Part 14

Yet even when Sargon doubted he believed. It is a very comprehensible paradox. He knew clearly that to be Sargon was to be real, was to signify and make all the world signify, was to go back into the past and reach right out into the future, was to escape altogether from the shrivelled insignificance of the Preemby life. To be Sargon was to achieve not only greatness but goodness. Sargon could give and Sargon could dare. Sargon could face lions and die for his people, but Preemby could go round three fields, had been known to go round three fields, to evade the hostility of a barking terrier. Preemby’s world was dust and dirt, a mud speck in infinite space, and there was no life on it but abjection. Preemby was death; Sargon was rebirth into a world of spacious things. Not very clearly did Sargon achieve these realizations, but he felt them throughout his being. Something had happened to him of inestimable value and truth; he had to cling to this gift and hold it and keep it or be for ever fallen. Christina Alberta notwithstanding, the whole world notwithstanding.

So he walked up and down his little upper room in Midgard Street and elaborated his conception of his new rôle as lord and protector of the whole world. Twilight gave place to night but he did not turn on the light. He liked the friendly darkness. All visible things are limiting things, but the darkness goes out and beyond everything to God. “I must look,” he said. “I must watch and observe. But not for too long. There is action. Action gives life. That fellow Preemby, poor soul, he could look at things, but dared he lift a finger? No! Everywhere suffering, everywhere injustice and disorder, the desert and the wilderness breaking back in on us and he did nothing. If one does not call and call aloud, how can one expect an answer? In this world, vast, terrible--strikes--hoardings--adulteration--profiteers.... Nevertheless men who once lived bravely and did their duty.... Who may do it again.... Once they hear the call. Awake! Remember! The High Path. Simple Honour. Sargon calls you.... H’rrmp....”

He came to a halt at his uncurtained window and looked out on the plain, flat face of the opposite houses, pierced here and there by a lit window. Most had the blinds drawn, but just opposite a woman worked by lamp-light at a table, sewing something, her needle hand flew out perpetually and the book and one hand and the cuff of a reader came also into the picture, the rest of him hidden behind the curtain. At a bedroom window there was a looking-glass, and a girl tried on a hat and looked at it this way and that; then suddenly she vanished, and after a little interval the light went out.

“All their scattered lives,” said Sargon, holding out his arms with a benevolent gesture, “knitted--drawn together by wisdom and love. A rudder put on the drifting world.”

Came a knock at the door. “Come in,” said Sargon.

Bobby appeared. “Getting on all right, sir?” he said in his engaging subaltern manner. He clicked on the electric light and came into the room. (Cadaverous and pleasant face he had; surely one would remember presently what he had been.) “Wondered if you were eating anything to-night?” he asked.

“I quite forgot eating,” said Sargon. “Quite. My mind--troubled by many grave matters. I have much to think of, much to plan. The hour grows late. The time is near. I wonder if the serving woman here----?”

“Only breakfasts,” said Bobby. “Here we are on bed and breakfast terms strictly. The rest is with ourselves. For an emergency like this there is nothing so good as the Rubicon Restaurant. The Grill Room keeps open quite late. They will do you a chop or a cutlet. Or ham and eggs. Very good ham and eggs--crisp ham. You go out from here, turn to the left at the second corner, and go right down Hampshire Street until you come to it. You’ll have no difficulty in finding it.”

The word “crisp” had settled it.

“I will avail myself,” said Sargon.

“And it’s equally easy to find your way back,” said Bobby with a faint flavour of anxiety in his voice.

“Have no fear, young man,” said Sargon in a tone of jolly reassurance. “Have no fear. I’ve found my way in many climes and under many conditions--the wild mountains--the trackless desert. Time and space.”

“Of course,” said Bobby. “I forgot that.

“Still--London is different,” said Bobby.

