One of them was a short man in a black coat; he wore a gold watch-chain
and a rich-looking tie with a jewelled pin; he had a gold pince-nez, a
little pointed nose, a fat, clean-shaven white face, and a mouth like
an oblique spade-thrust in a lump of dough. He spoke with something
between a sniff and a lisp, and he was evidently rather in a hurry and
annoyed at having been called in to see Sargon. The other was large and
grey and worn-looking; he impressed Sargon in some indefinable way as
being a medical man who had private troubles. He seemed to consider
himself in charge of the conversation, and would occasionally refer
upon some point of fact to the hovering Jordan.
“Understand,” said the pasty-faced man, “you wanted to give some sort
of dinner party to all sorts of people. Eh?--at the Rubicon. I suppose
it came on you sort of sudden like. Eh?”
“I wished to confer with certain people,” said Sargon. “It may have
been a mistake on my part.”
“No doubt it was a mistake, Mr.--Mr.----”
“Won’t ’ave a Mister to it,” said Jordan from the background. “Calls
’isself Sargon.”
The doctor became very acute in his manner. “Now isn’t that some sort
of historical name?” he asked with a sideways searching look.
“It is,” said Sargon.
“But it isn’t _your_ name, you know.”
“Possibly not. I mean--It is my only name.”
“That’s a bit of an answer, that is,” said the pasty-faced man. “My
_word_!”
“What is your _real_ name?” asked the doctor persuasively.
“Sargon.”
“Not Mr. A. E. Preemby?”
Sargon started and stared, possibly with a certain wildness in his
eyes. “With God’s help, _No_!” he said.
“Was it ever Mr. Preemby?” asked the doctor.
“That does not matter now. That is of no importance now.”
“It may be of _some_ importance,” said the pasty-faced man.
“And now you’re a King or a Lord or something and you own the world?”
said the doctor.
Sargon made no answer. He felt he was in a net.
The doctor turned to Jordan and beckoned him in a whisper. Only one
sentence came to Sargon’s ears. “’Iggs ’eard it,” said Mr. Jordan.
“Aren’t you called Sargon the Magnificent?” asked the doctor.
Sargon bent his head in sorrow. “Better were it to call me Sargon the
Unworthy. For in many things I have failed.”
The pasty-faced man looked at the doctor. “Haven’t we had about enough
of this?”
“My conclusions are clear,” said the doctor. “In fact, I have the
certificate ready.”
“If you’re satisfied, Dr. Manningtree, I am. If I’m to see those other
fellers.”
“I’ve got all the papers in my room,” said the doctor.
“Right-o,” said the pasty-faced man.
“It’s very good of you to come to-day. I wouldn’t have bothered you
until to-morrow but we are really getting overcrowded here. One chap’s
decidedly dangerous. The attendants here don’t like the look of him.
You need only just see him for a moment. Or any of them. All clear
cases for summary reception orders.”
They spoke now as if Sargon were not present or as if he were an
inanimate object. And indeed for them he had become so; he had passed
for them already out of the comity of mankind.
“Why have you been talking to me?” asked Sargon suddenly with a vague
fear of what had been said and done developing in his mind.
The doctor’s manner altered. He spoke to Sargon as one might speak to a
small child. “You’ll be going back to bed now,” he said. “Jordan!”
“But I want to know.”
“Go with Mr. Jordan.”
“What are these papers you speak about?”
The doctor turned his back on Sargon without an answer and the man with
the pasty face opened the door to depart. Sargon made a step towards
them, but Jordan laid hold of his arm.
And while Sargon was being steered back to bed, firmly rather than
gently, in the grip of Jordan, the justice and the doctor filled in and
signed the forms that were necessary to deprive him of nearly every
right he possessed as a human being. For there is no trial by jury
and no writ of habeas-corpus in Britain for the unfortunate charged
with insanity. He may not plead in public and there is no one to whom
he may appeal. He may write complaints but they will be neglected;
his most urgent expostulations will be disregarded in favour of any
dull attendant’s asseverations. He is handed over to the nearly
autocratic control of under-educated, ill-paid, ill-fed, and overworked
attendants. Every night and every day seems endless to him at first,
and then the nights and days fall into a sort of routine and become
unimportant and pass away more and more rapidly. He is almost always
kept in a state of bodily discomfort, always rather ill from the
ill-prepared and sometimes tainted food, and much incommoded by clumsy
drugging and particularly by the administration of violent purgatives.
