Christina Alberta's father

§ 1

IT has been said in an earlier chapter that Mr. Preemby, after his wife’s death, was like some seed which germinates and thrusts out bold and unexpected things. A new phase in that belated germination began as he walked through the London streets beside his captor policeman. If the thing had happened to Mr. Preemby while he was still Mr. Preemby, it would have been merely a dreadful, shameful horror. It would have been an insupportable experience, a thing to regret, a thing to get through and conceal and if possible obliterate from record and memory. If, again, it had happened in the early days of Sargon’s dreams it would have been an occasion for an immense dramatic improvisation. He would have thought of the effect upon the spectators and passers-by, he would have posed and gesticulated and said profound, memorable words. But some power of growth had taken possession of him now and he did none of these things. He posed now neither to the world without nor to himself within. For the first time in his life almost he was looking directly at himself and at what he had done and what had befallen him, and so full of wonder was he at this ultimate discovery of reality that he forgot all the vast fabric of make-believe, imaginative response, and deliberate self-delusion, up which he had clambered to this new phase of vision. He walked so quietly through the lit streets that only the most observant noted he was in charge and that the policeman was on duty; to the rest he might have been any casual companion of a home-going policeman.

One determination had been released in this renascent mind with an extraordinary strength and clearness, that he was not, and never would again be, that Albert Edward Preemby who had launched him into existence. He was a being called, it mattered not what, in reality, but for his present purposes, Sargon, Sargon the Magnificent King. The first concrete visions of Sumeria and his ancient glories had passed now into the background of his mind. He had not lost his belief in them at all, but they were now ancient history to him, and even the revelation at the boarding house seemed very far away. His ideas had travelled long distances and gathered much in the past week. The expectation of an immediate sensational splendour had been rudely shattered. The Power that had called him had surprised him exceedingly, but had not overwhelmed him. He knew quite clearly that he had to be Sargon who lived not for himself but for the Whole World, and that to relinquish or deny that was to perish utterly. It had not seemed to be necessary to him that his own faith should be tried, but manifestly the Power had determined that it should be tried. And manifestly he was to be put through some austere process of preparation before he entered into his Empire. He was to know what prison was and to stand a trial. He would be asked to deny himself.

What should he say to them? I am not He—I am not Him—which was it? I am not Him you suppose I am. He muttered it to himself.

“Whassay?” said the policeman.

“Nothing. Is it much further?” asked Sargon.

It was just round the corner. Sargon found himself in a little austere room with half a dozen quite amiable but slightly disrespectful men in uniform. He was asked his name and address by one who sat at a table. “Sargon,” he said. “Sargon the First.”

“No Christian name?”

“Pre-Christian,” said Sargon.

“No given name, I mean,” said the questioner.

“No.”

“And the address?”

“None at present.”

“Just anywhere?”

Sargon did not answer.

“Case for Gifford Street,” said a voice behind him.

“Memory case or something,” said the man at the table. “Anyhow, it’s Gifford Street.”

Sargon reflected. “What’s Gifford Street?” he asked.

“’Ospital. Where they’ll give you a bit of a rest and quiet.”

“But I want to meet a magistrate in open court. I have a message. I am in no need of rest or quiet.”

“They’ll tell you all about that at Gifford Street. Buxton, will you take ’im round?”

“But I am perfectly well! Why should I go to hospital?”

“Routine I suppose,” said the seated policeman and gave his mind to other things.

§ 2

Queer! Why should it be a hospital? The way the Power was treating him was a strange way. He had to submit to the Power; he had to maintain himself Sargon. Still he could have wished for more explicitness.

He was so turned inward now that he went along beside Constable Buxton, not noting the streets nor the traffic nor the passers-by. Presently they were at a door in a high wall, within which there were buildings. Then they were in a little office and a large, grey-faced porter looked at him and exchanged muttered explanations with the constable. Then they were going across a wide yard and through large doors into a corridor where there was an unoccupied stretcher and two or three nurses in uniform. They came to a little glazed-in office and Sargon was asked to sit down on a bench against a wall while there was telephoning. Constable Buxton hovered down the corridor as though the task was nearly done.

A small bright-eyed man in a grey suit came and looked at Sargon. For some moments they regarded each other in silence. “Well?” said the man in the grey suit.

“My name is Sargon. I do not know why I have been brought here. Is this a hospital? I understand it is. I am not ill.”

“You may be ill without knowing it.”

“No.”

“We just want to have you here for a bit to have a look at you.”

Sargon shrugged his shoulders.

A very big man with exaggerated shoulders and a large, clean-shaven, intensely self-satisfied looking face appeared. He had a wide, thin-lipped mouth, protruding grey eyes and highly oiled and entirely subjugated sandy hair with an army “quif” on the forehead.

“Busy evening,” he said. “This is number three.”

