and desires? - -Bobby became aware of the voice of the officiating clergyman driving -high, like a flying bird, over the welter of his thoughts: “_But some -men will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they -come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened unless it die. -And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be, but -bare grain, it may chance of wheat or any other grain: But God giveth -it a body, as it hath pleased him, but to every seed its own body...._” - -“Queer, tortuous, ingenious fellow that Paul,” thought Bobby. Now -what exactly was he driving at there? Queer fellow! Bad manners too -with his “Thou fool.” A rather strained analogy this about the seed, -“sown in corruption.” After all a seed was the cleanest, most living -bit of vegetable matter you could have; it had to be sown in clean -mould. Growing plants you manured perhaps, but not seed-boxes. But -there was a queer insistence in the discourse of the “difference,” the -discontinuity, of the new life. What was to come was to be altogether -different from what was sown. Bobby had never noted that before, never -noted how plainly the apostle insisted that no body, no earthly sort of -body, no personality, ever came back. - -“_The glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial -is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the -moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from -another star in glory._” - -What was the drift of that? Was it translated properly? What had Paul -been up against in Corinth? After all, why couldn’t the Church speak -to one’s living needs instead of disinterring this Levantine argument? -And that analogy of the seed; was it after all a good one? Whatever -comes from a seed must itself die again; it is no more immortal than -the plant that came before it. The clergyman was going too fast, too, -to follow him closely. Better get a prayer-book at home afterwards and -read all this. - -“_O Grave where is thy sting? O death where is thy victory? The sting -of death is sin and the strength of sin is in the law._” - -No. There was no following that. It sounded like nonsense. One just -missed the implications. It was like listening to some one who was -too far off to be heard distinctly but who made eloquent gestures and -noises. - -The service came to an embarrassed pause. Everyone was motionless, -arrested. - -“_Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live.... He cometh -up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow...._” - -Set in motion by unseen hands the coffin went gliding towards the -furnace doors which opened to receive it. There was a deep roar, a -sound like a mighty rushing wind, an elemental and chaotic sound.... - -Life is a faint dispersed film upon one little planet, but flames roar -like this and great winds rush and whirl, out to the remotest star in -the unfathomable depths of space. That deep disorderly tumult is the -true voice of lifeless matter, not of dead matter, for what has never -lived cannot be dead, but of lifeless matter, outside of and beneath -and beyond life. - -Everyone in the chapel seemed still and bowed and hushed and dwarfed to -minute dimensions until the furnace doors had closed again upon that -soulless devouring clamour. - - - - -CHAPTER THE FOURTH - -_May at Udimore_ - - -§ 1 - -Bobby _forgot_ that glimpse of the elemental powers that the furnace -doors had given him altogether, for such things do not remain -naturally in the mind. They inconvenience life. But the voice of the -clergyman hustling the arguments of St. Paul along, and the scene in -the Crematorium Chapel with the little coffin waiting to be launched -into eternity and the few still black mourners dotted among the yellow -benches came back to him very vividly when Paul Lambone began to quote -and twist those familiar sentences about the contrast between the -corruptible and the incorruptible and expand a fantastic philosophy of -his own. Bobby had always intended to read that funeral service over -again slowly and judicially, but he had never done so and he regretted -it now very much. It left him--and Paul of Tarsus--at the mercy of -Paul Lambone, and he knew that Paul Lambone loved ingenious slight -misquotations. - -It was a very warm, serenely still May evening, and Lambone’s party -sat after dinner in the twilight, some just inside the house and some -on deck-chairs upon the terrace. They looked out over the marsh and -over the still sea. The sky was like the inside of a deep blue globe -on which an ever increasing multitude of starry midges was alighting, -and Rye and Winchelsea crouched low beneath it, black low lumps with a -street light and a window or so showing minutely. Receding out to sea -was a liner quite brightly lit. With a swift steadiness the beam of the -nearer lighthouse swept the distant flats, came near, lit the faces of -the talkers, lit the room, called a church tower and a group of trees -into existence and dropped them back into the darkness and forgot about -them and passed on. And then presently it was coming again, a thin -white streak of light hurrying far away across the levels. - -When one’s attention wandered from the talk one became aware of an -abundance of nightingales. They were nightingales newly come from the -south. One or it might be two were in the trees close at hand; others -remoter wove a gauze curtain of faint sweet sounds over the visible -universe. - -Bobby sat on the step between the room and the terrace with his back -against a pillar and with his empty coffee-cup beside him. He had put -himself there by the feet of Christina Alberta, who was deep in a big -arm-chair and very still. Her face was dim except when her cigarette -glowed and showed a red-lit unfamiliar face. And yet that afternoon -she had been the most familiar thing in the world to him; she had -kissed him and pulled his ears and he had kissed her bare shoulders -and clasped her in his arms. Devizes too was silent and preoccupied. -He sat over against Christina Alberta on the other side of the opening -of the room; and he was so much in the twilight that except when the -lighthouse beam lit his face, only his shining shoes and socks were -clearly visible to Bobby. There had been times when Bobby had thought -that Devizes was in love with Christina Alberta, and he had a vague -inexplicable feeling that to some extent she was or had been in love -with Devizes. He had a sense of unfathomed deeps in their relationship, -but he did not know where these deeps lay. If Christina Alberta loved -Devizes she would have said so. Bobby knew of no reason why she -should not. But to-day she had hugged and kissed Bobby so that it was -impossible to believe she loved anyone else. - -Yet in the last three or four months she had gone about with Devizes -a lot; Bobby had seen her mind responding and changing with her talks -with this man. She used to quote him, and she would say things exactly -like the things he said. It had been a great inconvenience and trial -to Bobby, this preoccupation. And then suddenly he found Devizes -wasn’t the lover at all, never could have been a lover. That day she -had proved that up to the hilt. And now in a state between pride and -servitude Bobby sat at her feet. He sat at her feet and close to her; -Devizes in the darkness was remote, a full three yards away. - -Except for Lambone’s unquenchable flow it had not been a very talkative -party. To-night it was less talkative than ever. “This is too perfect,” -Margaret Means had sighed. “I can’t talk. I just thank God I am alive,” -and she had nestled into her big deck-chair upon the terrace. This was -the girl--it had suddenly become apparent to Bobby a fortnight ago in -London--whom Devizes intended to marry. Abruptly she had come upon the -scene to destroy the triangle that had obsessed Bobby’s imagination. -A sweetly pretty fragile thing she was; in the twilight she seemed as -faint and fragrant as nightstock, and she was a wonderful pianist. -Last night she had played for two hours. Paul’s sister, Miss Lambone, -had been evoked from somewhere in the west of England to come and be -hostess to the engaged couple. Bobby had tried to talk to Christina -Alberta about Margaret, but Christina Alberta hadn’t wanted to talk -about her. “You see,” said Christina Alberta compactly, “she has opened -the whole world of music to him. That’s what brought them together. -She’s clever; she’s very clear and clever. - -“I’d never heard of her--until you mentioned their engagement. - -“They’ve gone to concerts together and that sort of thing. He’s known -her much longer than he has known me.” - -“When did you first meet Devizes?” - -“About the time my Daddy came to Midgard Street. As recently as that. -It’s hardly six months. Paul Lambone took me to him to get advice -about Daddy. But _they_ have been going about--for more than a year. -I thought it was just music that interested them. They’d seemed to be -friends. And I thought he didn’t mean to marry again. He just suddenly -decided.” - -Christina Alberta reflected. “That’s the way with life, Bobby. Things -accumulate, and then you suddenly decide.” - -“Had she been undecided? Had she made him wait?” - -“Not her,” said Christina Alberta with a remarkable hardness in her -voice. - -“No,” she said. “_He_ decided.” - -She seemed to feel there was still something to express. “He just took -hold of the situation.” - - -§ 2 - -This was Bobby’s second visit to Udimore. Paul Lambone had suddenly -seen fit to gather this party; apparently on the spur of Devizes’ -engagement. In the interval Bobby had seen Christina Alberta a number -of times and developed an immense sense of relationship to her. It -filled his life. He had always been dreaming things about her from the -time when he anticipated her with blue eyes and a fragile person, and -always she was and did things that tore his dreams to shreds. This -made her profoundly interesting. More and more he had become dependent -upon her for interest. He wanted to marry her if only to make sure he -wouldn’t lose the interest of her. She had refused--twice. Without any -of the graces proper to the occasion. “No fear, Bobby,” she said. “It -wouldn’t do. I’m not the woman you take me for.” - -“You never are,” he said. “I don’t mind that.” - -“You’re the dearest companion,” she said. “I like the way your hair -grows.” - -“Then why not make it yours, and be companions for ever?” - -“Nothing more frightful,” she said, and so dismissed the proposal. - -They went about together; they spent much of their spare time together -except for those distressing occasions when she would suddenly throw -him over to go to a theatre or walk with Devizes. Or to go to Devizes -to talk. She never hesitated to throw him over for Devizes. Yet Bobby -got a lot of her. She didn’t know much about theatres or music-halls -or restaurants or dancing-places or that sort of thing, and Bobby was -discreetly competent in that province. The Malmesburys felt themselves -deserted, and Susan was vindictive in her resentment at his frequent -absence from her bed-time rituals. Tessy, Bobby declared, remained his -dearest friend; but when he tried to tell her all about himself in the -old, old fashion--which he did when Christina Alberta was away with -Devizes--he naturally had to tell her all about Christina Alberta. But -Tessy declined in the most emphatic way to be told about Christina -Alberta. It was extremely surprising and disappointing to Bobby to find -out how incapable Tessy was of appreciating the endless interestingness -and charm of Christina Alberta. It was a blind spot in her mind. She -seemed to assume that Christina Alberta was no better than she should -be, whereas she was much better. It estranged Bobby and Tessy very -much, and it was a great sorrow to Bobby. - -Because Christina Alberta _was_ good--and interesting--beyond dispute. -She was growing with tremendous rapidity mentally and in her knowledge -of the world. Every time he met her she seemed more of a person, with -richer, fuller, more commanding ideas. She seemed to be living every -moment of her time. She was working now at the Royal College of Science -under Macbride. She was taking hold of her new studies there with -tremendous enthusiasm. She was in love with comparative anatomy. Bobby -had always thought that comparative anatomy was dry, pedantic stuff -about bones, but she declared it lit up the whole story of life for -her. It changed her ideas about the world and about herself profoundly. -“It is the most romantic stuff I have ever read or thought about,” she -said. “It makes human history seem silly.” - -She took him three times to the Natural History Museum at South -Kensington to show him something of the fine realizations that stirred -her mind. She made it clear to him how the bones of a wing or the -scratches of a flint could restore the storms and sunlight and passions -of ten million years ago. - -And then suddenly a week ago Christina Alberta had consented to marry -Bobby. She had taken back her two refusals. But the way she did it -made it like everything else she did, astonishing and disconcerting. -She had a confession to make, and for a time until he could think it -over thoroughly that confession seemed to Bobby to explain her refusals -completely and to clear up everything about her. - -She got him to take her to Hampton Court. But they did not go into the -gardens because they saw through the park gates that the chestnuts of -Bushey Avenue were in full blossom; they went instead by the pond and -up under the riotously flowering branches. A belated spring was coming -now in a hurry, warm and brilliant. The trees were glorious. It was as -if a bright green sea was splashing up warm creamy foam under a shower -of cannon shots. The blue sky hummed with light. - -“The spring has come fast now that it has begun to come,” she said. - -He felt she had something to say and waited. - -“I never know, Bobby--this year less than ever--whether spring is the -happiest time in the year or the most miserably restless. Everybody and -everything is falling in love.” - -“I didn’t wait for spring,” said Bobby. - -“But what of the frogs that can’t find water?” said Christina Alberta. - -“There’s water where there are frogs,” said Bobby. - -“Everybody is marrying and giving in marriage,” she said. “I thought--I -thought--Dr. Devizes at least was an inconsolable widower. But the -spring tides have caught even him. They catch everybody.” - -“They’ve caught you?” - -“I don’t know. I’m miserable, Bobby, and restless and all astir.” - -“Then let yourself go.” - -“One aches--alone.” - -“But are you alone?” - -“Fairly.” - -“There’s me.” - -“Bobby dear, what do you want in me?” - -“_You._ To be with you. To be always about with you. And to be loved by -you.” - -“It’s kind of you.” - -“Oh, nonsense! _Kindness!_” - -“Listen, Bobby,” she said, and made a long pause. - -Her voice when she spoke had adopted the ease of casual conversation. -“Do you believe in chastity, Bobby? Could you love a girl who -wasn’t--chaste?” - -Bobby winced as if she had struck his face with a whip. He went white. -“What do you mean?” he asked. - -“Plainly,” she said. - -For a time neither of them said a word. - -“You have had _your_ experiences,” she thrust. “In France. They all -did.” - -Bobby made no answer to that. - -“Now you know,” she flung at him. - -For a little while the light had gone out of Bobby’s world. - -“Did you love the man?” he asked. - -“If I did I don’t remember it. It was just--curiosity. And the stir of -growing up. And the intolerable sense of being forbidden. No--I think I -was almost--cold-blooded. I liked the look of him. And then I disliked -him.... But there it is, Bobby. That’s how things are.” - -Bobby weighed his words. “I’d care if it were any girl but you. -You--you’re different. I love you. What has or hasn’t happened to you -doesn’t matter. At least--it doesn’t matter so much.” - -“You’re sure it doesn’t matter so much?” - -“Quite.” - -“Sure for good?” - -“Yes.” - -“From this moment you forget, you begin to forget what I have told you? -As I want to forget it?” - -“It will go soon enough if you want to forget it. It doesn’t matter at -all. I see now, it doesn’t matter at all.” - -“But why on earth do you want to marry me, Bobby? What is there in me? -I’m ugly, rude, greedy, inconsiderate. I’ve no purity, no devotion.” - -“You’re incessantly interesting. You’re straight, swift, and endlessly -beautiful.” - -“Bobby, truly! Does it look like that to you?” - -“Yes. Doesn’t my manner--? Don’t you _know_?” - -“Yes,” she said gravely; “I suppose I know.” - -She came to a stop in front of him with her arms akimbo. They stood -looking at one another, and Bobby winced as if he was going to cry. Her -face was grave and troubled, and then at the sight of his expression -her smile broke through. Her gravity vanished. She was a different -Christina Alberta. She was suddenly the gayest conceivable thing to -him, confident and impudent. - -“If you were to kiss me, Bobby, right here and now in Bushey Park, -would they lock us up?...” - -Most wonderful it was to Bobby to take her in his arms. A new -Christina Alberta was revealed to Bobby; Christina Alberta seen from a -distance of six inches or so, an amazingly beautiful Christina Alberta. -One might have thought she had never lived for anything but being loved -by Bobby. - -“You’re learning,” said Christina Alberta after a little while. “Now do -it all over again, Bobby. Nobody seems to be looking....” - - -§ 3 - -Neither Lambone nor Devizes had seemed in the least surprised at their -engagement. Indeed their attitude of gratified expectation was almost -embarrassing. The young couple had come down to Udimore with Devizes -and Miss Means under the ample protection of Miss Lambone almost as -though they had been appointed for each other from the beginning of -things. - -But at Udimore there were further surprises and perplexities for -Bobby. All day Saturday Christina Alberta seemed to be not so much -in love as in a thoroughly bad temper. She seemed far more concerned -by the fact that Devizes was going to marry Miss Means than by the -generous devotion that Bobby was prepared to lavish upon her. She was -inattentive to his various little manœuvres to get isolated with her. -The two couples played tennis after tea until it was time to dress for -dinner; she was badly out of practice and fundamentally unorthodox, and -Margaret played with a smoothness and sweetness that roused her to a -pitch of viciousness only too evident to Bobby’s fine perceptions. It -seemed to Bobby that Devizes also noted her annoyance, but Miss Means -was blissfully unobservant of anything in the world but Devizes. - -On Sunday morning Christina Alberta carried off Bobby through the -distant cheerfulness of church bells for a walk to Brede Castle. And -she announced to Bobby that she did not intend to marry him. - -Bobby protested. “You don’t love me?” - -“Haven’t I kissed you? Didn’t I hug you? Haven’t I ruffled your hair?” - -“Then why don’t you want to marry me?” - -“I do not want to marry anyone. I don’t love anybody. Except of course -you. But even you, I can’t marry. I want to be loved, Bobby, yes. But -not to be married.” - -“But why? Not the--the old reason?” - -“No. I took your word about that. But all the same I don’t want to -marry you, Bobby.... I think it’s because I don’t want to be bound up -with anyone’s life. I don’t want to be a wife. I want to be my free and -independent self. I’ve got to grow. That’s it, Bobby. I want to be free -to grow.” - -Bobby made protesting noises. - -“I don’t want some one seeing me grow all the time. You’d always be -looking at me, Bobby; I know you would.” - -It was useless of Bobby to say he wouldn’t. He would. - -“I didn’t know that things were going to take me like this until I -fixed to marry you. I wanted to marry you when I consented--honestly -I did. I wanted dreadfully then to get close to some one, as close as -possible, and to be kissed and told ‘There! There!’ and to keep there. -It was a comfort for me, Bobby. You are a comfort for me. I’d ache to -madness without you. But how close we come when we love, Bobby, and how -far away we are all the time! How can we know each other when we hardly -know ourselves? When we don’t _dare_ know ourselves? - -“You are such a dear, Bobby. You are so warm and kind that it seems -ungrateful not to give myself to you with both hands. But I just -can’t. I’m not a normal woman perhaps. Or something has happened to me -unawares. Perhaps life has cheated me out of something.... Oh, I don’t -know, Bobby. I want some one dreadfully; I want you dreadfully and I -don’t want you at all. I’d rather be dead than a female thing like -Margaret Means. If _that’s_ marrying----!” - -“But I thought,” said Bobby, “after all that’s happened----” - -“No.” - -“I’ll wait ten years for you,” said Bobby, “on the chance of your -altering your mind.” - -“You are the dearest comforter,” said Christina Alberta, and stopped -short.... - -And suddenly she had put her hands upon his shoulders and clung to him -and broken into a wild passion of weeping. - -“Wetting you instead of wedding you,” she sobbed and laughed. “Oh, my -poor Bobby! you dear lover!” - -She clung to him for a time. Then she detached herself and stood wiping -her eyes, the Christina Alberta he generally knew, except for the -traces of her tears. “If women can’t control their emotions better,” -she said, “they’ll have to go back to Harems. We can’t have it both -ways. But I _won’t_ marry you. There’s no man in the world I can marry. -I’m going to be a free and independent woman, Bobby. From now on.” - -“But I don’t understand!” said Bobby. - -“It’s not because I don’t want you to love me.” - -He was baffled. “_Bobby!_” she whispered, and seemed to glow. - -Bobby took her back into his arms and held her, and pressed his cheek -and ears against hers, and kissed her and kissed her again, and it -seemed to him to mark his own unworthiness that he should think at such -a time that there were no such wonderful kisses in the world as kisses -flavoured with salt tears. - -And yet she wasn’t going to marry him! She had snatched herself back -from him and nevertheless she was in his arms. - -He was enormously perplexed at what was happening, but it was quite -clear that the end of his engagement was not to be the end of his -love-making. Anyhow here was love. It was so manifestly the time for -love. High May ruled the world. About them there were hawthorn trees -white with blossom and great bushes of elder just breaking into flower. - - -§ 4 - -Bobby sat in the gloaming with his friends and thought of the things -that had happened to him that day, thought of Christina Alberta’s -salt tears and the incessant intriguing strangeness of her ways. He -was still immensely puzzled, but now in a large, restful, contented -fashion. Christina Alberta and he were not to marry it seemed; -nevertheless he had kissed her and embraced her, and he was free to sit -at her feet. For a time he was not even to humiliate himself by telling -these others he was not to marry her. He said nothing. His thoughts and -feelings were beyond words. Christina Alberta too was darkly silent. -Everyone indeed seemed preoccupied. Talk about the view and the stars -and the coming of the nightingales, and about migratory birds and -lighthouses rambled on for a time and died away. - -They were all too full for talking. The silence lengthened. He wondered -what would happen if nobody spoke any more. He thought of Christina -Alberta close behind him and he began to quiver in all his being. The -silence was becoming oppressive. He felt as though he could no longer -change his attitude. Nobody stirred. But Lambone saved the situation. - -“It is exactly six months ago to-night that Sargon died upstairs,” said -Lambone. He paused and seemed to answer an unspoken question. “We don’t -know when he died exactly. He just faded out in the night.” - -“I wish I could have known him,” said Margaret Means after quite a long -interval. - -Bobby’s thoughts came round to Sargon. That still young woman sitting -in the darkness behind him ceased to dominate his thoughts. He was -moved to speak, and had to cough to clear his throat. - -“I hate to think of his being burnt and scattered,” he said. - -“It’s not so disagreeable,” said Miss Lambone, “as to think of the body -all shut up in the coffin and decaying.” - -“Oh, don’t!” cried Bobby. “It’s death--any death, that I hate to think -of. Now when it is spring time, when the whole world is so full of -life, I remember all he was, the hopes he had, and they are scattered -and dispersed. Anyhow they are scattered and dispersed, they are not -boxed up and locked up and buried.... When I was here last he was like -a little boy who has just heard of the world. He was going to fly, -going to India and China, going to learn all about everything and then -do all sorts of splendid things. And there were the beastly bacteria at -work in his lungs and beating his strength down and none of it was ever -to happen.... When first I heard he was dead I could not believe it.” - -“_Is_ he dead?” said Paul Lambone. - -There was no reply to be made to that. - -Paul adjusted his shoulder-blades a little more comfortably against the -back of the small deep sofa on which he sat. “The more I think over -Sargon the less dead he seems to me, and the more important he becomes. -I don’t agree with you, Roothing. I don’t find anything futile in his -life. I think he was--symbolically--perfect. I have thought about him -endlessly.” - -“And talked,” said Devizes, “endlessly.” - -“And given you some very helpful ideas for your treatment. Don’t be -ungrateful. You think that Sargon is over. He has only just begun. You -are becoming too professional with success, Devizes. You begin to take -up cases and work them off and drop them out of your mind. You don’t go -on with them and learn. You don’t sit about and think about them as I -do. I continue to think about Sargon. I go on with him because he is -still a living being for me. I have got a new religion from him, the -religion of Sargonism. I declare him prophet of a new dispensation. -It is my latest new religion. There will always be new religions, and -the new religions will always be the only ones that matter. Religion -is a living thing, and what is alive must be continually dying and be -continually born again--differently but the same.” - -“You believe in immortality, Mr. Lambone,” said Miss Means. “I wish -that I could. But when I try to imagine it my wits fail me. Sometimes -one seems to _feel_ what it might be. On a night like this perhaps----” - -Her pretty clear voice died away in the stillness as the trail of a -falling star dies away. - -Paul, a large dark lump on the dim pale sofa, went on speaking. -“Immortality,” he said, “is a mystery. One can only speak of it in dark -metaphors. How can we believe that each of our individual commonplace -lives is to have an endless commonplace sequel? That is incredible -nonsense. Yet we go on living after death nevertheless. When we die we -are changed. All wise teachers have insisted upon that. As Roothing -said, we are not boxed up and buried and forgotten. Our real death is -an escape, and we escape and become--what did you say?--dispersed. -Immortal life is endless consequence. Our lives are like lines in a -great poem. It is an unfinished and yet it is a perfect poem. The line -begins and ends but it has to be there, and once it is there, it is -there eternally. Nothing could follow if it was not there. But every -star has not the same glory. Some lives, some lines, stand out as more -significant than the others. They open a new branch of the subject, -they start a new point of view, they express something fresh. They are -geniuses, they are prophets, they are major stars. Sargon was the last, -the latest of these prophets, and I am his Paul. Not for nothing was I -christened Paul.” - -“Paul of Tarsus,” said Devizes, “was a man of energy.” - -“There will always be minor differences in such parallels,” said -Lambone. - -“I will tell you my doctrine,” he said. - -He began to talk in that clear miniature voice of his, which was so -like a little mouse running out of the mountain of his person, of -Sargon and his struggles with his individuality, and of the struggles -in every man between his individual life and something greater that -is also in him. There was a streak of fantasy in what he was saying, -a touch of burlesque in his constant use of theological and religious -phrasing, and withal a profound sincerity. In every human being, he -declared, the little laundryman battled with the King of Kings. He -expanded and amplified his theme. Ever and again Devizes would cut into -the monologue and talk for a time, not so much to make objections as to -restate and amend and amplify. The others said little. Margaret Means -twice made soft sweet sounds suggestive of intellectual sensuousness, -and once Christina Alberta said “But--!” very loudly and then “Never -mind. Go on” and relapsed for a long time into a silence that could -be felt. Bobby sat still, sometimes listening intently and sometimes -with his mind spreading out like an uncared-for stream into a number of -parallel channels. The argument itself was interesting to follow, but -moving at the side of that was the question of the talker’s sincerity. -How much of all this stuff did Lambone mean? How much of what he said -was of a piece with the rest of his observant, self-indulgent life, his -life as a humorous comment on a universe that was profoundly absurd? - -How easily Lambone played with phrases and ideas for which men had -lived and died! How widely he had read and thought to bring so many -things together! He produced a great effect of erudition. The Golden -Bough he had at his fingers’ ends. He talked of the sacramental -mysteries of half a dozen cults, from Mithraism to ritual sacrifices, -of varying ideas of personality that had held and swayed human life -from Fiji to Yucatan. Now he was in pre-Christian Alexandria, and now -among the Chinese philosophers. The “Superior Person” of Confucius he -declared was merely an example of our way of translating all Chinese -phrases as ridiculously as possible; it meant really the Higher and -Greater Man, the Universal Man, in whom the inferior egotistical man -merged himself. It was the salvation of the Revivalist everywhere; it -was the Spiritual Man of Pauline Christianity. When the late Mr. Albert -Edward Preemby poured out all his little being into the personality of -Sargon, King of Kings, he was only doing over again what the saints -and mystics, the religious teachers and fanatics, have done throughout -the ages. He was just the Master under the Bo Tree translated into the -cockney of Woodford Wells. - -Presently Devizes was talking. Devizes was a great contrast to -Lambone. He talked a different language. He did not seem nearly so -clear and clever to Bobby as Lambone did, but he had an effect of -sincerity and solidity of conviction that Lambone lacked altogether. -His interventions made all that Lambone said seem like a wild and -picturesque parody of something that was otherwise inexpressible. Both -he and Lambone had an air of casting verbal nets for some truth that -still eluded them. And yet this truth so remotely and imperfectly -apprehended was for each of them the most important thing in life. - -“Stripped of its theological trappings,” Devizes said to Lambone, “your -new religion is simply a statement of this. That our race has reached, -and is now receding, from a maximum of _individuation_. That it turns -now towards synthesis and co-operation. It will move back towards what -you call Sargon, the great ruler, and it will swallow up individual -egotistical men in its common aims. As already scientific work swallows -them up. Or good administrative work. Or art. That is what you are -saying.” - -“Exactly,” said Paul Lambone. “If we _must_ talk your language, -Devizes, and not mine. Art, science, public service, creative work of -every sort, these are parts of what you, I suppose, would call the race -mind, parts of the race life. Every man who matters is a fresh thought, -a fresh idea. He is himself still, it is true, but his significance is -that he comes out of his past and out of his conditions and he flows on -to further men. This is the new realization that is changing all the -values in human life. It is happening everywhere. Even in the books and -reading of to-day you can see the thing happening. History now becomes -more important than biography. What made up the whole of life in the -romantic past; the love story, the treasure story, the career, getting -on, making a fortune, the personal deed and victory, the sacrifices for -an individual friend or love or leader; remains no longer the whole -of life and sometimes not even the leading interest in life. We are -passing into a new way of living, into a new sort of lives, into new -relationships. The world which seemed for a time not to be changing any -more is changing very swiftly ... in its mental substance.” - -“New sorts of people,” said Bobby softly, and went off from listening -to Lambone’s lucid little voice into a final recapitulation of the -puzzling things Christina Alberta had said and done that day. - - -§ 5 - -Bobby was recalled to the matter of the talk by a movement in the chair -behind him. - -Lambone’s smooth voice was explaining: “So that it does not matter so -much what we achieve as what we contribute. That cherished personal -life which men and women struggle to round off and make noble and -perfect, disappears from the scheme of things. What matters more and -more is the work one does. What matters less and less is our personal -romance and our personal honour. Or rather our honour will go out of us -into our work. Our love affairs, our devotions and private passions, -for example, will fall more and more definitely into a subordination -to our science or whatever our function is. Our romances and our fame -and honour will join our vices among the things we suppress. There was -a time when men lived for a noble tomb and in order to leave sweet and -great memories behind them; soon it will matter nothing to a man and -his work to know that he will probably die in a ditch--misunderstood. -So long as he gets the work done.” - -“With no last Judgment ever to vindicate him,” said Devizes. - -“That will not matter in the least to him.” - -“I agree. Some of us begin to feel like that even now.” - -“Even if one has done nothing worth doing,” said Paul Lambone, and in -his voice was that faint quality of the sigh of one who has crowned a -rather difficult and uncertain card castle, “even if Sargon had died -unrescued in his Asylum and all the world had thought him mad, all the -same he would have escaped, his imagination would have touched the -imagination of the greater life.” - -Came a pause of edification and then a sigh of satisfaction from Miss -Lambone. She never understood in the least what her brother was talking -about, but she adored him when he talked. Nobody she thought had ever -talked like him, or could possibly talk like him. His voice was so -clear and bright, like the best sort of print. Only sometimes you -wished you had spectacles. - -But now Miss Lambone was to receive a shock. Christina Alberta suddenly -came out of the silence in which she had been sitting. - -“I don’t believe in this,” said Christina Alberta out of the depths of -her chair. - -Bobby was beginning to know the voice of Christina Alberta very well; -and he knew now that she was terrified at having to talk, and at the -same time desperately resolved to get something said. He knew too that -she was gripping hard at the arms of her chair. He glanced at Devizes -and in that instant the lighthouse beam touched his face and Bobby -saw it very intent, watching Christina Alberta steadily and as if -forgetful of all other things. It was intent and tender and tenderly -apprehensive, grave and very pale in that white illumination. When the -light had passed away Bobby still seemed to see that face, but now -conversely it was a face of ebony. - -“I do not believe in _any_ of this,” said Christina Alberta. - -She paused with the effect of marshalling her argument. “It is -theology, I suppose,” she said. “Or mysticism. It is all an -intellectual game that men have played to comfort themselves. Men -rather than women. It makes no real difference. Tragedy _is_ tragedy, -failure _is_ failure, death is death.” - -“But is there ever complete failure?” asked Lambone. - -“Suppose,” said Christina Alberta, “suppose a man is thrown into prison -and misrepresented to all the world, suppose he is taken away presently -and made to dig his own grave, and shot at the edge of it and buried -and then lied about for a time and forgotten. It isn’t part of the race -that is murdered, it isn’t a wonderful thing that passes on; it is a -man who has been killed and made away with. Your mysticism is just an -attempt to dodge the desolation of that. It doesn’t. Such things have -happened. They happen to-day. In Russia. In America. Everywhere. Men -are just wiped out, body and soul, hope and will. That man and his -black personal universe are done with and over, and there is an end -to his business; he is beaten and wiped out, and all the clever talk -upon easy sofas in the warm twilight will not alter that one jot. It -is frustration. If I am frustrated I am frustrated, if I have desires -and dreams and they are defeated and die, I die. It is playing with -words to say I do not die or that they are changed and sublimated and -carried on into something better.” - -“My dear,” said Miss Lambone to Miss Means. “You are sure you are not -feeling cold?” Her voice conveyed a faint intimation that she would -cease to be acutely interested in the talk if this chit of a girl -intervened any further in the discussion, and that she would begin to -do things with wraps and shawls and break up the meeting. - -“I’m perfectly happy, dear,” Miss Means answered. “All this--! I wish -it could go on for ever.” - -But Christina Alberta disregarded Miss Lambone’s warning. She had -something to say and there was some one she wanted to say it to, not -too pointedly, not too plainly. - -“All this theology, this religion, the new religions that are only the -old ones painted over----” - -“Reborn,” said Paul. - -“Painted over. I don’t want them. But that is not what I want to say. -What I want to say is that you are wrong about my Daddy, you are quite -wrong about him. That I do know. Mr. Lambone has dressed him up to suit -his own philosophy. He had that philosophy long before he knew him. And -you talked my Daddy over and put Mr. Lambone’s ideas into him when he -was beaten and broken because they suited his case. They weren’t there -before. I know him and exactly how he thought. I was brought up on him. -He talked to me more than to anyone. And it is all nonsense to talk of -him--his exaltation, as being like the great soul coming like the tidal -sea into the pool of the little soul. It didn’t. When he said he was -Lord of the World he wanted to be Lord of the World. He didn’t want to -incorporate any other people at all--or be incorporated. He was just -as exclusively himself when he was Sargon as when he was Albert Edward -Preemby. More so.... And I believe that is how it is with all of us.” - -She went on rather hurriedly, for she knew there were forces there very -ready to silence her. - -“I want to be myself and nothing else. I want the world--for myself. -I want to be a goddess in the world. It does not matter that I am an -ugly girl with natural bad manners. It does not matter that it is -impossible. That is what I want. That is what I am made to want. One -may get moments anyhow. A moment of glory is better than none.... -I believe that sort of thing is what you all want really. You just -persuade yourselves you don’t. And you call that religion. I don’t -believe anyone has ever believed religion from the beginning. Buddhism, -Christianity, this fantastic Sargonism, this burlesque religion you -invent to make an evening’s talk, they are all consolations and -patchings-up--bandages and wooden legs. People have tried to believe in -such religions no doubt. Broken people. But because we cannot satisfy -the desires of our hearts--why should we cry ‘Sour grapes’ at them? - -“I don’t want to serve--anything or anybody. I may be heading for -frustration, the universe may be a system of frustration, but that -doesn’t alter the fact that this is how I feel about it. I may be -defeated; it may be certain that I shall be defeated--but as for -bringing a contrite heart out of the mess and starting again as a good -little part of something--I _don’t_ fink. Oh, I know I beat my hands -against a wall. It’s not my fault. Why don’t we take? Oh, why don’t we -dare?” - -Miss Lambone stirred and rustled. - -The darkness that was Devizes spoke to Christina Alberta, and Miss -Lambone became still. - -“We don’t take and we don’t dare,” he said, “we don’t defy laws and -customs because there are other things in our lives, _in_ us and not -outside us, that are more important to us. That is why. It pleases Paul -to dress up his view of these things in old mystical phrasing, but -what he says is really an unscientific way of putting psychological -fact. You think you are simple, but you are really complex. You are the -individual but you are the race also. That is your nature and mine and -everyone’s. The more our intelligence awakens the more we know that.” - -“But it is the difference that is distinctively me, and not the -general part. The race in me is no more to me than the ground I walk -on. I am Christina Alberta; I am not Woman or Mankind. As Christina -Alberta, I want and I want and I want. And when the door is slammed -upon my imaginations I cry out against it. Why pretend I give up a -thing because I can’t have it? Why make a glory of renunciation and -letting-go? I hate the idea of self-sacrifice. What is the good of -coming into the world as Christina Alberta just in order to sacrifice -being Christina Alberta? What is the good of being different if one is -not to live a different life?” - -Unexpectedly Miss Lambone intervened, “The life of a woman is one long -sacrifice,” she said. - -There was a pause. - -“But we have the vote now?” said Christina Alberta almost flippantly. -“Why is a woman’s life sacrifice?” - -“Think of the children we bear,” said Miss Lambone in a constrained -voice. - -“_Well!_” said Christina Alberta, and suppressed some scandalous remark. - -“The most astonishing thing about us,” she broke out again, after a -pause; “the most astonishing thing in the feminine make-up is that -hardly any of us _do_ seem to want children. A lot of us anyhow don’t. -Now that I am beginning to learn something about biology, I realize how -marvellous that is. As a race of creatures specialized for children, -we ought to be eaten up by the desire for children. As a matter of -fact most modern women will do anything to avoid having children. We -dread them. To me they seem like a swarm of hidden dwarfs, prepared to -come upon me and eat up my whole existence. It’s not simply I don’t -want them; I live in fear of them. Love we _may_ want. Many of us do. -Intensely. We want to love and be loved--to get close and near to -some one. It’s a delusion I suppose. One of Nature’s clumsy tricks. -It is all a delusion. He vanishes--he was never there. Under the old -conditions it availed; it got the children Nature wanted. But we -don’t think of children. We don’t want to think about them. There it -is! And anyway children do not take a woman out of her egotism; they -only extend and intensify it. I have known intelligent girls marry -and have children, and when the baby appeared their minds evaporated. -They became creatures of instinct, messing about with napkins. I could -scream at the thought of it. No, I am an egoist pure and simple. I am -Christina Alberta, and her only. I am not Sargon. I refuse altogether -to mix with that promiscuous anybody-nobody.” - -“After all that may only be a phase in your development,” said Devizes. - -“It is the only one I know.” - -“That is evident. But I assure you, Christina Alberta, that this revolt -and distress of yours is a phase. You are talking rebellion and egoism -and anarchism as a healthy baby screams to get breath into its lungs, -and escape from the stuffiness of old air. The baby doesn’t know why it -screams and no doubt finds some dim little grievance in its brain----” - -“Go on,” said Christina Alberta. “Chastise me and chastise me.” - -It seemed to Bobby that there were tears in her voice. - -“No, but you are so young, my dear,” said Devizes. - -My dear! - -“Not so young. Not so actually young,” cried Christina Alberta. - -“If I live to be eighty,” said Christina Alberta, “shall I ever be able -to feel more than I am feeling now? Why will you always treat me like a -child nowadays?” - -“Feeling isn’t the only measure,” said Devizes. “Even now, to-night, -you are talking below your beliefs. You are not an egoistic -adventurer. You take sides on a score of matters. You insist you are a -Communist for example.” - -“Oh! just to smash up things,” said Christina Alberta. “Just to smash -up everything.” - -“No. You say that to-night, but you have told me differently before. -You have a care for the world. You want to help forward the common -interest. You develop a passion for scientific truth. Well--there’s no -way of fencing in your individuality from other minds in science or in -public affairs. You’re a part by necessity; you can’t be a complete -whole. You find already you can’t keep away from these things. They -will take you more and more, whether you like it or not, because it is -the spirit of the time. That is what is happening to us all. You can’t -escape. Our work, our part, is the first thing in our lives. To that, -pride must bow now and passion and romance. We have to slam and lock -and bar the door against all personal passion that might wreck our -work. Bar it and put it out of your mind. As a secondary thing. Work. -Give the greater things a chance to keep you.” - -“That’s all very well.” - -“It’s everything.” - -“Why _should_ they keep me?” came from Christina Alberta, sullenly and -resolutely. - -“I know that this is your faith,” she said. “You told me all about it. -You’ve always told me about it.” Bobby’s quick ear detected a change in -her voice “Do you remember our first talk together? Do you remember our -talk in Lonsdale Mews? When we dined together at that Italian place? -That night. Just after we had found each other.” - -Found each other? - -“But I did not know then that your faith meant all the suppressions and -sacrifices and discretions it seems to do. I thought it was something -robust and bold. I did not understand its--qualifications. But since -then we have argued about these things and argued. That day at Kew -Gardens. That day when you took me for that walk over the downs to -Shere. We have threshed things out. Why should we argue again? I am -giving in--what can I do but give in?--and soon I will be a Sargonite -with you and Paul. But not this summer. Not now. This night--This -wonderful first night of summer. To-night I rebel against any -renunciation, any fobbing-off of individuals with second-best things. -I am going to be impossible and absurd. For the last time. I want the -world from the stars to the bottom of the sea for myself, for my own -hungry self. And all between. The precious things between. The love.... -_There!_” - -Vague questions appeared and vanished again on the screen of Bobby’s -mind. What had Christina Alberta renounced? What was she renouncing? -What was anyone renouncing? And had his ears cheated him, or had -Devizes called her, “my dear”? In front of Margaret Means and in face -of all the circumstances of the case it seemed to Bobby that Devizes -was the last person who ought to call Christina Alberta “my dear.” -And what was this about “fobbing-off”? Was this really a shameless -plainness of speech, an atrocious confession, or something that he -misunderstood? - -Miss Lambone stirred uneasily. - -It was as if an evil spirit possessed Christina Alberta. “Oh, _damn_ -renunciation!” she said with bitter gusto. - -They seemed to be sitting for some moments in a profound silence, and -then the nightingale became very audible. - - -§ 6 - -“I think,” said Miss Lambone in the silence, “that it is getting just a -_leetle_ chilly.” - -“It is so beautiful here,” said Miss Means, who was warm in Miss -Lambone’s shawl. “Perfectly beautiful. - -“How you can talk of frustration--!” she added, and left her sentence -incomplete. - -“I think,” said Miss Lambone, “that I shall go in and light the -candles. It is too wonderful a night for the electric lights, far too -wonderful. We will just light the candles and the fire. And perhaps you -will play us something beautiful. These are such marvellous fire-places -here that they blaze up at once. I don’t know if you have noticed -them--a new sort. The fire is all on the hearth--no draught below, but -the shape of the back draws it up. - -“I love a wood fire,” said Miss Lambone, and sighed and rose slowly and -voluminously. - - -§ 7 - -Two days later Bobby came into one of the little studies on the garden -side of Paul Lambone’s house. Paul had found out that Bobby wanted a -few days of uninterrupted thought in which to begin his novel, and had -asked him to stay on after the other guests had returned to London. -It was a perfect room for a writer of Bobby’s temperament; it had a -low writing-table close to the sill of the casemented window, and -on the sill was a silver bowl of forget-me-nots and white tulips. A -little glass-paned door released one into the garden without one’s -having to go back through the house. The writing-table had everything -a fastidious writer could desire, a pleasant paper-rack and wafers, -and real quill pens, and plenty of elbow room. The chair he sat in was -an arm-chair, immensely comfortable but not too luxurious; no hint -of repose in it but only a completely loyal support for a working -occupant. A garden path ran up hill from the window, a garden path -skirted by wonderful clusters of pansies. On either side of the pansies -were rose bushes, and though not a rosebud was showing, yet the fresh -green leaves, tinged with ruddy brown, were very exquisite in the -light. - -He stood looking up the path for a time and then sat down and drew the -writing-pad towards him. He took one of those delightful quills, tested -the delicious flexibility of its points, dipped it in the ink and wrote -in his very neat and beautiful handwriting: - - UPS AND DOWNS - - _A Pedestrian Novel_ - - BY ROBERT ROOTHING - - CHAPTER THE FIRST - - WHICH INTRODUCES OUR HERO - -He wrote this very readily because it was very familiar to him. From -first to last he had written it on fair fresh sheets of paper perhaps -half a dozen times. - -Then he stopped short and sat quite still with his head on one side. -Then very neatly he corrected “which introduces” into “in which we -introduce.” - -It was nearly two years now since he had first begun his novel in -this fashion, and he was still quite uncertain about the details -of his hero’s introduction. His original intention about the story -still floated pleasantly in the sky of his mind; a promise of a happy -succession of fine, various and delightful adventures, told easily -and good-humouredly; the fortunes of a kindly, unpretending, not too -brave but brave enough young man, on his way through the world, to live -happily afterwards with a delicious young woman. “Picaresque” was the -magic word. None of these adventures had as yet assumed a concrete form -in his mind. He felt they would come to him definitely enough one day. -If one sat and mused one half saw them, and that was assurance enough -for him. And so having rewritten his title page neatly and prettily, he -fell into a day-dream and was presently thinking round and about his -Christina Alberta as a good hero should. - -Bobby was always being puzzled by Christina Alberta, always coming -upon something that seemed to clear up everything, and then being -puzzled again. But now it seemed to him that he really did know the -last fact of importance that was to be known about her. Overnight Paul -Lambone had described how he had taken her to Devizes to get advice, -and how they had blundered upon the reality of her parentage. He told -his story well as a story-writer should; he gave it dramatic point. -Evidently he told the tale of set intention, because it was time Bobby -knew. Lambone was aware of Christina Alberta’s engagement. He did not -know and nobody but Bobby knew that she never intended to be married. -But this, it seemed to Bobby, made the understanding of her situation -possible; explained that watchful tenderness of Devizes’ face suddenly -betrayed by the light of his inadvertent “my dear”; explained her -position as though she belonged to him and Paul Lambone instead of -being a rather unaccountable visitor; excused her vehement jealousy of -Margaret Means, because evidently she had become violently possessive -of her father, and had counted perhaps upon recognition and being very -much with him. No doubt Margaret Means stood in the way of that. It -was natural for Christina Alberta to want to be with Devizes and work -with him, and natural for her to suspect and anticipate and resent an -intervening personality. Apart from the magic of kinship it was natural -that two such subtle and abundant personalities should attract each -other greatly. That Devizes should have decided quite abruptly to marry -Margaret Means did not present any difficulties to Bobby; he was not -thinking very closely about Devizes. Margaret Means was pretty enough -for anyone to want to marry her. There are times, as Bobby knew, when -that sweet prettiness can stab one like an arrow. It had evidently -stabbed and won Devizes. And almost the only thing that gave Bobby -a second thought, but no more than a second thought, was Christina -Alberta’s fluctuation of purpose, why she should have consented to -marry him and then have changed her mind so quickly and definitely and -yet have retained him as a lover. - -That resolution not to marry seemed after all just a part of her -immense modernity. Because of all this group of “new people” in which -he found her, she seemed to Bobby to be in every way the newest. -She was the boldest enterprise in living he had ever met. Her flare -of hungry rebel individuality fascinated him. Where in this world -was she going? Would she win out to this free personal life she -desired or would she fail to find an objective of work and come upon -disappointment and solitude like some creature that has strayed? The -world had terrified Bobby in his own person greatly; it terrified him -still more when he thought of this valiant little figure going out to -challenge it. - -Bobby was naturally, inherently, afraid; his instinct was for security, -protection, kindliness and help. He clung to his “Aunt Suzannah” job -for safety. He didn’t believe Christina Alberta knew one tenth of the -dangers she ran of insult, defeat, humiliation, neglect, repulse, -fatigue and lonely distress. His imagination presented a tormenting -picture of her away there in dark, confused, immense and blundering -London, as an excessively fragile figure, light on its feet, shock-head -erect, arms akimbo, unaware of monstrous ambushed dangers. Now that -he began to understand her, he began to understand a great number of -bright-eyed, adventurous, difficult young women he had met in the last -few years, and he had his first dim realization of the meaning of the -deep wide stir among womankind that had won them votes and a score of -unprecedented freedoms. - -Many of these younger women were doing their work and holding their -own exactly like men. They were painting and drawing like men, writing -criticism like men, writing plays and novels like men, leading -movements, doing scientific work, playing a part in politics. Like -men? On reflection--not exactly. No. They still kept different. But -they didn’t do their things in any fashion one could call womanly. -Without adding strange new meanings to “womanly.” The novels they were -writing interested him immensely. People like Stella Benson wrote -books like--anybody; you could not tell from her work whether she was -a man or a woman. All that again was new. George Eliot perhaps was a -precursor. Perhaps. The former sort of women’s writings, when they -were not “pretty me” books, were “kindly auntie” books; you heard the -petticoats swish in every page. - -Sexless, these new ones? Bobby weighed the word. The earlier generation -of women who wanted to be emancipated suppressed sex, suppressed it so -fiercely that its negative presence became the dominant factor in their -lives. They ceased to be positive woman; they became fantastically -negative woman. But this newer multitude was not so much repressing as -forgetting their sex, making little of it. Christina Alberta had in -a way made nothing of her sex, not by struggling against it, but by -making it cheap for herself as a man makes it cheap for himself--so -that it was a thing of mere intermittent moods and impulses for -her--and she could go on to other things. - -Going on to other things. His imagination recurred to that little -figure resolved to conquer the world for itself in defiance of every -tradition. - -There was a strong urgency in him to start off to London in pursuit -of her, to hover about her, intervene, protect her and carry her off -to security. He knew she wouldn’t permit that sort of thing to happen -anyhow. He’d have to be just a friend and companion to her, be at hand -for her, and if she did encounter some disaster, stand by her. - -It was a queer thing that he should want to stand by this unsexed -young woman. It was just what one would not expect; it was part, -perhaps, of the immense biological changes of the time. In the past -the species had needed half the race specialized for child-bearing and -child-rearing; now plainly it didn’t. The tremendous and worshipful -dignity of wife and mother was not for all women any longer. That would -remain for a certain sort of them to take up if they would. But a vast -multitude of women were born now to miss that. Some would become pretty -nuisances who would presently cease to be pretty, parasites on love and -the respect for motherhood; shams, simulacra. Others would break away -to a real individual life--a third sex. Perhaps in the new world there -would cease to be two sexes only; there would be recognized varieties -and subdivisions. So Bobby speculated. For just as there were women who -did not want to bear children, so there were men who did not want to -lord it over wife and children. - -They would want to love all the same. Every individual of a social -species needed love; to fail in that need was to escape out of social -life to lonely futility. “Mutual comfort,” Bobby quoted. In his past -Bobby had dreamt of the love of children. Even now he remembered as -a fact that he had dreamt particularly of a little girl of his own -that he could protect and explore. But now the thought and interest of -Christina Alberta had blotted that out. It was extraordinary to him -to perceive how possessed he was by her. He could endure no prospect -of life just now unless it was to include Christina Alberta as its -principal fact. But he’d be no use to her unless she respected him. -He couldn’t hope to stand subordinate to her, any more than he could -hope to be her master. In the latter case she’d rebel; in the former, -she’d despise. They would have to stand side by side. And since she was -clever, able and resolved to work hard and distinguish herself, he must -word hard and also distinguish himself too. He had to be her equal and -remain and keep himself her equal.... - -That, in fact, was why he was going to write a great novel--not just a -novel but a great one. - -He looked again at the neatly written page. “Ups and Downs,” he read. -“A Pedestrian Novel.” - -It dawned upon him that there was something profoundly wrong about that. - -It was to have been a story of wandering about in the world that is; -the story of the happy adventures of a well tempered mind in a well -understood scheme of things. But Bobby was beginning to realize that -there is not, and there never has been, a world that is; there is -only a world that has been and a world that is to be. “New people,” -whispered Bobby, and dipped a quill in the ink and made a border of -dots round his title. Then suddenly he crossed out those three words -“Ups and Downs” and wrote instead, “New Country.” - -“That might be the title of any novel that matters,” said Bobby. - -He mused deeply. Then he altered the sub-title to “The History of an -Explorer.” - -He scratched out “Explorer.” - -“Involuntary traveller,” said Bobby. - -Finally he put back “A Pedestrian Novel” as his sub-title.... - -He became aware of an intermittent dull tapping, and following the -sound discovered a thrush trying to break up a snail on the gravel -path. But the gravel path was too fine and soft to give a firm anvil -for the beating. “The silly bird ought to find a brick or a potsherd,” -said Bobby and reflected. “I suppose all the flower-pots are shut up in -the shed.... - -“I don’t like to see that bird wasting the morning and being -disappointed.... - -“It wouldn’t take a minute....” - -He got up, let himself out by the little glass door beside the window -and went to find a brick. Presently he returned with it. - -But he did not go back into the study because while he had been -looking for the brick, he had seen a young blackbird which had got -under the strawberry netting, and was evidently scared out of its -silly wits. So he went back to see about the blackbird. The minutes -passed and he did not reappear. Perhaps he had found some other -fellow-creature in trouble. - -Presently a little breeze blew into the study through the open glass -door, and lifted the sheet of paper which was to introduce our hero, -and wafted it softly and suggestively on to the unlit wood fire upon -the hearth. There it lay for a long time. - - - - -TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES: - - - Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_. - - Superscripted characters are preceded by a carat character: n^{th}. - - Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. - - Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. - - Archaic or variant spelling has been retained. - - No attempt has been made to regularize dialect. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTINA ALBERTA'S -FATHER *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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Wells—A Project Gutenberg eBook - </title> - <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> - <style> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; - margin-right: 10%; -} - - h1,h2,h3,h4 { - text-align: center; - clear: both; -} - -p { - margin-top: .51em; - text-align: justify; - margin-bottom: .49em; -} - -hr { - width: 33%; - margin-top: 2em; - margin-bottom: 2em; - margin-left: 33.5%; - margin-right: 33.5%; - clear: both; -} - -hr.tb {width: 45%; margin-left: 27.5%; margin-right: 27.5%;} -hr.tiny {width: 10%; margin-left: 45%; margin-right: 45%;} -hr.chap {width: 65%; margin-left: 17.5%; margin-right: 17.5%;} -@media print { hr.chap {display: none; visibility: hidden;} } - -div.chapter {page-break-before: always;} -h2.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} -h3.nobreak {page-break-before: avoid;} - -table { - margin-left: auto; - margin-right: auto; -} - -p.drop-cap { - text-indent: -0.35em; -} -p.drop-cap2 { - text-indent: -0.75em; -} -p.drop-cap:first-letter, p.drop-cap2:first-letter -{ - float: left; - margin: 0em 0.15em 0em 0em; - font-size: 250%; - line-height:0.85em; - text-indent: 0em; -} -.x-ebookmaker p.drop-cap, .x-ebookmaker p.drop-cap2 { - text-indent: 0em; -} -.x-ebookmaker p.drop-cap:first-letter, .x-ebookmaker p.drop-cap2:first-letter -{ - float: none; - margin: 0; - font-size: 100%; -} - -.indentright {margin-right: 5em;} - -th {font-size: 125%} - -.tdr {text-align: right;} -.tdc {text-align: center;} - -.pagenum { - position: absolute; - left: 92%; - font-size: smaller; - text-align: right; - font-style: normal; - font-weight: normal; - font-variant: normal; - text-indent: 0; -} - -.blockquot2 { - margin-left: 5%; - margin-right: 5%; -} - -.center {text-align: center;} - -.right {text-align: right;} - -.smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} - -.allsmcap {font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;} - -.ph1 {text-align: center; font-size: large; font-weight: bold;} -.ph2 {text-align: center; font-size: xx-large; font-weight: bold;} - -div.titlepage {text-align: center; page-break-before: always; page-break-after: always;} -div.titlepage p {text-align: center; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: 2em;} - -.xxlarge {font-size: 175%;} - -.large {font-size: 125%;} - -.x-ebookmaker .hide {display: none; visibility: hidden;} - -.figcenter { - margin: auto; - text-align: center; - page-break-inside: avoid; - max-width: 100%; -} - -.antiqua { - font-family: Blackletter, Fraktur, Textur, "Old English Text MT", "Olde English Mt", "Olde English", Gothic, serif, sans-serif;} - -.poetry-container {text-align: center;} -.poetry {display: inline-block; text-align: left; margin-left: 2em;} -.poetry .verse {text-indent: -2.5em; padding-left: 3em;} -.poetry .indent2 {text-indent: 2.5em;} -.poetry .first {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;} -.poetry .center {text-align: center;} -@media print { .poetry {display: block;} } -.x-ebookmaker .poetry {display: block;} - -.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; - color: black; - font-size:smaller; - margin-left: 17.5%; - margin-right: 17.5%; - padding: 1em; - margin-bottom: 1em; - font-family:sans-serif, serif; } - -</style> -</head> -<body> -<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Christina Alberta's father, by H. G. Wells</p> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Christina Alberta's father</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: H. G. Wells</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: November 23, 2022 [eBook #69410]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTINA ALBERTA'S FATHER ***</div> - -<div class="figcenter hide"><img src="images/coversmall.jpg" width="450" alt=""></div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h1>CHRISTINA ALBERTA’S FATHER</h1> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<p><span class="xxlarge">M</span><span class="allsmcap">R. WELLS</span> has also written the following novels:</p> - -<div class="blockquot2"> -<p>THE WHEELS OF CHANCE.<br> -LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM.<br> -KIPPS.<br> -TONO-BUNGAY.<br> -ANN VERONICA.<br> -MR. POLLY.<br> -THE NEW MACHIAVELLI.<br> -MARRIAGE.<br> -THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS.<br> -THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN.<br> -BEALBY.<br> -THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT.<br> -MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH.<br> -THE SOUL OF A BISHOP.<br> -JOAN AND PETER.<br> -THE UNDYING FIRE.<br> -THE SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART.</p> -</div> - -<p>The following Fantastic and Imaginative Romances:</p> - -<div class="blockquot2"> - -<p>THE TIME MACHINE.<br> -THE WONDERFUL VISIT.<br> -THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU.<br> -THE INVISIBLE MAN.<br> -THE WAR OF THE WORLDS.<br> -THE SLEEPER AWAKES.<br> -THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON.<br> -THE SEA LADY.<br> -THE FOOD OF THE GODS.<br> -IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET.<br> -THE WAR IN THE AIR.<br> -THE WORLD SET FREE.<br> -MEN LIKE GODS.<br> -THE DREAM.</p> -</div> - -<p>Numerous Short Stories collected under the following Titles:</p> - -<div class="blockquot2"> - -<p>THE STOLEN BACILLUS.<br> -THE PLATTNER STORY.<br> -TALES OF SPACE AND TIME.<br> -TWELVE STORIES AND A DREAM.</p> -</div> -<p>The same Short Stories will also be found in three volumes:</p> - -<div class="blockquot2"> - -<p>TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED.<br> -TALES OF WONDER.<br> -TALES OF LIFE AND ADVENTURE.</p> -</div> - -<p>A Series of Books on Social, Religious, and Political Questions:</p> - -<div class="blockquot2"> -<p>ANTICIPATIONS (1900).<br> -A MODERN UTOPIA.<br> -THE FUTURE IN AMERICA.<br> -NEW WORLDS FOR OLD.<br> -FIRST AND LAST THINGS.<br> -GOD THE INVISIBLE KING.<br> -THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY.<br> -RUSSIA IN THE SHADOWS.<br> -THE SALVAGING OF CIVILIZATION.<br> -WASHINGTON AND THE RIDDLE OF PEACE.<br> -A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD.<br> -THE STORY OF A GREAT SCHOOLMASTER.<br> -A YEAR OF PROPHESYING.</p> -</div> - -<p>And Two Little Books about Children’s Play, called:</p> - -<div class="blockquot2"> -<p>FLOOR GAMES AND LITTLE WARS.</p> -</div> - -<p class="center"><i>A uniform Atlantic Edition of Mr. Wells’ works is in course of -publication.</i></p> -</div></div></div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> -<div class="chapter"> - -<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_title.jpg" alt=""></div> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="titlepage"> -<p><span class="xxlarge">CHRISTINA ALBERTA’S<br> -FATHER</span></p> - -<p>BY<br> -<span class="large">H. G. WELLS</span></p> - -<p><span class="antiqua">New York</span><br> -THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br> -1925<br> -<i>All rights reserved</i></p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1925,<br> -By</span> H. G. WELLS.</p> - -<hr class="tiny"> - -<p class="center">Set up and electrotyped.<br> -Published September, 1925.<br> -Reprinted September 22, 1925.<br> -Reprinted November, 1925.<br> -<br> -<br> -PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY<br> -THE CORNWALL PRESS</p> -</div> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>CONTENTS</i></h2> -</div> - -<table> - -<tr><th colspan="2"><a href="#Page_9">BOOK THE FIRST</a></th></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2"><i>The Coming of Sargon, King of Kings</i></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdr" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE FIRST</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>THE EARLY LIFE OF MR. PREEMBY</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_11"> 11</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE SECOND</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>CHRISTINA ALBERTA</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_28"> 28</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE THIRD</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>IN LONSDALE MEWS</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_50"> 50</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE FOURTH</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>THE PETUNIA BOARDING HOUSE</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_85"> 85</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE FIFTH</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>THE SCALES FALL FROM MR. PREEMBY’S EYES</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_114"> 114</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE SIXTH</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>CHRISTINA ALBERTA CONSULTS A WISE MAN</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_132"> 132</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td colspan="2"> </td></tr> - -<tr><th colspan="2"><a href="#Page_161">BOOK THE SECOND</a></th></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2"><i>The World Rejects Sargon, King of Kings</i> - -<tr><td colspan="2"> </td></tr> -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE FIRST</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>INCOGNITO</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_163"> 163</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE SECOND<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span></td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>THE CALLING OF THE DISCIPLES</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_195"> 195</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE THIRD</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>THE JOURNEY OF SARGON UNDERNEATH THE WORLD</small>      </td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_218"> 218</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td colspan="2"> </td></tr> - -<tr><th colspan="2"><a href="#Page_243">BOOK THE THIRD</a></th></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2"><i>The Resurrection of Sargon, King of Kings</i> - -<tr><td colspan="2"> </td></tr> -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE FIRST</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>CHRISTINA ALBERTA IN SEARCH OF A FATHER</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_245"> 245</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE SECOND</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>HOW BOBBY STOLE A LUNATIC</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_300"> 300</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE THIRD</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>THE LAST PHASE</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_343"> 343</a></td></tr> - -<tr><td class="tdc" colspan="2">CHAPTER THE FOURTH</td></tr> - -<tr><td><small>MAY AT UDIMORE</small></td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_369"> 369</a></td></tr> -</table> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="ph2">CHRISTINA ALBERTA’S FATHER</p> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span></p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span> -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>BOOK THE FIRST</i><br> -<br> -THE COMING OF SARGON, KING<br> -OF KINGS</h2> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE FIRST<br> - -<i>The Early Life of Mr. Preemby</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">T<small>HIS</small> is the story of a certain Mr. Preemby, a retired -laundryman and widower, who abandoned his active -interest in the Limpid Stream Laundry, in the parish of -Saint Simon Unawares, near Woodford Wells, upon the -death of his wife in the year of grace 1920. Some very -remarkable experiences came to him. The story is essentially -a contemporary story: it is a story of London in the -age of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, broadcasting, and the first -Labour peers. The historical element in it is insignificant -and partly erroneous, and the future, though implicitly -present, is substantially ignored.</p> - -<p>Since washing in London, like the milk trade and baking -and the linen drapery and various other branches of commerce, -is something rather specialized and hereditary and -a little difficult towards outsiders, it is necessary to explain -that Mr. Preemby was not a laundryman born. He had -little of the spirit and go of a true London laundryman. -He married into laundrying. He met a Miss Hossett at -Sheringham in 1899, an heiress and a young lady of great -decision of character; he wooed and won her and married -her, as you will be told, almost without realizing what he -was doing. The Hossetts are big people in the laundry -world, and the Limpid Stream concern, which presently -fell into the capable hands of Mrs. Preemby, was only one<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span> -of a series of related and sympathetic businesses in the -north, north-east and south-west districts of London.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby, as Miss Hossett’s family came to recognize -quite frankly and explicitly at a very early stage, derived -from a less practical strain than his wife. His father had -been an artist of considerable charm and unpunctuality, a -photographic artist, who resided at Sheringham and made -what were called in the eighteen-eighties, “gem” photographs -of the summer visitors to that place. In the -eighteen-eighties he was a well-known Sheringham figure, -dark and handsome and sometimes a little unkempt, wearing -a brown velvet jacket and a large grey soft felt hat. He -would fall into conversation with the visitors upon the -beach, and a certain air of distinction about him would -bring a sufficient proportion to his studio to maintain him. -His wife, our Mr. Preemby’s mother, was a patient, underdeveloped -personality, the daughter of a farmer near Diss. -When presently Mr. Preemby senior passed out of his -son’s life—he became romantically entangled with a small -variety entertainment in the summer of 1887 and vanished -away with it in the autumn with as little fuss as possible, -never to return to Sheringham—Mrs. Preemby senior -became the working partner in a small lodging-house and -died in a year or so’s time, leaving her furniture, her -interest in the lodging-house and her only son to her -cousin and partner, Mrs. Witcherly.</p> - -<p>Young Albert Edward Preemby was then a good-looking, -slender youth of sixteen, with his father’s curliness and -his mother’s fair hair and eyes of horizon blue, dreamy and -indisposed for regular employment. Even as a child he -had been given to reverie; at school he would sit with sums -or book neglected before him, looking beyond them at unknown -things; his early experiences in business were disappointing -by reason of this abstraction. After a number -of unsuccessful attempts to exploit his gifts at some favourable -point in the complex machinery of our civilization, he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span> -came to rest for several years in the office of a house-agent -and coal-merchant in Norwich to whom his mother was -distantly related.</p> - -<p>Some ancient, remembered, sentimental tie helped -Albert Edward to this appointment and shielded any imperfections -in his performance from too urgent a criticism. -He did much better at it than anyone could have expected. -The calling of a house-agent differs from most other callings -in the fact that the necessary driving energy is supplied -entirely by the clientele, and there was something -about the letting of the larger houses that touched the -dormant imagination of young Preemby. He revealed a -natural gift for attractive description and was duly entrusted -with the work of collecting particulars from prospective -lessors. He had a quite useful hopefulness. And -even the coal proved unexpectedly interesting so soon as -he found that none of it had to be carried about by him. -He could never believe that all the golden scales one finds -in it were pyrites. He cherished a secret dream of a great -commercial enterprise to work cinder heaps for residual -gold. He told no one of this project, he took no steps to -realize it, but it warmed his daily routines with its promise -of release and wealth. And when things were slack in the -office in the early afternoon and he was left in charge, he -would go and sit on the coal counter and pick out the coal -samples for the little trays and turn them over and over -and view them from various angles and weigh them in his -hand and lapse into the most splendid visions.</p> - -<p>And if inquirers after houses came in, he would receive -them with a manner almost regal.</p> - -<p>In Norwich he became a member of the Y.M.C.A., but -he was interested in its literary rather than its religious -side, and he attended any political debates available. He -never spoke in these debates, but he sat at the back -reflecting that politicians are, after all, no more than puppets -in the hands of the silent rich men who sit behind the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span> -scenes. It was in Norwich, too, that he was able to buy his -first tailor-made suit, of a most becoming grey. When he -went to stay with Mrs. Witcherly at Sheringham for his -summer holiday of a fortnight, she was delighted by the -improvement in his appearance and much impressed by the -active hopefulness that had replaced his former lethargy. -Upon the sea front in the afternoon in his grey suit, to -anyone who did not know about him, he might have been -almost any sort of prosperous summer visitor.</p> - -<p>It seems a yesterday, and yet it seems ages ago, that our -plump and short Mr. Preemby was that small blonde young -man twirling his stick and glancing furtively but desirously -at the lady bathers in their vast petticoated bathing-dresses -and oilskin caps, as he strolled along the Sheringham -front. That was in the days when motor cars were -still rather a joke, a smell, and a noise and wayside repairs, -and flying was understood to be impossible. Queen -Victoria had had her Diamond Jubilee and nobody thought -Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, would ever survive to be -King. The War in South Africa was being arranged for -that summer, to last six months and employ forty thousand -men. And it was on the third day of his grey suit holiday -at Sheringham that Mr. Preemby was run into by his future -wife, Miss Hossett, riding on a bicycle, and thrown against -and almost run over by her friend Miss Meeta Pinkey.</p> - -<p>Because, incredible as it may seem to the modern reader, -people did succeed in those distant nineties, before the -coming of the more suitable automobile, in knocking down -and running over other people with the sluggish apparatus, -bicycles, horse-drawn vehicles and so forth, then available.</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>Miss Meeta Pinkey was an emotional blonde girl, and she -fell off her machine gracefully and naturally into Mr.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span> -Preemby’s arms as he was hurled against her. It would -seem to have been the original intention of Destiny to have -made this the beginning of a permanent relationship, but -in this matter Destiny had reckoned without Miss Hossett. -Miss Meeta Pinkey was as ripe for love just then as dry -gunpowder is for a bang, and she was already deeply in -love with Mr. Preemby before she had been replaced -securely on her feet. She stood flushed and round-eyed -and breathless, and Mr. Preemby looked quite manly and -handsome after picking up her bicycle with an air of -rescue.</p> - -<p>Miss Hossett, after butting against Mr. Preemby, had -swerved, dismounted and stood now prepared for a dispute. -The collision had further loosened the already loose -handlebar of the entirely untrustworthy hired machine she -had been riding. It was this looseness had caused the accident. -Her attention seemed divided equally between this -and the possible grievance of Mr. Preemby. “I rang my -bell,” she said.</p> - -<p>She was flushed and erect. She was a round-faced girl -with a long, thin neck, a good bright complexion, glasses -on her thin nose and a resolute thin-lipped mouth.</p> - -<p>“I did all I could to avoid you,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Awkward of me,” said Mr. Preemby disarmingly. “I -was lost in a day-dream.”</p> - -<p>“You aren’t hurt—?” asked Meeta.</p> - -<p>“Startled,” said Mr. Preemby, “especially where the -wheel got me. This place is full of corners.”</p> - -<p>“I’d’ve been over,” said Meeta, “if you hadn’t caught -me.”</p> - -<p>Miss Hossett was reassured about any possible conflict -with Mr. Preemby. Evidently he was going to be quite -nice about the accident. “This handlebar was as loose as -could be,” she said. “Look at it! You can twist it about -like on a swivel. They ought to be punished for letting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span> -out such machines. Some of these days one of ’em’ll get -let in for Damages. Then they’ll be a bit more careful. -Scandalous I call it.”</p> - -<p>“You can’t ride it at all now,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“No,” she agreed. “Have to take it back to them.”</p> - -<p>It seemed only right and proper for Mr. Preemby to -wheel the machine for her back through the town to the -hiring place, where Miss Hossett reproved the hirer, refused -to pay anything, and secured the return of her -deposit in a few well-chosen words. Miss Pinkey paid the -hire of her bicycle for a First Hour. It seemed natural -after that for the little party of three to keep together. -They kept together with a faint sense of adventure, and -Mr. Preemby behaved as nothing less than a normal lodger -at Miss Witcherly’s establishment and summer visitor to -the seaside. His new-found friends were Londoners, and -he referred himself to Norwich and the management of -house property. He was quite amusing about Sheringham. -He said it was “a dear little backward-forward -place,” that it was a real treat to come to for a breath of -sea air.</p> - -<p>“I don’t like regular smart places,” said Mr. Preemby. -“I’m too absent-minded.”</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>In after years Mr. Preemby would often try to recall the -various stages that led to his marrying Miss Hossett, but -there was always a vague sense that he missed out something, -though he knew not what it was nor where it ought -to have come in.</p> - -<p>At first things did not look in the least like his marrying -Miss Hossett. Indeed they did not look like his marrying -anyone, and if the word marriage had been whispered in -his ears as the possible consequence of this encounter he -would have been terrified. He perceived that he was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span> -acceptable company to these girls, but it seemed to him -that it was Meeta who formed the link between them and -himself. A fourth person presently joined their company -who answered to the name of Wilfred, and it seemed to -Mr. Preemby that the air of mutual proprietorship between -Wilfred and Miss Hossett was unchallengeable.</p> - -<p>The young people wandered in a little party along the -sea front until the sea front came to an end, and there they -found a sheltered and comparatively secluded niche in the -brow of the low cliffs and gave themselves up to the -delights of Spooning; and it was Meeta who Spooned with -Mr. Preemby that afternoon and Wilfred who Spooned -with Miss Hossett. Across the gulf of a quarter of a century -the memory of Mr. Preemby was still certain that -this was so.</p> - -<p>The fashions of life change from age to age. Knowledge -has spread and refinement increased; and a generation of -young people, more restrained, more sophisticated, or more -decisive than their predecessors has taken possession of -the world. This Spooning was an artless, clumsy dalliance -in great favour in those vanished days, a dalliance that was -kept within the bounds of strict decorum—if ever that -became necessary—by cries of “Starp it” or “Starpit, I tell -you,” on the part of the lady. They embraced, they kissed, -and put their silly young heads together and so whiled -away the long waiting-time before love had its way with -them. The summer resorts of England were littered with -young people indulging in these poor, silly, undignified -anticipations of love. Mr. Preemby, it became manifest, -was a natural born Spooner.</p> - -<p>“It’s lovely,” said Miss Meeta, “the way you squeeze -me.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby squeezed some more and ventured to kiss -a hot ear.</p> - -<p>“Go On with you!” said Miss Meeta, in a voice thick -with delight. “That little moustache of yours—it <i>tickles</i>.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>Flushed with encouragement and preoccupied with ideas -for further enterprises, Mr. Preemby did not remark that -the affairs of Miss Hossett and her Wilfred followed a -more troubled and less satisfactory course. Wilfred was -not a type that appealed to Mr. Preemby. In spite of the -fact that he was much less neat in his dress than Mr. -Preemby—he had grey flannel trousers, an old fancy vest, -a tweed Norfolk jacket, and low brown shoes with light-coloured -socks—he impressed Mr. Preemby as being consciously -a social superior. He was young—the youngest -of the party—and yet dominant. He had large red hands -and big feet, much untidy hair, ill-regulated features that -might later be handsome, and a hoarse guffaw. He viewed -Mr. Preemby as though he knew all about him and thought -the worse of him for it, but did not intend to make any -positive trouble for the present about his existence. He -was, Meeta whispered, a medical student at Cambridge, -and his father was a Harley Street physician who had been -knighted. He did not Spoon with any abandonment; he -seemed weary of Spooning, he had perhaps been Spooning -for some days, and his conversation with Miss Hossett -went on in subdued contentious tones. He sat a little apart -from her amidst the sand and coarse bluish grass, and her -face was flushed. What they said was inaudible to our -intertwined couple.</p> - -<p>“Chris and Wilfred don’t get on together as we do,” -Meeta said in a low voice. “They’re sillies.”</p> - -<p>“He’s like all the men,” said Meeta, “’Sept one perhaps. -Want everything they do and give nothing.</p> - -<p>“He won’t even say they’re engaged,” she said. “Dodged -seeing her father.”</p> - -<p>There was a pause for reflection and then a renewal of -endearments.</p> - -<p>“I’m gorne on you,” said Meeta. “I <i>am</i> fair gorne on -you. You’ve got the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. China -blue they are.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>So detachedly it was that Mr. Preemby and his future -wife passed their first afternoon together. He remembered -it, as he remembered most actual things, indistinctly, in a -setting of hot sand and sunshine, blue-grey grass and a -line of poppies nodding against an intense blue sky. And -then across these opening memories Chris Hossett seemed -to leap at him with flushed cheeks and glowing eyes, magnified -by her glasses.</p> - -<p>Two or three days intervened before that passionate -pounce. Mr. Preemby, in his character of an incidental -visitor to Sheringham, was under no obligation to produce -a social background, but Miss Pinkey introduced him to -two large, kindly aunts of a sedentary sort, as a young man -related to Miss Hossett who had saved her from a nasty -fall off a bicycle, and he and she both went to tea with -Chris Hossett’s “people.” Old Mr. Hossett was a very ailing -man, excessively fat and irritable; he had never been -the same, whatever the same was, after his only son had -died; and Mrs. Hossett, an energetic lean threat of what -her daughter might become, had to wait on Mr. Hossett -hand and foot. She had spectacles instead of Chris’s -glasses, her eyes were careworn and her complexion was -leaden and her neck lean. There were also a married -cousin and his wife, a Mr. and Mrs. Widgery, who seemed -to be under the impression that Mr. Preemby was a relation -of Miss Pinkey’s. Mr. Widgery had a long pock-marked -face and the dullest brown eyes Mr. Preemby had -ever seen. There was nothing difficult to eat at tea and Mr. -Preemby got on very well listening to an explanation of -the precariousness of Mr. Hossett’s existence, due to heart -trouble, from Mrs. Hossett and of just how unsatisfactory -and distressing it was to come away and leave the laundry -in the hands of a manager. Wilfred did not come to the -tea. He had been asked but he did not come.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>The next day Mr. Preemby met Wilfred on the sea front -watching the girls bathing from a bathing machine. Afterwards -all four went for a walk in search of privacy, and -it became evident that Miss Hossett declined to Spoon -further with Wilfred. It was evident that there was profound -trouble between Chris and Wilfred. They scarcely -spoke as they returned towards the town; and before the -sea front was reached Wilfred said “So long” quite suddenly, -and turned away and vanished up a road running -inland. Thereupon Wilfred passed out of Mr. Preemby’s -world; Mr. Preemby never knew what became of him and -never wanted to know; and the next day he became aware -for the first time of Miss Hossett’s magnified eyes, regarding -him with an interest and a challenge that made him -feel almost uncomfortable.</p> - -<p>Miss Hossett became a serious obstacle to the Spooning -of Meeta. The quartette was now reduced to a trio; and -Mr. Preemby found himself the apex, so to speak, of a -triangle, the eternal triangle in an exceptionally acute -form. Whenever Meeta was on the one hand, Chris was -on the other. She called him “Our Teddy”; she pressed -upon him; she went so far as to stroke his hair. Meeta’s -endearments faded to some extent in the presence of this -competition, but she made no explicit objection.</p> - -<p>Deep in the nature of the human male is a fount of polygamous -pride. Mr. Preemby in these novel circumstances -was proud and disingenuous. He believed himself “carrying -on” with two girls at once, and it seemed to him to -be a very splendid situation. But indeed it was not so -much a case of carrying on as of being carried off. In the -American world of emotional imaginations there is an ideal -called the Cave Man, much cherished by quiet, unaggressive -women because its realization would involve so little -trouble on their own part. The Cave Man is supposed to -seize and grip and carry off and adore. In this simple love -story of Mr. Preemby’s Miss Hossett played the Cave<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span> -Man’s rôle, up to the carrying-off point at any rate. On -the first occasion of their being alone together she drew -him to her and kissed him on the mouth with a warmth -and an intensity and thoroughness that astonished and -overwhelmed Mr. Preemby. It was quite different from -Meeta’s coy achievements, or anything he had ever met -around Norwich. He had not known that there was such -kissing.</p> - -<p>And in the warm summer twilight Mr. Preemby found -himself being carried off to a lonely piece of beach to -Spoon with Chris Hossett. The light of a rising full moon -mingled with the afterglow; pebbles shone out like gems -and stars. He carried himself bravely but he was all -atremble. He knew that this time the enterprises would -not come from him. And the Spooning of Chris Hossett -was no more like the Spooning of Meeta than a furnace -glow is like the light of the moon.</p> - -<p>“I love you,” said Chris as though that justified anything, -and as they stumbled homeward at an hour that Mr. -Preemby called “feefully late,” she said: “You’re going to -marry me aren’t you? You’ve <i>got</i> to marry me now. -And then we can <i>really</i> make love. ’Soften as we like.”</p> - -<p>“I can’t rightly say that I’m exactly in a position to keep -a wife just at present,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“I don’t see that there’s any necessity for me to ask a -man to keep me,” said Miss Hossett. “You’re a wonder, -Teddy, anyhow, and I’m going to marry you. It’s got to be, -and there you are.”</p> - -<p>“But <i>’ow</i> can I marry you?” asked Mr. Preemby almost -peevishly—for he was really very tired.</p> - -<p>“One would think to hear you that no one had ever married -before,” said Chris Hossett. “And besides—after -this—you <i>must</i>.”</p> - -<p>“Mind you I’ve got to go back to Norwich next Tuesday,” -said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“You ought to have thought of that before,” she said.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span>“But I’ll lose my situation.”</p> - -<p>“Naturally father will find you something better. We -aren’t poor people, Teddy. There’s no need to be scared -about it....”</p> - -<p>In such terms was Chris Hossett wooed and won by Mr. -Preemby. He was scared, dreadfully scared, but also he -was tremendously roused. It impressed him as being a -wildly romantic affair and very terrifying and a little hard -on Meeta Pinkey. But he was bustled along too fast to -think very much about Meeta Pinkey. He was introduced -over again to the Hossett parents next day as their daughter’s -affianced husband, and in secret she gave him three -golden sovereigns to buy her an engagement ring as a -surprise. Mrs. Hossett behaved at first as though she -approved of Mr. Preemby and disapproved of the marriage, -and then after what was clearly a stormy scene upstairs -with her daughter, she behaved as though she -approved highly of the marriage and thought Mr. Preemby -a very objectionable person. Mr. Hossett would not speak -to Mr. Preemby directly, but he spoke of him to his wife -and to imaginary auditors in Mr. Preemby’s presence as a -“scoundrel” who had “got hold” of his girl. Yet he, too, -seemed to regard the marriage as desirable, and no one -made any reply to his <i>obiter dicta</i>.</p> - -<p>It was all very puzzling and exalting to Mr. Preemby. He -did little except what he was told to do. He was carried -over his marriage as a man might be carried over a weir. -He left any explanation to Mrs. Witcherly of what was -happening for some more favourable occasion. He went -off on Tuesday with his little valise as though he was -going back to Norwich. He wrote a simple letter of regret -to the house-agent and coal-merchant. Private affairs, he -said, of an urgent nature prevented his return to his -duties. Mrs. and Miss Hossett went up to London with -him. They all took rooms at a temperance hotel in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span> -Bloomsbury, and Mr. Preemby was married by special -licence at St. Martin’s by Trafalgar Square.</p> - -<p>Then he went down to the Limpid Stream Laundry to -live with his parents-in-law and master the duties of assistant -manager, canvasser and publicity agent. Mr. Hossett -never spoke to him and sometimes talked rather unpleasantly -about him when he was in the room, making accusations -that were better ignored, but Mrs. Hossett gradually -became cordial again. And presently Mr. Hossett had a -heart seizure and died, and in the course of a few months -Mr. Preemby found himself a father. When he was first -confronted with his daughter and, as it proved, his only -child, he thought her an extremely ugly little red object. -He had never seen a baby at so early a stage before. -She had a lot of very fine moist dark hair which subsequently -gave place to a later crop; she had large indeterminate -features and remarkably large feet and hands. Mr. -Preemby had an absurd impression that he had seen her -somewhere before and hadn’t liked her. Then in a day or -so she became a quite ordinary pink baby and wonder gave -place to affection.</p> - -<p>She was christened Christina Alberta after her mother -and Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>In time all these experiences mellowed in Mr. Preemby’s -memory into a vague, glorious, romantic, adventurous -past. He continued to be rather dreamy and distraught, -but on the whole he made a dutiful, faithful husband, and -he got on very well with his masterful and capable wife.</p> - -<p>She was, he had discovered on his marriage, three years -his senior, and she continued to be in every respect his -senior to the day of her death. But she treated him with -proprietary affection; she chose all his clothes for him, she -cultivated his manners and bearing and upheld him against<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span> -all other people. She dressed him rather more like a golf -champion than he would have done himself if he had had -any say in the matter. She would not let him have a -bicycle for many years, she was a little exacting about his -ways of keeping the laundry accounts, she fixed his pocket-money -at ten shillings a week, and she was disposed to -restrict his opportunities for conversation with feminine -members of the laundry staff. But he made no marked -protest against these slight deviations from the customary -obedience of a wife. A tendency to plumpness manifested -itself, and he grew considerable quantities of blonde moustache -without apparent effort.</p> - -<p>Their home was an agreeable one, the more so after Mrs. -Hossett had followed her husband to his resting-place, -under a marble crucifix with a dove and olive branch in -relievo at the intersection of the arms, at Woodford Wells. -Mr. Preemby became a great reader, reading not only -romantic novels—he had a great distaste for “realism” in -any form—but ancient history, astronomy, astrology and -mystical works. He became deeply interested in the problem -of the pyramids and in the probable history of the lost -continent of Atlantis. Mental science also attracted him, -and the possibility of increasing will-power very greatly. -He would sometimes practise will-power before the looking-glass -in his bedroom when Mrs. Preemby was not -about. At nights he would sometimes will himself to sleep -instead of going to sleep in the usual fashion. He gave a -considerable amount of attention to prophecy and eschatology. -He developed views of his own about the Day of -Judgment that might have led to a breach with the Established -Church if Mrs. Preemby had not thought that such a -breach would react unfavourably upon the Laundry. As -time went on he accumulated a library of upwards of a -thousand volumes and a very considerable vocabulary.