§ 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.”
The bright vision of a discourse to a gathering of disciples at a table had so restored the gloriousness of Sargon that by the time he reached the entrance of the Rubicon Restaurant, which bulges invitingly at a corner, he had called two further disciples. One of these acquisitions was a matchbox-holding beggar of venerable appearance, and the other a highly intelligent-looking man of perhaps fifty, lean and thinly bearded, carrying a book on the Doukhobors and wearing mittens and a tall black felt hat—a hat of an unusual shape rather like the steam-dome of a railway engine. This last acquisition was made at the very door of the Restaurant.
“Come in here,” said Sargon, seizing his arm, “and take meat with me. I have things to tell you that will change your whole life.”
“This is very suddan,” said the intelligent-looking man, speaking in the high neighing protesting accent of an English scholar and gentleman, as he yielded himself to Sargon’s grip.