§ 3
When the tea was made and Christina Alberta had sipped a cup and looked more comfortable, Lambone, who felt he was managing things beautifully, told her she might begin.
“He’s getting queer in his mind, but you know that he isn’t really going out of his mind,” said Lambone. “That’s it, isn’t it?”
“That is it,” said Christina Alberta. “You see—” She paused.
Lambone sat down in a second arm-chair and sipped his tea in a leisurely manner. “It’s a little difficult,” he said.
“You see,” said Christina Alberta, knitting her brows at the fire, “he’s a person of peculiar imaginativeness. He always has been. Always. He’s always lived half in a dream. We’ve been very much together ever since I was born almost, and from the earliest times I remember his talks, rambling talks, about the Lost Atlantis, and about the secrets of the pyramids and Yogis and the Lamas of Tibet. And astrology. All such wonderful, impossible, far-off things. The further off the better. Why!—he almost got me into a dream too. I was a Princess of Far Atlantis lost in the world. I used to play at that, and sometimes my play came very near to believing. I could Princess it for a whole afternoon. Lots of children day-dream like that.”
“I did,” said Lambone. “For days together I would be a great Indian chief, sentenced to death again and again—disguised as a small preparatory schoolboy. The incongruity didn’t matter a rap. Everybody does it more or less for a time.”
“But he’s gone on doing it all his life. And he’s doing it now more than ever. He’s lost the last trace of any sense that it is a dream. And some one played a trick upon him at Tunbridge Wells. Not realizing what it might mean for him. They seem to have muddled about with spiritualism in the evenings while I was in London, table-rapping and so forth, and a man who had nothing better to do pretended to have a trance. He told Daddy he was Sargon the First, Sargon King of Kings he called him, who was Lord of Akkadia and Sumeria—you know—ages ago, before Babylon was born or thought of. The man who did it couldn’t have hit on anything more mischievous so far as Daddy was concerned. You see he was exactly ready for it; leaving Woodford Wells where he had spent half his life in one routine had cut him off, even more than he was usually cut off, from reality. He was uprooted already before this idea came to him. And now it’s just swamping him. It suited him exactly. It—fixed him. Always before one could get him back—by talking about my mother or the laundry vans, or something familiar like that. But now I can’t get him back. I can’t. He’s Sargon, incognito, come back as Lord of the World, and he believes that just as firmly as I believe that I am his daughter Christina Alberta Preemby talking to you now. It’s a reverie no longer. He’s got his evidence and he believes.”
“And what does he want to do about it?”
“All sorts of things. He wants to declare himself Lord of the World. He says things are in a bad way and he wants to save them.”
“They are in a bad way,” said Lambone. “People don’t begin to know half how bad they are. Still—I suppose having a delusion about who one is, isn’t Insanity. Does he want to make some sort of fuss?”
“I’m afraid, yes.”
“Soon?”
“That’s what worries me.
“You see,” she went on, “I’m afraid he’s going to strike most people as queer. He’s back at Lonsdale Mews. We had to come up from Tunbridge Wells yesterday. On a few hours’ notice. It’s that has upset me. For a couple of days things went on all right. Practically we were turned out of the boarding house. There was a frightfully disagreeable man there, a Mr. Hockleby, and he seemed to take a violent dislike to Daddy. You know those unreasonable dislikes people take at times?”
“A very disagreeable side of human nature. I know. Why, people have taken dislikes to me!... But go on.”
“He and his daughter got upset about Daddy’s queerness. They frightened the Miss Rewsters, the sisters who run the place. They said he might break out at any moment, and either he would have to leave or they would. There they were all whispering on the stairs and talking of sending for a policeman and having him taken away. What could I do? We had to clear out. You see Daddy had a sort of idea that when he was Sargon Mr. Hockleby had been alive too and had had to be impaled for seditious behaviour; and instead of letting bygones be bygones as one ought to do in such cases, he said something about it to him, and Mr. Hockleby construed it as a threat. It’s all so difficult, you see.”
“He didn’t try to impale him over again, or anything?”
“No. He doesn’t do things like that. It’s only his imagination that is doing tremendous things. He isn’t.”
“And now he’s in London?”
“He has a sort of idea he’s overlord of the King, and he wants to go to the King at Buckingham Palace and tell him about it. He says the King is a thoroughly good man, thoroughly good; and directly he hears how things are, he will acknowledge Daddy as his feudal superior and place him on the throne. Of course if he tries to do anything of that sort he will be locked up for a certainty. And he’s written letters to the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor and the President of the United States and Lenin, and so forth, directing them to wait upon him for his instructions. But I’ve persuaded him not to post them till he can have a proper seal made.”
“Rather like Muhammad’s letters to the potentates,” said Lambone.
“He’s thinking, too, of a banner or something of that sort, but all that’s quite vague. He’s just got the phrase ‘raise my banner.’ I don’t think that matters much yet. But the Buckingham Palace idea,—something may come of that.”
“This is no end interesting,” said Lambone, and walked across his room and back, and then half sat on the arm of his easy chair with his hands deep in his pockets. “Tell me; is he distraught to look at?”
“Not a bit of it.”
“Untidy in his dress?”
“Neat as ever.”
“I remember when I saw him how neat he was. Is he—at all—incoherent? Or does it all hold together?”
“Absolutely. He’s perfectly logical and coherent. He talks I think rather better and more clearly than usual.”
“It’s just one simple delusion? He has no delusions about having great physical strength or beauty or anything of that sort?”