In croton oil alone are our asylums truly generous. He has excellent
reason for fearing many of his fellow inmates and for a servile
obedience to the attendants in charge of him. A medical superintendent
hovers in the background; a medical staff with no special training in
mental science. They pass through the wards at the appointed times,
avoiding trouble, seeing as little as possible.
And, after all, what can they do? They cannot raise the expenditure
upon food or increase the number or salaries of the attendants.
They are appointed to save and not to spend the ratepayers’ money.
The attendants work together and protect each other; they must hang
together; many of them go in fear of the violent cases. Occasionally,
after due notice, a visiting magistrate will pay a formal visit to the
asylum. Everything is put in order for the occasion. The inmate with a
grievance dares not accost him or does not know how to accost him nor
how to frame his complaint. The attendants are at hand to interrupt,
embarrass, and explain. So, with no possibility of redress, the poor
half-lunatic will be roughly handled, badly fed, and coarsely clothed,
and night and day he will have no other familiar company than the
insane. It is bad enough for the sane to be afflicted by the vagaries,
the violence, the exasperating mechanisms, the incoherences of the
truly demented, but what must it be for those upon whom the penumbra
of that same shadow has fallen? They have no privacy; no escape from
those others; no peace. Our world herds these discards together out of
sight, walls them up, spends so little upon them that they are neither
properly fed nor properly looked after, and does its brave hopeful best
to forget all about them.
And our Sargon, who even in the outer world of usage and freedom was
sometimes a little at a loss, must now go on into this dark underworld.
For two days more he will be kept in the Gifford Street Observation
Ward awaiting the convenience of the authorities; then in the company
of four other prisoners he will be sent to a still bleaker and more
desolate and hopeless confinement within the clustering buildings and
walls and railings of Cummerdown Hill.
So he passes now for a time out of sight of everyday mankind, and
so also for a time he shall pass out of this story. It would be
insufferable to tell with any fulness his daily tale of discomfort and
indignity.
_BOOK THE THIRD_
THE RESURRECTION OF SARGON, KING OF KINGS
CHAPTER THE FIRST
_Christina Alberta in Search of a Father_
§ 1
Hitherto Christina Alberta had faced life with a bold, disdainful, and
successful gesture. The discretions and scruples of others were not
for her. She had seen no reason for their prudent hesitations, their
conventions and restraints. Now for the first time she knew dismay. Her
Daddy had vanished into a world that she suddenly realized could be
immensely cruel. Teddy was rotten, so plainly rotten that only a fool
wrapped up in her own sensations would have touched him. She lay awake
for most of the night after her Daddy had vanished, biting her hands
and damning Teddy. Lambone the great friend was lazy, incompetent, and
futile. Harold and Fay seemed already a little tired of her misfortune
and vaguely disposed to blame her for bringing her Daddy to London. She
had no one else to whom she could turn. No one remained to her--except
Christina Alberta herself, feeling a little soiled now and more than a
little afraid. “But what am I to do?” she asked the night, again and
again, in her stuffy but artistic little bedroom.
Among the other disadvantages of her position she had less than a pound
of ready money.
It has to be recorded that for two whole days Christina Alberta did
not even take the obvious step of going to the police. She had a queer
instinctive knowledge of the danger of bringing the police and the
social system generally to bear upon her odd little Daddy. She had
an innate distrust of official human beings. It was Paul Lambone who
induced her to go to the police. He had the grace to be ashamed of his
unhelpfulness, and after an interval of two clear days he came round to
the Lonsdale Mews to offer his generous but sluggish help once more. He
caught her having tea with Fay.
“Christina Alberta,” he said, looking a very large comfortable figure
of sorrow, “I’ve been worrying and worrying about you all the time. I
didn’t help enough. I thought he’d come back of his own accord and that
all the fuss was a little premature. Have you heard anything?”
Christina Alberta was torn between the desire to snap his head off
and the realization that he was, after his fashion, quite sincerely
friendly to her and could be very useful.
“_Say_ it!” said Lambone. “You’ll be better, my dear, after you’ve said
it and then we can talk matters over.”
He got the reassurance of a smile. He brightened visibly. He was the
sort of man who would hate to feel hated even by a cockroach. “I won’t
sit in that chair, thanks,” he said to Fay. “It’s too comfortable. And
at any moment we may think of something, and I may have to leap up and
act.
“Spartan,” he said, sitting down.
“Eh?” said Fay.
“Spartan. My doctor tells me to say it before every meal and especially
before tea. I don’t know why. Magic or Coué or something. Are these
things cocoanut cakes? I thought so.... Good they are. And what are we
going to do about it, Christina Alberta?”
