§ 5
Within the restaurant Sargon made his supreme and final effort and encountered swift and overwhelming defeat. But at any rate he did not run away. He made a frontal attack on the world he had set out to subdue—as Sargon. As Sargon, invincibly Sargon, he met disaster.
Things had not begun to be very brisk yet in the Rubicon Restaurant. But indeed it is never so brisk in the Rubicon of an evening as it is at lunch time; it is too far from the west; pre-eminently a luncheon place. And the hour even for such briskness as is customary had not yet come. The neat lines of the little white tables, each with its lamp and flowers, were only broken here and there by occupants. A family group going to a circus; a little knot of people going to a meeting in the Kingsway Hall; three or four couples of theatre-goers in evening dress; three or four of those odd couples of a rather inexperienced looking middle-aged business man and an extremely inexperienced looking young woman in imperfectly conceived dinner dress who are to be seen everywhere in London, and a group of three business men from the north dressed in a canny grey and dining with a resolute completeness from cocktail to liqueur, was all the company yet assembled in the body of the restaurant. There were one or two occupants in the lower gallery, dimly seen; the upper gallery was unlit. The atmosphere was still timorous and chilly; even the three men from the north exacted their tale of London luxury in a subdued and even furtive manner.
The staff was still largely unemployed. The head-waiters, wine-waiters and table-waiters fidgeted serviettes and glasses, or stood about with that expression of self-astonishment and melancholy upon their faces habitual to waiters. A slight hubbub in the entrance hall and the sound of the smashing of the glass in the rotating door by the last effort of the man in mourning preceded the entry of Sargon.
Every one looked up. The guests forgot their food and their company manners; the waiters forgot their secret sorrows. Sargon appeared, an inconspicuous figure, a little white, almost luminous face, round bright eyes. With one hand he still gripped his last disciple. With the other he waved aside the gobbets of speech which Mr. Godley proffered him. A tall expectant negro face rose like a shield of ebony and ivory above him. Behind were the match-seller and other followers, less clearly apprehended.
A head-waiter faced him. Behind hovered a manager and a little further off an assistant manager fiddled with the fruit on the buffet.
Sargon released his latest catch and stood forward.
“Set a table here,” he said with a fine gesture. “Set a table here for a great company. I have called a following and must needs discourse with them.”
“Table, sir,” said the head-waiter. “For ’ow many, sir?”
“A great company.”
“Well, sir,” said the head-waiter with an appealing glance at the manager, “we’d like to ’ave an idea ’ow many.”
The manager came up to take control and the assistant manager deserted his piles of fruit and came up behind helpfully. Sargon perceived he was against opposition and gathered all the forces within him. “It is a great company,” he said. “It must sit at meat with me here and I must discourse to it. These people yonder may join. Set all the tables one to another. The day of separate tables and separate lives is at an end. Let even the tables manifest the Brotherhood of Man. Under Our Rule. Set them together.”
At the words “Brotherhood of Man” one of the three business men from the north was smitten with understanding. “It’s a blood-stained Bolshevik,” he said, or words to that effect. “Shovin’ in here! Of all places!”
“Oughtn’t to be allowed,” said his friend. “Aren’t we to have no peace from them?”
The first business man expressed a general antipathy for incarmined Bolsheviks and went on eating bread in a hurried, fussed, irritated manner. “When’s that Fricassee of Chicken coming?” he said. “They must have dropped it or something.”
But the manager’s intelligence had been even quicker than the business man’s. A swift signal had been given at the very beginning of Sargon’s speech. The waiter sent to summon the police had already sped past Billy and Bobby and the rest of the uncertain crowd in the entrance hall, draughty now and uneasy because of the broken glass in the rotating door that the man in mourning had broken.
But Sargon heeded nothing of this byplay. He held on to the only course that he could see before him, which was to overwhelm the opposition that gathered against him.
“We don’t have banquets in this room, sir,” said the manager, playing for time. “Banquets you can have in the Syrian Hall or in the Elysian Chamber or in the Great Masonic or Little Masonic Hall—given due notice and after proper arrangements, but this is the general public restaurant. You can’t suddenly give a banquet to an unknown company or society or something here. We don’t cater for that. It isn’t done.”