</p> - -<p>His wife viewed these intellectual preoccupations with -friendly sympathy, at times even with pride, but she took<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span> -little part in them herself. The Laundry was good enough -for her. She loved the Laundry more and more; loved its -piled clean and starched shirts and collars and its folded -and stacked sheets, loved the creak of its machinery and -the suddy bustle of the washing room. She loved to have -it all going on, orderly and right; to feel everything going -through the tubs and washers and wringers, sure and safe; -nothing astray, nothing missing at the end. When she -walked about the place voices were hushed and scrubbing -became respectfully assiduous. And she liked making -things pay.</p> - -<p>On Sunday afternoons and on days when the laundry had -no need of his services, Mr. Preemby took long walks. In -fine weather he would walk into Epping Forest or to Ongar -or even into the rustic peace of the Roothings, but in dull -weather he would go Londonward. After a while the -trams were extended as far as the present terminus at -Woodford and it became possible to ride very pleasantly -right into the heart of London by way of Seven Sisters -Road and Camden Town or, with a little bit of extra -walking, by the Lea Bridge Road and the Angel and -Holborn.</p> - -<p>The greatness and multitudinous activities of London -stirred slumbering strands of Mr. Preemby’s imagination. -He would go in and lunch at an Aërated Bread Shop on a -scone and butter, with a cup of cocoa and perhaps a jam-puff, -and he would spend hours looking into shop windows -and sometimes even making small purchases. He loved -Charing Cross Road with its book-shops, Tottenham Court -Road, Holborn, Clerkenwell, and the Whitechapel Road, -but Piccadilly and Bond Street and Regent Street seemed -costly and lacking in true intellectual interest, and he felt -his baggy tweed knickerbockers and cap a little out of -tune in these smart places. Sometimes he would go to the -British Museum and look very hard at objects connected -with the pyramids. Great public events always drew<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span> -him to London. If there was a great murder or a great -fire or a Royal Wedding or a Royal Funeral, Mr. Preemby -would be sure to be looking at it where the crowd was -thickest, often with a neat packet of provisions, a sandwich, -an orange, or so forth, that Mrs. Preemby had provided. -But he never saw illuminations and fireworks because Mrs. -Preemby liked to have him at home when the day’s work -was over. He enjoyed the Great War of 1914-18 gravely -and profoundly. Once he passed a man who he thought -afterwards was almost certainly a German spy. The -thought thrilled him for days. He had given him a good -look anyhow. He attended air raids in plenty, and he saw -the Potters Bar Zeppelin shot down. He was a good four -years too old for compulsory military service when the -time came, and Mrs. Preemby would not let him be a special -constable because she thought he might catch cold.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby’s work in the counting house was not very -onerous, but he also gave thought and attention to the -extension of the business outside. He invented several -attractive circulars. His experience as a house-agent had -trained him to note the existence of large comfortable-looking -houses that might otherwise have escaped his -observation and to ascertain whether they were occupied; -he would then find out whether the Limpid Stream Laundry -got the washing from such establishments, and if not -he would send a circular and even follow it up with a personal -letter. He was vaguely observant about the premises. -He would go sometimes and look for quite a long time at -the furnaces or the delivery vans or any new piece of -machinery like the new calendering machine until he got -used to it. But if he stood about where there were girls -working, Mrs. Preemby would make some excuse to get -him back into the office because, as she explained, she -thought a man standing about affected the girls’ work -unfavourably. He took in and sometimes read the <i>British -Laundryman</i> and the <i>Dyers’ and Cleaners’ Gazette</i>.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span>Occasionally he had happy ideas. It was his idea to paint -the delivery vans bright blue and decorate them with a -swastika, and to paint exactly the same colour and design -on the front of the laundry and put it on the bills. But -when he wanted to put the van drivers into swastika caps -and blue the clothes baskets, Mrs. Preemby said she -thought the thing had gone far enough. It was also Mr. -Preemby who suggested Ford cars instead of horse vans as -early as 1913. This change was made in 1915.</p> - -<p>And at home with her peaceful interested father and her -busy, occasionally, rather astringent, mother, Christina -Alberta grew to girlhood and womanhood.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE SECOND<br> - -<i>Christina Alberta</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">T<small>HIS</small> story, it was clearly explained in the first paragraph -of the first section of the first chapter, is a story -about Mr. Preemby in the later years, the widower years, -of his life. That statement has all the value of an ordinary -commercial guarantee, and on no account shall we ever -wander far from Mr. Preemby. But the life of his daughter -was so closely interwoven with his own during that time -that it is necessary to tell many things about her distinctly -and explicitly before we get our real story properly begun. -And even after it has begun, and while it goes on, and -right up to the end, Christina Alberta will continue to -intrude.</p> - -<p>Intrusion was in her nature. She was never what is -called an engaging child. But she always had a great liking -for her Daddy and he had the greatest affection and respect -for her.</p> - -<p>She had little or no tact, and there was always something -remote and detached, something of the fairy changeling -about her. Even her personal appearance was tactless. -She had a prominent nose which tended to grow larger, -whereas Mrs. Preemby’s nose was small and bright and -pinched between her glasses, and her father’s delicately -chiselled and like some brave little boat shooting a great -cascade of moustache; she was dark and both her parents<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span> -were fair. As she grew up the magic forces of adolescence -assembled her features into a handsome effect, but she was -never really pretty. Her eyes were brown and bright and -hard. She had her mother’s thin-lipped, resolute mouth -and modestly determined chin. And she had her mother’s -clear firm skin and bright colour. She was a humming, -shouting, throwing, punching child with a tendency not to -hear admonitions and an almost instinctive dexterity in -avoiding sudden slaps. She flitted about. She might be up -the drying-ground or she might be under your bed. The -only thing to do was to down and look.</p> - -<p>She danced. Neither Mr. Preemby nor Mrs. Preemby -danced, and this continual jiggeting about perplexed and -worried them. A piano or a distant band would set her -dancing or she would dance to her own humming; she -danced to hymn-tunes and on a Sunday. There was a -standing offer from Mr. Preemby of sixpence if ever she -sat quiet for five minutes, but it was never taken up.</p> - -<p>At her first school, a mixed day-school in Buckhurst Hill, -she was first of all extremely unpopular and then extremely -popular and then she was expelled. Afterwards she did -fairly well at the Taverners’ Girls’ School at Woodford, -where she was recognized from the first as a humorist. -There was always a difficulty in calling her any other name -than Christina Alberta. People tried all sorts of names but -none of them stuck but “Christina Alberta.” “Babs” and -“Baby” and “Bertie” and “Buss” she was called at home and -“Ally” and “Tina,” and at school they tried “Nosey” and -“Suds” and “Feet” and “Preemy” and “Prim.” Also “Golliwog” -because of her hair at hockey. These all came off -again, and left the original name exposed.</p> - -<p>She was quick at her lessons and particularly at history, -geography and drawing, but disrespectful to her teachers; -at school hockey she played forward right with marked -success. She could run like the wind, and she never seemed -blown. Her pinch was simply frightful. She could make<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span> -sudden grimaces with her nose that gave the weaker sort -hysterics. She was particularly disposed to do this at -school prayers.</p> - -<p>Between her mother and herself there was a streak of -animosity. It was not a very broad streak, but it was -there. Her mother seemed to cherish some incommunicable -grievance against her. It didn’t prevent Mrs. Preemby -from doing her duty by the child, but it restrained any -real warmth of affection between them. From an early age -it was Daddy got the kisses and got climbed over and -pulled about. He returned this affection. He called her -“my own little girl” and would even say at times that she -was a Wonder. He took her for walks with him and told -her many secret things that were in his mind, about the -Lost Atlantis and the Lamas of Tibet and the fundamentals -of Astrology preserved indecipherably in the proportions -of the pyramids. He’d often wished, he said, to -have a good look at the pyramids. Sometimes one man -saw things that others didn’t. She would listen intently, -although not always in quite the right spirit.</p> - -<p>He would tell her of the virtue and science of Atlantis. -“They walked about in long white robes,” he said. “More -like Bible Characters than human beings.”</p> - -<p>“Good for the laundries, Daddy,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“All we know of astrology is just fragments of what they -knew. They knew the past and future.”</p> - -<p>“Pity they were all drowned,” she remarked without -apparent irony.</p> - -<p>“Maybe they weren’t all drowned,” he said darkly.</p> - -<p>“You don’t mean there’s Atlantics about nowadays.”</p> - -<p>“Some may have escaped. Descendants may be nearer -than you suppose. Why you and me, Christina, we may -have Atlantic blood!”</p> - -<p>His manner conveyed his conviction.</p> - -<p>“It doesn’t seem to help much,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Helps more than you think. Hidden gifts. Insight.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span> -Things like that. <i>We</i> aren’t common persons, Christina -Alberta.”</p> - -<p>For some moments the two of them pursued independent -reveries.</p> - -<p>“Still we don’t <i>know</i> we’re Atlantics,” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>After she had fought her way to the sixth form in the -Taverners’ School the educational outlook of Christina -Alberta was troubled by dissensions both within the school -and without. The staff was divided about her, her discipline -was bad, her class-work rank or vile, but she passed -examinations, and particularly external examinations by -independent examiners, with conspicuous success. There -was a general desire to get her out of the school; but -whether that was to be done by a university scholarship -or a simple request to her parents to take her away, was a -question under dispute. The games-mistress was inclined -to regard murder as a third possible course because of the -girl’s utter disregard for style in games, her unsportsmanlike -trick of winning them in irregular and unexpected -ways, and her tendency to make drill and gymnastics an -occasion for a low facetiousness far more suitable for the -ordinary class-room. The English and Literature mistress -concurred—although Christina Alberta would spend hours -over her essays working in sentences and paragraphs from -Pater and Ruskin and Hazlitt so that they might pass as -her own original constructions. It was not Christina -Alberta’s fault if ever and again these threads of literary -gold were marked in red ink, “Clumsy” or “Might be better -expressed” or “Too flowery.” Only the head-mistress had a -really good word for Christina Alberta. But then the head-mistress, -as became her position, made a specialty of -understanding difficult cases.</p> - -<p>And Christina Alberta was always quietly respectful to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span> -the head-mistress, and could produce a better side to her -nature with the most disconcerting alacrity whenever the -head-mistress was called in.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta, as soon as the issue became clear to her, -decided for the scholarship. She reformed almost obtrusively, -she became tidy, she ceased to be humorous, she -lost sets of tennis to the games-mistress like a little sports-woman, -and she stopped arguing and became the sedulous -ape of Stevenson for the estranged English mistress. But -it was up-hill work even in the school. There was a little -too much elegant surrender in her reformed tennis and a -little too much parody about her English in velveteen. The -possibility that she would ever join that happy class of -girls who go in from the suburbs to classes in London and -lead the higher life beyond parental inspection and sometimes -until quite late in the evening in studios, laboratories -and college lecture-rooms, seemed a very insecure one, even -without reckoning with the quiet but determined opposition -of her mother.</p> - -<p>For Mrs. Preemby was not the woman to like a daughter -educated above her parentage and station. She came to -lament her weakness in not bringing Christina Alberta -into the laundry as she herself had been brought in at the -age of fourteen. Then she would have learnt the business -from the ground up, and have qualified herself to help and -at last succeed her mother, even as Mrs. Preemby had -helped and succeeded Mrs. Hossett. But the school with -its tennis and music and French and so forth had turned -the girl against this clean and cleansing life. She was rising -seventeen now, and the sooner she abandoned these things -which lead straight to school-teaching, spinsterhood, Italian -holidays, “art” clothes and stuck-up incapacity, the better -for her and every one.</p> - -<p>She made a campaign against Christina Alberta’s habit of -sitting about in unladylike attitudes and reading; and when -Mr. Preemby took the unusual and daring course of saying<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span> -that it was a bit hard on the girl, and that he didn’t see any -harm in a book or so now and then, Mrs. Preemby took him -up to Christina Alberta’s own little room to see what came -of it, and more particularly to see the sort of pictures she’d -stuck up there. Even when he was confronted with a large -photographic reproduction of Michael Angelo’s creation of -Adam as the master had painted that event on the roof of -the Sistine Chapel in Rome, he still made a feeble show -of resistance, and said that it was “Art.”</p> - -<p>“You’d stand anything she did, I believe,” said Mrs. -Preemby. “Look at it. Art! Look at these books! Darwin’s -<i>Origin of Species</i>! That’s a nice book for a girl to be -prying into.”</p> - -<p>“Very likely she doesn’t see the harm of it,” said Mr. -Preemby.</p> - -<p>“<i>Her!</i>” said Mrs. Preemby compactly. “And look at -this!”</p> - -<p>“This” was Howe’s <i>Atlas of Biology</i>. She opened it to -display its large pages crowded with pictures of the detailed -dissection of a frog.</p> - -<p>“Reely, my dear!” said Mr. Preemby. “It’s one of her -schoolbooks. There reely isn’t nothing what I should call -<i>improper</i> in that. It’s Science. And, after all, it’s only a -frog.”</p> - -<p>“Pretty things they teach at school nowadays. What -with your Art and your Science. Doesn’t leave much to the -imagination. Why, when I was a girl if I’d asked Ma -what was inside <i>any</i> animal, she’d have slapped me and -slapped me hard. And rightly. There’s things rightly hid -from us—and hid they ought to be. God shows us as -much as is good for us. More. No need to <i>open</i> animals. -And here—here’s a book <i>in French</i>!”</p> - -<p>“H’m,” said Mr. Preemby, yielding a little. He took up -the lemon-yellow volume and turned it over in his hand.</p> - -<p>“All this reading!” said Mrs. Preemby and indicated three -shelves of books.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span>Mr. Preemby assembled his courage. “You mustn’t expect -me to go against reading, Chris,” he said. “It’s a pleasure -and a light. There’s things in books.... Reely, Chris, -I believe you’d be happier if you read a bit. Christina -Alberta is a born reader, whether you like it or not. She -gets it from me, I suppose.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Preemby started and regarded his flushed opposition; -the anger in her eyes was magnified through her -glasses. “It’s wonderful,” she said after a little pause; “it’s -truly wonderful how Christina Alberta manages to get -everything she wants.”</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>Miss Maltby-Neverson, the head-mistress of the Taverners’ -School, called upon Mrs. Preemby and shook her -resolution a good deal. She was obviously a lady, and the -school washing ran in term-time to twenty pounds a week. -She was taken to see the scandalous picture and she said: -“Very beautiful, I’m sure. One of the really Great Paintings -in the world. Pro-foundly religious. It’s the very -words of the Bible made into a picture. What do you find -in it to object to, Mrs. Preemby?”</p> - -<p>Whereupon, as if by a trick, the picture ceased to be -scandalous and Mrs. Preemby was ashamed of herself. She -saw now there never had been anything wrong about that -picture.</p> - -<p>Miss Maltby-Neverson said that Christina Alberta was -a difficult type but a thoroughly interesting personality, -a <i>real</i> personality. She had a great capacity for affection.</p> - -<p>“I haven’t found that,” said Mrs. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“It is a type I have studied,” said Miss Maltby-Neverson, -simply but conclusively.</p> - -<p>She explained that Christina Alberta was an <i>active</i> type. -Left to herself without employment to <i>stretch</i> her faculties -she might easily get into almost any sort of mischief.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span> -Almost any sort. Not that there was anything wrong in -her essentially. It was just energy. Given good hard -work and a scope for ambition, she might become a very -satisfactory woman indeed—possibly even a distinguished -woman.</p> - -<p>“I’ve no use for distinguished women,” said Mrs. Preemby -shortly.</p> - -<p>“The world has,” said Miss Maltby-Neverson gently.</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid I’m one of the old-fashioned sort,” said Mrs. -Preemby.</p> - -<p>“Christina Alberta isn’t.”</p> - -<p>“Let the man be distinguished abroad and the woman distinguished -at home,” said Mrs. Preemby. “I’m sorry to -differ from you, Miss Maltby-Neverson, but one cannot -help one’s opinions.”</p> - -<p>“It depends upon ourselves,” said Miss Maltby-Neverson.</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid I like men to rule,” said Mrs. Preemby. -“Woman has her place in the world, and it isn’t man’s.”</p> - -<p>“But I thought Mr. Preemby rather favoured the scholarship -idea.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Preemby was baffled. “He <i>did</i>,” she said as though -she did not see clearly what that had to do with the matter. -“Give the thing a trial,” said Miss Maltby-Neverson. -“After all, she may not win this scholarship.”</p> - -<p>But Christina Alberta won it with marks to spare. She -took no risks. It was a biennial scholarship which had -been established by a benefactor of advanced views. It -was tenable at the London School of Economics. As soon -as Christina Alberta knew she had secured it she went, -without consulting her mother or anyone, to a hairdresser’s -and had her hair bobbed. To Mrs. Preemby this was -almost a worse blow than the scholarship. She surveyed -her shock-headed, handsome-nosed daughter in her short -gymnastic skirts with a qualm of sincere hatred.</p> - -<p>She wished she could make her daughter feel about herself<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span> -as she felt about her. “I wish you could only see yourself,” -she said with concentrated bitterness.</p> - -<p>“Oh, <i>I</i> know,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“I suppose you’re a judgment on me,” said Mrs. Preemby.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>But Christina Alberta had only studied in the London -School of Economics for a year, she was beginning her -second year when her mother obliged her to resign her -scholarship. Christina Alberta had stayed late in London -one evening without telling her mother she was going to -do so, she had gone to a discussion of the Population -Question at the New Hope Club in Fitzgerald Street, and -she had come home smelling so strongly of tobacco that -her mother had repented of and revoked all her concessions -to modernity there and then.</p> - -<p>She had been waiting for that moment for many months. -“This ends it,” she said as she let her daughter in.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta found there was no immediate way -round or through that decision. She worked her father -and Miss Maltby-Neverson in vain. But instead of resigning -her scholarship right out as she had been told to do, -she played for time and explained her absence by a vague -reference to family trouble.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Preemby in those days was already in very bad -health, but this fact was completely overshadowed in the -minds of both her daughter and her husband by the far -more urgent fact that she was now constantly in a very bad -temper. Everything was conspiring to worry her—except -Mr. Preemby, who knew better than to do anything of the -sort.</p> - -<p>The closing years of the Great War, and still more so the -opening year of the Disappointing Peace, were years of very -great difficulty for the laundry business. The munitions -business put laundry girls above themselves and there was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span> -no doing anything with them. Coal, soap, everything was -at unheard-of prices, and it was impossible to get back on -the customers by raising the charges. People, even the -best sort of people, were giving up cleanliness. Gentlemen -of position would wear their dress-shirts three or four -times and make their undervests and under-pants last a -fortnight. Household linen was correspondingly eked out. -People moved about; the new army officers’ wives came -and went, here to-day and gone to-morrow, leaving unpaid -bills. Never had Mrs. Preemby known so many bad debts. -Van men came back from the army so shell-shocked and -militarized that they embezzled out of pure nervousness -and habit. Income tax became a nightmare. Outside as -within, Mrs. Preemby’s life was a conflict. She kept the -Limpid Stream Laundry paying all through that awful -time because she was a wonder at management, but she -did it at a terrible loss of vitality.</p> - -<p>She became bitterly critical of the unhelpfulness of Mr. -Preemby and her daughter. When they tried to be helpful -she criticized their incapacity. They did more harm than -good.</p> - -<p>Meal-times were awful. She would sit flushed and glowering -through her glasses, obviously afflicted by a passionate -realization of the world’s injustice and eating very little. -Mr. Preemby’s attempts to start a cheerful conversation -were rarely successful. Even Christina Alberta was -overawed.</p> - -<p>“Things going a little better this morning?” Mr. Preemby -would try.</p> - -<p>“Can’t I get rest from business even at my meals?” -the poor lady would complain.</p> - -<p>Or, “Looks like pleasant weather for the Derby.”</p> - -<p>“Pity you can’t go there for all the help you are in the -place. I suppose you haven’t heard what’s happened to -van number two.”</p> - -<p>“No!” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>“You wouldn’t. Hind mudguard smashed. Been done for -weeks. And nobody knows who did it. One would think -that that was a man’s business anyhow. But it’s left for me -to find out. And pay for. Like everything else in the -place.”</p> - -<p>“I’d better make inquiries.”</p> - -<p>“I know those inquiries of yours. Better leave the whole -thing alone now. Grin and bear it....”</p> - -<p>The silence of the meal would be restored.</p> - -<p>She seemed to set a high value upon these awful silences. -She even complained that he ate his cheese biscuits audibly. -But how else can one eat cheese biscuits? Christina Alberta -was made of sterner stuff and became controversial. Then -her mother would flare out at her insolence and declare -that “one or the other of us” leaves the table. “I’ll read -upstairs,” said Christina Albert. “It isn’t <i>my</i> wish to be -lunching here.”</p> - -<p>Before the abrupt ending of Christina Alberta’s university -career she was present only at breakfast and supper; -supper wasn’t nearly as awful in quality as breakfast, and -breakfast could easily be bolted and got away from; but -after the New Hope Club catastrophe, she was present at -all the meals, a sort of lightning-conductor for her father -and something of a restraint upon, and an added exasperation -to, her mother. She took the line of agreeing that if -her university career was to end, then she must go into the -laundry business; but she argued very stoutly that to do -that with any hope of success under modern conditions -meant a “proper business training.” If she could not go to -the London School of Economics then she ought to go to -Tomlinson’s Commercial Training School in Chancery Lane -and learn book-keeping, shorthand, typing, business correspondence, -précis, commercial French, and so forth. And -after three weeks of painful midday meals this proposal was -adopted under stringent conditions and her season-ticket -to London was renewed. She worked her way very passably<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span> -through another winter with Tomlinson’s as her school -and most of London as her playground. She learnt all -sorts of things. She added a new set of friends and -acquaintances, some with bobbed hair and some without, -of the most various social origins and associations, to the -circle she had already acquired at the London School of -Economics.</p> - -<p>When presently Mrs. Preemby began to speak of a gnawing -pain that oppressed her, both her husband and daughter -took it at first as a new development of her general grievance -against them and felt no particular apprehension about -it. Mr. Preemby said he thought she ought to take advice -or see some one about it, but for some days she treated -the suggestion with scorn. If once she got in a doctor, -she said, they’d have to find some one else to look after -the laundry. Doctors put you to bed and give you things -to keep you there. Otherwise how could they get a living?</p> - -<p>Then suddenly she changed. One morning she confessed -she felt “dreadful.” She went back to bed and Mr. Preemby, -with strange premonitions that the world was coming to -an end, trotted off for a doctor. The clinical thermometer -showed a temperature mounting above one hundred and -one. “It hurts. My side hurts,” said Mrs. Preemby. “I’ve -had it once before, but not like this.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta came home that evening to discover -herself capable of fear, remorse, and tenderness.</p> - -<p>She had some strange moments with her mother in -between phases of weak delirium and insensibility. Mrs. -Preemby’s face seemed to have become smaller and prettier; -the feverish flush in her cheeks simulated youth. She -was no longer hard or angry, but rather pathetically -friendly. And Christina Alberta hadn’t seen her in bed for -years.</p> - -<p>“Take care of your Daddy,” said Mrs. Preemby. “You -owe more to him—and less to him—than you think. I had -to do all I’ve done. Take care of him. He’s gentle and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span> -good and easily persuaded and not to be trusted alone in -the world....</p> - -<p>“I’ve never been quite all a mother should be to you. -But you’ve been <i>difficult</i>, Christina.... I’ve had a great -respect for you....</p> - -<p>“I’m glad you haven’t my eyes. Glasses are a -Curse....”</p> - -<p>Anxiety about the laundry occupied a large part of her -thoughts.</p> - -<p>“That woman Smithers in the washing room is a thief, -and I’d get rid of the new man Baxandale. I don’t know -why I’ve kept Mrs. Smithers on so long.... Weakness.... I’m -not sure about <i>him</i>, there’s nothing positive -yet, but I feel he’s not straight.... I’m very much -afraid we’ve let Lady Badger’s account run too long. Nowadays -titles—want watching. I’ve been misled by her. She -promised a cheque.... But I doubt about you two in the -laundry altogether. He can’t and you won’t. <i>You</i> might -have done it.... Never mind that now.</p> - -<p>“Sell it as a going concern? The Widgerys might come in. -He’s hard, but he’s straight. Straight enough. They might -like to come in....</p> - -<p>“It’s never entered my head I wasn’t good for twenty -years yet.... I wish the doctor wouldn’t think of operating. -It won’t do any good.”</p> - -<p>She repeated many of her phrases.</p> - -<p>“I hate the thought of being opened,” she said. “I suppose—. -Like those frogs in your book....</p> - -<p>“Packed like a bag.... Never get it back again. -Loose bits....</p> - -<p>“Washing-basket or something to keep it together.”</p> - -<p>Then her mind went off at a tangent to things beyond -Christina Alberta’s understanding.</p> - -<p>“Sneaked off and left me to it.... I wonder what he’s -doing now.... Suppose.... Fancy, if it should be him -that had to operate.... Operate....</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>“Children we were.”</p> - -<p>She seemed to recollect herself and regarded her daughter -with a hard inquiring eye. Some instinct in Christina -Alberta told her to assume an incurious expression. But -these words struck upon her mind and stayed there and -germinated like a seed. Children they were, and he had -sneaked off? Queer and yet according with all sorts of -other imponderables.</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>Mr. Preemby looked unusually small but unusually dignified -in his full mourning. Christina Alberta was also -extremely black and shiny. Her skirts reached for the first -time in her life to her ankles; a sacrifice that she felt would -be particularly acceptable to the spirit of the departed.</p> - -<p>A new thing had come into Christina Alberta’s life—responsibility. -She perceived that for unfathomable reasons -she was responsible for Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>It was clear that the sudden death of his wife under the -surgeon’s knife had been a very great blow to him. He -did not break down or weep or give way to paroxysms of -grief, but he was enormously still and sad. His round -china-blue eyes and his moustache looked at the world -with a mournful solemnity. The undertaker had rarely met -so satisfactory a widower. “Everything of the best,” said -Mr. Preemby. “Whatever she can have, she must have.” -Under the circumstances, the undertaker, who was a friend -of the family, having met both Mr. and Mrs. Preemby -at whist-drives quite frequently, showed commendable -moderation.</p> - -<p>“You can’t imagine what all this means to me,” said Mr. -Preemby to Christina Alberta, quite a number of times. -“It was a pure love match,” he said; “pure romance. She -had nothing to gain by marrying me. But neither of us -thought of sordid things.” He was silent for a little while, -struggling with intractable memories. He subdued them.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span> -“We just met,” he said, smiling faintly; “and it seemed that -it <i>had</i> to be.”</p> - -<p>“Sneaked off and left me”; came a faint whisper in -Christina Alberta’s memory.</p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>There was much to see to in those days of mourning. -Christina Alberta did her best to help, watch and guide -Mr. Preemby even as her mother had desired, but she was -surprised to find in him certain entirely unexpected decisions -that had apparently leapt into existence within a few -hours of her mother’s death. One was a clear resolve that -he and she must part company with the laundry either by -selling it or letting it, or, if no means of disposing of it -offered, by burning it down or blowing it up as speedily -as possible. He did not discuss this; he treated it as an -unavoidable necessity. He expressed no animosity for the -laundry, he made no hostile criticism of the life he had led -there, but every thought betrayed his fundamental aversion. -And also they were to go away—right away—from -Woodford Wells and never return thither. She had come to -much the same decisions on her own account, but she had -not expected to find them in such quiet strength in him.</p> - -<p>He became explicit about the future as they sat at supper -on the evening of the funeral.</p> - -<p>“Your mother’s cousin, Sam Widgery,” he said, “was talking -to me.”</p> - -<p>He munched for a moment; his moustache went up and -down and his eyes of china-blue stared out of the window -at the sunset sky. “He wants to take it over.”</p> - -<p>“The laundry?”</p> - -<p>“As a going concern. And he being our nearest relation, -so to speak, I’d as soon he had it as anybody else. Other -things being equal.... Wish I knew what to ask him for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span> -it. I don’t want to ask him too little. So I said I didn’t -care to discuss things at a funeral. Said he’d better come -along to-morrow. Their place isn’t doing well. It’s got -sort of embedded in Walthamstow. It would pay him to -get out and let the land go for building. He hasn’t got very -much money.... But he wants this place. He reely -wants this place.”</p> - -<p>His blue eyes were the eyes of one who sees visions.</p> - -<p>“I don’t know if they taught you about making companies -at the School of Economics. I’m a child at all that sort of -thing. He talks about partnership or a mortgage or something -like that, but what we want—what we want is a -limited company. And what we want is something like -debentures only rather more like preference shares. We -want it so that whatever he draws out of the business we’ve -got to draw out more. Otherwise the company can cut -away the security for your debentures by paying too much -dividend on the ordinary shares. <i>He</i>’ll have the ordinary -shares. Him and his wife. I don’t say he’d do such a thing -deliberately, but he might very easily be led into doing it. -He’s got to be looked after. We want to fix it so that if he -pays more on his shares than we get on our shares we’d get -our interest levelled up. It’s all very difficult and complicated, -Christina Alberta.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta regarded Mr. Preemby with a new and -deepening respect. She had never heard him make such a -speech before at meals, but then he had never before been -free from interruption and correction.</p> - -<p>“We’ll have to have it fixed up properly by our solicitors,” -said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“We shan’t be badly off,” he continued, helping himself to -cheese.</p> - -<p>“There’s a mortgage or so we’ve got and some houses at -Buckhurst Hill. It’s a curious thing, but your poor dear -mother had a sort of faith in my eye for house property.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span> -She often let me guide her. And I always had a feeling for -making some sort of reserve <i>out</i> of the business.... Very -likely Sam Widgery will take over most of the furniture of -this house. It’s a bigger house than his....”</p> - -<p>“Where do you think of going to live, Daddy?” asked -Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“I don’t rightly know,” said Mr. Preemby after a moment -or so of introspection. “I keep thinking of different places.”</p> - -<p>“London,” she said. “If I could go back to study—before -it is too late.”</p> - -<p>“London,” he said, “it might be.”</p> - -<p>He hesitated over his next suggestion with the hesitation -that had become a habit, so accustomed was he to see his -suggestions crumpled up and flung aside. “Have you ever -heard of Boarding Houses, Christina Alberta?” he asked -with an unreal carelessness. “Have you ever thought it -might be possible for us to go and live in Boarding -Houses?”</p> - -<p>“In London?”</p> - -<p>“All over the world—almost, there are Boarding Houses. -You see, Christina Alberta, we might get rid of our furniture -here, except for my books and a few little things, and -we might put most of that away for a time—Taylor’s -Repository would take care of that for us—and we might -go and live sometimes in a Boarding House here, and -sometimes in a Boarding House there. Then you could -study and needn’t keep house, and I could read and look -at things and make memorandums about some Theories -I’ve thought of, and talk to people and hear people talking. -All sorts of people go to Boarding Houses—all sorts of -interesting people. These last nights I’ve been thinking no -end about living in Boarding Houses. I keep on thinking -of it, turning it over in my mind. It would be a new life -for me—like beginning again. Life’s been so regular here. -All very well while your poor dear mother was alive, but -now I feel I want distraction. I want to move about and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span> -see all sorts of things and different kinds of people. I want -to forget. Why, in some of these Boarding Houses there’s -Chinese and Indians and Russian princesses, and professors -and actors and all sorts of people. Just to hear -them!”</p> - -<p>“There’s Boarding Houses full of students in Bloomsbury.”</p> - -<p>“Every sort,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“One place that attracts me,” said Mr. Preemby, pouring -out what remained of the beer, “is Tumbridge Wells.”</p> - -<p>“Isn’t that sometimes called Tunbridge, Daddy?”</p> - -<p>“Formerly. But now it is always spoken of as Tumbridge -Wells. At this Tumbridge Wells, Christina Alberta, there -are hills with names that point directly to some connection -with the ancient Israelites, Mount Ephraim and Mount -Gilboa and so on, and there are a number of curiously -shaped rocks, shaped in the likeness of great toads and -prehistoric monsters and mystical forms and nobody knows -whether they are the work of God’s hand or man’s. I am -very anxious to see these things for myself. They may -have a deeper and closer significance for us than is commonly -supposed. There are plenty of Boarding Houses at -Tumbridge Wells—I was told only the other day by a man -I met in the Assyrian room in the British Museum—and -some of them are said to be very comfortable and reasonable -indeed.”</p> - -<p>“We might go there for the holidays,” said Christina -Alberta, “before the London session begins.”</p> - -<p>Outside was the summer afterglow, and a dusky peace -filled the room. Father and daughter followed divergent -trains of thought. Mr. Preemby was the first to break the -silence.</p> - -<p>“Now that I shall be in mourning, or half mourning, for -some time I have decided to give away all those Harris -tweed knickerbocker suits and stockings of mine. Some -poor man might feel the comfort of them—in winter. I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span> -have never really liked those <i>very</i> baggy knickerbockers, -but of course while your poor dear mother was alive her -taste was Law to me. And those caps; they get over your -eyes when you’re hot. That tweed stuff.... It is overrated. -When you ride a bicycle or anything it ravels out -with the friction of the seat. Makes you look ridiculous.... -And I think that quite soon I shall get myself one of -those soft grey felt hats—with a black band.”</p> - -<p>“I have always wanted to see you wear one, Daddy,” said -Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“It would count as mourning?”</p> - -<p>“Oh! yes, Daddy.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby meditated pleasantly. The girl had common -sense. Her advice was worth having. “As for putting -the swastika on your poor dear mother’s tombstone, perhaps -you are right in thinking it is not what she herself would -have chosen. It may be better after all to do as you -suggest and erect a simple cross. After all—it is <i>her</i> -tombstone.”</p> - -<p>Whereupon Christina Alberta got up from her chair and -went round the table—almost at a prance, until she remembered -things—and kissed him. For some obscure reason -she hated the swastika almost as much as she loved her -Daddy. For her it had become the symbol of silliness, and -she did not like to think of him as silly. Particularly now -when for some obscure reason she was beginning to think -of him as ill-used.</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>There was much to see to before the Preembys could go -to Tunbridge Wells. There had to be quite a number of -interviews with Mr. Sam Widgery at Woodford Wells -and afterwards in the dingy offices of Messrs. Payne and -Punter in Lincoln’s Inn. It was clear from the first to these -men of affairs that Mr. Preemby was a child at business, -but as they went on with him they realized that he was an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span> -extremely greedy and intractable child. It was six weeks -before Mr. and Mrs. Sam Widgery could move in, sullenly -and resentfully, to the Limpid Stream premises, and Mr. -Preemby and his daughter could go on after a day or so -in London to select a Boarding House at Tunbridge Wells.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta spent her early days as an orphan -struggling against an unreasonable cheerfulness and a profound -sense of release. She found her father ready to -accept almost any explanation of her need to run up to -London for a day and even disposed to be tolerant when -she came home late. She had quite a little world of -miscellaneous acquaintances in London; fellow-students and -their friends, fellow-students from the London School of -Economics and fellow-students at Tomlinson’s School and -art students they knew and medical students they knew -and girls from the provinces who had chucked their families -and got typing jobs, and so on to models and chorus girls -and vaguely employed rather older young men of the intellectual -class. She met them in and about the class-rooms -and in A.B.C.’s and suchlike places and in the New Hope -Club, where there were even Labour politicians and men -who claimed to be Bolsheviks, and she went to parties and -duologues in studios in high, remote, extraordinary flats. -It was tremendous fun, although a lot of it had to be -snatched from the insistent claims and inquiries of Woodford -Wells. And people liked her, they liked Christina -Alberta, laughed at her jokes they did and admired her -thundering cheek and never said anything about her nose. -It was much more her natural world than the Taverners’ -School people had ever been. Nobody seemed to mind -that she came out of a laundry; for all they seemed to -care about that sort of thing, she might have come out of -a gaol. In between the excitements of student life she -even did some reading.</p> - -<p>In her first grief for her mother she tried not to feel a -sense of new unstinted freedom in regard to all these<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span> -adventures and experiences. Her Daddy in his grief, bless -him! was smoking much more than he had ever done -before; he was even trying cigars; he had no nose for -tobacco reek in his daughter—or for anything of that sort. -He asked few questions and they were easily answered. -Long years of exercise had made him almost constitutionally -acquiescent. Christina Alberta realized that within -very wide limits indeed now she might do anything she -pleased whenever she liked. She realized also that there -was no particular hurry to do anything at all. All the -others seemed to be running about in pairs like knives and -forks. It suited her humour to stay detached.</p> - -<p>And the world had altered. This break-up of the old -home, the death of her mother, the disappearance of every -control, except her credulous, inattentive Daddy, had jerked -her forward from childhood to maturity. Hitherto home -had seemed an eternal, indestructible thing, from which -you started out for adventures, to which, whatever happened, -you returned like a sea-rover to rest and where -you went to bed and slept as you had been wont to sleep, -secure, unthreatened. Now here the two of them, Daddy -and herself, were in the open; no bolting place at all for -them; anything might happen to them and might insist -upon going on happening. She could now do just anything -she pleased, it was true, but also she realized that now she -had to take the unlimited consequences.</p> - -<p>So that in spite of her sense of novel, unbounded freedoms, -Christina Alberta found she did not go up to London -any more than she would have done during her mother’s -lifetime. Many of her most attractive friends, it is true, -were away upon their holidays. And she found her father’s -company unusually interesting. Every time she came back -to him he seemed to be slightly enlarged and of a firmer -colour and consistency. He reminded her of Practical -Biology (Botanical Section) in the Taverners’ School, when -you take a dried-up bean out of its package and put it in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span> -a jar with water and observe it under the influence of -warmth and moisture. It germinates. And he was -germinating.</p> - -<p>Mother had kept him dried up for nearly twenty years, -but now he was germinating and nobody could tell what -sort of thing he might become.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE THIRD<br> - -<i>In Lonsdale Mews</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap2">A<small>FTER</small> a month of deep mourning, Christina Alberta -put aside her long skirts and returned to the more -kilt-like garments to which she was accustomed. She had -not been inactive while her father had conducted his business -settlement with Mr. Sam Widgery, and she had -worked out a scheme of living that seemed to promise quite -a happy life for her father and herself. She fell in with -the Boarding House idea and with the project of beginning -at Tunbridge Wells. She ceased to struggle with the fact -that he continued to call it quietly but insistently <i>Tum</i>bridge -Wells; it seemed to her upon reflection that -<i>Tum</i>bridge was really the place he, at any rate, was going -to live at. That gentle departure from exactitude was -quite of a piece with his general habit of living a little -askew from actual things.</p> - -<p>But she impressed upon him the view that since their -lives were to be migratory henceforth, and since there were -a certain number of books, unsaleable articles of furniture -that Mrs. Widgery would not take over at a valuation, a -number of curiosities—for example, a piece of shell which -he believed to be a fragment of a Great Auk’s Egg, a Rosicrucian -regalia, and a mummified hawk from Egypt which -had prophetic qualities, to consider—there must be a sort -of permanent headquarters in London, at which these -objects could be stored and to which he and she could -return from the various Boarding Houses round and about<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span> -the earth. And, pursuant to this suggestion, she made -inquiries and worked out an admirable project for sharing -some accommodation with two little friends of hers who -practised art, literature, and picturesque economies in a -converted mews in Chelsea. In fact, she made arrangements -with them. She told Mr. Preemby she had made -these arrangements according to his instructions, and after -a time it did come to seem to him that he had given her the -instructions upon which she acted.</p> - -<p>Lonsdale Mews opens out of Lonsdale Road, Chelsea; -and there is quite a noble entrance with large stucco -pillars on either side and an arch over, on which is a design -in relievo of Neptune and sea-horses and the words “Lonsdale -Mews.” Inside there had once been stables and coach-houses, -and over each a bedroom and a sitting-room, which -was also, in the more prolific past, generally used as a -bedroom, and a cupboard and a landing and so forth, the -little home of the coachman (and his wife and family) -attached to the genteel carriage and horses below. But the -advancement of science and the progress of invention have -abolished gentility, and so reduced the number of coachmen -and carriages in the world that Lonsdale Mews has -had to accept other tenants; and being too narrow down -the centre for the coming and going of automobiles without -a great deal of bashing of mudguards and radiators, -has had to paint itself up attractively and fall back upon -art and the intelligenzia.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta’s two young friends were in possession -of one of these perverted coachmen’s homes, and as they -were very inadequately prepared to pay the rent—it was -a quite aristocratic rent—they were extremely glad to -welcome Mr. Preemby and particularly Christina Alberta -as co-tenants. Mr. Preemby was to have the big room -downstairs and there he was to arrange his books and his -surplus furnishings and ornaments and curious objects, and -have a sofa that could be made into an apparent bed when<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span> -he wanted to sleep in London. And Christina Alberta was -to have a little bedroom for herself behind this wherein a -breezy decorative scheme of orange and bright blue more -than made up for a certain absence of daylight and fresh -air. But when the two young friends had a party or -when Mr. Preemby was away they were to have the -use of the big downstairs room, and in the case of a -party Christina Alberta’s room was to be a ladies’ -cloak-room.</p> - -<p>The lessors were to retain the use of the upstairs rooms -and in the matter of the kitchen all things therein were to -be held in common. None of this agreement was put into -writing and many issues were left over frankly for future -controversy. “We are to be the pigs that pay the rent,” -said Christina Alberta; that was the general idea. “Much -we’ll work out,” said Mr. Harold Crumb. “Much will -work itself out. It’s no good being too definite.” What -was definite was that Mr. Preemby was to pay the rent.</p> - -<p>Mr. Harold Crumb was a red-haired young man, a -shock-headed young man with a rampant profile, dressed -in a blue overall, frayed grey trousers and slippers. He had -large freckled hands and he did Black and White, which -Mr. Preemby had supposed to be a whisky but discovered -was an art. Harold lived by attempting to sell drawings -for advertisements and pictured jokes for the weekly papers. -His expression was lofty and his voice constrained and it -seemed to Mr. Preemby that he was suffered rather than -met by Mr. Crumb. With Christina Alberta Mr. Crumb -seemed to be on terms of tacit friendship and no word -passed between them. He lifted his hand and twiddled his -fingers at her—with a kind of melancholy.</p> - -<p>Mrs. Crumb was more effusive. She embraced Christina -Alberta warmly and answered to the name of “Fay.” Then -she turned to Mr. Preemby and shook hands with him -quite normally. She was a slender young lady with carelessly -bobbed corn-coloured hair, pale-grey eyes and an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span> -absent-minded face. She also was dressed in a blue overall, -she wore oyster-coloured stockings and slippers and possibly -other things, and her business in life, Mr. Preemby learnt, -was to review books for various newspapers and write -romantic fiction for bookstall magazines. Her right forefinger -had that indelible inkiness which only the habitual -use of an incontinent fountain-pen can give. There was -a big screen in the downstairs room Mr. Preemby was to -have that Mr. Crumb had made and Mrs. Crumb had -covered with the bright mendacious wrappers of the books -she had reviewed. This exercised Mr. Preemby the more -because several of the wrappers were manifestly upside -down, and he could not understand whether this was due -to art, carelessness or some serious mental lapse.</p> - -<p>“We’ll have something to eat,” she told Mr. Preemby, -and then they could settle up things. But she had a surprisingly -rapid articulation and it sounded like, “We’ll ’f -sum t’eat ’n’ then we’ll set lup thins.” It took ten or twelve -seconds to come through to Mr. Preemby’s understanding. -Meanwhile she had turned to Christina Alberta. “’Dabit -’f work to do,” she explained. “Bres no’ clear’ d’way. Late -las’ ni’. You be’r loo’ roun’ he’ while Nolly gessomeat an’ -Ikn do ’p stairs fore you see’t.”</p> - -<p>“Right-o,” said Christina Alberta, understanding perfectly. -Mr. Preemby was left stunned, with his lips moving -slowly. “So long,” said Harold, and took some money out -of a black Wedgwood tea-pot and went and fell over things -in the passage, and presently went out into the wide world -while Fay vanished upstairs.</p> - -<p>“She’s gone upstairs,” said Mr. Preemby, interpreting -slowly, “to do their rooms. And <i>he’s</i> gone to get some -meat. It’s a nice large room, Christina Alberta—and quite -well lit. Quite.</p> - -<p>“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a Mew before,” said Mr. -Preemby, approaching a group of attractive drawings on -the wall.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>“In a <i>what</i>, Daddy?”</p> - -<p>“In a Mew. Or in a <i>Studjo</i>.... I suppose these are -Originals.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta awaited his reaction to the drawings -with a slight anxiety.</p> - -<p>“Looks like a lot of fruit and human legs and things,” -said Mr. Preemby. “Wonder what they mean? <i>Summer -Night</i> it says, and that’s <i>Passion in Solitude</i>. Don’t quite -see it, but I suppose it’s symbolical or something.” He -turned his round blue eyes to the room generally. “I could -get a mahogany cabinet for my Curiosities and have it -against the wall <i>there</i>—I’d like the sort with glass doors -so that people could see the things—and if there was some -shelves put across that place, it would hold most of my -books. There’ll have to be a bed somewhere, Christina -Alberta.”</p> - -<p>“They’ve got a sofa upstairs,” said Christina Alberta, -“with an end that pulls down.”</p> - -<p>“Might go there.”</p> - -<p>“Or under the window.”</p> - -<p>“Of course there’s my clothes,” said Mr. Preemby. “I -almost wish I hadn’t practically promised Sam Widgery -your mother’s wardrobe. Rosewood it is. It has a lot of -room in it and it might have gone against that bit of wall -there. The trunk will make a sort of seat if we get the -corners mended. Wonder how that screen would look the -other way up. Books might go behind it. These easels -and things I suppose they’ll take upstairs.... We’ll get -things settled all right.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta turned about with arms akimbo to -follow his proposals. She perceived that they threatened a -considerable disturbance of the æsthetic balance of the -studio. She’d just thought of a little bed-sofa affair with a -bright rug over it. Silly of her to forget the baggage. But -in the end perhaps it might be possible to arrest a lot of his -gear in the passage. The passage was so choked already<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span> -that a little more in it hardly seemed to matter. He could -go out and get what things he wanted when he wanted -them. She had a momentary anticipation of him in his -shirt and braces, routing in trunks.</p> - -<p>“Of course,” said Mr. Preemby, “when you said you’d got -two little friends in a <i>Studjo</i>, I thought they were two -girls. I didn’t think they were a married couple.”</p> - -<p>“They aren’t so <i>fearfully</i> married,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“No,” said Mr. Preemby, and was restrained by modesty -from further speech for some seconds. “Of course,” he -said, “if presently a Family came along—well, we’d have -to move out, Christina Alberta.”</p> - -<p>“Never meet families half-way,” said Christina Alberta. -“It isn’t very likely anyhow. You trust Fay.”</p> - -<p>“You never know,” said Mr. Preemby rather weakly, and -showed a tendency to drift back to those ambiguous -drawings.</p> - -<p>“About time we had a look at the upstairs rooms, Daddy,” -said Christina Alberta, and went out into the passage to -call “Fay!”</p> - -<p>The answer came remotely. “Lo?”</p> - -<p>“Read-<i>dee</i>?”</p> - -<p>“Not yet.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta found her Daddy back in the illustrated -corner with his head on one side like an inquiring sparrow. -For some time nothing was said. “Of course,” he remarked -at last; “it’s Art.” He turned away with his face pursed -up beneath the moustache, humming faintly. She perceived -it was just as much Art as he could stand.</p> - -<p>He ran his hand over the wall and turned intelligent eyes -to Christina Alberta. “It’s just canvas,” he said; “what -you pack things in. With sort of dabs of gold paint. I -don’t think I’ve ever seen walls that wasn’t either done with -paper or distemper before. I suppose really one might -put all sorts of things on walls, cloth, bed-ticking, tarpaulin. -Odd how one doesn’t think of things.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>Presently “upstairs” was “read-ee;” Mrs. Harold Crumb -was free to answer questions and make explanations and -Mr. Preemby could learn more of Christina Alberta’s -plans for his comfort. Upstairs was more various but less -spacious than downstairs, the beds were dressed-up rather -than disguised as divans and there was more vaguely -improper but highly decorative Art. Like Christina Alberta -Mrs. Crumb had not fully considered Mr. Preemby’s possibilities -in the way of luggage, but she rose to the occasion -very well. When Mr. Preemby spoke of the mahogany -cabinet and the wardrobe, she said that it would be quite -easy for Harold to “camouflage” them with very, very -bright-coloured paint, and she thought a lot might be done -for Mr. Preemby’s trunks and clothes by making a curtained -alcove in a corner. “Trouble with clothes,” said Mrs. -Crumb, “is when somebody starts charades or dressing up. -Nothing is sacred. Last week, somebody tore my only -pyjamas limb from limb.”</p> - -<p>“We’d have to arrange,” said Mr. Preemby, a little -uneasily.</p> - -<p>“We’ll have to arrange somehow,” said Mrs. Crumb.</p> - -<p>But before anything could be arranged definitely Harold -returned from his shopping with a large piece of purple -beefsteak in a mere loin cloth of newspaper, and a lettuce -and a bundle of small onions in his hand and two large -bottles of beer under his arm, and everybody’s attention -was directed to the preparation of the midday meal.</p> - -<p>“Generally,” said Harold, “we go Out for a meal. There’s -quite a decent aufschnittery and a little Italian place and -so forth not five minutes away in the King’s Road. It’s -more fun feeding Out. But we thought you’d like to see -the studio put through its paces.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby in the course of his life had rarely seen -meals prepared; somebody else had always laid a table and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span> -said “Dinner’s ready, Daddy,” or “Supper’s ready, Daddy,” -as the case might be, and he had just sat down, and it was -with real interest that he obeyed Mr. Crumb’s invitation -to “come and see how we do it,” and assisted under direction -in the operations. Mr. Crumb, in a few well-chosen -words, introduced the cooking apparatus that clustered -around the gas-stove; the gas-stove was lit explosively, Mr. -Preemby handed things and held things under direction and -got in the way a good deal. Christina Alberta, who -seemed used to the job, chopped the onions and dressed a -salad at a small kitchen table close at hand, and the steak -got itself grilled fiercely and flaringly.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile Mrs. Crumb laid a blue-painted table in what -was to be Mr. Preemby’s room with an orange-coloured -cloth and a selection of plates and parts of plates, yellow-glazed -mugs with rudely painted inscriptions in some rustic -dialect, “Here’s t’ absent frens” and the like, several knives -and forks, a pewter mug full of cigarettes and a bunch of -sunflowers in a brown-glazed bowl. And at this table Mr. -Preemby presently found himself seated very hot in the -face and liberally splashed with fat from the grilled steak. -Nobody said grace, and the meal began.</p> - -<p>There was a general assumption that Mr. Preemby’s -tenancy was settled, though there were many points upon -which he would have liked a clearer definition. He was -particularly anxious to exclude as tactfully as possible his -garments and his specimens from promiscuous use as properties -when these charades occurred, but he did not know -quite how to reopen the subject. And he was preoccupied -by a doubt whether his long nightgowns of Saxony flannel, -if they were publicly exposed, might not be considered -old-fashioned by these artistic young people. But their -talk jumped about so that it was difficult to lead up to what -he had to say. He was accustomed, especially when company -was present, to clear his throat “h’rrmp” and waggle -his moustache up and down a little before he spoke, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span> -by the time he was ready to deliver what he had to say -one of the others was away with something else. So that -he hardly said anything but an occasional “h’rrmp” all -through the meal.</p> - -<p>The two young ladies did most of the talking. Harold -seemed moody, making an occasional correction or comment -upon his wife’s remarks and eating most of the steak -with the pained expression of one who has tender teeth -and is used to better food. Once he asked Mr. Preemby if -he really cared for Good Music, and once if he had been to -see the Iberian dancers last year, but neither of these -inquiries led to a sustained conversation. “H’rrmp. No-oh,” -said Mr. Preemby. “Not exactly. Not particularly,” -and in the second case, “No-oh, I didn’t.”</p> - -<p>Mrs. Crumb talked brightly of various newspaper jobs -she had got and how she had been asked to do a children’s -corner in the <i>Patriotic News</i> and whether she would accept -the offer—Mr. Preemby thought the editors and newspaper -proprietors she mentioned seemed a depraved lot—but -mainly the talk concerned the movements and readjustments -of a large circle of friends. After the meal there -was coffee, and Harold, with an air of resignation, went -and washed up.</p> - -<p>There were many little things awaiting attention at the -laundry, and after two or three cigarettes Mr. Preemby -decided, “It’s time for us to be going, Christina Alberta.” -“We’ll work it out all right,” said Harold on their -departure.</p> - -<p>There were intervals of meditation as Mr. Preemby and -Christina Alberta returned in the train from Liverpool -Street to Woodford Wells. “It’s not what I’ve been accustomed -to,” said Mr. Preemby. “It’s all very different from -the way your mother used to manage things.... Less -orderly.... Of course I could keep my clothes locked up -in my trunk.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>“You’ll do all right. They’re perfect Dears. <i>She</i> loves -you tremendously already,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>But before she went to sleep that night Christina Alberta -experienced compunction. She felt compunction about -these arrangements she was making for her Daddy. She -doubted whether he would be truly comfortable and happy -in that studio in Lonsdale Mews, and able to lead the life -of steadfast curiosity he anticipated with so much quiet -pleasure—ever humming to himself about it and working -his moustache and saying “h’rrmp,” when he was not -otherwise engaged.</p> - -<p>This story, it cannot be too often reiterated, is the story -of Mr. Preemby who became, as we shall tell in due course, -Sargon, King of Kings. But Christina Alberta has got -herself hatched into this story very much like a young -cuckoo in a wagtail’s nest and it is impossible to ignore her. -She was virtually in control of him and she had the egotism -of her sex and age.</p> - -<p>She had also a pitiless conscience. It was almost the only -thing she could not manage in her life. It managed her. -It was a large, crystalline conscience with no foundations -and no relationships; it just flooded by itself in her being; -it was her gravitational centre and the rest of her could not -get away from it.</p> - -<p>When Christina Alberta went up for examination and -judgment before Christina Alberta there was no nonsense -in the proceedings, a fearful frankness; it was cards on the -table, everything in evidence, no etiquette, not a stitch on, -X-rays if necessary. These examinations were all the more -terrible because they were done in what was practically -an empty room, without screens, curtains, standards or -general beliefs of any sort. It is appalling to think of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span> -drapery and function that was absent from Christina -Alberta’s court of conscience. In the first place Christina -Alberta was completely and explicitly irreligious. In the -next she was theoretically anti-social and amoral. She -did not believe in respectability, Christian morality, the -institution of the family, the capitalist system, or the -British Empire. She would say so with extreme plainness -and considerable detail except when her parent was about. -Prevalent winds of sentiment did not stir her. She did not -find the Prince of Wales ravishing nor <i>Punch</i> funny. She -thought modern dancing tiresome, though she did it very -well, and Wimbledon tennis and tennis-talk an intolerable -bore. She favoured Bolshevism because everybody she -disliked abused it and she hoped for a world-wide social -revolution of an entirely destructive and cleansing type. -What was to follow this revolution Christina Alberta, with -the happy confidence of youth, did not seem to mind.</p> - -<p>It is not for us to speculate here why a young woman born -and bred between Woodford Wells and central London in -the opening years of the twentieth century should confront -the world with a mind so entirely swept and void of -positive and restraining convictions; we put the fact on -record. And if she had been sustained by all the beliefs -in Christendom and a sure and certain respect for every -detail of the social code, whatever that code may be, she -could not have confronted the world with a more cheerful -confidence, nor with a stronger persuasion that Christina -Alberta had to behave, in some undefined fashion, well. -Christina Alberta had to be Christina Alberta, clear and -sound, or the court of conscience made things plain and -hard for her.</p> - -<p>“Christina Alberta,” the court would say, “you are the -dirtiest, filthiest little thing that ever streaked the dust of -life. How do you propose to get clean again?”</p> - -<p>Or, “Christina Alberta, you have been lying again. You’ll -lie to <i>me</i> next. First it was laziness made you lie and now<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span> -it is cowardice. What are you going to make of yourself, -Christina Alberta?”</p> - -<p>There came a time when the court had to address Christina -Alberta in this fashion: “Your nose, Christina Alberta, -is large beyond comparison. It will probably go on growing -all your life—as noses often do. Yet you are setting -yourself out to charm and fascinate Teddy Winterton. -You go to places where you think you will meet him. You -fuss and preen yourself like any female idiot. You dream -all sorts of things about him, disgraceful things. You are -soppy on this young man in spite of the fact that you know -he is—no sort of good. You like him to touch you. You -sit and look at him foolishly and you gloat. Does he gloat -on you? Isn’t it time you considered where you are going, -Christina Alberta?”</p> - -<hr class="tb"> - -<p>And now the court was in full session and the charge, the -charge for which there was no defence, was that she was -going to take her absurd, unprotected Daddy and entrust -him and his foolishness and his silly books and his ridiculous -treasures and all his dreams and desires to the -insecure and unsympathetic studio of the Crumbs, not -because of any vague and general hunger for London, -though that was in the background, but because that -studio was frequented by the all too seductive Teddy, -because there she had met him and danced wildly with -him and been suddenly and astonishingly kissed by him -and kissed him. And then he had beguiled her to learn a -dance with him and had got her to come to tea with him at -his studio to meet his sister—who hadn’t turned up. And -there had been other meetings. He was impudent and -provocative and evasive. All her being was in a state of -high excitement about him. Coldly and exactly now the -court unfolded the operations of her mind to her; showed -how the thought of Teddy, always present and never -admitted, had guided her decision to harbour with the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span> -Crumbs. Only now did she come to confession and clear -vision. “You have lied to yourself, Christina Alberta,” said -the court; “and that is the worst sort of lie. What are you -going to do about it?”</p> - -<p>“I can’t let the Crumbs down now. They count upon -us.”</p> - -<p>“You are in a mess, Christina Alberta. You are in a -worse mess than we thought you were. <i>Soppy</i> you are -about Teddy Winterton. Why not call things by their -right names? You are in love. Perhaps something frightful -has happened to you. Little rabbits run about the -hedges and every day is like every other day for them; -they waggle their little noses and wiggle their little tails -and do what they like with their paws. Until one day -there is a ping and the snare snaps on the little furry -foot and everything you try to do after that is different. -The snare holds your movements and you must just dance -round it and squeal if you like, till the man comes along. -Is that what has happened to you? And for Teddy! -Teddy, with that open, lying face!”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Christina Alberta, “I don’t love him. I don’t -love him. I’ve been silly and soppy and adrift. I am no -more worthy to be called Christina Alberta. But it hasn’t -got me yet and it shan’t get me. I’ll pull Daddy out of it -and myself out of it; I vow and swear....”</p> - -<p>“H’m,” said the court.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>It seemed to Mr. Preemby that the first evening he spent -in his new quarters in Lonsdale Mews was the most eventful -evening in his life. Impressions crowded upon each -other. Insomnia was not among his habits, but when at -last he lay upon his shake-up bed he was kept awake for -most of what was left of the night (it was the frayed piece -with the bleak dawn in the middle of it) trying to get these<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span> -same impressions sorted out, impressions about his new -surroundings, impressions about Christina Alberta, impressions -of new and unprecedented personalities, a marmalade -of impressions.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta arrived at the studio -according to plan about half-past three, but the Picton van -which had started that morning with Mr. Preemby’s bags -and trunks and the crates of books and curiosities and the -late Mrs. Preemby’s roomy wardrobe, which had after all -been rescued from the clutches of Sam Widgery, did not -arrive until it was nearly six. Unfortunately the furniture -dealer in Brompton Road from whom Mr. Preemby had -purchased a specimen-cabinet and a long low walnut bookcase -had delivered these articles the day before, and all the -animosity of the modern artist towards self-assertive wood -had been aroused in Harold. He and Fay and a friend or -so who had dropped in, had sat up quite late painting these -new pieces a deep ultramarine blue with stars and splashes -of gold like the paper they put around the necks of Ayala, -Tsarist and suchlike champagnes. When Mr. Preemby saw -their handiwork he could scarcely believe it was the same -specimen-cabinet and bookcase.</p> - -<p>“I suppose one could get it off again,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“But see how they are assimilated by the room,” said -Harold in high expostulation.</p> - -<p>“I mean if we moved at any time,” said Mr. Preemby. -“I know it’s art, and it goes with the things here very -nicely, but there’s neighbourhoods I wouldn’t like to move -into—not with these things as they are. You don’t know -what people’s imaginations are like.”</p> - -<p>Matters went a little tediously until the arrival of the -Picton van. The sofa-bed was arranged and rearranged. -The bed things, blankets, sheets and pillow-cases, were to -be put in a bundle on the top of Mr. Preemby’s flat trunk -behind the book-wrapper screen. “We shall have to find -some other place for the bottled beer,” said Harold. “It’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span> -too hot in the kitchen and too dangerous in the passage. -But I’ve an idea we might have it in the scullery under the -sink, with a cloth over it and water dripping on the cloth. -Evaporation. I’ll see about it.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby was surprised by a yawn. “I suppose you’d -like to have some tea,” said Fay suddenly, and she and -Christina Alberta prepared some.</p> - -<p>Harold was obviously in a strained and nervous state. -Mr. Preemby’s patient little figure, sitting about hands on -knees, waiting for Picton’s van, looking at things with -innocent eyes and saying “h’rrmp” had much the same -effect of nervous dislocation upon Harold that the mild -and patient camel has on a horse. Harold chafed and -pranced. He walked about and went upstairs and out -and returned; he smoked endless cigarettes and pressed -endless cigarettes upon Mr. Preemby; he made recondite -remarks in a strained voice. “All this is like something out -of Dostoievsky,” he said to Mr. Preemby. “In a different -scheme of colouring of course. Different, but the same. -Don’t you think so, Mr. Preemby?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby nodded his head in a sympathetic, humorous, -not too explicit manner. “H’rrmp,” he said. “It <i>is</i> a -bit like that.”</p> - -<p>“Things will work themselves out,” said Harold. “Things -will work themselves out. You know that poem of Ruby -Parham’s.” He cleared his throat. “It is called ‘Waiting,’” -he said. “It goes like this—”</p> - -<p>His eyes became fixed and glazed; his voice gathered -volume, so that the words seemed more than life-sized.</p> - -<div class="blockquot2"> -<p>“After every minute<br> -“Comes another minute<br> -“And then, rest assured,<br> -“Another.<br> -“Like drops from a ledge in the rain.<br> -“You may not want to go on;<br> -“But <i>they</i> will,<br> -“Oh! endlessly<br><span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span> -“Taking your life away, death, not final and complete,<br> -“But death in the midst of life,<br> -“Particles of death,<br> -“Death by attrition.<br> -“Drip on Old Death—in life!<br> -“Slow, dull, implacable, unendurable!<br> -“Drip on.”</p> -</div> - -<p>“That ‘Drip on’ is great. But perhaps you don’t like -modern poetry?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t <i>mind</i> it,” said Mr. Preemby genially.</p> - -<p>“Of course, nothing of a really destructive nature <i>can</i> -have happened to that van,” said Mr. Crumb in a pessimistic -tone.</p> - -<p>When Picton’s van arrived and the roomy wardrobe -began its destructive march through the passage, Mr. -Crumb called suddenly upon his maker in a loud distressful -voice and vanished for the better part of an hour.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta was torn between a sympathetic understanding -of Harold’s state of mind and the fear that her -Daddy might perceive the unfavourable reaction he produced -in Harold and be hurt by it. She and Fay became -brightly helpful with the unpacking. “If I might have one -of those blue pinafores of Mr. Crumb’s to put on,” said -Mr. Preemby, “I’d be glad. These black things of mine -show every mark.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Crumb’s overall reached far below Mr. Preemby’s -knees and somehow justified his calling it a pinafore. It -brought out something endearingly infantile in his appearance -that appealed to the maternal instinct lurking in Mrs. -Crumb. She struggled with a persuasion that he was -really a little boy of nine who had been naughty and grown -a big moustache and that she had to take care of him and -restrain him and generally tell him not to. The books -were put in the bookshelves as Mr. Preemby said, “just -anyhow”; they could be sorted up later, but the curiosities -and specimens took longer and had to be “put out” more or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span> -less in the cabinet. There were not only real curiosities -and specimens but many little things that Mr. Preemby -had accumulated because they looked like curiosities and -specimens. There was, for instance, a piece of one of the -laundry delivery van mudguards so bent by a collision as -to resemble a human torso in the most striking fashion; -there was the almost complete skull of an unknown mammal, -probably a fallow deer, picked up in Epping Forest, -there was a potato, now rather shrivelled, in which it was -possible to detect thirty-seven distinct human faces and—specimen -of an entirely different quality—a large flint in -which there were no less than fifty-five. Ages ago some -primordial Preemby had discovered and loved that very -same flint and had brought out the likenesses by chipping -an eye here or a nostril there; but Mr. Preemby did not -suspect the help of that remote and perhaps ancestral -hand. Even in waking life Mr. Preemby saw faces in -everything. What he would have been like with a high -temperature it is impossible to imagine.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta’s anxiety about her father’s reception -by the Crumbs diminished as she saw his virtual conquest -of Fay. Fay treated him firmly but indulgently, and they -lost a good deal of time while she tried to see all the fifty-five -faces of the wonderful flint. They had to start and -start again, but always they lost count about “Twen-tee” -or “Twen-tee-one.” The question would arise whether they -were counting one of the faces over again.</p> - -<p>Harold returned in a moody state and could be heard, all -too distinctly, kicking Mr. Preemby’s packing cases in the -hall, but Fay went out to him with a lofty sleep-walking -expression in her pale eyes, and the concussions ceased, -and presently Harold came downstairs again looking -almost handsome in nankeen trousers, a blue jacket with -big silver buttons and a voluminous black tie, and was -quite nice to Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“You won’t mind my touching that wardrobe of yours up<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span> -a bit?” he said. “It damps us off, as it is. Kind of reproaches -us. One of us has to be altered, you see, it or me, -and either I paint it or else I get a silk hat with a deep -mourning band and a gold-handled umbrella—which would -cost no end of money. Whereas I <i>have</i> the paint.”</p> - -<p>“If you can get the paint off again,” said Mr. Preemby. -“You see if I was to move—<i>back</i>.... It’s all right to have -all this paint in a Mew. But out of a Mew....”</p> - -<p>“Exactly,” said Harold. “My idea is to make a little -pink house of it with windows and so on. Something very -simple. Rather like the scenery of a Russian Sketch. -<i>Chauve Souris</i> sort of stuff. Conventional to the <i>n</i><sup>th</sup>. And -we might put up placards at the corner of it according -to what is going on. Make a bit of an institution of it.”</p> - -<p>“So long as it makes things agreeable,” said Mr. -Preemby.</p> - -<p>He found his hair being ruffled affectionately. “Dear -little Daddy!” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>But now appeared a new-comer and life was made uncomfortable -and complicated for Christina Alberta again -by the presence of Mr. Teddy Winterton’s candid insincerity. -His graceful body, his movements, his voice, stirred -her senses as she hated them to be stirred; his quiet -impudence invaded her sense of humour; he wounded her -pride and she longed to be even with him. She had no -power over him and he behaved as if he owned her. She -was always letting him go just a little too far. When he -was about her nose cast a shadow that reached to her -horizon. He stood now in the doorway—trousers of one -pattern of tweed, waistcoat of another, Norfolk jacket of -a third extensively unbuttoned in the accepted student -style, and he watched Mr. Preemby carry his collection -of roc’s bones, found near Staines, across the studio on a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span> -tea-tray. His eyes were round with surprise and amusement; -his mouth said noiselessly, “What is it?”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta was not going to have her Daddy -laughed at by any Teddy Winterton. “Mr. Winterton,” -she said. “This is my father.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll just get rid of my bones,” said Mr. Preemby, “and -then I’ll shake hands.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll just finish up Mr. Preemby’s things and then -we’ll all go round to Poppinetti’s to get some dinner,” said -Fay. “There’s hardly anything left to unpack now.”</p> - -<p>“Just one or two Antediluvium bones,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>Teddy seized upon one. “This,” he said, inspecting it, -“is a fossil rhinoceros thigh-bone from the Crag.”</p> - -<p>“It’s an Antediluvium horse,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“Forgive me! It’s a rhinoceros bone!”</p> - -<p>“Horses had rhinoceros bones in those days,” said Mr. -Preemby. “And the rhinoceroses—! They were incredible. -If I had one I shouldn’t have anywhere to put -it.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby was extracted from his overall and restored -to the black coat and the grey felt hat with the black -band. He became one of a straggling party that went out -of Lonsdale Mews to a little Italian restaurant in the -King’s Road. Three neighbours of the Crumbs mixed -themselves up with the party, a very quiet man with silver -hair and a young man and a dusky girl.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby was much impressed by the novelty of -thus going out for dinner, and expatiated on its advantages -to the silver-haired man who seemed to be the -quiet sort of listening man that Mr. Preemby liked to -meet. “You see you don’t have to <i>cook</i> the meal and you -don’t have to lay the table and afterwards naturally there -isn’t any washing up. But I expect it comes more -expensive.”</p> - -<p>The silver-haired man nodded intelligently. “Exactly,” -he said.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>Harold Crumb overheard this. “Expensive,” he said, -“it isn’t. No. Every other crime Poppinetti can commit, -but that is barred by the circumstances of his clientele. -He feeds us on stolen pigeons, his <i>dinde</i> is guinea-pig, -his beef, <i>a l’omnibus</i>: what he minces God knows; what he -puts into his ravioli makes even the Lord God repent of -his extreme creativeness. But you see, you don’t <i>think</i> -about his ravioli, you eat ’em, and they’re damned good. -There are always flowers on the table and an effect of -inexpensive refinement. You will see. You will see.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby saw. Poppinetti was a small man but -carefully modelled on Caruso, and he received his large -party with the deference of a diplomatist and the effusion -of a geyser. He was particularly gracious to Mr. Preemby, -bowing profoundly to him, and saluting him with great -richness subsequently whenever he caught his eye. He -seemed to Mr. Preemby to spend the rest of their time -together going to remoter and remoter parts of the restaurant -in order to catch Mr. Preemby’s eye and bow and -smile to him from greater and greater distances. Mr. -Preemby had curious doubts whether he wasn’t being mistaken -for somebody else.</p> - -<p>Signor Poppinetti, with an air of peculiar favour, guided -the party to a long, unattractive table near the centre of -the restaurant and took their conflicting orders with the -gestures of a conductor guiding an orchestra through a -difficult passage. Mr. Preemby was passive but observant; -he presently found himself eating macaroni and drinking -a rough red wine with a name that sounded to his London -tuned ears like a challenge. Chianti.</p> - -<p>Harold Crumb showed great earnestness in the matter of -macaroni. “In order to taste macaroni,” he assured Mr. -Preemby, “it is necessary to fill the mouth absolutely full, -good measure, pressed in and running over. To cut up -macaroni with your fork as you are doing, is as awful -as to cut an oyster. It—it devitalizes it.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>“I like it cut up,” said Mr. Preemby with unexpected -firmness. And he cut up some more.</p> - -<p>“Otherwise,” he said in a confidential aside to the silver-haired -man, “I can’t help thinking it’s earthworms.”</p> - -<p>“Exactly. Exactly,” said the silver-haired man.</p> - -<p>Harold exemplified generously. His rampant face riding -over a squirming mouthful of macaroni was like St. George -and the Dragon on an English sovereign. He whistled as -he ate. Long snakes of macaroni hung thoughtful for a -moment and then, drawn by some incomprehensible fascination, -fled into him. Teddy Winterton and one of the -new-comers from the studio next door emulated him. -Christina Alberta and Fay showed the furtive dexterity -of the female. But Mr. Preemby was glad when macaroni -was over, even though it raised the problem of eating an -egg on spinach with a fork.</p> - -<p>But he was not really troubled in his mind as a younger -man might have been. He had the <i>savoir-faire</i> of middle-age. -This restaurant dinner was on the whole a bright -and agreeable experience for him. He liked even the -corrosive taste of the Chianti. This Chianti you drank -out of quite largish tumblers because it was almost as -cheap and light as beer. It did not intoxicate, but it warmed -the mind, and it cast a pleasant and convincing indistinctness -over the universe so that the Tunbridges all -became Tumbridges without any question, and the secret -dreams and convictions of the heart became certain knowledge. -Presently Mr. Preemby found himself able and -willing to tell things and hint much more important things -about his collections to the white-haired man and also to -the dark, untidy girl who was sitting on his other side, and -who came from the other studio and about whose name he -had no idea, and presently to others; and when the bird -came—it was a bird new to Mr. Preemby, and called, he -gathered, <i>rabbkey</i> or <i>turkit</i>—most of the party was talking<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span> -in the loud, confused, explosive way these young people -affected about the lost <i>Atlantis</i>.</p> - -<p>He had never spoken so freely before upon this topic. -At home he had always been restrained by the late Mrs. -Preemby’s genuine lack of interest. And even now he was -not prepared for positive statements or for an encounter -with sceptical arguments about that great lost continent -of the Golden Age. Atlantis had been the scene and substance -of his secret reveries for many years; he knew his -knowledge of it was of a different order from common -knowledge, more intuitive, mystical, profound. From the -outset his manner was defensive, discreet and obscure, as -of one willing but not permitted to speak.</p> - -<p>How did he know that there had been this lost continent?</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” he said with the faint smile of peculiar knowledge; -“studied it for years.”</p> - -<p>“What is the evidence?” asked the untidy young lady.</p> - -<p>“So abundant. Impossible to retail it. Convincing. -Of various sorts. Plato has much about it. Unfinished -fragment. Many books have been written. Many inscriptions -in Egypt.”</p> - -<p>“What sort of people were they?” asked the untidy girl.</p> - -<p>“Very wonderful people, young lady,” said Mr. Preemby. -“H’rrmp. Very wonderful people.”</p> - -<p>“Philosophy, no end I suppose?” asked the young man -from the next studio with his mouth full.</p> - -<p>“What we know—a mere remnant,” said Mr. Preemby. -“Mere remnant.”</p> - -<p>“How did they dress?”</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp. Robes. White robes—extremely dignified. -Blue—azure—when justice was administered. Plato tells -us that much.”</p> - -<p>“Could they fly?”</p> - -<p>“They understood it. It was not made a practice of.”</p> - -<p>“Motor cars? All that sort of thing?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>“If they wanted to. There was less motoring—more -meditation. We live—age of transition. H’rrmp.”</p> - -<p>“And then it all went phut?” said the young man from -the next studio. “Submerged and all that. What a lesson!”</p> - -<p>“That need not have happened,” said Mr. Preemby -darkly.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby became dimly aware of scepticism. -“There’s not an atom of evidence that there ever was a -continent in the Atlantic,” Mr. Teddy Winterton was -saying to Christina Alberta; “within thirty million years -of anything human. The ocean troughs go right back to -the Mesozoic age.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby would have noticed this remark but the -untidy girl asked him suddenly if he did not think that -the swastika was a symbol derived from Atlantis. He said -he was quite certain it was. She asked what it meant -exactly; she had always been curious about its significance: -and he became guarded and mysterious. She wanted -moreover to know things about the costume of that lost -world, about its social customs, about its religion. Were -women citizens? She was certainly the most intelligent -about it of all the company. The silver-haired man seemed -to be faintly amused.</p> - -<p>The rest of the company wandered off into a discussion -of the possibility of going to the Chelsea Arts Ball in the -character of a party from the Lost Atlantis. Many of their -ideas Mr. Preemby thought trivial and undignified. “Leaves -us unlimited scope,” said Harold Crumb. “We could invent -weapons—have wings if we liked. Magic carbuncles -on our shields—illuminated. Mysterious books and tablets. -And a sort of peculiar wailing, drumming music; Mya, -mya, mya.”</p> - -<p>He pursed up his face and made a curious mooing noise -with it to convey his intention, twiddling his fingers to -assist the effect.</p> - -<p>It was no good protesting against such imaginative<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span> -ignorance. But to the dark, untidy girl and to the acquiescent -man with silvery hair Mr. Preemby continued to be -quietly oracular and communicative from behind his -moustache.</p> - -<p>“But how are these things known?” the dark girl persisted. -“There is nothing in the British Museum.”</p> - -<p>“You forget,” said Mr. Preemby. “H’rrmp, the Freemasons. -There are Inner Groups—traditions. Thank you. -Just half a glass more. Oh! you’ve filled it! Thank you.”</p> - -<p>As he talked he was aware of something going on between -Christina Alberta and Winterton. At first it seemed not -to matter in the slightest degree, but to be just part of the -general unusualness of the gathering, and then it seemed -to matter a great deal. He saw Christina Alberta’s little -fist resting on the table, and suddenly Winterton’s hand -enveloped it. She snatched her hand away. Then something -was whispered and her hand came back. In another -moment the hands were five inches apart and it was as if -nothing had ever happened between them.</p> - -<p>He would probably have forgotten the momentary invasion -of his attention by Christina Alberta if something -else had not occurred at the phase of dessert. Poppinetti’s -idea of dessert was a sort of lottery of walnuts—if you -found a sound one you won—masses of compressed and -damaged dates and a few defiant apples. There was a -great crackling. The company was littering the table -with walnut shells, and the green, black and yellow corruption -they had contained, when this second incident -caught Mr. Preemby’s eye. He saw Teddy Winterton -run his hand very softly along Christina Alberta’s forearm. -And her arm was not withdrawn.</p> - -<p>Every one was talking just then and for a moment it -seemed to Mr. Preemby that he alone had seen, and then -he caught an observant expression on the face of the silver-haired -man. It was all very confusing, and this Chianti—though -it was really not intoxicating—made everything<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span> -swimmy, but Mr. Preemby knew somehow that the silver-haired -man had also seen that furtive familiarity, and that -he too didn’t quite approve of it.</p> - -<p>Ought one to take notice? Ought one to say anything? -Perhaps afterwards. Perhaps when they were alone together, -he might ask her quietly, “Are you and that young -man Winterton engaged?”</p> - -<p>“A bit too much,” said Mr. Preemby quietly, meeting the -eye of the silver-haired man. “I don’t like that sort of -thing.”</p> - -<p>“Quite,” said the silver-haired man.</p> - -<p>“I shall speak to her.”</p> - -<p>“You’re right there,” said the silver-haired man warmly. -A very sensible fellow.</p> - -<p>A great rustle and a scraping of chairs. Poppinetti, -figuring upon an accounts-pad, came to collect the money. -“I’ll pay for us, Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, “and we’ll -settle up afterwards.”</p> - -<p>Poppinetti bowing. Poppinetti on Mr. Preemby’s right -and on Mr. Preemby’s left; several Poppinettis bowing. -A great activity of Poppinettis handing hats and so forth. -Poppinettis whichever way you turned. The restaurant -rotating slightly. Was this Chianti perhaps stronger -than Mr. Preemby had been led to believe? A number of -Poppinettis opening a number of doors and saying polite -things. Difficult to choose a door. Right the first time. -Out into the street. People going by. Taxis. No more -Poppinettis. But a girl ought not to let a young man -stroke her arm at dinner, when anyone might see it happen. -It wasn’t correct. Something had to be said. Something -tactful.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby became aware that he was walking next to -Mrs. Crumb. “It was lovely to hear you talking about the -New Atlantis,” she said. “I wish I had been sitting -nearer.”</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span>Something very nice about Mrs. Crumb. What was it? -Not so <i>fearfully</i> married, but married quite enough.</p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>Mr. Preemby thought they were going back for coffee -and a little talk and then bed; he had no idea of the immense -amount of evening still before him. He knew -nothing as yet of the capacity for sitting up late and getting -lively in the small hours possessed by this new world of -young people into which Christina Alberta had led him.</p> - -<p>And in a sort of hectic discontinuous way they were -lively for hours. It became vaguely evident to Mr. -Preemby that there was a periodic “day” set apart by Mrs. -Crumb for evening gatherings in the studio, and that this -evening he had chosen for his settling down was such an -evening. Fresh people dropped in. One it seemed was a -portentous arrival, he came in quite soon after the return -from Poppinetti’s; he was very fat and broad, a white-faced -man of forty or so, rather short of breath, with -exceedingly intelligent eyes under a broad forehead and -a rather loose, peevish mouth. He carried himself with -the involuntary self-consciousness of a man who thinks he -is pointed out. His name it seemed was Paul Lambone, -and he had written all sorts of things. Everybody treated -him with a faint deference. He greeted Christina Alberta -with great warmth.</p> - -<p>“How’s the newest Van?” he said, shaking her hand as -though he liked it, and speaking with a singularly small -voice for so ample a person. “How’s the last step in -Advance?”</p> - -<p>“You’ve got to meet my father,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Has it got a father? I thought it just growed like -Topsy—out of Nietzsche and Bernard Shaw and all the -rest of them.”</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>Mr. Lambone turned to him. “What a Handful a -daughter is!” he said, and bowed slightly towards Christina -Alberta, “even the best of them.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby replied after the manner of the parents -in Woodford Wells. “She’s a good daughter to me, sir.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, but they aren’t like sons.”</p> - -<p>“You have sons, sir, I presume.”</p> - -<p>“Only dream children. I’ve not had your courage to -realize things. I’ve married a hundred times in theory -and here I am just a sort of bachelor uncle to everybody. -Poking in among the younger people and observing their -behaviour with”—his intelligent eyes looked quietly over -his garrulous mouth at Christina Alberta—“terror and -admiration.”</p> - -<p>Two other visitors appeared in the doorway and Mr. -Lambone turned from Mr. Preemby to greet them as soon -as Fay had done her welcome, a fierce-looking young man -with an immense head of black hair and a little lady like -a china doll dressed to remind one of Watteau.</p> - -<p>Conversation became general and Mr. Preemby receded -into the background of events.</p> - -<p>He found himself side by side with his friend with the -silver hair, against his bookcase. “I didn’t expect a party,” -he said.</p> - -<p>“I thought so too.”</p> - -<p>“I only got here this afternoon. The vans came late -and lots of my things are still to be unpacked.”</p> - -<p>The silver-haired man nodded sympathetically. “Often -the case,” he murmured.</p> - -<p>Every one was talking loudly. It was difficult to hear. -It was confused sort of talking, and whenever two or three -seemed to be interested in what they were saying, Fay -Crumb went and interrupted them as a good hostess -should. Other people, only vaguely apprehended by Mr. -Preemby, got into the studio somehow. There was a red-haired -young lady with a tremendous decolletage; behind<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span> -you could see almost to her waist. He h’rrmp’d at it and -thought of saying something about it, something cold and -quiet, to the silver-haired man. But he didn’t. He couldn’t -think of anything sufficiently cold and quiet to say.</p> - -<p>Fay Crumb came and asked whether he would like some -whisky or beer. “Not on the top of that nice Chianti, -thank you,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>The conversation seemed to get noisier and noisier. In -one corner Harold Crumb could be heard quoting the poems -of Vachel Lindsay. Then Mr. Lambone came up and -seemed to want to talk about the Lost Atlantis, but Mr. -Preemby was shy of talking about the Lost Atlantis -with Mr. Lambone. “Getting on all right, Daddy?” said -Christina Alberta, drifting by and not waiting for any -answer but an “h’rrmp.”</p> - -<p>There appeared three young people with a gramophone -they explained they had just bought, and Fay discovered -that the beer had been forgotten and sent Harold out to -borrow some from a neighbour. These new-comers made -no very profound impression on Mr. Preemby’s now jaded -mind, except that one of them, the owner of the gramophone, -a very fair young man with a long, intelligent nose, -was wearing the big horn of the gramophone as a headdress, -and that he meant to have that gramophone going -whatever else might occur.</p> - -<p>The music was dance-music, jazz for the most part and -a few waltzes, and it revived Mr. Preemby considerably. -He sat up and beat time with the leg-bones of a roc, and -presently two or three couples were dancing on the studio -floor. Curious dancing, Mr. Preemby thought; almost -like walking—jiggety walking with sudden terrific back-swipes -of the legs. There was an interruption when -Harold returned with the borrowed beer—bringing its -lenders with it. Then there was a general clamour for -Christina Alberta and Teddy to “do” their dance. Teddy -was quite willing but Christina Alberta seemed reluctant,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span> -and when Mr. Preemby saw the dance he was not surprised.</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” he said, and stroked his moustache and looked -at the silver-haired man.