“None. He’s not a bit crazy. He’s just possessed by this one grand impossible idea.”
“He’s not throwing away money or anything of that sort?”
“Not a bit of it. He’s always been—careful with money.”
“And he is now?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s hope that lasts. I don’t see that a man is insane because he believes he is a King or an Emperor—if some one tells him he is. After all, George V has no other grounds for imagining he is a King. The only difference is that rather more people have told him so. Fancying yourself a King isn’t lunacy, and behaving in accordance with that idea isn’t lunacy either. It may be some day, but it isn’t so yet. No.”
“But I’m afraid that people will think that it is.... You see it’s only in the last few days I’ve realized how fond I am of my father and how horrible it would be for me if anyone attempted to take him away. I’m afraid of asylums. Restraint for those who can least understand restraint. He particularly would go mad in a week, really mad, if he got into one. That Mr. Hockleby has frightened me—he’s frightened me. He was so intent and cruel. He was evil about Daddy—malignant. A nasty man.”
“Yes, I know,” said Lambone. “Hate.”
“Yes,” she said. “Hate.”
She jumped to her feet and took possession of the hearthrug, looking with her bobbed hair and short skirts and manly pose and serious face the most ridiculous and attractive mixture of fresh youth and mature responsibility conceivable.
“You see, I don’t know what they can do with him—whether they can take him away from me. I’ve never been much afraid of what might happen before, but I am now. I don’t know how to take hold of all this. I thought life was just a lark and people were fools to be afraid of doing anything. But now I see life’s dangerous. I’ve never been much afraid of what happened to myself. But this is different. He’s walking about in a dream of glory—with absolute wretchedness hanging over him. Think of it! People getting hold of him! Perhaps hitting him! An asylum!”
“About the law on these matters I know very little,” Lambone reflected. “I doubt if they can do very much to him without your consent. But I agree about asylums. From their very nature they must be horrible places, haunted places. Most of the attendants—hardened. Even if they start well. Every day at it... too much for anyone.... I don’t know how a lunatic is made, a legal lunatic I mean, or who has a right to take him. Somebody—I think two doctors—have to certify him or something of that sort. But, anyhow, I don’t think your father is a lunatic.”
“Nor I. But that may not save him.”
“Something else may. He’s as you say an imaginative—a super-imaginative man, possessed by a fantastic idea. Well, isn’t that a case perhaps for a psycho-analyst?”
“Possibly. Who’d talk him back—to something like he used to be.”
“Yes. If such a man as Wilfred Devizes, for example, could talk to him——”
“I don’t know much about these people. I’ve read some Freud of course—and a little Jung.”
“I know Devizes slightly. We talked at lunch. And I liked his wife. And if perhaps you could get your father away into a country cottage. By the by—have you got any money?”
“He’s got the cheque-book, but he makes me an allowance. So far there’s been no money trouble. He signs his cheques all right.”
“But he may not presently.”
“Oh! Of course at any time he may begin putting a swastika or a royal cipher in the place of his signature, and then the fat would be in the fire. I shouldn’t know where to turn. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“No,” said Lambone.
For some seconds—it seemed quite a long time to Christina Alberta—he said nothing more. He sat half leaning upon the arm of his chair and looked past her at the fire. She had said what she wanted to say, and now stood waiting for him to speak. His wisdom told him that things had to be done in this matter very soon; his temperament inclined him just to stay in that pleasant room and say things. Meanwhile she looked about the room and realized how comfortable a wise man could be. It was the best furnished room she had ever been in. The chairs were jolly; there were bound books in the bookcase, a delightful old Chinese horse on the top of it; all his tea-things were silver or fine china; there was a great writing-desk with silver candlesticks; the windows that gave on Half Moon Street were curtained with a rich, subtly folding material very pleasing to the eye. Her eyes came back to his big fat face and his peevish mouth and fine, meditative eyes.
“Something,” he said and sighed, “ought to be done at once. It isn’t a matter to leave about. He might commit some indiscretion. And get into trouble.”
“I’m afraid of that.”
“Exactly. He’s safe—where you left him?”
“There’s somebody with him.”
“Who won’t let anything happen?”
“Yes.”
“So far, good.”
“But what am I to do?”
“What are you to do?” he echoed, and said no more for some seconds.
“Well?” she said.
“What in fact are we to do? I ought to see him. Decidedly. Yes, I ought to see him.”
“Then come and see him.”
“I ought to come and see him. Now.”
“Then let’s.”
He nodded. He seemed to be making an intense internal effort. “Why not?” he asked.
“Well?”
“And then—then we can broach a visit to Wilfred Devizes. Generally fix that up. Then our subsequent action will be determined by what Wilfred Devizes says. The sooner he sees Devizes the better. It’s a question whether it wouldn’t be better for you or both of us to see Devizes first. No. Father first. Then when I’m properly instructed—as a lawyer would say—Devizes.”
A great tranquillity descended upon him.
She could not restrain a faint exclamation of impatience.
He looked up as if he awakened from profound meditation. “I’ll come along now,” he said, “to Lonsdale Mews. I’ll have a talk to your father and then I’ll try to get at Devizes and fix up some sort of a meeting between them. That’s what I ought to do. I’ll go along with you now—at once.”
“Right-o,” said Christina Alberta, “come along.” She threw on her cloak and clapped her hat upon her head in a dozen seconds and stood waiting.
“I’m ready,” she said.
“I’ll just change this jacket,” said Lambone; and kept her waiting a full ten minutes.