“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.”