</p> - -<p>It really was too familiar altogether; for some moments -the principals vanished upstairs, and came back altered. -For some reason Teddy had adopted a cloth cap and a -red neck-wrap; he was, in fact, being an Apache, and the -bearing of Christina Alberta had become very proud and -spirited with her arms akimbo.</p> - -<p>Every one backed against the walls to clear a dancing -floor. At the beginning it wasn’t so bad. But presently -this Mr. Teddy was pitching Christina Alberta about, -throwing her over his shoulder, taking hold of her, bending -her backward, holding her almost upside down, both -legs in the air and her hands dragging on the ground. -And she was red and excited and seemed to like these -violent familiarities. There was a kind of undesirable -suitability between them for such purposes. She and Teddy -looked into each other’s eyes with a sort of intimacy and -yet with a sort of fierce defiance. At one point in the -extraordinary dance she had to smack his face, a good hard -smack, nicely timed. She did it with a spirit that made -every one applaud. Whereupon he smiled and took her -nice little neck in his hands and strangled her with great -realism.</p> - -<p>Then the gramophone had its death rattle and the dance -was over.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby’s throat had not troubled him much since -dinner, but now he said “h’rrmp” repeatedly.</p> - -<p>They wanted Christina Alberta, bright and panting and -shock-headed, to repeat the performance, but she wouldn’t. -She had had a glimpse of the solemn dismay and perplexity -upon her Daddy’s face.</p> - -<p>The people from the studio next door were the next to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span> -give a display: they obliged with an imitation of a Russian -imitation of a peasant dance from Saratoff. There was a -gramophone record that was not quite the proper music, -but it would do. That dance really amused Mr. Preemby. -The young man went down quite close to the floor and -kicked out his feet with the greatest agility and the girl -was as wooden as a doll. Every one clapped hands in time -to the music, and so did Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>And then came a further irruption. Five people in fancy -dress demanding beer. They impressed Mr. Preemby as -strange and bright-coloured, but totally uninteresting. -One wore a red coxcomb and was dressed as a jester in -cap and bells. The others just wore tights and bright things -that signified nothing at all. They had been at some party -given by somebody or other for the “Young people.” They -announced with shouts, “They shut down at midnight. Yes, -they shut down at midnight. When the young people go -to bed.”</p> - -<p>It was only too manifest that No. 8 Lonsdale Mews -meant to do nothing of the sort.</p> - -<p>Beer. Mr. Preemby declined. The last of the beer. -Cigarettes. Much smoke. The last of the whisky. More -gramophone, more dancing and Harold Crumb’s voice loose -again in recitation. Beer or whisky had thickened it. -But there were countervailing noises. Movement. A circle -was cleared. Not more dancing! No. Feats of strength -and dexterity with chairs, performed chiefly by Teddy -Winterton, the gramophone owner, and Harold. This -stunting stopped presently and the company flowed back -towards the middle of the room. Talk Mr. Preemby could -not follow; phrases he could not understand. Nobody -taking the slightest notice of him.</p> - -<p>A sense of weariness and futility and desolation came -upon him. How differently were the evenings of the past -spent by the good wise people of the lost Atlantis! Philosophical<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span> -discourse they had, the lute, the lyre. Elevated -thoughts.</p> - -<p>He caught sight of Mrs. Crumb yawning furtively. -Suddenly, stupendously he yawned. And yawned again.</p> - -<p>“Yaaw,” he said to Paul Lambone who was at his side.</p> - -<p>“Proyawaw—Prolly thiswe sitting on my beawawd.”</p> - -<p>“You live here?” said Mr. Lambone.</p> - -<p>“Come to-day. Christina Albyawawawter arranged it.”</p> - -<p>“The devil she did!” said Mr. Lambone, and looked -across the studio at her. For some moments he seemed -lost in thought.</p> - -<p>“Very remarkable young woman that daughter of yours,” -he said. “Makes me feel old-fashioned.”</p> - -<p>He looked at the wrist-watch he wore, “Half-past one,” -he said. “I’ll start the Go....”</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>Mr. Preemby heard a few sentences of the parting -between Teddy Winterton and Christina Alberta. “Yes -or no?” said Teddy.</p> - -<p>“<i>No</i>,” said Christina Alberta with emphasis.</p> - -<p>“Not a bit of it,” said Teddy.</p> - -<p>“I don’t want to,” she said.</p> - -<p>“But you <i>do</i>.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, go to the devil!”</p> - -<p>“Not as if there were risks.”</p> - -<p>“I shan’t come. It’s preposterous.”</p> - -<p>“I shall wait all the same.”</p> - -<p>“You may wait.”</p> - -<p>“Little Chrissy Hesitation. Anything to please you.”</p> - -<h4>§ 8</h4> - -<p>It took until past two o’clock for the Go Paul Lambone -had started to remove the last of the company.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>“All hands to the bedmaking,” cried Fay. “It isn’t always -like this, Mr. Preemby.”</p> - -<p>“Confess I feel tired,” said Mr. Preemby. “Had a long -day of it.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta regarded him with belated compunction. -“It just happened like this,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Not used to such late hours,” said Mr. Preemby, sitting -on his bed when at last it was made, and he did a yawn -that almost dislocated his jaw.</p> - -<p>“Night,” said Fay, yawning also.</p> - -<p>“We’ll turn in,” said Harold. “So long, Mr. Preemby.” -The yawning seized upon Harold also. What a face he -had!</p> - -<p>“Goo-i.”</p> - -<p>“Gawooi-i.”</p> - -<p>The door closed upon them.</p> - -<p>There was much to say to Christina Alberta, but it was -too late and Mr. Preemby was too weary to say it now -And also he had no idea what it was he ought to say.</p> - -<p>A casual remark fell out, “I liked that man with the -white hair,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Did you?” said Christina Alberta absently.</p> - -<p>“He was intelligent. He took a great interest in the Lost -Atlantis.”</p> - -<p>“He’s stone deaf,” said Christina Alberta, “and he’s -ashamed of it—poor dear.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“All this is going to be rather noisy for you, Daddy,” -she said, coming to what she had in mind.</p> - -<p>“It <i>is</i> a bit ramshackle,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“We ought to go to Tunbridge Wells quite soon and look -round there.”</p> - -<p>“To-morrow,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“Not to-morrow.”</p> - -<p>“Why not?”</p> - -<p>“The next day,” said Christina Alberta. “I’m not quite<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span> -sure about to-morrow. I’d sort of half promised to go -somewhere else—. But it doesn’t matter very much -really.”</p> - -<p>“I’d like to go to Tumbridge Wells to-morrow,” said Mr. -Preemby.</p> - -<p>“Why not?” said Christina Alberta as if to herself, and -hesitated.</p> - -<p>Se walked to the door and came back. “Good night, -little Daddy,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Are we going then? To-morrow?”</p> - -<p>“No.... Yes.... I don’t know. I <i>had</i> planned to do -something to-morrow. Important in a kind of way.... -We’ll go to-morrow, Daddy.”</p> - -<p>She walked away from him with her arms akimbo and -stared at those queer pictures.</p> - -<p>She spun round on her feet. “I can’t go to-morrow,” she -said.</p> - -<p>“Yes, I will,” she contradicted.</p> - -<p>“Oh, hell!” she cried, in a most unaccountable and -unladylike way. “I don’t know what to <i>do</i>!”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby looked at her with grave and weary eyes. -This was a new Christina Alberta to him. She ought not -to swear. She did <i>not</i> ought to swear. She’d caught it -up from these people. She didn’t know what it meant. -He must talk to her—to-morrow. About that and one or -two other things. But Heavens! how tired he was!</p> - -<p>“You—” He yawned. “You must take care of yourself, -Christina Alberta,” he said.</p> - -<p>“I’ll do that all right, Daddy. Trust me.”</p> - -<p>She came and sat down beside him on his little half-fictitious -bed. “We can’t decide to-night, Daddy. We’re -too tired. We’ll settle to-morrow. Have to see what the -weather’s like for one thing. Wouldn’t do to walk about -Tunbridge if it was wet. We’ll decide about everything -to-morrow—when our heads are cool. Why! you dear -little Daddy! It’s just upon half-past two.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span>She put her arm round his shoulders and kissed him on -the top of his head and the lobe of his ear. He loved her -to touch him and kiss him. He did not understand in the -least how much he loved her to kiss him.</p> - -<p>“Dear <i>tired</i> little Daddy,” she said in her softest voice: -“You are ever so kind to me. Good night.”</p> - -<p>She had gone.</p> - -<p>For some time Mr. Preemby sat quite motionless in a -state of almost immobile thought.</p> - -<p>The floor of the studio was littered with burnt matches -and cigarette ends and the air smelt of stale smoke and -beer. On the blue-painted table stood an empty beer-bottle -and two or three glasses containing dregs of beer -and cigarette ash.</p> - -<p>It was all very different from Woodford Wells,—very -different indeed.</p> - -<p>But it was Experience.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby bestirred himself to undress.</p> - -<p>That night-shirt of Saxony flannel had still to be -unpacked.</p> - -<h4>§ 9</h4> - -<p>In the morning Christina Alberta was still restless and -quite undecided about going to Tunbridge Wells, though -the weather was perfectly fine. About half-past eleven -she disappeared, and after a light lunch with Fay—Harold -was out also—it became evident to Mr. Preemby that the -visit to Tunbridge Wells was postponed for the day. So -he went to South Kensington to look at the Museums -there. He did not go into them actually, he just looked -at them and at the colleges and buildings generally. It -was a preliminary reconnaissance.</p> - -<p>The Museums were quite good to look at. Larger, more -extensive, than the British Museum. Probably they contained—all -sorts of things.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta reappeared in the studio about half-past<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span> -six looking very bright and exalted. There was -something about her subtly triumphant.</p> - -<p>She offered no explanation of her disappearance. She -was full of the visit to Tunbridge on the morrow. They -must catch a train soon after nine and have a good long -day. She was unusually affectionate to her Daddy.</p> - -<p>Harold was out for the evening and Fay had some -reviewing to do, so they had quite a quiet and domestic -evening. Mr. Preemby read with a varying attention a -nice deep confusing book he had found in the room -upstairs called <i>Fantasia of the Unconscious</i> about the Lost -Atlantis and similar things.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE FOURTH<br> - -<i>The Petunia Boarding House</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">M<small>OST</small> places in the world have sister cities and twins -and parallels, but Tunbridge Wells is Tunbridge -Wells, and there is nothing really like it upon our planet. -Not that it is in any way strange or fantastic, but because -of its brightly delicate distinction. It is clean and open, -and just pleasantly absurd. It is not more than thirty miles -from London, as the crow flies, but the North Downs six -miles away dismiss with a serene and gracious gesture all -thoughts of London from the mind. It is away from the -main line out of London, inconvenient for season-ticket -holders; there is no direct route for the hurrying motorist -over those saving Downs; to Dover and Kent generally he -goes to the east of it, and to Brighton he goes to the west—if -he survive the hills of Westerham and Sevenoaks. -Rich men’s estates encircle it with accessible parks. Eridge, -Bayham, Penshurst Park, Knole and the like protect it -from overmuch breeding of little villa residences. There -it lies, on a rare piece of rocky soil, dry underfoot, airy -and wholesome, with its friendly Common in the midst of -it; its Spa of evil-tasting beneficent waters as the Stuart -princesses drank them, its Pantiles and its Pump Room, -much as Dr. Johnson knew the place. Mount Sion and -Mount Ephraim, Beulah Road and something evangelical -in the air, remind the light-minded visitor that London in -the past was a Puritan city. Many a serious liver has been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span> -touched and found grace at Tunbridge Wells. Many a -light liver has found fresh strength there. And thither -came Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta seeking a boarding -house—and they could have sought it in no more -favourable locality.</p> - -<p>They set about the search in a systematic way as became -a couple, one of whom had been partially trained for sociological -research at the London School of Economics and -partially trained for business at the Tomlinson School. -Mr. Preemby had been for beginning with a general look-round, -just walking round and looking quietly at things for -a bit, but Christina Alberta consulted all the agents in -order, and bought a map and guide to the town and sat -down on a seat on the Common and planned the operations -that led quite readily and easily to the Petunia Boarding -House.</p> - -<p>In the guide Mr. Preemby read with approval some very -promising words. “Listen to this, my dear,” he said. -“H’rrmp. ‘General Characteristics. Emphasis might very -well be laid on the character enjoyed by Tunbridge Wells -as a magnet for high-class residents and visitors. The -town is never overrun with trippers, nor are its streets ever -defiled by the vulgar or the inane. Its inhabitants are -composed, for the most part, of well-to-do people who -naturally create a social atmosphere tinged by culture and -refinement.’”</p> - -<p>“<i>Tinged</i> is a jolly good word for it, I expect,” said -Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“I think my instinct has guided me aright to this place,” -said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>The Petunia Boarding House looks obliquely upon the -Common from where Petunia Road runs into the quaint -and pleasant High Street. It has not the towering magnificence -of the Wellington, the Royal Mount Ephraim, the -Marlborough, or their fellows, which face the sun so -bravely from the hill-crest above the Common, but it is a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span> -house of dignified comfort. The steps, the portico, the -ample hall, the name in letters of gold on black, made -Mr. Preemby say h’rrmp several times. An excessively -chubby maid in a very, very tight black dress and a cap and -apron, came and looked at Mr. and Miss Preemby with a -distraught evasive expression, answered some preliminary -questions incoherently, and said she would call Miss Emily -Rewster—Miss Margaret was out. Thereupon Miss Emily -Rewster, who had been hovering attentively behind a bead -curtain, thrust it aside and came ingratiatingly into the -foreground. She was a little high-coloured old lady, with -an air of genteel <i>savoir-faire</i>; she had a lace cap and wore -a great deal of lace and several flounces, and she had the -most frankly dyed chestnut hair that Christina Alberta -had ever seen. “Was it just for a week or so Mr. Preemby -wanted to come, or something—perheps—more permanent?”</p> - -<p>Explanations were exchanged. Mr. Preemby was to be -“more permanent”; Christina Alberta intermittent—and -rather a difficulty. The existence of headquarters in -Chelsea was revealed discreetly, but not the fact that they -were in a Mews.</p> - -<p>Miss Emily Rewster thought Christina Alberta could -be fitted in if she wasn’t too particular about having the -same room, or exactly the same sort of room every time she -came. “We have to menage,” said Miss Emily Rewster.</p> - -<p>“So long as the window opens,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>The rooms exhibited were very satisfactory, (h’rrmp) -very satisfactory. A glimpse of a bathroom was given. -“You say when you want one,” said Miss Emily Rewster. -There was a dining-room with separate tables, and there -were flowers on every table, very refined and pleasant, and -there was a large drawing-room with a piano and a great -number of arm-chairs and sofas wearing flounces so like -the flounces of Miss Emily Rewster, and antimacassars so -like her cap, and with so entirely her air of accommodating<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span> -receptiveness that it seemed as though they must be at -least her cousins who had joined her in the enterprise. -The piano wore a sort of lace bed-spread, and there were -polished tables bearing majolica pots of aspidistra on mats -and little less serious tables for use, and there was a low -bookcase with books in it and a great heap of illustrated -papers on the top. The hall expanded at the back into a -rather modernish lounge where two ladies were having tea; -and there was also a smoking-room, where, said Miss Emily -Rewster to Christina Alberta rather coyly, “the gentlemen -smoke.”</p> - -<p>“We’ve been very full this season,” said Miss Emily -Rewster, “very full. We’ve had nearly thirty sitting at -dinner. But of course the season is drawing in now. Just -at present we’re down to nine at breakfast and seven at -dinner; two gentlemen in business here. But people come -and people go. I’ve had two inquiries by post to-day. -One an invalid lady and her sister. They think of drinking -the waters. And there are Birds of Passage as well as -Regulars. Just for a night or so. Motor families. They -take us <i>en route</i>. That’s where we have an advantage in -being so close to the shops.”</p> - -<p>She beamed intimately at Mr. Preemby. “Often my -sister or I pop out at the last moment and get in things -ourselves. When every one else is busy. We don’t mind -any little trouble if it makes people comfortable.”</p> - -<p>“We’ve been on the separate table system ever since the -war,” said Miss Emily Rewster. “So much more pleasant. -You can keep yourself Quate to yourself if you wish, or -you can be Friendly. People often Speak in the Drawing-room -or in the Smoking-room. And they bow. Sometimes -people get Quate friendly. Play Games. Get up -Excursions together. Quate Pleasant.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta asked an obvious question.</p> - -<p>“Very pleasant people indeed,” said Miss Emily. “Very -pleasant people. A retired gentleman and his wife and her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span> -stepdaughter and two retired maiden ladies and a gentleman -and his lady who has been in a forest in Burmah and -so on.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta restrained a ribald impulse to ask what -a “retired gentleman” or a “retired maiden lady” really -meant.</p> - -<p>“I’ve always been attracted to Tumbridge Wells,” said -Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“<i>Royal</i> Tunbridge Wells <i>if</i> you please,” said Miss Emily -radiantly. “The ‘Royal’ was added in nineteen nine, you -know, by gracious command of his Majesty.”</p> - -<p>“I didn’t know,” said Mr. Preemby with profound -respect, and tried it over; “<i>Royal</i> Tumbridge Wells.”</p> - -<p>“Makes it rather a mouthful,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“A very pleasant mouthful for Us, I can assure you,” -said Miss Emily loyally.</p> - -<p>The Petunia Boarding House seemed so satisfactory to -Mr. Preemby that it was arranged that he should return -the next day but one, bringing with him some clothes and -other luggage, and that Christina Alberta was to come and -stay with him for a few days—there was a little room -upstairs she could have—and then she would go back to -London and her studies and take her chance of coming -again when there was a room for her.</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>In the train back to London Mr. Preemby rehearsed -these arrangements and made his plans.</p> - -<p>“I shall come down here the day after to-morrow, after I -have put my collections in order at the Mew. I shall put -the best things so that they can be seen through the glass -of the cabinet, but I think I shall lock them up, and I shall -bring down a few necessary books, and then when I have -quite settled in I shall go and have a good look at these -celebrated Rocks here.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>“We could come down in the morning,” said Christina -Alberta, “and go and look at them in the afternoon.”</p> - -<p>“Not the same afternoon,” said Mr. Preemby. “No. I -want my mind to be quite fresh and open when I look at -the Rocks. I think it will be best to see them quite early—after -a night’s sleep. When there are no other visitors. I -think—I think, Christina Alberta, that for the first time I’d -better go to them quite alone. Without you. Sometimes -you say things, Christina Alberta—you don’t mean to say -them of course—but they put me out....”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta reflected. “What do you expect to -find at these Rocks, Daddy?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby waved his moustache and the rest of his -face slowly from side to side. “I go with an Open Mind,” -he said. “Perhaps all of Atlantis was not lost. Some of it -may be hidden. There are legends preserved by the philosopher -Plato. Partly in cipher. Who knows? It may be -here. It may be in Africa. A plan. A sign. The toad rock -must be most singular. In the British Museum there is a -toad rock from Central America....”</p> - -<p>He mused pleasantly for a time.</p> - -<p>“I shall take a note-book,” he said, “and several coloured -pencils.”</p> - -<p>He continued to meditate. His next remark came after -an interval of three or four minutes, and was a surprise for -Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“I hope, my dear,” said Mr. Preemby, “that among all -these artists and people you are not getting Ram -Shackle.</p> - -<p>“I should be sorry to think you were getting Ram -Shackle,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“But Daddy, what makes you think I may be getting—Ram -Shackle?” asked Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“One or two little things I saw at the Mew,” said Mr. -Preemby. “Just one or two little things. You’ve got to -be careful, Christina Alberta. A girl has to take care of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span> -herself. And your friends—decidedly Ram Shackle. Don’t -mind my making a remark about them, Christina Alberta. -Just a word in season.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta’s answer came after a little interval, -and without her usual confident ring. “Don’t you worry -about me, Daddy,” she said. “I’m all right.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby seemed about to change the subject. Then -he remarked, “I don’t like that feller, Teddy Winterton. -He’s too familiar.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t like him either,” said Christina Alberta. “He <i>is</i> -too familiar.”</p> - -<p>“That’s all right,” said Mr. Preemby. “I thought you -didn’t notice,” and relapsed into meditation.</p> - -<p>But this sudden and unprecedented intervention in her -personal affairs made Christian Alberta thoughtful for all -the rest of the way to London. Ever and again she glanced -furtively at her Daddy.</p> - -<p>He seemed to have forgotten her.</p> - -<p>But it was dreadfully true. Teddy Winterton had become—altogether—too -familiar.</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>In all ages competent observers have noted the erratic -unexpectedness of destiny, and now Christina Alberta was -to add her own small experience to this ever accumulating -testimony. It seemed to her that in planting him out in the -wholesome quiet of Royal Tunbridge Wells she was securing -for her Daddy the very best possible conditions for -a happy and harmless life. There had, indeed, been a -notable change in the little man since her mother’s death, a -release of will, a new freedom of expression, a disposition -to comment and even form judgments upon things about -him. She had herself likened it to the germination of a -seed brought out of a suppressing aridity into moisture -and the light, but she had not followed up that comparison<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span> -so far as to speculate what efflorescences might arise out of -this belated unfolding of his initiatives. That here, of all -places, he would meet just the stimulus that was needed -for the most fantastic expansions of his imaginative life, -that for him Tunbridge Wells should prove the way out of -this everyday world of ours into what was to be for him -an altogether more wonderful and satisfactory existence, -never entered her head.</p> - -<p>For three days, until a fretting urgency for events carried -her back to London, she stayed in the Petunia Boarding -House, and for all those three days there was no intimation -of the great change in his mind that impended. On the -whole he seemed unusually dull and quiet during those -three days. He liked Tunbridge Wells very much, he said, -but he was greatly disappointed by the High Rocks and by -the Toad Rock when he came to examine them. He even -doubted whether they were not “simply natural.” This was -a terrible concession. He tried hard to believe that the -Toad Rock was like one of the big Maya carvings of a toad -from Yucatan, a cast of which he had seen in the British -Museum, but it was evident that with all the will possible -he could not manage so great an act of faith. All the -decoration, he declared, all the inscription had been obliterated, -and then, making the great blonde moustache bristle -like a clothes-brush: “There never were any decorations -or inscriptions. Never.”</p> - -<p>It was clear to Christina Alberta that he must have -evolved very extraordinary expectations, indeed, to be so -much cast down. She found herself very interested in the -riddle of what was fermenting in his mind. It seemed to -her as if he had regarded Tunbridge Wells as a sort of -Poste Restante at which some letter of supreme importance -had awaited him. And there was no letter.</p> - -<p>“But what did you expect, little Daddy?” said Christina -Alberta, when on the afternoon of the first day he took her -to the Toad Rock to see for herself how ordinary and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span> -insignificant a rock it was. “Did you expect some wonderful -carvings?”</p> - -<p>“I expected—something for me. Something significant.”</p> - -<p>“For you?”</p> - -<p>“Yes, for me. And every one. About Life and the Mysteries. -I had grown a sort of feeling there would be something -there. <i>Now</i>—I don’t know where to turn.”</p> - -<p>“But what sort of thing, what significance did you -expect?”</p> - -<p>“Isn’t Life a Riddle, Christina Alberta? Haven’t you -noticed that? Do you think it is just nothing but studios -and dances and excursions and char-à-bancs and meal-times -and harvest?” he said. “Obviously there is something -more in it than that. Obviously. All that is just a Veil. -Outward Showing. H’rrmp. And I don’t know what is -behind it, and I am just a plain boarder—in a boarding -house—and my life is passing away. Very difficult. -H’rrmp. Almost impossible. It worries me exceedingly. -Somewhere there must be a clue.”</p> - -<p>“But that’s how we <i>all</i> feel, Daddy,” cried Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Things can’t be what they seem,” said Mr. Preemby, -waving his hand with a gesture of contemptuous dismissal -towards Rusthall Village, public house, lamp-posts, a -policeman, a dog, a grocer’s delivery van and three passing -automobiles. “That at any rate is obvious. It would be -too absurd. Infinite space; stars and so forth. Just for -running about in—between meals....”</p> - -<p>Now who would have thought, Christina Alberta reflected, -that this sort of thing was going on in his head? -Who would have thought it?</p> - -<p>“Either I am a Reincarnation,” said Mr. Preemby, “or I -am not. And if I am not, then I want to know what all -this business of the world is about. Symbolical it <i>must</i> be, -Christina Alberta. But of what?</p> - -<p>“All those years at the Laundry I knew that that life<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span> -wasn’t real. A period of rest and preparation. Your dear -mother thought differently—we never discussed it, h’rrmp, -but it was so.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta could find no adequate comment and -they went on in silence for some time. When they spoke -again it was to discuss how they could get round to the -High Rocks Hotel for tea.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>Mr. Preemby was evidently depressed and more than a -little aggrieved, but he had none of the comprehensive -despondency of your melancholic type. Concurrently he -was quite actively interested in the boarding house, and -the fellow boarders he encountered there. It was a novel -experience for him to be in a boarding house. During his -married life he had always spent his holidays with Mrs. -Preemby in seaside apartments, so that she could supervise -the provisioning properly, and detect, expose and -rectify errors and extortion. They had taken drives inland -during these vacations, or camped on the beach while -Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta had made sandcastles -or pottered among rocks, and Mrs. Preemby had sat -in a folding-chair and pined for the Laundry. If the -weather was bad they kept in their apartments, where -Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta could read books -while Mrs. Preemby could pine for the Laundry almost as -well as she could on the beach. But deep in Mr. Preemby’s -heart there had always been a craving for such a collective, -promiscuous life as a boarding house affords.</p> - -<p>They had made the acquaintance of the second Miss -Rewster, Miss Margaret Rewster, on their arrival with the -luggage. She was a taller, more anxious and less richly -belaced variation of her sister. They both, Mr. Preemby -discovered, had a peculiar hovering quality. They seemed -always hovering behind bead curtains or down passages,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span> -or looking over from staircase landings or peeping round -doors; poor dears! they were dreadfully anxious not to -interfere with their guests, but they were equally anxious -that everything should be all right. At meal-times they -operated with the joints and dishes behind a screen, and -the chubby maid carried round the plates and vegetables. -And whenever Mr. Preemby looked at the screen he found -either Miss Margaret Rewster peeping over the top of it at -him or Miss Emily Rewster peeping round the end. It -made him quite nervous with his forks and spoons. When -he dropped his serviette he hoped that would pass unobserved, -but Miss Emily noted it at once and sent the -chubby maid to pick it up for him.</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby and Christina Alberta came down to dinner -as soon as Miss Margaret had sounded the second gong, -and so they were the first to be seated and could survey -their fellow-guests at an advantage. Christina Alberta was -quietly observant, but Mr. Preemby said “h’rrmp” at each -fresh arrival. The next to appear were two Birds of Passage, -a young man in Hudibrastic golfing knickerbockers, -and a lady, presumably his wife, in a bright yellow sporting -jumper, who were motoring about Kent; they made -strenuous attempts to seize a table in the window which -was already reserved for Petunia Regulars and were subdued -with difficulty, but perfect dignity, by Miss Emily. -They then consulted loudly about wine—the young man -called the lady “Old Thing,” and “Old Top,” forms of -expression new and interesting to Mr. Preemby, and she -called him “Badger”—and the chubby maid produced a -card of wines that could be sent out for. The young man -read out the names and prices of wines and made his selection -almost as though he were a curate officiating in a very -large cathedral. His wife, to follow out that comparison, -made the responses. “Chablis such as we should get here -might be too sweet,” he proclaimed.</p> - -<p>“It might be too sweet?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span>“What of a Pommard, Old Top?”</p> - -<p>“Why <i>not</i> a Pommard, Badger?”</p> - -<p>“The Beaune is a shilling cheaper and just as likely to be -good—or bad.”</p> - -<p>“Just as likely.”</p> - -<p>The chubby maid flew out of the room, list in hand, with -her thumb on the wine he had chosen.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile under cover of this hubbub the two ladies -Mr. Preemby had seen at tea in the lounge on the occasion -of his first visit, percolated unobtrusively to a table near -the window. They were obviously sisters, both rather -slender and tall with small, round, bright-coloured faces -on stalk-like necks; they had sharp little noses, and one -of them wore tortoiseshell spectacles. A gentleman with -a white moustache, larger and nobler even than Mr. -Preemby’s, accompanied by a small alert-looking wife, was -the next to appear. Possibly this was the gentleman who -had been in a forest in Burmah. The small alert-looking -wife bowed to the slender ladies, who became agitated like -reeds in a wind. The gentleman took no notice of them, -grunted as he sat down, produced glasses and read the menu.</p> - -<p>“Tomato soup <i>again</i>!” he said.</p> - -<p>“It’s usually very nice tomato soup,” said his wife.</p> - -<p>“But Three Times Running!” he said. “It favours -acidity. I don’t <i>like</i> tomato soup.”</p> - -<p>The table in the bow window was occupied by three -people who drifted in separately. First came a little, thin, -dark lady in grey, carrying a bead work-bag, then a little -dark, bald man with large side-whiskers whom she addressed -as father, and then a plump, healthy-looking wife with a -radiant manner who swept in and distributed greetings.</p> - -<p>“Did you get your walk, Major Bone?” she said to the -gentleman from the Burmese forest.</p> - -<p>“Just to Rusthall Common and back,” said Major Bone, -speaking thickly through his moustache and soup. “Just -to Rusthall Common.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span>“And you got a char-à-banc to Crohamhurst, Miss -Solbé?” The two sisters answered in unison. “Oh! we -had a <i>lovely</i> ride.”</p> - -<p>“So picturesque,” said the one with spectacles.</p> - -<p>“So open and pleasant,” said the one without spectacles.</p> - -<p>“Did you see the sea?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, plainly!” said the one with spectacles.</p> - -<p>“Ever so far away,” said the one without.</p> - -<p>“Just as if the sky had a steel edge,” said the one with -spectacles.</p> - -<p>“Exactly like a leetle silver line,” said the one without.</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>Small portions of fish followed the tomato soup, and -were consumed in comparative silence. There was a little -burst of scarcely audible conversation at the window table.</p> - -<p>“Now is <i>this</i> the same fish as we had yesterday?” asked -the wife.</p> - -<p>“It is a very similar fish,” said the gentleman with -whiskers.</p> - -<p>“The menu simply says, ‘Fish,’” said the stepdaughter.</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>“I think our back tyres were too tight to-day, Old Top,” -said the man in plus fours, in a very loud, clear voice. “I -felt the road dreadfully.”</p> - -<p>“I felt the road dreadfully,” said the lady in the yellow -jumper.</p> - -<p>“I must let them down a little to-morrow morning.”</p> - -<p>“It would be better.”</p> - -<p>“To-morrow morning will do. I won’t trouble to-night.”</p> - -<p>“Much better to-morrow morning, Badger. You’re tired -to-night after all that bumping. You’d make your hands -dirty.”</p> - -<p>Silence and active business with knives and forks.</p> - -<p>“Porruck hasn’t written about that,” said the Major from -the forest.</p> - -<p>“Very likely he’s busy,” said his wife.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span>Silence.</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta searched her mind for some conversational -opening that would give her father a reasonable -opportunity to make an acceptable reply, but she could -think of nothing that was neither too disconcerting nor too -dangerous. She met his eye and he had the expression of -one who holds out against a strain.</p> - -<p>Fish gave place to lamb.</p> - -<p>“I thought that road from Sittingbourne was just awful,” -said the motoring gentleman.</p> - -<p>“It was <i>just</i> awful,” responded his wife.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta saw her father’s face working. He was -going to say something. “H’rrmp. To-morrow, if it is fine, -I think we will go for a walk in the morning.”</p> - -<p>The knives and forks were hushed. Everybody was -listening.</p> - -<p>“I’d love a walk to-morrow, Daddy,” said Christina -Alberta. “I should think there were some jolly walks about -this place.”</p> - -<p>“Exactly,” said Mr. Preemby. “Very probably. The -Guide Book is very reassuring. H’rrmp.”</p> - -<p>He had the dignified expression of a man who has carried -off a difficult duty.</p> - -<p>Resumption of activity with knives and forks.</p> - -<p>“Hard to tell this lamb from mutton,” said Major Bone, -“if it wasn’t for the mint sauce.”</p> - -<p>“Peas are never so nice as they are from your own -garden,” said the wife of the whiskered gentleman to her -stepdaughter.</p> - -<p>“It’s late for peas,” said the stepdaughter.</p> - -<p>The two Miss Solbés and the motoring gentleman began -talking at the same time. Mrs. Bone expressed the idea -that it was hard to get good lamb nowadays. Taking -courage from this sudden swirl of conversation Mr. -Preemby was emboldened to remark to Christina Alberta<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span> -that he had always been attracted to Tumbridge Wells. -He felt the air was a strong air. It gave him an appetite.</p> - -<p>“You must be careful not to get fat,” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>The outburst of active human exchanges came to an end. -Baked apple and custard were consumed in comparative -silence. The chubby maid came to ask Mr. Preemby -whether he would like his coffee in the lounge or the -smoking-room. “The lounge I think,” said Mr. Preemby. -“H’rrmp. The lounge.”</p> - -<p>The Misses Solbé, bearing glasses containing sugar and -lemon juice, flitted from the room. The people from the -window table followed. The function of dinner was completed. -They found themselves alone in the lounge. Most -of the people seemed to have drifted into the sitting-room. -The gentleman from the forests of Burmah went by towards -the smoking-room, carrying a large cigar which had an -air of also coming from the forests of Burmah. It did -not look like a cigar that had been rolled or filled; it -looked like a cigar of old gnarled wood that had been -hewn from a branching tree. A straw came out of the -end of it....</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta stood and contemplated a vast void of -time, two hours it might be, before she could decently go -to bed. “Oh! this is the Life!” she said.</p> - -<p>“Extremely comfortable,” said Mr. Preemby, sitting down -with much creaking in a basket arm-chair.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta sat on a glass-topped table and lit a -cigarette. She saw those two hours stretching before her, -and she wanted to scream.</p> - -<p>The chubby maid brought coffee and seemed gently surprised -at Christina Alberta’s cigarette. Whisperings off -stage. Then Miss Emily became dimly visible through the -bead curtain at the end of the passage, hovering. She -vanished again and Christina Alberta finished her cigarette -in peace. Mr. Preemby drank up his coffee. Pause. Christina<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span> -Alberta swung her legs rhythmically. Then she slid off -the table to her feet.</p> - -<p>“Daddy,” she said, “let’s go into the sitting-room and see -if anything is happening there.”</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>In the Boarding Houses of the past the common dining-table -was the social centre where people met and mind -clashed upon and polished mind. But the spirit of aloofness, -the separate table system, has changed all that, and -now it is in the smoking-room or the sitting-room that the -vestiges of social intercourse, advances, retreats, coquettings, -exchanges, games and jests are to be found. But the -company of the Petunia Boarding House was not in a state -of social fusion. The only coalescence was a conversation. -The wife of the gentleman from the Burmese forests had -secured an arm-chair by the side of the fire-place, and she -was describing in a low whisper the numerous servants she -had had in Burmah, to the cheerful wife and the younger -Miss Solbé who was knitting. The Miss Solbé with the -spectacles had fortified herself behind a table on the other -side of the fire and was engaged meticulously with a very -elaborate Patience. The gentleman with the side-whiskers -sat rigidly on one of the sofas, behind a copy of the <i>Times</i>, -while his daughter sat at a table close at hand and also -threaded her way through a Patience. The Birds of Passage, -after inquiries about movies and music-halls, had -gone out.</p> - -<p>Nobody took the slightest notice of Mr. Preemby and -Christina Alberta. The two stood for some moments in -the middle of the room, and then panic came upon Mr. -Preemby. A dishonourable panic so that he threw his -daughter to these silent, motionless wolves.</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” he said. “I think my dear, I will go to the -smoking-room. I think I will go and smoke. There are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span> -some illustrated papers over there on the bookcase for you -if you care to look at them.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta walked over to the low bookcase and -Mr. Preemby departed, h’rrmping.</p> - -<p>She stood pretending an interest in the illustrated jokes -and in the portraits of actresses and society people in the -<i>Sketch</i> and <i>Tatler</i>. Out of the tail of her eye she surveyed -those fellow-guests of hers, and with a negligent ear she -collected the gist of Mrs. Bone’s dissertation upon the -servant question in Burmah. “They will plant the whole -family upon you if they can—uncles and cousins even. -Before you know where you are....</p> - -<p>“Of course a white woman is a Little Queen out -there....</p> - -<p>“The chief fault of the cooking from my point of view, -was the way it upset Major Bone. His stomach ... far -more delicate than a woman’s.”</p> - -<p>“He looks so stout and strong,” said Miss Solbé.</p> - -<p>“In everything but that. In everything. But the Curries -they used to make——”</p> - -<p>She sank her voice, and the heads of the younger Miss -Solbé and the pleasant mannered lady closed in upon her -for the rich particulars.</p> - -<p>What a Lot they were! Christina Alberta reflected. And -they were living beings! The astonishing thing to Christina -Alberta was that they were alive. And being alive and -having presumably been a cause of considerable trouble, -distress, emotion and hope to various people before they -were got alive, they were now all in the most resolute way -avoiding anything that with the extremest stretch of civility -could be spoken of as living. Their hours, their days were -passing; a few thousand days more perhaps for each of -them, a few score thousand hours. Then there would be -no more chance of living for ever. And instead of filling -up this scanty allowance of hours and days with every -possible sensation and every possible effort and accomplishment,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span> -here they were, gathered into a sort of magic -box of atmosphere in which nothing could possibly be done. -By anyone....</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta felt like a moth caught under a glass. -Well, for a day or so, she had an excuse, little Daddy must -be settled. But then? Nothing could be done here. -Neither joy nor sorrow nor sin nor creative effort—because -even Miss Solbé’s knitting was being knitted to a prescription -on a dirty cutting of printed paper. Everything they -were employed upon was an evasion, everything. Even -the whispered delicate hints of the diuretic, dyspeptic, -infuriating and wildly aphrodisiac effects of Burmah Curry -upon Major Bone in his younger days that were being -handed out by his good lady to her intent hearers, were -just a substitution of second-hand knowledge for realities.</p> - -<p>And this Patience! Would she, Christina Alberta asked -herself, would she ever come to play Patiences in Boarding -Houses? Was it credible that some day she also would -come to sit voluntarily in such an atmosphere?</p> - -<p>“Rather sell matches in a gutter,” whispered Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>What a marvellous thing is Man! What ingenuities he -has! what powers and capabilities! He invents paper and -perfects printing! He develops the most beautiful methods -of colour printing. He makes cardboard like silk and ivory -out of rags and vegetable pulp. And all it would seem, -that human beings, hanging for a little while in life between -the nothingness before death and the nothingness after -death, should fiddle away long hours in a feeble, fuddled -conflict with the permutations of duplicate sets of four -differently coloured thirteens! Cards! The marvel of -cards! All over the world millions of people drawing -nearer to death and nothingness were pursuing the chances -of the four thirteens: bridge, whist, nap, skat, a hundred -forms of it. Directly they could get in out of the wet and -dark, they sat down to that sort of thing, to the cards<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span> -shining under the still lamps, to being endlessly surprised, -delighted, indignant and despondent by chances that anyone -who chose to sit down to it could work out and tabulate -in a week!</p> - -<p>“Getting it out, dear?” said the younger Miss Solbé.</p> - -<p>“The spades are <i>Wicked</i> to-night,” said the Miss Solbé -with the glasses.</p> - -<p>“Mine is going rather well,” said the daughter of the -gentleman with the whiskers.</p> - -<p>“Does your daughter play <i>Miss Milligan</i>?” asked the -younger Solbé sister.</p> - -<p>“<i>Eight-eights</i>,” said the comfortable wife. “<i>Miss Milligan</i> -is too much for her.”</p> - -<p>“Well, it <i>is</i> a Beast you know,” said the stepdaughter. -“You never know where you are with it.”</p> - -<p>“Patience is Patience,” said the elder Miss Solbé. “Nowadays -I often get it out. But not when the spades come as -they’ve done to-night, both twos in the top row, and no -aces till the last round but one.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta thought it was time to change from the -<i>Sketch</i> to the <i>Tatler</i>. She tried to do this with careless ease -and flopped a dozen papers on the floor. “Oh, <i>Damn</i>!” said -Christina Alberta to a great stillness. She struggled to pick -up and replace the disordered sheets. For a time every one -seemed to be regarding her. Then Mrs. Bone took up her -discourse again.</p> - -<p>“And you can’t imagine their obstinacy,” she said. -“They are <i>wilfully</i> ignorant. When you show them, <i>then</i> -they won’t do it. I took my cook-boy in hand for a time—boy -I call him, but he was quite a middle-aged man—and I -said to him, ‘just let me show you some plain English -cookery, a boiled fowl with nice white sauce, a few plain -potatoes and vegetables—quite plain with the natural -flavour left in—the sort of food that builds up these brave -young Englishmen you see.’ Of course I’m not a good cook -myself, but anyhow I knew more of English cooking than<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span> -he did. But we never got further than the plain boiled -fowl. He expressed the most violent disapproval—really -violent I mean—of the whole proceedings. As I took hold -of the things and got to work he began to behave in the -most extraordinary way. He tried <i>not</i> to follow what I was -doing. Tried not to. He said that if he cooked a fowl like -that he would lose caste, lose his position in the local guild -of cooks, be perpetually defiled and outcast. <i>Why</i>, he -would not say. When I persisted he rushed up and down -pulling at his black hair—a black madman, his eyes rolling -frightfully. I could never make out what there was in a -plain boiled fowl to cause such excitement. ‘This in my -kitchen,’ he said. ‘This in <i>my</i> kitchen!’</p> - -<p>“There I stood quietly boiling my fowl while all this -pother went on. He hovered about me. He talked—fortunately -in his own language. I even caught him pretending -to be sick behind my back. Then he came and implored -me to desist—with tears in his great brown eyes. He tried -to say things in English. The Major always says that he -was simply swearing, but I believe the wretched man really -did believe that if he was to boil a fowl in the plain, wholesome, -simple way nice people in England do it daily, he -would be hung in the air, and the great jays of Burmah -would come and peck—ahem!”</p> - -<p>She cast a side glance at Christina Alberta, apparently -lost in the <i>Sketch</i>, and lowered her voice.</p> - -<p>“Peck at his <i>entrails</i>, just his insides you know, for a -Thousand, Thousand Years.”</p> - -<p>Sensation.</p> - -<p>“You never know What Ideas Easterners will get into -their Heads,” said the younger Miss Solbé. “East is East, -and West is West.”</p> - -<p>But now Christina Alberta’s attention was distracted by -another set of phenomena. She had discovered that the -thin, bald gentleman with side-whiskers, rigid behind his -<i>Times</i>, was not really reading that interesting vestige of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span> -British constitution at all. His gaze was not directed to -the edge of his paper, but beyond it. He was staring from -behind that ambush and round the corner of his glasses in -a strange, hard-eyed way, without passion or admiration, -at the upper part of Christina Alberta’s black-stockinged -legs as they delivered their last challenge to human censure -before disappearing beneath her all too exiguous but -extremely comfortable skirt. And also she was realizing -that a furtive but intense scrutiny of her bobbed hair was -disorganizing the Patience of the whiskered gentleman’s -daughter very seriously, and that it was also interfering -with the proper laying out of a second and different sort of -Patience by the elder Miss Solbé. And suddenly, to her -extreme annoyance, Christina Alberta found a flush of -indignation mantling her cheek, and a combative tingle -passing down the backbone of her straight little body. -“Why the devil,” Miss Preemby asked herself, “why the -devil shouldn’t a girl cut her hair to save trouble and -bother, and wear clothes in which she can walk about?” -Anyhow, a mop of well-washed hair was ten times better -than those feeble, aimless interweavings of pigtails and -fringes and scraps and ends. And as for showing one’s legs -and body; why shouldn’t one show one’s legs and body? -It was just a part of the universal evasion of life by these -people that had got most of their bodies hidden away, tied -up in a sort of bundle. Do they ever venture to look at -themselves? Those Solbé girls, once upon a time, they -must have been jolly little girls with an amused interest in -their stalky little legs, before they said Shush! and put -them away.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta’s speculative vein took charge for a -time. What becomes of legs that are put away and never -looked at and encouraged? Do they get etiolated and -queer, dead-white and funny-shaped and afraid of the -light? And after you’ve really packed your body away and -forgotten it, nothing is left of you but a head sticking out<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span> -and hands that wave about and feet with hidden and distorted -toes; and you go about between meal-times and take -trips in chars-à-bancs to see what every one sees and feel -what every one feels, and you play games by rule and -example according to your age and energy, and become -more and more addicted to Patience until you are ready -to cover yourself up in bed for the last time of all and die. -Evasion! And the fuss they had caused getting born! The -fuss, the morality and marriages and everything that was -necessary before these vacuous lives were begotten!</p> - -<p>But it was all evasion, and the life shown in these <i>Tatlers</i> -and <i>Sketches</i> was evasion just as much. Just as much. All -these photographs of the pushful pretty, the actresses for -sale and the daughters who had to be sold, looked at you -with just your own question in their eyes: “Is this the -Life?” The unending photographs of Lady Diana This, and -Lady Marjorie That, and Mr. So-and-So and a Friend of -the Duke of York or the Duchess of Shonts, at dog-shows, -at horse-shows, at race meetings, at royal inaugurations -and the like, were inevitably suggestive of obstinate doubts -that were in need of a perennial reassurance. The photographs -of people playing tennis and suchlike games were -livelier, but there, too, if you care to look at it, were -evasions. Evasions. Evasions.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta turned over the back numbers of the -<i>Sketch</i> without looking at the pictures before her eyes.</p> - -<p>What was this Life she and these people and every one -by games and jokes and meetings and ceremonies and -elaborate disregards and concealments were all evading? -What was this great thing outside, this something like a -huge, terrible, attractive and compelling black monster, -beyond the lights, beyond the movements and appearances, -that called to her and challenged her to come?</p> - -<p>One might evade the call of it by playing Patience and -games perhaps. One might evade it by living by rule or -custom. People seemed to do so. A time might come when<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span> -that call to Christina Alberta to be Christina Alberta to -the uttermost and fulfil her mysterious mission to that -immense being beyond the lights might no longer distress -her life. She had thought that in a certain recklessness and -violence with herself she might fight her way out to the -call. She had made love now. Anyhow, she hadn’t evaded -<i>that</i>. But—was it going to matter as much as she had -thought it would matter? She and her little friends were -playing desperate games with the material of love in a -world where Dr. Marie Stopes and Mr. D. H. Lawrence -were twin stars, and it was just something you went -through—and came out much as you had been before. -More restless, perhaps, but no further on. It left you just -where you had been, face to face with the unsolved darkness -and that mysterious, distressing, unanswerable call to -come out of it all and really live and die.</p> - -<p>She had made love.... Queer it had been....</p> - -<p>These furtive people were watching and watching her, -reading her thoughts, perhaps, penetrating her....</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta shut her copy of the <i>Sketch</i> with -something of a snap, and walked out of the drawing-room -with a serene expression. She shut the door behind her and -went downstairs to find what had happened to her father -in the smoking-room.</p> - -<p>“I’m leaving the best part of the talk behind me,” -reflected Christina Alberta.</p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>She found that her father and the gentleman from the -forests of Burmah, after a very prolonged and brilliant -“h’rrmping” match, had settled down to conversation. But -unhappily the conversation was unsuitable for her.</p> - -<p>“Siam, Cambodia, Tonquin, the country is full of such -temples. They take you there and show you them.”</p> - -<p>“Wonderful,” said Mr. Preemby. “Wonderful. And you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span> -do not think the carvings you speak of—? Some high -symbolism?”</p> - -<p>Both gentlemen became aware of Christina Alberta, -attentive and hovering.</p> - -<p>“Symbolism,” said the arboreal gentleman, “Symbolism,” -and had complicated pharyngeal difficulties. “Heathenish -indecency. Difficult to discuss.... Presence of young -lady.... H’rrmp.”</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby. “Had you come down to -say good night, my dear? We are having a rather—rather -technical talk.”</p> - -<p>“Sounds like it, Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, and -went round and sat on the arm of his chair for a moment.</p> - -<p>“Good night, little Daddy,” she said.</p> - -<p>Reflective moment.</p> - -<p>“I think this Tumbridge is going to suit me,” said Mr. -Preemby.</p> - -<p>“I hope it will, little Daddy. Good night.”</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>Christina Alberta’s first evening at the Petunia Boarding -House has been described with some particularity because -it is a sample of all the still and uneventful evenings that -seemed to lie before Mr. Preemby there. It impressed -her as an unfathomable enormity of uneventfulness in -which nothing harmful or disturbing could conceivably -occur to him. The last remote possibility of imaginative -disturbance seemed to remove itself next day when Mrs. -Bone announced to the whiskered gentleman’s wife that -she and her husband were off to Bath on the morrow: they -were in luck it seemed; they had got the exact rooms for -the winter in the exact boarding house they had always had -their eyes on. “Tunbridge seems so bleak,” she said. -“After Burmah.”</p> - -<p>The dinner was like the previous dinner; the Birds of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span> -Passage had gone and Mr. Preemby astonished himself, -Christina Alberta, the chubby maid and the assembled -company by demanding whether it was possible to send -out (h’rrmp) for a bottle or flask of Chianti. “It’s an -Italian wine,” said Mr. Preemby to inform and help the -chubby maid in her inquiries. But there was no Chianti -on the wine-list supplied, and after a conversation markedly -reminiscent of that of the Birds of Passage overnight, the -Preemby table was stocked with a bottle of Australian -Burgundy and, at Christina Alberta’s request, a bottle of -mineral water.</p> - -<p>After this display of initiative, self-assertion and social -derring-do, Mr. Preemby did little but h’rrmp throughout -the rest of the meal.</p> - -<p>The subsequent life of the drawing-room was also -vacantly similar to the previous evening. Christina Alberta -got her possibly illegal cigarette in the lounge, indeed she -smoked two, and Miss Margaret Rewster looked at her -through the bead curtain near the office and Miss Emily -had a sniff from the landing upstairs, though nothing was -said. And then Mr. Preemby followed Major Bone into -the smoking-room to gather whatever further information -he could about the temple decorations and religious customs -of the peoples of further India. He was inclined to think -Major Bone rather biased by evangelical prejudice. But -Major Bone was not even indignant about Eastern religions -that night. He wanted to talk about Bath, and he talked -about Bath. He told Mr. Preemby in very great detail -about a remarkable occurrence at Bath. He had met a -gentleman named Bone, a gentleman much of his own -age and appearance, a Captain Bone who had also once -been in Burmah. He detailed various extremely dramatic -conversations between himself and the other Bone, occasionally -going back and correcting himself. They had -made the most elaborate comparison of their genealogies, -and it did not appear that they were even remotely related.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span> -“Most curious coincidence that has ever occurred to me,” -said Major Bone. “In Bath. In nineteen-eh-nine.”</p> - -<p>In the drawing-room Patience prevailed and Mrs. Bone -was talking about Bath. The cheerful wife of the -whiskered gentleman said “Deavning” to Christina Alberta -quite suddenly.</p> - -<p>“Oh! Good evening,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“You had a walk to-day?”</p> - -<p>“We’ve been to see the Toad Rock and the High Rock -and Eridge Park.”</p> - -<p>“Quite a nice walk,” said the cheerful lady, and restored -her attention to Mrs. Bone. Christina Alberta gathered -she was to be noticed, but not made a pet of.</p> - -<p>There was nothing for it but to go through the <i>Tatlers</i> -and <i>Sketches</i> again. This time the pictures were exhausted, -but there were reviews of books and one or two -short stories. Christina Alberta read them all.</p> - -<p>When she went to say good night to her Daddy she had -come to a decision. “Daddy,” she said, “on Thursday, -that’s the day after to-morrow, I must go back to London. -There are some lectures beginning.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby made no effective opposition.</p> - -<p>The third evening was in countenance like the second -except that the Bones had gone and that Christina Alberta -was sustained by the thought that next day she would pass -from the vacuities of Tunbridge to the tangled riddles of -London. And there was a Bird of Passage present, an -untidy young man of the student type with a lot of hair -imperfectly controlled by unguents whose motor bicycle -had broken down just outside Tunbridge Wells. He lived -somewhere away in the north, it seemed, in Northumberland; -he would have to wait in Tunbridge for two or three -days while some broken part of his machine was replaced -from Coventry; he had taken refuge in the Petunia Boarding -House and it was jolly hard luck on him. He couldn’t<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span> -budget for a trip to London; he would just have to sit -down in Tunbridge. He was a Cambridge undergraduate -and a geologist; he had a bag of specimens on his machine. -These facts he conveyed across the width of the room to -Mr. Preemby in the course of a rather one-sided conversation.</p> - -<p>From the first Christina Alberta did not like this young -gentleman from Cambridge. He was like a younger, cruder -Teddy Winterton, with impudent bad manners instead of -impudent good manners, and with neither bodily grace nor -good looks. And while he spoke to Mr. Preemby he glanced -at her. But she had no inkling of the part he might play -in the life of her Daddy and herself.</p> - -<p>When she and her Daddy went into the lounge for coffee -and her cigarette, the young man came and placed himself -at an adjacent table and initiated some more conversation. -Was Tunbridge Wells an amusing place? Was there any -chance of his getting any golf or tennis?</p> - -<p>“There are a number of delightful walks,” said Mr. -Preemby.</p> - -<p>“Not much fun alone,” said the young man.</p> - -<p>“There are the pleasures of observation,” said Mr. -Preemby.</p> - -<p>“All this country has been pretty well worked over,” said -the young man of science. “Is there a Museum here?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby did not know.</p> - -<p>“There ought to be a Museum in every town.”</p> - -<p>Presently the coffee and the cigarettes were finished. -This evening Mr. Preemby was for the drawing-room. -Major Bone had gone, the smoking-room had no attractions, -and Mr. Preemby had exchanged a few amiable words with -the gentleman with whiskers and hoped to follow them up. -Christina Alberta went with him. At the sight of the old -<i>Tatlers</i> and <i>Sketches</i> she remembered she had bought a -book in the High Street that day, a second-hand copy of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span> -Rousseau’s <i>Confessions</i>. She went off to get it. She found -the young gentleman from Cambridge still sitting in the -lounge smoking cigarettes.</p> - -<p>“Pretty gloomy here,” he said.</p> - -<p>“Oh! <i>I</i> don’t know,” said Christina Alberta with an open -mind, pausing before him.</p> - -<p>“Nothing much doing—what?”</p> - -<p>“It’s not a Gala Night.”</p> - -<p>“I’m stranded.”</p> - -<p>“You must bear up.”</p> - -<p>“S’pose you wouldn’t be disposed to come out for a bit -and forage around for some fun?” said the young man -from Cambridge, taking his courage in both hands.</p> - -<p>“Sorry,” said Christina Alberta conclusively, and turned -to go on.</p> - -<p>“No offence?” said the young man from Cambridge.</p> - -<p>“Nice of you to think of me,” said Christina Alberta -who would rather have been thought utterly shameless than -the least bit prudish. “Good hunting.”</p> - -<p>And the young man from Cambridge perceived that he -was dismissed.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta went into the drawing-room for -another tremendous bout of nothingness. But anyhow she -had got Rousseau to read, and to-morrow she would be in -London.</p> - -<p>About the Rousseau—? She had always wanted to know -how she stood towards Rousseau.</p> - -<p>He carried her on to ten o’clock. But she didn’t think -much of Rousseau. He ought to have known a few of the -New Hope Club girls. They’d have shown him.</p> - -<h4>§ 8</h4> - -<p>For three weeks Christina Alberta did not return to Tunbridge -Wells, and when she returned she had passed -through a variety of experiences that will have their due<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span> -effect upon the course of this story. This story is the story -of Mr. Preemby, and we have little sympathy with that -modern sort of novel which will not let a girl alone but -must follow her up into the most private and intimate -affairs. Christina Alberta was perplexed and worried and -would have hated the pursuit of such a searchlight. Suffice -it that events had crowded so closely upon her that for -whole days together she thought scarcely at all of her possibly -quite lonely little Daddy at Tunbridge Wells. Then -came a letter that brought her bustling down.</p> - -<p>“I think it only right to tell you,” said the letter, “that -Very Important Communications indeed have been made to -me <i>of the Utmost Importance</i>, and that I ought to tell you -about them. They seem to alter all our lives. I know you -are immearced in your studies, but these Communications -are so Important that I want to talk them over with you -soon. I would come up to the Studio to tell you about it -all, but very likely Mr. Crumb might be in and I would -much prefer to tell you here on the Common amid more -congenial surroundings. Some of it you will find almost -unbeleavable.”</p> - -<p>“Communications?” said Christina Alberta, re-reading -the letter. “Communications?”</p> - -<p>She went down to Tunbridge Wells that afternoon.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE FIFTH<br> - -<i>The Scales Fall from Mr. Preemby’s Eyes</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">“T<small>HE</small> scales,” said Mr. Preemby, “have fallen from -my eyes.”</p> - -<p>He had chosen a seat upon the Common which commanded -an extensive view of the town, the town crowned -by the green cupolas of the Opera House and lying as -though the houses had been shot out of a cart down the -long incline to the Pantiles. Beyond were the wide distances -of the Kentish hill country, blue and remote.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta waited for more.</p> - -<p>“This experience,” said Mr. Preemby, speaking with an -occasional h’rrmp; “all these experiences—difficult to relate. -Naturally I think you are of a sceptical disposition—taking -after your dear mother. She was very sceptical. Of -psychic phenomena in particular. She said it was Nonsense. -And when your dear mother said a thing was -Nonsense, then it was Nonsense. It only made things -disagreeable if you argued it was anything else. As for -myself—always the open mind. No dogma either way. I -just refrained.”</p> - -<p>“But, Daddy, have you been having psychic experiences? -How could you have psychic experiences down here?”</p> - -<p>“Let me tell you the story in due order. I want you to -see it as I saw it—in due order.”</p> - -<p>“How did it begin?”</p> - -<p>Mr. Preemby held up a propitiatory hand. “Please! In -my own way,” he said.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span>Christina Alberta bit her lips and scrutinized the tranquil -resolution of his profile. There was no hurrying him; he -had to tell his tale as he had prepared it.</p> - -<p>“I do not think,” said Mr. Preemby, “that mine is a very -credulous sort of mind. It is true I am not given to argument. -I do not <i>say</i> very much. But I think and observe. -I think and observe and I have a kind of gift for judging -people. I do not think I am a very easy man to deceive.</p> - -<p>“And it is to be noted that I started the whole affair. It -began at my suggestion. I do not know what put it into -my head, but I do know that it was me started the whole -thing going.</p> - -<p>“You know, after your departure our little band at the -Petunia Boarding House was reduced to just six persons, -not counting the young gentleman from Cambridge who -was, as Miss Rewster says, a Bird of Passage. Naturally -the six of us felt rather drawn together. There were the -two Miss Solbés, both very intelligent young ladies, and -there were Mr. Hockleby and Mrs. Hockleby, and Miss -Hockleby, and there was me. We were drawn together at -lunch after you had gone off—it was a little showery and we -had a fire in the drawing-room and Miss Solbé, the one -with the glasses, tried to show me one of her Patiences. -We got into quite an interesting argument about whether -it was possible to <i>will</i> which card would turn up next. I -have always inclined to the view that for certain people, -people with the necessary gift, it was possible to do so, but -Mr. Hockleby showed himself extremely sceptical in the -matter. He said that if there was a card on the top of the -pack ready to turn up, and if one willed that a different -card should turn up, then that meant that one had really by -sheer will force to re-manufacture two of the cards in the -pack, make them over again, each into the other, make -them blank, reprint them and everything. But I tried to -explain to him that this is not philosophically sound because -of predestination. If you were predestined to will<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span> -that such a card should be on the top of the pack, then that -card was also predestined to be there. He argued——”</p> - -<p>“But is it necessary to tell me all this, Daddy, before we -get to your psychic experience?”</p> - -<p>“It is just to illustrate the fact that Mr. Hockleby was an -extremely sceptical person.”</p> - -<p>“Was that young man from Cambridge present at the -discussions?”</p> - -<p>“No-oh. No. He was not. He had probably gone down -to the Garage to see if his Spare Part had come. He was -always going down to the Garage to see about his Spare -Part.”</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>Mr. Preemby h’rrmped and began a new section of his -narrative.</p> - -<p>“It was in the evening after dinner,” he said, “that things -really began. I went into the smoking-room—to smoke—and -afterwards I went into the drawing-room, and when I -went into the drawing-room I had no more thought of -occult phenomena, Christina Alberta, than I had of flying -over the moon. But as I came into the drawing-room I -saw Miss Solbé looking at her Patience cards which she -had just put out, and the way she was holding her hands -on the table reminded me of the way I had read that -people put their hands together on the table when they -were trying experiments in table-turning. And almost -without thinking I said: ‘Why, Miss Solbé, the way you -are holding your hands is just the way they do when they -are going to do table-turning!’ I said it just like that.</p> - -<p>“Mr. Hockleby was reading his paper at the time—the -<i>Times</i>, I think, but it may have been the <i>Morning Post</i>—but -he put it down when he heard me say that and he -looked over his glasses at me and said, ‘You don’t believe -in that sort of thing, Mr. Preemby, surely?’</p> - -<p>“His wife was sitting with her back to me and from the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span> -way she spoke I think she must have been eating some sort -of sweet or lozenge at the time. ‘<i>I</i> do,’ she said. ‘We -did it at home dozens of times before I was married.’</p> - -<p>“And I don’t know what put it into my head, Christina -Alberta; it seemed almost as though it was something -behind myself that did it, or it may have been a sort of -antagonism I have always felt about that man Hockleby; -but anyhow, I said, ‘I’d really like to try some of this -table-turning.’</p> - -<p>“The younger Miss Solbé, she’s really quite a charming -young lady when you get to know her, and it seems she has -been reading a little occult literature lately——”</p> - -<p>“How old is she, Daddy?” asked Christina Alberta, regarding -him with a look of novel suspicion.</p> - -<p>“I don’t think she can be very much more than thirty-two -or three. Thirty-four at the outside. And really quite -well-read, quite well-read. Well, anyhow, she said she -would like to try it. And Miss Hockleby, evidently she -had been brought up on strictly sceptical lines by her -father, she was curious too. So to cut a long story short, -we tried it. Only Mr. Hockleby objected and Mrs. Hockleby -overruled that. She was the only one among us who -had ever seen anything of the sort before, and so it was she -who arranged things and told us what to do. We chose a -very solid table, the one that usually has the big aspidistra -on it, and while we were turning out the light——”</p> - -<p>“But why did you do that, Daddy?”</p> - -<p>“One always does that,” said Mr. Preemby. “It makes -the atmosphere more favourable. We lit a candle which -Miss Margaret Rewster got for us and turned out all the -electric lights; and while we were doing this, in came young -Mr. Charles Fenton and said—<i>what</i> did he say? A -peculiar expression. Ah, yes! ‘Gollys,’ he said, ‘what’s -up?’”</p> - -<p>“Was that the young man with the motor bicycle?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. The young man from Cambridge. We explained<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span> -what we were doing and asked him to join us. He declared -he knew nothing of psychic phenomena, had never experimented -with it at all and seemed very doubtful about taking -part in the trial. ‘I don’t think there’s anything in it,’ -he said. ‘We shall just waste our time.’ Indeed I remember -now that he did go out intending to visit a music-hall, -and then he came back and said it was raining. It’s very -important to note that he was not at all eager to join -us and that he was quite uninformed about occult things -because, you see, as I will tell you, we found out presently -that he was a person of exceptional psychic gifts, much -greater psychic gifts than anyone else among us.</p> - -<p>“Well, we arranged ourselves about the table in the usual -manner, thumbs and little fingers touching, and for a time -nothing seemed to happen at all. We found Miss Emily -Rewster was peeping in through the slightly open door, -and perhaps that may have had an unfavourable influence. -I suppose she wondered what we were doing and why we -had asked her sister for a candle. Then Mr. Fenton got -very restive and grumbled to himself and said it was the -silliest way of passing an evening he had ever tried. It was -a little difficult to persuade him to keep silence and persevere. -‘<i>All</i> right,’ said he, with a kind of resentment. -‘Have it your own way.’ And then suddenly came two -violent raps, raps like little pistol shots, not immediately -under the table it was, but as if it was in the air a foot or -so under the table. And then the table began to move. -Slowly at first, shifting along the floor, and then quite -strongly twisting and pushing up against our hands. It -was very weird and impressive, Christina Alberta, very -weird and impressive indeed. It rose nearly two feet I -should think and then Mr. Hockleby broke the circle and -it fell rather heavily, I fancy, and the leg hit his shin. He -uttered an exclamation and stooped to rub his leg, and in -the indistinct light he hit his head on the edge of the table. -It seemed almost a judgment on his scepticism I thought.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span> -We turned up one or two of the lights to attend to him. ‘I -don’t like this,’ said Mr. Fenton. ‘This is a bit too rum -for me.’</p> - -<p>“I asked him to try just once more.</p> - -<p>“‘I don’t like this table riding up like this,’ he said. -‘It’s such a bad example for the chairs. Suppose some of -them start playing cup and ball with us! You might get a -nasty toss from a buck-jumping chair. And besides, it’s a -lot too like a Channel crossing for my taste.’</p> - -<p>“I think we were all a good deal excited by what had -happened, and all the others, even Mr. Hockleby, were -eager to continue.</p> - -<p>“‘Next time I shall <i>press</i> down,’ he said. I think he was -a little suspicious that either his wife or me had something -to do with the phenomena. Evidently spiritualism was a -long-standing dispute between him and his wife. His wife -said she had seen tables move before, but none so actively -as this one had done.</p> - -<p>“Down we sat again. We had hardly waited a minute -before the table began rocking about in the most extraordinary -fashion, and then absolutely flew up so violently that -the elder Miss Solbé was thrown back over that Ottoman -there is there, and I was bumped under my chin. At the -same time there was a perfect volley of cracks, like somebody -cracking his fingers, but ever so much louder. It -was quite a comfort to have the lights up again and see -Mr. Hockleby holding the table down firmly in its proper -place. ‘Damn you,’ he said—quite loudly. ‘Damn you. -Keep down.’ Miss Hockleby and her father picked up -Miss Solbé, who was on the floor in a sort of hysterical fit -of laughter, with her feet waving about.</p> - -<p>“‘I don’t like this,’ said Mr. Fenton. ‘It goes through -one like an electric shock.’</p> - -<p>“He spoke quite simply.</p> - -<p>“The only one of us who had had any experience with -occult phenomena was Mrs. Hockleby, and she had not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span> -done anything of the sort since her marriage to Mr. -Hockleby five or six years before, because of his scepticism. -She said now that it was very evident that some very strong -and resolute spirit was present and was trying to communicate -with us, and she explained a simple and safe -method of getting into communication. We were to reform -the circle round the table and we were to call over the -alphabet, and when we came to the letter the spirit wanted -there would be a rap and so we should be able to arrive -at something definite. There is a sort of code quite well -understood it seems in the spirit world, in which you -convey ‘No’ by one rap and ‘Yes’ by two, and so on.</p> - -<p>“We set to work at this,” said Mr. Preemby. “We asked -if the spirit would like to spell out anything and it answered -with two very loud raps, and then Mr. Hockleby read out -the letters: A B C and so on. When it got to S the spirit -gave a rap so loud it made me jump.”</p> - -<p>“And what did you spell out, Daddy?”</p> - -<p>“A name quite unknown to me then—<span class="allsmcap">SARGON</span>, and then -<span class="allsmcap">KING OF KINGS</span>. We asked: was the spirit that was communicating -with us Sargon? The answer came <i>No</i>. Was -Sargon present? <i>Yes.</i> Then who was our communicant? -<span class="allsmcap">OUJAH.</span> Who was Oujah? <span class="allsmcap">WISE MAN.</span> It was a very slow -process spelling out the words in this way, and by the time -we had got so far we were all very tired. Mr. Fenton in -particular was very tired. He yawned and seemed greatly -exhausted, and said at last he felt so weary and muzzy -that he <i>must</i> go to bed. That was really very natural, -because though none of us realized it at the time he was -the actual medium under Oujah’s control. He went to bed -and we tried to go on without him, but the magic had -departed and we could not get so much as a rap. So we -sat for a time talking all this over. Mr. Hockleby in particular -was greatly flabbergasted, and then the rest of us -went to bed.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span>“Evidently Mr. Fenton made the raps,” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Evidently his presence was necessary for the raps to be -made,” corrected Mr. Preemby. “Quite unconsciously he -was a Mejum.”</p> - -<p>There was a pause.</p> - -<p>“Go on with the story,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>“The next evening was wet again, and as his Spare Part -hadn’t come Mr. Fenton was able to join us once more. -He made some little objection at first because he said he -and his people were all Particular Baptists, and he was -doubtful whether this sort of thing was not Necromancy -and forbidden in the Bible. But I persuaded him out of -that. And this time we spelt out a quite singular message. -It was <span class="allsmcap">AWAKE, SARGON</span>! <span class="allsmcap">ARISE OR BE FOREVER FALLEN!</span></p> - -<p>“Even from the first I had had a feeling that those messages -from Sargon had something to do with me. Now -suddenly conviction came upon me. I asked ‘Is Sargon -present?’ ‘<i>Yes.</i>’ I knew it would be so. ‘Is it anyone -in the circle?’ ‘<i>Yes.</i>’ ‘Is it this gentleman?’—pointing to -Mr. Hockleby. A very loud <i>No</i>. ‘Is it me?’ ‘<i>Yes.</i>’</p> - -<p>“Mr. Hockleby I noted at the time looked annoyed—as -though he felt it was he who ought to be Sargon.</p> - -<p>“Then young Mr. Fenton stood up suddenly. ‘Oh! I -can’t stand any more of this,’ he said. ‘My head feels quite -muzzy. I’m sure this sort of thing is harmful.’ He walked -across the room and sat down suddenly with his hands -hanging over the arms of the chair—it was one of the big -arm-chairs covered in cretonne. We all felt very much -concerned, but as for myself I was all in a daze at the -thought of being this Sargon and being called upon so -openly to rouse myself to action. I did not understand<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span> -fully as yet all that it meant to me, but I did realize that -it meant a very great deal.”</p> - -<p>“But what did you think it meant?” said Christina -Alberta sharply, and her perplexed gaze searched his profile. -His blue eyes stared at things far away beyond the distant -hills, strange things, fantastic empires, secret cities, mystical -traditions, and his brows were knit in the effort to keep his -story together.</p> - -<p>“All in good time,” said Mr. Preemby. “Let me tell my -story in my own way. I was telling you, I think, that -young Mr. Fenton said he felt heavy and strange. Mrs. -Hockleby happily was quite equal to that situation. She -had seen the same thing before. ‘Don’t struggle against -it,’ she said. ‘Let yourself go. Just lean back in your -chair. If you want to lie quiet, do. If you want to say -anything, do. Let the influence work.’ And she turned -to me and whispered ‘trance.’</p> - -<p>“‘What is a trance?’ said Mr. Fenton—just like that. -‘What is a trance?’</p> - -<p>“She began moving her hands in front of his face, ‘making -passes,’ I think they call it. He shut his eyes, gave a sort -of sigh and his head lolled back. We all sat round him -waiting, and presently he began to mutter.</p> - -<p>“At first it was just nonsense. ‘Oojah Woojer Boojer,’ -words like that. Then more distinctly, ‘Oujah the Wise -Man, Sargon’s servant. Oujah comes to serve Sargon. -To awaken him.’ After that he seemed to wander off into -sheer rubbish. ‘Why is a mouse when it spins?’ he whispered -in his own voice and then, ‘That damned Spare -Part.’</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Hockleby said that was quite characteristic of this -sort of trance, and then Mr. Hockleby got a writing-pad -and a pencil to take down anything more that was said.</p> - -<p>“And presently when Mr. Fenton spoke again, he did not -speak in his own voice but in a kind of hoarse whisper -quite different from his usual voice. It was the voice of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span> -this Oujah speaking—Oujah the control. With a slight -accent—Sumerian I suppose.</p> - -<p>“Well, the things he said were very astonishing indeed. -I think that this Oujah was anxious to secure my attention -by convincing me that he knew of things, intimate things -that nobody else could know. At the same time he did not -wish the others to know too clearly what he was aiming at. -How did it go? What can I remember? Mr. Hockleby has -a lot of it written down, but so far I have not had time -to make a copy. ‘Child of the sea and the desert,’ he said, -‘the blue waters and the desert sand.’ Is it too fanciful to -find an allusion to Sheringham in that? ‘Cascades and -great waters and a thing like a wheel on a blue shield.’ -That is more puzzling. But ‘cascades and great waters’ -set me thinking of our big washers. And you remember -the swastika on our blue delivery vans, Christina Alberta? -Is not that oddly suggestive of a thing like a wheel on a -blue shield? The Norse peoples called the swastika the -fire-wheel. ‘Armies with their white garments fluttering, -the long lines drawn out—armies of delivery.’ That again -is queer. One is reminded of armies and also—don’t think -me absurd!—of the drying-ground and the vans. It is like -one thing becoming transparent and your seeing the other -behind it.”</p> - -<p>“Are you sure of the exact phrases, Daddy?”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Hockleby has them written down. If I have not -got them quite right you will be able to read his notes.”</p> - -<p>“The swastika may be a coincidence,” said Christina -Alberta. “Or you may have been drawing it on the edges -of the newspaper. You do sometimes. And he may have -seen it.”</p> - -<p>“That does not account for the blue ground. He laid -great stress on the blue ground. And there were other -things; matters known only to me and your dear mother. -I could not tell you them without telling you everything. -And small things, entirely private to me. The name of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span> -my late grandfather at Diss. Munday his name was. It -is sometimes difficult to argue about things although one -may be absolutely convinced. And all this was mixed up -with broken sentences about a great city and the two -daughters of the western King and the Wise Man. And -also he called me Belshazzar. Belshazzar seemed to drift -in and out of his thoughts. ‘Come again to a world that -has fallen into disorder.’ These are remarkable words. -And then ‘Beware of women; they take the sceptre out of -the hands of the king. But do they know how to rule? -Ask Tutankhamen. Ask the ruins in the desert.’”</p> - -<p>“Pah,” said Christina Alberta. “As though women have -ever had a fair chance!”</p> - -<p>“Well, anyhow, Mr. Hockleby has that written down.... -And it seemed to me that this too applied to me, for -because of my great fondness for your mother I had let so -many years of my life slip away. He said many other -things, Christina Alberta, richly suggestive things. But I -have told you enough for you to understand what has happened. -In the end Mr. Fenton came-to quite suddenly, -much more suddenly than is usual in such cases, Mrs. -Hockleby said. He sat up and yawned and rubbed his -eyes. ‘Oh, Lord!’ he said, ‘what nonsense all this is! I’m -going to bed.’</p> - -<p>“We asked him if he felt exhausted. He said he was. -‘Absolutely fed up,’ were his actual words.</p> - -<p>“We asked him if that was the end of his message.</p> - -<p>“‘What message?’ he said. He had absolutely no -memory of his communications at all. ‘Have I been talking?’ -he asked. ‘This isn’t the sort of thing one ought to -get up to. What sort of things have I been saying? Nothing -objectionable I hope. If so I apologize. I mustn’t do -any more of this sort of thing.’</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Hockleby told him she had never met anyone with -such a promise of great psychic power as he had, before.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span> -He said he was really very sorry to hear it. She said he -owed it to himself to cultivate so rare and strange a gift, -but he said That wouldn’t do for his people at all. The -rain had stopped and he said he thought he would take a -walk down to the Pantiles and back before turning in. -Perfectly simple and natural he was from first to last, -and rather unwilling. And he really did look tired out.”</p> - -<p>“Didn’t he laugh once?” asked Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Why should he? He seemed a little afraid of what he -had transmitted. The next day his Spare Part came. Mrs. -Hockleby did her utmost to try to get him once more in the -afternoon and develop his Communication, but he would -not do so. He was full of questions about the ferry at -Tilbury and the time of high tide. He would not even -give us his name and address. When I spoke of sending -Mr. Hockleby’s notes to the <i>Occult Review</i> he was suddenly -quite alarmed. He said that if his name appeared in connection -with them it might mean a very serious row with -his family. He would not even allow us to put a Mr. F. -from Cambridge. ‘Put quite another name,’ he said, ‘quite -a different name. Put anything you like that does not -point to me, a Mr. Walker, say, from London. Or something -of that sort.’</p> - -<p>“Of course there was nothing for us to do but agree.”</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>“And that was the whole of your communication, -Daddy?”</p> - -<p>“It was only the beginning. Because after that I began -to remember. I began to remember more and more.”</p> - -<p>“Remember?”</p> - -<p>“Things from my other lives. Memories stored up. This -young Mr. Fenton was, so to speak, no more than the -first cut in the curtain of forgetfulness that hung between<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span> -this present life and all my previous existences. Now it -was rent and torn open so that I could see things through -it at a dozen points. Now I begin to realize what I really -was and what I can really be....</p> - -<p>“You know, Christina Alberta, I have never actually -believed I was myself—not even as a schoolboy. And -now it is interesting, I know and understand clearly that -I <i>am</i> somebody else. I have always been somebody else.”</p> - -<p>“But who do you believe you are, Daddy?”</p> - -<p>“So far as I can gather I was first a chief called Porg -in a city called Kleb in the very beginning of the world, -æons and æons ago, and I tamed my people and taught -them many things. Then afterwards I was this Sargon—Sargon -the King of Kings. There is very little about him -here in the Public Library, in the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>; -an upstart who took his name, <i>my</i> name, three thousand -years later, an Assyrian fellow is the Sargon they tell about—he -got mixed up with the Jews and he besieged Samaria—but -I was the original Sargon long before there were Jews -or anything of the sort, long before Abraham and Isaac -and Jacob. And afterwards I was Belshazzar, the last -crown prince of the Babylonians, but that is not very clear. -That remains obscure. Only one part of the record is lit—as -yet. And possibly I have been other people. But the -figure that stands out in my memory now is Sargon. It is -his memories have been returning to me. It is he who has -returned in me.”</p> - -<p>“But Daddy, you don’t really believe all this?”</p> - -<p>“Believe!—I <i>know</i>. Long before this Communication -came to me I had had those intimations,—that assurance -that I was somebody else. <i>Now</i> I see clearly. I can -remember days in Akkadia now just as clearly as I can -remember days in Woodford Wells. I could almost doubt -whether I have ever lived at Woodford Wells; it seems so -far away now. It was when I was in bed the night after -Mr. Fenton had gone that these memories began to come.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span> -I was in bed, and then suddenly I was not in bed—I was -reclining on a couch under a canopy, a canopy of pure -white wool very finely woven and embroidered with -emblems and symbols and suchlike things in golden thread, -and I was upon my state barge upon the Euphrates. Two -King’s daughters, sisters, with slender necks, not unlike -the two Miss Solbés except that they were fairer—and -decidedly younger—<i>much</i> younger—and clad rather more -in accordance with the requirements of a warm climate, -chiefly in woven gold—sat and fanned me with fans of -Eagles’ feathers dyed a royal purple. And at my feet sat -my councillor Prewm, who was oddly enough extremely -like Mr. Hockleby—just the same iron-grey whiskers and -with the same little tufts of hair over his ears. He was -wearing an extremely tall cap of some black woollen substance, -and he was making memoranda with a wooden -style on a tablet of wet clay. It was like writing on a -mud pie. And beyond him were the officers of the boat -on a kind of bridge—they were wearing leather helmets -studded with brass—and then one saw the rowers below, -chained to their oars, and then on either side spread the -broad brown river just crinkled by the breeze. The little -boats fled to make way for us. They had coarse, square -sails, and they lowered them and turned them about all -in precisely the same way at precisely the same time. It -was very pretty to see. Along the banks were little villages -of mud-brick houses and clumps and lines of palm trees; -and everywhere there were primitive contrivances, great -bent poles of wood like giant fishing-rods, for raising water -out of the river for the cultivation of the land. And the -people were all crowded along the water’s edge and bowing -with their hands and foreheads in the water and crying, -‘Sargon the Conqueror, Sargon, King of Kings!’”</p> - -<p>“But Daddy, this was a dream?”</p> - -<p>“How could I dream of things I had never seen nor -heard of before?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span>“One does.”</p> - -<p>“One does <i>not</i>,” he replied with a quiet, invincible -obstinacy. “I remember I was coming back from the -South where I had given peace to a multitude of warring -tribes, Elamites and Perrizites and Jebusites and people of -that sort, and I was returning to my capital. I remember -distinctly many details of the campaign and I know that -with an effort I could recall more in the proper order. -In dreams absurd things happen, dreams when you think -them over afterwards are all at sixes and sevens, but this -is all sane and orderly. One might think, Christina -Alberta, that I had never dreamt dreams and that all these -memories of that previous existence which crowd upon me -now were a deception of my imagination! But I can go -right back as if it was yesterday, and I am surer by far -that I am Sargon than that I am Albert Edward Preemby -your father. The former is my true self, the latter is just -a very simple, unpretending wrapping that for some purpose, -at present inexplicable to me, has hidden me from -the world.”</p> - -<p>He waved his hand with a bolder gesture than was -habitual to him. He sat with his eyes wide open, looking -at unseen things.</p> - -<p>The girl regarded him for some seconds in silence. She -was trying to grasp the full import of this amazing -speech.</p> - -<p>“And <i>this</i> was your Communication?” she said at last.</p> - -<p>“You have to know,” he said. “You have to serve and -help me.”</p> - -<p>(Help him! How could she help him or herself? How -far was this thing going? What was she to do?)</p> - -<p>“Have you told anyone else of this, Daddy?” she asked -abruptly. “Have you told anyone else?”</p> - -<p>He turned his solemn little face towards her.</p> - -<p>“Ah, <i>there</i>,” he said, “we have to be very discreet and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span> -careful—very careful indeed. Here and now is not the -time to proclaim that Sargon, King of Kings, has come -back to the civilization he did so much to found. One -has to be careful, Christina Alberta. There is a spirit of -opposition.</p> - -<p>“For instance, I have told something of my first vision—dream -you may call it if you like—to Mr. Hockleby. I -described the resemblance between himself and Prewm. -He was by no means pleased. His is a seditious, insubordinate -nature. And besides—since then—I have recalled -what happened—on the advice of Oujah—to Prewm....</p> - -<p>“And I have realized since then that, though one may be -convinced oneself, it does not follow that one will convince -other people. It is true that Miss Hockleby and the two -Miss Solbés have asked me to tell them more of my -dreams—they too call them dreams. But their manner -was curious rather than respectful and I have been -extremely reserved with them.”</p> - -<p>“That’s my wise Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, “You -have to think of your dignity.”</p> - -<p>“I have to think of my dignity, certainly. Nevertheless—” -His hands went out in a new amplitude of gesture. “Here -I am and this is my world. My world! I nursed it in its -infancy. I taught it law and obedience. Here I am, the -most ancient of monarchs. Rameses and Nebuchadnezzar, -Greece and Rome, the Kingdoms and Empires, things of -yesterday—interludes while I have been sleeping. And -clearly I have been sleeping. And clearly I have not been -sent back to the world without a mission. This is a great -and crowded world now, Christina Alberta, but it is in a -sad state of disorder. Even the newspapers remark upon -it. People are not happy now. They are not happy as they -were under my rule in Sumeria thousands of years ago. -In the sunshine and abundance of Sumeria.”</p> - -<p>“But what can you <i>do</i>, Daddy?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span>“Dear Princess, my child, that I have to think out. -Nothing hastily; nothing rashly.”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>There came a pause. “One person only seems to have -any belief in me. The younger Miss Solbé—— Did you say -anything, dear?”</p> - -<p>“No. Go on.”</p> - -<p>“I have asked her if she too has had any dreams, any -vague memories of a previous existence. She seems to -have had something confirmatory in a shadowy sort of -way. Very vague intimations. She tells them timidly, -when her sister is not about. But she is under a misapprehension -that her relationship to me was a particularly -close and special one. She was not my Queen. There she -is wrong. It is perhaps natural for her to think so, but I -remember quite distinctly how it was. She was one of the -Twenty Principal Concubines who carried the Eagle fans.”</p> - -<p>“Have you told her that?”</p> - -<p>“Not yet,” said Mr. Preemby. “Not yet. One has to go -discreetly in all these things.”</p> - -<p>Another pause followed. Christina Alberta looked at her -wrist-watch. “My word!” she cried. “We shall be late -for lunch!”</p> - -<p>She noted as they walked back towards the Petunia -Boarding House that his bearing and manner had -undergone a subtle change. He seemed larger and taller -and his face was serener and he held his head higher. He -did not h’rrmp once. He seemed to expect people and -things to get out of his way, and it was as if the path was -a carpet that was being unrolled before his advance. Had -she been able to see herself she would have remarked an -equal change in her own carriage. The dance had gone -out of her paces. She walked like one upon whose -shoulders the responsibilities of life might easily become -overwhelming.</p> - -<p>They were late for lunch and all the other boarders<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span> -were in their places, beginning. Every one turned to look -at Mr. Preemby’s face as they came in, and then they -glanced at one another. “So you’ve come back to us,” -said Mrs. Hockleby to Christina Alberta, meeting her eye.</p> - -<p>“It’s jolly to be back,” said Christina Alberta.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE SIXTH<br> - -<i>Christina Alberta Consults a Wise Man</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">C<small>HRISTINA ALBERTA</small> and Paul Lambone had been great -friends for nearly a year. He liked her and admired -her, and as became his literary line of work, he studied -her. And she liked him and trusted him, and showed off -a good lot when she was with him.