§ 9

The next day at about half-past four in the afternoon a small but heavily moustached figure, with eyes full of blue determination, emerged from Saint Paul’s Cathedral and stood at the top of the steps before the great doors, surveying the jostling traffic of Ludgate Hill and the Churchyard. There was a sort of valiant uncertainty in the figure’s pose, as though it was equally resolved to be up to something, and uncertain about what it meant to do. London had been looked at from the top of the Monument and from the Cathedral dome on a crystal-clear October day, and it had betrayed an unusual loveliness and greatness under the golden sunshine. But it had shown itself, too, as a vast dreamy multitudinousness in which none but those who are resolute and powerful in action can hope to escape being swallowed up. It had stretched away to wide sunlit stretches that seemed to be the horizon, and then up in the leaden-blue other stretches had been visible of houses, of shipping, of distant hills. The vans and carts in the shadowed streets below had looked like toys; the people were hats and hurrying legs and feet, curiously proportioned. And over all an immense dome of kindly cloud-flecked sky.

He had walked round the little gallery under the ball, muttering: “A wilderness. A city that has forgotten....

“How fair it might be. How great it might be!

“How fair and great it _shall_ be!”

And now he had come down again from these high places and the time had come for him to gather together his disciples and ministers and inaugurate the New World. He had to call them. Followers would not come to him unless he called them; they would wait for him to act, not know even of what awaited them until he called them, but when he called them they would surely come.

It was with an extraordinary sense of power over men’s destinies that he stood now upon Saint Paul’s steps and reflected that even now men and women might be passing by, among these busy men thronging the pavement, among the people in omnibuses, among the girls clattering away at their typewriters behind the upstairs windows, over whose busy, petty, undistinguished lives hung the challenge of his summons. Yonder perhaps was his Abu Bekr, his right-hand man, his Peter. Let them wait a little longer. He waved the traffic onward with a gesture of kindly encouragement. “Soon now,” he said, “very soon. Go on while ye may. Even now the sorting of the lots begins.”

Yet a moment more he stood still and silent, a statuette of destiny. “And now,” he whispered; “and now....

“And first----”

He was no longer troubled by his oblivion of the Sumerian tongue. In the night he had recovered the gift of tongues; he had muttered strange words in the darkness, and understood.

“H’rrmp,” he said, a word common to many tongues, clearing the way after five thousand years for the return of the forgotten sounds to a renewed use in the world of men. “Dadendo Fizzoggo Grandioso Magnificendodidodo--yes,” he whispered. “The Unveiling of the Countenance. The First Revelation. Then perhaps they will see.”

And slowly he descended the steps, his eyes searching the convergent frontages of the Churchyard for some intimations of a barber’s shop.

CHAPTER THE SECOND

_The Calling of the Disciples_

§ 1

There are already wide differences of statement and opinion about the order and the details of the calling of the followers of Sargon. Happily we are in a position to give the circumstances with all the exactitude that may be necessary, and with an authority that will anticipate vexatious criticism. It was about half-past six that Sargon appeared in Cheapside, and the day’s traffic was already ebbing in that busy city thoroughfare. His countenance was transformed and shone with that kind of luminosity that only the most thorough and exhaustive shaving can give. A youthful smoothness had been restored to it. The facial mane, the vast moustache, that had veiled it for so many years from mankind was abandoned, a mess of clippings and lather now in a barber’s basin. Now the face was as bare as the young Alexander, a fresh-complexioned, sincere and innocent countenance speaking clearly with an unfiltered voice. It was flushed with a natural excitement as it went along Cheapside scrutinizing the faces of the foot passengers on a momentous and mystical search. The blue eyes beneath the brim of the distinguished-looking hat were alight. Was it to be this man? Was it to be this?

§ 2

The first to be called was a young man of Leytonstone named Godley, a young man with a large and excessively grave grey face and a deliberation of utterance amounting to an impediment. He was carrying a microscope in a wooden box. He was a student of biology with a cytological bias; naturally very polite and temperamentally disposed to be precise and deliberate in all he said and did. He was making his way from Liverpool Street station to the Birkbeck Institute by a circuitous route because he had nearly an hour in hand before his class began. He stood poised on the pavement edge at a street-corner waiting for two vans to pass, when his call came to him.

He found a very earnest, barefaced little man beside him whose blue eyes searched his countenance swiftly, and who then gripped his arm.

“I think,” said Sargon, “that it is you.”