“Pretty full then,” said the small man in grey.

“Too full,” said Mr. Jordan, “You don’t know where you are. This ’im?” he asked and indicated Sargon by creasing his thick neck and depressing the corner of his mouth towards him.

“This,” said the little man in grey to Sargon, “is Mr. Jordan. He’s going to show you just where you have to go and just what you have to do.”

Immediately, instinctively, Sargon disliked Mr. Jordan. But he stood up obediently because his idea of submission to the Power seemed in some way to overlap and include this new coercion. Mr. Jordan produced a voice of flat, oily, insincere amiability. “You come along, Old Chap, with me,” he said. “We’ll make you comfortable all right ’fyou don’t give no trouble.”

They went round a corner and up a cheerless stone staircase that turned back on itself; they came to a landing and double doors with glass panes in them that opened upon a very long, dark passage lit by a single very remote light. And suddenly it appeared to Sargon that behind him and already distant lay that outer world of freedom, the streets and the lights, the coming and going of people and things, the endless chance encounters, the events and the spectacle of life to which the Power had sent him, and before him were dark and narrow and dreadful experiences. Why should he turn his back thus voluntarily on the great outer world he had come to save? Was this again only another mistake he was making? He took a step or so away from Jordan and faced him.

“No,” he said. “I do not want to go further into this place. I do not wish it. Let me return. I have disciples to call and many things to do.”

The full moon of Jordan’s face displayed incredulous astonishment that passed into fierceness. “Wot?” he said.

He left a tremendous pause after “Wot” and then spoke very rapidly. “None of your tricks ’ere, you thundering old Bastard.” With a swift movement his huge, raw, red hand gripped Sargon by the upper arm. His thin lips were retracted to show his teeth; his eyes seemed popping out. He gripped not to hold but to pinch and compress and injure, and he dug his fingers in between muscle and bone, so that Sargon stared at him with dilated eyes and uttered a sharp, involuntary cry of pain.

The grip relaxed from the acutely painful to the merely uncomfortable, and the big face came down close to Sargon’s. It was manifest that Mr. Jordan had been regaling himself on cheese and cocoa. “Don’t you try it on, you Old Fool! Don’t you blooming well try it on. Whatever it is, don’t you try it on ’ere. You’re right enough to understand what I say. See? You do exactly wot you’re told ’ere. You do exactly wot you’re told. You do your best to avoid givin’ trouble and I’ll do my best ditto. But if you start doin’ tricks—Gawd ’elp you! See?”

And he crushed the arm again.

“Understan’?”

The blue eyes seemed to assent.

“Down that passage, blast you!” said Mr. Jordan.

A distressed and wondering and yet not absolutely abject Sargon was taken to a wet and untidy bathroom in which a broken chair, pools of water, great splashings on the wall, and some crumpled towels in the corner suggested a recent struggle. There he was made to undress and take a tepid bath, dried with a towel that had already been in action, put into a grey nightgown that was doubtfully clean, a grey shoddy dressing-gown that certainly wasn’t, and a pair of down-at-heel slippers two sizes too big, and so garbed, was led by Mr. Jordan, a little propitiated now by alert obedience, into the ward in which he was to pass the night.

A rufous man with very light eyelashes appeared.

“’Ere ’e is, Mr. ’Iggs,” said Mr. Jordan.

“I’ve got his bed ready,” said Mr. Higgs. “’Ow many more of ’em?”

“Perfec’ shower of ’em,” said Mr. Jordan.

“Three,” said Mr. Higgs.

“Well,” said Mr. Jordan. “So long.”

“So long,” said Mr. Higgs.

Neither of them addressed the Lord of the Whole World directly. He might have been a parcel passed from hand to hand.

§ 3

When Sargon entered the Observation Ward of the Gifford Street Infirmary his sense of having left life, ordinary current life, far away behind him, beyond these grey passages and corridors and staircases and glass offices and high walls and little doors, was enormously reinforced. Never had he seen anything so emptily bleak and cheerless as this place. A heartless great dingy room it was, with green-grey distempered walls discoloured in patches, lit by a few bare lights that gave neither high-lights nor shadows. Black night and a greasily lit brick wall stared in through uncurtained windows. Half-way down the length of the place projecting pieces of wall suggested that two former rooms had been thrown into one. The floor was of polished bare boards. Far off was a table set against the wall with two or three torn and crumpled magazines thereon, and at the end an empty fire-place. In the near half, on either side, there were iron bedsteads in rows, twenty or thirty perhaps altogether. There was a foul smell in the air, faint and yet indescribably offensive, a fæcal smell mixed with a heavy soapy odour.

Even had it been unoccupied, this cold, large, evil-smelling room would 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:

“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.

“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.”

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:

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.

Neither of these gentlemen explained their business with Sargon to him. 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.