</p> - -<p>Paul Lambone wrote novels and short stories and books -of good advice, and he was particularly celebrated for the -pervading wisdom of his novels and the excellence of his -advice. It was his pervading wisdom that had picked him -up out of the general poverty of writers and placed him -in a position of comparative prosperity. Not that his -conduct of his affairs was wise, but that the quality of his -wisdom was extremely saleable. Some writers prosper by -reason of their distinctive passion, some by reason of their -austerity and truth, some by their excellent invention, -and some even by simple good writing, but Paul Lambone -prospered because of his kindness and wisdom. When -you read the stories you always felt that he was really -sorry for the misfortunes and misbehaviour of his characters -and anxious to help them as much as he could. -And when they blundered or sinned he would as often as -not tell you what was the better course they might have -chosen. His book of advice, and particularly his <i>Book -of Everyday Wisdom</i> and his <i>What to Do on a Hundred -and One Occasions</i> sold largely and continually.</p> - -<p>But like that James, King of England, to whom the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span> -Bible was dedicated, Paul Lambone was far wiser in his -thoughts and counsels than in his acts. In small matters -and most of the time his proceedings were foolish or selfish -or indecisive or all of those things. His wisdom did not -reach below the level of his eyes, and his face and body -and arms and legs were given over to the unhappiest -tendencies which were restrained by his general indolence -rather than by any real self-control. He was very well off -chiefly because he was lazy; he asked the highest possible -prices for everything he wrote because that was just as -easy as asking the lowest, and there was always a chance -that the bargain would not come off and then he would be -saved the trouble of correcting his proofs. He accumulated -money because he was too unenterprising to buy things -or incur the responsibility of possessions, and so he just -let a trust invest it for him. His literary reputation was -high because a literary reputation in England and America -depends almost entirely upon apparent reluctance of output. -The terse beauty of his style was mainly due to his -sedulous indisposition to write two words where one would -suffice. And in the comfort and leisure his indolence -accumulated for him, he sat about and talked and was -genially wise and got fatter than was becoming. He tried -to eat less as a preferable alternative to taking exercise, -but in the presence of drink and nourishment his indolence -flagged and failed him. He went about a good deal, and -was always eager for new things because they saved him -from boredom, the malign parent of much needless activity. -He had an expensive little cottage near Rye in -Kent to which he could motor without needless trouble -whenever London bored him, and directly his cottage bored -him he would come back to London. And he visited -people’s houses a lot because it was too troublesome to -resist invitations.</p> - -<p>There were, it must be admitted, limits to the wisdom of -Paul Lambone. It is often more difficult to see what is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span> -near us than what is far away; many a stout fellow who -looks with a clear, discerning eye upon the universe sees -little of his toes, and ignores the intervening difficulty; -and something sub-conscious in Paul Lambone’s mind -obstinately refused to recognize the defective nature of -many of his private acts. He knew he was indolent, but -he would not allow himself to admit that his indolence -was fundamental and vicious. He thought there was a -Paul Lambone in reserve of very great energy. He liked -to think of himself as a man of swift and accurate decisions -who, once aroused, was capable of demoniac energy. -He had spent many an hour in arm-chairs, on garden seats, -and on Downland turf, thinking out his course of action -on various possible occasions of war, business, criminal -attempt or domestic crisis. His favourite heroes in real -life were Napoleon, Julius Cæsar, Lord Kitchener, Lord -Northcliffe, Mr. Ford, and suchlike heroic ants.</p> - -<p>He liked Christina Alberta because of her tremendous -go. She was always up to something; she preferred standing -to sitting, and she kicked her legs about while she -talked to you. He idealized her go; he attributed to her -much more go than she really had. He was secretly -persuaded that her blood must be like a bird’s, a degree -or so above normal. He felt that in imagination she had -much in common with him. He called her the Last -Thing, the Van, the Ultimate Modern Girl, and the Life -Force. He openly professed pity for the unaided single-handed -man who would in accordance with our social laws -presently have to marry her and go her pace and try to -keep her in order.</p> - -<p>She had been to tea with him once or twice. She perceived -his admiration and suspected a certain affection, -and she basked in admiration and affection. She liked his -books and thought he was very like what he thought he -was himself. She told him all sorts of things about herself -just to lift his eyebrows.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span>And he was wise all over her and round and about her, -tremendously wise.</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>It was quite interesting to be rung up by Christina -Alberta and asked if she might come for tea and advice. -“Come along now,” he said. “I’m probably all alone for -tea.”</p> - -<p>And as he replaced the instrument he said: “Now I -wonder what the young woman has been up to! And what -she wants me to do for her.”</p> - -<p>He went back to his sitting-room and spread himself on -his very nice Persian hearthrug, and regarded the pretty -silver kettle that swung over his spirit lamp. “It won’t be -money,” he considered. “She isn’t the sort that tries to get -money....</p> - -<p>“She’s barked her shins on something....</p> - -<p>“Girls nowadays are a lot too plucky—they’re a lot too -plucky altogether.... I hope it’s nothing serious.... -She’s just a kid.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta appeared in due course. Erect as -ever, but nevertheless looking a little dashed and subdued.</p> - -<p>“Uncle,” she said—for that was her theory of their relationship—“I’m -in trouble. You’ve got to give me all -sorts of advice.”</p> - -<p>“Take off that brigand’s cloak,” he said, “and sit down -there and make me some tea. I’ve been watching your -love affair out of the corner of my eye for some time. I’m -not surprised.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta paused with her cloak in her hand and -stared at him. “That’s nothing,” she said. “I can manage -that little affair all right. Such as it is. Don’t you worry -about <i>me</i>, in that respect. Don’t imagine things. But -there is something—something different.” She threw the -cloak over a chair back and came and stood by the silver -tea-tray.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span>“You know my Daddy,” she said, arms akimbo.</p> - -<p>“I never saw a more dissimilar parent.”</p> - -<p>“Well—” She considered how she should put it. “He’s -behaving queerly. So that people may think—people who -don’t know him—that he’s going out of his mind.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Lambone reflected. “Was it ever such a very serious -mind to go out of?”</p> - -<p>“Oh! don’t make jokes. His mind was good enough to -keep him out of trouble, and now something’s happened -and it isn’t. People will think—some of them think -already—he is mad. They may take him away. And -there’s just him and me. It’s serious, Uncle. And I don’t -know what I ought to do. I don’t know enough to know. -I’m scared. I’ve got no friends that I can talk to about it. -None. You’d think I’d have women friends. I haven’t. -I don’t get on with older women. They want to boss me. -Or I think they do. And I irritate them. They know, -they feel—the proper ones—that I don’t—oh! respect their -standards. And the other sort just hate me. Because -I’m young. The girls I know—no good for what I want -just now.”</p> - -<p>“But isn’t there a man,” said Lambone, “on whom you -have a sort of claim?”</p> - -<p>“You know who it is, I suppose?”</p> - -<p>He was frank. “Things rather show.”</p> - -<p>“If you know him—” She left the sentence unfinished.</p> - -<p>“I know the young man only very incidentally,” he -said.</p> - -<p>“I go to Teddy,” said Christina Alberta without any -further reservations. “I went to him as a matter of fact -before I telephoned to you. He hardly listened to what I -had to say. He didn’t bother.” She winced. Suddenly -tears stood in her eyes. “He was just loafing about in his -studio. He kissed me and tried to excite me. He would -hardly listen to what I had to tell him.... That I suppose -is what one gets from a lover.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span>“So it’s got to that,” Paul Lambone reflected with hidden -dismay, and then remarked a little belatedly: “Not every -lover.”</p> - -<p>“Mine—anyhow.”</p> - -<p>“And you came away?”</p> - -<p>“<i>Well!</i> What do <i>you</i> think?”</p> - -<p>“H’m,” said Lambone. “You <i>have</i> barked your shins, -Christina Alberta! More than I thought.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, Hell take Teddy!” said Christina Alberta, putting it -on a bit and helping herself by being noisy. “What does -that matter now? I’ve done with Teddy. I was a fool. -Never mind that. The thing is my Daddy. What am I to -do about my Daddy?”</p> - -<p>“Well, first you’ve got to tell me all about it,” said Lambone. -“Because at present, you know, I’ve hardly got -the hang of the trouble. And before you do that you -sit down in that easy chair and I make the tea. No, not -you. Your nerves are on edge and you’ll upset something. -You’ve been having your first dose of adult worry. -Sit down there and don’t say anything for a minute. I’m -glad you came along to me. Very glad.... I liked that -Daddy of yours really. Little innocent-eyed man he was. -Blue eyes. And he was talking—what nonsense <i>was</i> he -talking? About the Lost Atlantis. But it was quite nice -nonsense.... No, don’t interrupt. Just let me recall -my own impression of him until you’ve had your tea.”</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>When the tea was made and Christina Alberta had -sipped a cup and looked more comfortable, Lambone, who -felt he was managing things beautifully, told her she might -begin.</p> - -<p>“He’s getting queer in his mind, but you know that he -isn’t really going out of his mind,” said Lambone. “That’s -it, isn’t it?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span>“That <i>is</i> it,” said Christina Alberta. “You see—” -She paused.</p> - -<p>Lambone sat down in a second arm-chair and sipped his -tea in a leisurely manner. “It’s a little difficult,” he said.</p> - -<p>“You see,” said Christina Alberta, knitting her brows at -the fire, “he’s a person of peculiar imaginativeness. He -always has been. Always. He’s always lived half in a -dream. We’ve been very much together ever since I was -born almost, and from the earliest times I remember his -talks, rambling talks, about the Lost Atlantis, and about -the secrets of the pyramids and Yogis and the Lamas of -Tibet. And astrology. All such wonderful, impossible, -far-off things. The further off the better. Why!—he -almost got me into a dream too. I was a Princess of Far -Atlantis lost in the world. I used to play at that, and -sometimes my play came very near to believing. I could -Princess it for a whole afternoon. Lots of children day-dream -like that.”</p> - -<p>“I did,” said Lambone. “For days together I would be a -great Indian chief, sentenced to death again and again—disguised -as a small preparatory schoolboy. The incongruity -didn’t matter a rap. Everybody does it more or -less for a time.”</p> - -<p>“But he’s gone on doing it all his life. And he’s doing it -now more than ever. He’s lost the last trace of any sense -that it is a dream. And some one played a trick upon -him at Tunbridge Wells. Not realizing what it might -mean for him. They seem to have muddled about with -spiritualism in the evenings while I was in London, table-rapping -and so forth, and a man who had nothing better -to do pretended to have a trance. He told Daddy he was -Sargon the First, Sargon King of Kings he called him, -who was Lord of Akkadia and Sumeria—you know—ages -ago, before Babylon was born or thought of. The man -who did it couldn’t have hit on anything more mischievous -so far as Daddy was concerned. You see he was exactly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span> -ready for it; leaving Woodford Wells where he had spent -half his life in one routine had cut him off, even more -than he was usually cut off, from reality. He was uprooted -already before this idea came to him. And now it’s just -swamping him. It suited him exactly. It—fixed him. -Always before one could get him back—by talking about -my mother or the laundry vans, or something familiar like -that. But now I can’t get him back. I can’t. He’s Sargon, -incognito, come back as Lord of the World, and he believes -that just as firmly as I believe that I am his daughter -Christina Alberta Preemby talking to you now. It’s a -reverie no longer. He’s got his evidence and he believes.”</p> - -<p>“And what does he want to do about it?”</p> - -<p>“All sorts of things. He wants to declare himself Lord -of the World. He says things are in a bad way and he -wants to save them.”</p> - -<p>“They <i>are</i> in a bad way,” said Lambone. “People don’t -begin to know half how bad they are. Still—I suppose -having a delusion about who one is, isn’t Insanity. Does -he want to make some sort of fuss?”</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid, yes.”</p> - -<p>“Soon?”</p> - -<p>“That’s what worries me.</p> - -<p>“You see,” she went on, “I’m afraid he’s going to strike -most people as queer. He’s back at Lonsdale Mews. We -had to come up from Tunbridge Wells yesterday. On a -few hours’ notice. It’s that has upset me. For a couple -of days things went on all right. Practically we were -turned out of the boarding house. There was a frightfully -disagreeable man there, a Mr. Hockleby, and he -seemed to take a violent dislike to Daddy. You know -those unreasonable dislikes people take at times?”</p> - -<p>“A very disagreeable side of human nature. <i>I</i> know. -Why, people have taken dislikes to <i>me</i>!... But go on.”</p> - -<p>“He and his daughter got upset about Daddy’s queerness. -They frightened the Miss Rewsters, the sisters who run<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span> -the place. They said he might break out at any moment, -and either he would have to leave or they would. There -they were all whispering on the stairs and talking of -sending for a policeman and having him taken away. -What could I do? We had to clear out. You see Daddy -had a sort of idea that when he was Sargon Mr. Hockleby -had been alive too and had had to be impaled for seditious -behaviour; and instead of letting bygones be bygones as -one ought to do in such cases, he said something about -it to him, and Mr. Hockleby construed it as a threat. -It’s all so difficult, you see.”</p> - -<p>“He didn’t try to impale him over again, or anything?”</p> - -<p>“No. He doesn’t do things like that. It’s only his imagination -that is doing tremendous things. He isn’t.”</p> - -<p>“And now he’s in London?”</p> - -<p>“He has a sort of idea he’s overlord of the King, and he -wants to go to the King at Buckingham Palace and tell -him about it. He says the King is a thoroughly good man, -thoroughly good; and directly he hears how things are, -he will acknowledge Daddy as his feudal superior and -place him on the throne. Of course if he tries to do anything -of that sort he will be locked up for a certainty. -And he’s written letters to the Prime Minister and the -Lord Chancellor and the President of the United States -and Lenin, and so forth, directing them to wait upon him -for his instructions. But I’ve persuaded him not to post -them till he can have a proper seal made.”</p> - -<p>“Rather like Muhammad’s letters to the potentates,” said -Lambone.</p> - -<p>“He’s thinking, too, of a banner or something of that -sort, but all that’s quite vague. He’s just got the phrase -‘raise my banner.’ I don’t think that matters much yet. -But the Buckingham Palace idea,—something may come -of that.”</p> - -<p>“This is no end interesting,” said Lambone, and walked -across his room and back, and then half sat on the arm<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span> -of his easy chair with his hands deep in his pockets. -“Tell me; is he distraught to look at?”</p> - -<p>“Not a bit of it.”</p> - -<p>“Untidy in his dress?”</p> - -<p>“Neat as ever.”</p> - -<p>“I remember when I saw him how neat he was. Is he—at -all—incoherent? Or does it all hold together?”</p> - -<p>“Absolutely. He’s perfectly logical and coherent. He -talks I think rather better and more clearly than usual.”</p> - -<p>“It’s just one simple delusion? He has no delusions about -having great physical strength or beauty or anything of -that sort?”</p> - -<p>“None. He’s not a bit crazy. He’s just possessed by this -one grand impossible idea.”</p> - -<p>“He’s not throwing away money or anything of that -sort?”</p> - -<p>“Not a bit of it. He’s always been—careful with money.”</p> - -<p>“And he is now?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“Let’s hope that lasts. I don’t see that a man is insane -because he believes he is a King or an Emperor—if some -one tells him he is. After all, George V has no other -grounds for imagining he is a King. The only difference -is that rather more people have told him so. Fancying -yourself a King isn’t lunacy, and behaving in accordance -with that idea isn’t lunacy either. It may be some day, -but it isn’t so yet. No.”</p> - -<p>“But I’m afraid that people will think that it is.... -You see it’s only in the last few days I’ve realized how fond -I am of my father and how horrible it would be for me -if anyone attempted to take him away. I’m afraid of -asylums. Restraint for those who can least understand restraint. -He particularly would go mad in a week, really -mad, if he got into one. That Mr. Hockleby has frightened -me—he’s frightened me. He was so intent and cruel. He -was <i>evil</i> about Daddy—malignant. A nasty man.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span>“Yes, I know,” said Lambone. “Hate.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she said. “Hate.”</p> - -<p>She jumped to her feet and took possession of the -hearthrug, looking with her bobbed hair and short skirts -and manly pose and serious face the most ridiculous and -attractive mixture of fresh youth and mature responsibility -conceivable.</p> - -<p>“You see, I don’t know what they can do with him—whether -they can take him away from me. I’ve never -been much afraid of what might happen before, but I -am now. I don’t know how to take hold of all this. I -thought life was just a lark and people were fools to be -afraid of doing anything. But now I see <i>life’s dangerous</i>. -I’ve never been much afraid of what happened to myself. -But this is different. He’s walking about in a dream of -glory—with absolute wretchedness hanging over him. -Think of it! People getting hold of him! Perhaps hitting -him! An asylum!”</p> - -<p>“About the law on these matters I know very little,” -Lambone reflected. “I doubt if they can do very much -to him without your consent. But I agree about asylums. -From their very nature they must be horrible places, -haunted places. Most of the attendants—hardened. Even -if they start well. Every day at it ... too much for -anyone.... I don’t know how a lunatic is made, a legal -lunatic I mean, or who has a right to take him. Somebody—I -think two doctors—have to certify him or something -of that sort. But, anyhow, I don’t think your father -is a lunatic.”</p> - -<p>“Nor I. But that may not save him.”</p> - -<p>“Something else may. He’s as you say an imaginative—a -super-imaginative man, possessed by a fantastic idea. -Well, isn’t that a case perhaps for a psycho-analyst?”</p> - -<p>“Possibly. Who’d talk him back—to something like he -used to be.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span>“Yes. If such a man as Wilfred Devizes, for example, -could talk to him——”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know much about these people. I’ve read some -Freud of course—and a little Jung.”</p> - -<p>“I know Devizes slightly. We talked at lunch. And I -liked his wife. And if perhaps you could get your father -away into a country cottage. By the by—have you got -any money?”</p> - -<p>“He’s got the cheque-book, but he makes me an allowance. -So far there’s been no money trouble. He signs his -cheques all right.”</p> - -<p>“But he may not presently.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! Of course at any time he may begin putting a -swastika or a royal cipher in the place of his signature, -and then the fat <i>would</i> be in the fire. I shouldn’t know -where to turn. I hadn’t thought of that.”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Lambone.</p> - -<p>For some seconds—it seemed quite a long time to -Christina Alberta—he said nothing more. He sat half -leaning upon the arm of his chair and looked past her at -the fire. She had said what she wanted to say, and now -stood waiting for him to speak. His wisdom told him -that things had to be done in this matter very soon; his -temperament inclined him just to stay in that pleasant -room and say things. Meanwhile she looked about the -room and realized how comfortable a wise man could be. -It was the best furnished room she had ever been in. -The chairs were jolly; there were bound books in the -bookcase, a delightful old Chinese horse on the top of it; -all his tea-things were silver or fine china; there was a -great writing-desk with silver candlesticks; the windows -that gave on Half Moon Street were curtained with a -rich, subtly folding material very pleasing to the eye. -Her eyes came back to his big fat face and his peevish -mouth and fine, meditative eyes.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span>“Something,” he said and sighed, “ought to be done at -once. It isn’t a matter to leave about. He might commit -some indiscretion. And get into trouble.”</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid of that.”</p> - -<p>“Exactly. He’s safe—where you left him?”</p> - -<p>“There’s somebody with him.”</p> - -<p>“Who won’t let anything happen?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“So far, good.”</p> - -<p>“But what am I to do?”</p> - -<p>“What are you to do?” he echoed, and said no more for -some seconds.</p> - -<p>“Well?” she said.</p> - -<p>“What in fact are <i>we</i> to do? I ought to see him. Decidedly. -Yes, I ought to see him.”</p> - -<p>“Then come and see him.”</p> - -<p>“I ought to come and see him. Now.”</p> - -<p>“Then let’s.”</p> - -<p>He nodded. He seemed to be making an intense internal -effort. “Why not?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Well?”</p> - -<p>“And then—then we can broach a visit to Wilfred Devizes. -Generally fix that up. Then our subsequent action -will be determined by what Wilfred Devizes says. The -sooner he sees Devizes the better. It’s a question whether it -wouldn’t be better for you or both of us to see Devizes -first. No. Father first. Then when I’m properly instructed—as -a lawyer would say—Devizes.”</p> - -<p>A great tranquillity descended upon him.</p> - -<p>She could not restrain a faint exclamation of impatience.</p> - -<p>He looked up as if he awakened from profound meditation. -“I’ll come along now,” he said, “to Lonsdale Mews. -I’ll have a talk to your father and then I’ll try to get at -Devizes and fix up some sort of a meeting between them. -That’s what I ought to do. I’ll go along with you now—at -once.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span>“Right-o,” said Christina Alberta, “<i>come</i> along.” She -threw on her cloak and clapped her hat upon her head -in a dozen seconds and stood waiting.</p> - -<p>“I’m ready,” she said.</p> - -<p>“I’ll just change this jacket,” said Lambone; and kept -her waiting a full ten minutes.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>The taxi dropped them at the entrance of the Mews.</p> - -<p>“I suppose it won’t matter our arriving together?” said -Lambone. “He won’t think it’s something preconcerted?”</p> - -<p>“He doesn’t have suspicions of that sort.”</p> - -<p>But when they reached the studio a little surprise awaited -them. Fay Crumb opened the door to them and her eyes -looked paler and her neck longer and her face more absent-minded -than ever.</p> - -<p>“I’m so glad you’ve come at last,” she said in a flat, distraught -voice. “You see—he’s gone!”</p> - -<p>“Gone!”</p> - -<p>“Completely. He’s been away since three. He went out -alone.”</p> - -<p>“But, Fay, you promised!”</p> - -<p>“I know. I could see he was restless and I kept telling -him you’d be back soon. It wasn’t so easy keeping him. -He walked up and down and talked. ‘I must go out to -my people,’ he said. ‘I feel they need me. I must be -about my proper business.’ I didn’t know what to do. I -just hid his hat. I never dreamt he’d go out without his hat—prim -as he is. I just went upstairs for a moment to get -something—I forget what now—but, anyhow, it wasn’t -there, and I may have spent five minutes looking for it—and -meanwhile he slipped out. He left the door open and -I never heard him go. As soon as I knew he’d gone I ran -up the Mews right up into Lonsdale Road and stood about -there.... He’d vanished. I’ve been hoping he’d come<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span> -back every moment since. Before you returned. But! He -hasn’t come back.”</p> - -<p>Her conviction was all too manifest that he would never -come back.</p> - -<p>“I’d have done anything—” she said.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta and Paul Lambone looked at one -another. “This rather puts the lid on,” said Christina -Alberta. “What are we going to do now?”</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>Lambone followed Christina Alberta into the studio and -sat down at once on the simple couch that became Mr. -Preemby’s bed at night. The couch squeaked and submitted. -He stared at the floor and reflected. “I’ve got no -engagements this evening,” he said. “None.”</p> - -<p>“It won’t be much good waiting here for him,” said -Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“I feel in my bones he won’t head back here for hours and -hours,” he said.</p> - -<p>“And meanwhile he may be up to anything!” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Any old lark,” said Lambone.</p> - -<p>“Anything,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Three,” said Lambone and consulted his watch: “it’s -now nearly five. Do you think there is any particular -place, Christina Alberta, more than any other place, where -we might go and look for him? Where, in fact, we ought to -look for him?”</p> - -<p>“But will you come and look for him?”</p> - -<p>“I’m at your service.”</p> - -<p>“It wasn’t in the bond.”</p> - -<p>“I want to. If you won’t walk too fast. I feel I -ought to.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta stood before him with her arms<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span> -akimbo. “I would bet five to one,” she said slowly, “that he -heads for Buckingham Palace and demands an audience—No, -that isn’t how he puts it—offers to give an audience -to his Vassal, the King. He was full of that this morning. -And then—Then I suppose they will lock him up and -have an inquiry into his mental condition.”</p> - -<p>“H’m,” said Lambone, and then, rising to the occasion: -“Let’s go to Buckingham Palace.</p> - -<p>“We’ll go there at once,” he said, and moved slowly doorward. -“We’ll get a taxi.”</p> - -<p>They found a taxi in the King’s Road. Christina Alberta -did not belong to the taxi-ing class, and she was impressed -by a sudden realization that Lambone had all these thousands -of taxi-cabs upon the streets alert to do his bidding. -The taxi dropped them according to instructions at the -foot of the Victoria Memorial which gesticulates in front -of Buckingham Palace, and they stood side by side surveying -that building. “It looks much as usual,” said -Lambone.</p> - -<p>“You didn’t expect him to bend it?” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>“If he made a disturbance they’ve cleared him up very -completely. That flag I suppose means G. R. is at home.... -I wonder—what do we do next?”</p> - -<p>He was rather at a loss. The emotional atmosphere of -this wide-open place was quite different from the emotional -atmosphere of his flat or the Lonsdale Mews. In -the flat and in the Mews the appeal had been for him to -act; the appeal here was not to make himself conspicuous. -He was a man of decorous instincts. A car passed, a -beautiful, big, shining Napier, and he thought the occupants -looked at him as though they recognized him. Lots -of people knew him nowadays and might recognize him. -In his flat, in the studio at Lonsdale Mews, he could foregather -with Christina Alberta without compunction; but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span> -now, in this very conspicuous place, this most conspicuous -place, he had a momentary realization that he and she -didn’t exactly match, he with his finished effect of being a -man about town, a large, distinguished, mature man about -town, and she with her air of excessive youthfulness, her -very short skirts and her hat, like the calyptra of a black -mushroom, pulled over her bobbed hair. People might -think them an incongruous couple. People might wonder -what had brought them together and what he was up to -with her.</p> - -<p>“I suppose we ought to ask some one,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Who?”</p> - -<p>“Oh!—one of those sentinels.”</p> - -<p>“May one speak to the sentinels at the gate? Frankly, -I’m afraid of those tremendous chaps in the busbies. I’d as -soon speak to the Horse Guard in Whitehall. He’d probably -look right over our heads and say nothing. And we -should just dither away from beneath him. I couldn’t -stand that....”</p> - -<p>“But what are we to do?”</p> - -<p>“Nothing rash.”</p> - -<p>“We <i>must</i> ask some one.”</p> - -<p>“Away there on the left towards Victoria there’s what -looks like the real business way in. There’s two policemen. -I’m not afraid of policemen. No. And of course -that man at the corner is a plain-clothes man.”</p> - -<p>“Then let’s ask <i>him</i>!”</p> - -<p>Lambone made no move. “Suppose he hasn’t come here -at all!”</p> - -<p>“I know he meant to do so.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose if he hasn’t come,” said Lambone, “we ought -to wait about here on the chance of his coming.” He felt -extremely like flight at that instant. “There ought to be -seats here.</p> - -<p>“Come along,” he said, with a sudden return to manly -decision, “let’s ask one of those bobbies at the far gate.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>The policeman at the gate to whom they addressed themselves -listened gravely to their inquiries, making no instant -reply. He belonged to that great majority of English -speakers who are engaged upon the improvement of the -word “yes.” His particular idea was to make it long -and purry.</p> - -<p>“Yurrss,” he said breaking presently into speech: -“Yurrss. There was a small gentleman without a ’at on. -Yurrss. He <i>’ad</i> blue eyes. And a moustache? Yurrss, -come to think of it there <i>was</i> a moustache. A rather considerable -moustache. Well, ’e said he wanted to speak to -King George on a rather urgent matter. It always is a -rather urgent matter. Never ‘quite.’ Always ‘rather.’ We -replied, according to formula, ’e’d ’ave to write for’n -’pointment. ‘Perhaps,’ ’e says, ‘You don’t know who I -am?’ They all say that. ‘I guess it’s something important,’ -I says. ‘Not the Ormighty, by any chance,’ I says. -But ’e was ’ere last week and ’e wouldn’ go away and they -’ad to take ’im off in a taxi-cab. You know there <i>was</i> a -chap ’ere, sir—Thursday last or Friday, I forget which—with -a long white beard and ’air all down ’is back. Very -like ’im I should think. Well any’ow this sort of dashed -your gentleman. He kind of mumbled a name.”</p> - -<p>“Not Sargon?” asked Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“It might ’ave been. Any’ow, ‘There is no exceptions,’ I -says. ‘Not even if you was a close relation. We got no -option here. We’re just machines.’ He stood sort of looking -baffled for a time. ‘All this must be altered,’ he said -in a sort of low, earnest voice. ‘It’s the duty of every king -to give audience to every one, every day.’ I says, ‘Very -likely it is, sir. But we policemen aren’t in any position to -’elp it,’ I says, ‘much less alter it.’ So off ’e goes. I kind -of tipped the wink to the detective at the corner and ’e -watched ’im go along the front and then cross over to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span> -monument and stand looking up at the windows. And -then ’e shrugged ’is shoulders and took ’imself off. And -that’s the last I see of ’im.”</p> - -<p>Lambone asked a superfluous question.</p> - -<p>“It might be Piccadilly way,” said the policeman, “it -might be down towards Trafalgar Square. Fact is, sir, I -didn’t notice.”</p> - -<p>It was clear that the conversation was drawing to an end.</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>“So that’s that,” said Lambone. “So far, good. He’s -still at large.”</p> - -<p>He expressed his thanks to the policeman.</p> - -<p>“And now,” he said with an air of bringing out the solution -of a difficult problem very successfully, “all we have -to do is to find him.”</p> - -<p>“But where?”</p> - -<p>“That’s the essence of the problem.”</p> - -<p>He led the way back to the Victoria Memorial and stood -side by side with Christina Alberta beneath that perfect -symbol of the British Empire, the statue of Queen Victoria. -They stared down the Mall to the distant Admiralty Arch, -and for a moment neither of them said a word. It was a -warm and serene October afternoon; the cupolas of Whitehall -and Westminster’s two towers and a brown pile of -mansions were just visible over the trees on the right, -transfigured to beauty by the afternoon glow; the two tall -columns of the Duke of York and Nelson rose over the -trees and buildings to the left; it was in the pause before -the dinner and theatre traffic begins, and only a few taxi-cabs -and a car or so emphasized the breadth of the processional -roadway. Half a dozen windows in the Admiralty -had taken fire already from the sinking sun.</p> - -<p>“I suppose,” said Lambone, “he’s gone down there.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span>Christina Alberta stood with her arms akimbo and her -feet a little apart. “I suppose he has.”</p> - -<p>The wide road ran straight to the distant Admiralty Arch. -And through that remote little opening was Trafalgar -Square and Charing Cross and a radiating tangle of roads -and streets spreading out and beyond and further into the -twilight blue.</p> - -<p>“What will he make for now?”</p> - -<p>“Heaven knows. I’m bankrupt. I haven’t an idea.”</p> - -<p>Neither spoke for a little while.</p> - -<p>“He’s gone,” she said, “just gone,” and that simple and -desolating thought filled her mind.</p> - -<p>But the thoughts of Paul Lambone were more complex -and intricate.</p> - -<p>He perceived that a serious adventure was happening to -him and that he was called upon to exert himself. He had -suddenly been called away from his tea and hot tea-cake to -hunt a slightly demented comparative stranger about -London. He wanted to do it, and he wanted to do it properly -and in a way to impress Christina Alberta. And his -intelligence told him that the best thing he could do would -be to follow upon the probable track of his quarry and -come up with him before he got into mischief. Or while -he was getting into mischief—and interfere and carry him -off. And meanwhile his more exercised lower nature was -exhorting him to leave Christina Alberta to do the pursuing -alone, and go back as straightly as possible to his -ample arm-chair and sit down and think things out. And -then go to his best club to dinner. And in fact quietly and -neatly get out of this unexpected and tiresome business -altogether.</p> - -<p>And then he looked at Christina Alberta and realized that -he could do nothing of the sort. He couldn’t leave her. He -looked at her profile, the profile of a grave child, and an -almost maternal emotion was aroused in him. She looked<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span> -with anxious and perplexed eyes at the blue and limitless -city that had swallowed up her Daddy. The scene was still -warm with the evening sun-glow, but the blue twilight -gathered in the lower eastern sky. Here and there a yellow -pin-point showed that London was beginning to light itself -up. She couldn’t go down that road alone. Absurdly, -preposterously they were linked. The impulse to disentangle -himself was the impulse of a selfish discretion that -was rapidly taking all the happiness out of his life and -leaving security and luxuries in its place. This was a call -to that latent Paul Lambone to <i>act</i>. Even supposing she -was a common, queer little flapper that his imagination had -made into a friend and heroine, was that any reason whatever -why he shouldn’t see her through this trouble that had -come upon her?</p> - -<p>He made his decision.</p> - -<p>“He won’t go back for ages,” he said following up the -problem. “Nobody would on an evening like this.”</p> - -<p>“No,” she said. “But I don’t see that that gives me any -hint of what I ought to do next.”</p> - -<p>“We can keep together and go down towards Trafalgar -Square. We might look along the Embankment. When -we are tired we can get some dinner somewhere. You can -get a sort of dinner almost anywhere I suppose. We shall -want our dinner.... Perhaps it’s not so hopeless a job as -it seems at first. A big job but not a hopeless one. There -are limitations to what he may do. Limitations in himself -I mean. I don’t think he’ll go into uninteresting streets. -His feeling is—spectacular. He’s much more likely to -keep to open spaces and near conspicuous buildings. That -cuts out a lot of streets. And he won’t go far east. In -another hour the city will be shutting up and going home -and putting out its lights. He’ll turn back out of that—westward.”</p> - -<p>“You can spare the time?”</p> - -<p>“I’ve no engagements at all to-night. It was to have been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span> -an ‘off’ night. And this business attracts me. It is interesting -to see just how far we can infer and guess his proceedings. -It’s a curious mental exercise.... Do you -know I think we shall find him!”</p> - -<p>She stood quite still for some moments.</p> - -<p>“It’s awfully good of you to come with me,” she said.</p> - -<p>“I come on one condition.... That you don’t walk -too fast. We’ve never walked much together, Christina -Alberta, but I’ve seen enough of you to know that you -walk abominably fast.”</p> - -<h4>§ 8</h4> - -<p>Every one knows the Café Neptune near Piccadilly Circus -and the various crowd that assembles there. There you -see artists and painters that are scarcely artists, poets and -mere writers, artists’ models and drug-fiends, undergraduates -in arts and medicine who are no better than -they should be, publishers and gay lawyers, Bolsheviks and -White Refugees, American visitors who come to scoff and -remain a prey, stray students from the Far East and Jews -and Jews and Jews—and Jewesses. And hither at about -half-past nine that night came a stout, large, and wearily-distinguished-looking -man accompanied by an attractive -young lady in short skirts and bobbed hair who carried a -large and shapely nose high and sternly, and they threaded -their way among the tables through the smoky atmosphere, -seeking a congenial place. Out of the garrulous confusing -mirk arose a young man with a mop of red hair and protruded -a rampant face and asked in a large whisper: “<i>Have -you found him?</i>”</p> - -<p>“Not a trace,” said Paul Lambone.</p> - -<p>Fay Crumb’s face looked up from the table through a -haze of cigarette smoke.</p> - -<p>“Nor we. <i>We’ve</i> been looking too.”</p> - -<p>“As well here as anywhere,” said the stout man. “Where -have you looked?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span>“Here,” said Harold, “and hereabouts. It seemed a suitable -rendezvous.”</p> - -<p>“We’ve ranged far and wide,” said Lambone. “We’ve done -miles—oh! endless miles. And Christina Alberta has -refused all nourishment—for me as well as for herself. At -last I said, either I sit down and eat or I drop down and -die. May we take these chairs? You have that one, Christina -Alberta. Waiter! It is a case of extreme fatigue. -No—neither Munchner nor Pilsener. I must have champagne. -Bollinger 1914 will do and it must be iced—rather -over-iced, and with it, sandwiches—a very considerable -number of sandwiches of smoked salmon. Yes—a dozen. -Ah!”</p> - -<p>He dropped his wrists on the table. “When I have -had some drink I will talk,” he wheezed and became -silent.</p> - -<p>“When did you leave the Mews?” Christina Alberta asked -Fay.</p> - -<p>“Half-past eight.... Not a sign of him.”</p> - -<p>“Have you been far?” Harold asked Lambone.</p> - -<p>“<i>Far!</i>” said Lambone and for a time was incapable of -more.</p> - -<p>His voice seemed to recede in perspective. “Asking -policemen for a small, hatless man. Over great areas of -London. On and on—from one policeman to another.... -She’s a most determined young woman. God help the -man who wins her love! Not a soul had seen him. But I -can’t talk <i>yet</i>....”</p> - -<p>Harold clawed his chin softly with long artistic fingers. -“It is just possible,” he said slowly, “that he went in somewhere -and bought a hat.”</p> - -<p>“Of course he must have got a hat,” said Fay.</p> - -<p>“It never occurred to either of us that he would do anything -so sane.”</p> - -<p>“We never thought of asking in the hatters’ shops,” said -Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span>“Happily,” said Lambone, and turned to welcome his -refreshment. “That would have been the last straw.”</p> - -<p>“For a long time we were on the trail of another hatless -man,” said Christina Alberta. “We ran him down in the -Essex Road after tracking him all up Pentonville. But he -was just a vegetarian in sandals and a beard. And there -was a report of a hatless man near the Britannia, but that -came to nothing. He seemed just to have come out of his -house somewhere to buy fried fish off a barrow in the -Camden Town High Street.”</p> - -<p>“Extraordinary how a crowd collects when you ask the -simplest questions,” said Lambone with his mouth full of -sandwich. “And how urgently helpful it can be. They -almost forced us up a staircase after that fried-fish man, -who struck me as an extremely pugnacious, suspicious-looking -fellow. The crowd would have it we wanted him, -and he didn’t seem to want in the very least to be wanted. -If I hadn’t had an inspiration something very disagreeable -might have happened. I just said ‘No, it’s not this gentleman, -it’s another of the same name.’”</p> - -<p>“But what did he say?”</p> - -<p>“‘You <i>better</i>,’ he said. But anyhow it satisfied the crowd, -and afterwards we got away quite easily on an omnibus -that took us down to Portland Road Station.”</p> - -<p>The champagne arrived in its ice pail. “Hardly cold, sir, -yet,” said the waiter, feeling the bottle.</p> - -<p>“It’s not a time for fastidiousness,” said Lambone and -took a third sandwich. “You’re not eating, Christina -Alberta. And I insist upon your having at least one -glass of this.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta drank a little and ate mechanically.</p> - -<p>“I wonder if we shall ever see him again,” said Harold. -“London is so vast. So <i>vast</i>! But I always feel that, when -I see anyone go out anywhere. There is a tremendous -courage in going out. London must be full of lost people. -I used to be afraid of London until I discovered the Tubes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span> -and the Underground. I felt I might be sucked up side-streets -to God knows where. And keep on going round -corners into longer and longer streets for ever. I used to -dream of the last street of all—<i>endless</i>. But whenever I get -nervous I just ask for the nearest tube station and there -I am.”</p> - -<p>“He <i>may</i> be back at the studio now,” said Fay.</p> - -<p>Paul Lambone reached his fourth sandwich and his third -glass of champagne with great rapidity. He became more -leisurely in his refreshment.</p> - -<p>“I am disappointed,” he said, “that I didn’t think of the -possibility of his buying a hat. It has disorganized all my -inductions. You see I was so concentrated on what was -going on inside his head that I never troubled about what -might be going on outside it. But a man of his neat and -proper habits—acquired through a lifetime of orderly -living—would get himself a hat almost mechanically.... -We may have passed quite close to him in that.”</p> - -<p>“I should have known him,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“But, until that Pentonville man drew a red herring across -the trail, I am convinced we were close on his footsteps. -You see Christina Alberta insisted upon my asking every -policeman we saw—even men, overworked, irritable, -snappy, <i>rude</i> men controlling the traffic—but at any rate I -chose the route—I inferred the route. You see, my dear -Watson”—he smiled faintly in weary self-approval at -Crumb—“the essential thing in a case like this is to put -yourself in your man’s place, to think his thoughts instead -of your own. That is what I tried—so far as being out of -breath would allow it—to impress on Christina Alberta. -It’s fairly straightforward. Here you have a man convinced, -beautifully and enviably convinced, that he is the -supreme lord of the world, unknown, unrecognized as yet, -but on the eve of his proclamation. Will such a man go -along any street just as easily as any other? Not at all! -He will be elated, expansive, ascendant. Very well; he will<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span> -go up hill and not down. He will choose wide highways -and not narrow ones and tend towards the middle of the -street——”</p> - -<p>“He hasn’t been run over!” cried Christina Alberta -sharply.</p> - -<p>“No. No. He would avoid traffic because that -would hustle him and impair his dignity. Open spaces -would attract him. High buildings, bright lights, the intimations -of any assembly would draw him powerfully. So -he certainly crossed Trafalgar Square from the Admiralty -Arch in a diagonal direction, towards the conspicuous invitation -of the Coliseum.... You see my method?”</p> - -<p>He did not wait for Crumb to answer. “But the more I -think over our missing friend,” he went on, “the more I -admire and envy him. What crawling things we are!—content -to be subjects, units, items, pawns, drops of water -and grains of sand, in the multitudinous, unmeaning muddle -of human affairs. He soars above it. He soars above it -now. He rejects his commonness and inferiority in one -magnificent gesture. <i>His</i> world. The grandeur of it! -Wherever he is to-night and whatever fate overtake him, -he is a happy man. And we sit here, we sit here and -drink—I am ordering another bottle of that wine, Harold, -and I expect you and Mrs. Crumb to abandon that warm -and sticky beer and join me—Waiter! Yes—another, -please—we sit here in this crowded, smoky gathering (<i>look</i> -at ’em!) while he plans the salvation of the world that we -let slide, and lifts his kingly will to God. Glorious exaltation! -Suppose that all of us could be touched——”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta interrupted. “I think we ought to telephone -to the hospitals. I didn’t think before of the possibility -of his being run over. Always he has been a little -careless at crossings.”</p> - -<p>Paul Lambone lifted a deprecating hand and searched in -his mind for some excuse for rest.</p> - -<p>“A little later,” he said after a slight pause, “the hospital<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span> -staffs will be more at leisure. It is their rush hour now—ten -to eleven. Yes, the Rush Hour....”</p> - -<h4>§ 9</h4> - -<p>Teddy Winterton appeared wading through obstructive -seated people. His eye was fixed on Christina Alberta. -“Hullo!” said Lambone in not too cordial greeting, and -glanced at Christina Alberta and back at the new-comer.</p> - -<p>Teddy struggled for an unoccupied chair over which -some lady had thrown a sealskin coat, and captured it with -profuse apologies to the owner of the cloak and squeezed -it in at the end of the table between Harold and Fay, who -barred his way to Christina Alberta. “Have pity on a -lonely man,” he said genially and tried to catch the eye of -Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“You shall have one glass of champagne,” said Lambone -with a slightly forced welcome in his tone.</p> - -<p>“How do, Christina Alberta!” said Teddy forcing her -attention.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta turned to Fay. “Will you come back -with me now,” she said to her, “back to the flat? I must -do that telephoning to the hospitals now or it won’t -be done.”</p> - -<p>Fay looked at her curiously. “It’s serious,” said Christina -Alberta’s eyes, and Fay stood up and struggled with -her coat. Teddy leaped to his feet to assist her. Christina -Alberta had not removed her cloak, and was ready. “I say, -Christina Alberta,” said Teddy. “I want a word with you.”</p> - -<p>“Go on, Fay,” said Christina Alberta, giving her friend a -little dig in the back and pretending not to hear him.</p> - -<p>Teddy followed them out to the Piccadilly pavement. -“Just a word,” he said. Fay was for standing a little way -off, but Christina Alberta would not let that happen.</p> - -<p>“I don’t want a word,” she said.</p> - -<p>“But I might help you.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span>“You might have done. But it’s too late. I never want -to see you again.”</p> - -<p>“Give a fellow a chance.”</p> - -<p>“You’ve had your chance. And tried to take it.”</p> - -<p>“You might at least keep up appearances,” said Teddy.</p> - -<p>“Damn appearances!” said Christina Alberta. “Oh! -<i>Come</i> on, Fay.”</p> - -<p>She gripped her friend’s arm.</p> - -<p>Teddy was left hovering. He hesitated and then went -back into the café to rejoin Crumb and Lambone.</p> - -<p>The two young women went on in silence for a little -while.</p> - -<p>“Anything up?” Fay ventured.</p> - -<p>“Everything’s up,” said Christina Alberta. “I wonder if -there’s a ghost of a chance of finding Daddy at the studio.”</p> - -<p>They made their way to Chelsea without much further -conversation. Fay had never before seen Christina Alberta -looking tired.</p> - -<p>When Fay opened the door Christina Alberta pushed -in past her. “Daddy!” she cried in the dark passage. -“Daddy!”</p> - -<p>Fay clicked on the light. “No,” said Christina Alberta. -“Of course he’s not here. He’s gone. Fay! What am I to -<i>do</i>?”</p> - -<p>Fay’s pale blue eyes became rounder. Christina Alberta, -the valiant, the modern, was in tears.</p> - -<p>“There’s the hospitals,” said Fay, doing her best to be -brisk and cheerful.</p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>BOOK THE SECOND</i><br> -<br> -THE WORLD REJECTS SARGON,<br> -KING OF KINGS</h2> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE FIRST<br> - -<i>Incognito</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">M<small>R. PREEMBY</small> had disappeared from Christina Alberta’s -world. For a time he must disappear almost as -completely from this story. Mr. Preemby fades out. -Taking over his outward likeness we have now to tell of -another and greater person, Sargon the First, the Magnificent -One, King of all Kings, the Inheritor of the Earth.</p> - -<p>It is no doubt a very wonderful and glorious thing to -discover that instead of being the rather obscure widower -of a laundry proprietor with no particular purpose in the -world one is Lord of the Whole World, but it is also, to a -conscientious man anxious to do right, an extremely disturbing -and oppressive discovery. And at first it is natural -that there should be something a little confusing to the -mind in this vast and glittering idea. It was an idea that -carried with it an effect of release and enlargement. For -purposes as yet obscure, he had been caught like a caged -creature in that limited and uninteresting Preemby life. -His imagination had rebelled against its finality; some -deep instinct had warned him that his life was an illusion; -in moments of reverie, and sometimes between sleeping and -waking, there had been intimations of a light and purpose -beyond the apparent reality. Now abruptly, as though a -portal swung open, as though a curtain was drawn, that -light poured upon him dazzlingly. His was no single life -that begins and ends and is done with like an empty song.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span> -His existence was like a thread that shone and vanished and -returned in the unending fabric of being; that was woven -into a purpose. In the past he had been Porg in the city -of Kleb, and he had been Sargon and Belshazzar. Many -others had he been, but those memories still slumbered -under the dark waters of forgetfulness. But the memory -of Sargon shone bright. It was his Sargon self that had -returned and no other of his selves. For some reason that -was still obscure the Power that ruled his life needed him -to be Sargon once again, in this great distressful world of -to-day. Sargon had begun life humbly as an outcast babe -and had risen to restore and rule and extend a mightier -Empire than the old world had ever seen before. Certain -qualities (h’rrmp) had been displayed by Sargon, and because -of these qualities the Power had called upon him -again.</p> - -<p>A whole series of memories was unfolding in his mind. -With an extraordinary convincingness he recalled his youth, -memories of those distant days in Sumeria where the -Power had set him on high. They were so bright and so -pleasing that already they were thrusting his recollections -of Sheringham and Woodford Wells into the background, -making a fading phantom of his Preemby existence. He -had never cherished these latter experiences, never turned -them over in his mind with any pleasure. But his newly-restored -memories were memories to dwell upon. There -were pictures of his early life when he was a foundling, -a mysterious foundling at the court of his predecessor. -(That predecessor’s name still escaped him.) Young -Sargon was a fair and blue-eyed youth, a thing rare in -brown Sumeria, and he had been found floating down the -great river in a little cradle boat of rushes and bitumen, -and he had been taken and adopted by the ruler of the -land. And already as a lad he was pointed out as having -an exceptional wisdom, as being able to do what other men -could not do, he had the genius of the ruler. It was not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span> -that he had great cleverness nor great skill nor strength. -Many of those about him excelled him in these minor -things—in cleverness and memory work in particular, -Prewm, the son of the Grand Vizier, excelled him—but he -had the true, the kingly wisdom beyond them all.</p> - -<p>“The true, the kingly wisdom,” said Mr. Preemby-Sargon -aloud and came into sharp collision with a tall, dark gentleman -hurrying from St. James’s Park towards St. James’s -Palace. “Sorry!” cried Mr. Preemby-Sargon.</p> - -<p>“My fault,” said the tall, dark gentleman. “Late for an -appointment.” And swept on.</p> - -<p>Odd! Where had Mr. Preemby—or Sargon—seen that -face before? Could it be—Something connected it -vaguely with Sheringham and sunlit sand. And then -Sumeria came uppermost and the tall, dark gentleman became -the chieftain of a desert tribe, a desert tribe amidst -the sands.</p> - -<p>The ruffled surface became calm again, and that boyhood -in Sumeria resumed possession of the mirror. Where were -we? Even in those early days men had marked a gravity -in the lad beyond his years. He had avoided puerile games. -In all his lives he had avoided puerile games. No cricketer -even at Sheringham. Modestly but firmly this youth had -raised his voice in the council chamber and his words were -seen to be wisdom. The old men had sat around marvelling. -“He sayeth Sooth,” they said in their antique Sumerian -way. A soothsayer. He was also called the Young -Pathfinder.</p> - -<p>Before Sargon was fifteen the old childless ruler, beset -by enemies, threatened with plots, had marked him. “This -boy might save the state.” Then, while yet only a few -days over eighteen he was given charge of an expedition to -pacify the mountain folk of the north and persuade them -not to ally themselves with the Enemy of the North. He -did more than he was told to do. He went through the -mountain land into the plains beyond, and gave battle to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span> -the Enemy of the North and defeated him and smote him -severely. After that all men perceived that he must be the -new Lord and Master of Sumeria, the successor of his aged -Patron. All applauded with sincerity except Prewm the -Clever (already adorned with precocious sprouting -whiskers) and he applauded with envy in his eyes. And -then came the days of the Succession, and the Inauguration -of the Harem, beautiful days. And after that the birth of -the Princess Royal, his only child, and that great expedition -into the deserts of the south. And more expeditions -and great law-makings, wise laws and wiser, and crowds -of applauding, grateful people and happy villages. Life -became happy universally. Prewm plotted and rebelled -and was dealt with after the simple custom of the time. -That was a regrettable necessity, a thing not to be dwelt -upon. The frontiers spread and the great peace spread; -Russia, Turkey in Europe, Persia, India, Ancient Egypt, -Somaliland, and so on and so forth, were conquered and -made happy. America and Australia and the remains of -Atlantis, still not completely submerged, were discovered. -They were forgotten again afterwards, but they were really -discovered then—and paid tribute. A League of Nations -was established.</p> - -<p>All the world told of the goodness of Sargon and lived -golden days. For Sargon ruled by the light of justice in -his heart. He mitigated the sacrifices in the Temples and -introduced a kind of Protestantism into the creeds and -services. The people made songs praising him. Passing -men and women would run to kiss his hand. Nor did he -deny himself to his people. That confidence was his end. -Came alas! the assassin’s knife, the black assassin, a -madman, a stranger——!</p> - -<p>It was wonderful. He could remember his people -mourning after he was dead.</p> - -<p>The white glove of a policeman against Mr. Preemby-Sargon’s -chest just saved him from stepping in front of a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span> -motor ’bus. He recoiled dexterously. He was in Trafalgar -Square, a great meeting-place, a confluence. Here in the -warm light of the October afternoon was a crowd even -greater than the Sumerian crowds. Here he would observe -them. They were dark crowds, anxious-faced crowds. His -coming back had to do with them. There had been a great -war, much devastation; the world was wounded and unable -to recover. The poor rulers and politicians of this age -had no wisdom, had no instinct for the fundamentally right -thing. Once more a leader and a saviour was required, -one who had the wisdom that counts.</p> - -<p>It was Sargon that walked under the noses of Nelson’s -lions and made his way past the statue of George the -Fourth to the balustrading that commands the square. He -took up his position there for a long survey. He looked -down Whitehall to the great tower of the Houses of Parliament -and Whitehall was full of a golden haze set with a -glitter of traffic. The stream of omnibuses, cars, and -motor vans poured up to mingle with the streams that -came out of Northumberland Avenue and the Strand, and -the joint flow sundered again to the left of him and to -the right away to Pall Mall, across the square there. No -street lamps were lit as yet, but in the rounded bluffs of -building to the left a few windows were warm with lights. -Below, across the square, thin streams of pedestrians flowed -like ants from one point to another and the squat little -station of the Tube Railway perpetually swallowed up -dots and clumps of individuals. Some sort of meeting was -going on at the foot of the Nelson column, a mere knot of -people without evident enthusiasm. Men with white and -red placards about Unemployment were distributing white -handbills and shaking collecting boxes. Immediately underneath -a few poorly-dressed children ran about and played -and squabbled....</p> - -<p>Just a little patch this was in one of his cities. For, you -see, by the lapse of time and the development of his ancient<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span> -empire, he was the rightful owner and ruler of this city -and of every other city in the world.</p> - -<p>And he had come back to heal the swarming world’s -disorders and reinstate the deep peace of old Sumeria -once again.</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>But how to set about this task?</p> - -<p>That was the difficulty. There must be no Half Advent. -He must take hold swiftly and decisively he realized, and -from the balustrading in front of the National Gallery it -looked a large, loose, scattering sort of world to take hold -of. It might refuse to be taken hold of. If he began now, -if he began to shout from this place, it was more than -likely that no one would heed him. He must watch warily -for his opportunity and <i>make no mistakes</i>. It did not -become the Lord and Restorer of the Whole Earth to make -mistakes.</p> - -<p>Now, for example, that had nearly been a mistake at -Buckingham Palace. It had blown over all right but it -might have had serious consequences. People did not -know the Master yet, had no inkling. “They might,” said -Sargon, lapsing into a Preemby homeliness “have run me -in. And a Pretty Fool I should have looked then!”</p> - -<p>There must be no more hasty action of that sort.</p> - -<p>No. Indeed it became him rather to wait for guidance.</p> - -<p>The Power that had brought him back into the world and -awakened him to a sense of his true identity and his -mission, might be trusted presently to send him an enlightened -supporter or so—who would recognize him. Because, -of course, he must resemble the monarch he had been—even -as Hockleby had been recognizably like Prewm. As -he weighed this thought his hand sought his moustache -and he twisted it thoughtfully. It was in effect a disguise. -Meanwhile—? Meanwhile he must see what he could,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span> -determine the mood of the people and learn their particular -needs and distresses. He could go among his people -unsuspected—like Haroun al Raschid, but for a wiser -purpose....</p> - -<p>“Haroun al Raschid,” whispered Sargon and looked up to -Lord Nelson and nodded to him in a friendly way. -“Haroun al Raschid. Would that my pocket was full of -pieces of gold! But of that to-morrow. That man—what -was his name?—Preemby had a bank somewhere.”</p> - -<p>He felt for his breast pocket. The cheque-book was -still there. One signed the cheques “<i>A. E. Preemby</i>”—queer, -but one did. This A. E. Preemby had played the -part of a chrysalis. His hoard remained.</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>In the Strand his Majesty caught a glimpse of his -reflection in a shop window. His hair was a little disordered, -and he disliked to have his hair disordered. He went -into a hat shop that presented itself conveniently and -bought himself a hat.</p> - -<p>He took out his little note-case to pay—a reassuring -thing to do. For in it were no less than seven pound-notes. -He counted them with satisfaction. After paying up at -Tunbridge he had drawn again on his bank. He hesitated -whether he should give largesse to the shopman—and did -not do so.</p> - -<p>It was not another grey felt hat with a black ribbon -he bought; it was an exceptional felt hat with a large brim -such as an artist or a literary personage might have chosen. -It was not the hat that Albert Edward Preemby, the restrained, -the hesitating, would have bought; it was much -more Sargon’s sort of hat. Yet not pure Sargonesque; -there was a touch of disguise about it still, a more manifest -disguise. The brim came down over one’s brow. One<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span> -could see ever and again in shop windows and incidental -mirrors that now a shadow of mystery lay upon those -brooding blue eyes.</p> - -<p>He made his way eastward towards Aldwych and so into -Kingsway, looking now at the shops, now scanning the -faces of the people.</p> - -<p>To-day he was The Unknown. Scarce a soul that gave -him a second glance. But soon would come discovery and -then all this careless jostling crowd would be magnetized -as he passed, would turn with one accord to him. They -would salute and whisper and wonder. And he must be -ready for them, ready to guide their destinies forthwith. -It would not do to stand at a loss and say “Er,” to stand -collecting his thoughts and clear his throat, “H’rrmp.”</p> - -<p>Terrible the responsibility that lay upon him! But he -would not shirk it. What should be his opening words -to them when the moment of revelation came? “First;—Let -there be Peace!” Better words than that one could -not imagine. He muttered to himself; “Peace and not -War among the Nations. Peace and not War among individuals. -Peace in the street—in the workroom—in the shop. -<i>Peace</i>.</p> - -<p>“Love and Peace. I, Sargon the Magnificent, command -it. I, Sargon, have come back after many ages to give -Peace to the Whole World.”</p> - -<p>A shop window drew him. It was a map shop and -prominently displayed in the window was a map of -<i>Europe after the Treaty of Versailles:—Two and Sixpence.</i> -He stood looking at that. It would all have to be altered -again. That was just part of his task. Then he surveyed -the rest of the window. Behind the map of Europe there -hung a wall-map of the world. He would need such a -map of the world; you cannot rule the world without a -map of it. Or you may forget large portions. Or would -a globe be better? Maps are all to be seen at once, and -besides they are more portable. Furthermore, the shop<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span> -did not seem to sell globes and he did not know where -globes were to be bought. He went in and bought the -world map and emerged again on Kingsway after an -interval, with a roll four feet long under his arm. He was -also carrying an ingenious flat-paper planisphere which -had caught his fancy as he stood at the counter. It might -be useful, he felt, for astrological purposes.</p> - -<p>He began to think vaguely of his possible destination. -Whither was he going?</p> - -<p>He was seeking quarters, he was seeking indeed some -lonely hermitage. He had slipped away from the Princess -Royal, who also had come back—rather needlessly he -thought—into this modern world, because it was necessary -for him to be absolutely alone for a time. He had to spend -some days or weeks in spiritual struggle and meditation -and mental purification before his revelation came. Even -she might not minister to him during that period. She -was devoted, but she hampered him. Indeed, she hampered -him greatly. She did not fully understand. Her remarks -and questions were generally disconcerting and sometimes -downright annoying. It was quite probable that the metamorphosis -might never occur with her about. And, besides, -always in the history of great Visitants and marvellous -returns there had been this opening phase of withdrawal -and self-communion. Buddha, Muhammad; they had -all done it. Perhaps he would fast. Perhaps fasting -would be necessary. Perhaps there would be Celestial -Visitants.</p> - -<p>He wished he knew more of the technique of fasting. -Did one just stop having meals or were there ceremonies -and precautions? But of that later. First he had to find -that quiet room, his secret place of final preparation.</p> - -<p>Presently he found himself in the grey squares of -Bloomsbury and every house he passed displayed in its -window a genteel card offering “Apartments” or “Bed and -Breakfast.” Here also were “Private Hotels” and even a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span> -plain “Boarding House.” Well, here no doubt it had to be. -A simple room amidst his unsuspecting people, a simple, -simply furnished room.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>But through all Bloomsbury, to judge by the dark green -and silver cards in its ground-floor windows, was offering -shelter and sustenance to the homeless and the stranger, -the new Lord of the World found it no easy matter to -secure that simple room he needed for his own use. For -more than an hour he was visiting one grey house after -another, knocking, standing on doorsteps, entering passages -laid with immemorial oilcloth, and demanding a -sight of the accommodation offered, inspecting it, asking -prices—and—it became more and more evident—arousing -suspicion. The people stared at his rolled-up map and -his planisphere and seemed to dislike them instinctively. -He had not expected such blunt demands for information; -his vague mysteriousness was swept aside, he found himself -difficult to explain. They wanted to know how he was -occupied and when he would like to move in. None of -them seemed prepared for him to just sit down in his -room there and then. They expected him to go out and -fetch his luggage. It undermined his confidence that -behind him there was no luggage. All these people, he -realized more and more distinctly, would expect him to -produce luggage and might behave unreasonably if he did -not do so. A mere readiness to pay in advance, he -gathered, was not enough for them.</p> - -<p>He had counted upon finding kind and simple people -behind these lodging-house doors, people who would accept -him and look up to him from the first and wonder about -him and his planisphere, speculate about its significance -and gradually realize the marvellous visitant that had come -to them. But the people he saw were not simple people.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span> -Mostly they were dingy, sophisticated people. They -came up out of basements in a mood of sceptical -scrutiny, men in shirt sleeves, morose for the most part -and generally ill-shaven; extremely knowing and anything -but virginal young women, grimy looking older women, -hungrily lean or unwholesomely fat. One had a goitre-like -growth. And always there was something defensive in -their manner.</p> - -<p>And the rooms he saw were even less simple than the -people. His consciousness was invaded by a sense of the -vast moral changes that had happened to the world since -he had ruled the white-robed honesty of his Sumerian -irrigators. Then a room would have a table, a seat or two, -a shelf with a few phials, an image or suchlike religious -object, a clay tablet and a writing style, perhaps, if the -occupant was educated. But these rooms were encumbered -with contradictions. They had windows to let in the light -and dark curtains to keep it out. Sargon’s hidden second -youth in the laundry had made him very sensitive to dirtiness, -and the cotton-lace curtains of those places were -generally very dirty indeed. Electric light was still rare -in “apartments”; mostly they were lit from gas brackets -that descended from the centre of the ceiling and carried -globes of frosted and cut glass. Always there was a considerable -table in the centre and two uneasy arm-chairs. -And there were lumpish sideboards of shiny, liver-coloured -wood and comfortless sofas and incredible ornaments. -Sometimes the rooms, and particularly the bedrooms, had -a meretricious smartness and gaiety with mezzotints of -ladies in the natural state trying to pass themselves off as -allegorical figures or of the Baths in the congested harems -of wealthy, rather than refined, Orientals. The over-mantels -were extraordinary affairs and much loaded with -crockery ornaments, little jars, small gilt-winged angels, -red devils, or encouraging looking ladies in bathing-dresses -that were too tight for them. A common form of decoration<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span> -was to fasten up plates on the wall much as one sees vermin -nailed up on a barn.</p> - -<p>A considerable number of these homes for hire were as -shabby as roadside tramps. One stood out in his memory -as faded and dusty and grey and threadbare beyond the -possibility of reality. His self-absorption was penetrated -by the wonder of who could live and who could have -lived in such quarters. All his life had been amongst -clean and bright surroundings; it was rare that he had -any glimpses of that worn and weary stratum of English -town life in which things are patched indeed, but in -which it is rare for anything to be mended or cleaned and -incredible that anything should be replaced. Even the -air in these rooms seemed long out of date and the glass -over the rusty engravings of the Monarch of the Glen -and the Stag at Bay spotted by remote ancestral flies.</p> - -<p>“Does anyone ever stay here?” asked Sargon of the -shattered-looking lady in charge.</p> - -<p>He did not realize the cruelty of his question until he -had asked it.</p> - -<p>“My last gentleman stayed here fifteen years,” said the -shattered lady. “He was a copying clerk. He died in -hospital this June. Dropsy. He always found this very -satisfactory—<i>very</i> satisfactory. I never knew him complain. -He was a very good friend to me.”</p> - -<p>A great desire for fresh air came upon Sargon. “How -much are these rooms?” he asked. “I must think it over. -Think it over and let you know.”</p> - -<p>She asked her price, the usual price in that street, but -as she led the way down to the door she said: “If it’s too -much—If you made an offer, sir——”</p> - -<p>Despair looked out of her grime-rimmed eyes.</p> - -<p>“I must think about it,” said Sargon and was once more -at large.</p> - -<p>Why did people get so dirty and dismal and broken -down? Surely in Sumeria there were never lives like that!<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span> -It would have to be altered; all this would have to be -altered when the Kingdom came.</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>Then as the twilight deepened Sargon discovered just -the peaceful room he desired. It announced itself hopefully -not by the usual printed card but by a hand-written -tablet saying “A Room to Let,” in a window that had no -lace curtains but little purple ones enhancing rather than -concealing a bare-looking white room lit pleasantly by the -flickering of a fire. There were one or two pictures—real -coloured pictures—hanging on the white wall. Rather -wearily Sargon lifted the knocker and supplemented its -appeal by pressing the electric bell.</p> - -<p>There was no immediate answer, and he knocked a -second time before the door opened. A slender young man -appeared holding a small girl perched on his shoulder. -She regarded Sargon gravely with very dark grey-blue -eyes.</p> - -<p>“Everybody seems to have gone out,” said the slender -young man in a very pleasant voice. “What can I do -for you?”</p> - -<p>“You have a room to let,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“There <i>is</i> a room to let here, yes,” said the slender young -man and his appreciative dark eyes took in the details -of the figure in front of him.</p> - -<p>“Could I see it?”</p> - -<p>“I suppose he might <i>see</i> it, Susan,” the young man hesitated.</p> - -<p>“Of course the gem’s got to see it,” said the small girl. -“If Mrs. Richman was here she’d show it him fast enough, -old stoopid.” And she pulled the slender young man’s -hair—affectionately but very, very hard.</p> - -<p>“You see,” the young man explained. “The landlady is -out. <i>Don’t</i>, Susan. And the landlady’s lady assistant is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span> -out, too. Every one is out—and we’re sort of unofficially -left in charge somehow. Properly, I ought not to have -answered the door.”</p> - -<p>“But I told you to—<i>silly</i>!” said the little girl.</p> - -<p>The young man made no definite move. Instead, he -asked a question. “Is that a map, sir, you are carrying?” -he asked.</p> - -<p>“It is a map of the world,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“Very helpful I should think, sir. And so you found -your way here. Well—The room’s upstairs if you’d -come up. Hold tight, Susan, and try not to strangle me.” -And he led the way up the staircase.</p> - -<p>It was just the usual staircase and hall with oilcloth -and wall-paper to imitate some exceptionally bilious -coarse-grained wood. As they ascended the young lady -ran great risks in her resolution never to take her eyes -off Sargon and his map. She twisted round a complete -circle and forced her bearer to stop on the first landing -and readjust her. “If you pull my hair once more,” said -the slender young man, “I shall put you down and never, -never, never give you a ride again. It’s on the next floor, -sir, if you’d go first.”</p> - -<p>The room appeared delightfully free from unnecessary -furnishings. There was a little plain bed, a table under -the window, and a gas-stove, and the walls were papered -in brown paper, adorned with commonplace but refreshing -Japanese colour prints. There was a recess one side of the -fire-place with three empty shelves painted like the mantelpiece, -a deep blue. The young man had clicked on an -electric light, which was pleasantly shaded.</p> - -<p>“It’s rather plain,” said the young man.</p> - -<p>“I like it,” said Sargon. “I have no use for superfluities.”</p> - -<p>“It used to be my room,” said the young man, “but -now I share the dining-room floor with the people downstairs -and I’ve given this up. It’s rather on my conscience——”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span>“People downstairs—what people downstairs? There -aren’t no People downstairs. It’s Daddy and Mummy -he means,” said the young lady.</p> - -<p>“It’s rather on my conscience,” said the young man, -“that I persuaded Mrs. Richman to alter the furniture. -It isn’t to everybody’s taste.”</p> - -<p>“May I ask,” said Sargon, “how much the room might -be?”</p> - -<p>“Thirty shillings, I <i>believe</i>,” said the young man, “with -breakfasts.”</p> - -<p>Sargon put down his map and the planisphere upon the -table. He felt that he must secure this room or be for -ever defeated.</p> - -<p>“I am willing,” he said, “to take the room. I would pay -for it in advance. And take up my quarters at once. But, -I must warn you, my position in the world is peculiar. -I give no reference, I bring no luggage.”</p> - -<p>“Except of course these charts,” said the young man. -“Haven’t you—for instance—a toothbrush?”</p> - -<p>Sargon thought. “No. I must get myself a toothbrush.”</p> - -<p>“I think it would <i>look</i> better,” said the young man.</p> - -<p>“If necessary,” said Sargon, “I will pay for two weeks in -advance. And I will get myself all necessary things.”</p> - -<p>The young man regarded him with an affectionate expression. -“If it was my room I should let you have it like -a shot,” he said. “But Mrs. Richman is the landlady and -in many respects she’s different from me. Have you—travelled -far, sir?”</p> - -<p>“In space,” said Sargon, “<i>No</i>.”</p> - -<p>“But in time, perhaps?”</p> - -<p>“In time, yes. But I would rather not enter into explanations -at present.”</p> - -<p>The young man’s interest and amusement deepened. He -put Susan down on her feet. “Might I look at your -map?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Willingly,” said Sargon. He unrolled the map on the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span> -table and put his finger on London. “We are here,” he -said.</p> - -<p>“Exactly,” said the young man, helping to hold the map -on the table from which it seemed likely to slip.</p> - -<p>“It is still the most convenient centre in the world,” said -Sargon.</p> - -<p>“For almost any purpose,” said the young man.</p> - -<p>“For mine, yes,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“And that star thing—that must be a great help?”</p> - -<p>“It is,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“I suppose you would—<i>work</i> in the room? It would be -just yourself? There would be no coming and going of -people?”</p> - -<p>“None. While I was here, no one would know me. Afterwards -perhaps. But that does not concern us. Here I -should remain incognito.”</p> - -<p>“Incognito,” the young man repeated, as though he considered -the word. “Of course. Naturally. By the by, -sir, might I ask your name? (If you hit me again, Susan, -I shall do something cruel and dreadful to you.) We’d -have to know your name.”</p> - -<p>“For the time I think Mr.—Mr. Sargon.”</p> - -<p>“Of course,” said the young man, “for the time. Sargon—wasn’t -that an Assyrian king, or does my memory betray -me?”</p> - -<p>“It is not the Assyrian Sargon in this case, it is the Sumerian -Sargon, his predecessor.”</p> - -<p>“Not a word more, sir—I understand. You must be -fatigued after your long journey and I should love—I -should dearly love to let you the room. <i>Wow!</i> Susan, -you go downstairs. Pinching I can’t stand. Come along. -You go down to your own proper room and let’s have no -nonsense about it. <i>Come!</i>”</p> - -<p>Susan backed to the wall and prepared to resist tooth -and nail. “I didn’t <i>mean</i> to pinch, Bobby,” she said. “I -didn’t mean to pinch. Troof and really! I was just feelin’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span> -your trousis. Oh, don’t take me down, Bobby! Don’t take -me down. I <i>will</i> be good! I’ll be awful good. I’ll just stay -here and look at the funny geman. If you take me down, -Bobby——”</p> - -<p>“Now, is this a real reformation, Susan—a conversion, a -change of heart? Will you be a <i>jeune femme rangée</i> and -all that, if I forgive you?”</p> - -<p>“I’ll be anyfing, Bobby dear, flet me stay.”</p> - -<p>“Well! cease to exist then—for all practical purposes and -I’ll forgive you. What can the nice gentleman think of -you, Susan? And you more than five! <i>Bah!</i> We were -saying, Mr. Sargon—? Yes, of course, I was saying that -you ought to take the room. Payment in advance will be -accepted. <i>But</i>—there is that toothbrush. And other small—what -shall I say?—realistic touches. <i>I</i> shouldn’t mind -personally, but I’m only an agent, so to speak. Properly -I am a sort of writer. Properly I ought to be writing a -novel now, but, as you see, Mrs. Richman has left the -house on my hands and my friends downstairs have left -this charming young lady on my hands—Put that tongue -back at once, Susan. Unladylike child!—and here we are! -But as I’m saying, Mrs. Richman is the principal. She -has her fancies about lodgers. It is useless to dispute -about them. She will want a show of luggage. She will -insist. But that is really not an insurmountable difficulty. -This—you will remember the name?—is Nine Midgard -Street. If you go out from here and turn to the left, take -the third to the right and go straight on, you will come to -a main thoroughfare full of ’buses and trams and traffic -and light and noise, and at the corner you will find a shop -where they sell second-hand trunks and bags. Now if you -bought an old, battered, largish bag—and then went across -the road to a chemist’s shop and got those washing things -you need—Oh! and a reserve collar or so at the outfitter’s -next door—You <i>must</i> get such things.... You see the -idea?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span>Sargon stood in front of the unlit gas-stove. “This seems -to be acting a falsehood.”</p> - -<p>“But you must have clean collars sometimes,” protested -the young man.</p> - -<p>“I admit that,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“And then you can settle down here and tell me about -that business of yours. Otherwise, you know, you’ll just -wander about.”</p> - -<p>“Your suggestion is really quite a helpful one,” said -Sargon, getting the thing into focus. “I shall adopt -it.”</p> - -<p>“You won’t lose the way back?”</p> - -<p>“Why should I?”</p> - -<p>“Nine Midgard Street.”</p> - -<p>“I shall remember.”</p> - -<p>“Queer world it is,” said the young man; “isn’t it? How -did you leave the old folks in—Sumeria?”</p> - -<p>“My people were happy,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“Exactly. I’ve been there since. <i>Quite</i> recently. But -the weather wasn’t good and I got knocked about by a -shell and had a nasty time as a wounded prisoner. Hot. -Crowded. No shelter. Nothing cool to drink. But in -your time it was different.”</p> - -<p>“Very,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“And now—by Jove! that kettle is boiling over all by this -time, Susan. Come down to my room, such as it is, and -have a cup of tea, sir. And then you can go out and make -those little arrangements of yours and dig yourself in so -to speak before Mrs. Richman comes back. This, by the -by, is your gas meter. You get gas by the shilling in the -slot arrangement.”</p> - -<p>“You are being very, very helpful to me,” said Sargon. -“It shall not be forgotten when my time comes.”</p> - -<p>“Nothing. It just happened you came into my hands so -to speak. No, Susan, we don’t. You <i>walk</i> downstairs. -Pinching is forgiven but not forgotten. You can leave<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span> -your map, sir—and that star thing—as visible signs of -your occupation. No, Susan—on foot.”</p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>The young man’s room was bookish and rather untidy, -and Susan had been killing toys on the carpet—a china-headed -doll and something or other of yellow painted wood -appeared to be the chief victims. The doll had bled sawdust -profusely. Dark curtains were drawn and a green-shaded -electric light threw all the apartment into darkness -except the floor. There was a gas-fire with a gas-ring on -which a boiling kettle steamed like an excited volcano; -there was a deal table on which was a big pile of letters -address to “<i>Aunt Suzannah</i>” c/o Editor of <i>Wilkins’ Weekly</i>, -and there was a large untidy desk on which was another -litter of letters evidently receiving attention, and in the -midst of the desk a writing-pad, on which reposed a -squeezable tube of liquid glue and a half-mended toy. -The glue oozed upon the face sheet of the writing-pad -beneath these words, written in a beautifully neat handwriting:</p> - -<p class="center">UPS AND DOWNS<br> -<br> -<i>A Pedestrian Novel</i><br> -<br> -<small>BY ROBERT ROOTHING</small><br> -<br> -CHAPTER THE FIRST<br> -<br> -<small>WHICH INTRODUCES OUR HERO</small></p> - -<p>Beyond that the novel did not seem to have progressed.</p> - -<p>With the dexterity of long-established usage Bobby made -tea and produced plum-bread and butter. Meanwhile he -kept a wary eye on Susan who had sat down by the waste-paper -basket and was tearing up paper, and attended to -the remarks and attitudes of his remarkable visitor.</p> - -<p>Sargon already liked this young man enormously. It was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span> -extremely reassuring and encouraging to meet such kindly -acceptance and understanding after the chill and doubt -and ugliness of the previous hour’s experiences. And it -was nice and refreshing to have tea. A sort of grey insecurity, -a threat of suppression that had come over his -mind, vanished in this genial atmosphere. The shrivelled -incognito expanded. The hidden mystery beneath it grew -rich and full once more. This young man—he seemed -ready to believe anything. Sargon walked up and down -with his hands behind his back as if in the profoundest -meditation. He would have muttered a few phrases in -Sumerian, but for some reason he had quite forgotten -that forgotten tongue.</p> - -<p>“And so you write books?” he said regally.</p> - -<p>“Not books,” Bobby answered over his shoulder; he was -now toasting a circle of plum-bread. “Not books <i>yet</i>. -But—it <i>is</i> ridiculous, isn’t it?—I am a bit of a poet and -all that sort of thing, and a journalist of sorts. Just -answers to correspondents—laborious, but a living.” He -indicated the piles of letters on the deal table. “As for -books—I have as a matter of fact <i>started</i> a novel—it’s -on that desk—but that’s only in the last few days. And -it’s so difficult to get a lot of time to oneself to really let -oneself go with it.”</p> - -<p>“Inspiration,” said Sargon understandingly.</p> - -<p>“Well, one must let oneself go a bit, I suppose; particularly -at first. But there’s always something one must do -cropping up to prevent it.”</p> - -<p>“With me also.”</p> - -<p>“No doubt.”</p> - -<p>“That is why,” said Sargon, “I am withdrawing into this -solitude. To collect my forces. In Sumeria it was always -the practice, before any great undertaking, to go out -into the wilderness for a certain tale of days.”</p> - -<p>“If I go out into the wilderness I get so lonely in the -evenings,” said Bobby. “<i>Ssh!</i> That was the front door.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span>He went out upon the staircase and stood listening.</p> - -<p>“Mrs. Richman,” Sargon heard him call.</p> - -<p>“S’me,” said a lady’s voice.</p> - -<p>“Here’s a lodger for the second-floor front.”</p> - -<p>“I bin to the pictures,” said the voice outside. “Mary -and Doug—a fair treat.”</p> - -<p>A corpulent lady in a black bonnet appeared breathing -heavily. She panted a few obvious questions and -Bobby hovered helpfully at Sargon’s elbow to prevent -him making any mistakes. “He’ll pay in advance,” said -Bobby.</p> - -<p>“That’s awright,” said Mrs. Richman. “When will he -move in?”</p> - -<p>“He’s getting his luggage right away,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“I suppose it’s all right,” said Mrs. Richman.</p> - -<p>“I know his people. At least I know about them. I’ve -been in his part of the country. You can be quite sure he’s -all right,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“Well, if <i>you</i> say so,” said Mrs. Richman. “’Ope you’ll -be comfortable, Mr.——”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Sargon.”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Sargon.”</p> - -<p>And after a few rather vague comments on the weather -Mrs. Richman withdrew. “And now,” said Bobby, “I’ll -just unload Susan on her and come with you for that -bag. It’s extraordinary how people lose their way in -London at times.”</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>“I’ve let the second-floor front to a lunatic,” said Bobby, -breaking the news to his ground-floor friends, Mr. and -Mrs. Malmesbury.</p> - -<p>“Oh, <i>Bobby</i>! and with Susan about!” cried Mrs. Malmesbury -reproachfully.</p> - -<p>“But he’s a quite <i>harmless</i> lunatic, Tessy—and he had to -be taken in somewhere.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span>“But a lunatic!” said Mrs. Malmesbury.</p> - -<p>“I only said that for effect,” said Bobby. “He’s really -morbidly sane. I wouldn’t have let him go for anything. -Some day when I really get to work on that novel I’ll -put him in. I <i>must</i> have material, Tessy. And he’s -wonderful.”</p> - -<p>He was preparing supper for the Malmesburys and himself. -He was frying some sausages and potatoes over a gas-ring. -Previously Bobby had done most of the putting of -Susan to bed, and he had sat and told her stories according -to custom until she was fast asleep. Tessy Malmesbury -was out of sorts; she had a neuralgic headache, Billy -Malmesbury had taken her for a walk in Regent’s Park -and she had come home exhausted; things would have -gone to pieces badly if Bobby had not taken them in hand.</p> - -<p>Tessy was never very well nowadays; she was a slight -and fragile little thing and Susan had been a violent and -aggressive child long before she was born. In the long-lost -days before the war when Bobby had seen Tessy -first she had been the lightest, daintiest, most perfect thing -imaginable; he had compared her to a white petal drifting -down through sunlight, and almost written a poem about -her; he had loved her tremendously. But it had seemed -to him impossible to make love to so exquisite a being, -and Billy Malmesbury, who was less scrupulous, had -slipped in front of him and married her; she had not -appreciated the delicacy of not making love to her. And -then came the war and wounds and here they all were -again, fagged and near the thirties, in a world where their -small annuities brought them far less than they had -promised to do. Billy was the junior partner of an -architect and much encumbered with drawing-boards. He -was a large-framed young man with a big, round, good-looking, -slightly astonished face, pleasantly dappled with -freckles. He had a great protective affection for Bobby. -He sat now and designed a new sort of labour-saving<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span> -pantry and, with a sense of infinite protection, let Bobby -get the meal.</p> - -<p>“And now I can tell you,” said Bobby, when at last all -three of them were sitting at table.</p> - -<p>“It’s a little dear of a lunatic,” he said. “If it’s a lunatic -at all.”</p> - -<p>“I hope it isn’t,” said Tessy.</p> - -<p>“He’s quite tidy in his person and he hangs together—mentally -he hangs together—and his eyes aren’t in the -least wild. A leetle too bright and open perhaps. But -he <i>does</i> think the world belongs to him.”</p> - -<p>“Well, Susan does that,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“And so does Billy,” said Tessy.</p> - -<p>“But not quite with the same air of magnificent responsibility. -You see he thinks he’s a certain Mesopotamian -monarch called Sargon—I’ve heard of him because we -had a little dust-up with the Turks round and about his -stamping ground—he thinks he’s this Sargon come again -and come somehow—that bit’s a little difficult—into the -empire of the whole earth. It was Sargon, you know, -who started all these British Lions and Imperial Eagles -in the world. And so he proposes to take possession of -the planet, which is in such a frightful mess——”</p> - -<p>“Hear, hear!” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“And put it in order.”</p> - -<p>“What more simple?” cried Tessy.</p> - -<p>“Exactly. Why haven’t we <i>all</i> thought of that?” said -Billy.</p> - -<p>“But where does he come from?” asked Tessy.</p> - -<p>“Not a sign. He might be a suburban nurseryman or -a small draper or something of that sort. I can’t place -him. One or two phrases he used suggested a house-agent. -But he may have picked them up from advertisements. -And his first proceeding—perfectly rational—was to buy -a map of the world. Naturally if you are going to rule -the world, you ought to have a map of it handy.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span>“Has he any money?”</p> - -<p>“Enough to pay his way. He’s got a small note-case. -That seems to be all right. After we’d got a bag for him—he -hadn’t any luggage, and I thought he’d better buy a bag -to satisfy Mrs. Richman—we sat down upstairs and had -a simple straightforward talk about the world and what -had to be done with it. Most instructive.”</p> - -<p>Bobby helped himself to some more fried potatoes.</p> - -<p>“And what <i>is</i> going to be done with it?”</p> - -<p>“Let me see,” said Bobby; “it’s quite an attractive little -programme. Rather I think on the lines of the Labour -programme. Only simpler and more thorough. The Distinction -of Rich and Poor is to be Abolished Altogether. -Women are to be Freed from all Disadvantages. There is -to be No More War. He gets at the roots of things every -time.”</p> - -<p>“If those are the roots,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“But isn’t the real question how to do it?” asked Tessy, -“Aren’t we all agreed about those things—in theory?”</p> - -<p>“In theory, yes,” said Bobby. “But not in reality. If -every one really wanted to abolish the difference of rich -and poor it would be as easy as pie to find a way. There’s -always a way to everything if you want to do it enough. -But nobody really wants to do these things. Not as we -want meals. All sorts of other things people want, but -wanting to have no rich and poor any more isn’t real -wanting; it is just a matter of pious sentiment. And so it -is about war. We don’t want to be poor and we don’t -want to be hurt or worried by war, but that’s not wanting -to end those things. <i>He</i> wants to end them.”</p> - -<p>“But how’s he going to set about it?” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“That is still a little vague. I think there is to be a sort -of Proclamation. He’s thinking that out upstairs now. He -seems to think that he has to call up some sort of disciples. -Then I think he will go down to Westminster and take -the Speaker’s place on the Woolsack or something of that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span> -sort. It <i>is</i> the Speaker sits on the Woolsack, isn’t it? Or is -it the Lord Chancellor? Anyhow, there are to be demonstrations—on -a large and dignified scale. The people have -forgotten the ancient simple laws, he says. He himself -had forgotten them. But he has remembered them now; -they have come back to him, and presently every one will -remember them, all the great old things, justice, faith, -obedience, mutual service. As it was in Ancient Sumeria. -Dreamland Ancient Sumeria, you know. The dear old -Golden Age. He has come to remind people of the true -things in life—which every one has forgotten. And when -he has reminded them every one will remember. And be -good. And there you are, Tessy! I hope it will affect -Susan—but I don’t feel at all sure. I have a sort of -feeling that Susan could stash up any golden age they -started in about five minutes, but then perhaps I’m a bit -prejudiced about her.”</p> - -<p>“It’s rather wonderful all the same,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“He <i>is</i> rather wonderful. He sits up there and looks at -you with his little round innocent face and tells you all -these things. And, assuming he’s Lord of the World, -they’re perfectly right and proper. He sits with the map of -the world unrolled on the table. I ventured to suggest that -he would require a lot of subordinate rulers and directors. -‘They will come,’ he said. ‘No office, no duty shall be -done henceforth except by the Proper People. That has -been neglected too long. Let every man do that he is -best fitted to do. Then everything will be well.’”</p> - -<p>“And when’s all this to begin?” asked Billy.</p> - -<p>“Any time. I don’t think—” Bobby’s expression became -profoundly judicial. “I don’t think he’ll do anything -for a day or so. I pointed out to him that he ought to -consider his demonstrations very carefully before he makes -them, and he seemed inclined to agree. Some mistake, he -says, has occurred already—I couldn’t find out what. -Apparently to-morrow he is just going to look at London,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span> -quietly but firmly, from the Monument and from the -Dome of Saint Paul’s. And also he wants to observe the -manners of his subjects in the streets and railway stations, -and wherever there is a concourse of people. The scales -have fallen from his eyes, he explains, and now that he -knows that he is Lord of the World he realizes how distressed -and unsatisfactory everybody’s life is—even when -they don’t know it’s unsatisfactory. His own life was -terribly unsatisfactory he says, unreal and frustrated, -until he awoke and realized the greatness of his destiny.”</p> - -<p>“And what was that life of his?” asked Tessy.</p> - -<p>“I tried to get that. And he caught the eager note in -my voice I suppose, and shut up like an oyster. The -draper’s shop perhaps. Or a milk-round. I wonder.”</p> - -<p>“But, Bobby,” cried Billy in the expostulatory tone of one -who remonstrates with wild unreason; “he must come from -<i>somewhere</i>!”</p> - -<p>“Exactly,” said Bobby. “And somewhere must be looking -for him. But you can’t always hurry these things. -And meanwhile I take it it’s our bounden duty to keep -an eye on him and see that he doesn’t bump himself too -hard or fall into the wrong hands.... Until some one -comes along.... Don’t you get up, Tessy, you’re tired.”</p> - -<p>And Bobby jumped to his feet and proceeded to change -the plates and dishes while Billy fell into a profound -meditation upon the problem of the new neighbour -upstairs.</p> - -<p>Presently he smiled and shook his head in kindly -disapproval.