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.