Mr. Godley, who was not without a sense of humour, attempted to reply that it certainly was him, but that impediment of his, partly natural but greatly developed by affectation, arrested him about the word “certainly,” and he was still sawing the air with his profile when Sargon spoke again.

“I have need of your help,” said Sargon. “The great task is beginning.”

Mr. Godley went through the preliminary convulsions of explaining that he had the better part of an hour to spare and that he was willing to give help in any reasonable matter provided it was first explained to him clearly just exactly what the matter was. But he could only give help for a limited time. His engagement with his class at the Birkbeck was imperative. Sargon paid little heed to the significance of the various sounds that Mr. Godley was biting off and swallowing. He led his captive by the arm and explained, with helpful gestures of his free hand, the full significance of this call. “You are, I perceive, a young man of scientific qualifications. They will be needed. I do not know if you recognize me--your memory may still be imperfect--but I recall your face, chief among the wise men of our ancient court. Yes, indeed, chief among our wise men.”

“N-no-no-not as-as-assure that I follow you aw-ow-ow quite,” said the young man. “My my--my aw-ow-ow-work issferr’ll aw-ow-ow-known as yet.”

“_I_ know it,” said Sargon boldly. “_I_ know it. I have been seeking you. Do not be deceived by my plain incognito. Believe me I have tremendous powers behind me. In a little while all men will understand. The age of confusion draws near its end; a new age begins. We are the first two particles, the very first, in a great crystallization----”

“Where aaare we g-g-g-oing agg-aggs-aggs-exactly?” asked the young man.

“Trust me,” said Sargon bravely. “Keep with me.”

The young man struggled with some complex question. But now three fresh individuals came under the magic attraction of the call and the young man’s question fell in unheeded chunks. These new adherents were a little group of men standing at the kerb, about a small, almost inaudible hurdy-gurdy on which was a placard stating: “We want Work not Charity; but there is no Work for Us in this So-called Civilized State.” They were clad in faded khaki, and were all youths of less than five-and-twenty.

“Now look at that!” said Sargon. “Is it not time the new age began?”

He addressed himself to the man on the right of the organ-grinder.

“All this is to be altered here and now,” he said. “I have work for you to do.”

“Oh!” said the ex-soldier in the accent of a fairly well-educated man. “What sort of work?”

“We’re straight,” said the organ-grinder. “We’ll take it. If it’s work we can do. We ain’t fakers. Wot work is it?”

“Shillin’ an hour?” said the third.

“More than that. Much more than that. And very great and responsible work. A harvest! A splendid harvest! You shall be leaders of men. Follow after me.”

“Far?” asked the man who had spoken first.

Sargon made a gesture that effectually concealed his own lack of a definite plan, and led the way.

“Lead on, Macbeth,” said the organ-grinder, and swung his hurdy-gurdy into its carrying position on his back. The two other ex-soldiers exchanged views that it was all right and that anyhow they’d see what was offered them. Mr. Godley, keeping abreast of his leader, began an immense and ultimately futile struggle with a fresh question.

The next disciple was not so much called as fell into the gathering body of Sargonites. He was a tall gentleman of a rich brown colour with frizzy black hair, and a vast disarming smile. He was dressed in an almost luminous grey frock-suit, a pink tie, buttoned shoes with bright yellow uppers, and a hat as distinguished as Sargon’s own. He carried a grey alpaca umbrella. He held out a sheet of paper in a big mahogany hand and emitted in a rich abundant voice the word “Escuse.” The paper had printed on it at the head the words, “Lean and Mackay, 329 Leadenhall Street, E.C.” and below written in ink, “Mr. Kama Mobamba.”

Sargon regarded his interlocutor for a moment and then recognized him. “The Elamite King!” he said.

“Non spik English,” said the black gentleman. “Portugaish.”

“No,” said Sargon with a gesture that explained his intention. “Providence. Follow after me.”

The coloured gentleman fell in trustfully.

“Look here!” protested one of the ex-soldiers. “There ain’t going to be coloured labor on this job?”

“Peace!” said Sargon. “Very soon everything will be shown to you.”