He became sane and helpful and more and more like the man who wrote
_What to Do on a Hundred and One Occasions_. He made Christina Alberta
admit to bankruptcy, and made it clear to her that it was her duty to
accept a loan of twenty-five pounds from him. He then dealt with the
point about reporting the disappearance to the police, and convinced
Christina Alberta upon that. If Mr. Preemby had fallen into bad hands
the sooner the police looked for him the better. But he did not think
that likely; he was much more inclined to the idea that Preemby had
made a disturbance and been taken up. He guessed he would be dealt with
as a mental case. He had consulted those useful books _The Justice
of the Peace_ and the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, and displayed the
excellence of his mental digestion. Christina Alberta perceived that he
had in him the makings of a competent barrister.
He carried off Christina Alberta in a taxi to Scotland Yard. “Either
they’ll tell us there or tell us where we shall be told,” he said.
Fay was impressed by the originality of that. “Now if it was a lost
umbrella,” she said, “I could understand it. But I’d never have thought
of going to Scotland Yard for a lost father.”
By six Mr. Preemby had been traced to Gifford Street. But there was no
seeing him at Gifford Street. He had been certified as a lunatic and he
was bound, the attendant thought but wasn’t quite sure, for Cummerdown
Hill. Paul Lambone tried to be dignified and important and to prevail
over the attendant and extract further information, but not very
successfully. In the end he and Christina Alberta departed with little
more than one immense discouraging fact. They would not be able to see
Mr. Preemby nor to learn anything very material about his condition
until the next visiting day, whenever that might be, at Cummerdown
Hill. Then if he was “fit to be visited,” they might go and see him.
The attendant was rigid in his statements and had the air of disliking
both Lambone and Christina Alberta extremely.
As they came away from Gifford Street Christina Alberta observed that
Lambone was angry. She had never seen him angry before. It was a very
transitory phase. There was an unusual depth of pink in his cheeks.
“Dog in office,” he said. “Just there to annoy people--anxious people.
One would think ... man in my position ... certain standing.... Some
attention.... Any other country but this, Man of letters has respect.”
Christina Alberta agreed mutely.
“Manners in a public official--primary.”
“He was detestable,” said Christina Alberta.
“Not at the end of my resources,” said Lambone.
Christina Alberta waited.
“Ought to have gone to Devizes in the first place. Knows more about
mental cases and lunacy law than any other man in London. Wonderful
fellow. I’ll go back to my flat and I’ll ring him up and make an
appointment. Then he’ll put us wise about the whole business. And I
want you to meet him anyhow. You’ll appreciate Devizes. Come to think
of it, you’re remarkably like him.”
“How?”
“Got the Life Force and all that. And physically like him. Very. The
same nose--much the same profile.”
“It’s a nose more suitable for a man,” said Christina Alberta. “I
suppose _he_ carries it off all right!”
“It’s a damned good nose, Christina Alberta,” said Lambone. “It’s a
valiant nose. Don’t you break down to any modesty about it. It was
your nose attracted me first to you. You’ll spike a husband with it
yet, and he’ll adore it and follow it even as you do. Nowadays women
have to be free and individualized; they have got to have features
and distinction. The days of the wanton curl and the swan neck and
complexion have gone. Not that you haven’t the clearest skin I’ve ever
set eyes upon, Christina Alberta.”
“Tell me some more about Dr. Devizes,” said Christina Alberta.
§ 2
But it wasn’t the next day that Christina Alberta met Devizes. She put
that off for a day and fled down to Woodford Wells in response to a
remarkable communication from Mr. Sam Widgery.
The Widgerys had never been correspondents of the Preembys except in so
far as the payment of the dividends upon Mr. Preemby’s interest in the
Limpid Stream Laundry necessitated letters. There had been a certain
amount of friction in the flotation of the company, and Mr. Widgery had
remained resentful and sought to show as much by a studied curtness
in his communications. But now came this letter addressed to “Miss
Chrissie Preemby.” “_My dear Chrissie_,” the letter began.
“_This is a shocking business about your poor father I can’t tell you
how shocked I am I went up post haste to the workhouse where you had
put him as soon as they wrote to me and got his watch and cheque-book.
