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.