“I don’t think you have any ub-ub-business to mislead ap-ap-people,” said Mr. Godley, who was becoming more and more interested in, and perplexed by, Sargon’s proceedings.

Sargon quickened his pace.

“This--this gentleman s-s-s-simply wa-wa-wanted tu-tu-tu-tu-to go to that address,” said Mr. Godley.

In his eagerness to get the idea home to Sargon he became a little disregardful of his microscope box which inflicted a sudden sharp blow on the knee of a passing gentleman, a business man in a silk hat. The victim cursed aloud with extraordinary vehemence and stood hopping on the pavement with his hand to his knee. Then he succumbed to a passionate impulse to tell Mr. Godley exactly what he thought of his conduct, his upbringing, and his type of human being. He joined the followers of Sargon at a brisk limp, occasionally saying “Hi!” in a breathless voice. A rather intoxicated man in deep mourning had witnessed the incident. He came hurrying, with a certain margin of error, to the side of the angry gentleman in the silk hat.

“’Sgraceful salt,” he said. “’Sgraceful! F’want a witness _I_’m your man!”

His general intention was to go forward at the side of the gentleman in the silk hat, but there were chemically emancipated factors in his being that drove him sideways. The resultant was a sinuous course that presently involved him with a display of oranges in a barrow at the pavement edge. It was not a serious nor a prolonged contact, but it involved a certain scattering of oranges in the gutter and added a new ingredient, a very angry costermonger’s assistant with a remonstrance and a claim for damages, to the gathering body of Sargon’s followers.

The moral of a proverb depends entirely upon the image chosen, and though a rolling stone gathers no moss, a rolling snowball grows by what it rolls upon. A small hurrying group of people in a London street is a moving body of the snowball type; its physical pull is considerable; it appeals to curiosity and the increasing gregariousness of mankind. Sargon, blue-eyed and exalted, with Mr. Godley intent and eloquent upon his left hand, and Mr. Kama Mobamba, tall, silent, smiling, with a shining confidence upon his ebony face that soon he would be led into the presence of Messrs. Lean and Mackay, formed the spearhead of the procession. Behind came the three out-of-work ex-soldiers, who were now involved in obscure protests and explanations with the gentleman in the silk hat, and a smart but rather incomprehensible young newspaper reporter, who had acquired his native tongue in Oldham, and had just come up to London to push his fortunes, and was anxious for something called a “scoop.” He seemed to think that Sargon might be the “scoop” he sought. Two ambiguous-looking individuals in caps and neck-wraps had also fallen in, possibly for nefarious purposes, a vague-faced young woman of the streets in a weather-worn magenta hat was asking what was “_up_” and the intoxicated man in mourning was explaining as wittily and obscurely as possible. There was also a fringe of skirmishing juveniles. And an Eton boy. He was very, very young and fresh-faced, a scion of one of the oldest and best families in England and a convinced and fierce Communist. He had been on his way with a bosom friend to the celebrated model engine shop in Holborn when Sargon had swept past him and the inscription on the organ had caught his eye.

He was a boy of swift initiatives and with a highly developed dramatic sense.

“Sorry, old Fellow,” he said to his friend. “But I feel the time has come. Unless I’m very much mistaken that little bunch is the beginning of the Social Revolution, and I must do my duty.”

“Oo I _say_, Rabbit!” said the friend. “Come and buy that steam-launch first, anyhow.”

“_What’s_ a model steam-launch?” said Rabbit scornfully, and turned to follow Sargon.

He would have liked to have had a swift strong hand-clasp first, but you can’t do that sort of thing with a chap who will always keep both hands in his trouser pockets. He darted off, and his friend followed discreetly in a state between amusement and dismay, and at such a distance as seemed to him to exonerate him from any personal complicity with the social revolution.

“Where are we going?” asked the young Etonian as he came up with the hindmost of the out-of-work ex-soldiers.

“_He_ knows,” said the out-of-work ex-soldier, indicating Sargon.

§ 3

But that was exactly what our dear Sargon did not know. By this time he was no longer a convinced and complete Sargon. A scared and doubting and protesting Preemby was struggling back into his being.