It is fortunate they found my address in his pocket or I suppose I
should have been kept in the dark as per usual about all this he did
not know me and denied his own name but afterwards he said he knew
me for a filching commercial wrogue and would have my ears cut off
and threatened me. I was to be unpailed whatever that may be. I have
been thinking over all this business and since you are not yet of age
I suppose I am a sort of guardian to you and have to look into your
interests at the laundry which is not paying nearly so well as your
father led me to believe. I think he was already queer at the time and
didn’t fully understand what he was doing and I doubt if all that of
his about preference shares which I never held with really but did to
humour him ought to stand. Luckily there is no hurry about this has you
won’t have to pay anything for him where he is Mr. Punter says so long
as you leave well alone and we can see about these other things when
you have got over the first shock of your father’s breakdown. My wife
sends her love and kind sympathy. You must keep calm and not let these
things disturb you too much because very often it is hereriterary and
one cannot be too careful so leave everything to me and believe me to
remain_
“_Your affectionate cousin_
“_Sam Widgery_.”
“Rather!” said Christina Alberta and telephoned forthwith to put off
Paul Lambone and Wilfred Devizes and hurried off with a combatant light
in her eye to the Underground and Liverpool Street Station.
§ 3
When Christina Alberta got down to Woodford Wells it seemed to her
that the laundry was just a little smaller than it used to be and
that a slight tarnish had fallen upon the bright blue delivery vans.
The swastika upon them had been covered over by paper bills in
red lettering saying: “Under Entirely New Management. Address all
Communications to the Managing Director Samuel Widgery Esq. By Order.”
She went up the garden path to the door that had been home to her for
nearly all her life, and it was opened to her by Sam Widgery himself,
who had seen her coming. “So you came down,” he said, and seemed to
hesitate about admitting her. He was a tallish, stooping man with
a large bare pock-marked face, a dropping nether lip, a large nose
that snored occasionally when he breathed, and furtive very small
brown eyes. He was clad in dark grey ill-fitting garments, with a
frayed collar and a very worn made-up black satin tie. His waistcoat
was mainly unbuttoned and he fidgeted with his hands. He looked at
Christina Alberta as though he found her more formidable than he had
thought her.
“Did you see Daddy?” said Christina Alberta, coming straight to the
point.
He compressed his mouth and shook his head from side to side as though
he recalled painful things.
“Was he bad? Was he queer or--_dreadful_?”
“Not too loud, my dear,” he said in his husky whispering voice. “We
don’t want _every one_ to hear about your trouble. Come in here where
we can talk properly.”
He led the way into the little living-room in which her father had so
recently planned the conditions for the conversion of the laundry into
a limited company. The familiar furniture had been rearranged rather
amazingly, and a large, dark bureau had been placed under the window.
With discreet gestures, Sam Widgery closed the door and came towards
her. “Sit down, Chrissie,” he said, “and don’t get excited. I was
afraid you might come rushing down here. But of course I was bound to
write to you.”
“Did you see him?” she repeated.
“Mad as a hatter,” he said. “They say he made a riot at the Rubicon
Restaurant. Wanted to give a great banquet there to all the beggars in
London.”
“Did you see him? Was he well? Was he unhappy? What have they done with
him?”
“You mustn’t _pelt_ me with questions, Chrissie. You mustn’t let your
mind go on at such a pace. I told you in my letter I went up and saw
him. They called him out and he came to me in a little room.”
“Where was it? Where was this workhouse?”
“There you go again. Just sit down and take things quietly, my girl. I
can’t answer all these questions at once.”
“Where was it you saw him? Was it at Gifford Street?”
“Yes. Where else could it be? They was waiting to remove him.”
“Where?”
“Some asylum I suppose?”
“Cummerdown Hill?”
“Come to think of it, it _was_ Cummerdown Hill. Yes--they said
Cummerdown Hill. He came out. He looked much as usual, but more vacant
perhaps, until he set eyes on me and then he gave a sort of start and
said, ‘Don’t know you,’ he said. Like that.”
“Well, that wasn’t mad. Did he _look_ mad? I suppose he didn’t want to
talk to you--after all the disagreeable things that have been said.”
“Very likely. Any’ow I said to him, ‘What! don’t know _me_?’ I said;
‘not know old Sam Widgery what you planted your laundry on?’ Just like
that--joking at him like. Quite kindly but--humorous. ‘I don’t know
you,’ he says and tried to go. ‘Hold hard!’ I said and took him by the
arm. ‘You’re a base, complaining scoundrel,’ he says to me and sort of
tried to push me away. ‘You’d rewin any laundry!’ he says--him to me,
what was in the laundry business a dozen years before he married your
poor mother. ‘Any ’ow I haven’t your complaint,’ I says, ‘Mr. Albert
Edward Preemby.’ He sort of stiffened. ‘Sargum,’ he says, ‘if you
please....’”