</p> - -<p>“This will suit Bobby all right,” he said to Tessy. -“Whenever he ought to be upstairs in his own room getting -on with that novel of his he will be up on the second floor -talking to—what is it?—Sargon.”</p> - -<p>“Accumulating material,” corrected Bobby from the -Welsh dresser where he was turning a tin of peaches out -into a glass dish. “Accumulating evidence.... Not even<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span> -a spider could spin a yarn out of an empty stomach. -Tessy, have you just simply <i>lost</i> the cream or have you -put it away in a new place very carefully for me to guess? -Oh, right-o! I’ve got it.”</p> - -<h4>§ 8</h4> - -<p>Let us be frank about it; Sargon had his doubts.</p> - -<p>Not always. There were times when his fantasy was -bravely alive and carried him high above any shadow of -uncertainty, and he was all that he could have ever wished -to be. Then Mr. Preemby was almost forgotten. But -there were moments, there were phases, when he became -aware of a cold undertow of conviction that he was after -all just Mr. Preemby, Mr. Preemby, formerly of the -Limpid Stream Laundry, making believe, carrying it off -and perhaps presently failing to carry it off. This chill -flow of doubt could even oblige him to reason with himself, -force him into a definite reassurance of himself. He -would debate the whole question, candidly, fairly. Surely -there was no deception, could have been no deception, -about that séance. “Told me things no one but I could -have known,” he would repeat. “I pin my faith to that.”</p> - -<p>He knew that Christina Alberta had not really believed. -It was just because of her revealing scepticism that he had -fled from her. She had asked questions, tearing, rending -questions, and she had said “Um.” It is not proper to say -“Um” to world emperors. If presently he fasted or went -into a trance, he felt sure that she would come and stand -about beside him and say “Um,” and spoil everything. -Well, anyhow, he was away from that for a bit. But to be -away from doubt was not enough. The great discovery -threatened to evaporate. He wanted the comfort of the -disciple. He wanted help and reassurance.</p> - -<p>Bobby had comforted him greatly. While Sargon had -been going from one suspicious lodging-house keeper to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span> -another, the faith of the new Saviour of mankind had -weakened dreadfully. But Bobby from the first had had -something deferential in his manner, had seemed to understand. -His questions had grown more and more intelligent. -Perhaps he was to be the first of the reawakened adherents. -Perhaps presently he would be recognizable as some faithful -servant in that still so largely forgotten past, a trusted -general perhaps or some intimate court official.</p> - -<p>Yet even when Sargon doubted he believed. It is a very -comprehensible paradox. He knew clearly that to be -Sargon was to be real, was to signify and make all the -world signify, was to go back into the past and reach right -out into the future, was to escape altogether from the -shrivelled insignificance of the Preemby life. To be -Sargon was to achieve not only greatness but goodness. -Sargon could give and Sargon could dare. Sargon could -face lions and die for his people, but Preemby could go -round three fields, had been known to go round three fields, -to evade the hostility of a barking terrier. Preemby’s world -was dust and dirt, a mud speck in infinite space, and there -was no life on it but abjection. Preemby was death; -Sargon was rebirth into a world of spacious things. Not -very clearly did Sargon achieve these realizations, but -he felt them throughout his being. Something had happened -to him of inestimable value and truth; he had to -cling to this gift and hold it and keep it or be for ever -fallen. Christina Alberta notwithstanding, the whole world -notwithstanding.</p> - -<p>So he walked up and down his little upper room in Midgard -Street and elaborated his conception of his new rôle -as lord and protector of the whole world. Twilight gave -place to night but he did not turn on the light. He liked -the friendly darkness. All visible things are limiting things, -but the darkness goes out and beyond everything to God. -“I must look,” he said. “I must watch and observe. But -not for too long. There is action. Action gives life. That<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span> -fellow Preemby, poor soul, he could look at things, but -dared he lift a finger? No! Everywhere suffering, everywhere -injustice and disorder, the desert and the wilderness -breaking back in on us and he did nothing. If one does -not call and call aloud, how can one expect an answer? -In this world, vast, terrible—strikes—hoardings—adulteration—profiteers.... -Nevertheless men who once lived -bravely and did their duty.... Who may do it again.... -Once they hear the call. Awake! Remember! -The High Path. Simple Honour. Sargon calls you.... -H’rrmp....”</p> - -<p>He came to a halt at his uncurtained window and looked -out on the plain, flat face of the opposite houses, pierced -here and there by a lit window. Most had the blinds -drawn, but just opposite a woman worked by lamp-light -at a table, sewing something, her needle hand flew out -perpetually and the book and one hand and the cuff of a -reader came also into the picture, the rest of him hidden -behind the curtain. At a bedroom window there was a -looking-glass, and a girl tried on a hat and looked at it this -way and that; then suddenly she vanished, and after a -little interval the light went out.</p> - -<p>“All their scattered lives,” said Sargon, holding out his -arms with a benevolent gesture, “knitted—drawn together -by wisdom and love. A rudder put on the drifting world.”</p> - -<p>Came a knock at the door. “Come in,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>Bobby appeared. “Getting on all right, sir?” he said in -his engaging subaltern manner. He clicked on the electric -light and came into the room. (Cadaverous and pleasant -face he had; surely one would remember presently what -he had been.) “Wondered if you were eating anything -to-night?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“I quite forgot eating,” said Sargon. “Quite. My mind—troubled -by many grave matters. I have much to think -of, much to plan. The hour grows late. The time is near. -I wonder if the serving woman here——?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span>“Only breakfasts,” said Bobby. “Here we are on bed -and breakfast terms strictly. The rest is with ourselves. -For an emergency like this there is nothing so good as the -Rubicon Restaurant. The Grill Room keeps open quite -late. They will do you a chop or a cutlet. Or ham and -eggs. Very good ham and eggs—crisp ham. You go out -from here, turn to the left at the second corner, and go -right down Hampshire Street until you come to it. You’ll -have no difficulty in finding it.”</p> - -<p>The word “crisp” had settled it.</p> - -<p>“I will avail myself,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“And it’s equally easy to find your way back,” said -Bobby with a faint flavour of anxiety in his voice.</p> - -<p>“Have no fear, young man,” said Sargon in a tone of -jolly reassurance. “Have no fear. I’ve found my way in -many climes and under many conditions—the wild -mountains—the trackless desert. Time and space.”</p> - -<p>“Of course,” said Bobby. “I forgot that.</p> - -<p>“Still—London is different,” said Bobby.</p> - -<h4>§ 9</h4> - -<p>The next day at about half-past four in the afternoon a -small but heavily moustached figure, with eyes full of blue -determination, emerged from Saint Paul’s Cathedral and -stood at the top of the steps before the great doors, surveying -the jostling traffic of Ludgate Hill and the Churchyard. -There was a sort of valiant uncertainty in the figure’s pose, -as though it was equally resolved to be up to something, -and uncertain about what it meant to do. London had -been looked at from the top of the Monument and from -the Cathedral dome on a crystal-clear October day, and it -had betrayed an unusual loveliness and greatness under -the golden sunshine. But it had shown itself, too, as a vast -dreamy multitudinousness in which none but those who -are resolute and powerful in action can hope to escape<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span> -being swallowed up. It had stretched away to wide sunlit -stretches that seemed to be the horizon, and then up in -the leaden-blue other stretches had been visible of houses, -of shipping, of distant hills. The vans and carts in the -shadowed streets below had looked like toys; the people -were hats and hurrying legs and feet, curiously proportioned. -And over all an immense dome of kindly cloud-flecked -sky.</p> - -<p>He had walked round the little gallery under the ball, -muttering: “A wilderness. A city that has forgotten....</p> - -<p>“How fair it might be. How great it might be!</p> - -<p>“How fair and great it <i>shall</i> be!”</p> - -<p>And now he had come down again from these high places -and the time had come for him to gather together his -disciples and ministers and inaugurate the New World. -He had to call them. Followers would not come to him -unless he called them; they would wait for him to act, not -know even of what awaited them until he called them, but -when he called them they would surely come.</p> - -<p>It was with an extraordinary sense of power over men’s -destinies that he stood now upon Saint Paul’s steps and -reflected that even now men and women might be passing -by, among these busy men thronging the pavement, among -the people in omnibuses, among the girls clattering away -at their typewriters behind the upstairs windows, over -whose busy, petty, undistinguished lives hung the challenge -of his summons. Yonder perhaps was his Abu Bekr, his -right-hand man, his Peter. Let them wait a little longer. -He waved the traffic onward with a gesture of kindly -encouragement. “Soon now,” he said, “very soon. Go on -while ye may. Even now the sorting of the lots begins.”</p> - -<p>Yet a moment more he stood still and silent, a statuette -of destiny. “And now,” he whispered; “and now....</p> - -<p>“And first——”</p> - -<p>He was no longer troubled by his oblivion of the -Sumerian tongue. In the night he had recovered the gift<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span> -of tongues; he had muttered strange words in the darkness, -and understood.</p> - -<p>“H’rrmp,” he said, a word common to many tongues, -clearing the way after five thousand years for the return of -the forgotten sounds to a renewed use in the world of men. -“Dadendo Fizzoggo Grandioso Magnificendodidodo—yes,” -he whispered. “The Unveiling of the Countenance. -The First Revelation. Then perhaps they will see.”</p> - -<p>And slowly he descended the steps, his eyes searching the -convergent frontages of the Churchyard for some intimations -of a barber’s shop.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE SECOND<br> - -<i>The Calling of the Disciples</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">T<small>HERE</small> are already wide differences of statement and -opinion about the order and the details of the calling -of the followers of Sargon. Happily we are in a position to -give the circumstances with all the exactitude that may be -necessary, and with an authority that will anticipate vexatious -criticism. It was about half-past six that Sargon -appeared in Cheapside, and the day’s traffic was already -ebbing in that busy city thoroughfare. His countenance -was transformed and shone with that kind of luminosity -that only the most thorough and exhaustive shaving can -give. A youthful smoothness had been restored to it. The -facial mane, the vast moustache, that had veiled it for so -many years from mankind was abandoned, a mess of clippings -and lather now in a barber’s basin. Now the face -was as bare as the young Alexander, a fresh-complexioned, -sincere and innocent countenance speaking clearly with an -unfiltered voice. It was flushed with a natural excitement -as it went along Cheapside scrutinizing the faces of the -foot passengers on a momentous and mystical search. -The blue eyes beneath the brim of the distinguished-looking -hat were alight. Was it to be this man? Was it to be this?</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>The first to be called was a young man of Leytonstone -named Godley, a young man with a large and excessively<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span> -grave grey face and a deliberation of utterance amounting -to an impediment. He was carrying a microscope in a -wooden box. He was a student of biology with a cytological -bias; naturally very polite and temperamentally -disposed to be precise and deliberate in all he said and did. -He was making his way from Liverpool Street station to -the Birkbeck Institute by a circuitous route because he had -nearly an hour in hand before his class began. He stood -poised on the pavement edge at a street-corner waiting for -two vans to pass, when his call came to him.</p> - -<p>He found a very earnest, barefaced little man beside him -whose blue eyes searched his countenance swiftly, and who -then gripped his arm.</p> - -<p>“I think,” said Sargon, “that it is you.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Godley, who was not without a sense of humour, -attempted to reply that it certainly was him, but that -impediment of his, partly natural but greatly developed by -affectation, arrested him about the word “certainly,” and -he was still sawing the air with his profile when Sargon -spoke again.</p> - -<p>“I have need of your help,” said Sargon. “The great -task is beginning.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Godley went through the preliminary convulsions of -explaining that he had the better part of an hour to spare -and that he was willing to give help in any reasonable -matter provided it was first explained to him clearly just -exactly what the matter was. But he could only give help -for a limited time. His engagement with his class at the -Birkbeck was imperative. Sargon paid little heed to the -significance of the various sounds that Mr. Godley was -biting off and swallowing. He led his captive by the arm -and explained, with helpful gestures of his free hand, the -full significance of this call. “You are, I perceive, a young -man of scientific qualifications. They will be needed. I do -not know if you recognize me—your memory may still be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span> -imperfect—but I recall your face, chief among the wise -men of our ancient court. Yes, indeed, chief among our -wise men.”</p> - -<p>“N-no-no-not as-as-assure that I follow you aw-ow-ow -quite,” said the young man. “My my—my aw-ow-ow-work -issferr’ll aw-ow-ow-known as yet.”</p> - -<p>“<i>I</i> know it,” said Sargon boldly. “<i>I</i> know it. I have been -seeking you. Do not be deceived by my plain incognito. -Believe me I have tremendous powers behind me. In a -little while all men will understand. The age of confusion -draws near its end; a new age begins. We are the first two -particles, the very first, in a great crystallization——”</p> - -<p>“Where aaare we g-g-g-oing agg-aggs-aggs-exactly?” -asked the young man.</p> - -<p>“Trust me,” said Sargon bravely. “Keep with me.”</p> - -<p>The young man struggled with some complex question. -But now three fresh individuals came under the magic -attraction of the call and the young man’s question fell in -unheeded chunks. These new adherents were a little -group of men standing at the kerb, about a small, almost -inaudible hurdy-gurdy on which was a placard stating: -“We want Work not Charity; but there is no Work for Us -in this So-called Civilized State.” They were clad in faded -khaki, and were all youths of less than five-and-twenty.</p> - -<p>“Now look at that!” said Sargon. “Is it not time the new -age began?”</p> - -<p>He addressed himself to the man on the right of the -organ-grinder.</p> - -<p>“All this is to be altered here and now,” he said. “I have -work for you to do.”</p> - -<p>“Oh!” said the ex-soldier in the accent of a fairly well-educated -man. “What sort of work?”</p> - -<p>“We’re straight,” said the organ-grinder. “We’ll take it. -If it’s work we can do. We ain’t fakers. Wot work is it?”</p> - -<p>“Shillin’ an hour?” said the third.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span>“More than that. Much more than that. And very great -and responsible work. A harvest! A splendid harvest! -You shall be leaders of men. Follow after me.”</p> - -<p>“Far?” asked the man who had spoken first.</p> - -<p>Sargon made a gesture that effectually concealed his own -lack of a definite plan, and led the way.</p> - -<p>“Lead on, Macbeth,” said the organ-grinder, and swung -his hurdy-gurdy into its carrying position on his back. -The two other ex-soldiers exchanged views that it was -all right and that anyhow they’d see what was offered -them. Mr. Godley, keeping abreast of his leader, began -an immense and ultimately futile struggle with a fresh -question.</p> - -<p>The next disciple was not so much called as fell into the -gathering body of Sargonites. He was a tall gentleman of -a rich brown colour with frizzy black hair, and a vast disarming -smile. He was dressed in an almost luminous grey -frock-suit, a pink tie, buttoned shoes with bright yellow -uppers, and a hat as distinguished as Sargon’s own. He -carried a grey alpaca umbrella. He held out a sheet of -paper in a big mahogany hand and emitted in a rich abundant -voice the word “Escuse.” The paper had printed on it -at the head the words, “Lean and Mackay, 329 Leadenhall -Street, E.C.” and below written in ink, “Mr. Kama -Mobamba.”</p> - -<p>Sargon regarded his interlocutor for a moment and then -recognized him. “The Elamite King!” he said.</p> - -<p>“Non spik English,” said the black gentleman. “Portugaish.”</p> - -<p>“No,” said Sargon with a gesture that explained his intention. -“Providence. Follow after me.”</p> - -<p>The coloured gentleman fell in trustfully.</p> - -<p>“Look here!” protested one of the ex-soldiers. “There -ain’t going to be coloured labor on this job?”</p> - -<p>“Peace!” said Sargon. “Very soon everything will be -shown to you.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span>“I don’t think you have any ub-ub-business to mislead -ap-ap-people,” said Mr. Godley, who was becoming more -and more interested in, and perplexed by, Sargon’s proceedings.</p> - -<p>Sargon quickened his pace.</p> - -<p>“This—this gentleman s-s-s-simply wa-wa-wanted tu-tu-tu-tu-to -go to that address,” said Mr. Godley.</p> - -<p>In his eagerness to get the idea home to Sargon he -became a little disregardful of his microscope box which -inflicted a sudden sharp blow on the knee of a passing -gentleman, a business man in a silk hat. The victim cursed -aloud with extraordinary vehemence and stood hopping on -the pavement with his hand to his knee. Then he succumbed -to a passionate impulse to tell Mr. Godley exactly -what he thought of his conduct, his upbringing, and his -type of human being. He joined the followers of Sargon -at a brisk limp, occasionally saying “Hi!” in a breathless -voice. A rather intoxicated man in deep mourning had -witnessed the incident. He came hurrying, with a certain -margin of error, to the side of the angry gentleman in the -silk hat.</p> - -<p>“’Sgraceful salt,” he said. “’Sgraceful! F’want a witness -<i>I</i>’m your man!”</p> - -<p>His general intention was to go forward at the side of the -gentleman in the silk hat, but there were chemically emancipated -factors in his being that drove him sideways. -The resultant was a sinuous course that presently involved -him with a display of oranges in a barrow at the pavement -edge. It was not a serious nor a prolonged contact, but it -involved a certain scattering of oranges in the gutter and -added a new ingredient, a very angry costermonger’s -assistant with a remonstrance and a claim for damages, to -the gathering body of Sargon’s followers.</p> - -<p>The moral of a proverb depends entirely upon the image -chosen, and though a rolling stone gathers no moss, a rolling -snowball grows by what it rolls upon. A small hurrying<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span> -group of people in a London street is a moving body -of the snowball type; its physical pull is considerable; it -appeals to curiosity and the increasing gregariousness of -mankind. Sargon, blue-eyed and exalted, with Mr. Godley -intent and eloquent upon his left hand, and Mr. Kama -Mobamba, tall, silent, smiling, with a shining confidence -upon his ebony face that soon he would be led into the -presence of Messrs. Lean and Mackay, formed the spearhead -of the procession. Behind came the three out-of-work -ex-soldiers, who were now involved in obscure protests -and explanations with the gentleman in the silk hat, and -a smart but rather incomprehensible young newspaper -reporter, who had acquired his native tongue in Oldham, -and had just come up to London to push his fortunes, and -was anxious for something called a “scoop.” He seemed -to think that Sargon might be the “scoop” he sought. Two -ambiguous-looking individuals in caps and neck-wraps -had also fallen in, possibly for nefarious purposes, a vague-faced -young woman of the streets in a weather-worn -magenta hat was asking what was “<i>up</i>” and the intoxicated -man in mourning was explaining as wittily and obscurely -as possible. There was also a fringe of skirmishing juveniles. -And an Eton boy. He was very, very young and -fresh-faced, a scion of one of the oldest and best families -in England and a convinced and fierce Communist. He -had been on his way with a bosom friend to the celebrated -model engine shop in Holborn when Sargon had swept -past him and the inscription on the organ had caught -his eye.</p> - -<p>He was a boy of swift initiatives and with a highly developed -dramatic sense.</p> - -<p>“Sorry, old Fellow,” he said to his friend. “But I feel -the time has come. Unless I’m very much mistaken that -little bunch is the beginning of the Social Revolution, and I -must do my duty.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span>“Oo I <i>say</i>, Rabbit!” said the friend. “Come and buy -that steam-launch first, anyhow.”</p> - -<p>“<i>What’s</i> a model steam-launch?” said Rabbit scornfully, -and turned to follow Sargon.</p> - -<p>He would have liked to have had a swift strong hand-clasp -first, but you can’t do that sort of thing with a chap -who will always keep both hands in his trouser pockets. -He darted off, and his friend followed discreetly in a state -between amusement and dismay, and at such a distance as -seemed to him to exonerate him from any personal complicity -with the social revolution.</p> - -<p>“Where are we going?” asked the young Etonian as he -came up with the hindmost of the out-of-work ex-soldiers.</p> - -<p>“<i>He</i> knows,” said the out-of-work ex-soldier, indicating -Sargon.</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>But that was exactly what our dear Sargon did not know. -By this time he was no longer a convinced and complete -Sargon. A scared and doubting and protesting Preemby -was struggling back into his being.</p> - -<p>Up to the beginning of the calling of the disciples Sargon -had ruled in his own soul assured and unchallenged. But -he had expected his disciples to respond to his call, to -recognize and remember, to be immediately understanding -and helpful. The calling was to have been like the -lighting of a lamp in their minds and the world about -them. He had expected not only his own clear and unquestioning -conviction but accession and reinforcement for -it. And so leaping from soul to soul the restoration of -Humanity, the Empire of Sargon would have spread. For -disciples who made conditions, for disciples who followed, -gesticulating strangely and spluttering and bubbling and -stammering injurious criticisms, for disciples who asked -for a minimum wage, and for disciples who came limping<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span> -after one calling “Hi!” as though one was a cab, Sargon -was totally unprepared.</p> - -<p>Had he called these disciples rashly? Had he been premature -again? Had he made another mistake?</p> - -<p>These were unpleasantly urgent questions for a Master -to solve while he was going briskly to nowhere in particular -about four miles an hour along Holborn with his following -gathering at his heels. Perhaps all leadership is a kind of -flight. In every leader of men perhaps the fugitive has -been latent. In Sargon now it was more than latent; it was -awake and stirring, and its name was Preemby.</p> - -<p>Since first mankind in its slow ascent from mere animalism -became susceptible to Prophets and Great Teachers -and Leaders there must always have been something of -this internal conflict between the greatness of the mission -and something discreetly less, and there must also have -been always something of this clash of the disciples’ -quality and motive with the teacher’s expectations. The -very calling of disciples seems to admit a sense of weakness -on the prophet’s part. Their calling puts him in pledge. -He puts himself in pledge to them. They will, he knows, -hold him to it when he falters; deep gregarious instincts -assure him he will not desert his declaration to them even -when he might desert himself. They desert him—inevitably. -In the whole record of the world there is only one -unvarying, faithful disciple, Abu Bekr. All other disciples -failed and crippled their Masters and misled them. They -deserted or they drove the prophet whither he would not -go. Great things and little things of the same kind follow -the same laws. At the head of that small wedge of commotion -driving along lamp-lit Holborn in the October -twilight went Sargon the Lord and Protector of Mankind, -the Restorer of Faith and Justice, the Magnificent One, -and though he was already aware of an error made and -dangers incurred, he was still resolved to pull a great -occasion by some stupendous gesture out of the jaws of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span> -disaster. And closer than his shadow was Preemby, scared -nearly out of his wits, ready for a desperate headlong bolt -down any side turning, a bolt from explanation, a bolt -from effort, a bolt back to Preembyism and infinite -nothingness.</p> - -<p>Suddenly there came to Sargon a reassuring voice, the -voice of one who had at least seemed to believe and accept.</p> - -<p>There had been a slight altercation with Billy before -Bobby came hurrying across the road. “There he goes!” -said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“That isn’t him,” said Billy. “Where’s his moustache? -He was pretty nearly all moustache.”</p> - -<p>“Shaved,” said Bobby. “I’d swear to him anywhere. A -sort of prance in his walk. It’s our prophet, Billy, and he’s -heading for trouble.”</p> - -<p>“Looks more like a welsher,” said Billy. “Where’d he -get that ecstatic nigger? It’s too rummy for me altogether, -Bobby. You keep out of it. There’s a policeman tacking -on now.”</p> - -<p>Bobby hesitated. “Can’t let him go like that,” he said, -and dodged across the road just as four racing omnibuses -blotted out the Sargonites from Billy’s eyes.</p> - -<p>“Forgive me, but where are you going?” said Bobby, -stooping to Sargon’s grateful ear in spite of a considerable -push from Mr. Godley.</p> - -<p>“I have declared myself,” said Sargon, and straightway -reassurance came. This was the First of the Disciples, -and he had found his way to his Master. Quite clearly -now did Sargon see what he had to do. These first followers -had to be instructed. The Teaching had to begin. -To do that it was necessary to lead them apart out of the -hurry and tumult of the street. A vision came to Sargon -of a long brightly lit table, and an array of disciples -asking questions, and of memorable answers and great -sayings. And straight ahead, glowing, bursting with light, -already a friend, there towered up the inviting mass of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span> -the Rubicon Restaurant, pioneer in the great enterprise -of supplying dinners de luxe at popular prices.</p> - -<p>“Yonder,” said Sargon with a sweeping gesture of the -hand, “we will rest and sit at meat, and I will talk, and all -things shall be explained.”</p> - -<p>The bright vision of a discourse to a gathering of disciples -at a table had so restored the gloriousness of Sargon -that by the time he reached the entrance of the Rubicon -Restaurant, which bulges invitingly at a corner, he had -called two further disciples. One of these acquisitions was -a matchbox-holding beggar of venerable appearance, and -the other a highly intelligent-looking man of perhaps fifty, -lean and thinly bearded, carrying a book on the Doukhobors -and wearing mittens and a tall black felt hat—a -hat of an unusual shape rather like the steam-dome of a -railway engine. This last acquisition was made at the very -door of the Restaurant.</p> - -<p>“Come in here,” said Sargon, seizing his arm, “and take -meat with me. I have things to tell you that will change -your whole life.”</p> - -<p>“This is very <i>suddan</i>,” said the intelligent-looking man, -speaking in the high neighing protesting accent of an -English scholar and gentleman, as he yielded himself to -Sargon’s grip.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>The actual invasion of the Rubicon Restaurant was a -confused and swift affair. Sargon’s mind was clear and -simple now; he had to make that vision of a long white -table with his disciples grouped about him a reality or -incur a great defeat. His following was animated by a -mixture of unequal and incompatible motives, as all followings -are, and it was now swollen to something near -thirty—the exact number is uncertain because it passed -marginally into mere onlookers and passers-by—by the -action of the least worthy of the three out-of-work ex-soldiers,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span> -who had been uttering these magic words, “A -Free Feed!” ever since the Rubicon Restaurant had been -in sight.</p> - -<p>The attention of that challenging individual, the outside -porter, had happened to be distracted by the arrival of -guests in a motor car when the Sargonites came along. -They therefore swept through the outer entrance without -encountering any obstacle other than the rotating door, -which chopped the little crowd into ones and twos before -it reached the entrance hall. Perhaps twenty got into the -entrance hall, that space of marble and mahogany and -hovering cloak-room attendants, before the mechanical incompetence -of the man in deep mourning and his subsequent -extraction by the politely indignant outer porter, the costermonger’s -assistant intervening unhelpfully, jammed the -apparatus. The man with the bruised shin seems to -have fallen out before the restaurant was reached, and -the vague-faced young woman in the magenta had drifted -away at some unnoted moment.</p> - -<p>In the spacious, glittering and observant outer hall a -tendency to dispersal manifested itself. The out-of-work -ex-soldier with the organ, seized by a sudden shyness, made -for the gentleman’s cloak-room to deposit his instrument -and became involved in an argument with his colleagues. -The two ambiguous young men in caps and neck-wraps -seem to have hesitated about the correctness of their costume. -But Sargon held the newly caught gentleman tight, -and the venerable match-seller did not mean to be separated -from his patron in this bright, luxurious, dangerous place. -Mr. Kama Mobamba, tall and smiling and shining, handed -hat and umbrella to an attendant and followed closely -upon the Master, serene in his assurance that these were -the lordly portals of the long sought firm of African traders, -Lean and Mackay. And Mr. Godley, with his natural -passion for explicitness, would not leave Sargon until he -had made it perfectly clear to him why he did not feel<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span> -bound to accompany him further. He came next after the -others into the Large Restaurant, making noises like a -cuckoo clock that has lost control of itself. The reporter -from Oldham was also holding on, though in considerable -doubt now what sort of story he would have to write. The -Eton boy, more than half aware now of his error, and so -disposed to be a little detached also, came into the restaurant -after depositing hat and umbrella without.</p> - -<p>Bobby never came through. He was overtaken and held -up in the entrance hall by Billy. “This isn’t your affair, -Bobby,” said Billy. “This really isn’t your affair.”</p> - -<p>“I can’t make out what he’s up to,” said Bobby. “He’s -bound to get into trouble.”</p> - -<p>“Never mind.”</p> - -<p>“But I do mind.”</p> - -<p>“The management’s scared,” said Billy. “They’re sending -for the police. There’s a crowd gathered outside. Look -at the faces looking in. See that chap peering through the -hole in the glass? Nice thing for Tessy and Susan if we -get into some police-court scrape.”</p> - -<p>“But we can’t leave him to get into a mess here.”</p> - -<p>“But how can we help him?”</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>Within the restaurant Sargon made his supreme and -final effort and encountered swift and overwhelming -defeat. But at any rate he did not run away. He made a -frontal attack on the world he had set out to subdue—as -Sargon. As Sargon, invincibly Sargon, he met disaster.</p> - -<p>Things had not begun to be very brisk yet in the Rubicon -Restaurant. But indeed it is never so brisk in the Rubicon -of an evening as it is at lunch time; it is too far from the -west; pre-eminently a luncheon place. And the hour even -for such briskness as is customary had not yet come. The -neat lines of the little white tables, each with its lamp and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span> -flowers, were only broken here and there by occupants. A -family group going to a circus; a little knot of people going -to a meeting in the Kingsway Hall; three or four couples -of theatre-goers in evening dress; three or four of those -odd couples of a rather inexperienced looking middle-aged -business man and an extremely inexperienced looking -young woman in imperfectly conceived dinner dress who -are to be seen everywhere in London, and a group of three -business men from the north dressed in a canny grey and -dining with a resolute completeness from cocktail to -liqueur, was all the company yet assembled in the body of -the restaurant. There were one or two occupants in the -lower gallery, dimly seen; the upper gallery was unlit. The -atmosphere was still timorous and chilly; even the three -men from the north exacted their tale of London luxury -in a subdued and even furtive manner.</p> - -<p>The staff was still largely unemployed. The head-waiters, -wine-waiters and table-waiters fidgeted serviettes and -glasses, or stood about with that expression of self-astonishment -and melancholy upon their faces habitual to -waiters. A slight hubbub in the entrance hall and the -sound of the smashing of the glass in the rotating door by -the last effort of the man in mourning preceded the entry -of Sargon.</p> - -<p>Every one looked up. The guests forgot their food and -their company manners; the waiters forgot their secret -sorrows. Sargon appeared, an inconspicuous figure, a little -white, almost luminous face, round bright eyes. With one -hand he still gripped his last disciple. With the other he -waved aside the gobbets of speech which Mr. Godley -proffered him. A tall expectant negro face rose like a -shield of ebony and ivory above him. Behind were the -match-seller and other followers, less clearly apprehended.</p> - -<p>A head-waiter faced him. Behind hovered a manager -and a little further off an assistant manager fiddled with -the fruit on the buffet.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span>Sargon released his latest catch and stood forward.</p> - -<p>“Set a table here,” he said with a fine gesture. “Set a -table here for a great company. I have called a following -and must needs discourse with them.”</p> - -<p>“Table, sir,” said the head-waiter. “For ’ow many, sir?”</p> - -<p>“A great company.”</p> - -<p>“Well, sir,” said the head-waiter with an appealing -glance at the manager, “we’d like to ’ave an idea ’ow -many.”</p> - -<p>The manager came up to take control and the assistant -manager deserted his piles of fruit and came up behind -helpfully. Sargon perceived he was against opposition and -gathered all the forces within him. “It is a great company,” -he said. “It must sit at meat with me here and I must discourse -to it. These people yonder may join. Set all the -tables one to another. The day of separate tables and -separate lives is at an end. Let even the tables manifest -the Brotherhood of Man. Under Our Rule. Set them -together.”</p> - -<p>At the words “Brotherhood of Man” one of the three -business men from the north was smitten with understanding. -“It’s a blood-stained Bolshevik,” he said, or words to -that effect. “Shovin’ in here! Of all places!”</p> - -<p>“Oughtn’t to be allowed,” said his friend. “Aren’t we to -have <i>no</i> peace from them?”</p> - -<p>The first business man expressed a general antipathy for -incarmined Bolsheviks and went on eating bread in a -hurried, fussed, irritated manner. “When’s that Fricassee -of Chicken coming?” he said. “They must have dropped it -or something.”</p> - -<p>But the manager’s intelligence had been even quicker -than the business man’s. A swift signal had been given at -the very beginning of Sargon’s speech. The waiter sent to -summon the police had already sped past Billy and Bobby -and the rest of the uncertain crowd in the entrance -hall, draughty now and uneasy because of the broken<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span> -glass in the rotating door that the man in mourning had -broken.</p> - -<p>But Sargon heeded nothing of this byplay. He held on -to the only course that he could see before him, which was -to overwhelm the opposition that gathered against him.</p> - -<p>“We don’t have banquets in this room, sir,” said the -manager, playing for time. “Banquets you can have in the -Syrian Hall or in the Elysian Chamber or in the Great -Masonic or Little Masonic Hall—given due notice and -after proper arrangements, but this is the general public -restaurant. You can’t <i>suddenly</i> give a banquet to an unknown -company or society or something here. We don’t -cater for that. It isn’t done.”</p> - -<p>“It will be done to-night,” said Sargon, with a glance and -intonation and gesture that would have bent all dream -Sumeria to its knees.</p> - -<p>But the managers of European restaurants are made of -sterner stuff, it seems, than were the old Sumerians. “I’m -afraid <i>not</i>, sir,” he said, and stood blandly obstructive.</p> - -<p>“Do you know,” cried Sargon, “who it is with whom you -have to deal?”</p> - -<p>“Not one of our regular customers, sir,” said the manager, -with the apologetic air of one who scores a point perforce.</p> - -<p>“Listen,” said Sargon. “This day is an Epoch. This is -the End and the Beginning of an Age. Men will count -this banquet I shall hold here the sunrise moment of a -new world. I am Sargon, Sargon the Great, Sargon the -Restorer, come to proclaim myself. This multitude of -my followers must be fed and instructed here, fed bodily -and fed spiritually. See to it that your share is done.”</p> - -<p>He made a gesture behind him when he spoke of his -followers, but indeed there was no following behind him -now save that one faithful but deluded African, and that -perplexed but persistent Oldham reporter. The Eton boy -had detached himself completely now. He was sitting at a -table afar off, where he had been joined by his friend, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span> -they conversed in undertones and watched. Even Mr. -Godley with his microscope, and the gentleman with the -book about the Doukhobors, had faded out of this story by -this time, and were going along Holborn exchanging and -interrupting each other’s explanations and surmises about -this singular affair that had so unexpectedly deflected their -high and reasonable progress through life.</p> - -<p>“I can only sus-sas-sas-suppose that-the-fellow-was-mad,” -said Mr. Godley.</p> - -<p>While Sargon’s retinue had melted the manager’s had -gathered. Behind him now stood an array of waiters of -every description, three dozen perhaps of various and yet -uniform waiters, tall waiters and short ones, fat and thin, -hairy and bald, young and old, waiters in aprons and one -in shirt sleeves.</p> - -<p>“I’m afraid you’re creating a disturbance here,” said the -manager. “I’m afraid I must ask you to go, sir.”</p> - -<p>Should he go? Never!</p> - -<p>“Oh, generation of blind and deaf!” he cried, lifting his -voice in an attempt to reach the scattered diners beyond -this lowering crowd of waiting men, “do you not recognize -me? Have you neither memories nor vision? Do you not -see the light that offers itself to you? Can you not hear -the call that thrills throughout the world? The hour for -awakening has come. It is to-day; it is now. You may -cease to be things of habit and servitude, and you may -become masters of a world reborn. Now! This moment. -<i>Will</i> the change with me and the change is upon you! -Sargon calls you, Sargon the Ancient and the Eternal, the -Wise Ruler and the Bold One, calls you to light, to nobility, -to freedom——”</p> - -<p>“’Fraid we can’t let you make speeches here,” said the -manager with hand extended.</p> - -<p>“Let’s chuck ’im out <i>now</i>,” said a short, thick-set waiter.</p> - -<p>“Chuck him out!” said the anti-Bolshevik business man, -standing up and speaking in a voice replete with indignation<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span> -and gathering volume as he went on. “And then bring -us our Fricassee of Chicken. We have been waiting Ten -Minutes for <span class="allsmcap">THAT FRICASSEE OF CHICKEN</span>!”</p> - -<p>And then a voice could be heard saying: “Wot’s it all -<i>about</i>?” and suddenly a policeman stood beside Sargon and -overshadowed him.</p> - -<p>A wave of horror went through his soul, a wave of horror -that was entirely Preemby. Throughout his whole virtuous -life he had never once been in antagonism to the Police. -“Oh, Lord! oh, Lord!” cried this horror in his soul. “What -have I done now? I’m going to be run in!” The blue eyes -grew rounder and he gasped for air, but no one there -perceived how close he came to ignominious collapse. -Preemby shivered and passed. Sargon choked and then -spoke stoutly. “What is this, Officer?” he said. “Would -you lay hands on the Master of the World?”</p> - -<p>“My duty, sir, if he makes a disturbance,” said the policeman. -“Master or no Master.”</p> - -<p>Very rapidly did Sargon adjust himself to this new phase -in his affairs. He was defeated. He was to be led away. -Yes, but he was still Sargon. The Power that ruled him -had thrust him into defeat, but that could only be to try -him. He had not expected this of the Power, but since the -Power willed it, so it had to be.</p> - -<p>“You understand, Officer, what it is you are doing?” he -said, magnificently and gently.</p> - -<p>“Quite, sir. I ’ope you don’t intend to give us any -trouble.”</p> - -<p>A captive! Not thus had he foreseen the revelation of the -Master. He gave one last look at the rich decorations of -the great restaurant in which the opening banquet was to -have taken place. Not here then but in some squalid -police-court it was that the New Empire of Justice and -Brotherhood had to be proclaimed.</p> - -<p>He turned in silence and went out at the policeman’s side -quietly, deep in thought.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>So ended Sargon’s first effort to enter into his Empire. -Unless we count the visit to Buckingham Palace as his first -attempt.</p> - -<p>But before we go on to tell of the unexpected and dreadful -experience that now came upon him, we must record -one or two minor incidents of his capture.</p> - -<p>One is the behaviour of Mr. Kama Mobamba. He -watched the closing incidents in the restaurant with a -growing amazement upon his great bronze face. Had this -little blue-eyed man been, after all, leading him wrong? -When at last Sargon was led away, Mr. Mobamba moved -at first as though still half inclined to follow him. Then he -stood still, frowned reflectingly and fumbled at his ticket-pocket. -With some effort he produced the sheet of paper -that seemed to be his one intelligible link with London; it -was now in a rather crumpled condition. Smoothing it out -with his great hands, he advanced upon the manager with -it extended.</p> - -<p>“What’s this?” said the manager.</p> - -<p>The black gentleman bowed with infinite suavity, still -tending his paper. “Non spik English,” said the black -gentleman. “Portugaish. Lean-a-Kay. Lemonallstree.”</p> - -<p>He was difficult to direct.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile in the entrance hall Bobby tacitly denied all -knowledge of Sargon. He was still hovering there with -Billy, held by a curious half-maternal solicitude. The ex-soldiers -had “mizzled,” to use the expressive word of the -man with the organ, at the appearance of policemen; the -man in mourning and his troubles had been cleared up; -but there were still quite a number of people hanging -about in a state of vague anticipation, and the young reporter -was trying to find some one who understood the rare -and obscure language of Oldham in order to verify his -facts. And there were several policemen; one evidently a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span> -superior officer, a very good-looking man in a peaked cap -and a frogged coat.</p> - -<p>“Here he comes!” said Billy, and Sargon was led out.</p> - -<p>There was a silence as he passed through the hall to the -rotating door. And upon Sargon, it seemed to Bobby, there -rested a hitherto unnoted dignity. He looked neither to -the right nor the left, and his eyes were exceedingly -mournful.</p> - -<p>“But what will they do with him?” asked Bobby.</p> - -<p>“You don’t happen to know him, sir?” asked the superior -officer abruptly.</p> - -<p>“Not a bit!” said Billy, taking the answer out of Bobby’s -mouth. “Never seen him before. We just came in here to -see what was up.”</p> - -<p>And by his silence Bobby acquiesced.</p> - -<p>“I’ve got no power to move you on here,” said the police -officer, and smiled a suggestion of inopportuneness to -Billy, and motioned to his satellites that the business there -was at an end.</p> - -<p>“We’d better go home,” said Billy, interpreting the smile.</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>The three friends sat round a fire in the white room with -the purple curtains, and Bobby poured out his regret that -he had denied Sargon. “They’ve taken him off, Tessy,” he -said for the third time, “and I do not know what they will -do with him.”</p> - -<p>“Discharge him with a caution,” said Billy with a drawing-board -on his knee. “He hadn’t committed very much -of an offence that I can see.”</p> - -<p>“And then?” said Bobby, and meditated on the fire.</p> - -<p>“I shall go round to the police-court and try to pick him -up again afterwards if they let him go,” he said presently.</p> - -<p>“Better leave it all alone,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>But Tessy sat in her arm-chair between Billy and the fire<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span> -and looked at Bobby’s preoccupied profile rather sweetly -out of the warm shadow. And nobody in the world saw -her.</p> - -<p>“They’ll warn him and he’ll come back here of his own -accord, Bobby,” said Tessy comfortingly.</p> - -<p>“Of course he’ll come back,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“Very likely, Tessy,” said Bobby. “But suppose they -don’t.”</p> - -<p>He got up and stood by the fire. “I suppose I ought to go -upstairs and do some work.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose you had,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“How is the novel getting on?” asked Tessy.</p> - -<p>“Not much done yet,” said Bobby. “The Prophet has -disorganized the actual writing. But I’ve learnt a lot of -things that will tell some day. And of course I have to -do all my Aunt Suzannah stuff. Aunt Suzannah gets more -and more popular. You can’t imagine the things they ask -me. It’s all material in the long run. Still—it takes -time.... I suppose they’ve locked him in a beastly little -cell somewhere. And he’s wondering why they don’t see -that he’s truly the great Sargon, come again to this -world.... Billy, the world’s a dangerous place, a dangerous, -unkind place. Why couldn’t they let him rip a bit? -And his poor little map of the Whole World upstairs—he -always called it the Whole World—and his little paper -star-machine, and his poor little empty room and his poor -little empty bed.”</p> - -<p>“I protest,” said Billy, putting his drawing-board aside. -“Bobby, you are a case of morbid overgrowth of the sympathies. -You are a new disease. You are the type case of -Bobbyism. It’s bad enough that you should sympathize -openly with that little devil Susan when I have spanked -her, and so undo all my teaching. It’s bad enough that -you should do about a third of Mrs. Richman’s work -because she needs light and air. I can even understand -something of your emotional relationships with various<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span> -stray cats and pigeons. But when it comes to your being -sorry for a poor little empty lodging-house bed, I draw the -line. Absolutely, Bobby; I draw the line. Poor little -empty bed! It’s—it’s <i>morbid</i>, Bobby.”</p> - -<p>“But of course he was thinking of Sargon,” said Tessy. -“You’ll go to the police-court to-morrow, Bobby?”</p> - -<p>“I’ll go—in spite of Billy. I don’t care if it is a disease. -I’m worried about that little man. I’m afraid. He’s too -round-eyed for this cruel world.”</p> - -<p>And next morning Bobby went. He went to Lemon -Square Court and sat through a frowsty morning and -waited for Sargon who never appeared. He heard all the -morning “drunks” and suchlike come up for judgment, a -case about stolen soda-water syphons, two matrimonial -differences, and all about the wilful smashing of a plate-glass -window with intent to rob, but nothing about Sargon. -The magistrate vanished and the court began to disperse. -He asked questions of a policeman who had never heard of -Sargon and the little trouble at the Rubicon Restaurant. -Had he come to the right court? the policeman asked. -Bobby hurried headlong to Minton Street. Minton Street, -too, it seemed, had never heard of Sargon. It did not -occur to Bobby to ask in either police station. He retired -baffled. He tried to find something about Sargon in the -evening newspapers; there was not a line about the Rubicon -or him. Perhaps he had not been charged! He hurried -back and rushed upstairs full of a vain surmise; the room -was desolate, the window open, the map of the world on -the floor. Had Sargon been spirited out of existence?</p> - -<p>Next day brought neither Sargon nor news of Sargon. -Bobby lay awake of nights.</p> - -<p>After three full days Billy, who had been watching his -friend furtively, remarked in a casual manner: “Why don’t -you go and see the Head Panjandrum at the Lemon Square -Police Station about it? He’d be sure to know if anyone -does.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[216]</span>Shown in to Inspector Mullins, Bobby found himself confronted -by the same good-looking officer he had seen in the -entrance hall of the Rubicon Restaurant. “You’re the -young man who didn’t happen to know anything about -him, three nights ago,” said Inspector Mullins, not answering -Bobby’s questions.</p> - -<p>Bobby explained the situation candidly.</p> - -<p>“Doesn’t help much now,” said the Inspector. “Still it’s -all in order. We took him, in the exercise of our discretion, -to the Workhouse Infirmary—for observation as to his -mental state. Three clear days they keep them there. -Then they’re either certified or let go. Or charged.”</p> - -<p>“Certified?” asked Bobby.</p> - -<p>“As a lunatic,” said Inspector Mullins.</p> - -<p>“And what happened to him?”</p> - -<p>“Usual thing, I suppose. He was a pretty clear case. By -this time he’s a certified lunatic, I suppose, and either at -Cummerdown Hill or on his way there. Or if that’s full—somewhere -else.”</p> - -<p>“Phew!” said Bobby. “Pretty quick.”</p> - -<p>He sat disconcerted. “Can I go and see him at Cummerdown -Hill?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Probably not,” said Inspector Mullins. “Seeing you’re -not a relation.”</p> - -<p>“I’m interested in him.”</p> - -<p>“It isn’t your business.”</p> - -<p>“Exactly. But I like him. And I don’t think he’s exactly -mad.... Seems odd of his people—Do you know anything -about his people? I might go and talk to them about -him.”</p> - -<p>“That’s possible,” said the Inspector. “I don’t know who -they are. You might find out at the Workhouse Infirmary -or they might tell you from Cummerdown. I don’t know. -Very likely <i>they</i> don’t know who his relations are. There’s -all sorts of such stragglers in the world. Possibly he hasn’t -any relations—the sort of relations, I mean, who would<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span> -want to bother about him. My impression is that once a -man or woman is certified and put away it’s rather hard -for an outsider to get through. But, as you say, you can -but try. Sorry I can’t tell you any more. I never saw him -myself at all—except as he went past me. Not my affair.... -Yes, our usual procedure in such a case.... Oh! -no trouble. Good morning.”</p> - -<p>Left sitting squarely, an embodiment of implacable and -indifferent law and rule.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE THIRD<br> - -<i>The Journey of Sargon Underneath the World</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">I<small>T</small> has been said in an earlier chapter that Mr. Preemby, -after his wife’s death, was like some seed which germinates -and thrusts out bold and unexpected things. A -new phase in that belated germination began as he walked -through the London streets beside his captor policeman. -If the thing had happened to Mr. Preemby while he was -still Mr. Preemby, it would have been merely a dreadful, -shameful horror. It would have been an insupportable -experience, a thing to regret, a thing to get through and -conceal and if possible obliterate from record and memory. -If, again, it had happened in the early days of Sargon’s -dreams it would have been an occasion for an immense -dramatic improvisation. He would have thought of the -effect upon the spectators and passers-by, he would have -posed and gesticulated and said profound, memorable -words. But some power of growth had taken possession of -him now and he did none of these things. He posed now -neither to the world without nor to himself within. For -the first time in his life almost he was looking directly at -himself and at what he had done and what had befallen -him, and so full of wonder was he at this ultimate discovery -of reality that he forgot all the vast fabric of make-believe, -imaginative response, and deliberate self-delusion, -up which he had clambered to this new phase of vision.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span> -He walked so quietly through the lit streets that only the -most observant noted he was in charge and that the policeman -was on duty; to the rest he might have been any -casual companion of a home-going policeman.</p> - -<p>One determination had been released in this renascent -mind with an extraordinary strength and clearness, that he -was not, and never would again be, that Albert Edward -Preemby who had launched him into existence. He was a -being called, it mattered not what, in reality, but for his -present purposes, Sargon, Sargon the Magnificent King. -The first concrete visions of Sumeria and his ancient -glories had passed now into the background of his mind. -He had not lost his belief in them at all, but they were now -ancient history to him, and even the revelation at the -boarding house seemed very far away. His ideas had -travelled long distances and gathered much in the past -week. The expectation of an immediate sensational splendour -had been rudely shattered. The Power that had called -him had surprised him exceedingly, but had not overwhelmed -him. He knew quite clearly that he had to be -Sargon who lived not for himself but for the Whole World, -and that to relinquish or deny that was to perish utterly. -It had not seemed to be necessary to him that his own -faith should be tried, but manifestly the Power had determined -that it should be tried. And manifestly he was to be -put through some austere process of preparation before -he entered into his Empire. He was to know what prison -was and to stand a trial. He would be asked to deny -himself.</p> - -<p>What should he say to them? I am not He—I am not -Him—which was it? I am not Him you suppose I am. -He muttered it to himself.</p> - -<p>“Whassay?” said the policeman.</p> - -<p>“Nothing. Is it much further?” asked Sargon.</p> - -<p>It was just round the corner. Sargon found himself in a -little austere room with half a dozen quite amiable but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span> -slightly disrespectful men in uniform. He was asked his -name and address by one who sat at a table. “Sargon,” he -said. “Sargon the First.”</p> - -<p>“No Christian name?”</p> - -<p>“Pre-Christian,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“No given name, I mean,” said the questioner.</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“And the address?”</p> - -<p>“None at present.”</p> - -<p>“Just anywhere?”</p> - -<p>Sargon did not answer.</p> - -<p>“Case for Gifford Street,” said a voice behind him.</p> - -<p>“Memory case or something,” said the man at the table. -“Anyhow, it’s Gifford Street.”</p> - -<p>Sargon reflected. “What’s Gifford Street?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“’Ospital. Where they’ll give you a bit of a rest and -quiet.”</p> - -<p>“But I want to meet a magistrate in open court. I have -a message. I am in no need of rest or quiet.”</p> - -<p>“They’ll tell you all about that at Gifford Street. Buxton, -will you take ’im round?”</p> - -<p>“But I am perfectly well! Why should I go to -hospital?”</p> - -<p>“Routine I suppose,” said the seated policeman and gave -his mind to other things.</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>Queer! Why should it be a hospital? The way the -Power was treating him was a strange way. He had to -submit to the Power; he had to maintain himself Sargon. -Still he could have wished for more explicitness.</p> - -<p>He was so turned inward now that he went along beside -Constable Buxton, not noting the streets nor the traffic -nor the passers-by. Presently they were at a door in a high -wall, within which there were buildings. Then they were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span> -in a little office and a large, grey-faced porter looked at -him and exchanged muttered explanations with the constable. -Then they were going across a wide yard and -through large doors into a corridor where there was an -unoccupied stretcher and two or three nurses in uniform. -They came to a little glazed-in office and Sargon was asked -to sit down on a bench against a wall while there was -telephoning. Constable Buxton hovered down the corridor -as though the task was nearly done.</p> - -<p>A small bright-eyed man in a grey suit came and looked -at Sargon. For some moments they regarded each other -in silence. “Well?” said the man in the grey suit.</p> - -<p>“My name is Sargon. I do not know why I have been -brought here. Is this a hospital? I understand it is. I am -not ill.”</p> - -<p>“You may be ill without knowing it.”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“We just want to have you here for a bit to have a look -at you.”</p> - -<p>Sargon shrugged his shoulders.</p> - -<p>A very big man with exaggerated shoulders and a large, -clean-shaven, intensely self-satisfied looking face appeared. -He had a wide, thin-lipped mouth, protruding grey eyes -and highly oiled and entirely subjugated sandy hair with -an army “quif” on the forehead.</p> - -<p>“Busy evening,” he said. “This is number three.”</p> - -<p>“Pretty full then,” said the small man in grey.</p> - -<p>“Too full,” said Mr. Jordan, “You don’t know where you -are. This <i>’im</i>?” he asked and indicated Sargon by creasing -his thick neck and depressing the corner of his mouth -towards him.</p> - -<p>“This,” said the little man in grey to Sargon, “is Mr. -Jordan. He’s going to show you just where you have to -go and just what you have to do.”</p> - -<p>Immediately, instinctively, Sargon disliked Mr. Jordan. -But he stood up obediently because his idea of submission<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span> -to the Power seemed in some way to overlap and include -this new coercion. Mr. Jordan produced a voice of flat, -oily, insincere amiability. “You come along, Old Chap, -with me,” he said. “We’ll make you comfortable all right -’fyou don’t give no trouble.”</p> - -<p>They went round a corner and up a cheerless stone staircase -that turned back on itself; they came to a landing and -double doors with glass panes in them that opened upon a -very long, dark passage lit by a single very remote light. -And suddenly it appeared to Sargon that behind him and -already distant lay that outer world of freedom, the streets -and the lights, the coming and going of people and things, -the endless chance encounters, the events and the spectacle -of life to which the Power had sent him, and before -him were dark and narrow and dreadful experiences. Why -should he turn his back thus voluntarily on the great outer -world he had come to save? Was this again only another -mistake he was making? He took a step or so away -from Jordan and faced him.</p> - -<p>“No,” he said. “I do not want to go further into this -place. I do not wish it. Let me return. I have disciples -to call and many things to do.”</p> - -<p>The full moon of Jordan’s face displayed incredulous -astonishment that passed into fierceness. “<i>Wot?</i>” he said.</p> - -<p>He left a tremendous pause after “Wot” and then spoke -very rapidly. “None of your tricks <i>’ere</i>, you thundering -old Bastard.” With a swift movement his huge, raw, red -hand gripped Sargon by the upper arm. His thin lips were -retracted to show his teeth; his eyes seemed popping out. -He gripped not to hold but to pinch and compress and -injure, and he dug his fingers in between muscle and bone, -so that Sargon stared at him with dilated eyes and uttered -a sharp, involuntary cry of pain.</p> - -<p>The grip relaxed from the acutely painful to the merely -uncomfortable, and the big face came down close to Sargon’s.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span> -It was manifest that Mr. Jordan had been regaling -himself on cheese and cocoa. “Don’t you try it on, you -Old Fool! Don’t you blooming well try it on. Whatever -it is, don’t you try it on ’ere. You’re right enough to -understand what I say. See? You do exactly wot you’re -told ’ere. You do exactly wot you’re told. You do your -best to avoid givin’ trouble and I’ll do my best ditto. But -if you start doin’ tricks—Gawd ’elp you! See?”</p> - -<p>And he crushed the arm again.</p> - -<p>“Understan’?”</p> - -<p>The blue eyes seemed to assent.</p> - -<p>“Down that passage, blast you!” said Mr. Jordan.</p> - -<p>A distressed and wondering and yet not absolutely abject -Sargon was taken to a wet and untidy bathroom in which -a broken chair, pools of water, great splashings on the wall, -and some crumpled towels in the corner suggested a recent -struggle. There he was made to undress and take a tepid -bath, dried with a towel that had already been in action, -put into a grey nightgown that was doubtfully clean, a -grey shoddy dressing-gown that certainly wasn’t, and a -pair of down-at-heel slippers two sizes too big, and so -garbed, was led by Mr. Jordan, a little propitiated now -by alert obedience, into the ward in which he was to pass -the night.</p> - -<p>A rufous man with very light eyelashes appeared.</p> - -<p>“’Ere ’e is, Mr. ’Iggs,” said Mr. Jordan.</p> - -<p>“I’ve got his bed ready,” said Mr. Higgs. “’Ow many -more of ’em?”</p> - -<p>“Perfec’ shower of ’em,” said Mr. Jordan.</p> - -<p>“Three,” said Mr. Higgs.</p> - -<p>“Well,” said Mr. Jordan. “So long.”</p> - -<p>“So long,” said Mr. Higgs.</p> - -<p>Neither of them addressed the Lord of the Whole World -directly. He might have been a parcel passed from hand -to hand.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>When Sargon entered the Observation Ward of the -Gifford Street Infirmary his sense of having left life, ordinary -current life, far away behind him, beyond these grey -passages and corridors and staircases and glass offices -and high walls and little doors, was enormously reinforced. -Never had he seen anything so emptily bleak and cheerless -as this place. A heartless great dingy room it was, with -green-grey distempered walls discoloured in patches, lit -by a few bare lights that gave neither high-lights nor -shadows. Black night and a greasily lit brick wall stared -in through uncurtained windows. Half-way down the -length of the place projecting pieces of wall suggested -that two former rooms had been thrown into one. The -floor was of polished bare boards. Far off was a table -set against the wall with two or three torn and crumpled -magazines thereon, and at the end an empty fire-place. In -the near half, on either side, there were iron bedsteads -in rows, twenty or thirty perhaps altogether. There was -a foul smell in the air, faint and yet indescribably offensive, -a fæcal smell mixed with a heavy soapy odour.</p> - -<p>Even had it been unoccupied, this cold, large, evil-smelling -room would have seemed a strange inhospitable place -to Sargon. For it had always been the lot of Mr. Preemby, -even in the days of his early poverty, to live snug, to have -carpets, even if they were shabby carpets, under his feet, -and an encumbrance of furniture and silly human pictures -and brackets and things about him on the walls. Here -in this harsh plainness it was as though the fussy, accumulative, -home-making imagination of man had never been.</p> - -<p>But the strange soulless atmosphere of the place was but -the first instant impression of Sargon. It was followed by -a far more vivid and terrible realization, that this place was -inhabited by beings who were only at the first glance men. -Then as one looked again it became clear that they were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[225]</span> -not exactly men, they did not look up at his entry as men -should, or they showed their awareness of him by queer -unnatural movements. Several were in bed; others were -dressed in shabby and untidy clothes and either sat on -their beds or were seated in chairs about the lower part of -the room. One individual only was in motion; a grave-faced -young man who was walking with an appearance of -concentrated method to and fro in a restricted circle in the -far corner of the ward. Another sat and seemed to remove -a perpetually recurrent cobweb from his face by a perpetually -repeated gesture. Two men were jammed behind -the table against the wall and one, a fleshy lout with a -shining pink skin and curling red hair on his bare chest, -was making violent gestures, hammering the table with a -freckled fist, talking in a voice that rose and sank and -occasionally broke into curses while the other, a sallow-complexioned, -cadaverous individual, seemed to be sunken -in profound despair. In one of the beds close at hand a -young man with a shock of black hair and an expression -of fatuous satisfaction, that changed with dramatic suddenness -to triumphant fierceness or insinuating lucidity, -sat up and gesticulated and composed and recited an interminable -poem—something in the manner of Browning. It -was running in this fashion:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="indent2">“God shall smite them</div> -<div class="indent2">And blight them</div> -<div class="indent2">They may prevail but God will requite them</div> -<div class="indent2">Light ’em.</div> -<div class="indent2">Burn ’em to ashes and burn ’em to atoms</div> -<div class="indent2">Atoms!</div> -<div class="indent2">Burning atoms—exactly like stars. See?</div> -<div class="indent2">Stars in the void and all over the place.</div> -<div class="indent2">Atoms galore and God can’t show his face.</div> -<div class="verse">(Triumphant discovery.)</div> -<div class="indent2">He <i>hasn’t</i> a face.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[226]</span> -<div class="indent2">That’s it! That’s it, my Boys!</div> -<div class="indent2">Atheists wrong and theology wrong,</div> -<div class="indent2">Plainly and simply here’s every one wrong!</div> -<div class="indent2">And I have to tell ’em!</div> -<div class="indent2">There’s a God, <i>item</i> one, but he hasn’t a face</div> -<div class="indent2">So he can’t show his face.</div> -<div class="indent2">That’s the kink of it.</div> -<div class="indent2">Naturally every one thinks he’s <i>non est</i></div> -<div class="indent2">But he’s there as I know to my cost;</div> -<div class="indent2">For I’m lost</div> -<div class="indent2">But I’ve shown how it is all the same.</div> -<div class="indent2">No face—what a game!</div> -<div class="indent2">I found God in the void</div> -<div class="indent2">Unmasked and a little annoyed.</div> -<div class="indent2"><i>Quod erat demonstrandum</i> X.L....”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>“There’s your bed,” said Mr. Higgs at Sargon’s elbow, -shoving him slightly.</p> - -<p>Sargon moved a little unwillingly, his puzzled eyes still -on the talker.</p> - -<p>“You’ll hear enough of him before you’re done, Old -Chap,” said Mr. Higgs. “Hop into bed now.”</p> - -<p>Impelled partly by the arm of Mr. Higgs and partly by -his natural disposition to please, Sargon got into bed. Mr. -Higgs assisted him in a rough brotherly fashion. But -before Sargon could pull up the clothes about him, Mr. -Higgs, glancing over his shoulder, became aware of something -that was happening down the room—Sargon could -not see what.</p> - -<p>In an instant the genial authoritativeness of Mr. Higgs -gave way to rage. “Yaaps, you dirty old devil!” said Mr. -Higgs. “You’re at it again!”</p> - -<p>He quitted Sargon and ran down the room very swiftly. -Sargon sat up in bed to see what was happening. Three -or four of the other patients did the same. A very dirty -old man with a face of extreme misery, who was sitting in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[227]</span> -a chair, was seized upon and bumped up and down and hit -several times with great vigour by Mr. Higgs. Then Mr. -Higgs departed and returned, still uttering admonitions, -with a pail and a rag.</p> - -<p>For Mr. Higgs was not only an attendant on the mentally -afflicted but also, on account of economy, the floor-scrubber -and general cleaner of the ward. He had been -trained in the navy to ideals of a speckless brightness and -he scrubbed better than he attended.</p> - -<p>“Lie down there!” cried Mr. Higgs returning up the ward -with his pail. “It ain’t nothing to do with you.”</p> - -<p>The Lord of the World lay down.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>It was an extremely uninteresting ceiling to look at -except for a streak of yellowish stains, but it was better to -look at the ceiling for a time than to look too much at -these distressing people around him. They were distressing -and distracting, and Sargon knew that it was urgently -necessary not to be distracted, but to think over his position -very carefully before anything further happened to -him. All this rush of consequences had been so unexpected, -preposterous and violent since—a few hours ago—he had -surveyed London from the dome of Saint Paul’s and -decided that the moment had come to take hold of his -Lordship of the World, that he perceived he might very -conceivably be overwhelmed. How serene and distant -now was that spectacle of London spread out under the -amber sunshine between its far blue hills and its shining -river, with its dense clusters of shipping and the black ant-currents -of folk below. From that he had come swiftly, -inevitably, to this echoing prison. For prison he saw it -was. He knew quite well that these men around him were -demented men and that he had been seized upon as a -lunatic, but he thought that the Workhouse Observation<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[228]</span> -Ward in which he was, was a lunatic asylum already. In -his wildest imaginations he had never imagined the Power -over all things could treat him thus. The possibility of a -brief interlude in prison, of a severe but very public and -triumphant trial, had entered his mind; but not that he -might be hustled away out of the possibility of any such -appeal. He had to think his position out anew, to discover -what all this monstrous experience was intended to show -and to teach him, and what he had to do to meet this -strange occasion.</p> - -<p>And it was very difficult to do this with a raucous voice -down the room uttering foul threats about the ward -attendant and a great fist beating the table in sudden -storms and with that smooth, fluctuating, unending recitation -nearer at hand, that cosmic poem, now almost -inaudible—so that one strained to catch the words—and -now in high-pitched delight. For long stretches it was -just incoherent jumble and Sargon would hold it almost -completely out of his attention while he pursued his own -perplexities, and then it would rush together into something -that challenged its way to mingle with his inmost -thoughts.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="first">“Filthy old Nature, she drives us amain;</div> -<div class="verse">One goad is lust and the other goad pain.</div> -<div class="verse">And so we get back to old nowhere again.</div> -<div class="verse">Nowhere to start from and nowhere again.</div> -<div class="verse">Want and be hurt, want and be hurt,</div> -<div class="verse">Out of the dirt you came, back to the dirt.</div> -<div class="verse">Hunger for dirt and dirty regretting</div> -<div class="verse">Dirty our feeding and dirty begetting</div> -<div class="verse">Smear yourself, paint yourself, wear a fine shirt</div> -<div class="verse">Put a brave face on it, Yah!—you are dirt.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>“Now is that true?” asked Sargon of himself. Is that -true? Dirt? What is dirt? But no! he must not wander<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[229]</span> -off after this mad raving! What was it he had been thinking -about? He had been asking why had the Power thrust -him into this dreadful place? Why had the Power brought -him to this place? If only the man would stop that improvisation -of his for a little while it might be possible -to think that out. Why had he been given over to the -commands of Jordan and Higgs to live among the madmen -and—sudden fantastic side question!—why had <i>they</i>?</p> - -<p>If only that poem would cease! If only that voice would -fade to silence! It was now mere rubble and rubbish, as -though thought had been broken up with a pickaxe and -loaded in carts and shot down a slope. Don’t listen to it, -Sargon! Don’t listen to it! Concentrate!</p> - -<p>In his endeavour to concentrate, Sargon forgot even -Higgs. He sat up in bed and drew his knees nearly to -his chin and thought.</p> - -<p>He was Sargon; that was the great issue. He had to -remain Sargon. He was probably in this place of trouble -and torment because of the conflict between his being -Sargon and the possibility of his relapsing into Preemby. -The Power had called him to be Sargon and to serve and -suffer for and at last to rule the Whole World, but manifestly -it was not a simple direct call. There was something -working in opposition to this destiny, an Anti-Power, -opposed to the Power, which was trying to put him back -to Preemby and Preembyism, to being little and insignificant, -to living obscurely and to no purpose and so at -last to dying and becoming utterly and finally dead. That -Anti-Power it was that had been permitted to bring him -here, to frighten and torment him, to din mad rhymes -into his ears, to urge upon him in a monotonous persistent -voice that he was dirt and that God was without a face, -and a multitude of suchlike blasphemies. But they were -not true. The Anti-Power might talk and talk—would -God there could be a respite from his talking!—but the -truth was outside this place and greater than this place and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[230]</span> -altogether comprehended it. He was one, Sargon was one, -from the beginning in Sumeria, in many lands and now -here, the same spirit, the ruler who serves; he was one just -as London was one when it was seen from on high up above -there, endlessly multitudinous yet drawn together into a -single personality. And so was the whole world one. To -be Preemby was to be like a wretched little back street -house down below there, swallowed up in the general effect. -Never more could he be Preemby, even if he would. That -was what he had to keep hold of. He could only be -Sargon by denying Preemby—even though he had to face -the pains of death.</p> - -<p>Yet all the while the Anti-Power was insulting life and -himself through that disordered poet and his recitation. -The man had now fallen under the spell of a fascinating -but detestable word, if one may call such a thing a word, -“Tra-la-la.”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="first">“Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.</div> -<div class="verse">That is the note of it.</div> -<div class="verse">Get the full gloat of it.</div> -<div class="verse">Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.</div> -<div class="verse">All times and places</div> -<div class="verse">Happy derision for Gods without faces.</div> -<div class="verse">Tra-la-la sunshine or Tra-la-la rain.</div> -<div class="verse">Eat, drink, and kiss ’em and at it again.</div> -<div class="verse">Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.</div> -<div class="verse">Kiss ’em and Kiss ’em and at it again.</div> -<div class="verse">At it again!</div> -<div class="verse">Tra-la-la.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>He varied his recitation with a loud explosive noise made -by his lips on the back of his hand.</p> - -<p>“Pray don’t think me cynical,” he said to Sargon. “It is -just pure Joy de Vive.”</p> - -<p>Sargon could not stand it any longer. This was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[231]</span> -damnable teaching to fling out before the very regenerator -of mankind. He suddenly thrust out a pointing finger. -“You are wrong!” he said loudly and sharply.</p> - -<p>The poet stared for a minute and with a gesture of -salutation said: “Tra-la-la-la.”</p> - -<p>“I tell you life is real,” cried Sargon. “Life is immense. -Life is full of meaning and order. I have come to tell you -and all men so.”</p> - -<p>The poet interrupted smilingly and politely with:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> -<div class="first">“Tra-la-la</div> -<div class="verse">Tra-la-la</div> -<div class="verse">Life is a hiccup and life is a sneeze</div> -<div class="verse">A smell from a dunghill borne on the breeze</div> -<div class="verse">A thing of no moment—so do as you please!</div> -<div class="verse">Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.”</div> -</div></div> - -<p>He was going on, but Sargon would not hear him. He -lifted his voice to drown his antagonist. “I tell you, you -poor soul! you are utterly wrong and blind,” he said. “For -the light has come to me and understanding is mine. You -are not the lost thing you deem you are, or at least you -need not be. No! I, too, was a lost thing such as you are, a -little while ago. I, too, thought I was a grain, a fragment, a -thing of no account. But the call has come to me, and I -have been called to call others to take part with me in a -new awakening. I have had a vision and I have seen the -world like one who awakens from a long sleep. All things -are joined together and work together and continue for -ever.”</p> - -<p>The poet wrinkled up his nose and waved his hand at -Sargon as who should wave aside some object of offence. -“Tra-la-la,” he shouted.</p> - -<p>“All things I tell you are joined together and work -together——”</p> - -<p>“Tra-la-la,” louder.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[232]</span>“I tell you,” much louder.</p> - -<p>“Shuddup there,” cried the loud and wrathful voice of -Sanity embodied in Mr. Higgs.</p> - -<p>“You’ll have the whole ward jabbering in a minute,” -said Mr. Higgs, approaching and addressing Sargon in -tones of earnest expostulation. “Shud Dup.”</p> - -<p>And after a brief pause of reflection the Lord of the -Whole World obeyed.</p> - -<p>With a gesture of extreme dignity he indicated to Higgs -that his crude demands were conceded.</p> - -<p>“That’s o right,” said Higgs. “<i>You</i> can hold in if you -want to. So you better. <i>He</i> can’t.”</p> - -<p>The poet went on in a soft insinuating undertone -reviling and mocking Sargon’s faith to a refrain of: -“Tra-la-la. Tra-la-la.”</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>Sargon sat up in bed, motionless now except that his head -turned slowly to look at the people about him, and silent. -His recent outbreak had in some way assuaged the exasperation -of that endless recitation. It continued, now -crazily persuasive, now strident and vehement, now a mere -babble of words, it flowed past him and over him; it was -now manifestly directed at him, but he was able to disregard -it. He sat up and looked at the people about him -and contemplated the vast dreadful hours that plainly lay -before him.</p> - -<p>He did not look beyond the coming night. That alone -he foresaw as an eternity.</p> - -<p>He knew that this harsh, naked electric light which prized -up his eyelids however tightly he closed them, would be -glaring all night; he knew that because he had noted a -glance that Higgs had directed at the violent man with red -hair. Instantly he knew that Higgs was afraid of that red-haired -man with the shining pink skin and would never<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[233]</span> -dare to have the ward in darkness, never dare to have even -shade in it, whatever the custom or the regulations might -be. And also he understood why ever and again Higgs -went out of the room at the upper end; he went out to -assure himself of the presence of Jordan or some such -other helper, within call. Yes, this light would certainly -keep on all night and the poet seemed as likely to keep on, -and there would be occasional outbreaks of table hammering -and shouting from the red-haired man and from another -man who uttered a sudden flat shout ever and again. And -there would be misadventures of various sorts; noises and -comings and goings. So he might just as well sit up and -think as lie down and make hopeless attempts to slumber. -One could always think. Of course if one was too tired -one would cease thinking onward, one would just think -round and round, but it would be impossible not to go -on waking and thinking. There was no sleeping in this -place. Eyes, ears, nose were all too much offended. Did -anyone ever sleep here, mad or sane?</p> - -<p>There was nothing for him to do, therefore, but to sit up -and think, sit up and think, doze perhaps and think into a -dream, until some unexpected jolt or jar brought him back -to his thinking.</p> - -<p>The longest night must end at last.</p> - -<p>Then suddenly Sargon, between sleeping and waking, saw -something horrible. At least it struck upon his nerves as -horrible. Two beds away from him there lay an extremely -emaciated young man and his head was lifted up. It was -not supported by pillows; it was six inches above the -pillow. It was held up in an attitude that it was painful -to realize. The young man’s face expressed a serenely -proud satisfaction at this fantastic rigidity. It was incredible. -Was there such a thing as an invisible pillow? Or -was this a delusion of Sargon’s eyes, a waking dream?</p> - -<p>In the bed beyond another man was lying down with his -wakeful face towards Sargon. His eyes met Sargon’s.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[234]</span> -Neither man said a word nor made a gesture, but to each -came infinite comfort. For the eyes each encountered were -as sane as his own and each gave support to the other. It -is so, they said. It is strange, but your eyes are not deceiving -you. That is the form of that young man’s affliction.</p> - -<p>Sargon nodded. The other sane man nodded in reply -and then turned over in his bed as a reassured child might -do, to sleep. But could he sleep?</p> - -<p>Sargon’s gaze went round the ward with a new discovery. -Yes, several of these others might be sane—sane as he was—and -caught like himself. There was another man across -the corridor with a little beard, a very, very mournful man, -but he also had sane eyes.</p> - -<p>To-morrow Sargon must go and talk to these others and -tell them about himself and discuss this dreadful situation, -but not now because Higgs would certainly interfere. -Many things had already conspired to annoy Higgs. It -was plain he could be easily irritated and it would be well -not to annoy him further. For the present one must just -sit and think.</p> - -<p>What were the mad and what did madness mean?</p> - -<p>Why had he been lifted up by the Supreme Power, out of -the common acts and imaginations of his daily life, to a -knowledge of his immortal being, why had he been shown -his endless destinies and a vision of the whole world as -his sphere, merely to be cast out of life and light and -freedom forthwith into this grey underworld of the -demented? It could not be that this was for nothing. It -must signify.</p> - -<p>And then the wind of a second question blew across his -mind. The Power that had called him and called him it -would seem only to bring him into this place, had also -brought all these others to this same dreadfulness. <i>Why?</i> -For him it might be a trial but what was it for these others, -whose souls had indeed dissolved and gone? What was the -Power doing with them?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[235]</span>The whole scheme of things in Sargon’s mind began to -shudder and dissolve. If the Power had not done this, then -it must be the Anti-Power had done it. There must be an -Anti-Power as strong almost as the Power then, able to -snatch men out of life into confusion, indignity, and death -for ever. Or else—<i>there was Nothing</i>!</p> - -<p>He sat quite still with his chin on his knuckles and eyes -staring blankly at the last black possibility.</p> - -<p>Was the whole of this call and this mission of his a deception -and a delusion? Had he been cheated at Tunbridge -Wells when the call first came to him to arise and awake? -Were those memories of Sumeria no more than dreams? -Was he indeed just Albert Edward Preemby—gone crazy? -In a crazy, pointless universe of commonplace inanities? -If so he was indeed the most foolish of living men. He had -left his comfort and securities, sound though insignificant; -he had run away from his dear Christina Alberta—to obey -a Power that was nothing more than his own imagination -and to follow a phantom end. For days he had been -shutting Christina Alberta out of his thoughts; she was a -sceptic, an ally of the Anti-Power. Now she came back, -over-valiant and rash, but just a girl. He had left her to -shift for herself, left her beyond reach of his reproofs and -cautions. What was she doing? What evil and danger -might not be overtaking her even now? It had not occurred -to him before that his disappearance might distress -and endanger her. Now he saw plainly that it must -have done so.</p> - -<p>The enemy came and argued frankly with him. “You -have been a fool, Albert Edward Preemby,” said the -enemy. “You have got yourself into a position of great -danger and discomfort, you have deserted your own proper -life for a horror of nothingness. Go back. Go back while -there is still a chance of going back.”</p> - -<p>But could he go back?</p> - -<p>Yes. That could be done. So easily! He could say<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[236]</span> -plainly that now he remembered his proper name. He -could ask to see the doctor or the director or whoever it -was presided over Jordan and Higgs and their colleagues; -he could give his name and the address of the studio and -his bankers’ address and the address of the laundry and -so forth, speaking very plainly and quietly, he could admit -that he had behaved strangely but that the fit was over, -and so he would pass out of these grim shadows back -into the world. It would rejoice the heart of Christina -Alberta....</p> - -<p>He thought of that alert, kind, slightly antagonistic -figure. If only he could see it now! Coming down the -long ward to him, to rescue, to release....</p> - -<p>Then he would be just Preemby again for the rest of his -days, comfortably Preemby, Preemby the bystander, -Preemby the onlooker, the ineffective, speechless man in -the background of the noisy studio. But certain things -would be at an end. He would never go to any museums -again or browse in the dark shadows of book-shops over -dusty forgotten books about vanished cities and enigmatical -symbols. He would think no more of the wonder -and mystery of Atlantis and of the measurements of the -Pyramids and of all the high riddles of the past and the -future. There would be no more wonder in his life at -all, for he had sought to enter into wonder and had found -it delusion. Those things would be old tales and fancies -of things that would never arrive. Past and future would -be dead for him. The days would be dull and empty as -they had never been before. The bladder of his life would -be pricked....</p> - -<p>And the other way lay pain, indignity, rough treatment, -vile food, filthy circumstances, trials that might break him—but -with the Power still beckoning.</p> - -<p>He thought of the things that belonged to Sargon; of the -Power, of cities that were like great single persons, of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[237]</span> -Whole World, of the mystical promise of the stars, of all -these things he must renounce now and be Preemby, -Preemby plain and sensible, to the end of his days, if he -would go out of this place. He sat at it seemed to him for -an immense time, still and brooding, though his answer -was already definite in his mind. And at last he spoke. -“No,” he said in a hoarse voice that was almost a shout. -“I am Sargon, Sargon the servant of God—and the Whole -World is mine!”</p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>Long after midnight Sargon was still sitting up in that -bleak greasy glare amidst the noises and disorder about -him. He had lost all count of time; his watch had been -taken from him. Somewhen in the small hours he was -praying. And at times he wept a little.</p> - -<p>He prayed. Sometimes he made sentences and whispered -them to himself and sometimes the sentences never got to -words but passed through his mind like serpents that are -seen through deep, dark water. “Great is the task thou hast -put upon me. I see now I am not worthy, O Master, to do -the least thing that is required of me. I am not worthy. I -am a petty man and a foolish man and all I have done so -far is folly. But thou hast called me, knowing my folly. -Forgive thou my folly and help thou my faith.” Silent and -still he sat with tears upon his cheeks. “Any punishment -and any trial,” he whispered at last, “only that thou -shouldst not desert me and vanish out of my world.”</p> - -<p>He prayed that the Power would yet make him the -servant of the world and added falteringly and feebly, -“even as it was in the ancient days.”</p> - -<p>For had there even been those ancient days? Sumeria -was now very far away from him, and the white towns and -the blue river and the river galleys had faded and the worshipping -crowds were just a faint smear upon his mind no<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[238]</span> -stranger than the fading memory of a dream. He said -nothing for a time, and then in a very loud whisper he said: -“Help thou my unbelief.”</p> - -<p>Sometimes he prayed in a whisper and sometimes he -prayed silently and sometimes he sat quite still. Higgs -came and looked at him once or twice but did not interfere -with him. The poem in the adjacent bed still went on, but -it had now become a mere rhyming stream of blasphemous -obscenities.</p> - -<p>For a time after he had made an end to his praying, -Sargon must have slept; he must have slept because he -was awakened by the dawn. It did not come gradually; he -awoke to it.</p> - -<p>A cold, shadowless light filled the ward and the electric -lamps that had seemed so bright were just luminous -orange-yellow threads. And Higgs was standing in the -doorway peering intently at the red-haired man, who was -lying with his head on the table as though he were asleep—but -perhaps only pretending to be asleep.</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>It was on the afternoon of the following day that two -strangers came to see Sargon. He was taken to them and -they talked a little with him, and then chiefly with each -other. Higgs was off duty but Jordan hovered in the background.</p> - -<p>Neither of these gentlemen explained their business with -Sargon to him. One of them was a short man in a black -coat; he wore a gold watch-chain and a rich-looking tie -with a jewelled pin; he had a gold pince-nez, a little -pointed nose, a fat, clean-shaven white face, and a mouth -like an oblique spade-thrust in a lump of dough. He spoke -with something between a sniff and a lisp, and he was evidently -rather in a hurry and annoyed at having been called -in to see Sargon. The other was large and grey and worn-looking;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[239]</span> -he impressed Sargon in some indefinable way as -being a medical man who had private troubles. He seemed -to consider himself in charge of the conversation, and would -occasionally refer upon some point of fact to the hovering -Jordan.</p> - -<p>“Understand,” said the pasty-faced man, “you wanted to -give some sort of dinner party to all sorts of people. Eh?—at -the Rubicon. I suppose it came on you sort of sudden -like. Eh?”</p> - -<p>“I wished to confer with certain people,” said Sargon. -“It may have been a mistake on my part.”</p> - -<p>“No doubt it was a mistake, Mr.—Mr.——”</p> - -<p>“Won’t ’ave a Mister to it,” said Jordan from the background. -“Calls ’isself Sargon.”</p> - -<p>The doctor became very acute in his manner. “Now isn’t -that some sort of historical name?” he asked with a sideways -searching look.</p> - -<p>“It is,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“But it isn’t <i>your</i> name, you know.”</p> - -<p>“Possibly not. I mean—It is my only name.”</p> - -<p>“That’s a bit of an answer, that is,” said the pasty-faced -man. “My <i>word</i>!”</p> - -<p>“What is your <i>real</i> name?” asked the doctor persuasively.</p> - -<p>“Sargon.”</p> - -<p>“Not Mr. A. E. Preemby?”</p> - -<p>Sargon started and stared, possibly with a certain wildness -in his eyes. “With God’s help, <i>No</i>!” he said.</p> - -<p>“Was it ever Mr. Preemby?” asked the doctor.</p> - -<p>“That does not matter now. That is of no importance -now.”</p> - -<p>“It may be of <i>some</i> importance,” said the pasty-faced -man.</p> - -<p>“And now you’re a King or a Lord or something and you -own the world?” said the doctor.</p> - -<p>Sargon made no answer. He felt he was in a net.</p> - -<p>The doctor turned to Jordan and beckoned him in a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[240]</span> -whisper. Only one sentence came to Sargon’s ears. “’Iggs -’eard it,” said Mr. Jordan.</p> - -<p>“Aren’t you called Sargon the Magnificent?” asked the -doctor.</p> - -<p>Sargon bent his head in sorrow. “Better were it to call -me Sargon the Unworthy. For in many things I have -failed.”</p> - -<p>The pasty-faced man looked at the doctor. “Haven’t we -had about enough of this?”</p> - -<p>“My conclusions are clear,” said the doctor. “In fact, I -have the certificate ready.”</p> - -<p>“If you’re satisfied, Dr. Manningtree, I am. If I’m to -see those other fellers.”</p> - -<p>“I’ve got all the papers in my room,” said the doctor.</p> - -<p>“Right-o,” said the pasty-faced man.</p> - -<p>“It’s very good of you to come to-day. I wouldn’t have -bothered you until to-morrow but we are really getting -overcrowded here. One chap’s decidedly dangerous. The -attendants here don’t like the look of him. You need -only just see him for a moment. Or any of them. All -clear cases for summary reception orders.”</p> - -<p>They spoke now as if Sargon were not present or as if he -were an inanimate object. And indeed for them he had -become so; he had passed for them already out of the -comity of mankind.</p> - -<p>“Why have you been talking to me?” asked Sargon suddenly -with a vague fear of what had been said and done -developing in his mind.</p> - -<p>The doctor’s manner altered. He spoke to Sargon as one -might speak to a small child. “You’ll be going back to bed -now,” he said. “Jordan!”</p> - -<p>“But I want to know.”</p> - -<p>“Go with Mr. Jordan.”</p> - -<p>“What are these papers you speak about?”</p> - -<p>The doctor turned his back on Sargon without an answer -and the man with the pasty face opened the door to depart.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[241]</span> -Sargon made a step towards them, but Jordan laid hold of -his arm.</p> - -<p>And while Sargon was being steered back to bed, firmly -rather than gently, in the grip of Jordan, the justice and -the doctor filled in and signed the forms that were necessary -to deprive him of nearly every right he possessed as a -human being. For there is no trial by jury and no writ of -habeas-corpus in Britain for the unfortunate charged with -insanity. He may not plead in public and there is no one -to whom he may appeal. He may write complaints but -they will be neglected; his most urgent expostulations -will be disregarded in favour of any dull attendant’s -asseverations. He is handed over to the nearly autocratic -control of under-educated, ill-paid, ill-fed, and overworked -attendants. Every night and every day seems endless -to him at first, and then the nights and days fall into -a sort of routine and become unimportant and pass away -more and more rapidly. He is almost always kept in a -state of bodily discomfort, always rather ill from the ill-prepared -and sometimes tainted food, and much incommoded -by clumsy drugging and particularly by the -administration of violent purgatives. In croton oil alone -are our asylums truly generous. He has excellent reason -for fearing many of his fellow inmates and for a servile -obedience to the attendants in charge of him. A medical -superintendent hovers in the background; a medical staff -with no special training in mental science. They pass -through the wards at the appointed times, avoiding trouble, -seeing as little as possible.</p> - -<p>And, after all, what can they do? They cannot raise the -expenditure upon food or increase the number or salaries -of the attendants. They are appointed to save and not to -spend the ratepayers’ money. The attendants work together -and protect each other; they must hang together; -many of them go in fear of the violent cases. Occasionally, -after due notice, a visiting magistrate will pay a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[242]</span> -formal visit to the asylum. Everything is put in order for -the occasion. The inmate with a grievance dares not -accost him or does not know how to accost him nor how -to frame his complaint. The attendants are at hand to -interrupt, embarrass, and explain. So, with no possibility -of redress, the poor half-lunatic will be roughly handled, -badly fed, and coarsely clothed, and night and day he will -have no other familiar company than the insane. It is -bad enough for the sane to be afflicted by the vagaries, -the violence, the exasperating mechanisms, the incoherences -of the truly demented, but what must it be for those upon -whom the penumbra of that same shadow has fallen? They -have no privacy; no escape from those others; no peace. -Our world herds these discards together out of sight, walls -them up, spends so little upon them that they are neither -properly fed nor properly looked after, and does its brave -hopeful best to forget all about them.</p> - -<p>And our Sargon, who even in the outer world of usage -and freedom was sometimes a little at a loss, must now go -on into this dark underworld. For two days more he will -be kept in the Gifford Street Observation Ward awaiting -the convenience of the authorities; then in the company of -four other prisoners he will be sent to a still bleaker and -more desolate and hopeless confinement within the clustering -buildings and walls and railings of Cummerdown Hill.