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.”