“Sargon,” Christina Alberta corrected.
“Maybe. It sounded like ‘Sargum.’ And ‘Sargum’ he would have it. Mad
as a hatter on that. I tried to talk but what was the good of talking?
I couldn’t get anything plain or straight out of him at all. Started
threatening me with the bastinado--whatever that may be. I asked him to
be decent with his language. ‘I’ve ’ad enough’ I says to the attendant
at last and the attendant took him away. And so we’re quit of him,
Chrissie.”
“Quit of him!”
“Quit of him. What can anyone do?”
“Everything. Did he look very unhappy? Did he look frightened or
ill-treated?”
“Why should he? They’re taking proper care of him and he’s out of
harm’s way.”
“You’re sure he looked--serene?”
“Bit jaded perhaps. That’s his own internal workings I expect. But he’s
where he ought to be, Chrissie. I feel that. What we’ve got to do, from
what Mr. Punter says, is to let well alone. There he is with everything
he wants, living on the ratepayers’ money. We’ve got ourselves to
consider. We’ve got to think of that crazy preference-share idea he’s
saddled the laundry with. _That’s_ urgent. It’s a charge of nearly five
hundred a year as things are, nearly ten pound a week. There isn’t a
laundry in London could stand it.”
“I shall have to see my Daddy,” said Christina Alberta. “I don’t
believe he _is_ so comfortable. I’ve heard horrid stories of asylums.
Anyhow, I ought to go right away and see him.”
“Can’t do that, Chrissie,” said Mr. Widgery, shaking his large grey
face slowly from side to side and watching her as he spoke. “They don’t
have visitors running in and out of these mad-houses just whenever they
want to. Wouldn’t _do_, you know. The poor creatures have to be kept
quiet and not excited. I daresay I could give you a letter for next
visiting day----”
“_You!_ Give _me_ a letter!”
Mr. Widgery shrugged his shoulders. “It would help you to get in. But
you won’t make anything of him, Chrissie, even if you see him. And
you’ll have to wait for a visiting day. You must do that.”
“I want to see him.”
“Very likely. But regulations are regulations. Meanwhile there’s all
this business muddle we got to put straight. While he’s in that asylum
I think what I ought to do is to give you ’n allowance, five pounds
a week say, and keep back the rest until we’re able to get something
settled up. Or four. Or perhaps as you want it--not a definite sum. I
don’t know. I haven’t thought it out yet. You can’t possibly want to do
with all that ten pounds a week with him off your hands. Then we’ll be
able to see where we stand and everything will be all right again.”
He paused and scratched his cheek and watched her with his little
sidelong eyes. “See?” he said as if to stimulate her to speech.
Christina Alberta looked at him in a silence that became painful. Then
she stood up and regarded him--her arms akimbo and her face alight.
“I see now,” she said. “You damned old Rascal!”
Mr. Widgery had nice old-fashioned ideas about young ladies and
ladylike language. He was taken aback. “Now!” he said. “_Now!_”
“Always I should think,” said Christina Alberta.
“You mustn’t say things like that, Chrissie. You mustn’t use words like
that. You mustn’t get wrong ideas about all this. What d’you mean? Old
rascal! Something old rascal! Why? I’m only doing what I got to do. You
aren’t really of age yet, you’re just a mere child legally speaking,
and it falls to _me_ naturally, _me_, his nearest relative so to speak,
to make such arrangements as have to be made about his affairs. That’s
all. You mustn’t get wrong ideas about it all and you mustn’t get
excited. See?”
“I called you,” said Christina Alberta, “a damned old Rascal.”
He did not meet her eye. He spoke as if he appealed to the bureau.
“And does it do you any good to use such horrible expressions? And does
it do me any harm? And does it alter the fact that whether I like it or
not, I’ve got to look after his property now and see about it and see
you don’t get into any trouble or mischief? All me and your aunt have
been thinking about is just what’s right and proper to be done for you.
And then you turn on me like a serpent and use language----!”
Words failed Mr. Widgery, and still seeking sympathy from the bureau,
he shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands.
“You’re no relation of his,” said Christina Alberta. “I guessed when I
read your letter that this was the sort of thing you’d be up to. You’re
glad to have him out of the way because he was such a one for punctual
payments. You think I’m all alone; you think I’m just a girl and that
you can do what you like now with me. You’ve made a mistake. I’ll make
you pay up every penny that’s due on the laundry and I’ll see you do it
more punctually than ever. And why didn’t you do something to get him
out as soon as you heard they’d taken him?”