</p> - -<p>So he passes now for a time out of sight of everyday -mankind, and so also for a time he shall pass out of this -story. It would be insufferable to tell with any fulness his -daily tale of discomfort and indignity.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[243]</span> - -<h2 class="nobreak"><i>BOOK THE THIRD</i><br> -<br> -THE RESURRECTION OF SARGON,<br> -KING OF KINGS</h2> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[244]</span></p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[245]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE FIRST<br> - -<i>Christina Alberta in Search of a Father</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">H<small>ITHERTO</small> Christina Alberta had faced life with a bold, -disdainful, and successful gesture. The discretions -and scruples of others were not for her. She had seen no -reason for their prudent hesitations, their conventions and -restraints. Now for the first time she knew dismay. Her -Daddy had vanished into a world that she suddenly realized -could be immensely cruel. Teddy was rotten, so plainly -rotten that only a fool wrapped up in her own sensations -would have touched him. She lay awake for most of the -night after her Daddy had vanished, biting her hands and -damning Teddy. Lambone the great friend was lazy, incompetent, -and futile. Harold and Fay seemed already a little -tired of her misfortune and vaguely disposed to blame her -for bringing her Daddy to London. She had no one else -to whom she could turn. No one remained to her—except -Christina Alberta herself, feeling a little soiled now and -more than a little afraid. “But what am I to do?” she -asked the night, again and again, in her stuffy but artistic -little bedroom.</p> - -<p>Among the other disadvantages of her position she had -less than a pound of ready money.</p> - -<p>It has to be recorded that for two whole days Christina -Alberta did not even take the obvious step of going to the -police. She had a queer instinctive knowledge of the danger<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[246]</span> -of bringing the police and the social system generally -to bear upon her odd little Daddy. She had an innate -distrust of official human beings. It was Paul Lambone who -induced her to go to the police. He had the grace to -be ashamed of his unhelpfulness, and after an interval of -two clear days he came round to the Lonsdale Mews to -offer his generous but sluggish help once more. He caught -her having tea with Fay.</p> - -<p>“Christina Alberta,” he said, looking a very large comfortable -figure of sorrow, “I’ve been worrying and worrying -about you all the time. I didn’t help enough. I thought -he’d come back of his own accord and that all the fuss was -a little premature. Have you heard anything?”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta was torn between the desire to snap -his head off and the realization that he was, after his -fashion, quite sincerely friendly to her and could be very -useful.</p> - -<p>“<i>Say</i> it!” said Lambone. “You’ll be better, my dear, -after you’ve said it and then we can talk matters over.”</p> - -<p>He got the reassurance of a smile. He brightened visibly. -He was the sort of man who would hate to feel hated -even by a cockroach. “I won’t sit in that chair, thanks,” -he said to Fay. “It’s too comfortable. And at any moment -we may think of something, and I may have to leap up -and act.</p> - -<p>“Spartan,” he said, sitting down.</p> - -<p>“Eh?” said Fay.</p> - -<p>“Spartan. My doctor tells me to say it before every -meal and especially before tea. I don’t know why. Magic -or Coué or something. Are these things cocoanut cakes? -I thought so.... Good they are. And what are we -going to do about it, Christina Alberta?”</p> - -<p>He became sane and helpful and more and more like the -man who wrote <i>What to Do on a Hundred and One Occasions</i>. -He made Christina Alberta admit to bankruptcy,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[247]</span> -and made it clear to her that it was her duty to accept a -loan of twenty-five pounds from him. He then dealt with -the point about reporting the disappearance to the police, -and convinced Christina Alberta upon that. If Mr. -Preemby had fallen into bad hands the sooner the police -looked for him the better. But he did not think that likely; -he was much more inclined to the idea that Preemby had -made a disturbance and been taken up. He guessed he -would be dealt with as a mental case. He had consulted -those useful books <i>The Justice of the Peace</i> and the <i>Encyclopædia -Britannica</i>, and displayed the excellence of his -mental digestion. Christina Alberta perceived that he had -in him the makings of a competent barrister.</p> - -<p>He carried off Christina Alberta in a taxi to Scotland -Yard. “Either they’ll tell us there or tell us where we -shall be told,” he said.</p> - -<p>Fay was impressed by the originality of that. “Now -if it was a lost umbrella,” she said, “I could understand it. -But I’d never have thought of going to Scotland Yard for -a lost father.”</p> - -<p>By six Mr. Preemby had been traced to Gifford Street. -But there was no seeing him at Gifford Street. He had -been certified as a lunatic and he was bound, the attendant -thought but wasn’t quite sure, for Cummerdown Hill. -Paul Lambone tried to be dignified and important and to -prevail over the attendant and extract further information, -but not very successfully. In the end he and Christina -Alberta departed with little more than one immense discouraging -fact. They would not be able to see Mr. -Preemby nor to learn anything very material about his -condition until the next visiting day, whenever that might -be, at Cummerdown Hill. Then if he was “fit to be visited,” -they might go and see him. The attendant was rigid -in his statements and had the air of disliking both Lambone -and Christina Alberta extremely.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[248]</span>As they came away from Gifford Street Christina Alberta -observed that Lambone was angry. She had never seen -him angry before. It was a very transitory phase. There -was an unusual depth of pink in his cheeks.</p> - -<p>“Dog in office,” he said. “Just there to annoy people—anxious -people. One would think ... man in my position ... -certain standing.... Some attention.... -Any other country but this, Man of letters has respect.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta agreed mutely.</p> - -<p>“Manners in a public official—primary.”</p> - -<p>“He was detestable,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Not at the end of my resources,” said Lambone.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta waited.</p> - -<p>“Ought to have gone to Devizes in the first place. Knows -more about mental cases and lunacy law than any other -man in London. Wonderful fellow. I’ll go back to my flat -and I’ll ring him up and make an appointment. Then -he’ll put us wise about the whole business. And I want you -to meet him anyhow. You’ll appreciate Devizes. Come to -think of it, you’re remarkably like him.”</p> - -<p>“How?”</p> - -<p>“Got the Life Force and all that. And physically like -him. Very. The same nose—much the same profile.”</p> - -<p>“It’s a nose more suitable for a man,” said Christina -Alberta. “I suppose <i>he</i> carries it off all right!”</p> - -<p>“It’s a damned good nose, Christina Alberta,” said Lambone. -“It’s a valiant nose. Don’t you break down to any -modesty about it. It was your nose attracted me first to -you. You’ll spike a husband with it yet, and he’ll adore -it and follow it even as you do. Nowadays women have to -be free and individualized; they have got to have features -and distinction. The days of the wanton curl and the swan -neck and complexion have gone. Not that you haven’t the -clearest skin I’ve ever set eyes upon, Christina Alberta.”</p> - -<p>“Tell me some more about Dr. Devizes,” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[249]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>But it wasn’t the next day that Christina Alberta met -Devizes. She put that off for a day and fled down to -Woodford Wells in response to a remarkable communication -from Mr. Sam Widgery.</p> - -<p>The Widgerys had never been correspondents of the -Preembys except in so far as the payment of the dividends -upon Mr. Preemby’s interest in the Limpid Stream -Laundry necessitated letters. There had been a certain -amount of friction in the flotation of the company, and Mr. -Widgery had remained resentful and sought to show as -much by a studied curtness in his communications. But -now came this letter addressed to “Miss Chrissie Preemby.” -“<i>My dear Chrissie</i>,” the letter began.</p> - -<div class="blockquot2"> -<p>“<i>This is a shocking business about your poor father I -can’t tell you how shocked I am I went up post haste to -the workhouse where you had put him as soon as they -wrote to me and got his watch and cheque-book. It is -fortunate they found my address in his pocket or I suppose -I should have been kept in the dark as per usual about all -this he did not know me and denied his own name but -afterwards he said he knew me for a filching commercial -wrogue and would have my ears cut off and threatened me. -I was to be unpailed whatever that may be. I have been -thinking over all this business and since you are not yet of -age I suppose I am a sort of guardian to you and have to -look into your interests at the laundry which is not paying -nearly so well as your father led me to believe. I think -he was already queer at the time and didn’t fully understand -what he was doing and I doubt if all that of his -about preference shares which I never held with really but -did to humour him ought to stand. Luckily there is no -hurry about this has you won’t have to pay anything for -him where he is Mr. Punter says so long as you leave well -alone and we can see about these other things when you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[250]</span> -have got over the first shock of your father’s breakdown. -My wife sends her love and kind sympathy. You must -keep calm and not let these things disturb you too much -because very often it is hereriterary and one cannot be -too careful so leave everything to me and believe me to -remain</i></p> - -<p class="right"><span class="indentright">“<i>Your affectionate cousin</i></span><br> - -“<i>Sam Widgery</i>.”</p> -</div> - -<p>“Rather!” said Christina Alberta and telephoned forthwith -to put off Paul Lambone and Wilfred Devizes and -hurried off with a combatant light in her eye to the Underground -and Liverpool Street Station.</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>When Christina Alberta got down to Woodford Wells it -seemed to her that the laundry was just a little smaller -than it used to be and that a slight tarnish had fallen upon -the bright blue delivery vans. The swastika upon them -had been covered over by paper bills in red lettering -saying: “Under Entirely New Management. Address all -Communications to the Managing Director Samuel Widgery -Esq. By Order.”</p> - -<p>She went up the garden path to the door that had been -home to her for nearly all her life, and it was opened to -her by Sam Widgery himself, who had seen her coming. -“So you came down,” he said, and seemed to hesitate about -admitting her. He was a tallish, stooping man with a large -bare pock-marked face, a dropping nether lip, a large nose -that snored occasionally when he breathed, and furtive -very small brown eyes. He was clad in dark grey ill-fitting -garments, with a frayed collar and a very worn made-up -black satin tie. His waistcoat was mainly unbuttoned and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[251]</span> -he fidgeted with his hands. He looked at Christina Alberta -as though he found her more formidable than he had -thought her.</p> - -<p>“Did you see Daddy?” said Christina Alberta, coming -straight to the point.</p> - -<p>He compressed his mouth and shook his head from side -to side as though he recalled painful things.</p> - -<p>“Was he bad? Was he queer or—<i>dreadful</i>?”</p> - -<p>“Not too loud, my dear,” he said in his husky whispering -voice. “We don’t want <i>every one</i> to hear about your -trouble. Come in here where we can talk properly.”</p> - -<p>He led the way into the little living-room in which her -father had so recently planned the conditions for the conversion -of the laundry into a limited company. The -familiar furniture had been rearranged rather amazingly, -and a large, dark bureau had been placed under the window. -With discreet gestures, Sam Widgery closed the -door and came towards her. “Sit down, Chrissie,” he said, -“and don’t get excited. I was afraid you might come -rushing down here. But of course I was bound to write -to you.”</p> - -<p>“Did you see him?” she repeated.</p> - -<p>“Mad as a hatter,” he said. “They say he made a riot at -the Rubicon Restaurant. Wanted to give a great banquet -there to all the beggars in London.”</p> - -<p>“Did you see him? Was he well? Was he unhappy? -What have they done with him?”</p> - -<p>“You mustn’t <i>pelt</i> me with questions, Chrissie. You -mustn’t let your mind go on at such a pace. I told you in -my letter I went up and saw him. They called him out and -he came to me in a little room.”</p> - -<p>“Where was it? Where was this workhouse?”</p> - -<p>“There you go again. Just sit down and take things -quietly, my girl. I can’t answer all these questions at -once.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[252]</span>“Where was it you saw him? Was it at Gifford Street?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Where else could it be? They was waiting to remove -him.”</p> - -<p>“Where?”</p> - -<p>“Some asylum I suppose?”</p> - -<p>“Cummerdown Hill?”</p> - -<p>“Come to think of it, it <i>was</i> Cummerdown Hill. Yes—they -said Cummerdown Hill. He came out. He looked -much as usual, but more vacant perhaps, until he set eyes -on me and then he gave a sort of start and said, ‘Don’t -know you,’ he said. Like that.”</p> - -<p>“Well, that wasn’t mad. Did he <i>look</i> mad? I suppose -he didn’t want to talk to you—after all the disagreeable -things that have been said.”</p> - -<p>“Very likely. Any’ow I said to him, ‘What! don’t know -<i>me</i>?’ I said; ‘not know old Sam Widgery what you planted -your laundry on?’ Just like that—joking at him like. -Quite kindly but—humorous. ‘I don’t know you,’ he says -and tried to go. ‘Hold hard!’ I said and took him by the -arm. ‘You’re a base, complaining scoundrel,’ he says to -me and sort of tried to push me away. ‘You’d rewin any -laundry!’ he says—him to me, what was in the laundry -business a dozen years before he married your poor -mother. ‘Any ’ow I haven’t your complaint,’ I says, ‘Mr. -Albert Edward Preemby.’ He sort of stiffened. ‘Sargum,’ -he says, ‘if you please....’”</p> - -<p>“Sargon,” Christina Alberta corrected.</p> - -<p>“Maybe. It sounded like ‘Sargum.’ And ‘Sargum’ he -would have it. Mad as a hatter on that. I tried to talk -but what was the good of talking? I couldn’t get anything -plain or straight out of him at all. Started threatening me -with the bastinado—whatever that may be. I asked him -to be decent with his language. ‘I’ve ’ad enough’ I says -to the attendant at last and the attendant took him away. -And so we’re quit of him, Chrissie.”</p> - -<p>“Quit of him!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[253]</span>“Quit of him. What can anyone do?”</p> - -<p>“Everything. Did he look very unhappy? Did he look -frightened or ill-treated?”</p> - -<p>“Why should he? They’re taking proper care of him -and he’s out of harm’s way.”</p> - -<p>“You’re sure he looked—serene?”</p> - -<p>“Bit jaded perhaps. That’s his own internal workings I -expect. But he’s where he ought to be, Chrissie. I feel -that. What we’ve got to do, from what Mr. Punter says, is -to let well alone. There he is with everything he wants, -living on the ratepayers’ money. We’ve got ourselves to -consider. We’ve got to think of that crazy preference-share -idea he’s saddled the laundry with. <i>That’s</i> urgent. -It’s a charge of nearly five hundred a year as things are, -nearly ten pound a week. There isn’t a laundry in London -could stand it.”</p> - -<p>“I shall have to see my Daddy,” said Christina Alberta. -“I don’t believe he <i>is</i> so comfortable. I’ve heard horrid -stories of asylums. Anyhow, I ought to go right away and -see him.”</p> - -<p>“Can’t do that, Chrissie,” said Mr. Widgery, shaking his -large grey face slowly from side to side and watching her -as he spoke. “They don’t have visitors running in and out -of these mad-houses just whenever they want to. Wouldn’t -<i>do</i>, you know. The poor creatures have to be kept quiet -and not excited. I daresay I could give you a letter for -next visiting day——”</p> - -<p>“<i>You!</i> Give <i>me</i> a letter!”</p> - -<p>Mr. Widgery shrugged his shoulders. “It would help -you to get in. But you won’t make anything of him, -Chrissie, even if you see him. And you’ll have to wait for -a visiting day. You must do that.”</p> - -<p>“I want to see him.”</p> - -<p>“Very likely. But regulations are regulations. Meanwhile -there’s all this business muddle we got to put straight. -While he’s in that asylum I think what I ought to do is to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[254]</span> -give you ’n allowance, five pounds a week say, and keep -back the rest until we’re able to get something settled up. -Or four. Or perhaps as you want it—not a definite sum. -I don’t know. I haven’t thought it out yet. You can’t -possibly want to do with all that ten pounds a week with -him off your hands. Then we’ll be able to see where we -stand and everything will be all right again.”</p> - -<p>He paused and scratched his cheek and watched her with -his little sidelong eyes. “See?” he said as if to stimulate -her to speech.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta looked at him in a silence that became -painful. Then she stood up and regarded him—her arms -akimbo and her face alight.</p> - -<p>“I see now,” she said. “You damned old Rascal!”</p> - -<p>Mr. Widgery had nice old-fashioned ideas about young -ladies and ladylike language. He was taken aback. -“Now!” he said. “<i>Now!</i>”</p> - -<p>“Always I should think,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“You mustn’t say things like that, Chrissie. You -mustn’t use words like that. You mustn’t get wrong ideas -about all this. What d’you mean? Old rascal! Something -old rascal! Why? I’m only doing what I got to do. -You aren’t really of age yet, you’re just a mere child legally -speaking, and it falls to <i>me</i> naturally, <i>me</i>, his nearest relative -so to speak, to make such arrangements as have to be -made about his affairs. That’s all. You mustn’t get wrong -ideas about it all and you mustn’t get excited. See?”</p> - -<p>“I called you,” said Christina Alberta, “a damned old -Rascal.”</p> - -<p>He did not meet her eye. He spoke as if he appealed to -the bureau.</p> - -<p>“And does it do you any good to use such horrible expressions? -And does it do me any harm? And does it -alter the fact that whether I like it or not, I’ve got to look -after his property now and see about it and see you don’t -get into any trouble or mischief? All me and your aunt<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[255]</span> -have been thinking about is just what’s right and proper -to be done for you. And then you turn on me like a serpent -and use language——!”</p> - -<p>Words failed Mr. Widgery, and still seeking sympathy -from the bureau, he shrugged his shoulders and threw out -his hands.</p> - -<p>“You’re no relation of his,” said Christina Alberta. “I -guessed when I read your letter that this was the sort of -thing you’d be up to. You’re glad to have him out of the -way because he was such a one for punctual payments. -You think I’m all alone; you think I’m just a girl and that -you can do what you like now with me. You’ve made a -mistake. I’ll make you pay up every penny that’s due on -the laundry and I’ll see you do it more punctually than -ever. And why didn’t you do something to get him out as -soon as you heard they’d taken him?”</p> - -<p>“Now don’t you go getting excited, Chrissie,” said Mr. -Widgery. “Even if I ain’t a blood relation of his, I am of -yours. I’m your next-of-kin and your best friend and I -got to think what’s got to be done about <i>you</i>. I got to act -for <i>you</i>. In spite of bad language and everything. I tell -you he’s right and safe where he is and I’m not going to -have anything done to disturb him. Nothing at all. -There he is and there he’s going to stay, and I’m going to -act as Mr. Punter advised me to act. I’m going to keep -back his dividends as they fall due, and pay you what I -think proper to pay you for your keep and so on and charge -it to him, and I’m going to see you live an orderly sort of life -in future now too, same as my poor cousin Christina would -have wanted you to do. You’ve been knocking about the -world in a perfectly scandalous way and learning to curse -and swear. It can’t go on. That’s how things are, Chrissie, -and the sooner you see them the right way round the -better.”</p> - -<p>The young woman stood speechless while Mr. Widgery -unfolded his intentions.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[256]</span>“Where’s Mrs. Widgery?” she said at last with an effect -of stupendous self-control.</p> - -<p>“Up in the laundry seeing to things. No need to bother -her. We been talking about all this, over and over, and -we’re quite of one mind in the matter. It’s <i>our</i> right to -look after you and it’s <i>our</i> responsibility to look after you, -and we mean to do our duty by you, Chrissie, whether -you like it or not.”</p> - -<p>Unpleasant doubts assailed Christina Alberta. She was -still two months short of one and twenty, and it was quite -conceivable that the law gave this ugly, oily creature all -sorts of preposterous powers of interference with her. Still -it was her style to carry off things with a brave face.</p> - -<p>“All this is just nonsense,” she said. “I’m not going to -have my Daddy put away like this without a word from -me, and I’m not going to let you muddle about with his -property. Everybody in the family knows you’re a crooked -muddler. Mother used to say so. I’m going to see about -him myself, and I’m going to have him sent off to -some special sort of mental nursing place where he can -have proper attention. And that’s what I came to tell -you.”</p> - -<p>Mr. Widgery’s little eyes seemed to weigh and judge her. -“You’re giving yourself high and mighty airs, Chrissie,” he -said, after a little pause. “You’ll do this and you’ll do that. -You’ve got a sort of wrong idea of what you can do in the -world. You haven’t got any money and you haven’t got -any authority, and the sooner you get that into your head -the better.”</p> - -<p>That scared feeling was gaining upon Christina Alberta. -In order to counteract it she deliberately lost her temper. -“I’ll jolly soon show you what I can do and what you -can’t,” she said with a flaming face.</p> - -<p>“Now don’t <i>yew</i> go getting excited,” said Mr. Widgery. -“You of all people shouldn’t get excited.”</p> - -<p>“<i>Excited!</i>” said Christina Alberta; rallying for a repartee, -and then struck by an ugly thought she stopped short and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[257]</span> -stared at the little bright brown eyes in the pock-marked -face. Mutely they answered her mute amazed question. -This was the third or fourth time he had used the word -“excited” and now she knew what he was aiming at. Suddenly -she realized the train of ideas that her Daddy’s -extinction had set going in his head. He also had been -studying the lunacy laws—and dreaming dreams.</p> - -<p>“Exactly,” said Mr. Widgery. “You’ve always been a -queerish sort of girl, Chrissie, and the rackety life you lead -and now this affair has been a strain on you. Must have -been. You’ve got no quiet friends but your aunt and me -and no quiet place to come to but here. Don’t you go flaring -out at me, Chrissie; I mean well by you. I’m not -going to go paying you money to keep you up there in -London. Why!—you might go gettings drugs or anything. -Call me a something rascal if you like. Swear at me as -though you were out of your senses; it won’t alter what I -mean to do. I want you to come down here and rest your -mind and nerves for a time, and let me get in some one to -see you—see what ought to be done about you.... -You’ll thank me for it some day.”</p> - -<p>His big grey face seemed to expand and swim about -before her eyes and the room grew small and dark.</p> - -<p>“It’s my duty to see after you,” he said. “It can’t hurt -you or anyone for us to have advice.”</p> - -<p>In the train from Liverpool Street she had told herself -she had intended to wipe the floor with Mr. Sam Widgery, -but things hardly seemed to be happening like that.</p> - -<p>“Bah!” she cried. “D’you think I’d come back here?”</p> - -<p>“Better than being lost in London, Chrissie,” he said. -“Better than being lost in London. We can’t have you -wandering off in London, same as your father did.”</p> - -<p>She felt that the time had come for her to go, but for a -second or so she could not move to do so. She could not -move because she feared he might do something to detain -her, and if he did she did not know what she would do. -Then she pulled herself up by the feet.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[258]</span>“Well,” she said with a step past him doorward that -turned him on his heel; “I’ve told you what I think of you. -I’d better be getting back to London.”</p> - -<p>In his eyes she saw the thought of obstructing her flash -into being and die. “Won’t you stay and have something,” -he said, “before you go back?”</p> - -<p>“Eat <i>here</i>!” she cried and got to the door.</p> - -<p>Her hand trembled so that it was difficult to turn the -handle. He stood motionless, staring at her with his lower -lip dropping and an expression of doubt upon his face. It -was as if he was not quite sure of himself nor of the -course he meant to pursue. The course he wanted to -pursue was appallingly plain.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>She walked with dignity out of the open front door and -down the garden path. She did not look back, but she -knew his face came up close to the window and watched -her. Never in her whole life had panic come so near to her. -She would have liked to run.</p> - -<p>After the train had started she felt a little safer. “How -the devil can he get at me?” she said aloud to the empty -compartment.</p> - -<p>But she wasn’t at all sure that she couldn’t be got at and -she found herself trying to estimate just how much support -and friendship she might find in her London friends. -Could she, for instance, count upon Mr. Paul Lambone? -If supplies were cut off could she get some sort of job and -keep herself for a time until she could extract her -silly Daddy from the net into which he had fallen? How -would Harold and Fay, perennially hard-up, behave if -supplies ran out? And meanwhile there was Daddy, -wondering why no help came to him—puzzled by what -had happened to him and no doubt getting sillier and -sillier.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[259]</span>Christina Alberta was growing up fast now. Beneath all -her radicalism and rebellion there had always hitherto -been a belief, tacit, sub-conscious, in the rightness and -security and sustaining energy of the social framework. -There is under most youthful rebellion. She had assumed -without thinking very much about it that hospitals were -places of comfort and luxury, doctors in full possession -and use of all existing science, prisons clean and exemplary -places, that though laws might still be unjust that the -administration of the law was untouched by knavery or -weakness. She had had the same confidence in the ultimate -integrity of social life that a little child has in the -invincible safeness of nursery and home. But now she was -awakening to the fact that the whole world was insecure. -It was not that it was a wicked or malignant world, but that -it was an inattentive and casual world. It dreaded bothers. -It would do the meanest, most dangerous, and cruellest -things to escape the pressure of bothers, and it would -refuse to be bothered by any sufferings or evil it could -possibly contrive to ignore. It was a dangerous world, a -world of bothered people in which one might be lost and -forgotten while one was still alive and suffering. It was a -world in which it is not good to be alone, and she was -beginning to feel herself very dangerously alone.</p> - -<p>She had never, she reflected, thought very much of her -family, but now she perceived a family may dissolve away -too soon. She wanted a wall to put her back against if -after all Sam Widgery screwed up his courage to be aggressive; -she wanted some one who would be her very own, -a safe ally, some one she could count upon, some one closer -than law or custom, some one who would go about and -find out exactly what had happened to her if she fell into -disaster, who would refuse to accept her downfall, some -one who would care for her more than he cared for himself -and not be lightly turned away.</p> - -<p><i>Himself?</i> Not <i>herself</i>. In fact, a lover.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[260]</span>“Damn Teddy!” cried Christina Alberta, and knocked a -puff of dust out of the railway cushion with her fist. “He -messes it up.</p> - -<p>“And I knew what he was. I knew all the time exactly -what he was!</p> - -<p>“I’ve got to stick it alone,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“And besides who’d have cared for me, anyhow, with a -nose like mine?”</p> - -<p>“Even if there were such things in the world as lovers -who loved like that! But it’s a world of people who don’t -care. It’s a world of people who haven’t the guts to care. -It’s a dust-heap of a world,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>Her thoughts began to flow into a new region. After all, -wasn’t there something too disagreeably justifiable in the -suggestion that she was—how to put it—<i>queer</i>? Hitherto -Christina Alberta had always regarded herself as a model -of sanity and mental directness—with no fault indeed -except possibly her nose. Now the word “queer” stuck in -her mind like a thorn that has gone right home. She -could not get it out again.</p> - -<p>She had always, she knew, been different. She had -always had a style of her own.</p> - -<p>Most of the people she had met in the world had impressed -her as being colourless, weak in speech and action, -evasive—that was the word, “evasive.” They evaded the -use of all sorts of blunt words, they didn’t know why. -Christina Alberta was all for saying “Damn” and “guts” -and so forth until some one convinced her of some better -reason for avoiding them than merely that they weren’t -used by “nice” people. These others were always not saying -things because they weren’t said and not doing things -because they weren’t done. And for what was said and -what was done, however manifestly preposterous it was,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[261]</span> -they had a sort of terrified imitativeness. They just ran -about being as far as possible somebody else until they -died. Why exist at all then? Why not get out of it and -leave some one else in possession? But, anyhow, they got -through life. They didn’t get into trouble. They supported -one another. And, on the other hand, if you didn’t -evade? You puzzled other people. You left the track. -You were like a train leaving the rails and trying to take -a cross-country short-cut. You hit against—everything.</p> - -<p>Was this evasive life she had always despised really the -sane life? Was ceasing to evade ceasing to be sane? -Sheep, she had read, had a disease called gid; then they -wandered alone and died. Was all this originality and -thinking for oneself and not going with the crowd and so -forth, that had been her pride and glory, just the way out -from the sane life? Originality, eccentricity, queerness, -craziness, madness; was that merely a quantitative scale?</p> - -<p>Was not her Daddy’s queerness this, that after years of -the extremest evasion he had at last tried to break away -to something real and strange? And had she, after her -fashion, been attempting anything else? Was she, too, lop-sided? -Lop-sided in a different direction, perhaps, but lop-sided -none the less. An inherited lop-sidedness?</p> - -<p>Her mind went off at a tangent on the question whether -she had really inherited anything whatever from her -Daddy. Was his queerness her sort of queerness at all? It -ought to be, seeing that they were father and daughter.</p> - -<p>How different they were! For a father and daughter how -amazingly different they were!...</p> - -<p>But were they father and daughter? A much repressed -fantasy came back to her—a fantasy based on the flimsiest -foundations, on chance phrases her mother had used, on -moments of intuition. Once or twice a reverie had arisen -out of these lurking particles of memory and had taken her -by surprise only to be thrust aside again with contempt.</p> - -<p>Blup. Blup. Blup. There came a familiar variation to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[262]</span> -the familiar sounds of the train. Christina Alberta was -running into Liverpool Street Station and her perplexities -were all unsolved.</p> - -<p>The old fantasy lost heart and faded away. What was -the good of such dreams? There she was.</p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>Christina Alberta’s meeting next day with Wilfred -Devizes turned out to be a much more exciting affair than -she or he had expected it to be.</p> - -<p>Acting on the advice of Paul Lambone, she had brought -photographs and a letter or so in her Daddy’s handwriting -with her, and she had thought out what she judged would -be significant things to tell about him. She went in a taxi -with Paul Lambone to Devizes’ house just off Cavendish -Square, and they were shown up at once past a waiting-room -and a consulting-room to a dignified little sitting-room -with an open fire and a table with tea-things and a -great array of bookcases. Devizes came in to them -forthwith.</p> - -<p>She was a little shocked to think that this lank, dark, -shock-headed man could be recognizably like her. He was -younger than she had expected him to be, younger she -thought, than her Daddy or Mr. Lambone, and he wore a -long unbuttoned morning coat. He carried the nose all -right; he was indeed very good-looking.</p> - -<p>“Hullo, Paul,” he said cheerfully. “Is this the young -lady whose father’s been stolen? We’ll have some tea. It’s -Miss——?”</p> - -<p>“Miss Preemby,” said Paul Lambone, “but every one -calls her Christina Alberta.”</p> - -<p>Devizes turned an eye that was by habit and disposition -a scrutinizing eye upon her. He betrayed a faint momentary -surprise and came and shook hands. “Tell me -all about it,” he said. “You don’t think he’s really<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[263]</span> -mad, but only rather exceptional and odd. That’s it, -isn’t it? Lambone tells me he is sane. It’s quite possible. -I’d better go over the state of his mind first, and then we -can discuss the question of the asylum afterwards. I -gather you want to get him under your own care—outside. -That isn’t by any means simple. We’ll have to study the -obstacles. Meanwhile tea.... I’ve been disentangling -the delusions of a perfectly terrible old lady, and I’m -rather deflated. Just tell me all about it in your own -way.”</p> - -<p>“Tell him,” said Paul, settling his shoulders into his -arm-chair, and preparing to interrupt.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta began to unfold her premeditated discourse. -Every now and then Devizes would interrupt her -with a question. He kept his eyes on her, and it seemed to -her even from the beginning that they betrayed something -more than attention to what she was saying. He looked at -her as though he had seen her before and couldn’t quite -remember where. She described her Daddy’s talks to her -when she was a girl, about the Pyramids and the Lost -Atlantis and so forth, and the odd spirit of release and -renewed growth that had followed the death of her mother. -She told of the spiritualistic séance and the coming of -Sargon. Devizes was very keen on various aspects of -the Sargon story. “It was odd that the suggestion fell in -so aptly with Preemby’s mental disposition. What was -that young man up to? I don’t quite understand him.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know. I think he just hit by chance on the -stuff he talked. It was just bad luck that it fitted.”</p> - -<p>“Undergraduate idea of fun?”</p> - -<p>“Undergraduate fun. It might have been Tut-an-ka-man.”</p> - -<p>“But it happened to be Sargon.”</p> - -<p>“He may have been reading some ancient history.”</p> - -<p>“He didn’t, I suppose, know anything about your -father?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[264]</span>“Couldn’t have done. I suppose he thought my—my -Daddy looked a little small and absurd, and I suppose it -appealed to his sense of humour to single him out from the -others and make him a great king. I’d like to have a few -minutes straight talk with that young man.”</p> - -<p>“This you see isn’t a delusion, Devizes. It’s a deception,” -said Paul Lambone.</p> - -<p>“Is he generally coherent,” asked Devizes.</p> - -<p>“Granted his thesis, he’s amazingly coherent,” she said.</p> - -<p>“He doesn’t sometimes become some one else, God or a -millionaire, or anything of that sort?”</p> - -<p>“No. He believes in reincarnation and hints at having -lived other lives, but that’s all.”</p> - -<p>“Thousands of people do that,” said Lambone.</p> - -<p>“And nobody is persecuting him? Nobody makes noises -to trouble him or gets at him with X-rays or anything of -that sort?”</p> - -<p>“Not a shadow of that sort of thing.”</p> - -<p>“The man’s sane. Unless he went mad when he walked -out of your friends’ studio.”</p> - -<p>“I’m for his sanity right out,” said Lambone. “I wish I’d -had a chance to talk to him. There’s something—everybody’s -chattering now about an Inferiority Complex. -Well, isn’t it common for people who have been rather put -upon and deceived and so forth, and who don’t want to -face the facts of life, to take refuge in an assumed personality? -And putting the reveries, the spiritualist séance and -so forth all together, doesn’t it work out on those lines?”</p> - -<p>“He knows he is really, <i>au fond</i>, Preemby?” Devizes -asked.</p> - -<p>“It annoyed him to tell him so,” said Christina Alberta. -“I think one reason why he went away was because I and -my friend, Mrs. Crumb that is, at the studio where we live, -would try to make him be sensible about that. It drove -him away. He knows he is really Preemby and he hates it. -He knows this is all a make-believe.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[265]</span>Paul Lambone took up the discourse. “I do so sympathize -with that. So far from that being insane it’s perfectly -rational. Becoming somebody else greater than oneself is -part of half the religions of the world. All the Mithraists -used to become Mithra. The Serapists, if I remember -rightly, used to become Osiris. We all want to be born -again really. Every one with any sense and humility does. -Into something greater. ‘Who will deliver me from the -body of this death?’ That’s why Christina Alberta’s -Daddy is so tremendously interesting. He’s got imagination; -he’s got originality. He may be a feeble little chap, -but he has that.”</p> - -<p>“Having an exceptional mind isn’t insanity,” said -Devizes, “or else we should put all our poets and artists -in asylums.”</p> - -<p>“Few would come up to that standard,” said Lambone. -“I wish they did.”</p> - -<p>Devizes reflected. “I think I’ve got things clear. He’s -coherent. He’s neat in his dress. He isn’t persecuted. -He’s unselfish in his thoughts, almost romantically so. And -he’s not fattish and lumpish, and he’s never had any sort of -fit. There’s no insane type a properly qualified doctor -could class him under, but then most doctors are altogether -unqualified for mental practice. A stupid doctor might -mistake his imaginations for the splendour of paranoia or -take his abstraction in reverie for <i>dementia præcox</i> or think -he was a masked epileptic. But all these are cases of -mental disease, and your father is probably not diseased at -all. He’s mentally disturbed, but that’s all. The difference -between him and a real lunatic is the difference between a -basketful of fruit that’s been overturned, and a basketful -that’s gone rotten. Overturned fruit gets bruised and rots -very easily—but being overturned isn’t being rotten. What -sort of man is he to look at?”</p> - -<p>“She’s got photographs,” said Lambone.</p> - -<p>“I’d like to see them,” he said, and was given a recent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[266]</span> -one of Mr. Preemby as laundryman. “Too much moustache -by a long way,” he said. “Is there anything—with -some at least of his face uncovered? There’s nothing here -but his eyes.”</p> - -<p>“I thought you’d feel that,” said Lambone. “There’s one -of Mr. Preemby as a young man, taken soon after his wedding -with Mrs. Preemby. Have you got it, Christina -Alberta?... Here we are.... That’s Mrs. Preemby in -the chair. The moustache—in bulk—has yet to come.”</p> - -<p>“He married young?” Devizes asked Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“He must have done,” she said. “I don’t know his exact -age. My mother never told me.”</p> - -<p>Devizes scrutinized the photograph. “Queer,” he said, -and seemed to be searching his memory. “Something -familiar. I’ve met people like this.</p> - -<p>“They were both London people, I suppose,” he said, -looking hard at Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Woodford Wells,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“My father was born at Sheringham,” she added as an -afterthought.</p> - -<p>“Sheringham. That’s queer.” With a manifestly deepened -interest he looked at the couple posed against one of -those rustic backgrounds dear to Victorian photographers. -“Chrissy,” he repeated to himself. “Chrissy. Christina -Alberta. It <i>can’t</i> be.”</p> - -<p>For some moments Dr. Devizes ceased to attend to his -consultants and they remained intently observing him. -He tried to fix his attention on the young man’s face in the -picture, but it was the young woman who sat on the rustic -style that absorbed his interest. Amazing how completely -he had forgotten her face, and how she came back now -incredibly unlike and yet like his memory of her. He -remembered the glasses and the neck and shoulders. And -a sort of stiff defiance. “When were your mother and father -married?” he asked. “How long ago?”</p> - -<p>“Eighteen ninety-nine,” she answered.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[267]</span>“And then you were born straight away?” He asked -the question with an affectation of ease.</p> - -<p>“There was a decent interval,” said Christina Alberta -with a clumsy levity. “I was born in nineteen hundred.”</p> - -<p>“A little, fair, blue-eyed chap with rather an absent-minded -manner. I seem to see him,” Devizes said, and -resumed his examination of the photograph. Nobody -spoke for the better part of a minute. “Good Lord!” -whispered Lambone to himself. Devizes drank a cup of -tea absent-mindedly. “Extraordinary,” he ejaculated. “I -never dreamt of it.”</p> - -<p>“What is?”</p> - -<p>His answer went off at a tangent. “Christina Alberta’s -resemblance to my mother. It’s amazing. It’s been worrying -me ever since I came into the room. It’s been distracting -my attention. I’ve got a little picture....”</p> - -<p>He jumped up and went out of the room. Christina -Alberta, puzzled, excited, turned instantly on Lambone. -“He knew my father and mother,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Apparently,” said Lambone with something defensive in -his voice.</p> - -<p>“<i>Apparently!</i>” she echoed. “But—he <i>knew</i> them! He -<i>knew</i> them well. And—<i>What’s he thinking of?</i>”</p> - -<p>Devizes reappeared holding out a small gold-framed picture. -“Look at that!” he said and handed it to Paul Lambone. -“It might be Christina Alberta. Don’t you see how -like it is? Allowing for that preposterous hair piled upon -her head and the way her dress goes up round her neck.”</p> - -<p>He handed the picture to Christina Alberta and looked -at Lambone in amazed interrogation.</p> - -<p>“It might be me in fancy dress,” Christina Alberta -agreed, with the picture in her hands. There came a long -pause. She looked up and saw the expression of his face. -Her mind gave a fantastic leap, so fantastic that it instantly -leapt back to the point of departure. It was like a flash -of lightning in a night as dark as pitch. She made a great<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[268]</span> -effort to pull the conversation together, to behave as though -her mind had never leapt at all. “But what has all this -to do with my Daddy’s case?” she asked.</p> - -<p>“Nothing directly. Your resemblance to my mother is a -pure coincidence. Pure. But it’s a curious coincidence! -Just for the moment it pulled my attention aside. Forgive -me. I’ve a belief that where there’s resemblance of this -sort there’s a blood relationship. I suppose your mother’s -people—what did you say they were called—Hoskin?”</p> - -<p>“Did I say? I don’t remember. I <i>didn’t</i> say. I didn’t. -Her name was Hossett.”</p> - -<p>“Ah, yes!—Hossett. I suppose that two or three generations -back the Hossetts and Devizes intermarried. And -there we are! Cousins—at we don’t know what remove. -But types go under in a family and then bob up again. It -sort of links us, Christina Alberta, doesn’t it? It gives me -a special interest. I don’t feel now that you’re just any old -patient. Or, rather, just Paul’s friend. I feel linked. Well—That’s -that. Let’s come back to your father. Who -married your mother just when they were starting the -old South African war. He’s always been a dreamy, unobservant -type. As we were saying. Even from the -beginning....”</p> - -<p>He stopped short.</p> - -<p>“Always,” said Christina Alberta, after a long pause.</p> - -<p>“We’ve been into all that,” said Devizes and paused, and -was for a minute entirely at a loss for words. “Yes,” he -said at last.</p> - -<p>Her heart was beating fast and there was a flush of -excitement on her cheeks. Her quick wits had filled in all -the gaps. She understood now—and then again it vanished. -She would have liked to have gone away and -thought it all over at once. But that wouldn’t do. She -must disregard the questions that surged up within her. -Her mind went forward like an obstinate traveller caught -in a whirlwind. Her mother for example. She was trying<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[269]</span> -to recall something about her mother that had long been -stifled in her mind. “Went away and left me to it,” was it? -“Went off and left me to it?” Her mother lying in bed and -wandering. Who had left her to what? That standing -perplexity. That suspicion. That dream. But attend to -him now, Christina Alberta; attend to him! She was -observing him with all her being, and yet she seemed deaf -to what he said.</p> - -<p>He was saying that now that he agreed with them that -Preemby was sane, he could see his way to the real business -before them. It was the old, old story of making lunatics -out of sane people which they encountered in Preemby’s -case. It was the old, old story of making lunatics out of -sane people which they encountered in Preemby’s case. -(He repeated his sentence word for word without apparently -realizing he had said it twice.) All exceptional people -were in danger of being misunderstood, but such a type as -Preemby, original and yet incapable of abstract expression -or philosophical method, which sought fantastic expression -for its feelings and impulses, was particularly liable -to give offence, awaken suspicion and dread and hostility. -It was just these borderland cases he was always trying to -save from asylums, and just such cases that were always -going there. And they were the last people to bring into -contact with real insanity. “To go back to my metaphor, -the basketful of fruit isn’t rotten, is scarcely speckled with -decay, but it is disordered and overturned. A mind is a -delicate thing to knock about. It will rot very easily, and -a mind like your father’s particularly will rot very easily -under asylum conditions. After all this rigmarole I come -to just the conclusion you’ve already reached, that we have -to get Preemby out of Cummerdown Hill and away under -restful conditions as soon as possible. When we’ll comb -out his particular complex and get him into working relations -with the world again. I’m quite sure we can do that -somehow, make his incognito permanent, make him an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[270]</span> -Emperor in exile, restore his proper name, organize a -common daily round for him and get him back more and -more to be a chastened and released Preemby.”</p> - -<p>He paused.</p> - -<p>“That’s it,” said Lambone, roused from a profound -contemplation of the two interesting faces before him.</p> - -<p>“It isn’t easy. Even to get at him isn’t easy. There will -be delays. A careless magistrate and a silly doctor can -make a lunatic in five minutes. It takes no end of time -to unmake one.”</p> - -<p>“That’s what I want to set about doing,” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Naturally,” said Devizes, “and I’m with you.”</p> - -<p>He explained one or two points in lunacy law, began -sketching a scheme of operations, considered the people -to whom she ought to write and the people to whom he -ought to write, and how soon it would be possible to see -Preemby, and give him a word of encouragement. Already -Devizes had had several brushes with lunacy organization; -he was considered a troublesome but dangerous man for a -medical superintendent to be up against. That might -arouse either hostile obstruction or the propitiatory spirit. -They must go carefully.</p> - -<p>Lambone scarcely interrupted now at all. He had ceased -to be acutely interested in Preemby, immured away there -in Cummerdown. He was lost in admiration of the self-control -his astonishing friends displayed. He tried to -imagine what an undertow of strange excitement, of queer -thoughts and confused emotions there must be beneath -their highly intelligent discussion of the case of Mr. -Preemby. They wasted very little attention upon the onlooker. -Christina Alberta’s face was faintly flushed, and -her eyes glowed; Devizes was rather less of a conversationalist -than usual and rather more like a university tutor -with an exceptionally interesting student.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[271]</span>The subject was exhausted at last and the time came to -depart. Devizes came to the door with them.</p> - -<p>“Don’t forget that I’m always round the corner, so to speak,” -he said. “I’m in the telephone directory. And -don’t forget, Christina Alberta, don’t forget I’m your long-lost -cousin, very much at your service.”</p> - -<p>“I won’t forget that,” said Christina Alberta, meeting -his eye.</p> - -<p>A little pause, and then rather stiffly they shook hands.</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>“Am I mad?” said Christina Alberta as soon as she and -Paul Lambone were in the street together. “Am I -dreaming?”</p> - -<p>Lambone was clumsy. “Mad? Dreaming? How?”</p> - -<p>“Oh! don’t pretend not to understand. That he’s my -real father? Don’t pretend! or, please don’t pretend! Is -he or is he not?”</p> - -<p>Lambone did not reply for a moment. “You flash at -things—like a lizard. How could it have happened?”</p> - -<p>“Then you <i>did</i> think?”</p> - -<p>“My dear Christina Alberta, he didn’t know you existed -until he set eyes on you. I’m sure of that.”</p> - -<p>“But then. Wasn’t it plain? He <i>knew them both</i>!”</p> - -<p>“Devizes,” said Lambone, “is ten years younger than I -am. He’s barely forty. He must have been—not more -than eighteen. Nineteen at most. It’s a little difficult.”</p> - -<p>“That makes it easier. You never knew mother. If they -were both young——”</p> - -<p>“It’s just possible,” said Lambone, “there is some other -explanation.”</p> - -<p>“But what?”</p> - -<p>“Can’t imagine. I suppose he was at Sheringham—perhaps -for a holiday—and met her. But——”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[272]</span>“It must have been something casual, a kind of accident. -Mother used to have flashes.... I never quite understood -her. She used to suppress me, and perhaps she was -suppressing herself.... And at the end—she said something. -Someone had left her to it.... Do you know—at -times—I’ve had fancies—suspicions! It seemed as though -she guessed that I was guessing. Now I know—I <i>was</i>. -It’s incredible. And yet it explains a hundred things.”</p> - -<p>“He certainly never knew of you. He’s—amazed.”</p> - -<p>“And what’s going to happen next?”</p> - -<p>“Legally you’re Preemby’s daughter. Nothing can alter -that. All the resemblances and coincidences in the world -won’t alter that.”</p> - -<p>“And all the law in the world won’t alter the facts. -And——”</p> - -<p>She turned on Lambone with a flushed face. “Do you -realize what it means to think you are the daughter of a -certified lunatic? And then find you are not? All last -night I was awake with that unendurable thought.”</p> - -<p>“All night—at your age!”</p> - -<p>“It seemed all night. Last night—I <i>tried</i> to imagine that -something of this sort had happened. Tried—and couldn’t. -Tried to bring back all those old fancies. And here it is! -I might have known. I did know and wouldn’t know.</p> - -<p>“Tell me about this real father of mine. I don’t know -a thing about him. Is he a good man? Is he a bad man? -Has he a wife?”</p> - -<p>“He adored his wife. And so did I. She was one of the -loveliest and cleverest young women I’ve ever known. She -was strong and jolly—and the beastly influenza and pneumonia -got her. In a week. It cut him to ribbons. They’d -had no children. They’d had only four years together. -He’s attractive to women, but I don’t think there’ll be a -second Mrs. Devizes for a long time. I can’t imagine -it. Any other woman! Why! All that house—it’s full of -her presence.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[273]</span>“Yes,” said Christina Alberta, and thought for a time.</p> - -<p>They were detached for a time in crossing Bond Street, -and the pavement was too crowded and Piccadilly was too -congested for them to talk again until they went in St. -James’ Street.</p> - -<p>“Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, “seems ten thousand -miles away. But when I’m over the amazement of this I -expect I’ll get back to him all right. But just for a time—he -must wait.”</p> - -<p>“You’ll come in for a bit?” said Lambone at the corner -of Half Moon Street. “I could give you some dinner.”</p> - -<p>“No, thanks. I’ll walk all the way to Chelsea,” said -Christina Alberta. “I want to think this out by myself. -I want to get alone with this spinning head of mine and -try to slow it down. My life’s gone topsy-turvy. Or it’s -been topsy-turvy and it’s suddenly come right side up. I -don’t know which. Oh!—I don’t know anything. I’ve -got to begin all over again.”</p> - -<p>She shook hands and paused. Lambone waited, for -manifestly she had something to say. She got it out at last.</p> - -<p>“Do you think—he liked me?”</p> - -<p>“He liked you all right, Christina Alberta. Don’t you -worry about that.”</p> - -<h4>§ 8</h4> - -<p>It was a little more than two days before Christina -Alberta, to use her own expression, “got back” to her lost -Daddy.</p> - -<p>Those two days were full of an immense excitement. -Devizes was the most wonderful fact in the world. She -exploded into love for him. She had the most vivid impression -of him, dark and tall, rather grave, watchful and -amazingly understandable. Yet vivid as her impression -was she doubted every detail of it, and wanted to go back -to him and verify it all over again. It was their quality of -mutual understanding that was at once the most delightful<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[274]</span> -and the most incredible aspect of the whole affair. Their -brains no doubt were unlike, as every two individual -brains must be, yet their unlikeness was not a mere accumulation -of accidental difference, but the unlikeness of -two variations of one theme. She could feel his intentions -beneath his words. Her mind had jumped with his realizations -and there must be kinks and turns in her brain, kinks -and turns that just made her difficult and queer for most -people, which would find the completest parallels in his. -She didn’t believe there was a thing in her thoughts and -acts that she would be surprised at his knowing and -comprehending.</p> - -<p>She had never before thought of parentage with any -enthusiasm. She had viewed it rather in the spirit of -Samuel Butler and Bernard Shaw, and conceived of parents -generally in relation to their children as embarrassed hypocrites -with an instinctive disposition towards restraint -and suppression. She had made an exception of her own -particular pair; Daddy had been a great friend anyhow, -though mother for the most part had been a concentrated -incarnate “Don’t.” But she had never realized there might -be something rather intimately interesting in consanguinity. -And then suddenly a door had opened, a man had -come in and sat down and talked to her and discovered -himself the nearest thing in life to her. And she to him. -She wanted to go to him again; she wanted to see more of -him, be with him. But he made no sign and she could -think of no decent excuse for a call upon him. The very -intensity of her desire made her unable to go to him easily. -She wrote the various letters they had agreed she should -write, and then decided to master mental science and -lunacy generally. That and the case of her “Daddy” she -perceived to be her formal link with Devizes.</p> - -<p>She set out for the Reading Room of the British Museum, -for which she had a students’ ticket, and she tried to concentrate -her mind upon the book she had requisitioned,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[275]</span> -instead of letting it wander off into the strangest reveries -about this miraculously discovered blood relation. In the -afternoon she rang up Lambone to be given tea, with the -intention of learning everything that the wise man could -tell her about Devizes and generally turning him over conversationally. -But Lambone was out. The next day the -craving for Devizes was overpowering. She rang him up.</p> - -<p>“May I have some tea?” she asked. “I’ve got nothing -much to say, but I want to see you.”</p> - -<p>“Delighted,” said Devizes.</p> - -<p>When she got to him she found herself shy, and him as -shy as herself. For a little while they made polite conversation; -it might almost have been the conversation of -two people at a formal call in a country town. He called -her “Christina Alberta,” but she called him “Doctor -Devizes,” and he asked her if she played or danced, and -whether she had ever been abroad. She sat in an arm-chair -and he stood over her on the hearthrug. It was clear -that the only way to intimacy lay in a frank treatment -of her Daddy. She felt that if this sort of talk went on -for another minute she would have to scream or throw -her tea-cup in the fire. So she plunged.</p> - -<p>“When did you first know my mother?”</p> - -<p>Devizes’ attitude stiffened, and he smiled faintly at her -boldness. “I was a Cambridge undergraduate reading for -the Natural Science Tripos, and I went down to Sheringham -to read. We—we picked each other up on the beach. -We made love—in a scared, furtive, desperate, ignorant -sort of way. People were primitive in those days—compared -with what they are now.”</p> - -<p>“Daddy wasn’t there.”</p> - -<p>“He came in afterwards.”</p> - -<p>Devizes considered for a moment. He decided that it -wasn’t fair to oblige her to go on questioning him. “My -father,” he said, “was a pretty considerable old bully. He -was Sir George Devizes, the man who invented the Devizes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[276]</span> -biscuit and cured old Alphonso, and he was celebrated for -being rude to his patients. He would smack their stomachs -and tell them they ought to be scooped out. He helped -make Unter Magenbad. He suspected me of being a bit -of a soft, though as a matter of fact I wasn’t, and he generally -had the effect of laying up for a quarrel with me. He -kept me pretty short. He wasn’t particularly nice to my -mother. He used to get at my mother through me. I -didn’t dare to have a scrape of any sort. I was really -afraid of him. If I saw a scrape blowing up my habit and -disposition was to run away.”</p> - -<p>“I see.”</p> - -<p>Devizes considered the implications of that “I see.” -“Not that I ran away from any definite scrape that I knew -of at Sheringham,” he said very carefully.</p> - -<p>“What was my mother like in those days?”</p> - -<p>“A sort of subdued fierceness. A flushed warm face. -She was pretty, you know, and very upright in her carriage. -And she had a swift decision beneath her stiffness. -Her wishes would suddenly crystallize out, and after that -there was no bending her.”</p> - -<p>“I know.”</p> - -<p>“I suppose you do.”</p> - -<p>“She wore glasses then?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes.”</p> - -<p>“Was she fresh then? Was she happy?”</p> - -<p>“A little too fierce to be happy.”</p> - -<p>“Did you—ever—love her?”</p> - -<p>“It is a long time ago, Christina Alberta. There was—seaside -love-making. Why do you cross-examine me like -this?”</p> - -<p>“I want to know. Why”—Christina Alberta had a -momentary terror at her own boldness—“Why didn’t you -marry her?”</p> - -<p>Devizes made no pretence of surprise at the question. -“There was no reason manifest why I should have married<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[277]</span> -her. None at all. I can’t conceive what my father would -have done if I had come back from Sheringham engaged -to a chance acquaintance. And anyhow, why should I -have done anything of the sort?”</p> - -<p>His eyes defied hers.</p> - -<p>“I left her my address,” he added. “She could have -written to me. She never did.”</p> - -<p>“Did a letter go astray?” said Christina Alberta, and -added hastily, “my imagination is running away with me.”</p> - -<p>She hesitated and trembled at the next words she had -resolved to say, but she said them, with a forced offhandedness. -“You see—I might have fancied you as a -father?”</p> - -<p>It produced no catastrophe. He looked her in the face -and then smiled. After that smile she felt that they understood -each other completely, and it was very pleasant to -think that. “Instead of which, you have to adopt me as a -cousin,” he said deliberately. “Cousins it is, Christina -Alberta. It’s the best we can do. We have to put our -heads together and think of your Daddy. He’s our common -concern. I’m interested in that little man. He’s -defended himself against many things by those dreams of -his. Very wilful dreams they may have been. Who -knows? Necessary protective dreams.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta did not speak for a little time. She -nodded. She was glad at their manifest understanding and -yet she was disappointed, though she could not have told -herself what else she had expected. This man a yard away -was the nearest thing in the world to her, and always there -might be this invisible barrier between them. They were -linked by an invisible tie and they were separated by an -unfathomable necessity. Never before in her life had she -known what love could be; she wanted to be free to love -him; she wanted him to love her.</p> - -<p>She realized that she was standing quite still, and that -Devizes was standing just as still upon his hearthrug,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[278]</span> -watching her face. His mouth and eyes were quiet and -serene, but she imagined he must be gripping his hands -together behind him. She had to obey him. There was -nothing for her to do but follow his lead.</p> - -<p>“Daddy’s our common concern,” she said. “I suppose I -shall begin to hear from some of those people to-morrow.”</p> - -<h4>§ 9</h4> - -<p>Christina Alberta got back to her Daddy in a dream.</p> - -<p>It was a queer dream. She was going about the world -with Devizes and they were locked together in such a way -that she and he could never look at each other, but were -always side by side. But also with the sublime incoherence -of dreams they were at the same time great ebony images, -and they sat stiffly side by side like a Pharaoh and his -consort, and they looked over a great space; they were -very big effigies indeed and their profiles were alike. All -through the dream she thought of Devizes and herself as -black. The space before them was sometimes a sandy -desert and sometimes a grey cloudy expanse. Then suddenly -something round and white came bounding into the -midst of this arena and became a little man, a familiar little -blue-eyed man, tied up into a ball with ropes and sorely -maimed, who rolled about and panted and struggled to be -free. Oh! but he struggled pitifully. Christina Alberta’s -heart went out to him, and yet impelled by some tremendous -force within her she rose and Devizes rose beside her -and they marched stiffly forward. She could not help -herself, she could not control the rigid movements of her -hands and feet. They stepped high and forcibly. She -was voiceless, she tried to cry out, “We shall trample upon -him! We shall trample upon him!” but there was no -more than a hoarse inarticulate sound of horror in her -throat....</p> - -<p>They were upon him. She felt the body of her Daddy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[279]</span> -writhe under her. He was like a bladder. His soft, ineffectual -body, with her feet upon him, bent and bulged -about. She forgot there was anything else but her Daddy -and herself. Why had she treated him like this? Devizes -disappeared. Her Daddy was clinging to her knees and -now a crowd of vile figures had appeared and sought -to drag him away. “Save me, Christina Alberta,” he was -pleading, though she heard no sound. “Save me. Save -me! Every day they torture me.” But they dragged him -away and she could not put out her arms to him. Because -she was made of ebony and all of one piece with Devizes.</p> - -<p>Then some one, a bird or a Sphinx with the face and -voice of Lambone, came into the dream. “Listen to your -Daddy,” he said. “Do not despise him or simply pity him. -He has much to teach you. The world will never learn -anything until it will learn from ridiculous people. All -people are ridiculous. I am. I am ridiculous. We learn -in suffering what we teach in song.” She saw that her -Daddy was now sheltering between the paws of the Sphinx, -and that the evil men had vanished.</p> - -<p>She became intensely aware of a revealing absurdity in -her dream. No previous incompatibility had shocked her -at all, and she had never thought that she was dreaming -up to this point. But now she became intensely oppressed -by the idea that the Sphinx was an ancient Egyptian -and classical figure, and that Sargon was a still more -ancient Sumerian. The dream was going wrong. The -periods, the cultures, were mixed. She conveyed this to -Sphinx-Lambone, and he turned his head to answer her, -and immediately the evil figures were back, and taking -advantage of Lambone’s inattention, were dragging her -Daddy away. She tried to call Lambone’s attention to -that, but he said there would be plenty of time to recover -her Daddy when the point about the Sphinx was settled. -He wasn’t a Sphinx, he explained, but a Winged Bull. He -never had been a Sphinx. Or why should he be wearing a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[280]</span> -long curly stone beard? She wanted to argue that it was a -false beard and that he had only just put it on. And anyhow -it was just like him to start an inopportune discussion. -Meanwhile her Daddy was receding into wretchedness. -She became aware of this rapidly and painfully. It was -her Daddy still, but his body was different; it was not a -human body any more, but a basket of fruit overturned. -Unless she did something at once it would go rotten and -be bad for ever.</p> - -<p>She tried to cry out words of comfort and reassurance -to the poor tragic little figure before the dream came to an -end—for now she knew surely that it was a dream. Of -course he was suffering intolerably. Why had she not -written to him or telegraphed to him? Surely they would -give him a letter or a telegram! A profound self-detestation -for her incompetence and negligence, and a -great horror of pain and cruelty came upon her, and she -awoke completely to black night and infinite dismay in her -little hard bed in her stuffy little bedroom in Lonsdale -Mews.</p> - -<h4>§ 10</h4> - -<p>But the impression of her Daddy, desolate and broken-hearted -and in danger, remained with her, terribly vivid. -It clung to her. She got up in the morning anxious and -depressed by it.</p> - -<p>“I am not doing enough for him,” she said. “I am letting -days slip by—and for him they must be days of -despair.”</p> - -<p>“Sure th’ ’Sylums ’nt so ba-s-at,” said Fay. “Sure yr -overrating it.”</p> - -<p>“But to live among lunatics and be classed as a lunatic!”</p> - -<p>“They’ve <i>bans</i> play-them. Foxhill ’Sylum there’s <i>buful</i> -ban. ’Ntainments nors-sorts treats,” said Fay.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta refrained from bad language.</p> - -<p>“You getting ill ove’ all this,” said Fay. “You doing no<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[281]</span> -good ’n Lun. Youffar be’r come dow’ Shore’m. The’s -th’ouse spoilin’. In this las’ bit of fine w’r.”</p> - -<p>For the October weather was holding out that year quite -wonderfully, a succession of calm golden days, and the -Crumbs had been offered the loan of a bungalow on the -beach at Shoreham by a friend who had used it throughout -the summer. They wanted to go down to it before the -weather broke, but going down to it meant leaving Christina -Alberta all alone in the studio, and they did not want -to do that. But they meant to go to Shoreham. Christina -Alberta, now that she had discovered Devizes, could not -endure the thought of getting out of telephone range of -him. London, she argued, was manifestly her proper -centre. She could get down to Cummerdown Hill in an -hour; she could keep in touch with everything. The -Crumbs might go but she <i>must</i> stay.</p> - -<p>Fay would not understand. She pestered.</p> - -<p>About eleven o’clock Christina Alberta went to the Post -Office telephone booth and rang up Devizes.</p> - -<p>“Can’t something be done to hurry things up?” she -asked. “I’ve got Daddy on my nerves. I can’t bear to -think of him there day after day. I’ve been dreaming -of him.”</p> - -<p>“Worrying is no good. We—I’ve got some bad news for -you. So put all your controls on.”</p> - -<p>He paused. Christina Alberta, for all her love of -Devizes, had to restrain her violent desire to snap, “Oh! -what is it?”</p> - -<p>“Visiting day was yesterday. He had one visitor. I suppose -that’s the agreeable relation you described—what -was his name? Wiggles? Mr. Widgery. But your Daddy -can’t be seen again by the outer world for a week. Not -until next Tuesday.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, damn!” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Exactly. I’ll do what I can to arrange some sort of -special access. I got on to the Medical Superintendent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[282]</span> -himself. But he’s queer. He’s evidently quite friendly and -well disposed, but he fences about. He can’t say either -Yes or No. Odd! I’m free to-day in the afternoon, but -I’m tied up to-morrow. I was for going down to see <i>him</i>—the -superintendent I mean, for a talk after lunch. ‘Better in a -day or so,’ he says. Hope there’s nothing wrong that he’s -keeping back. Afterwards he promised me to ring me up -later, and then abruptly he switched off. So hold yourself -ready, there. What’s your telephone number?”</p> - -<p>“Haven’t got one. You must telegraph.”</p> - -<p>“Or I’ll chase round in a taxi and pick you up. Sorry to -hold you up like this, Christina Alberta.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t mind anything so long as it’s getting towards -Daddy.”</p> - -<p>“Right-o,” and the voice was cut off.</p> - -<p>The telegram came after an interval of two hours, two -hours which had been devoted to a rambling dispute with -Fay about the Shoreham difficulty. The message ran as -follows: “<i>Has your father turned up he escaped at dawn -this morning in slippers and dressing-gown and nothing -seen of him since if not appeared meet me Victoria two-seven -for Cummerdown telephone Gerrard 0247 if there.</i>”</p> - -<h4>§ 11</h4> - -<p>But Mr. Preemby did not turn up anywhere. He just -vanished.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta, in a state of incredulous astonishment -at this fresh disappearance, went down with Devizes -to Cummerdown. They found a Medical Superintendent -by no means so amazed as they were. Sargon had been -missing at breakfast time; everything seemed to point -to his just walking out of the Asylum. That sort of thing -had happened before. It showed a certain sleepy negligence -on the part of one or two attendants, and they -would be reprimanded. But as for wonder, the Medical<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[283]</span> -Superintendent refused to wonder. Lunatics often stray -or escape, and unless they are dangerous the authorities -made no great commotion about it. They kept it out of -the newspapers as far as it was possible to do so.</p> - -<p>“This place isn’t Portland,” said the Medical Superintendent. -“They get back all right. I give him a day. He’s -probably coming back now. He may be hiding up a mile -away. I’m chiefly anxious about his catching cold. Pneumonia -is the standard death of a lunatic. But it’s wonderfully -warm for the time of year. I’ve never known such an -October.”</p> - -<p>He was much more desirous to talk to Devizes about -lunacy reform, and convince him that he was a highly progressive -and able Medical Superintendent than to discuss -the special case of Mr. Preemby. “We do what we can,” -he said, “but we’re fixed by the extreme economy we have -to practise. Low-grade attendants and not enough even of -them. The public indifference to lunatics is monstrous. -Everybody—even the people with insane relations—wants -to forget all about them.”</p> - -<p>“But how could Preemby have got out of the grounds?” -asked Devizes. “Aren’t there walls all round?”</p> - -<p>“Like everything else about lunacy law, the back is not -as good as the front,” said the superintendent. “But here -we have got at least a complete wall of sorts all round. -The original building used to be a private mansion with a -walled park. For a time—in the eighteenth century—it -was a boys’ school.”</p> - -<p>He showed them from his window over the roofs of a -clump of outbuildings the limits of the garden and farm -at the back, dropping towards a streamlet and defined by a -roadside wall and old thorn and oak trees. “For my own -part,” said the Medical Superintendent, “I admit the -urgency of very drastic reforms.”</p> - -<p>“I wonder if Cousin Widgery can throw any light on -this,” said Devizes.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[284]</span>“Widgery?”</p> - -<p>“That was his visitor yesterday.”</p> - -<p>“<i>Was</i> it?” said the Medical Superintendent, and reflected -and went to his desk as if to look for a paper. “I -thought it was a different sort of name—rather more like -Goodchild. Perhaps I’ve mixed up the names.”</p> - -<p>“Mr. Sam Widgery,” said Christina Alberta, “would be -the last person who’d want Daddy to get out. He probably -came to make sure that he wouldn’t. He may have come -just for the pleasure of gloating over him. Uncle Sam’s -not a pretty soul. He may have wanted to make sure the -wall went all the way round.”</p> - -<p>The Medical Superintendent forgot his doubt about the -name and the paper and turned with a fresh idea to them. -“You don’t think there was any animus? You don’t think -he may have made for Mr. Widgery? Where does this -Mr. Widgery live?”</p> - -<p>But neither Devizes nor Christina Alberta thought there -was any great possibility of Mr. Preemby beating back to -Woodford Wells.</p> - -<p>“He’s much more likely to go to Canterbury or -Windsor or start straight off for Rome,” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Or Mesopotamia—or the British Museum,” said -Devizes.</p> - -<p>“Or <i>anywhere</i>!” said Christina Alberta with a note of -despair.</p> - -<p>They returned to London completely baffled. Christina -Alberta was for a visit to the Cummerdown Police Station -and for a search in the villages round about, but Devizes -explained that this might do more harm than good. Until -now Christina Alberta had never heard of that one kindly -weakness in the British lunacy laws, the release of the -fourteen days freedom. If the lunatic can get away from -the Asylum and remain at large for that period, he or she<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[285]</span> -becomes legally sane again, and cannot be touched without -a fresh examination and a new certificate. To set the whole -countryside hunting for Preemby might merely lead to his -recapture by the Asylum authorities. And whatever happened -the mystery must not get into the papers.</p> - -<p>“But while we do nothing, he may be lying dead in some -out-of-the-way ditch,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“If he’s dead he won’t mind a little delay in finding him,” -said Devizes.</p> - -<p>No, the only thing was to wait at Lonsdale Mews against -the chance of his returning thither. The Crumbs went off -to Shoreham and Christina Alberta was left alone in the -studio, but after one endless day of it Paul Lambone -thought of a convenient agency called “Universal Aunts,” -and a suitable lady was sent to relieve her from a continuous -vigil.</p> - -<p>One, two, three days passed. There came no sign from -Sargon, no news of any fresh calling of disciples or visits -to the King. He had evaporated. A vision of a little -crumpled-up body in a ditch replaced the tormented figure -in the cell in the distressed imagination of Christina -Alberta. But the mind refuses to go on with a painful -fancy that leads to nothing, and Christina Alberta’s imagination -presently ceased further dealings with her Daddy -until fresh material came to hand. “He will turn up somewhere,” -she repeated feebly, and became a great consumer -of evening papers. “He will turn up somehow.” Her chief -anxiety was that he should not turn up with too tremendous -head-lines. She began to adjust herself like an early -Christian for the Second Coming. The riddle of her -Daddy’s disappearance became a habit of mind, became, -as it were, a frame, a proscenium arch to her current -activities. Beneath it she returned to the urgent and -extraordinary problem of herself and her relationship to -Devizes.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[286]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 12</h4> - -<p>It was manifest that he was almost as excited as she was -at their mutual discovery. The possible proceedings of -Sargon, fantastic as they might prove to be when they -came to light, remained for him as for her a matter of -urgent importance, but the thought of this strange relationship -completely overshadowed it. Each had a reciprocal -desire to get at the other, to discover what magic of sympathy -and understanding might not be latent in their -consanguinity.</p> - -<p>The evening after the Universal Aunt was installed he -took Christina Alberta out to dine with him at a pleasant -little Italian restaurant in the corner of Sloane Square, and -afterwards he came back to the studio with her and talked -until nearly one in the morning. He showed himself shyly -anxious to find out her aims and purposes in life, and -what she was doing and what might be done to let out her -possibilities. He was evidently disposed to shoulder just -as much parental responsibility as he could, subject to the -preservation of appearances and a proper care for the self-respect -of the vanished Sargon. She attracted him and he -liked her. Her feelings for him were more tumultuous and -abundant and indefinite. She didn’t particularly want help -or support from him. The idea of being dependent upon -him for anything repelled rather than attracted her, but -she wanted to get hold of him, to please and satisfy him, -to be better than he had expected and interesting in fresh -ways. She wanted him to like her—to care for her more -than mere liking. She wanted that anxiously and -tremendously.</p> - -<p>She liked a sort of ease and confidence he had with -waiters and cabmen and the common services of life. He -seemed to know just what people would do and they -seemed to know just what he would do; there was no -tension in these matters, no nervous “h’rrmping.” These<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[287]</span> -common attributes of habitual prosperity were so little in -her experience that they seemed a distinction of his; and -they threw a flavour of knowing what he was about, and -being serenely in control over most of the conversation, -when indeed he was as curious and experimental and -emotionally stirred almost as she was. The eyes that met -hers when she talked were steady, friendly, interested, -intimate eyes, and her heart went out to them.</p> - -<p>Over the dinner he talked at first about music. He had -had no music in his education, and now he was discovering -it. A friend of his had been taking him to concerts, and -he had got a pianola, “so as to spell it out at home first.” -But Christina Alberta’s education had missed out music -too, and she hadn’t as yet discovered it. So that topic died -out presently. He tried her about pictures, but there again -she wasn’t particularly interested. They had a little silence.</p> - -<p>He looked across at her and smiled.</p> - -<p>“I’d like to ask you all sorts of questions, Christina -Alberta, if I dared,” he said.</p> - -<p>She blushed—absurdly. “Any questions you like,” she -said.</p> - -<p>“Immense questions,” he said. “For example—generally—what -do you think you are up to?”</p> - -<p>She understood what he meant at once. But she was so -unprepared with an answer that she became evasive.</p> - -<p>“Up to!” she said, playing for time. “I suppose I’m -looking for my lost Daddy.”</p> - -<p>“But what are you up to generally? What are you -doing with your life? Where are you going?”</p> - -<p>“I’m at sea,” she said at last. “Lots of my generation -are, I think. The girls especially. You are older than I -am; I’m only beginning. I don’t want to seem cheeky, -but aren’t you better able to say what <i>you</i> are up to? -Suppose—” Her slightly scared gravity broke into an impudent -smile that Devizes found very congenial—“suppose -you play first?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[288]</span>He considered that. “Perfectly fair,” he said. “I will. -Have another olive. I’m glad you like olives. I do too. -Nobody’s called me to account for a long time. What <i>is</i> -my game? It’s a fair question.”</p> - -<p>But not an easy one evidently.</p> - -<p>“I suppose one ought to begin right back at one’s philosophy,” -he said. “A long story. But I started the idea.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta was greatly elated at her successful -repulse of his projected cross-examination. Instead of -making a display herself she could watch him. She watched -him over the flowers on the table and had to be nudged -by the waiter when he brought the pheasant to her elbow. -“How <i>should</i> one begin?” he plunged. She had heard of -Pragmatism? Yes. She was probably better read in that -sort of thing than he was. He was, he considered, a sort of -Pragmatist. Most modern-minded, intelligent people he -held were Pragmatists as he understood it. Pragmatist? -As he understood it? He met her eye and explained. In -this sense he meant it; we, none of us, had a clear vision -of reality; nobody perhaps would ever do more than -approach reality. What we perceived was just that much -of reality that got through to us, through our very defective -powers of interpretation. “They’ve done this pheasant <i>en -casserole</i> very well,” he broke off. “Three minutes’ truce we -ought to give it. Do you find I’m talking comprehensibly? -I doubt it.”</p> - -<p>“I’m hanging on,” said Christina Alberta....</p> - -<p>“Perhaps I’m beginning rather too far off.”</p> - -<p>Pheasant....</p> - -<p>“To come back to my confession of faith,” he said -presently.... “Mind you, Christina Alberta, you’ve got -to say your bit afterwards.”</p> - -<p>“It won’t be as definite as yours,” she said. “Some of -yours I shall steal. But go on—telling me.”</p> - -<p>“Well, keep hold, Christina Alberta. I feel I’m going to -be at once hesitating and condensed. And I’m not sure of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[289]</span> -what you know or don’t know. If I say I’m an Agnostic -about the nature of the universe, and how it began and -where it ends, does that convey anything to you?”</p> - -<p>“Just what I think,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Well.” He started afresh and got into parenthetical -difficulties. The Pêche Melba came to interrupt and permit -a fresh start. He unfolded a psychologist’s vision of -the world for her inspection, a curious and yet attractive -vision to her. He expressed himself in terms of mind and -understanding. She was used to hearing everything expressed -in terms of labour and material necessity. Life, -he said, was one continuous thing, all life was connected. -He tried to illustrate that. The conscious life of most lower -animals was intensely individual, a lizard, for example, -was just itself, just its instincts and appetites; it received -no teaching and no tradition, it handed on nothing to its -kind. But the higher animals were taught when they were -young, learnt and taught others and communicated with -each other. Men far more than any animal. He had -developed picture-writing, speech, oral tradition, scientific -record. There was now a common mind of the race, a -great growing body of knowledge and interpretations.</p> - -<p>“People like ourselves are just cross-sections of that -flow. Individually we receive it, react to it, change it a -little, and pass away. We are just passing phases of that -increasing mind—which may be for all we can certainly -say, an immortal mind. Does this sound like Greek—or -nonsense to you?”</p> - -<p>“No,” she said, “I think I get the drift of it.” She looked -at his intent face. He wasn’t in the least talking down to -her; he was simply trying to express himself as well as he -possibly could to her. He was treating her like an equal. -Like an equal!</p> - -<p>That was his general philosophy. He was coming to the -question of himself now, he said. He became very earnest -over the coffee cups and ash tray on the swept tablecloth.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[290]</span> -He spread elucidatory hands before her. He was conscientiously -explicit. He saw in himself two phases, or rather -two levels of existence. Roughly speaking, two. They had -links and intermediate stages of course, but they could be -ignored when one just wanted to express the idea. First of -all, he was the old instinctive individual, fearful, greedy, -lustful, jealous, self-assertive. That was the primary self. -He had to attend to that primary self because it carried -all the rest of him, as a rider must see that his horse gets -oats. Deeper lay social instincts and dispositions arising -out of family life. That was the second self, the social -self. Man, he threw out, is a creature that has become more -and more consciously social in the last two or three hundred -thousand years. He has been lengthening his life, -keeping his children with him longer and longer, enlarging -his community from family herds into clans and tribes and -nations. The deep-lying continuity of life was becoming -more apparent and finding more and more definite expression -with this socialization of man. To educate anyone in -the proper sense of the word was to make him more and -more aware of this continuity. The importance of the -passionate feverish self was then reduced. True education -was self-subordination to a greater life, to the social self. -The natural instincts and limitations of the primary self -were in conflict with this wider underflow; education, <i>good</i> -education, tended to correct them.</p> - -<p>“Here am I,” said Devizes, “as we all are, a creature in a -state of internal conflict, quicker, fiercer mortal instincts -at issue with a deeper, calmer, less brightly lit, but finally -stronger drive towards immortal purposes. And I am—how -shall I put it?—I personally am, to the best of my -ability, on the side of the deeper things. My aptitudes and -temperament and opportunities have brought me to psychology—as -a profession. I work to add to the accumulation -of human knowledge and understanding about the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[291]</span> -mind. I work for illumination. My particular work is to -study and cure troubled and tangled minds. I try to -straighten them out and simplify them and illuminate -them. And above all I try to learn from them. I seek the -mental or physical cause of their distresses. I try to set -down as clearly and accessibly as possible, all I observe -and learn. That’s my job. That’s my aim. It gives me a -general direction for my life. All the stuff of my mere -individual existence I try to subordinate to that end. Not -always. My monkey individual gets loose at times and -gibbers on the roof. And at other times it’s rather good -company as a relief from overwork. Vanity and self-indulgence -have their uses. But never mind the monkey now. -I do not want to be a brilliant person; I want to be a vital -part. That’s my essential creed. I want to be the sort of -wheel in the machinery they call a mental expert. As good -a wheel as I can be. That’s what I’m up to in general -terms, Christina Alberta. That’s what I think I am.”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” said Christina Alberta, reflecting profoundly. “Of -course I can’t produce a statement like that. You’ve got -your system—complete.”</p> - -<p>“And finished,” said Devizes. “You’ve got to tell your -story in your own way. At your age—you ought to be with -loose ends to all your convictions.”</p> - -<p>“I wonder if I can tell you any story.”</p> - -<p>“You’ve got to try your best now. It’s only fair play.”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>There was a little silence.</p> - -<p>“It’s wonderful to talk to you like this,” said Christina -Alberta. “It’s wonderful to talk to anyone like this.”</p> - -<p>“I feel that you and I—have to understand each other.”</p> - -<p>She met his grave eyes for a moment. There was a wave -of emotion within her. She could not speak. She reached -out her hand to touch his, and for a moment their hands -were together.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[292]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 13</h4> - -<p>Christina Alberta only got to her confession of faith in -the studio after they had returned thither and relieved -the Universal Aunt. Even then they didn’t settle down -to the business all at once. Devizes walked about and -looked for drawings by Harold; he deduced Harold from -his drawings to a quite remarkable extent, Christina -Alberta thought. He was curious about Fay. “What’s -Mrs. Crumb like?” he asked. “Show me something of -hers, something that seems to give her.”</p> - -<p>It pleased Christina Alberta very much to think that -he was shy with her. She felt that this was a recognition -of her equality. He was respecting her and she was very -eager that she should be respected by him.</p> - -<p>He got to an anchorage at last in the gaily painted seat -by the gas-fire; and Christina Alberta, after flitting about -the room for a time, came and stood before it, shapely -legs wide apart and hands behind her back in an attitude -that would have shocked all her feminine ancestors for -many generations. But it did not shock Devizes; he found -her more and more interesting to watch, and he sat at his -ease and regarded her with a lively admiration. Most of -us get used to our daughters so gradually; they grow up -and we carry the wonder of them as Milo carried his ox; -it isn’t common for a man to get an unexpected daughter -abruptly at the age of twenty-one.</p> - -<p>She said she hadn’t much in the way of metaphysics; -she was a Materialist.</p> - -<p>“No prayers at mother’s knee? Religion of Mother and -Daddy? School prayers and teaching? Church or -chapel?”</p> - -<p>“It all washed out and faded out, I think, as they laid -it on.”</p> - -<p>“No fear of hell? Most of my generation went through -the fear of hell.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[293]</span>“Not a trace of it,” said the New Age.</p> - -<p>“But—a desire for God in the night?”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta paused for a little while. “I have -that,” she said. “It comes—sometimes. I don’t know -whether it’s very important or not important at all.”</p> - -<p>“It’s part,” said Devizes slowly, “of something that has -to do with wanting to be more than a miserable worm—and -disliking meanness—and so forth.”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Do you know more about it?”</p> - -<p>Rather oddly he didn’t answer that. “And how do you -see yourself in relation to mankind—and the animals—and -the stars? What sense of obligation have you? What -do you think the road is along which you have to -go?”</p> - -<p>“H’m,” said Christina Alberta. She considered she was -a Communist, she said, though she didn’t belong to the -Party. But she knew some other young people who did. -She produced some of the phrases of the movement, “the -materialist conception of history” and so forth. He said -he failed to understand and asked rather irritating questions; -she thought controversially. She didn’t realize at -first how widely apart was their phraseology. As they -talked this became apparent. He seemed to have nothing -too good to say for the Communist idea, for wasn’t it just -his own idea of being a part of a greater being of life? -but he seemed to have nothing too bad for practical -Communism. Marxist Communism he said wasn’t a constructive -movement at all; it was merely a solvent. It -had no idea, no plan. Christina Alberta was put on the -defensive. “Enthusiasm for an ideal Communist state -isn’t nearly so important as the question of immediate -Communist tactics in a decaying society,” she recited, in -an almost official tone. That was how her young friends -in the Party talked. But when she talked like this to him -it didn’t seem so effective. He wouldn’t leave her phrases -alone. He wanted to know what she meant by decay in a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[294]</span> -society, whether there had ever been a society not actively -in decay and not also actively in growth, what good tactics -were except in relation to general strategy and whether -there could be any strategy without a clear war-end. She -countered more vigorously than effectively and their manner -became controversial.</p> - -<p>He pressed the difference in their opinions. Communism -for him meant a new spirit, a spirit of science -reorganizing the world upon scientific collective lines, but -the whole temper of party communism was contemporary. -It was saturated with the feelings and ideas of existing -social classes, with the natural resentment of the dispossessed. -It had the angry dogmatism of desperate -people not sure of their grip. It needed more of the -passion of creative self-forgetfulness. Many Communists, -he said, were simply reversed capitalists, egotists without -capital; they wanted revenge and expropriation, and when -they were through with that they would be left with -nothing but social ruins and everything to begin all over -again. And they were suspicious and intolerant because -of their want of internal assurance. They distrusted their -best friends, their proper leaders, scientific men like Keynes -and Soddy.</p> - -<p>“Keynes a Communist!” cried Christina Alberta in derision. -“He doesn’t accept the first scientific fact of the -class war.”</p> - -<p>“It isn’t much of a fact—certainly not a First Scientific -Fact,” he replied. “Keynes builds up slowly a conception -of a scientifically organized exchange system. Most of -your friends in Russia don’t seem capable even of realizing -that such a thing is necessary.”</p> - -<p>“But they do!”</p> - -<p>“Have they shown it?”</p> - -<p>“What do <i>you</i> know of the Russian Bolsheviks?”</p> - -<p>“What do <i>you</i>? You just look at the labels on people.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[295]</span> -Nothing genuine without the red label—and everything -genuine with.”</p> - -<p>She said he saw things from his “bourgeois” standpoint, -and he laughed cheerfully at her social classifications; -there was no bourgeoisie in England, he said; she attempted -some of the stock cynicisms and sarcasms of the -movement but with an unusual lack of conviction. It was -easy for him to criticize, she said, living as he did on -invested capital.</p> - -<p>“It would make it easier,” he smiled. “But really I live -on my fees.”</p> - -<p>“You have invested capital.”</p> - -<p>“Some. I don’t live on it.”</p> - -<p>They had exhausted the dispute for a time. After all -she reflected she hadn’t put up such a bad fight, considering -her age and standing. The momentary glow of -controversial exasperation faded again. They drifted to -the more immediate question in which they were interested, -the question of what she was to do with her life.</p> - -<h4>§ 14</h4> - -<p>“We progress, Christina Alberta,” said Devizes, “but it’s -still generally the rule that a woman’s life is determined -very largely by the character and occupations of—the -leading man in the play. Have you by any chance been -in love yet?”</p> - -<p>She wanted to tell him all the truth about herself, but -some things are untellable. She hesitated and blushed -hotly. “Nowadays,” she said, and stopped. “I’ve some -imagination. I’ve run about London. I’ve perhaps -imagined things——”</p> - -<p>His eyes were very searching for a moment but none the -less kindly.</p> - -<p>“I’ve been in love—in a kind of way,” she admitted.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[296]</span>He nodded with a dreadful effect of complete comprehension.</p> - -<p>“I don’t want to run my life in relation to any man,” -she extended.</p> - -<p>“Clever girls never do. Any more than clever young men -want to spend their lives adoring a goddess.”</p> - -<p>“In any case I don’t see myself becoming a child-producing -housekeeper,” she said.</p> - -<p>“Even if you married. No. I doubt whether you are -that type. But if you are going to reject that easy way—and -it <i>is</i> an easy way, in spite of what people say—if you -are going to be a citizen on your own as a man is, then -you’ve got to do a man’s work, Christina Alberta. There’s -to be none of the Pretty Fanny business you know.”</p> - -<p>“Well, <i>am</i> I?” asked Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“No, I don’t think you are. And in that case, I guess -you want some more education. You’re clever, but you’re -a bit patchy.”</p> - -<p>“I’m good enough to get a job. And then learn.”</p> - -<p>“Learn,” he said. “That’s enough to take you all your -time. I’d rather we agreed it’s got to be a student for two -or three years more. You need have no anxiety about -ways and means. You and I are of the same Clan—a -clan of two practically—and I am the head. I’ll see you -through just as though you were a son. And now, what -sort of work is it to be? Law? Medicine? a general education -for journalism or affairs? Doors open to women now—fresh -doors every day.”</p> - -<p>To that Christina Alberta could speak a little more fully. -She had been thinking out some of these things. She -wanted to know about life and the world as a whole. Could -she have a good year at physical science, biology and -geology chiefly and anthropology? Would that be possible? -And then if she was any good at medical work, -another year at mental science or politics and public -health? “It sounds ambitious I know,” she said.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[297]</span>“Ambitious! It’s an encyclopædia in a year.”