Up to the beginning of the calling of the disciples Sargon had ruled in his own soul assured and unchallenged. But he had expected his disciples to respond to his call, to recognize and remember, to be immediately understanding and helpful. The calling was to have been like the lighting of a lamp in their minds and the world about them. He had expected not only his own clear and unquestioning conviction but accession and reinforcement for it. And so leaping from soul to soul the restoration of Humanity, the Empire of Sargon would have spread. For disciples who made conditions, for disciples who followed, gesticulating strangely and spluttering and bubbling and stammering injurious criticisms, for disciples who asked for a minimum wage, and for disciples who came limping after one calling “Hi!” as though one was a cab, Sargon was totally unprepared.

Had he called these disciples rashly? Had he been premature again? Had he made another mistake?

These were unpleasantly urgent questions for a Master to solve while he was going briskly to nowhere in particular about four miles an hour along Holborn with his following gathering at his heels. Perhaps all leadership is a kind of flight. In every leader of men perhaps the fugitive has been latent. In Sargon now it was more than latent; it was awake and stirring, and its name was Preemby.

Since first mankind in its slow ascent from mere animalism became susceptible to Prophets and Great Teachers and Leaders there must always have been something of this internal conflict between the greatness of the mission and something discreetly less, and there must also have been always something of this clash of the disciples’ quality and motive with the teacher’s expectations. The very calling of disciples seems to admit a sense of weakness on the prophet’s part. Their calling puts him in pledge. He puts himself in pledge to them. They will, he knows, hold him to it when he falters; deep gregarious instincts assure him he will not desert his declaration to them even when he might desert himself. They desert him--inevitably. In the whole record of the world there is only one unvarying, faithful disciple, Abu Bekr. All other disciples failed and crippled their Masters and misled them. They deserted or they drove the prophet whither he would not go. Great things and little things of the same kind follow the same laws. At the head of that small wedge of commotion driving along lamp-lit Holborn in the October twilight went Sargon the Lord and Protector of Mankind, the Restorer of Faith and Justice, the Magnificent One, and though he was already aware of an error made and dangers incurred, he was still resolved to pull a great occasion by some stupendous gesture out of the jaws of disaster. And closer than his shadow was Preemby, scared nearly out of his wits, ready for a desperate headlong bolt down any side turning, a bolt from explanation, a bolt from effort, a bolt back to Preembyism and infinite nothingness.

Suddenly there came to Sargon a reassuring voice, the voice of one who had at least seemed to believe and accept.

There had been a slight altercation with Billy before Bobby came hurrying across the road. “There he goes!” said Bobby.

“That isn’t him,” said Billy. “Where’s his moustache? He was pretty nearly all moustache.”

“Shaved,” said Bobby. “I’d swear to him anywhere. A sort of prance in his walk. It’s our prophet, Billy, and he’s heading for trouble.”

“Looks more like a welsher,” said Billy. “Where’d he get that ecstatic nigger? It’s too rummy for me altogether, Bobby. You keep out of it. There’s a policeman tacking on now.”

Bobby hesitated. “Can’t let him go like that,” he said, and dodged across the road just as four racing omnibuses blotted out the Sargonites from Billy’s eyes.

“Forgive me, but where are you going?” said Bobby, stooping to Sargon’s grateful ear in spite of a considerable push from Mr. Godley.

“I have declared myself,” said Sargon, and straightway reassurance came. This was the First of the Disciples, and he had found his way to his Master. Quite clearly now did Sargon see what he had to do. These first followers had to be instructed. The Teaching had to begin. To do that it was necessary to lead them apart out of the hurry and tumult of the street. A vision came to Sargon of a long brightly lit table, and an array of disciples asking questions, and of memorable answers and great sayings. And straight ahead, glowing, bursting with light, already a friend, there towered up the inviting mass of the Rubicon Restaurant, pioneer in the great enterprise of supplying dinners de luxe at popular prices.

“Yonder,” said Sargon with a sweeping gesture of the hand, “we will rest and sit at meat, and I will talk, and all things shall be explained.”