“It will be done to-night,” said Sargon, with a glance and intonation and gesture that would have bent all dream Sumeria to its knees.
But the managers of European restaurants are made of sterner stuff, it seems, than were the old Sumerians. “I’m afraid not, sir,” he said, and stood blandly obstructive.
“Do you know,” cried Sargon, “who it is with whom you have to deal?”
“Not one of our regular customers, sir,” said the manager, with the apologetic air of one who scores a point perforce.
“Listen,” said Sargon. “This day is an Epoch. This is the End and the Beginning of an Age. Men will count this banquet I shall hold here the sunrise moment of a new world. I am Sargon, Sargon the Great, Sargon the Restorer, come to proclaim myself. This multitude of my followers must be fed and instructed here, fed bodily and fed spiritually. See to it that your share is done.”
He made a gesture behind him when he spoke of his followers, but indeed there was no following behind him now save that one faithful but deluded African, and that perplexed but persistent Oldham reporter. The Eton boy had detached himself completely now. He was sitting at a table afar off, where he had been joined by his friend, and they conversed in undertones and watched. Even Mr. Godley with his microscope, and the gentleman with the book about the Doukhobors, had faded out of this story by this time, and were going along Holborn exchanging and interrupting each other’s explanations and surmises about this singular affair that had so unexpectedly deflected their high and reasonable progress through life.
“I can only sus-sas-sas-suppose that-the-fellow-was-mad,” said Mr. Godley.
While Sargon’s retinue had melted the manager’s had gathered. Behind him now stood an array of waiters of every description, three dozen perhaps of various and yet uniform waiters, tall waiters and short ones, fat and thin, hairy and bald, young and old, waiters in aprons and one in shirt sleeves.
“I’m afraid you’re creating a disturbance here,” said the manager. “I’m afraid I must ask you to go, sir.”
Should he go? Never!
“Oh, generation of blind and deaf!” he cried, lifting his voice in an attempt to reach the scattered diners beyond this lowering crowd of waiting men, “do you not recognize me? Have you neither memories nor vision? Do you not see the light that offers itself to you? Can you not hear the call that thrills throughout the world? The hour for awakening has come. It is to-day; it is now. You may cease to be things of habit and servitude, and you may become masters of a world reborn. Now! This moment. Will the change with me and the change is upon you! Sargon calls you, Sargon the Ancient and the Eternal, the Wise Ruler and the Bold One, calls you to light, to nobility, to freedom——”
“’Fraid we can’t let you make speeches here,” said the manager with hand extended.
“Let’s chuck ’im out now,” said a short, thick-set waiter.
“Chuck him out!” said the anti-Bolshevik business man, standing up and speaking in a voice replete with indignation and gathering volume as he went on. “And then bring us our Fricassee of Chicken. We have been waiting Ten Minutes for THAT FRICASSEE OF CHICKEN!”
And then a voice could be heard saying: “Wot’s it all about?” and suddenly a policeman stood beside Sargon and overshadowed him.
A wave of horror went through his soul, a wave of horror that was entirely Preemby. Throughout his whole virtuous life he had never once been in antagonism to the Police. “Oh, Lord! oh, Lord!” cried this horror in his soul. “What have I done now? I’m going to be run in!” The blue eyes grew rounder and he gasped for air, but no one there perceived how close he came to ignominious collapse. Preemby shivered and passed. Sargon choked and then spoke stoutly. “What is this, Officer?” he said. “Would you lay hands on the Master of the World?”
“My duty, sir, if he makes a disturbance,” said the policeman. “Master or no Master.”
Very rapidly did Sargon adjust himself to this new phase in his affairs. He was defeated. He was to be led away. Yes, but he was still Sargon. The Power that ruled him had thrust him into defeat, but that could only be to try him. He had not expected this of the Power, but since the Power willed it, so it had to be.
“You understand, Officer, what it is you are doing?” he said, magnificently and gently.
“Quite, sir. I ’ope you don’t intend to give us any trouble.”
A captive! Not thus had he foreseen the revelation of the Master. He gave one last look at the rich decorations of the great restaurant in which the opening banquet was to have taken place. Not here then but in some squalid police-court it was that the New Empire of Justice and Brotherhood had to be proclaimed.
He turned in silence and went out at the policeman’s side quietly, deep in thought.