Book the Third — The Resurrection of Sargon, King of Kings
Chapter the First — Christina Alberta in Search of a Father
§ 1
Hitherto Christina Alberta had faced life with a bold, disdainful, and successful gesture. The discretions and scruples of others were not for her. She had seen no reason for their prudent hesitations, their conventions and restraints. Now for the first time she knew dismay. Her Daddy had vanished into a world that she suddenly realized could be immensely cruel. Teddy was rotten, so plainly rotten that only a fool wrapped up in her own sensations would have touched him. She lay awake for most of the night after her Daddy had vanished, biting her hands and damning Teddy. Lambone the great friend was lazy, incompetent, and futile. Harold and Fay seemed already a little tired of her misfortune and vaguely disposed to blame her for bringing her Daddy to London. She had no one else to whom she could turn. No one remained to her—except Christina Alberta herself, feeling a little soiled now and more than a little afraid. “But what am I to do?” she asked the night, again and again, in her stuffy but artistic little bedroom.
Among the other disadvantages of her position she had less than a pound of ready money.
It has to be recorded that for two whole days Christina Alberta did not even take the obvious step of going to the police. She had a queer instinctive knowledge of the danger of bringing the police and the social system generally to bear upon her odd little Daddy. She had an innate distrust of official human beings. It was Paul Lambone who induced her to go to the police. He had the grace to be ashamed of his unhelpfulness, and after an interval of two clear days he came round to the Lonsdale Mews to offer his generous but sluggish help once more. He caught her having tea with Fay.
“Christina Alberta,” he said, looking a very large comfortable figure of sorrow, “I’ve been worrying and worrying about you all the time. I didn’t help enough. I thought he’d come back of his own accord and that all the fuss was a little premature. Have you heard anything?”
Christina Alberta was torn between the desire to snap his head off and the realization that he was, after his fashion, quite sincerely friendly to her and could be very useful.
“Say it!” said Lambone. “You’ll be better, my dear, after you’ve said it and then we can talk matters over.”
He got the reassurance of a smile. He brightened visibly. He was the sort of man who would hate to feel hated even by a cockroach. “I won’t sit in that chair, thanks,” he said to Fay. “It’s too comfortable. And at any moment we may think of something, and I may have to leap up and act.
“Spartan,” he said, sitting down.
“Eh?” said Fay.
“Spartan. My doctor tells me to say it before every meal and especially before tea. I don’t know why. Magic or Coué or something. Are these things cocoanut cakes? I thought so.... Good they are. And what are we going to do about it, Christina Alberta?”
He became sane and helpful and more and more like the man who wrote What to Do on a Hundred and One Occasions. He made Christina Alberta admit to bankruptcy, and made it clear to her that it was her duty to accept a loan of twenty-five pounds from him. He then dealt with the point about reporting the disappearance to the police, and convinced Christina Alberta upon that. If Mr. Preemby had fallen into bad hands the sooner the police looked for him the better. But he did not think that likely; he was much more inclined to the idea that Preemby had made a disturbance and been taken up. He guessed he would be dealt with as a mental case. He had consulted those useful books The Justice of the Peace and the Encyclopædia Britannica, and displayed the excellence of his mental digestion. Christina Alberta perceived that he had in him the makings of a competent barrister.
He carried off Christina Alberta in a taxi to Scotland Yard. “Either they’ll tell us there or tell us where we shall be told,” he said.
Fay was impressed by the originality of that. “Now if it was a lost umbrella,” she said, “I could understand it. But I’d never have thought of going to Scotland Yard for a lost father.”
By six Mr. Preemby had been traced to Gifford Street. But there was no seeing him at Gifford Street. He had been certified as a lunatic and he was bound, the attendant thought but wasn’t quite sure, for Cummerdown Hill. Paul Lambone tried to be dignified and important and to prevail over the attendant and extract further information, but not very successfully. In the end he and Christina Alberta departed with little more than one immense discouraging fact. They would not be able to see Mr. Preemby nor to learn anything very material about his condition until the next visiting day, whenever that might be, at Cummerdown Hill. Then if he was “fit to be visited,” they might go and see him. The attendant was rigid in his statements and had the air of disliking both Lambone and Christina Alberta extremely.
As they came away from Gifford Street Christina Alberta observed that Lambone was angry. She had never seen him angry before. It was a very transitory phase. There was an unusual depth of pink in his cheeks.
“Dog in office,” he said. “Just there to annoy people—anxious people. One would think... man in my position... certain standing.... Some attention.... Any other country but this, Man of letters has respect.”
Christina Alberta agreed mutely.
“Manners in a public official—primary.”
“He was detestable,” said Christina Alberta.
“Not at the end of my resources,” said Lambone.
Christina Alberta waited.
“Ought to have gone to Devizes in the first place. Knows more about mental cases and lunacy law than any other man in London. Wonderful fellow. I’ll go back to my flat and I’ll ring him up and make an appointment. Then he’ll put us wise about the whole business. And I want you to meet him anyhow. You’ll appreciate Devizes. Come to think of it, you’re remarkably like him.”
“How?”
“Got the Life Force and all that. And physically like him. Very. The same nose—much the same profile.”
“It’s a nose more suitable for a man,” said Christina Alberta. “I suppose he carries it off all right!”
“It’s a damned good nose, Christina Alberta,” said Lambone. “It’s a valiant nose. Don’t you break down to any modesty about it. It was your nose attracted me first to you. You’ll spike a husband with it yet, and he’ll adore it and follow it even as you do. Nowadays women have to be free and individualized; they have got to have features and distinction. The days of the wanton curl and the swan neck and complexion have gone. Not that you haven’t the clearest skin I’ve ever set eyes upon, Christina Alberta.”
“Tell me some more about Dr. Devizes,” said Christina Alberta.