</p> - -<p>“But I want to know about all these things.”</p> - -<p>“Naturally.”</p> - -<p>“Could I have longer than that?”</p> - -<p>“You’d have to have longer than that.”</p> - -<p>“It seems to be asking for so much.”</p> - -<p>“It wouldn’t be if you were in trousers. We’ve agreed to -unsex you to that extent. Why shouldn’t you be ambitious?”</p> - -<p>“You think I might do work—scientific work—at last—as -you do?”</p> - -<p>“Why not?”</p> - -<p>“A girl?”</p> - -<p>“You’re the sort of stuff I am, Christina Alberta.”</p> - -<p>“Do you think—some day—I might even come to work—to -work with you?”</p> - -<p>“Kindred minds may follow kindred courses,” he said, -with the completest recognition of their relationship -“Why not?”</p> - -<p>She stood and looked at him with a dark excitement in -her eyes and he had a momentary intimation of all that -he might be to her. Gallant she was and fine and ambitious; -a wonderful life to come out of nothingness into his -own. And she meant this relationship to grow, as well it -might grow, into something very great and deep for both -of them.</p> - -<p>He went off at a tangent to talk of the contrast of men -and women students and of men and women as workers. -“You’ll never run parallel with men, you free women, so -don’t expect it. You’ve got to work out a way that is -similar perhaps but different. Different down to the roots.” -He argued that probably the whole fabric of a man had -its qualities that a woman’s did not possess and vice versa, -down even to a muscular fibre or a nerve tendril. A time -might come when we should be able to put a drop of -blood or a scrap of skin under the microscope or apply<span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[298]</span> -some subtle reagent to it and tell its sex. “A man resists,” -he said. “A man is intractable. He has greater inertia, -physical and mental. That keeps him to his course. Men -compared with women are steadier and stupider. Women -compared with men are quicker and sillier. Bludgeons -and bodkins.”</p> - -<p>He talked of his student days when women medical -students were still rather novel intrusions, and from that -he passed to his father’s prejudices, to his father’s treatment -of his mother and his boyish days. Presently they -were exchanging experiences of childish delusions and -fancies. She forgot how much older and more experienced -he was in the ease of his talk. He told her about himself -because he recognized her right to know about him; he -listened with a friendly eagerness to all she chose to tell -him of her Daddy and herself and about her impressions -and her few adventures in encounter as a suburban student -in London. They shared their delight in Paul Lambone’s -kindly absurdity. Presently it occurred to her to offer -him drink. The Crumbs had left a bottle of beer and -a syphon. But Devizes asked her to make tea and helped -her with the kettle. Meanwhile the mutual exploration -went on. Their friendliness grew richer and deeper as they -talked. She had never before met so intimate and delightful -a curiosity as his. She had had friends before but -no such friendliness; she had had a lover but never -such intimacy.</p> - -<p>It was one o’clock before he went away.</p> - -<p>The talk had ebbed. He sat thoughtful for a moment.</p> - -<p>“I must go,” he said, and stood up. They faced each -other, a little at a loss for parting words.</p> - -<p>“It’s been wonderful to talk to you,” she said.</p> - -<p>“It’s a great thing to have discovered you.”</p> - -<p>Another pause. “It’s a great thing for me,” she said -lamely.</p> - -<p>“We’ll talk—many times,” he said.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[299]</span>He wanted to call her “my dear,” and an absurd shyness -prevented him. And she was aware of that suppression.</p> - -<p>She stood up straight before him in the passage with a -flush on her cheeks and her eyes alight, and he wondered -he had not thought her beautiful from the beginning. -“Good-bye for the time,” he said, and smiled at her gravely -and took and held her hand for a moment.</p> - -<p>“Good night,” she said, and hesitated and then opened -the green door for him and stood and watched him go up -the Mews.</p> - -<p>At the top he turned and waved his hand to her before -he disappeared. “Good night,” she whispered and started, -and looked about her as if she feared that her unspoken -thoughts had been audible.</p> - -<p>Father. Her father!</p> - -<p>So real fathers leave one aglow like this!</p> - -<p>He had left her tense as a violin string on which the bow -rests motionless. Now Daddy, who wasn’t her father, she -would just have hugged and kissed.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[300]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE SECOND<br> - -<i>How Bobby Stole a Lunatic</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">A <small>MAN</small> may be a mental expert and yet fail to take -the most obvious hints in a detective investigation. -The medical superintendent at Cummerdown Hill had -doubted for a moment whether Widgery was the name of -Sargon’s visitor. He had thought it was more like Goodchild. -But since there was no known Goodchild in the -world of Christina Alberta, neither she nor Devizes had -troubled to scrutinize this momentary uncertainty. Nor -had she and Devizes asked themselves why Widgery -should have made a second visit to his cousin. Indeed, -he had not done so. It was a much younger man who -had visited Sargon that Tuesday; he had falsely represented -himself as Sargon’s nephew and given the name of -“Robin Goodchild.” His real name was Robert Roothing, -and he had come for the sole purpose of getting Sargon -out of the asylum as soon as possible, because he could -not endure the thought of his staying there.</p> - -<p>Circumstances had conspired with a natural predisposition -to give Bobby a great horror of all restraint. His -mother, a gentle dark creature, the wife of a large blond -negligent landowner, had died when Bobby was twelve; -and he had been entrusted to the care of a harsh, old-fashioned -aunt—to whom the cupboard seemed a proper -place for discipline. When she discovered that he was -really distressed by it, she sought to break his “cowardice” -by giving him quite liberal doses of it—even when he had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[301]</span> -committed no offence. He went to a school where discipline -was maintained by “keeping-in.” The war eliminated -his father, who died suddenly of over-excitement -while in command of an anti-aircraft gun during an air-raid, -and it led Bobby through some tiresome campaigning -in Mesopotamia and the beleaguerment of Kut to an -extremely unsympathetic Turkish prison. In any case he -would probably have been a free-going easy creature, but -now he had so passionate a hatred of cages that he wanted -to release even canaries. He disliked the iron fences round -the public parks and squares with a propagandist passion, -he wrote articles about them in <i>Wilkins’ Weekly</i> and elsewhere -clamouring for their “liberation,” and he never went -by train if he could help it because of the claustrophobia -that assailed him in the compartment. He would ride a -push-bike except for long distances, and then he would -borrow Billy’s motor bicycle. He did his best to prevent his -craving for the large and open from becoming too conspicuous -or a nuisance to other people, but Tessy and Billy -understood about it and did their best to make things easy -for him.</p> - -<p>It was not only claustrophobia that Bobby had to fight -against. He carried on a secret internal conflict with a -disinclination to act upon most occasions, that he believed -had developed in him as a result of war experiences. Sometimes -it seemed to him to be just indolence, sometimes -fastidiousness, sometimes sheer funk and cowardice. He -could not tell. He had a rankling memory of a case -of cruelty he had witnessed in the prisoners’ camp when he -had stood by and done nothing. He would wake up sometimes -at three o’clock in the morning and say to himself -aloud, “I stood by and I did nothing. Oh God! Oh <i>God</i>! -Oh <span class="smcap">God</span>!” And at times he would walk up and down his -study repeating: “<i>Act!</i> You vegetable! you hiding cur! -Out and act!” Meanwhile he obeyed routines and did -whatever came to his hand. As “Aunt Suzannah” he was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[302]</span> -excellent, indefatigably considerate, lucid, really helpful. -<i>Wilkins’ Weekly</i> was proud of him. He was the backbone -of the paper.</p> - -<p>And now this affair of Sargon’s had twisted him up very -badly between his desire to free the little man, who had -taken an extraordinary hold upon his imagination and -sympathy, and his sense of the immense forces against -which he would have to pit himself if he tried to give him -any help. It was only after a considerable struggle with -himself that he had called at the police station and the -Gifford Street Workhouse. He was afraid of awkward -questions, afraid above all of being “detained.” The workhouse -was a detestable place with high walls and a paved -court and a general effect of sinister seclusion from the -grubby street outside. For the best part of a day after his -Gifford Street visit he hesitated whether he should do -anything more.</p> - -<p>“Bobby’s got a grouch,” Susan told Tessy. “He’s -stoopid. Just sits and says ’E ’as to fink sumpfink over. -What’s he fink fings over for? Said I was to come downstairs -again, there was a good girl.... Meant it.... -Said so.... Puss’d me ’way.... I do-o-n’t fink I -lo-o-o-ove Bobby ’nymore.”</p> - -<p>Great distress. A storm of tears. Tessy was deeply -sympathetic.</p> - -<p>But after tea Bobby was brighter and drew Susan her -“Good night picture” and came down and sat on her bed -and talked her to sleep the same as usual, and Tessy perceived -that the worst of Bobby’s trouble was over.</p> - -<p>At supper Bobby unfolded his plans.</p> - -<p>“I mean to go to Cummerdown Hill to-morrow,” he said -compactly.</p> - -<p>“To see Sargon?” said Tessy understandingly.</p> - -<p>“If I can. But it won’t be visiting day. That’s Tuesday. -I want to look round.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[303]</span>Billy raised his eyebrows and helped himself to butter.</p> - -<p>“But—” said Tessy, and stopped short.</p> - -<p>“Yes?” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“You won’t be able to see him. You don’t know the -name he’s under.”</p> - -<p>“They’ll call him Mr. Sargon,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“His name’s Preemby. He’s a laundryman. They told -me at the workhouse. His people <i>want him to be there</i>!”</p> - -<p>“I can’t stand the thought of it,” said Bobby after a brief -silence.</p> - -<p>“Don’t follow,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“That nice little thing being made into a lunatic. Like -a little blue-eyed bird he was. High walls. Great louting -warders. Sargon, King of Kings.... I’ve got to do -something about it or I shall burst.”</p> - -<p>He looked at once weak and desperate. Tessy reflected. -“You’d better go,” she said.</p> - -<p>“But what good will that do?” said Billy, and was quelled -by a glance from Tessy.</p> - -<p>“If you can lend me the old motor bike and the side-car. -You’re not using it this week-end.”</p> - -<p>“You can take off the side-car,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“I may want it,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“You don’t mean—!” said Billy.</p> - -<p>Bobby came as near to an explosion as he ever did.</p> - -<p>“Oh never mind <i>what</i> I mean. I tell you I’m going down -to Cummerdown to have a look at the place. No doubt -I’m a futile ass, Billy, but I just can’t help myself going. -The poor little beggar’s got no friends. His own family’s -helped to put him away. Families do. It’s an infernal -world. I’ve got to do something. If it’s only to shake ’em -up. If I stay here another day I shall start smacking -Susan.”</p> - -<p>“Somebody ought to,” said Billy.</p> - -<p>“If he can only keep away for fourteen days clear——”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[304]</span>“He’s free?” said Tessy.</p> - -<p>“He has to be certified all over again—anyhow,” said -Bobby.</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>Bobby discovered that the village of Cummerdown lies -nearly two miles away from the asylum, and does its best -very successfully to have as little to do with it as possible. -It nestles among trees just off the high-road to Ashford -and Hastings, and has one cramped little inn that gave him -a bleak bedroom and accommodated his machine and side-car -in an open outhouse crowded with two carts and a -Ford and populous with hens. The day was still young, -and after he had deposited the elderly rucksac in which -he had brought his “things” upstairs, he set out with a -walking-stick and an air of detached interest to reconnoitre -the asylum and develop his plans for the rescue of -Sargon. That golden autumn was still holding out; the -pleasant lane he followed to the high-road was patterned -with green and yellow chestnut leaves and the trees overhead -were full of sunshine. It was a reassuring day. It -encouraged him. It took him with a kindly seriousness -and made him feel that rescuing people from lunatic -asylums was the sort of work the sun could shine upon -and nature welcome.</p> - -<p>It had needed a great effort to get down from London. -He had felt then like a midget setting out to attack an -embattled universe. Amidst the Croydon traffic he had -been half-minded to go back, but he had felt that he could -not face Tessy until he had been at least definitely -defeated. It was delightful to note an increased assurance -within himself as he drew nearer to his enterprise. He -felt much more on the scale of the powers he attacked. -After all, what were laws and regulations but just things -patched up by men like himself? What were prison walls -but the slow work of shirking bricklayers and evasive<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[305]</span> -contractors? The attendants and custodians, the superintendents -and so forth he was setting out to circumvent, -were all as fallible as himself. And the thing was urgent -and outrageous, this seizure of a harmless little fantastic, -this frightful imprisonment. It had to be fought. The -world would be intolerable unless such things were -fought.</p> - -<p>Queer world it was! Such beauty on these tree-stems, -such a glow, and the delightfulness of rustling one’s feet -through these leaves! But all that was by the way; the -real business of life was to fight evil things.</p> - -<p>He came out from between the trees and saw the wide -downs opening out before him and the blocked masses -of the asylum with its broad bare grounds and walls, an -eyesore. This was his objective. In that place somewhere -was Sargon, and he had to be released.</p> - -<p>He seated himself on a convenient stile and inspected -that heavy architecture and tried to frame a plan. That -white building in the centre looked like a gaunt Georgian -private house. That was probably the nucleus of the -whole place. Two men were visible in front of it mowing -the grass—patients perhaps. The wall and railings along -the road looked implacable. Two stern-looking lodges -there were, no doubt with a testy janitor lurking within, -and there were iron gates—one open. A van was coming -out, a furniture dealer’s van. For a time Bobby’s mind -ran on the possibility of becoming a tradesman with -parcels or a crate to deliver.... Many difficulties that -way....</p> - -<p>“But why a frontal attack?” said Bobby with an effect -of discovery. The place fell away behind, down-hill. He -would inspect the rear. If he worked round by the open -down to the right, he would probably get on to slopes -commanding a view of the asylum grounds.</p> - -<p>An hour later Bobby was sitting on a heap of flints -by the side of a minor road which ran over the rising<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[306]</span> -ground behind the asylum. He found the rear of the -place much more hopeful and much more interesting than -the front. There were fields with a number of men working -in them, and at one place near the buildings a row of men -seemed to be digging a trench under the supervision of an -attendant. There was quite a lot of movement closer to -the buildings, under a sort of open shed half a dozen men -seemed to be taking exercise by walking up and down. It -vexed Bobby to think that any one of these figures might -be his Sargon. If only he had the elementary common -sense to bring a field-glass, he reproached himself, he might -have been able to make out his little friend’s features. -“No clearness of thought,” he whispered. “No decision.” -A lot of these people seemed to be going about very freely, -carrying gardening implements and so forth. One he noted, -walking about and gesticulating as if he talked to himself; -he was manifestly a patient and quite unattended.</p> - -<p>The wall bounding the asylum on this side had none of -the austerity of the front wall. It seemed to be an old -estate wall; in several places it was covered with ivy and -here and there it was overhung with trees. The ground -dropped away to his right, there was a little stream which -ran out of the asylum grounds at the lowest corner; the -corner was shaded by trees and seemed to be left to the -trees and undergrowth; the stream ran under a low arch -in the wall and went on down a widening valley towards -London. The seclusion and shade of this corner appealed -to Bobby very strongly. It seemed to him exactly the -point at which Sargon ought to be got out of the place. -He decided that presently he would stroll down and examine -its possibilities as precisely as possible. If one could -get Sargon to come down there——</p> - -<p>He found the details difficult. He meant to have a plan -worked out in every detail and to communicate it to Sargon -on the next visiting day, but it was very hard to fit this -plan together. He did not know when it would be most<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[307]</span> -convenient for Sargon to attempt to slip away, whether -this was to be a daylight or a night affair. He saw before -him a great vista of inquiries to be made and suspicious -people to be faced. “Damn!” said Bobby, and for a time -he was again for abandoning the attempt.</p> - -<p>Why couldn’t one go in at these gates, boldly and overwhelmingly, -and say, “There is a sane man here and I -have come to set him free?” A superman might do that, -or an archangel. How splendid it would be to be a sort -of Archangel-Knight-Errant, a great flaming presence of -light and winged power, righting wrongs, reproving -oppressors, liberating every kind of captive creature. -Then one might do things. Bobby lapsed into a childish -day-dream.</p> - -<p>Presently he roused himself, stood up and went down -towards the exit of the stream. The wall struck him as -quite climbable—even by a little old gentleman. The -stream came out meandering among pebbles through a -short tunnel. One could have got into the asylum grounds -or out of them quite easily over the wall by the ivy or -through the culvert. He resolved to come again at twilight -and—just to satisfy himself about his own pluck among -other things—get into the asylum premises and walk -about a little.</p> - -<p>Yes. He would do that.</p> - -<p>He tried to imagine himself assisting Sargon over the -wall. One could get on the top of the wall and reach -down to his hands. A cripple could do it. The motor -bicycle would have to be waiting up there in the lane. -And then? <i>Where would he take him?</i></p> - -<p>This was a new consideration. For a time Bobby’s mind -was appalled and paralyzed by the complexities of his -enterprise. He had not thought of taking him anywhere -in particular.</p> - -<p>The days that intervened before visiting day seemed at -once interminable and frightfully swift. He had been to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[308]</span> -Dymchurch in the summer with the Malmesburys, and -liked the landlady of his lodgings very much; he wired to -her “Can I come with a relation not ill but overworked for -week or so you will remember me last summer Roothing -the Feathers Cummerdown” and had got a reply, “Glad -to see you any time.” So that was all right. But the rest -of the plan failed very largely to materialize. He made -his nocturnal visit to the asylum grounds without misadventure.</p> - -<p>The morning of visiting day found him with half a dozen -plans, and they all had gaps and none seemed much better -or worse than the others. And he had walked round the -asylum grounds at various discreet distances, by night and -day just twenty-three times, not counting loops, returns -and visits to particular points of interest. Fortunately -asylums are much preoccupied with their internal affairs, -and do not keep look-out men upon the battlements. They -do not reckon with rescuers from outside.</p> - -<p>Bobby made his final decision among these conflicting -projects over his breakfast bacon. With a resolute sang-froid -and his nerves all a-tingle, he set out for the asylum -to see Sargon and begin the work of rescue as he had -thought it out. First he had to find out what freedom of -movement was permitted Sargon, when it might be possible -for him to get away to the corner by the culvert, -and he had to arrange a time for that meeting. Then -he would have to provide also for alternative times if -Sargon failed to keep his first appointment. Bobby would -be waiting under the wall and the motor bicycle and side-car -would be hidden among the bushes up by the road. -In a trice Sargon would be over the wall. After that they -could laugh at pursuit. Off they would go to Dymchurch, -and there, safe and untrackable, Sargon would keep -indoors until the fifteen days needed to make him legally -a sane man again had passed. And then Bobby could -find out those relations of his and talk the matter over<span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[309]</span> -with them, and get things on a proper footing. So Bobby -planned it out.</p> - -<p>Just at the lodge gates he decided upon an assumed -name. He wasn’t quite clear why he didn’t give his own -name, but an assumed name seemed to him to be more -in the spirit of the adventure.</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>When Sargon was informed that he was to be visited by -Mr. Robin Goodchild he was in a depressed mood. He -betrayed no surprise at the name. It seemed to him to be -as good as any other name. It might be the name of some -intelligent inquirer or possibly even some precursor of the -release he still hoped for. His spirits rose. He submitted -cheerfully to a searching examination of his personal tidiness, -and he nodded acquiescently to a warning not to -talk about “<i>every</i> blessed thing” he’d seen.</p> - -<p>His spirits rose still more when he saw the dark kindliness -of Bobby’s face. It was the one disciple who had ever -seemed to believe. He held out both his hands in a little -storm of emotion. Whatever sort of muddler Bobby might -be to himself, to Sargon in that moment at least he was -strength and hope.</p> - -<p>The meeting occurred in the reception-room downstairs, -for no one from the outside world may ever penetrate to -the wards and the bleak realities of everyday asylum life. -The reception-room had a baize-covered table in the middle, -a black horsehair sofa and numerous chairs; it was -totally devoid of small movables; there was an A B C -time-table and one or two illustrated weeklies on the -table, and the walls bore brown-spotted steel engravings -of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria in the Highlands and -of Windsor Castle from the Thames. There were three -or four groups, each of two or three people, with their -heads together conversing in tactful undertones; there were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[310]</span> -several women and one little girl; a tearful lady in profound -mourning sat apart by the empty fire-place and no -doubt awaited a patient; two attendants tried hard not -to look as though they were listening as intently as possible -to the conversations going on about them. The patients -present were all in the sanest phase, “fit to be visited.” -There was no madness visible; at most only a little nervous -oddity. Bobby had been watching these other groups -while he waited, and he had been impressed by a certain -quality of furtiveness in their behaviour. The furtiveness -he connected with the alertness of the attendants. One -affected to look out of the window, the other half sat at a -table holding an old <i>Graphic</i>, and ever and again there -would be a quick glance at this patient or that. It had not -occurred to Bobby that his talk to Sargon would be semi-public; -it was a disconcerting interference that would -greatly hamper him in giving his instructions.</p> - -<p>Bobby saw at once that Sargon was very much thinner -than when he had taken his room in Midgard Street. He -looked ill and worn, an effect that was emphasized by the -fact that he was badly shaven and wearing ill-fitting -clothes. His eyes seemed larger and sunken under his -brows and his forehead more definitely lined. Yet if he -looked unhappier he also looked more intelligent. He -seemed more aware of the things about him—less a man -in a dream.</p> - -<p>“I have come to see if I can be of service to you,” said -Bobby, holding out his hands. “Your friends and disciples -are anxious for your welfare.”</p> - -<p>“You have come to see me,” he said, and glanced sideways -at the listening attendant and dropped his voice; -“me—<i>Sargon</i>?”</p> - -<p>Bobby understood that note of doubt and it grieved him. -“You, Sargon, the King out of the Past.”</p> - -<p>“They would have me deny it,” whispered Sargon.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[311]</span>Bobby raised his eyebrows and nodded his head as -who should say, “They’d do <i>anything</i>.”</p> - -<p>The little man’s manner changed. “How is one to -know?” he said. “How is one to know?”</p> - -<p>He sighed. “Nothing seems certain any more.”</p> - -<p>“Can we sit down and talk together?” said Bobby. -“There is much to be said between us.”</p> - -<p>Sargon glanced round. There were two chairs in a corner, -and in that corner they might be a little beyond the -eavesdropper’s range. “I cannot understand this madness,” -said Sargon as they sat down. “I cannot understand this -Riddle that has been set me. Why does the Power, why -does God, permit men to be mad? When they are mad -they are beyond good and evil. What are they? Men still? -What becomes of justice, what becomes of righteousness—when -men go mad?” His voice sank. His eyes became -furtive. “Dreadful things happen here,” he whispered. -“Dreadful things. Quite dreadful things.”</p> - -<p>He ceased. For a little while neither he nor Bobby said -a word.</p> - -<p>“I want to get you out of this,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“Are my friends doing anything?” asked Sargon. “What -is Christina Alberta doing? Is she well?”</p> - -<p>“She is splendid,” he said haphazard. No doubt she was -one of this beastly family of Sargon’s that was content to -leave him here. “I want you to listen to me,” he said.</p> - -<p>But Sargon had things to tell. “Everyone in this place -is always thinking about what their friends outside are -doing for them. The poor souls come and talk to me. -They know I am different from what they are. They -write letters, petitions. I tell them that when God releases -me I will bear them all in mind. Some mock at me. They -have delusions. They think they are kings or emperors -or rich men or great discoverers, and that the world has -plotted against them.... Some are suspicious and cruel....<span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[312]</span> -Darkened souls.... Some have dreadful habits. -You cannot help but see.... Some are badly sunken—degraded—indescribably.... -It is very painful, very painful.”</p> - -<p>The blue eyes stared blankly at unpleasant memories.</p> - -<p>“There can be no doubt that I am Sargon,” he said -abruptly, and looked sharply at Bobby.</p> - -<p>“I call you by no other name,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>The momentary acuteness faded again. “That man -Preemby was unawakened. He was asleep—scarcely -dreaming of life. <i>But I have seen!</i> I have looked at the -world from high places. And from dark places too.... -Sargon. Sargon is a different person.... But it is -difficult.”</p> - -<p>He became silent.</p> - -<p>Bobby felt that they were getting nowhere. In his -anticipations of this conversation he had talked and Sargon -had listened. And there had been no one to overhear. -But this was all unexpected. Anyhow, the plan had to be -told; Sargon had to be instructed in his part. He glanced -warily at the people nearest to them. “There are those -among us,” he said quietly and quickly, “who would set -you free. I want to tell you—” On the spur of the -moment he attempted a code. “When I speak of a city -in Central Asia it will mean this place, the Asylum. Do -you understand?”</p> - -<p>“This place—Central Asia. If I am Sargon.... Everything -is possibly something else. But we are still in -England nevertheless.”</p> - -<p>“In reality. But I want to explain to you.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes. Explain.”</p> - -<p>“I shall speak of great discoveries in Central Asia. That -will mean this.”</p> - -<p><i>Did</i> he understand?</p> - -<p>“<i>Rescue!</i>” whispered Bobby in Sargon’s ear, and glanced -at the attendant and met his eye and was discomposed.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[313]</span>“Tell me about the discoveries,” said Sargon after a little -pause as though he had not heard that whispered word.</p> - -<p>“It is a symbol for this place,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>Sargon looked puzzled. The attendant was watching -their faces now. Perhaps he suspected already. Bobby -flushed hotly and plunged abruptly into an account of -the discoveries of an amazing Russian he called Bobinsky. -Bobinsky had found a walled city with no way out. “Yes,” -said Sargon, interested. The attendant was now looking -away. “Like this place,” said Bobby, and more explicitly; -“I <i>mean</i> this place.” There was a river ran through the -city, the city of confinement, and went out by the lower -part. There it was the helper waited. The rescuers. That -was the place for them to wait. Did he understand? At -that point where the trees grew and the river went out -through the wall. They they waited. There they would -wait until the captive king came to them.</p> - -<p>“It is a curious story,” said Sargon. “What captive king -do you mean?”</p> - -<p>“It is meant for you.”</p> - -<p>“The river you speak of may be the Euphrates,” said -Sargon. “I dream of the Euphrates.”</p> - -<p>He had missed it all! He was out upon some woolgathering -of his own. Euphrates! What had the Euphrates -to do with Central Asia? Or the Asylum?</p> - -<p>“Bother!” said Bobby. “I say— It is a smaller river I -mean, a streamlet—in the grounds here. Don’t you understand?”</p> - -<p>A tall sharp-faced woman in a hat of hard black straw -came near them and sat down. Bobby, as he talked, observed -her out of the corner of his eye. Was she the friend -of a patient or what was she doing here? “I speak in -symbols,” said Bobby, still watching and thinking about -this woman. “This city is your prison.” He caught the -woman exchanging a glance of intelligence with the male -attendant who had moved a couple of yards up the room.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[314]</span> -They knew each other. Then she must be another observer. -“I want no other prison than this,” said Sargon, evidently -quite at cross-purposes. “One prison is enough.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t mean that,” said Bobby. “Can you walk about -here pretty freely?”</p> - -<p>“Not freely,” said Sargon. “No.”</p> - -<p>“If you could come out into the grounds. To-morrow.”</p> - -<p>The woman turned her long sharp foxy nose towards -him, and stared at him with rather stupid green-blue eyes.</p> - -<p>Bobby’s nerve was going to pieces altogether. He was -always more afraid of women than men. This prim -sharp-nosed figure so manifestly listening, and listening -with a faint hostility to all he said, completed his discomfiture. -He tried to improvise a story of lost and -recovered cities that would be crystal clear to Sargon and -yet incomprehensible to the listener. But his invention -faltered at the difficult task. Where the river ran out of -the city, he repeated; he harped upon that idea; where -there were trees and ivy, there the faithful waited. When -was the propitious hour for the Master to steal away to -them? Everything was prepared. When could it be? -When might it be? Fragmentally and mixed with many -irrelevancies Bobby tried to get the import of these suggestions -over to his hearer. Now he would be explicit; now -as the fear of the listener returned, vague and misleading. -He did convey a sense of mystery and intention to Sargon, -that was plain; but he felt he conveyed nothing more. -The time was slipping by. Bobby could have throttled -that infernal woman. More and more did she become -audience to his floundering efforts. He maundered back to -his starting point about Bobinsky. “There is no such -person as Bobinsky,” he threw in.</p> - -<p>“Then how could he explore cities?” asked Sargon, -manifestly more and more perplexed at Bobby’s rigmarole.</p> - -<p>“He is dead,” said Bobby. “He was just a mask.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[315]</span>“Some men are.”</p> - -<p>“Don’t mind about Bobinsky. Could you slip away to -that corner? No, no. She’s looking. Don’t answer.</p> - -<p>“Now <i>answer</i>.”</p> - -<p>“I don’t understand,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>Bobby felt that he was only puzzling Sargon. But what -else was to be done? He could have kicked himself for -not having brought a brief statement of his plan written -plainly on a little piece of paper that he could have slipped -into Sargon’s hand—or pocket. It would have been so -simple. He could have made a map and a drawing. Too -late to do that now.</p> - -<p>Despair came upon Bobby. Everything had gone wrong. -He got up to go and then sat down again to make another -attempt. He felt murderous towards that woman, towards -himself, even towards slow-witted little Sargon.</p> - -<p>“It was very good of you to come and see me,” said -Sargon.</p> - -<p>“<i>Why</i> did you come?...</p> - -<p>“Do you think anything will be done about me?...</p> - -<p>“You will see Christina Alberta? When I saw you first I -thought you had things to tell me—important things. One -lives on such hopes here. Here—when there are no visitors—nothing -happens, nothing pleasant. And one is distressed....</p> - -<p>“I am interested to hear of those cities in Central Asia -of course, but it is a little puzzling. Did you come -specially about them? Or just to see me?</p> - -<p>“You will come again. Even to come down here to this -sitting-room is an event....”</p> - -<p>Then in a swift whisper. “The food is frightful. So -badly cooked. It disagrees with me....”</p> - -<p>“That woman,” said Bobby as he went, “She has spoilt -everything. I can’t stand her.”</p> - -<p>“That woman?” said Sargon, and followed the direction<span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[316]</span> -of Bobby’s eyes. “Poor soul,” he said. “She’s a deaf mute. -She comes to see her brother. The whole family is defective -or insane.”</p> - -<p>A maddened Bobby returned towards his little inn. -Should he chuck the whole thing? Intolerable thought! -He must make fresh plans—fresh plans altogether. He -must begin all over again. The little man was evidently -wretched. But it was going to be harder to get hold of -him than Bobby had thought.</p> - -<p>Bobby had no sleep that night.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>In the night just before daybreak suddenly Sargon woke -up and understood. He understood quite clearly what the -young man had been saying to him. He had said “Rescue!” -Of course he had meant to say “Escape”! That city in -Central Asia was only a parable; he had said as much. -He had been describing a corner of the asylum grounds, -that corner where the stream ran out beyond the work-fields -and the shrubbery where the patients were supposed -not to go. He had been telling of friends who would wait -outside. He had been trying to arrange an hour when -these friends would come there. And Sargon had failed -to understand. He sat up in bed very still.</p> - -<p>It was perfectly clear, but through a sort of dulness that -came upon him at times he had not grasped the drift of -it at the time. The young man had shown irritation, -naturally enough. What would he do now? Would he -try again? Were the friends still waiting?</p> - -<p>Who was this young man? His name was unknown or -forgotten. But he believed. He had said, “I call you by -no other name.” Sargon! And there were these friends -he spoke of, who waited outside for the king. They must -know. How could they know, if there was nothing to be -known? After all, perhaps it was no dream. Perhaps the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[317]</span> -world was awakening.... But he had failed them. He -had not understood.... They waited without....</p> - -<p>How still everything was! A strange unusual stillness. -It was rare for this place to be so bereft of noise. It was -dark and yet not altogether dark. The ward was dimly -lit by a blue-shaded light. The three nearer beds were -unoccupied, and beyond the man who tossed and muttered -almost incessantly lay for a little while at peace. The -man who raved had died three days ago; the man who gave -sudden loud shouts had been taken away to another ward. -Through the open door one could see across the landing -into the little yellow-lit room, where Brand the ward -attendant sat with his arms crossed and chin on his chest -and slept, his patience cards spread out before him. He -seemed to be alone and yet he could sleep like that! Where -could the other man be—the new attendant whose name -Sargon did not know? And yet he felt—some one had just -gone out!</p> - -<p>The uncurtained windows showed the night outside, a -darkness that became translucent, a streak of very black -cloud and five pale stars. Across the lower edge of that -oblong picture one could see indistinctly a tracery of tree -branches and the lumpish head of a young oak still -bearing its leaves, the trees along the first hedge. These -outlines grew distincter as he watched. It was like the slow -development of a photographic plate in the dark-room. -The stars dissolved. Had there been five? There were -three; the other two had dissolved into the pale invading -light.</p> - -<p>Dared one venture on to the landing? If Brand awoke -he could make some natural excuse. He stood well with -Brand. But the other fellow——?</p> - -<p>There was not a trace of him. Where had he gone?...</p> - -<p><i>Do it now!</i>—wisest of maxims.</p> - -<p>Very swiftly Sargon slipped out of bed and put on his -dressing-gown and slippers. Hush! <i>What was that?</i>...<span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[318]</span> -Only some one snoring. Nothing more. He went out and -stood on the landing. Brand slept on like a log.</p> - -<p>The stone staircase was lit and empty and from the open -door to the left downstairs came the harsh breathing of a -sleeper. All the world seemed asleep for once, except -Sargon and those friendly watchers outside the walls. -Far away there were sounds of bawling and raving, but -these were stifled by distance and an intervening door. -They merely made the nearer silence more perceptible.</p> - -<p>Something stirred, a little clicking sound that sent -Sargon’s heart racing. Then a resonant blow. A second -blow. It was nothing; it was the clock downstairs striking -six.</p> - -<p>Very quietly but very resolutely he walked downstairs. -An intuition, an instinct impelled him. He felt and peered -at the door and behold! it was ajar! Unbolted! Unlocked! -Brand’s colleague was abroad upon some errand of his -own. The cold air of freedom blew upon Sargon’s face.</p> - -<p>The door opened and closed softly and Sargon stood -upon the doorstep of the left wing of the asylum, facing -the dim world of a November dawn.</p> - -<p>It was dark but it was clear, a world of ebony outlines -and colourless forms. Everything looked as if it had just -been wiped over with a wet rag. It was cold, but it was -cold without any of the hate and bitterness of wind.</p> - -<p>He crossed the gravel drive and came to a stop and -stood looking about him. The heavy building of the left -wing rose above him, a vast bulk that went up into the -paler darkness of the sky. It receded in perspective and -the central block beyond looked like the ghost of a house. -Here and there were orange-lit windows and others fainter -lit by some remote reflected light. In the lodge to the -left of the gates there was also a light. For where there -is madness there is never perfect sleep.</p> - -<p>But the asylum was as near complete silence that morning -as an asylum can ever be.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[319]</span>He looked and listened. Not a footfall. It would not do -to be found here by that other attendant....</p> - -<p>But the man was snugly away somewhere. No one -would loiter here in this chill air.</p> - -<p>What was it Sargon had to remember?</p> - -<p>The friends and believers were waiting for him. They -were waiting now. Where the river ran out of the city -wall; that was to say where the little streamlet ran out of -the grounds. That would be this way—to the left, where -the fields dropped down-hill. He stepped on to the grass, -for his feet made loud sounds on the gravel. The grass -hissed crisply. It was heavy with white frost and his -footmarks made black blots in the wet silvery grey.</p> - -<p>He walked past and away from the ponderous dark -mass of the asylum into the open, colder air of freedom. -He unlatched and went through the small iron gate in the -iron fencing that separated the trim grass plots of the -front from the cabbage field. It complained a little on its -hinge and he opened and closed it very carefully. He -struck across the field. The path ran before him into a -mist. It came out of the mist to his feet and vanished -behind him. It was as if it went past him while he -marked time. He could not remember whither the path -ran, nor how it lay with regard to the corner he sought. -But every moment things grew clearer.</p> - -<p>Every moment things grew clearer. There had been -something dark and brooding in the sky that hung over -him and seemed to watch him. He had done his best to -ignore the vague presence, because he was afraid of his -own imagination. But suddenly he saw plainly that it -was just the tops of trees showing above the mist. That -must be the line of trees along the hedge parallel to the -asylum front. He must go through these if he wanted to -go down-hill. He left the path and made his way slowly -along a frozen ridge of dug earth. He skirted long rows of -stalky cabbages, black and shrivelled and unkempt they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[320]</span> -looked like Cossack sentinels afoot. They all leant -towards him as though they listened to the sound of him.</p> - -<p>As he drew near the hedge and the trees he heard a sound -like the feet of an army of midgets. It was the drip, drip -of moisture from the trees.</p> - -<p>Far away behind him and quite invisible to him a motor -car scurried along the high-road.</p> - -<p>He had some difficulty in finding a way through the -hedge and a bramble scratched his ankle. He told himself -there was no hurry; the friends waited. Beyond the hedge -the ground went down-hill and the mist grew whiter and -thicker. The daylight was strong enough now to show -the mist dead-white. It veiled the stream altogether.</p> - -<p>He walked slowly. He had no sense of being pursued. -Brand would not go into the ward for an hour yet; he -might not miss him for a long time....</p> - -<p>What a wonderful thing, thought Sargon, is daybreak, -and how little one sees of it! Every day begins with this -miraculous drama and we sleep through it as though it did -not concern us and rouse ourselves only for the trite day. -A little while ago the world had been an inky monochrome -and now it was touched with colour. The sky was blue. -All the stars had gone—but no! not all. One still shone, a -large pale star, the star of Sargon. And the sky about -it was flushed with a faint increasing pinkiness. That -must be the east and that star must be the morning star, -hanging above the outhouse chimneys. Those chimneys -were very distinct. The butt end of the asylum which -had been a black and shapeless monster a little while ago, -had now become a dark purple shape outlined with an -exquisite clearness, eaves and ridges and chimneys and -creasings and window-frames. Four windows shone a fading -orange and two of them suddenly blinked and vanished.</p> - -<p>Would anyone look out of a window there and see him?</p> - -<p>It did not matter. He would go on down towards the -stream. This friendly mist would hide him.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[321]</span>It was wonderful to be in this white mist and yet not in -it. It was always a little way from him. And nevertheless -it wetted him. How crisp the frosted ground was, but -if one kicked through the surface, it was soft.</p> - -<p>Overhead the blueness increased and there was now a -rippled patch of pink cloud.</p> - -<p>He went deeper and deeper into the soft mist. Presently -he was walking on long wet shrivelled grass. When he -turned presently to look back at the asylum it had altogether -disappeared.</p> - -<p><i>What was that?</i> Was it something talking or was it the -beating heart of some busy elfin machine? Listen! Peer! -Think!</p> - -<p>It was the stream.</p> - -<p>Now everything was plain and easy.</p> - -<p>He walked beside the stream. Near at hand trees became -visible, attendant trees with mist about their waists, white-clad -sentinel trees. The dry grass was ranker here. And -what was this, like a denser lower mist within the mist? -This was the wall. Beyond that wall, almost within shouting -distance now, the friends and believers would be -waiting. How discreet they were! Not a murmur, not a -footfall.</p> - -<p>For a long time Sargon stood motionless beside the -culvert beneath the wall. At last he roused himself and -by a great effort and with the help of the ivy he scrambled -to the top of the wall.</p> - -<p>No one waited. Some dim four-footed thing bolted -from the frost-bitten weeds below, and then there was -silence. There was no sign of watchers nor helpers.</p> - -<p>No matter. If it was God’s will they would come.</p> - -<p>He sat very still. He did not feel deserted nor alone. -He was not in the least dismayed. He felt that the Power -who had called him into being was all about him.</p> - -<p>Slowly, steadily the light grew brighter. A little cloud -like a floating feather caught fire very suddenly and then<span class="pagenum" id="Page_322">[322]</span> -another. A great beam of light, like the beam of a searchlight, -only very much broader, appeared slanting to the -north. Then above a whaleback of distant downland came -a knife-edge of dazzling light, an effulgence, like a curved -knife, like a cap, like a dome, a quivering blazing fire-birth. -And then torn clear of the hill and round and red -the November sun had risen.</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>It was full daylight and the mist had dissolved away. -The roofs of the asylum buildings were now visible -over the crest, divested of all magic, bleak and commonplace. -From some point in that direction a dog was -barking.</p> - -<p>It was strange that there should be no one here. That -young man whose name he had never known, had made -it very plain that there were friends in waiting here. -Perhaps they had gone away and would come back -presently.</p> - -<p>Still it did not matter now very much. At any rate he -had seen a sunrise of almost incredible beauty. How good a -thing the sun was! The thing of all visible things that was -most like God.</p> - -<p>Perhaps there were no helpers here at all. Perhaps he had -misunderstood. He was stupid he knew. He misunderstood -more and more. Perhaps presently keepers would -come in search of him and take him back to the asylum. -It might be so that things were decreed. He would not -let it distress him. Life was full of trials and disappointments. -He was feeling now very cold throughout his substance -and tired so that all his energy was gone. With a -start he became aware that there was a man standing up -the slope that overlooked the asylum grounds. He felt -a thrill of renewed vitality. This man was standing quite -still looking down at the asylum. It might be one of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_323">[323]</span> -staff looking for him. Or one of the promised helpers. -One of the promised helpers?</p> - -<p>Sargon was not so calm and apathetic as he had supposed. -He was atremble from head to foot. He was not -shivering with cold but trembling with excitement. He -felt he must end this doubt one way or the other. Could -he catch this man’s eye? He waved a hand. Then he drew -a dirty little pocket-handkerchief from his dressing-gown -pocket and began to wave it. Now! Now it seemed the -man was looking straight down at Sargon.</p> - -<p>He was moving towards Sargon slowly, as if incredulous. -Then he was signalling and running.</p> - -<p>Sargon sat quite still. He knew all along they would -come for him.</p> - -<p>It was Bobby, close at hand now and crying out, “Sargon! -It is you! Sargon!” Sargon did not wait for him. He -turned about and scrambled and dropped off the wall. They -clasped hands. “You have come to fetch me?”</p> - -<p>“I was in despair. I didn’t dream you understood me. -I’m all amazed.... Let me think; what are we to do? -This is splendid. My motor bicycle is in the inn. Nuisance -that. Yes, come along. I must hide you somewhere -and fetch it. Then we will get away. I didn’t think you’d -have no clothes. Clothes? Won’t show much. Cold? -May be cold. I’ll get a rug. There’s a rug in the side-car.”</p> - -<p>He led the way back up the slope, glancing ever and -again at the asylum fields. Sargon trotted beside him, -calmly confident in God and Bobby, with the limitless -docility of one who trusts his servant.</p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>Bobby’s mind was fresh and bright that morning. He -had wandered out to the asylum simply because he could -lie in bed in a fever of regrets no longer. His extreme luck -in encountering Sargon had restored all his confidence in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_324">[324]</span> -himself and in the propitiousness of things. He made his -plans quickly and with decision. It would be impossible -to take Sargon back to the inn and give him coffee. So -soon as he was missed they would surely go to the village. -And every one would note this queer little figure with its -dressing-gown and slippers and scarred ankles. He must -get the little man into hiding somewhere close at hand. -In that small beech-wood just over the next crest. (Pity -he was so scantily clad!) Then the motor bicycle must be -fetched as quickly as possible.</p> - -<p>Sargon was absolutely trustful and obedient. “It is cold I -know,” said Bobby, “but unavoidable. I wish there were -not so many wet dead leaves.”</p> - -<p>“Only be quick and fetch help,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>“Don’t stir from here,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>It was not the most perfect hiding-place in the world, a -ditch, a clump of holly on the edge of a bare beech-wood, -but it was all that downland was likely to provide. “So -long,” said Bobby and set off at a smart trot for the inn and -the motor bicycle. He arrived flushed, dishevelled, and -out of breath and found the inn suspicious and reluctant -when he announced that he wanted his bill instantly, refused -any breakfast but a cup of tea and a chunk of -bread and butter, and set about packing his little roll. -There seemed endless things to do, taking an interminable -time. To cap a score of irritating delays the inn was short -of change and had to send out to the village shop. Billy’s -motor bicycle, always a temperamental creature, gave great -trouble with its kick starter. And meanwhile Sargon was -shivering amidst the mud and dead leaves under the dripping -trees or worse, being recaptured and led back into -captivity.</p> - -<p>It was nearly eight before Bobby came back along the -cart-track into sight of the little beech-wood, and his heart -jumped when he saw two heavy-looking men advancing -towards him. He knew them for asylum men at once;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_325">[325]</span> -they had the unmistakable flavour of subaltern authority -that distinguishes prison warders, ex-policemen, time-keepers, -and the keepers of the insane. As he throbbed -near them they came into the middle of the road and made -signs for him to stop. “Hell!” said Bobby, and pulled up.</p> - -<p>They came alongside and without evident hostility.</p> - -<p>“Excuse me, sir,” said one—and Bobby felt better.</p> - -<p>“That large place you see there, sir, is Cummerdown -Asylum. Perhaps you know it, sir?”</p> - -<p>“No. <i>Which</i> is the asylum? All of it?” Bobby felt he -was being really clever and his spirits rose.</p> - -<p>“Yesir.”</p> - -<p>“Damn great place!” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“We’ve got one of our inmates astray this morning. -Harmless little man, he is, and we ventured to stop you -and ask you if you’ve seen him.”</p> - -<p>Bobby had an inspiration. “I believe I have. Was he in -a sort of brown robe and slippers with nothing on his head?”</p> - -<p>“That’s ’im, sir. Where did you see him?”</p> - -<p>Bobby turned round and pointed in the direction from -which he had come. “He was making off along the edge of -a field,” he said. “I saw him not—oh, not five minutes ago. -Mile, or a bit more, away from here. Running he was. -Along a hedge to the right—left I mean—near a chestnut -plantation.”</p> - -<p>“That’s ’im all right, Jim. <i>Where</i> did you say, sir?”</p> - -<p>Bobby’s brilliance increased. “If one of you will sit behind -me and the other get into this contraption—bit of a -load, but we can manage it—I’ll run you back to the very -place. Right away.” And without more ado he set about -turning round. “That’s a real help, sir,” said Jim. “Don’t -mention it,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>Bobby was now at the top of his form. He loaded them in -with helpful words—even the smaller of the two was a -tight fit for the side-car and the other sat like a sack on the -luggage carrier—he took them back a mile and a half until<span class="pagenum" id="Page_326">[326]</span> -he found the suitable hedge by the chestnut tree. He unloaded -them carefully, received their hearty but hasty -thanks with a generous gesture and sent them off at a -smart trot across the fields. “He can’t have a mile’s start,” -he said. “And he wasn’t going particularly fast. Sort of -limping.”</p> - -<p>“That’s ’im,” said Jim.</p> - -<p>Bobby kissed his hand to their retreating backs. “That’s -<i>you</i>,” said Bobby. “God help you both and cleanse your -hearts. And now for Sargon.”</p> - -<p>He buzzed back to the place where he had left Sargon, -turned his machine round again and then looked towards -the corner of the wood by the holly clump where the little -man ought to have been waiting. But there was no sign of -a peeping head. “Queer!” said Bobby, and ran up to the -place where he had left Sargon crouching in the ditch. -Not a sign was there of him. Bobby looked about him, -baffled and frightened. After all, after everything, could -things go wrong now?</p> - -<p>“Sargon,” he called, and then louder, “Sargon!”</p> - -<p>Not a sound, not a rustle came in reply.</p> - -<p>“He’s hidden! Can he have crawled away and fainted? -Exhausted perhaps!”</p> - -<p>Fear touched Bobby with a chilly finger. Had he mistaken -the place perhaps? Had Sargon strayed away in spite -of his promise, or crept back numbed and wretched to the -warmth and shelter of the asylum? Bobby followed the -ditch down to the corner of the wood, and beyond the -corner in the ditch to the right he suddenly beheld a little -old woman, a little old woman sitting bunched in a heap on -a litter of dry straw and fast asleep. She was wearing a -battered black straw hat adorned with a broken black -feather, a small black jacket bodice; a sack was drawn over -her feet and a second sack thrown shawlwise over her -shoulders. She was so crumpled up her face was hidden, -all except one bright red ear, and behind her on the bank<span class="pagenum" id="Page_327">[327]</span> -lay two large stakes tied in the form of a cross. To Bobby -she was the most astonishing of apparitions. It was disconcerting -enough to discover Sargon gone. It was still -more amazing to find him so oddly replaced.</p> - -<p>Bobby stood hesitating for the better part of a minute. -Should he wake the old thing up and ask her about Sargon, -or should he steal away? Nothing, he decided, would be -lost by asking.</p> - -<p>He went close up to her and coughed. “Excuse me, -Madam,” he said.</p> - -<p>The sleeper did not awake.</p> - -<p>Bobby rustled among the leaves, coughed louder, and -asked to be excused again. The sleeper muttered a choking -snore, woke with a start, looked up, and revealed the -face of Sargon. He stared at Bobby without recognition -for a moment and then gave way to an enormous yawn. -While he yawned, his blue eyes gathered intelligence and -understanding. “I was so cold,” he said. “I took these -things from the scarecrow. And the straw was nice and -dry to sit on. Shall we put it all back?”</p> - -<p>“Oh, glorious idea!” cried Bobby, with all his spirits restored. -“It makes an honest woman of you. Can you -walk in that sack? No, we haven’t time to put it back. -Shake it down off your legs and bring it with you. The -side-car isn’t two hundred yards away. You’ll be able to -put it on again then. This is magnificent! This is wonderful! -Certainly we won’t put it back. Off we’ll go, -and when we’ve a good ten miles between us and the -asylum we’ll stop and get some hot coffee and something -to eat.”</p> - -<p>“Hot coffee!” said Sargon, brightening visibly. “And -bacon and eggs?”</p> - -<p>“Hot coffee and bacon and eggs,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“The coffee there is—<i>beastly</i>,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>Bobby helped Sargon into the side-car and raised the -hood over him, erected the wind-screen, and so packed him<span class="pagenum" id="Page_328">[328]</span> -away. He became a quite passable aunt, dimly seen. And -in another minute Bobby had kicked the engine into an -impatient fuss and was in the saddle.</p> - -<p>He felt himself now the cleverest fellow that ever stole a -lunatic. Not that it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to -get a lunatic away. If you knew how.... They quivered -and jolted along the little minor road and so on to the -smooth main highway to Ashford and Folkestone. The -accelerator was urged to do its best. “Good-bye, Cummerdown,” -sang Bobby. “Cummerdown Hill, good-bye!”</p> - -<p>The little old motor bike was going beautifully.</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>They got their breakfast at an inn near a Post Office a -mile or so beyond Offham. Bobby left Sargon dozing in -the side-car and went to send a telegram to Dymchurch -announcing his coming. There was some delay in the Post -Office, as the post-mistress had mislaid her spectacles. -Bobby returned to find the breakfast nearly ready and to -assist Sargon out of his sack and into the little room of the -inn. The landlord was a short, stout man, with a grave -observant face. He watched this emergence of Sargon and -his progress to a chair behind the little white tablecloth, -with silent wonder. Then for a time he hid. Then he -came back into the little room where the table was set. -For some moments he stood regarding Sargon. “Umph!” -he said at last and turned about and went slowly into his -kitchen where some sort of wife seemed to be cooking -things. “’E’s a rummun”; Bobby heard him remark, and so -was prepared for discussion.</p> - -<p>The ham and eggs and coffee were served and received -with eagerness. The landlord stood over them scrutinizing -their reception of his provisions. “Hain’t ’ad no breakfast, -then?” he said.</p> - -<p>“Having it now,” said Bobby, helping himself to mustard.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_329">[329]</span>“Come far?” said the landlord after a thoughtful pause.</p> - -<p>“Fairly,” said Bobby with judgment.</p> - -<p>“Going far?” the landlord tried.</p> - -<p>“So-so,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>The landlord rallied his forces for a great effort. “We -get some rummy customers here at times,” he said.</p> - -<p>“You must attract them,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>The landlord could make nothing of that. He turned -about and said “Umph”—meaningly.</p> - -<p>“Umph,” said Bobby, just saturating it with meaning.</p> - -<p>The landlord made a cunning attempt as they were departing. -“Hope you enjoyed your breakfast,” he said. “I -don’t know rightly whether it’s a lady or a gentleman you -got with you—still——”</p> - -<p>Bobby’s mercurial temperament was far too high just -then. “It’s hermaphrodite,” he said in a confidential -whisper and left the landlord with that.</p> - -<p>But when they had gone a few miles further he told -Sargon he had decided to buy him some socks and a -jacket and trousers at the next shop they saw. “As it is,” -he said, “you are ambiguous. And then we’ll put that hat -and jacket and the sacking by the wayside for anyone who -wants to use them. And I’ll have to send another telegram. -I made a mistake.”</p> - -<p>Bobby’s mental state became more febrile as the day -wore on. He developed a wonderfully circumstantial lie -about a cottage and a fire and how his friend had only -escaped with just a few articles of clothing hastily put on. -“Everything else,” said Bobby, “practically incinerated.” -They were going down to take refuge with a variable relation, -a brother, an uncle, a maiden aunt. As the day -progressed the circumstances of the fire became richer and -more remarkable and the particulars of the escape more -definitely thrilling. Bobby told such lies with great sincerity -and gravity; they were a form of freedom—from -reality.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_330">[330]</span>Sargon himself said very little. For him this adventure -was a severer endurance test than Bobby realized at the -time. For the most part he was either cramped up and -boxed in under the hood and wind-screen and being jolted -and jumped along the hard high-road, or he was hastily -changing some garment by the roadside, or he was sitting -still in the side-car taking refreshment and being lucidly -but perplexingly, and usually quite unnecessarily, explained.</p> - -<h4>§ 8</h4> - -<p>Mrs. Plumer, of Maresett Cottage, Dymchurch, was an -anxious widow woman. She had a kind, serviceable heart, -but it was troubled about many things. She saved and -eked out almost too much. She let most of her rooms in -the summer and some even in the winter, but she hated to -think of the things careless lodgers might do to her furniture. -She liked everything to be in order and lodgers -better looking and better behaved than Mrs. Pringle’s -lodgers or Mrs. Mackinder’s lodgers. She had taken a fancy -to Bobby because he had fitted in nicely when she had had -only one room to spare, and because he had shaved in -cold water instead of calling down as every other man -lodger did—there was no bell in that room—for hot. Also -he talked agreeably when he came in and out and didn’t -want more at meals.</p> - -<p>She was very pleased when he wrote to take her downstairs -living-room and two bedrooms for himself and a -friend for a fortnight. There were few people in Dymchurch -who got “lets” in November. They might come -“any time” after Tuesday.</p> - -<p>She told Mrs. Pringle and Mrs. Mackinder that she was -expecting two young gentlemen, and left them to suppose -that her guests might stay on indefinitely.</p> - -<p>On Wednesday she was excited and rather perplexed by a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_331">[331]</span> -series of telegrams from Bobby. The first said plainly and -distinctly: “<i>Arriving with aunt about four Roothing.</i>” That -disappointed her. She would have infinitely preferred two -gentlemen.</p> - -<p>But within an hour came another wire and this said: -“<i>Error in telegram not aunt uncle sorry Roothing.</i>”</p> - -<p>Now what was one to make of <i>that</i>?</p> - -<p>Presently the child from the Post Office was back again. -“<i>Uncle catching cold fire hot-water bottles whisky.</i>”</p> - -<p>The next sensational telegram announced a delay. “<i>Tyre -trouble not so soon later Roothing.</i>”</p> - -<p>Then came: “<i>Sixish almost certain good fire please -Roothing.</i>”</p> - -<p>“It’s very good of him,” said Mrs. Plumer “to keep me -informed like this. But I hope the old gentleman won’t -be fussy.”</p> - -<p>The fire in the downstairs sitting-room was burning -brightly at six, there was a kettle on the hob, there were -not only tea-things, but whisky, sugar, glasses, and a lemon -on the table and a hot-water bottle in both the beds upstairs -when the fugitives arrived. Mrs. Plumer’s first feelings -at the sight of Sargon were feelings of disappointment. -She had allowed her mind to run away with the idea of a -warm, comfortable uncle with at most a whisky-drinking -cold, an uncle who would be, if not absolutely golden, at -least gilt-edged. She had, if anything, exaggerated her -memories of Mr. Roothing’s geniality. So soon as she -held open her door at the roar and toot of the motor -bicycle, she saw that her anticipations would have to be -modified again. Things were rather indistinct in the -deepening twilight, but she could see that Bobby wasn’t -wearing the full and proper leather costume with gauntlets -and goggles complete, that a real young gentleman would -have worn on such an occasion and which Mrs. Pringle -and Mrs. Mackinder would have respected, and that the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_332">[332]</span> -shape he was extracting from the side-car was not the -shape of a properly-expanded uncle. It looked much more -like a large hen taken out of a small basket on market -day.</p> - -<p>As Sargon came into the light of the living-room, Mrs. -Plumer’s disillusionment deepened and decreased. She -had rarely seen so strange and weather-beaten an outcast. -His blue eyes stared pitifully out of a pale face; his hair, -beneath an unsuitable black felt hat, was greatly disordered. -He was clad chiefly in an excessive pair of trousers which -he clutched nervously to keep up; very full they were with -his dressing-gown tails; his too ample white socks fell like -gaiters over his old felt slippers and betrayed his distressful -ankles. He looked afraid. He stared at her almost as -though he anticipated an unfriendly reaction. And Bobby, -too, standing beside him, looked rough and travel-worn -and eventful, and not at all the self-effacing young gentleman -she had remembered.</p> - -<p>When Bobby saw the swift play of Mrs. Plumer’s expression -he realized that their foothold in this pleasant, restful, -firelit apartment was precarious. Happily a reserve -lie he had thought of, but not hitherto used, came aptly -to his mind.</p> - -<p>“Isn’t it a shame!” he said. “They went off with his -clothes. Even his socks.”</p> - -<p>“They seem to have,” said Mrs. Plumer, “whoever they -were.”</p> - -<p>“Pure hold-up. This side of Ashford. My big bag too.”</p> - -<p>“And where did the gentleman get the clothes he’s -wearing?” she asked. Her tone was unpleasantly sceptical.</p> - -<p>“They exchanged. I’d gone back along the road to see -if I could see anything of the tyre-pump I’d dropped, -never thinking anything of the sort was possible on an -English high-road. (Come and sit by the fire, uncle.) -And when I came back they’d gone and there he was—as -you see him. Imagine my astonishment!”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_333">[333]</span>“And you never sent a telegram about it!” said Mrs. -Plumer.</p> - -<p>“Too near home. I’d have got here first, anyhow. Well, -we’ve had adventures enough to-day, anyhow. I’ve never -known such a journey. Thank heaven, we’ve had our tea. -I think the best place for uncle is bed—until we can -arrange some clothes for him. What do you think, Mrs. -Plumer?”</p> - -<p>“After he’s had a good wash,” said Mrs. Plumer. She -was still doubtful, but a sort of kindliness was struggling -to the surface. “Weren’t you afraid when they jumped out -on you, sir!” She asked Sargon directly. His blue eyes -sought Bobby’s for instructions.</p> - -<p>“It was a great shock to him,” said Bobby, “a great -shock. He’s hardly got over it yet.”</p> - -<p>“Hardly got over it yet,” said Sargon in confirmation.</p> - -<p>“Took all your clothes off, they did. It’s shameful,” -said Mrs. Plumer. “And you with a cold coming on.”</p> - -<p>“We’ll get him to bed. Of course, if you’ve got anything -for us to eat we might have it first here. Perhaps just a bit -of toasted cheese or Welsh Rarebit, or something of that -sort, and a good hot grog. Eh, uncle?”</p> - -<p>“Don’t want much to eat,” said Sargon. “No.”</p> - -<p>“I haven’t forgotten that Welsh Rarebit you made for -me, Mrs. Plumer, after I got caught in the rain on the way -from Hythe.”</p> - -<p>“Well, I daresay I could get you a Welsh Rarebit,” said -Mrs. Plumer, softening visibly.</p> - -<p>“Famous,” said Bobby. “Make a new man of him. -And meanwhile I’ll run the old bike round to the shed. -If I may put it in the shed? You’ll be all right here, -uncle?”</p> - -<p>“It’s safe?”</p> - -<p>“Every one’s safe with Mrs. Plumer,” said Bobby, and -held the door open for her to precede him out of the room.</p> - -<p>“I’ll tell you about him to-morrow morning,” he said<span class="pagenum" id="Page_334">[334]</span> -to her confidentially in the passage. “He’s a wonderful -man.”</p> - -<p>“He’s all right?” asked Mrs. Plumer.</p> - -<p>“Right as can be.”</p> - -<p>“He looks that distraught!”</p> - -<p>“He’s a poet,” said Bobby, “besides playing on the -violin,” and so satisfied her completely.</p> - -<p>But he did not feel that he had brought the wonderful -day to a completely successful end until he had got Sargon -washed and brushed and tucked up cosily in Mrs. Plumer’s -bright little best bedroom. “Now we’re anchored,” he -said. He went into his own room and sat down for a time -to invent things about his uncle in case Mrs. Plumer was -desirous of more explicit information when he went downstairs. -He decided to say “He’s eccentric,” in an impressive, -elucidatory way. “And very shy.” His uncle, he would -explain, was suffering from overwork, due to writing an -heroic poem about the Prince of Wales’ journey round the -world. He wanted a complete rest. And sea air. The -more he stayed in bed and indoors the better. He filled in -a few useful details of this story, sat for a little while -twiddling the toes of his boots, and then got up and went -downstairs. He felt sure he could carry it off all right with -Mrs. Plumer. He found her waiting for him. The chief -difficulty he encountered was her conviction that the police -ought to be told of the highway robbery this side of -Ashford at once.</p> - -<p>“H’m,” said Bobby and for a moment he was at a loss. -Then he decided. “I’ve done that already,” he said.</p> - -<p>“But when?”</p> - -<p>“I telephoned from an Automobile Association box. To -the Ashford police. It will be in their district you know. -Not in Romney Marsh. Sharp fellows, the Ashford police. -I had to describe the lost clothes and everything. They -don’t let much get by them.”</p> - -<p>She took it beautifully. After that everything was easy.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_335">[335]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 9</h4> - -<p>The next morning found Sargon developing an evil cold -in his throat and chest. His chest was painful and he was -feverish, red-cheeked, bright-eyed, and short of breath. -Bobby did not care to consult a doctor. He believed that -all doctors constituted a league for the re-incarceration of -escaped lunatics. He imagined secret notices about escapes -being circulated throughout the profession. He motored -to Hythe and got ammoniated quinine, several sorts of -voice jujube, two iodine preparations for the chest, and -suchlike trifles that the chemist recommended. When he -returned about midday the patient looked better and -seemed in less pain. After Bobby had administered quinine -and rubbed his chest and made a generally curative -fuss, he was able and disposed to talk.</p> - -<p>“The pillow all right?” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“Perfect.”</p> - -<p>“You ought to doze for a bit now.”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>Sargon thought. “I shall not have to go back to that -Place again?”</p> - -<p>“I hope not.”</p> - -<p>The flushed face became very earnest. “Promise me not. -Promise me not. I couldn’t endure it.”</p> - -<p>“No need to be anxious,” said Bobby. “Here, you are -quite safe.”</p> - -<p>“And there will be no need to get into that side-car -again?”</p> - -<p>“None.”</p> - -<p>“Never?”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“It bumped—horribly.... Where is Christina Alberta?”</p> - -<p>Bobby did not answer for a moment or so.</p> - -<p>“Perhaps I ought to explain. I do not know who Christina<span class="pagenum" id="Page_336">[336]</span> -Alberta is. I took you out of the asylum because I do -not believe you are mad. But I know nothing of your -family. I know nothing about your circumstances at all. -I just couldn’t bear the thought of you in an asylum.”</p> - -<p>Sargon lay in silence for a little while with his blue eyes -on Bobby’s face. “You were sorry for me?”</p> - -<p>“I liked you from the very first moment I saw you in -Midgard Street.”</p> - -<p>“<i>Liked</i> me? But you believed I was Sargon, King of -Kings?”</p> - -<p>“Practically,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“You didn’t. Neither, I suppose, did I.”</p> - -<p>The vague blue eyes left Bobby’s face and stared out of -the window at the sky. “I have been very much confused -in my mind,” said Sargon. “Even now I am not clear. -But I realize I am confused. Christina Alberta is my -daughter. The Princess Royal I called her. In Sumeria. -She is a very dear, bold girl. She is all I have. I left her -and came away from her, and I must have distressed her -greatly.”</p> - -<p>“Then she may not know where you have been?”</p> - -<p>“She may be looking for me.”</p> - -<p>“Where is she?”</p> - -<p>“I have been trying to remember. It was in a studio -somewhere—with peculiar pictures. I never liked those -pictures. A studio in a Mew. It had a name but I cannot -remember its name. It is stupid of me. Probably Christina -Alberta is there with her friends—still wondering what -has become of me.”</p> - -<p>“At the—at the <i>Place</i>, they told me your name was -Preemby.”</p> - -<p>“Albert Edward Preemby.... I wonder.”</p> - -<p>He lay reflecting for a time. “I remember that for a long -time I thought I was Albert Edward Preemby, a small -creature, a little man living a mean life in a laundry. A -laundry with large blue vans. The swastika. You cannot<span class="pagenum" id="Page_337">[337]</span> -imagine what a small, insignificant life it was that this -Preemby led. And then suddenly I thought I could not -possibly be Preemby and also an immortal soul. Either -there was no Preemby, I thought, or there was no God. -There could not possibly be both. It perplexed and -worried me very much. Because there I was—Preemby. -I am not good at thinking—all my thinking goes off into a -kind of dreaming. And then when there came evidence -that seemed satisfactory—perhaps I jumped at what I was -told. But Sargon must have been a great king, a very great -king, and I am small and weak and not very intelligent. -When the keepers and attendants bullied me and ill-treated -me I did not behave as a great king should have behaved, -and when I saw them doing evil things to other—other -patients, I did not interfere. Yet all the time I think I -am something different from the Albert Edward Preemby -I used to be, something more and something better. But -it leaves me confused to think who I am, and I am very -tired. Perhaps, when I have rested a day or two, I may -be better able to think about these things.”</p> - -<p>The faded voice died away. The blue eyes remained -staring tranquilly at the sky.</p> - -<p>Bobby said nothing for a little while. Then he remarked, -“I have seen men ill-treated.”</p> - -<p>And then; “and I am not so slight as you are.”</p> - -<p>He said no more. It did not seem as though Sargon had -heard him. Bobby stood up.</p> - -<p>“You must rest. You are perfectly safe here. If we can -remain unnoted here for two weeks then it will be impossible -ever to send you back to that place again. Are you -comfortable?”</p> - -<p>“It is a beautiful bed,” said Sargon.</p> - -<p>But beautiful though the bed was it was not sufficient to -arrest the trouble in Sargon’s aching chest. He seemed -very exhausted that evening. In the night he began coughing; -he coughed so distressingly that Bobby went in to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_338">[338]</span> -him. In the morning he was spiritless and did not want to -eat. Bobby sat in the room downstairs working at the pile -of Aunt Suzannah correspondence that Billy had sent on -to him. He was half-minded to appeal to Tessy to come -down and help with the nursing, but there was no bedroom -available for her. Mrs. Plumer pressed for a doctor -and he put her off. Finally, on her own responsibility, she -brought in a young man who was just starting a practice in -the place. Bobby had a terrifying interview, but the young -doctor betrayed no suspicions. On the whole, he was reassuring. -There was congestion of the lungs but nothing -worse. Sargon must keep very warm and take this and -that. No urgent need for a nurse. Keep him warm and -give him his medicine.</p> - -<p>Late in the evening Bobby went up to say good night -and found Sargon better and more talkative.</p> - -<p>“I have been thinking of Christina Alberta and I should -like to see her. I would like to see her and tell her things I -have been thinking about her. I have been thinking out all -sorts of curious things. Perhaps I am not so much to her -as she may think. But chiefly I want to talk to her about -a young man I dislike. What was he called? When I was -last at Lonsdale Mews, she danced with him.”</p> - -<p>“Lonsdale Mews!”</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, of course. I had forgotten. Eight Lonsdale -Mews, Lonsdale Road, Chelsea. But my mind is very confused -and I do not know what I should say to her even if -she came.”</p> - -<p>Bobby wrote down the address forthwith.</p> - -<p>“And this Christina Alberta is all you have?” he -asked.</p> - -<p>“All I have.</p> - -<p>“Twenty. Quite a child really. I ought never to have -left her. But there came a sort of wonder upon me—As -though the world was opening. It made everything else -seem very trivial.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_339">[339]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 10</h4> - -<div class="blockquot2"> -<p>“<i>There came a sort of wonder upon me as though the -world was opening.</i>”</p> -</div> - -<p>Bobby wrote that down also. And he sat very late before -the fire in the ground-floor room thinking that over and -thinking over the message he would have to send to Christina -Alberta in the morning. To-morrow he would have -to explain himself and his extraordinary intervention in -Preemby affairs. It was by no means plain to himself -as yet, and to-morrow he would have to make plain to a -probably very indignant young lady why her father had -so caught his sympathies and fascinated his imagination as -to tempt him to this escapade. He found himself thrown -back on self-analysis. He found himself scrutinizing his -own motives and his own scheme of existence.</p> - -<p>He knew and understood that feeling, “as though the -world was opening” so well. Still better did he know that -feeling of dead emptiness in life out of which it arose. In -his own case he had thought this habitual discontent with -the daily round, this urgency towards something strange -and grandiose, was due to the dislocation of all his expectations -of life by the great war; that it was a subjective -aspect of nervous instability; but in the case of this little -laundryman it could not have been the war that had sent -him out, a sort of emigrant from himself, to find a fantastic -universal kingdom. It must be something more fundamental -than the war accident. It must be a normal disposition -in men towards detachment from safety and comfort.</p> - -<p>He glanced towards the pile of his Aunt Suzannah correspondence -on the table and the next sheet of “copy” for -<i>Wilkins’ Weekly</i> he had distilled therefrom. He rose from -his arm-chair and went back to his work with his wisdom -refreshed. He wrote: “So soon as man’s elementary needs -are satisfied and he is sure of food, clothing and shelter,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_340">[340]</span> -he comes under the sway of a greater imperative; he goes -out to look for trouble. So that I would not discourage -‘Croydon’s’ desire to become a missionary in West Africa -in spite of his religious doubts and his peculiar feeling -about black people. Such a region as Sherborough Island -will probably supply him with a good sustained, sustaining, -and ennobling system of troubles. A white man who has -once challenged the hostility of a West African secret society -will have little leisure for morbid introspection. He -will hardly have a dull moment....”</p> - -<p>He stopped writing. “Reads a little ironical,” he said -“And not quite Aunt Suzannah enough.”</p> - -<p>He reflected. “My mind scampers off from me at times. -Not in the vein to-day.”</p> - -<p>The one thing they must never feel about Aunt Suzannah -was that she could be ironical. No! it wouldn’t do. He -ran his pen through the six sentences he had just written -and pushed the sheet away from him. He drew another -sheet towards him on which he had been composing with -great difficulty a telegram to be sent next morning to -“Preemby, 8 Lonsdale Mews, Chelsea.” He read over -various drafts. The current form ran as follows: “<i>Your -father safe but with severe chest cold care of Roothing -Maresett Cottage Dymchurch desires see you discretion -very necessary return confinement fatal results best station -Hythe and cab could meet you Hythe if wire in time but do -not know you personally am tallish slender dark Roothing.</i>”</p> - -<p>Properly considered it was all right.</p> - -<p>He tried to imagine what sort of girl this Christina -Alberta Preemby would be. She would be blue-eyed of -course and probably very fair; a little taller and rounder -than her father, soft-voiced and rather dreamy. She would -be timid and affectionate, very kind and gentle and a little -incompetent. Perhaps it would be well to meet her at -Hythe so soon as he knew which train she was coming by. -The cab business might be a strain on her. He would have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_341">[341]</span> -to tell her what to do. To a considerable extent now he -had made himself responsible for the fortunes of both these -people. And he liked to think that. He liked to think that -perhaps these might become his own people, more of his -own people than the Malmesburys. Because to be frank -about it with himself he was a little bit of an interpolation -in the Malmesbury household. They liked him; they were -perfect dears to him; but they could do without him. -Even that little devil Susan managed without him; she -liked him and tyrannized over him but he knew he wasn’t -indispensable to her. Here at last might be two people -who couldn’t do without him, who might to an extraordinary -extent become his people.</p> - -<p>Of course he would have to put on a little more appearance -of strength and determination than was actually his -quality. He owed it to them to keep up their confidence -in him so that he might be able to direct them in their -difficulties.</p> - -<p>He would say to her—what would he say to her? “I have -been hasty, I know, but I know something of the strain -that is put upon the sane patient in an asylum. I thought -that the first thing to do was to get your father out of it. -It didn’t occur to me that for a time he might have forgotten -your address. Perhaps I ought to have come to you -before I acted. But then how was I to know there <i>was</i> a -you? Until he told me of your existence. In so many cases -in these asylums the relatives are hostile to release. It is -dreadful to admit it, but it is so.”</p> - -<p>Then rather humorously and quite modestly he would -describe the escape. He was already forgetting the uncertainties -of the visiting-day conversation and the numerous -accidental factors in the meeting by the culvert. But all -history has this knack of eliminating unnecessary detail.</p> - -<p>So he would make his statement. It did not occur to him -that Christina Alberta might be the sort of person who -interrupts speeches with elucidatory questions.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_342">[342]</span>He lit a cigarette, strolled about the room, and came to -rest standing before the fire and looking down on the -glowing coals. He was sure now that Christina Alberta -was blue-eyed, fragile, shy—with a deep sweet vein of -humorous fantasy hidden away in her. Very probably she -concealed a gift for writing. It would be for him perhaps -to discover that and cultivate it and bring it out. Together -they would protect Sargon, already more than half recovered -from the intoxication of his dream. They would -have to soften the humiliations of his complete awakening. -How fortunate and as it were providential it was that he -had been impelled to rescue the little man!—for otherwise -he would never have met Christina Alberta, never won her -timid wealth of love....</p> - -<p>“<i>Eh!</i></p> - -<p>“But this is all damned nonsense!” said Bobby violently, -and threw his cigarette into the fire. “This is just fancy! -I haven’t even <i>seen</i> the girl!”</p> - -<p>He lit his candle, put out Mrs. Plumer’s oil lamp with all -the devices and precautions proper to this dangerous survival -from the Dark Ages, and went up to bed. He stopped -and listened outside Sargon’s door. The patient was asleep -and breathing rather noisily—ever and again choking with -a little cough.</p> - -<p>“I wish the weather had kept warmer,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>When he opened his own bedroom door, the flame of -his candle writhed and flared horizontally, the curtains -streamed into the room and a sheet of paper flapped on -the dressing-table. He put down the candle and went to -shut the window. The wind was rising and there was a -little patter of raindrops on the pane.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_343">[343]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE THIRD<br> - -<i>The Last Phase</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">I<small>T</small> was part of the general unsatisfactoriness of Bobby’s -make-up that he was acutely responsive to meteorological -conditions. That late Indian summer was over now, -and the heavens and the earth and the air between began -to push, hustle, wet, chill, darken, distress and bully him. -Jumbled grey clouds came hurrying across Dymchurch -from Dungeness and the Atlantic, torn, angular, outstretched -clouds with malicious expressions like witches -and warlocks, emitting fierce squirts of rain. Under their -skirts came the waves in long rolling regiments, threatening -from afar, breaking into premature handfuls of foam, -gathering force at last, towering up for a last culminating -thud against the sea-wall and spouting heavenward in -white fountains of suddy water.</p> - -<p>“Face it, man,” said Bobby. “Face it. It’s only Nature. -Brace up to it. Think of this poor girl.”</p> - -<p>He forced himself to do a morning’s walk along the top -of the sea-wall, with his wet trousers flapping against his -legs like flags against their staves.</p> - -<p>“Glorious wind!” he told Sargon when he went in to see -him. “But I wish there was a gleam of sun.”</p> - -<p>“Have you any news from Christina Alberta?” asked -Sargon.</p> - -<p>“There’s hardly time yet for a reply to my wire. But -she’ll surely come,” said Bobby, and went downstairs to -dry his legs at the fire.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_344">[344]</span>He did not expect a summons to Hythe to meet the -young lady very much before half-past twelve. Meanwhile -he went out to the shed and assured himself that the -motor bicycle and side-car were in perfect order for a hasty -journey. Half-past twelve came, one, half-past one. He -had some lunch. He became very restless, and rose and -looked out of the window frequently to see if the messenger -girl was coming with Christina Alberta’s telegram. -About two a large, silent, luxurious-looking, hired Daimler -car appeared outside and stopped at Mrs. Plumer’s gate. -A hatless bobbed head appeared at the window and exchanged -remarks with the driver, who descended and -opened the door. The car emitted a handsome and determined -young woman of advanced appearance, hatless and -short-skirted, and a lean, dark, prosperous-looking man of -thirty-eight or forty in blue serge and a grey felt hat. The -man opened the gate for the girl, and she surveyed the -house as she advanced.</p> - -<p>Bobby realized that Christina Alberta had not kept her -promise to be blue-eyed and fragile. She had betrayed -him. Yet for all her treachery he had built up a sense of -personal relationship with her that gripped him still. He -watched her approach with an excitement he found difficult -to control. He wondered who the devil the dark man -was. A cousin perhaps. She discovered Bobby watching -her from the window and their eyes met.</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>Bobby, with an instinct that is given to young people for -such occasions, perceived that he interested Christina -Alberta extremely. He parleyed with her and Devizes in -Mrs. Plumer’s little downstairs room. He spoke chiefly -to her. Devizes he treated as a secondary figure, a voice -at her elbow. “He’s got a nasty cold on his chest,” he -said. “He’s been asking for Miss Preemby——”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_345">[345]</span>“Christina Alberta,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>“Christina Alberta a lot. But it was only last night I -could get the address out of him. He’d forgotten it before. -We’ve been here over a day. He caught the cold coming -here.”</p> - -<p>“How did you come here?” Devizes threw in.</p> - -<p>“Motor bicycle,” said Bobby. “But there was a lot of -waiting about before we could get away and it was a cold -raw morning, and he had just his nightgown and dressing-gown -and slippers. So hard to foresee everything.”</p> - -<p>“But how did you come to be rescuing him?”</p> - -<p>Bobby smiled at Devizes. “Somebody had to be rescuing -him.”</p> - -<p>He turned to Christina Alberta again. “Couldn’t bear -the thought of his being under lock and key. He took -a room, you see, in the place where I lodged, and there -was something innocent and—delightful about him. I’ve -a weakness, a sympathy perhaps, with absurdity.... -You ought to go up to him and see him.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, we’d better look at him,” said Devizes.</p> - -<p>(Who the devil was this fellow?)</p> - -<p>Bobby asserted himself. “Christina Alberta first, I -think.”</p> - -<p>He took Christina Alberta up to her daddy and closed -the door on a warm embrace. “And now, Mr. de Vezes, or -whatever you are,” he said to himself on the staircase, -“where do <i>you</i> come in?” He descended and found Devizes -standing very irritatingly upon his hearthrug before his -fire. As he stood there a remote resemblance to Christina -Alberta was perceptible. Bobby had an incoherent recognition -of the fact that in some obscure way Devizes was -responsible for Christina Alberta’s failure to produce blue -eyes. He was a little slow in saying what he intended to -say, and Devizes was able to take the initiative. “Forgive -my blunt impertinence,” he said, “but may I ask who you -are?”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_346">[346]</span>“I’m a writer,” said Bobby, refraining from any glance at -the accumulation of Aunt Suzannah material upon the side -table.</p> - -<p>“You’ve finished lunch?” asked Devizes in a disregarded -parenthesis.</p> - -<p>“May I ask the same question of you?” said Bobby, “and -how it is you come to be connected with the Preembys?”</p> - -<p>“I’m a blood relation,” said Devizes, considering it. “On -the mother’s side. A sort of cousin. And I happen to be -a nervous and mental specialist. That’s why I’ve been -brought in to-day.”</p> - -<p>“I see,” said Bobby. “You’ve got no intention of—putting -him back?”</p> - -<p>“None at all. We’re not antagonists, Mr——”</p> - -<p>“Roothing.”</p> - -<p>“We’re on the same side. You did well to get him out. -We were trying to do the same thing by less original -methods. We’re very grateful to you. The lunacy laws -are rather a clumsy and indiscriminating machine. But, -as you probably know, if he keeps clear of them for fourteen -days, they’ll have to begin with him all over again. -He renews his sanity. We’re allies in that. We’ve got to -know each other better. Your intervention—most surprising—strikes -me as being at once eccentric and -courageous. I wish you’d tell me more about it, how you -met him, how they got hold of him, and what set you -thinking of an escape.”</p> - -<p>“H’m,” said Bobby, and came and asserted his right to -half the hearthrug. He had thought of the way in which -he could tell this story—to Christina Alberta—the original -Christina Alberta with the blue eyes. He felt that that -version needed considerable revision, indeed, possibly even -a complete rearrangement, for the present hearer. He was -by no means sure he wanted to tell it to the present hearer. -The man was a doctor and a mental specialist and a distant<span class="pagenum" id="Page_347">[347]</span> -relation, and he was for keeping Sargon out of an asylum, -and that was all to the good, but it still lingered in Bobby’s -mind that he was an interloper. Nevertheless, he made -way for Bobby quite civilly on the hearthrug, and his manner -was attentive and respectful. Bobby embarked upon -a description of Sargon’s first appearance in Midgard -Street.</p> - -<p>Devizes showed himself alert and intelligent. He grasped -the significance of Sargon’s projected visit to the dome of -Saint Paul’s at once. “I’ve no doubt he did it,” said Devizes. -“Neither have I,” said Bobby, “though I’ve not asked -him about it yet.” They pieced together the probable story -of the calling of the disciples before Billy and Bobby had -come upon the procession. “It’s touching,” said Devizes, -“and immense.” Bobby approved these words.</p> - -<p>“You see how he got me,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>A distinct flavour of friendliness for Devizes crept by -imperceptible degrees into Bobby’s mind. Difficulties that -had seemed to threaten his explanation vanished; this man, -he perceived, could understand anything a fellow did. -Devizes made him feel that the extraction of Sargon from -Cummerdown by a perfect stranger was the most simple -and natural thing to do imaginable. Bobby warmed to -his story; his sense of humour took heart of grace, and he -became frank and amusing about his difficulties on the -visiting day. As he was telling of the foxy-faced deaf -mute, Christina Alberta came back again into the downstairs -room.</p> - -<p>“He takes me as a matter of course,” she said. “He -seems weak and drowsy and his chest is bad.” She spoke -more definitely to Devizes. “I think you ought to overhaul -him.”</p> - -<p>“There is a doctor in attendance?” he asked Bobby.</p> - -<p>Bobby explained. Devizes considered. Was Sargon dozing? -Yes. Then let him doze for a bit. Bobby, working<span class="pagenum" id="Page_348">[348]</span> -now a little more consciously for effect, went on with his -story. Christina Alberta regarded him with manifest -approval.</p> - -<p>By tea-time Bobby had adjusted his mind to the existence -of Devizes and the unexpectedness of Christina -Alberta. All that carried over from his state of expectation -was the idea that his relations with Christina -Alberta were to be very profound and intimate. He still -believed that, hidden away in her somewhere, there must be -a blue-eyed, yielding, really feminine person, but it was -very deeply hidden. Meanwhile the superimposed disguise -struck him as agreeable, alert, humorous, and friendly. -Devizes too he saw more and more as a strong, capable, -understanding personality. He had seen Devizes examining -Sargon, and it was clever, confidence-provoking doctoring. -Sargon’s lungs, he said, were badly congested, especially -on the left side; he was on the edge of pneumonia and -without much vitality to fight it. He ought to be kept -in a warmer, less draughty room with a night-nurse available. -Mrs. Plumer had no room for a nurse, and not an -hour away by automobile was Paul Lambone’s excessively -comfortable week-end cottage at Udimore. A little masterly -telephoning and telegraphing and the cottage was -available, fires were alight in the best bedroom, a trained -nurse was on her way to it, and it was all settled for Sargon, -warmly wrapped up and fortified with hot-water bottles, to -go thither. Bobby found himself a mere accessory in this -new system of things; he was to follow next day to Udimore -on his motor bicycle, for there would be room for all of -them in Paul Lambone’s cottage. Apparently Paul Lambone’s -conception of a simple cottage in the wilderness -involved a housekeeper, several servants, and four or five -visitors’ rooms.</p> - -<p>This fellow Devizes carried out all his arrangements with -a smooth competence that gave Bobby no scope for self-assertion. -Sargon and Christina Alberta and Devizes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_349">[349]</span> -would depart at five and get to Udimore by six, by which -time the nurse would be installed. Then Devizes would go -back to London and get there in time to dress for a dinner -he had to attend. On Saturday morning he would be busy -in London, and then he would come back to Udimore and -see if Sargon was recovered enough for the beginnings of -his mental treatment. Perhaps the unknown Paul Lambone -would be there too. He was a lazy person, Bobby -gathered; he’d have to be brought down by Devizes. -Bobby was to stay at Udimore for some days. He made -modest protestations. “No, you’re <i>in</i> it now,” said Devizes -cheerfully and glanced at Christina Alberta. “You’re in -for Sargon like the rest of us. Bring your work with you.”</p> - -<p>“Yes, do come,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>The only reason Bobby had for resisting the invitation -was that it attracted him so much.</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>This “cottage” at Udimore, which struck Bobby as being -a really very pretty and comfortable modern house, and -these three people, Christina Alberta, Devizes and Paul -Lambone, who now grouped themselves round Sargon, -exercised his mind in a quite extraordinary way. They -struck him as being novel and definite to a degree he’d -never met in anyone before, and even the house was fresh -and decisive in its broad white grace, like no house that had -ever before held his attention. It made most of the other -houses he had ever observed seem accidental and aggregatory -and second-hand and wandering in their purpose. -But this house was the work of a clever young architect -who had considered Paul Lambone intelligently, and its -white rough-cast walls sat comfortably on the hill-side -and looked with an honest, entirely detached admiration at -Rye and across the marsh to Winchelsea and the remote -blue sea; and it had seats and arbours and a gazebo for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_350">[350]</span> -sitting about in, and up hill was a walled garden with broad -paths up which you looked from the back of the house -through lead-paned windows. You could watch the sunset -from a number of excellent points of view, but it did not -shine upon any room to weary and blind you. There was -a kind wall to shelter hollyhocks and delphiniums from -the south-west wind, and to bear a plum or so and a pear -and a fig tree. Downstairs was mainly one great rambling -room with a dining recess in one corner and the power of -opening itself out into a loggia, and with conversational -centres about fire-places or windows as the season might -require, but there were several little studies about the -house in which one could be shut off and write. Bookshelves -grew in convenient corners, and the house was -everywhere mysteriously warm from unseen and scarce -suspected radiators. The house was so like Paul Lambone, -and Paul Lambone so much a part of his house that he -seemed to be really no more than its voice and its eyes.</p> - -<p>Paul Lambone was the first successful writer Bobby had -ever met. Bobby knew various needy young writers, tadpole -writers, insecure writers, but this was the first completely -grown-up and established and massively adult writer -he had ever known. The man struck Bobby as being -stupendously secure and free and prosperous. And the -remarkable thing was that he was in no way a great writer, -no Dickens nor Scott nor Hardy; his work wasn’t, after -all, in Bobby’s opinion anything so very remotely above -Bobby’s own efforts. A certain terseness he had at times, -a certain penetration: those were the chief differences. -In Bobby’s imagination the literary and artistic life had -hitherto had an unavoidable flavour of casual adventure, -glorious achievements, maddening difficulties, wild delights -and tragic unhappinesses. Swift, Savage, Goldsmith, -the Carlyles, Balzac, Dumas, Edgar Allan Poe, these had -been his types. But this new bright house was as sound and -comfortable as any country house, and Lambone sat in it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_351">[351]</span> -with as safe a dignity as though he was a provincial banker -or a mine owner or the senior member of some widespread -firm of solicitors. No fears of losing his “job” or “writing -himself out” oppressed him. He said and did exactly what -he thought proper, and the policeman saluted him as he -passed.</p> - -<p>If this sort of thing could spring from the <i>Book of -Everyday Wisdom</i> and Paul’s amiable novels, what -hitherto unsuspected possibilities of accumulation and ease -and security and helpfulness might there not be in Aunt -Suzannah’s kindly responsiveness? It had never before -seemed credible to Bobby that a day might come when he -would be secure and his own master, able to refuse limitations -himself and to release other people from limitations. -All Bobby’s life hitherto had been a matter of direction and -eminent necessity. He had been <i>sent</i> to school and <i>sent</i> to -college. He had been on the eve of being <i>put into</i> the position -of agent upon a friendly estate when the Great War -had seized upon him and the rest of his generation and -drilled him and sent him off to Mesopotamia. And after -the war he had had to do something to supplement his -diminished inheritance. Life had been so indicated and -prescribed for him at every stage, his parents’ existence -had been so entirely directed by a class tradition, that -Bobby’s mind was exceptionally well prepared to be impressed -by Paul Lambone’s freedoms.</p> - -<p>It was curious to note how completely Paul Lambone -arose out of the present-day world, and how completely he -didn’t belong to it. He had all its advantages and so little -of its standard obligations. He had escaped from it with -most of its gifts. He had to go to no court, follow no -seasons, make no calls, and perform no functions. Was he -exceptional in his circumstances altogether, or were there a -lot of people escaping, as he was escaping, prosperously, -from the old decaying social system? a queer sort of new -people who didn’t belong?</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_352">[352]</span>Bobby sat on the terrace and looked over the back of his -seat at this extremely new but very sightly and comfortable -cottage of Lambone’s, with this freshly arrived idea -of a new sort of people getting loose in the world and -living unrelated to the old order of things and shaping out -new ways of living, very active in his mind. This house -seemed to embody that idea; it was new and novel, but not -a bit apologetic nor rebellious. It was just breaking out -like a new fashion. It was just arising like a new century. -He had always assumed that revolutions came from below -through the rage of the excluded and the disinherited. He -had thought every one took that for granted. But suppose -revolutions were merely smashes-up that hadn’t very much -to do with real progress either way, and that the new age -dawned anywhere in the social order where people could -get free enough to work out new ideas.</p> - -<p>New ideas!</p> - -<p>Sargon was new, Paul Lambone was new, Devizes new; -before the war there could not have been any such people. -They had grown out of their own past selves; they were as -different from pre-war people as nineteenth-century people -had been different from eighteenth-century people. Newest -of all was this Christina Alberta who had effaced her blue-eyed -predecessor. She was so direct and free in her -thoughts and talk that she made Bobby feel that his own -mind wore a bonnet and flounces. He had gone for two -walks with her, once to Brede and once to Rye, and he -liked her tremendously. Whether he was in love with her -he didn’t yet know. Falling in love with her for anyone -was evidently going to be a quite unconventional, untested, -and difficult series of exercises. Nothing at all like that -unborn normal affair with the non-existent blue-eyed girl.</p> - -<p>She seemed to like him, and particularly the way his hair -grew on his head. She had mentioned it twice and ruffled -it once.</p> - -<p>A queer aspect of the situation was the riddle of how she<span class="pagenum" id="Page_353">[353]</span> -and Sargon and himself came to be the guests of Paul -Lambone with Devizes in attendance. It was just a part -of Paul Lambone’s freedom from prescription that he -should be able to give sanctuary to Sargon and assemble -this odd, unconventional week-end party. But Bobby had -a sense of hidden links and missing clues. Devizes was a -natural enough visitor, of course; he was manifestly Lambone’s -close friend. But their interest in Sargon was -stronger than Bobby could imagine it ought to be. He -was puzzled; he examined all sorts of possibilities in a -gingerly fashion. Some impulse like his own, no doubt, -but not quite the same, lay at the bottom of this—Sargonism.</p> - -<p>Bobby had begun by feeling very hostile to Devizes as an -unexpected intruder on a system of relationships sufficiently -interesting without him. He was glad that he had -to go to London for Friday, and not particularly pleased -by his return on Saturday. Then he found his feelings -changing to a curious respect, mingled with a defensive -element that was almost like fear.</p> - -<p>Devizes was more aware of you than Lambone. He -looked at you, his mind came at you. It had the habit of -coming at people. He was more actively and aggressively -interested in things than Lambone and more self-forgetful. -Lambone observed enough to make bright comments; -Devizes made penetrating observations. Bobby often felt -encumbered with himself; most people he thought were -encumbered with themselves, but Devizes to a conspicuous -degree wasn’t. He was a man of science; a man of -scientific habits. Bobby had known one or two scientific -men before, rather wrapped away from ordinary things, -but the interest that wrapped them was something that -wrapped them away from oneself; one had been concerned -chiefly with stresses in glass and another with the eggs of -echinoderms. You always seemed to be looking at the -backs of these fellows’ heads and smiling at their immense<span class="pagenum" id="Page_354">[354]</span> -preoccupation. But this man Devizes was wrapped up in -the motives and thoughts of people; he didn’t look away -from you; he looked into you. That grew upon Bobby’s -consciousness. Devizes’ eye lacked delicacy.</p> - -<p>He had come down for the week-end chiefly to deal with -Sargon. He went up and had long talks to Sargon. He -was “treating” Sargon. He didn’t go up and talk to Sargon -as man to man, as Bobby would have done. He went up -to a sort of mental jiu-jitsu with Sargon to exercise him -and push him about into new attitudes. Devizes was formidable -enough in himself, but far more formidable as a -portent. He had all the appearance of being a precursor, -the most vigorous precursor—they were all precursors!—of -a new type of human relationships, relationships without -delicate reservations, without rich accumulations of -feeling behind emotions avoided and things unsaid. So it -seemed to Bobby, who didn’t for a moment suspect how -much these people were avoiding and suppressing. Christina -Alberta’s thoughts and speech seemed to him to be -moving about without a stitch on, like the people in some -horrible Utopia by Wells. He compared the vast impalpable -network of “understanding” he and Tessy had woven -between each other.</p> - -<p>“New people,” he whispered, and looked Paul Lambone’s -new house in the face. To him they were stupendously -new, an immense discovery. The war had overstrained -him, he realized, and left him too tired for a time to see -new things. He had been one of the vast multitude of -those who had come out of the war in the expectation of -a trite and obvious old-fashioned millennium, and who -expressed their disappointment by declaring that nothing -had happened except devastation and impoverishment. -They were too jaded at first to observe anything else. But -indeed Bobby now realized the European world had been -travelling faster and faster since the break-up of the armed -peace in 1914; and here were new types, new habits of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_355">[355]</span> -thought, new ideas, new reactions, new morals, new ways of -living. He discovered himself in the advent of a new age, -a new age that was coming so fast that there hadn’t been -time ever to clear the forms and institutions of the old -age away. They weren’t reversed or abolished, they weren’t -overthrown, they were just disregarded. Which was just -why it was possible to get along for a year or so without -noting the tremendous changes everything was undergoing.</p> - -<p>“New People.” Did that apply to Sargon? That was -Sargon’s room: the two long windows between the buttresses. -Was Sargon also an escape from the established -order of relationships into novel things? What was the real -significance of the absurd little man with his preposterous -map of the world and his still more preposterous planisphere, -who wanted to be Lord of the Earth?</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>When Bobby came to talk it over with Sargon it seemed -to him that Devizes had taken the little man completely -to pieces and presented him with the disarticulated portions -of himself. Devizes went back to London on Monday; -he took Christina Alberta with him in his hired -car; but Lambone urged Bobby to stay on for a day or so -to cheer up the patient. Lambone, so far as he could -discover his own intentions, meant to stay on at Udimore -for a week or more and work. Bobby saw Christina Alberta -off, meditated on her for an hour, then gave the rest of -the morning to Aunt Suzannah and the afternoon to -Sargon; and Sargon, who was distinctly better, sat propped -up by two pillows and discussed the dissected structure -of himself.</p> - -<p>“Not a bit fatigued,” said Sargon. “I’m having a tonic -now. Every three hours.”</p> - -<p>He considered his next remark for some moments before -he made it. “Who <i>is</i> this Mr. Paul Lambone?” he asked.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_356">[356]</span> -“It is very hospitable for him to entertain us. Very. -(<i>H’rrmp</i>).... Is he a friend of yours?”</p> - -<p>“He’s quite a well-known writer. He’s a friend of Christina -Alberta’s.”</p> - -<p>“She has so many friends. Young people do nowadays. -And what is this Dr. Devizes?”</p> - -<p>“He is a nervous specialist, and he was consulted—he -was consulted about the possibilities of getting you away -from that—Place.”</p> - -<p>“Nervous specialist. He is a wonderful talker—most -intelligent and (h’rrmp) understanding. I have a curious -feeling that somewhere, somewhen, somehow I have met -him before. In this life—or some other. It is all quite -vague, and he does not seem to have any corresponding -recollection. No. Probably a coincidence of some sort.”</p> - -<p>Bobby saw nothing in the coincidence.</p> - -<p>Sargon shut his eyes for a second or so.</p> - -<p>“We talked of my recent experiences,” he resumed.</p> - -<p>“Naturally,” said Bobby, helping.</p> - -<p>“There has been a lot of confusion about my personality. -It is a trouble more frequent nowadays than it used to be. -Most of my life I have thought that I was a person called -Albert Edward Preemby, a limited person, a most limited -person. Then I had a light. I began to realize that -nobody could really be such a thing as that Albert Edward -Preemby. I began to seek for myself. I had reason—too -long to explain—to suppose that I was Sargon the First, -the great Sumerian, the founder of the first Empire in the -world. Then—then came trouble. You saw something -of it. I grasped at the sceptre—one afternoon—in Holborn—rashly. -Most painful affair. I was sent to that -Place. Yes. It shook me. Humiliations. Hardship. Real—uncleanness. -I doubted whether I wasn’t after all just -that little Preemby. A human rabbit. My faith faltered. -I admit it faltered.”</p> - -<p>He mused painfully for some moments.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_357">[357]</span>Then he laid his hand reassuringly on Bobby’s wrist.</p> - -<p>“I <i>am</i> Sargon,” he said. “Talking to your friend Devizes -has cleared my mind greatly. I <i>am</i> Sargon, but in a rather -different sense from what I had imagined. Preemby was, -as I had supposed, a mere accidental covering. But——”</p> - -<p>The little face puckered with intellectual effort. “I am -not <i>exclusively</i> Sargon. You—you perhaps are still unawakened—but -you are Sargon too. His blood is in our -veins. We are co-heirs. It is fairly easy to understand. -Sargon, regal position. Naturally many wives. Political—biological -necessity. Offspring numerous. They again—positions -of advantage—many children. Next generation, -more. Like a vast expanding beam of intellectual and -moral force. You can prove it—prove it by mathematics. -Dr. Devizes and I—we worked it out on a piece of paper. -We are all descended from Sargon, just as we are all -descended from Cæsar—just as nearly all English and -Americans are descended from William the Conqueror. -Few people realize this. A little arithmetic—it is perfectly -plain. Long before the Christian era the blood of Sargon -was diffused throughout all mankind. His traditions still -more so. We all inherit. Not merely from him—from all -the great kings, from all the noble conquerors. From all -the brave and beautiful women. All the statesmen and -inventors and creators. If not directly from them, from -their fathers and mothers. All that rich wine from the -past is in my veins. And I thought I was just Albert -Edward Preemby! And at Woodford Wells I went for a -silly little walk nearly every afternoon with sixpence in -my pocket to spend and nothing in the world to do! For -twenty years. It seems incredible.”</p> - -<p>The blue eyes sought confirmation from Bobby, who -nodded.</p> - -<p>“There was I walking about Epping Forest in a suit of -clothes I never really liked—a rather exaggerated golfing -suit with baggy knickerbockers that my wife chose for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_358">[358]</span> -me—they seemed to get baggier every year—and I was -quite ignorant that I was the heir of all the ages, and that -the whole earth down to the centre and up to the sky was -mine. And yours. Ours. I had no sense of duty to it; -I hadn’t woke up to self-respect. I wasn’t only Sargon, but -all the men and women who have ever mattered on earth. -I was God’s Everlasting Servant. Instead of which I was -rather timid about horses and strange dogs, and often -when I saw people approaching and thought they were -observing me and speaking about me, I did not know what -to do with my arms and legs, and became quite confused -about them.”</p> - -<p>He paused to smile at the thought of it.</p> - -<p>“It has been interesting to talk to your Dr. Devizes of -the absurdity of that contracted blind littleness in which I -lived so long. We talked of the Great Man I really was, -the Great Men we really were. All the Incorporated -Great Men. You and I, the same. Because in the past -you and I and he were one, and in the future we may -come together again. We have just separated to take hold -of things as the hand separates into thumb and fingers. -We talked of the time when the spirit that is in us made -the first hut, launched the first ship, rode the first horse. -We could not remember those great moments as exact -incidents, but we recalled them—generally. We recalled -a blazing day when a band of men went out across a -sandy desert for the first time, and when a man first stood -upon a glacier. It was—slippery. Then I remembered -watching my people heap up the earth-walls of my first -city. We went out against the robbers of the first herds. -Then Dr. Devizes and I stood in imagination on a sort of -quarter-deck, and watched our men lugging the great oars -of the galley that took us to Iceland and Vinland. We both -saw. We planned the Great Walls of China; I counted our -lateen sails upon our grand canal. You see, I have built a -million wonderful temples and made an innumerable multititude<span class="pagenum" id="Page_359">[359]</span> -of lovely sculptures, paintings, jewels and decorations. -I had forgotten it, but I have. And I have loved a -billion loves—I have indeed—to bring me here. We all -have. We talked it over, your Dr. Devizes and I. I had -not dreamt the millionth part of what I am. When I -thought I was Sargon wholly and solely I still did not -realize my great inheritance and my enormous destiny. -Even now I am only beginning to see that.... It is -preposterous to think that I who have all this past of -efforts and adventures behind me should have been content -to run about Woodford Wells in a ridiculous suit of tweeds -with plus-four breeches that were extremely heavy and uncomfortable—they -tickled me, you know—on hot days. -Yet I did. I did.... Not realizing.... I used to go -on until I could endure it no longer, and then I would have -to stop and scratch behind my knees....</p> - -<p>“Of course, when I called myself Sargon, King of Kings, -and proposed to rule all the world I was—Dr. Devizes -called it—<i>symbolizing</i>. Of course, everybody is really -Sargon, King of Kings, and everybody ought to take hold -of all the world and save it and rule it just as I have -got to do.”</p> - -<p>He had concluded his exposition. He had spread out -his disarticulated parts before Bobby just as Devizes had -returned them to him.</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>“But just what are you going to do?” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“I have been thinking of that.”</p> - -<p>For a little while he continued to think.</p> - -<p>“It becomes all different,” he said, “when one realizes -that one is not the <i>only</i> Sargon. I thought of being a -great king, a great leader, with the rest of the world just -following me. I doubt if I ever felt quite <i>up</i> to a job of -that sort, but I couldn’t see any other way of being<span class="pagenum" id="Page_360">[360]</span> -Sargon and a king. Now I do. I did my best, but even -when I went to Buckingham Palace I realized that the -thing was going to be too big for me. I was telling Dr. -Devizes—I told him, that since he was Sargon and King -just as much as me and that almost anyone might become -Sargon and King, then it wasn’t a case for palaces and -thrones any longer, or for being proclaimed and crowned—such -things were as much out of date as flint implements; -and that the real things was to be just a kingly person and -work with all the other kingly persons in the world to -make the world worthy of our high descent. Anyone who -wakes up to that becomes a kingly person. We can be -active kings even if we remain kings incognito. One can -be a laundryman like I was when I was just Preemby, and -think of nothing but the profits and needs and vanities -and fears of a little laundryman—and how dull it was!—or -one can be a king, the descendant of ten thousand kings, -the joint heir to the inheritance of all human affairs, the -lord of the generations still unborn—who happens to be -living in exile as a laundryman.”</p> - -<p>He paused.</p> - -<p>“I agree with most of that,” said Bobby. “It’s—it’s -attractive.”</p> - -<p>“So far it is as plain as can be. But after that the difficulties -begin. It isn’t enough just to say you are a king. -You have to be a king. You have to <i>do</i>. You can’t be a -king and not do kingly things. But it’s just there that Dr. -Devizes and I—we weren’t so clear. There’s a lot to be -thought out. What is my kingly task? In this frail body—and -what I am? I am not clear. Yet the mere fact that -I am not clear shows clearly where I have to begin. I -have to get clear. I have to get knowledge, find out about -my kingdom. That’s reasonable. I have to learn more -about my great inheritance, our great inheritance, the -history of it, the possibilities of it, the ways of the men -who misrule it. I have to learn about business and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_361">[361]</span> -economics and money; and then when I see it all plain I -have to exert myself and vote and work, and I have to -find out what particular gifts I have and how I may best -give them to our kingdom. Each king must glorify his -particular reign with his particular gift. We agreed about -that.</p> - -<p>“So far I do not know my particular gift. Dr. Devizes -says that so far as he is concerned he must work out -human motives and human relationships; his gift and his -natural interest is for mental science. He has his task -meted out for him, his kingly task. But for me at present -there isn’t that much self-knowledge. I have to begin -lower down and with broader questions. I have to learn -about the universe and about the history of this world-empire -of Sargon’s, and of all the things I have neglected -in my dreams and littleness. I have to go to school again. -To learn how to think harder. I don’t mind the fatigue. -But I am impatient. When I think of all that lies before -me, the reading, the inquiries, the visits to museums and -suchlike places, I want to get up right away and begin. -I have lived so unobservant and irresponsible a life that -I am puzzled how to account for the years I have spent. -I have mooned them away. But I am glad I have awakened -to my kingship before it is too late.</p> - -<p>“I am quite a young man still. I am a little past forty, -but that is nothing. Half of that was childhood and boyhood, -and much of the rest inattention. For all I know I -may live for another forty years. I’m not half through. -And they may be the best years, the full years. I can -spend three or four just learning—learning the round world. -I shall begin to find out politics, and why men and women -are servile and little-minded. I shall begin to realize how -I can extend to those others this great liberation that has -come to me. I shall begin to have a political life. A man -who has no political life is like a rat which lives in a ship -rather than like a man who navigates it. Then within<span class="pagenum" id="Page_362">[362]</span> -that I shall begin to find my own proper life, my particular -task. It is premature, I think, but I am very greatly -drawn to the riddle of madness and asylums. I do not -understand why there is madness. It puzzles and distresses -me, and Dr. Devizes agrees with me that when a -thing puzzles and distresses the mind the thing to do is -to gather all the knowledge and ideas one can about it—scientifically. -Presently it ceases to distress; it interests -and occupies. And when I was in—that Place, I talked -to some of those poor creatures. I was very sorry for them, -I made them promises to help them when my kingdom -came. And now I begin to see what my kingdom is, and -the way in which I must enter in to possess it. Perhaps -in good time I shall learn and spread knowledge about -asylums, and make things better in them so that they will -not simply imprison people but help and cure them.</p> - -<p>“It was Dr. Devizes’ idea, I think—or we may have -worked it out together—that there is a real and important -purpose in madness. It is a sort of simplification, a removal -of checks and controls, and a sort of natural experiment. -The secret things of the mind are laid bare. But -then if poor souls are to suffer that sort of thing to yield -knowledge for others, they ought to be treated properly; -they ought to be cherished and made the utmost use of, -and not handed over to such brutes as we had.... I -can’t tell you. Not yet. Brutes they were.... And in -their sane moments—they all have sane moments, these -lunatics—they ought to be comforted and told.”</p> - -<p>The queer little round face, with its sprouting moustache -and its pale blue eyes, stared at Bobby.</p> - -<p>“When first I saw you,” said Sargon, “I did not realize -in the least how things really were between us. I was still -wrapped up in vaingloriousness; I thought I was a great -prophet and teacher and king, and that all the world had to -obey me. I thought you were going to be the first and -best and nearest of my disciples. But now I know better<span class="pagenum" id="Page_363">[363]</span> -about myself. And about other people. They are here -not to be my followers and disciples but to be my fellow -kings. We have to work together with all the others who -are awakened, for our kingdom and the great progress of -mankind.”</p> - -<p>He went on talking rather to himself than to Bobby.</p> - -<p>“I have always wanted to know things, but now I shall -have the will really to know them. I shall be different -now. It seems incredible that a little while ago I was -bothered about what I should do with my time. Now I -am only eager to get at things, and however long my time -may be I know it will be full. It is astonishing to me -that there has been flying in my kingdom for a dozen -years, and I have never been in an aeroplane. I must look -at the world from an aeroplane. And perhaps I shall need -to go to India and China and suchlike strange and wonderful -countries, because they, too, are a part of my -inheritance. I need to know about them. And jungles -and wildernesses that we have to subjugate; I have to see -them. The beasts are under us; we have to cherish them -or destroy them mercifully as the necessities of our kingdom -may require. It is a terrible thing even to be lord -of a beast. All the beasts, wild or tame, are under our -dominion. And there is science. All the wonderful work -men do in laboratories and their marvellous discoveries -are our care. If I do not understand I may hinder. How -blind I have been to the splendour of my life. When I -think of all these things, I can hardly endure to be here -in bed; I am so impatient to get on with them. But I -suppose I must be patient with these poor wheezing lungs.</p> - -<p>“Patient,” he repeated.</p> - -<p>He looked at his wrist-watch and it had stopped. “Can -you tell me the time? At seven I ought to take some more -of that excellent tonic. It is working wonders in me. But -no! don’t trouble; the nurse will be thinking of it.... -It puts fresh life into me.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_364">[364]</span></p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>But Sargon did not live forty years more, nor thirty, nor -twenty. He lived just a day under seven weeks from that -conversation. He stayed in bed for two days after Bobby -returned to London; then Lambone also went and he became -intractable. As his strength returned he bothered -his nurse more and more for books he couldn’t name or -describe, and for volumes of the <i>Encyclopædia Britannica</i>; -and when she declared that seven volumes of that monumental -publication were surely as much as any invalid -could need at one time, he got up and put on his rough -little dressing-gown and came paddling downstairs, -h’rrmping resolutely, to the library. After that he got up -for three days running. A fire was made in the most -bookish corner of the downstairs room and screens put to -keep him warm. But his tonic was driving him, perhaps -it was too stimulating a tonic, and he would not stay in his -protected corner.</p> - -<p>The nurse seems to have been a weak, complaining -character, indisposed to act without authority. She telephoned -through to Devizes in London, but she did not -succeed in making clear to him the gravity of Sargon’s -misbehaviour. The crowning offence came when he -wouldn’t go to bed at seven, but instead slipped out, in -an overcoat and a wrapper indeed but in slippers, upon -the terrace before the house. His bare ankles and legs -were exposed to the cold wind. The slow-moving periodic -beams of light from the lighthouse upon the coast, sweeping -across the phantom hills under the clear starlight, had -drawn him out, those processional lights, and Sirius that -white splendour, and the steadfast sprawling glory of Orion. -It was a clear November night with frost in the air. The -nurse heard him cough and rushed out to him. He was -looking at Sirius through Lambone’s field-glasses and she<span class="pagenum" id="Page_365">[365]</span> -had to drag him in by main force. She lost her temper; -there was an ungracious struggle.</p> - -<p>The next day he was in no state to leave his bed. Yet he -tossed about and exposed his inflamed chest in feeble -attempts to read. “I know nothing,” he complained. For a -while he got better again, and then it is highly probable -that he went to his open window in the night and sat for -a long time wondering at the stars. After that came a -relapse and a week or so of struggle, and then after a -phase of delirium came great weakness, and then one -night, death. He was quite alone when he died.</p> - -<p>Bobby had not expected the death at all. He heard of it -from Christina Alberta with great astonishment. He had -been told nothing of Sargon being worse nor of his misbehaviour; -he had been thinking of him rather enviously -as growing steadily stronger and better and gratifying day -by day a happy and expanding curiosity. He had looked -forward presently to another talk and another phase in -this odd belated adolescence. It was as though an interesting -story had come to an abrupt end in the middle, as -though all its concluding chapters had been torn out -rudely and unreasonably.</p> - -<p>This mood of frustrated sympathy lasted over the cremation -of Sargon at Golders Green. Bobby went to that -queer ceremony. He arrived late with Billy; the coffin -that held the little body stood ready to glide into the -furnace, the Church of England burial service had already -begun. There were very few people in the chapel. Christina -Alberta in the black she had worn for her mother was -in the front seat, as chief mourner, between Paul Lambone -and Devizes. Behind her with an air of earnest support -were Harold and Fay Crumb, astonishingly in deep mourning -and following the service meticulously in two prayer-books. -An unpleasant-looking individual with a very long -pock-marked sheep’s face, small eyes and habitual-looking<span class="pagenum" id="Page_366">[366]</span> -blacks turned round and stared at Bobby as he came in. -He was accompanied by a very large blonde lady who -seemed to have slept in her mourning under a bed. Relations -of the deceased? The air of relationship was unmistakable. -Behind, a young woman and two detached old -ladies seemed to be indulging a simple propensity for -funeral services at large. They completed the congregation.</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta looked unusually small and overshadowed -by her two odd men friends. It was a grey day -outside, and the general effect of the gathering was thin -and scattered and damp and chilly. The organ was playing -as Bobby came in, and he thought he had never heard -a less musical organ. The service as it went on sounded -more and more trite and theological and insincere. What -an old second-hand damp mackintosh the Church of England -is, thought Bobby, for a striving soul to wear? But -then what can any religion in the world really be in the face -of normal death? Theologically one should rejoice when -a good man dies, but none of these religions had had the -pluck to brazen it out to that extent. None can get rid -of the effect of confrontation with a blank amazing interrogation. -Was there anything within that coffin there that -heard or cared a jot for those sombre mummeries?</p> - -<p>Bobby’s thoughts converged upon that still thing within -the coffin. The little face would be wearing a waxen unaccustomed -dignity; the round, preposterously innocent blue -eyes would be closed and a little sunken. Where were -those thoughts and hopes, now, that Bobby had listened -to a few weeks since? Sargon had talked of flying, of -visiting India and China, of doing noble work in the world. -He had said that half his life still lay before him. He had -seemed to be opening like a flower on the first sunny morning -of a belated spring. And it was all delusion; the door -of death that had slammed upon him was already closing -then.</p> - -<p>Surely those hopes had been life! In them if in anything<span class="pagenum" id="Page_367">[367]</span> -was something of the life that lives and cannot die. But -was it yonder? No. That in the coffin there was no more -than a photographic impression, a cast garment, the parings -of a nail. There was more of Sargon now in Bobby’s -brain alone, than in that coffin. But Sargon, where was he? -Where were those dreams and desires?</p> - -<p>Bobby became aware of the voice of the officiating clergyman -driving high, like a flying bird, over the welter of his -thoughts: “<i>But some men will say, How are the dead -raised up? and with what body do they come? Thou fool, -that which thou sowest is not quickened unless it die. And -that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall -be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat or any other -grain: But God giveth it a body, as it hath pleased him, -but to every seed its own body....</i>”</p> - -<p>“Queer, tortuous, ingenious fellow that Paul,” thought -Bobby. Now what exactly was he driving at there? Queer -fellow! Bad manners too with his “Thou fool.” A rather -strained analogy this about the seed, “sown in corruption.” -After all a seed was the cleanest, most living bit of vegetable -matter you could have; it had to be sown in clean mould. -Growing plants you manured perhaps, but not seed-boxes. -But there was a queer insistence in the discourse of the -“difference,” the discontinuity, of the new life. What was -to come was to be altogether different from what was -sown. Bobby had never noted that before, never noted -how plainly the apostle insisted that no body, no earthly -sort of body, no personality, ever came back.</p> - -<p>“<i>The glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the -terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and -another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; -for one star differeth from another star in glory.</i>”</p> - -<p>What was the drift of that? Was it translated properly? -What had Paul been up against in Corinth? After all, -why couldn’t the Church speak to one’s living needs instead -of disinterring this Levantine argument? And that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_368">[368]</span> -analogy of the seed; was it after all a good one? Whatever -comes from a seed must itself die again; it is no more -immortal than the plant that came before it. The clergyman -was going too fast, too, to follow him closely. Better -get a prayer-book at home afterwards and read all this.</p> - -<p>“<i>O Grave where is thy sting? O death where is thy victory? -The sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is -in the law.</i>”</p> - -<p>No. There was no following that. It sounded like -nonsense. One just missed the implications. It was like -listening to some one who was too far off to be heard -distinctly but who made eloquent gestures and noises.</p> - -<p>The service came to an embarrassed pause. Everyone -was motionless, arrested.</p> - -<p>“<i>Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live.... -He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he -fleeth as it were a shadow....</i>”</p> - -<p>Set in motion by unseen hands the coffin went gliding -towards the furnace doors which opened to receive it. -There was a deep roar, a sound like a mighty rushing wind, -an elemental and chaotic sound....</p> - -<p>Life is a faint dispersed film upon one little planet, but -flames roar like this and great winds rush and whirl, out -to the remotest star in the unfathomable depths of space. -That deep disorderly tumult is the true voice of lifeless -matter, not of dead matter, for what has never lived cannot -be dead, but of lifeless matter, outside of and beneath and -beyond life.</p> - -<p>Everyone in the chapel seemed still and bowed and -hushed and dwarfed to minute dimensions until the furnace -doors had closed again upon that soulless devouring -clamour.</p> -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_369">[369]</span> - -<h3 class="nobreak">CHAPTER THE FOURTH<br> - -<i>May at Udimore</i></h3> -</div> - -<h4>§ 1</h4> - -<p class="drop-cap">B<small>OBBY</small> <i>forgot</i> that glimpse of the elemental powers -that the furnace doors had given him altogether, for -such things do not remain naturally in the mind. They -inconvenience life. But the voice of the clergyman hustling -the arguments of St. Paul along, and the scene in the -Crematorium Chapel with the little coffin waiting to be -launched into eternity and the few still black mourners -dotted among the yellow benches came back to him very -vividly when Paul Lambone began to quote and twist those -familiar sentences about the contrast between the corruptible -and the incorruptible and expand a fantastic philosophy -of his own. Bobby had always intended to read that -funeral service over again slowly and judicially, but he -had never done so and he regretted it now very much. It -left him—and Paul of Tarsus—at the mercy of Paul -Lambone, and he knew that Paul Lambone loved ingenious -slight misquotations.</p> - -<p>It was a very warm, serenely still May evening, and -Lambone’s party sat after dinner in the twilight, some -just inside the house and some on deck-chairs upon the -terrace. They looked out over the marsh and over the -still sea. The sky was like the inside of a deep blue globe -on which an ever increasing multitude of starry midges -was alighting, and Rye and Winchelsea crouched low -beneath it, black low lumps with a street light and a window -or so showing minutely. Receding out to sea was a liner -quite brightly lit. With a swift steadiness the beam of the -nearer lighthouse swept the distant flats, came near, lit<span class="pagenum" id="Page_370">[370]</span> -the faces of the talkers, lit the room, called a church tower -and a group of trees into existence and dropped them back -into the darkness and forgot about them and passed on. -And then presently it was coming again, a thin white -streak of light hurrying far away across the levels.</p> - -<p>When one’s attention wandered from the talk one became -aware of an abundance of nightingales. They were -nightingales newly come from the south. One or it might -be two were in the trees close at hand; others remoter -wove a gauze curtain of faint sweet sounds over the visible -universe.</p> - -<p>Bobby sat on the step between the room and the terrace -with his back against a pillar and with his empty coffee-cup -beside him. He had put himself there by the feet of -Christina Alberta, who was deep in a big arm-chair and -very still. Her face was dim except when her cigarette -glowed and showed a red-lit unfamiliar face. And yet -that afternoon she had been the most familiar thing in -the world to him; she had kissed him and pulled his ears -and he had kissed her bare shoulders and clasped her in his -arms. Devizes too was silent and preoccupied. He sat -over against Christina Alberta on the other side of the -opening of the room; and he was so much in the twilight -that except when the lighthouse beam lit his face, only -his shining shoes and socks were clearly visible to Bobby. -There had been times when Bobby had thought that -Devizes was in love with Christina Alberta, and he had -a vague inexplicable feeling that to some extent she was -or had been in love with Devizes. He had a sense of -unfathomed deeps in their relationship, but he did not -know where these deeps lay. If Christina Alberta loved -Devizes she would have said so. Bobby knew of no reason -why she should not. But to-day she had hugged and -kissed Bobby so that it was impossible to believe she loved -anyone else.</p> - -<p>Yet in the last three or four months she had gone about<span class="pagenum" id="Page_371">[371]</span> -with Devizes a lot; Bobby had seen her mind responding -and changing with her talks with this man. She used to -quote him, and she would say things exactly like the things -he said. It had been a great inconvenience and trial to -Bobby, this preoccupation. And then suddenly he found -Devizes wasn’t the lover at all, never could have been a -lover. That day she had proved that up to the hilt. And -now in a state between pride and servitude Bobby sat at -her feet. He sat at her feet and close to her; Devizes in the -darkness was remote, a full three yards away.</p> - -<p>Except for Lambone’s unquenchable flow it had not been -a very talkative party. To-night it was less talkative than -ever. “This is too perfect,” Margaret Means had sighed. -“I can’t talk. I just thank God I am alive,” and she had -nestled into her big deck-chair upon the terrace. This -was the girl—it had suddenly become apparent to Bobby -a fortnight ago in London—whom Devizes intended to -marry. Abruptly she had come upon the scene to destroy -the triangle that had obsessed Bobby’s imagination. A -sweetly pretty fragile thing she was; in the twilight she -seemed as faint and fragrant as nightstock, and she was a -wonderful pianist. Last night she had played for two -hours. Paul’s sister, Miss Lambone, had been evoked -from somewhere in the west of England to come and be -hostess to the engaged couple. Bobby had tried to talk -to Christina Alberta about Margaret, but Christina Alberta -hadn’t wanted to talk about her. “You see,” said Christina -Alberta compactly, “she has opened the whole world of -music to him. That’s what brought them together. She’s -clever; she’s very clear and clever.</p> - -<p>“I’d never heard of her—until you mentioned their engagement.</p> - -<p>“They’ve gone to concerts together and that sort of thing. -He’s known her much longer than he has known me.”</p> - -<p>“When did you first meet Devizes?”</p> - -<p>“About the time my Daddy came to Midgard Street. As<span class="pagenum" id="Page_372">[372]</span> -recently as that. It’s hardly six months. Paul Lambone -took me to him to get advice about Daddy. But <i>they</i> -have been going about—for more than a year. I thought -it was just music that interested them. They’d seemed to -be friends. And I thought he didn’t mean to marry again. -He just suddenly decided.”</p> - -<p>Christina Alberta reflected. “That’s the way with life, -Bobby. Things accumulate, and then you suddenly -decide.”</p> - -<p>“Had she been undecided? Had she made him wait?”</p> - -<p>“Not her,” said Christina Alberta with a remarkable -hardness in her voice.</p> - -<p>“No,” she said. “<i>He</i> decided.”</p> - -<p>She seemed to feel there was still something to express. -“He just took hold of the situation.”</p> - -<h4>§ 2</h4> - -<p>This was Bobby’s second visit to Udimore. Paul Lambone -had suddenly seen fit to gather this party; apparently -on the spur of Devizes’ engagement. In the interval Bobby -had seen Christina Alberta a number of times and developed -an immense sense of relationship to her. It filled his life. -He had always been dreaming things about her from the -time when he anticipated her with blue eyes and a fragile -person, and always she was and did things that tore his -dreams to shreds. This made her profoundly interesting. -More and more he had become dependent upon her for interest. -He wanted to marry her if only to make sure he -wouldn’t lose the interest of her. She had refused—twice. -Without any of the graces proper to the occasion. “No fear, -Bobby,” she said. “It wouldn’t do. I’m not the woman -you take me for.”</p> - -<p>“You never are,” he said. “I don’t mind that.”</p> - -<p>“You’re the dearest companion,” she said. “I like the -way your hair grows.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_373">[373]</span>“Then why not make it yours, and be companions for -ever?”</p> - -<p>“Nothing more frightful,” she said, and so dismissed the -proposal.</p> - -<p>They went about together; they spent much of their -spare time together except for those distressing occasions -when she would suddenly throw him over to go to a theatre -or walk with Devizes. Or to go to Devizes to talk. She -never hesitated to throw him over for Devizes. Yet Bobby -got a lot of her. She didn’t know much about theatres -or music-halls or restaurants or dancing-places or that sort -of thing, and Bobby was discreetly competent in that -province. The Malmesburys felt themselves deserted, and -Susan was vindictive in her resentment at his frequent -absence from her bed-time rituals. Tessy, Bobby declared, -remained his dearest friend; but when he tried to tell her -all about himself in the old, old fashion—which he did when -Christina Alberta was away with Devizes—he naturally -had to tell her all about Christina Alberta. But Tessy -declined in the most emphatic way to be told about Christina -Alberta. It was extremely surprising and disappointing -to Bobby to find out how incapable Tessy was of -appreciating the endless interestingness and charm of -Christina Alberta. It was a blind spot in her mind. She -seemed to assume that Christina Alberta was no better -than she should be, whereas she was much better. It -estranged Bobby and Tessy very much, and it was a great -sorrow to Bobby.</p> - -<p>Because Christina Alberta <i>was</i> good—and interesting—beyond -dispute. She was growing with tremendous rapidity -mentally and in her knowledge of the world. Every -time he met her she seemed more of a person, with richer, -fuller, more commanding ideas. She seemed to be living -every moment of her time. She was working now at the -Royal College of Science under Macbride. She was taking -hold of her new studies there with tremendous enthusiasm.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_374">[374]</span> -She was in love with comparative anatomy. Bobby -had always thought that comparative anatomy was -dry, pedantic stuff about bones, but she declared it lit up -the whole story of life for her. It changed her ideas about -the world and about herself profoundly. “It is the most -romantic stuff I have ever read or thought about,” she said. -“It makes human history seem silly.”</p> - -<p>She took him three times to the Natural History Museum -at South Kensington to show him something of the fine -realizations that stirred her mind. She made it clear to -him how the bones of a wing or the scratches of a flint -could restore the storms and sunlight and passions of ten -million years ago.</p> - -<p>And then suddenly a week ago Christina Alberta had -consented to marry Bobby. She had taken back her two -refusals. But the way she did it made it like everything -else she did, astonishing and disconcerting. She had a -confession to make, and for a time until he could think -it over thoroughly that confession seemed to Bobby to -explain her refusals completely and to clear up everything -about her.</p> - -<p>She got him to take her to Hampton Court. But they -did not go into the gardens because they saw through the -park gates that the chestnuts of Bushey Avenue were in -full blossom; they went instead by the pond and up under -the riotously flowering branches. A belated spring was -coming now in a hurry, warm and brilliant. The trees -were glorious. It was as if a bright green sea was splashing -up warm creamy foam under a shower of cannon shots. -The blue sky hummed with light.</p> - -<p>“The spring has come fast now that it has begun to -come,” she said.</p> - -<p>He felt she had something to say and waited.</p> - -<p>“I never know, Bobby—this year less than ever—whether -spring is the happiest time in the year or the most miserably -restless. Everybody and everything is falling in love.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_375">[375]</span>“I didn’t wait for spring,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“But what of the frogs that can’t find water?” said Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>“There’s water where there are frogs,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“Everybody is marrying and giving in marriage,” she -said. “I thought—I thought—Dr. Devizes at least was an -inconsolable widower. But the spring tides have caught -even him. They catch everybody.”</p> - -<p>“They’ve caught you?”</p> - -<p>“I don’t know. I’m miserable, Bobby, and restless and -all astir.”</p> - -<p>“Then let yourself go.”</p> - -<p>“One aches—alone.”</p> - -<p>“But are you alone?”</p> - -<p>“Fairly.”</p> - -<p>“There’s me.”</p> - -<p>“Bobby dear, what do you want in me?”</p> - -<p>“<i>You.</i> To be with you. To be always about with you. -And to be loved by you.”</p> - -<p>“It’s kind of you.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, nonsense! <i>Kindness!</i>”</p> - -<p>“Listen, Bobby,” she said, and made a long pause.</p> - -<p>Her voice when she spoke had adopted the ease of casual -conversation. “Do you believe in chastity, Bobby? Could -you love a girl who wasn’t—chaste?”</p> - -<p>Bobby winced as if she had struck his face with a whip. -He went white. “What do you mean?” he asked.</p> - -<p>“Plainly,” she said.</p> - -<p>For a time neither of them said a word.</p> - -<p>“You have had <i>your</i> experiences,” she thrust. “In France. -They all did.”</p> - -<p>Bobby made no answer to that.</p> - -<p>“Now you know,” she flung at him.</p> - -<p>For a little while the light had gone out of Bobby’s -world.</p> - -<p>“Did you love the man?” he asked.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_376">[376]</span>“If I did I don’t remember it. It was just—curiosity. -And the stir of growing up. And the intolerable sense of -being forbidden. No—I think I was almost—cold-blooded. -I liked the look of him. And then I disliked him.... -But there it is, Bobby. That’s how things are.”</p> - -<p>Bobby weighed his words. “I’d care if it were any girl -but you. You—you’re different. I love you. What has -or hasn’t happened to you doesn’t matter. At least—it -doesn’t matter so much.”</p> - -<p>“You’re sure it doesn’t matter so much?”</p> - -<p>“Quite.”</p> - -<p>“Sure for good?”</p> - -<p>“Yes.”</p> - -<p>“From this moment you forget, you begin to forget what -I have told you? As I want to forget it?”</p> - -<p>“It will go soon enough if you want to forget it. It -doesn’t matter at all. I see now, it doesn’t matter at all.”</p> - -<p>“But why on earth do you want to marry me, Bobby? -What is there in me? I’m ugly, rude, greedy, inconsiderate. -I’ve no purity, no devotion.”</p> - -<p>“You’re incessantly interesting. You’re straight, swift, -and endlessly beautiful.”</p> - -<p>“Bobby, truly! Does it look like that to you?”</p> - -<p>“Yes. Doesn’t my manner—? Don’t you <i>know</i>?”</p> - -<p>“Yes,” she said gravely; “I suppose I know.”</p> - -<p>She came to a stop in front of him with her arms akimbo. -They stood looking at one another, and Bobby winced as -if he was going to cry. Her face was grave and troubled, -and then at the sight of his expression her smile broke -through. Her gravity vanished. She was a different -Christina Alberta. She was suddenly the gayest conceivable -thing to him, confident and impudent.</p> - -<p>“If you were to kiss me, Bobby, right here and now in -Bushey Park, would they lock us up?...”</p> - -<p>Most wonderful it was to Bobby to take her in his arms.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_377">[377]</span> -A new Christina Alberta was revealed to Bobby; Christina -Alberta seen from a distance of six inches or so, an amazingly -beautiful Christina Alberta. One might have thought -she had never lived for anything but being loved by Bobby.</p> - -<p>“You’re learning,” said Christina Alberta after a little -while. “Now do it all over again, Bobby. Nobody seems -to be looking....”</p> - -<h4>§ 3</h4> - -<p>Neither Lambone nor Devizes had seemed in the least -surprised at their engagement. Indeed their attitude of -gratified expectation was almost embarrassing. The young -couple had come down to Udimore with Devizes and Miss -Means under the ample protection of Miss Lambone almost -as though they had been appointed for each other -from the beginning of things.</p> - -<p>But at Udimore there were further surprises and perplexities -for Bobby. All day Saturday Christina Alberta -seemed to be not so much in love as in a thoroughly bad -temper. She seemed far more concerned by the fact that -Devizes was going to marry Miss Means than by the -generous devotion that Bobby was prepared to lavish upon -her. She was inattentive to his various little manœuvres -to get isolated with her. The two couples played tennis -after tea until it was time to dress for dinner; she was -badly out of practice and fundamentally unorthodox, and -Margaret played with a smoothness and sweetness that -roused her to a pitch of viciousness only too evident to -Bobby’s fine perceptions. It seemed to Bobby that Devizes -also noted her annoyance, but Miss Means was blissfully -unobservant of anything in the world but Devizes.</p> - -<p>On Sunday morning Christina Alberta carried off Bobby -through the distant cheerfulness of church bells for a walk -to Brede Castle. And she announced to Bobby that she -did not intend to marry him.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_378">[378]</span>Bobby protested. “You don’t love me?”</p> - -<p>“Haven’t I kissed you? Didn’t I hug you? Haven’t I -ruffled your hair?”</p> - -<p>“Then why don’t you want to marry me?”</p> - -<p>“I do not want to marry anyone. I don’t love anybody. -Except of course you. But even you, I can’t marry. I -want to be loved, Bobby, yes. But not to be married.”</p> - -<p>“But why? Not the—the old reason?”</p> - -<p>“No. I took your word about that. But all the same I -don’t want to marry you, Bobby.... I think it’s because -I don’t want to be bound up with anyone’s life. I don’t -want to be a wife. I want to be my free and independent -self. I’ve got to grow. That’s it, Bobby. I want to be free -to grow.”</p> - -<p>Bobby made protesting noises.</p> - -<p>“I don’t want some one seeing me grow all the time. -You’d always be looking at me, Bobby; I know you -would.”</p> - -<p>It was useless of Bobby to say he wouldn’t. He would.</p> - -<p>“I didn’t know that things were going to take me like this -until I fixed to marry you. I wanted to marry you when -I consented—honestly I did. I wanted dreadfully then to -get close to some one, as close as possible, and to be kissed -and told ‘There! There!’ and to keep there. It was a -comfort for me, Bobby. You are a comfort for me. I’d -ache to madness without you. But how close we come -when we love, Bobby, and how far away we are all the -time! How can we know each other when we hardly know -ourselves? When we don’t <i>dare</i> know ourselves?</p> - -<p>“You are such a dear, Bobby. You are so warm and kind -that it seems ungrateful not to give myself to you with -both hands. But I just can’t. I’m not a normal woman -perhaps. Or something has happened to me unawares. -Perhaps life has cheated me out of something.... Oh, I -don’t know, Bobby. I want some one dreadfully; I want -you dreadfully and I don’t want you at all. I’d rather<span class="pagenum" id="Page_379">[379]</span> -be dead than a female thing like Margaret Means. If -<i>that’s</i> marrying——!”</p> - -<p>“But I thought,” said Bobby, “after all that’s happened——”</p> - -<p>“No.”</p> - -<p>“I’ll wait ten years for you,” said Bobby, “on the chance -of your altering your mind.”</p> - -<p>“You are the dearest comforter,” said Christina Alberta, -and stopped short....</p> - -<p>And suddenly she had put her hands upon his shoulders -and clung to him and broken into a wild passion of weeping.</p> - -<p>“Wetting you instead of wedding you,” she sobbed and -laughed. “Oh, my poor Bobby! you dear lover!”</p> - -<p>She clung to him for a time. Then she detached herself -and stood wiping her eyes, the Christina Alberta he generally -knew, except for the traces of her tears. “If women -can’t control their emotions better,” she said, “they’ll have -to go back to Harems. We can’t have it both ways. But -I <i>won’t</i> marry you. There’s no man in the world I can -marry. I’m going to be a free and independent woman, -Bobby. From now on.”</p> - -<p>“But I don’t understand!” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>“It’s not because I don’t want you to love me.”</p> - -<p>He was baffled. “<i>Bobby!</i>” she whispered, and seemed to -glow.</p> - -<p>Bobby took her back into his arms and held her, and -pressed his cheek and ears against hers, and kissed her -and kissed her again, and it seemed to him to mark his -own unworthiness that he should think at such a time that -there were no such wonderful kisses in the world as kisses -flavoured with salt tears.</p> - -<p>And yet she wasn’t going to marry him! She had -snatched herself back from him and nevertheless she was -in his arms.</p> - -<p>He was enormously perplexed at what was happening, -but it was quite clear that the end of his engagement was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_380">[380]</span> -not to be the end of his love-making. Anyhow here was -love. It was so manifestly the time for love. High May -ruled the world. About them there were hawthorn trees -white with blossom and great bushes of elder just breaking -into flower.</p> - -<h4>§ 4</h4> - -<p>Bobby sat in the gloaming with his friends and thought -of the things that had happened to him that day, thought -of Christina Alberta’s salt tears and the incessant intriguing -strangeness of her ways. He was still immensely -puzzled, but now in a large, restful, contented fashion. -Christina Alberta and he were not to marry it seemed; -nevertheless he had kissed her and embraced her, and he -was free to sit at her feet. For a time he was not even to -humiliate himself by telling these others he was not to -marry her. He said nothing. His thoughts and feelings -were beyond words. Christina Alberta too was darkly -silent. Everyone indeed seemed preoccupied. Talk about -the view and the stars and the coming of the nightingales, -and about migratory birds and lighthouses rambled on for -a time and died away.</p> - -<p>They were all too full for talking. The silence lengthened. -He wondered what would happen if nobody spoke any -more. He thought of Christina Alberta close behind him -and he began to quiver in all his being. The silence was -becoming oppressive. He felt as though he could no longer -change his attitude. Nobody stirred. But Lambone saved -the situation.</p> - -<p>“It is exactly six months ago to-night that Sargon died -upstairs,” said Lambone. He paused and seemed to answer -an unspoken question. “We don’t know when he died -exactly. He just faded out in the night.”</p> - -<p>“I wish I could have known him,” said Margaret Means -after quite a long interval.</p> - -<p>Bobby’s thoughts came round to Sargon. That still<span class="pagenum" id="Page_381">[381]</span> -young woman sitting in the darkness behind him ceased to -dominate his thoughts. He was moved to speak, and had -to cough to clear his throat.</p> - -<p>“I hate to think of his being burnt and scattered,” he said.</p> - -<p>“It’s not so disagreeable,” said Miss Lambone, “as to -think of the body all shut up in the coffin and decaying.”</p> - -<p>“Oh, don’t!” cried Bobby. “It’s death—any death, that I -hate to think of. Now when it is spring time, when the -whole world is so full of life, I remember all he was, the -hopes he had, and they are scattered and dispersed. -Anyhow they are scattered and dispersed, they are not -boxed up and locked up and buried.... When I was -here last he was like a little boy who has just heard of -the world. He was going to fly, going to India and China, -going to learn all about everything and then do all sorts -of splendid things. And there were the beastly bacteria at -work in his lungs and beating his strength down and none -of it was ever to happen.... When first I heard he was -dead I could not believe it.”</p> - -<p>“<i>Is</i> he dead?” said Paul Lambone.</p> - -<p>There was no reply to be made to that.</p> - -<p>Paul adjusted his shoulder-blades a little more comfortably -against the back of the small deep sofa on which -he sat. “The more I think over Sargon the less dead he -seems to me, and the more important he becomes. I don’t -agree with you, Roothing. I don’t find anything futile in -his life. I think he was—symbolically—perfect. I have -thought about him endlessly.”</p> - -<p>“And talked,” said Devizes, “endlessly.”</p> - -<p>“And given you some very helpful ideas for your treatment. -Don’t be ungrateful. You think that Sargon is over. -He has only just begun. You are becoming too professional -with success, Devizes. You begin to take up cases and -work them off and drop them out of your mind. You don’t -go on with them and learn. You don’t sit about and think -about them as I do. I continue to think about Sargon.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_382">[382]</span> -I go on with him because he is still a living being for me. -I have got a new religion from him, the religion of Sargonism. -I declare him prophet of a new dispensation. It is my -latest new religion. There will always be new religions, and -the new religions will always be the only ones that matter. -Religion is a living thing, and what is alive must be continually -dying and be continually born again—differently -but the same.”</p> - -<p>“You believe in immortality, Mr. Lambone,” said Miss -Means. “I wish that I could. But when I try to imagine it -my wits fail me. Sometimes one seems to <i>feel</i> what it -might be. On a night like this perhaps——”</p> - -<p>Her pretty clear voice died away in the stillness as the -trail of a falling star dies away.</p> - -<p>Paul, a large dark lump on the dim pale sofa, went on -speaking. “Immortality,” he said, “is a mystery. One can -only speak of it in dark metaphors. How can we believe -that each of our individual commonplace lives is to have -an endless commonplace sequel? That is incredible nonsense. -Yet we go on living after death nevertheless. When -we die we are changed. All wise teachers have insisted -upon that. As Roothing said, we are not boxed up and -buried and forgotten. Our real death is an escape, and we -escape and become—what did you say?—dispersed. Immortal -life is endless consequence. Our lives are like lines -in a great poem. It is an unfinished and yet it is a perfect -poem. The line begins and ends but it has to be there, -and once it is there, it is there eternally. Nothing could -follow if it was not there. But every star has not the same -glory. Some lives, some lines, stand out as more significant -than the others. They open a new branch of the subject, -they start a new point of view, they express something -fresh. They are geniuses, they are prophets, they are -major stars. Sargon was the last, the latest of these -prophets, and I am his Paul. Not for nothing was I -christened Paul.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_383">[383]</span>“Paul of Tarsus,” said Devizes, “was a man of energy.”</p> - -<p>“There will always be minor differences in such parallels,” -said Lambone.</p> - -<p>“I will tell you my doctrine,” he said.</p> - -<p>He began to talk in that clear miniature voice of his, -which was so like a little mouse running out of the mountain -of his person, of Sargon and his struggles with his -individuality, and of the struggles in every man between -his individual life and something greater that is also in -him. There was a streak of fantasy in what he was saying, -a touch of burlesque in his constant use of theological -and religious phrasing, and withal a profound sincerity. -In every human being, he declared, the little laundryman -battled with the King of Kings. He expanded and amplified -his theme. Ever and again Devizes would cut into the -monologue and talk for a time, not so much to make objections -as to restate and amend and amplify. The others said -little. Margaret Means twice made soft sweet sounds suggestive -of intellectual sensuousness, and once Christina -Alberta said “But—!” very loudly and then “Never mind. -Go on” and relapsed for a long time into a silence that -could be felt. Bobby sat still, sometimes listening intently -and sometimes with his mind spreading out like an uncared-for -stream into a number of parallel channels. The -argument itself was interesting to follow, but moving at the -side of that was the question of the talker’s sincerity. How -much of all this stuff did Lambone mean? How much of -what he said was of a piece with the rest of his observant, -self-indulgent life, his life as a humorous comment on a -universe that was profoundly absurd?</p> - -<p>How easily Lambone played with phrases and ideas for -which men had lived and died! How widely he had read -and thought to bring so many things together! He produced -a great effect of erudition. The Golden Bough he -had at his fingers’ ends. He talked of the sacramental -mysteries of half a dozen cults, from Mithraism to ritual<span class="pagenum" id="Page_384">[384]</span> -sacrifices, of varying ideas of personality that had held and -swayed human life from Fiji to Yucatan. Now he was in -pre-Christian Alexandria, and now among the Chinese -philosophers. The “Superior Person” of Confucius he declared -was merely an example of our way of translating -all Chinese phrases as ridiculously as possible; it meant -really the Higher and Greater Man, the Universal Man, -in whom the inferior egotistical man merged himself. It -was the salvation of the Revivalist everywhere; it was the -Spiritual Man of Pauline Christianity. When the late -Mr. Albert Edward Preemby poured out all his little being -into the personality of Sargon, King of Kings, he was only -doing over again what the saints and mystics, the religious -teachers and fanatics, have done throughout the ages. He -was just the Master under the Bo Tree translated into the -cockney of Woodford Wells.</p> - -<p>Presently Devizes was talking. Devizes was a great -contrast to Lambone. He talked a different language. He -did not seem nearly so clear and clever to Bobby as Lambone -did, but he had an effect of sincerity and solidity of -conviction that Lambone lacked altogether. His interventions -made all that Lambone said seem like a wild and -picturesque parody of something that was otherwise inexpressible. -Both he and Lambone had an air of casting -verbal nets for some truth that still eluded them. And yet -this truth so remotely and imperfectly apprehended was -for each of them the most important thing in life.</p> - -<p>“Stripped of its theological trappings,” Devizes said to -Lambone, “your new religion is simply a statement of this. -That our race has reached, and is now receding, from a -maximum of <i>individuation</i>. That it turns now towards -synthesis and co-operation. It will move back towards -what you call Sargon, the great ruler, and it will swallow -up individual egotistical men in its common aims. As -already scientific work swallows them up. Or good administrative -work. Or art. That is what you are saying.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_385">[385]</span>“Exactly,” said Paul Lambone. “If we <i>must</i> talk your -language, Devizes, and not mine. Art, science, public service, -creative work of every sort, these are parts of what you, -I suppose, would call the race mind, parts of the race life. -Every man who matters is a fresh thought, a fresh idea. -He is himself still, it is true, but his significance is that he -comes out of his past and out of his conditions and he flows -on to further men. This is the new realization that is -changing all the values in human life. It is happening -everywhere. Even in the books and reading of to-day you -can see the thing happening. History now becomes more -important than biography. What made up the whole of -life in the romantic past; the love story, the treasure story, -the career, getting on, making a fortune, the personal deed -and victory, the sacrifices for an individual friend or love -or leader; remains no longer the whole of life and sometimes -not even the leading interest in life. We are passing -into a new way of living, into a new sort of lives, into new -relationships. The world which seemed for a time not to -be changing any more is changing very swiftly ... in its -mental substance.”</p> - -<p>“New sorts of people,” said Bobby softly, and went off -from listening to Lambone’s lucid little voice into a final -recapitulation of the puzzling things Christina Alberta had -said and done that day.</p> - -<h4>§ 5</h4> - -<p>Bobby was recalled to the matter of the talk by a movement -in the chair behind him.</p> - -<p>Lambone’s smooth voice was explaining: “So that it does -not matter so much what we achieve as what we contribute. -That cherished personal life which men and women struggle -to round off and make noble and perfect, disappears -from the scheme of things. What matters more and more -is the work one does. What matters less and less is our<span class="pagenum" id="Page_386">[386]</span> -personal romance and our personal honour. Or rather our -honour will go out of us into our work. Our love affairs, -our devotions and private passions, for example, will fall -more and more definitely into a subordination to our -science or whatever our function is. Our romances and -our fame and honour will join our vices among the things -we suppress. There was a time when men lived for a noble -tomb and in order to leave sweet and great memories -behind them; soon it will matter nothing to a man and his -work to know that he will probably die in a ditch—misunderstood. -So long as he gets the work done.”</p> - -<p>“With no last Judgment ever to vindicate him,” said -Devizes.</p> - -<p>“That will not matter in the least to him.”</p> - -<p>“I agree. Some of us begin to feel like that even now.”</p> - -<p>“Even if one has done nothing worth doing,” said Paul -Lambone, and in his voice was that faint quality of the -sigh of one who has crowned a rather difficult and uncertain -card castle, “even if Sargon had died unrescued in his -Asylum and all the world had thought him mad, all the -same he would have escaped, his imagination would have -touched the imagination of the greater life.”</p> - -<p>Came a pause of edification and then a sigh of satisfaction -from Miss Lambone. She never understood in the -least what her brother was talking about, but she adored -him when he talked. Nobody she thought had ever talked -like him, or could possibly talk like him. His voice was so -clear and bright, like the best sort of print. Only sometimes -you wished you had spectacles.</p> - -<p>But now Miss Lambone was to receive a shock. Christina -Alberta suddenly came out of the silence in which she had -been sitting.</p> - -<p>“I don’t believe in this,” said Christina Alberta out of -the depths of her chair.</p> - -<p>Bobby was beginning to know the voice of Christina -Alberta very well; and he knew now that she was terrified<span class="pagenum" id="Page_387">[387]</span> -at having to talk, and at the same time desperately resolved -to get something said. He knew too that she was gripping -hard at the arms of her chair. He glanced at Devizes and -in that instant the lighthouse beam touched his face and -Bobby saw it very intent, watching Christina Alberta -steadily and as if forgetful of all other things. It was intent -and tender and tenderly apprehensive, grave and very pale -in that white illumination. When the light had passed -away Bobby still seemed to see that face, but now conversely -it was a face of ebony.</p> - -<p>“I do not believe in <i>any</i> of this,” said Christina Alberta.</p> - -<p>She paused with the effect of marshalling her argument. -“It is theology, I suppose,” she said. “Or mysticism. It is -all an intellectual game that men have played to comfort -themselves. Men rather than women. It makes no real -difference. Tragedy <i>is</i> tragedy, failure <i>is</i> failure, death is -death.”</p> - -<p>“But is there ever complete failure?” asked Lambone.</p> - -<p>“Suppose,” said Christina Alberta, “suppose a man is -thrown into prison and misrepresented to all the world, -suppose he is taken away presently and made to dig his -own grave, and shot at the edge of it and buried and then -lied about for a time and forgotten. It isn’t part of the -race that is murdered, it isn’t a wonderful thing that passes -on; it is a man who has been killed and made away with. -Your mysticism is just an attempt to dodge the desolation -of that. It doesn’t. Such things have happened. They -happen to-day. In Russia. In America. Everywhere. -Men are just wiped out, body and soul, hope and will. -That man and his black personal universe are done with -and over, and there is an end to his business; he is beaten -and wiped out, and all the clever talk upon easy sofas in -the warm twilight will not alter that one jot. It is frustration. -If I am frustrated I am frustrated, if I have desires -and dreams and they are defeated and die, I die. It is -playing with words to say I do not die or that they are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_388">[388]</span> -changed and sublimated and carried on into something -better.”</p> - -<p>“My dear,” said Miss Lambone to Miss Means. “You -are sure you are not feeling cold?” Her voice conveyed a -faint intimation that she would cease to be acutely interested -in the talk if this chit of a girl intervened any -further in the discussion, and that she would begin to do -things with wraps and shawls and break up the meeting.</p> - -<p>“I’m perfectly happy, dear,” Miss Means answered. -“All this—! I wish it could go on for ever.”</p> - -<p>But Christina Alberta disregarded Miss Lambone’s warning. -She had something to say and there was some one -she wanted to say it to, not too pointedly, not too plainly.</p> - -<p>“All this theology, this religion, the new religions that -are only the old ones painted over——”</p> - -<p>“Reborn,” said Paul.</p> - -<p>“Painted over. I don’t want them. But that is not what -I want to say. What I want to say is that you are wrong -about my Daddy, you are quite wrong about him. That I -do know. Mr. Lambone has dressed him up to suit his -own philosophy. He had that philosophy long before he -knew him. And you talked my Daddy over and put Mr. -Lambone’s ideas into him when he was beaten and broken -because they suited his case. They weren’t there before. -I know him and exactly how he thought. I was brought up -on him. He talked to me more than to anyone. And it is -all nonsense to talk of him—his exaltation, as being like -the great soul coming like the tidal sea into the pool of the -little soul. It didn’t. When he said he was Lord of the -World he wanted to be Lord of the World. He didn’t want -to incorporate any other people at all—or be incorporated. -He was just as exclusively himself when he was Sargon as -when he was Albert Edward Preemby. More so.... And -I believe that is how it is with all of us.”</p> - -<p>She went on rather hurriedly, for she knew there were -forces there very ready to silence her.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_389">[389]</span>“I want to be myself and nothing else. I want the world—for -myself. I want to be a goddess in the world. It does -not matter that I am an ugly girl with natural bad manners. -It does not matter that it is impossible. That is what I -want. That is what I am made to want. One may get -moments anyhow. A moment of glory is better than none.... -I believe that sort of thing is what you all want really. -You just persuade yourselves you don’t. And you call that -religion. I don’t believe anyone has ever believed religion -from the beginning. Buddhism, Christianity, this fantastic -Sargonism, this burlesque religion you invent to make an -evening’s talk, they are all consolations and patchings-up—bandages -and wooden legs. People have tried to believe -in such religions no doubt. Broken people. But because -we cannot satisfy the desires of our hearts—why should we -cry ‘Sour grapes’ at them?</p> - -<p>“I don’t want to serve—anything or anybody. I may be -heading for frustration, the universe may be a system of -frustration, but that doesn’t alter the fact that this is how -I feel about it. I may be defeated; it may be certain that I -shall be defeated—but as for bringing a contrite heart out -of the mess and starting again as a good little part of something—I -<i>don’t</i> fink. Oh, I know I beat my hands against a -wall. It’s not my fault. Why don’t we take? Oh, why -don’t we dare?”</p> - -<p>Miss Lambone stirred and rustled.</p> - -<p>The darkness that was Devizes spoke to Christina Alberta, -and Miss Lambone became still.</p> - -<p>“We don’t take and we don’t dare,” he said, “we don’t -defy laws and customs because there are other things in -our lives, <i>in</i> us and not outside us, that are more important -to us. That is why. It pleases Paul to dress up his view -of these things in old mystical phrasing, but what he -says is really an unscientific way of putting psychological -fact. You think you are simple, but you are really complex. -You are the individual but you are the race also. That is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_390">[390]</span> -your nature and mine and everyone’s. The more our -intelligence awakens the more we know that.”</p> - -<p>“But it is the difference that is distinctively me, and not -the general part. The race in me is no more to me than -the ground I walk on. I am Christina Alberta; I am not -Woman or Mankind. As Christina Alberta, I want and I -want and I want. And when the door is slammed upon my -imaginations I cry out against it. Why pretend I give up a -thing because I can’t have it? Why make a glory of renunciation -and letting-go? I hate the idea of self-sacrifice. -What is the good of coming into the world as Christina -Alberta just in order to sacrifice being Christina Alberta? -What is the good of being different if one is not to live a -different life?”</p> - -<p>Unexpectedly Miss Lambone intervened, “The life of a -woman is one long sacrifice,” she said.</p> - -<p>There was a pause.</p> - -<p>“But we have the vote now?” said Christina Alberta -almost flippantly. “Why is a woman’s life sacrifice?”</p> - -<p>“Think of the children we bear,” said Miss Lambone in a -constrained voice.</p> - -<p>“<i>Well!</i>” said Christina Alberta, and suppressed some -scandalous remark.</p> - -<p>“The most astonishing thing about us,” she broke out -again, after a pause; “the most astonishing thing in the -feminine make-up is that hardly any of us <i>do</i> seem to want -children. A lot of us anyhow don’t. Now that I am beginning -to learn something about biology, I realize how marvellous -that is. As a race of creatures specialized for children, -we ought to be eaten up by the desire for children. -As a matter of fact most modern women will do anything -to avoid having children. We dread them. To me they -seem like a swarm of hidden dwarfs, prepared to come -upon me and eat up my whole existence. It’s not simply -I don’t want them; I live in fear of them. Love we <i>may</i> -want. Many of us do. Intensely. We want to love and be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_391">[391]</span> -loved—to get close and near to some one. It’s a delusion I -suppose. One of Nature’s clumsy tricks. It is all a delusion. -He vanishes—he was never there. Under the old conditions -it availed; it got the children Nature wanted. But we -don’t think of children. We don’t want to think about -them. There it is! And anyway children do not take a -woman out of her egotism; they only extend and intensify -it. I have known intelligent girls marry and have children, -and when the baby appeared their minds evaporated. They -became creatures of instinct, messing about with napkins. -I could scream at the thought of it. No, I am an egoist -pure and simple. I am Christina Alberta, and her only. -I am not Sargon. I refuse altogether to mix with that -promiscuous anybody-nobody.”</p> - -<p>“After all that may only be a phase in your development,” -said Devizes.</p> - -<p>“It is the only one I know.”</p> - -<p>“That is evident. But I assure you, Christina Alberta, -that this revolt and distress of yours is a phase. You are -talking rebellion and egoism and anarchism as a healthy -baby screams to get breath into its lungs, and escape from -the stuffiness of old air. The baby doesn’t know why it -screams and no doubt finds some dim little grievance in -its brain——”</p> - -<p>“Go on,” said Christina Alberta. “Chastise me and -chastise me.”</p> - -<p>It seemed to Bobby that there were tears in her voice.</p> - -<p>“No, but you are so young, my dear,” said Devizes.</p> - -<p>My dear!</p> - -<p>“Not so young. Not so actually young,” cried Christina -Alberta.</p> - -<p>“If I live to be eighty,” said Christina Alberta, “shall I -ever be able to feel more than I am feeling now? Why will -you always treat me like a child nowadays?”</p> - -<p>“Feeling isn’t the only measure,” said Devizes. “Even -now, to-night, you are talking below your beliefs. You<span class="pagenum" id="Page_392">[392]</span> -are not an egoistic adventurer. You take sides on a score -of matters. You insist you are a Communist for example.”</p> - -<p>“Oh! just to smash up things,” said Christina Alberta. -“Just to smash up everything.”</p> - -<p>“No. You say that to-night, but you have told me -differently before. You have a care for the world. You -want to help forward the common interest. You develop -a passion for scientific truth. Well—there’s no way of -fencing in your individuality from other minds in science -or in public affairs. You’re a part by necessity; you can’t -be a complete whole. You find already you can’t keep -away from these things. They will take you more and -more, whether you like it or not, because it is the spirit -of the time. That is what is happening to us all. You -can’t escape. Our work, our part, is the first thing in -our lives. To that, pride must bow now and passion and -romance. We have to slam and lock and bar the door -against all personal passion that might wreck our work. -Bar it and put it out of your mind. As a secondary thing. -Work. Give the greater things a chance to keep you.”</p> - -<p>“That’s all very well.”</p> - -<p>“It’s everything.”</p> - -<p>“Why <i>should</i> they keep me?” came from Christina Alberta, -sullenly and resolutely.</p> - -<p>“I know that this is your faith,” she said. “You told -me all about it. You’ve always told me about it.” Bobby’s -quick ear detected a change in her voice “Do you remember -our first talk together? Do you remember our -talk in Lonsdale Mews? When we dined together at that -Italian place? That night. Just after we had found each -other.”</p> - -<p>Found each other?</p> - -<p>“But I did not know then that your faith meant all the -suppressions and sacrifices and discretions it seems to do. -I thought it was something robust and bold. I did not -understand its—qualifications. But since then we have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_393">[393]</span> -argued about these things and argued. That day at Kew -Gardens. That day when you took me for that walk over -the downs to Shere. We have threshed things out. Why -should we argue again? I am giving in—what can I do -but give in?—and soon I will be a Sargonite with you and -Paul. But not this summer. Not now. This night—This -wonderful first night of summer. To-night I rebel against -any renunciation, any fobbing-off of individuals with -second-best things. I am going to be impossible and -absurd. For the last time. I want the world from the stars -to the bottom of the sea for myself, for my own hungry -self. And all between. The precious things between. The -love.... <i>There!</i>”</p> - -<p>Vague questions appeared and vanished again on the -screen of Bobby’s mind. What had Christina Alberta -renounced? What was she renouncing? What was anyone -renouncing? And had his ears cheated him, or had Devizes -called her, “my dear”? In front of Margaret Means and in -face of all the circumstances of the case it seemed to -Bobby that Devizes was the last person who ought to call -Christina Alberta “my dear.” And what was this about -“fobbing-off”? Was this really a shameless plainness of -speech, an atrocious confession, or something that he misunderstood?</p> - -<p>Miss Lambone stirred uneasily.</p> - -<p>It was as if an evil spirit possessed Christina Alberta. -“Oh, <i>damn</i> renunciation!” she said with bitter gusto.</p> - -<p>They seemed to be sitting for some moments in a profound -silence, and then the nightingale became very audible.</p> - -<h4>§ 6</h4> - -<p>“I think,” said Miss Lambone in the silence, “that it is -getting just a <i>leetle</i> chilly.”</p> - -<p>“It is so beautiful here,” said Miss Means, who was warm -in Miss Lambone’s shawl. “Perfectly beautiful.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_394">[394]</span>“How you can talk of frustration—!” she added, and left -her sentence incomplete.</p> - -<p>“I think,” said Miss Lambone, “that I shall go in and -light the candles. It is too wonderful a night for the electric -lights, far too wonderful. We will just light the candles -and the fire. And perhaps you will play us something -beautiful. These are such marvellous fire-places here that -they blaze up at once. I don’t know if you have noticed -them—a new sort. The fire is all on the hearth—no -draught below, but the shape of the back draws it up.</p> - -<p>“I love a wood fire,” said Miss Lambone, and sighed and -rose slowly and voluminously.</p> - -<h4>§ 7</h4> - -<p>Two days later Bobby came into one of the little studies -on the garden side of Paul Lambone’s house. Paul had -found out that Bobby wanted a few days of uninterrupted -thought in which to begin his novel, and had asked him to -stay on after the other guests had returned to London. -It was a perfect room for a writer of Bobby’s temperament; -it had a low writing-table close to the sill of the casemented -window, and on the sill was a silver bowl of forget-me-nots -and white tulips. A little glass-paned door released one -into the garden without one’s having to go back through -the house. The writing-table had everything a fastidious -writer could desire, a pleasant paper-rack and wafers, and -real quill pens, and plenty of elbow room. The chair he -sat in was an arm-chair, immensely comfortable but not -too luxurious; no hint of repose in it but only a completely -loyal support for a working occupant. A garden -path ran up hill from the window, a garden path skirted -by wonderful clusters of pansies. On either side of the -pansies were rose bushes, and though not a rosebud was -showing, yet the fresh green leaves, tinged with ruddy -brown, were very exquisite in the light.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_395">[395]</span>He stood looking up the path for a time and then sat -down and drew the writing-pad towards him. He took one -of those delightful quills, tested the delicious flexibility of -its points, dipped it in the ink and wrote in his very neat -and beautiful handwriting:</p> - -<p class="center"> -UPS AND DOWNS<br> -<br> -<i>A Pedestrian Novel</i><br> -<br> -<small>BY ROBERT ROOTHING</small><br> -<br> -CHAPTER THE FIRST<br> -<br> -<small>WHICH INTRODUCES OUR HERO</small></p> - -<p>He wrote this very readily because it was very familiar -to him. From first to last he had written it on fair fresh -sheets of paper perhaps half a dozen times.</p> - -<p>Then he stopped short and sat quite still with his head on -one side. Then very neatly he corrected “which introduces” -into “in which we introduce.”</p> - -<p>It was nearly two years now since he had first begun his -novel in this fashion, and he was still quite uncertain about -the details of his hero’s introduction. His original intention -about the story still floated pleasantly in the sky of -his mind; a promise of a happy succession of fine, various -and delightful adventures, told easily and good-humouredly; -the fortunes of a kindly, unpretending, not too brave -but brave enough young man, on his way through the -world, to live happily afterwards with a delicious young -woman. “Picaresque” was the magic word. None of these -adventures had as yet assumed a concrete form in his mind. -He felt they would come to him definitely enough one day. -If one sat and mused one half saw them, and that was -assurance enough for him. And so having rewritten his -title page neatly and prettily, he fell into a day-dream and -was presently thinking round and about his Christina -Alberta as a good hero should.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_396">[396]</span>Bobby was always being puzzled by Christina Alberta, -always coming upon something that seemed to clear up -everything, and then being puzzled again. But now it -seemed to him that he really did know the last fact of -importance that was to be known about her. Overnight -Paul Lambone had described how he had taken her to -Devizes to get advice, and how they had blundered upon -the reality of her parentage. He told his story well as a -story-writer should; he gave it dramatic point. Evidently -he told the tale of set intention, because it was time Bobby -knew. Lambone was aware of Christina Alberta’s -engagement. He did not know and nobody but Bobby -knew that she never intended to be married. But this, it -seemed to Bobby, made the understanding of her situation -possible; explained that watchful tenderness of Devizes’ -face suddenly betrayed by the light of his inadvertent -“my dear”; explained her position as though she belonged -to him and Paul Lambone instead of being a rather unaccountable -visitor; excused her vehement jealousy of -Margaret Means, because evidently she had become violently -possessive of her father, and had counted perhaps -upon recognition and being very much with him. No -doubt Margaret Means stood in the way of that. It was -natural for Christina Alberta to want to be with Devizes -and work with him, and natural for her to suspect and -anticipate and resent an intervening personality. Apart -from the magic of kinship it was natural that two such -subtle and abundant personalities should attract each other -greatly. That Devizes should have decided quite abruptly -to marry Margaret Means did not present any difficulties -to Bobby; he was not thinking very closely about Devizes. -Margaret Means was pretty enough for anyone to want to -marry her. There are times, as Bobby knew, when that -sweet prettiness can stab one like an arrow. It had evidently -stabbed and won Devizes. And almost the only -thing that gave Bobby a second thought, but no more than<span class="pagenum" id="Page_397">[397]</span> -a second thought, was Christina Alberta’s fluctuation of -purpose, why she should have consented to marry him and -then have changed her mind so quickly and definitely and -yet have retained him as a lover.</p> - -<p>That resolution not to marry seemed after all just a part -of her immense modernity. Because of all this group of -“new people” in which he found her, she seemed to Bobby -to be in every way the newest. She was the boldest enterprise -in living he had ever met. Her flare of hungry rebel -individuality fascinated him. Where in this world was -she going? Would she win out to this free personal life she -desired or would she fail to find an objective of work and -come upon disappointment and solitude like some creature -that has strayed? The world had terrified Bobby in his -own person greatly; it terrified him still more when he -thought of this valiant little figure going out to challenge it.</p> - -<p>Bobby was naturally, inherently, afraid; his instinct was -for security, protection, kindliness and help. He clung to -his “Aunt Suzannah” job for safety. He didn’t believe -Christina Alberta knew one tenth of the dangers she ran of -insult, defeat, humiliation, neglect, repulse, fatigue and -lonely distress. His imagination presented a tormenting -picture of her away there in dark, confused, immense and -blundering London, as an excessively fragile figure, light -on its feet, shock-head erect, arms akimbo, unaware of -monstrous ambushed dangers. Now that he began to -understand her, he began to understand a great number of -bright-eyed, adventurous, difficult young women he had -met in the last few years, and he had his first dim realization -of the meaning of the deep wide stir among womankind -that had won them votes and a score of unprecedented -freedoms.</p> - -<p>Many of these younger women were doing their work -and holding their own exactly like men. They were painting -and drawing like men, writing criticism like men, writing -plays and novels like men, leading movements, doing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_398">[398]</span> -scientific work, playing a part in politics. Like men? On -reflection—not exactly. No. They still kept different. -But they didn’t do their things in any fashion one could -call womanly. Without adding strange new meanings to -“womanly.” The novels they were writing interested him -immensely. People like Stella Benson wrote books like—anybody; -you could not tell from her work whether she -was a man or a woman. All that again was new. George -Eliot perhaps was a precursor. Perhaps. The former sort -of women’s writings, when they were not “pretty me” books, -were “kindly auntie” books; you heard the petticoats swish -in every page.</p> - -<p>Sexless, these new ones? Bobby weighed the word. The -earlier generation of women who wanted to be emancipated -suppressed sex, suppressed it so fiercely that its -negative presence became the dominant factor in their -lives. They ceased to be positive woman; they became -fantastically negative woman. But this newer multitude -was not so much repressing as forgetting their sex, making -little of it. Christina Alberta had in a way made nothing -of her sex, not by struggling against it, but by making it -cheap for herself as a man makes it cheap for himself—so -that it was a thing of mere intermittent moods and impulses -for her—and she could go on to other things.</p> - -<p>Going on to other things. His imagination recurred to -that little figure resolved to conquer the world for itself in -defiance of every tradition.</p> - -<p>There was a strong urgency in him to start off to London -in pursuit of her, to hover about her, intervene, protect -her and carry her off to security. He knew she wouldn’t -permit that sort of thing to happen anyhow. He’d have to -be just a friend and companion to her, be at hand for her, -and if she did encounter some disaster, stand by her.</p> - -<p>It was a queer thing that he should want to stand by this -unsexed young woman. It was just what one would not -expect; it was part, perhaps, of the immense biological<span class="pagenum" id="Page_399">[399]</span> -changes of the time. In the past the species had needed -half the race specialized for child-bearing and child-rearing; -now plainly it didn’t. The tremendous and worshipful -dignity of wife and mother was not for all women any -longer. That would remain for a certain sort of them to -take up if they would. But a vast multitude of women -were born now to miss that. Some would become pretty -nuisances who would presently cease to be pretty, parasites -on love and the respect for motherhood; shams, simulacra. -Others would break away to a real individual life—a third -sex. Perhaps in the new world there would cease to be two -sexes only; there would be recognized varieties and subdivisions. -So Bobby speculated. For just as there were -women who did not want to bear children, so there were -men who did not want to lord it over wife and children.</p> - -<p>They would want to love all the same. Every individual -of a social species needed love; to fail in that need was to -escape out of social life to lonely futility. “Mutual comfort,” -Bobby quoted. In his past Bobby had dreamt of the -love of children. Even now he remembered as a fact that -he had dreamt particularly of a little girl of his own that -he could protect and explore. But now the thought and -interest of Christina Alberta had blotted that out. It was -extraordinary to him to perceive how possessed he was by -her. He could endure no prospect of life just now unless -it was to include Christina Alberta as its principal fact. -But he’d be no use to her unless she respected him. He -couldn’t hope to stand subordinate to her, any more than -he could hope to be her master. In the latter case she’d -rebel; in the former, she’d despise. They would have to -stand side by side. And since she was clever, able and -resolved to work hard and distinguish herself, he must -word hard and also distinguish himself too. He had to be -her equal and remain and keep himself her equal....</p> - -<p>That, in fact, was why he was going to write a great -novel—not just a novel but a great one.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_400">[400]</span>He looked again at the neatly written page. “Ups and -Downs,” he read. “A Pedestrian Novel.”</p> - -<p>It dawned upon him that there was something profoundly -wrong about that.</p> - -<p>It was to have been a story of wandering about in the -world that is; the story of the happy adventures of a well -tempered mind in a well understood scheme of things. -But Bobby was beginning to realize that there is not, and -there never has been, a world that is; there is only a world -that has been and a world that is to be. “New people,” -whispered Bobby, and dipped a quill in the ink and made -a border of dots round his title. Then suddenly he crossed -out those three words “Ups and Downs” and wrote instead, -“New Country.”</p> - -<p>“That might be the title of any novel that matters,” said -Bobby.</p> - -<p>He mused deeply. Then he altered the sub-title to “The -History of an Explorer.”</p> - -<p>He scratched out “Explorer.”</p> - -<p>“Involuntary traveller,” said Bobby.</p> - -<p>Finally he put back “A Pedestrian Novel” as his sub-title....</p> - -<p>He became aware of an intermittent dull tapping, and -following the sound discovered a thrush trying to break -up a snail on the gravel path. But the gravel path was too -fine and soft to give a firm anvil for the beating. “The silly -bird ought to find a brick or a potsherd,” said Bobby and -reflected. “I suppose all the flower-pots are shut up in the -shed....</p> - -<p>“I don’t like to see that bird wasting the morning and -being disappointed....</p> - -<p>“It wouldn’t take a minute....”</p> - -<p>He got up, let himself out by the little glass door beside -the window and went to find a brick. Presently he returned -with it.</p> - -<p>But he did not go back into the study because while<span class="pagenum" id="Page_401">[401]</span> -he had been looking for the brick, he had seen a young -blackbird which had got under the strawberry netting, -and was evidently scared out of its silly wits. So he -went back to see about the blackbird. The minutes passed -and he did not reappear. Perhaps he had found some -other fellow-creature in trouble.</p> - -<p>Presently a little breeze blew into the study through the -open glass door, and lifted the sheet of paper which was to -introduce our hero, and wafted it softly and suggestively -on to the unlit wood fire upon the hearth. There it lay for -a long time.</p> - -<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> - -<div class="chapter"> -<div class="transnote"> -<p class="ph1">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:</p> - -<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.</p> - -<p>Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.</p> - -<p>Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.</p> - -<p>No attempt has been made to regularize dialect.</p> -</div></div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHRISTINA ALBERTA'S FATHER ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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