§ 9
The next morning found Sargon developing an evil cold in his throat and chest. His chest was painful and he was feverish, red-cheeked, bright-eyed, and short of breath. Bobby did not care to consult a doctor. He believed that all doctors constituted a league for the re-incarceration of escaped lunatics. He imagined secret notices about escapes being circulated throughout the profession. He motored to Hythe and got ammoniated quinine, several sorts of voice jujube, two iodine preparations for the chest, and suchlike trifles that the chemist recommended. When he returned about midday the patient looked better and seemed in less pain. After Bobby had administered quinine and rubbed his chest and made a generally curative fuss, he was able and disposed to talk.
“The pillow all right?” said Bobby.
“Perfect.”
“You ought to doze for a bit now.”
“Yes.”
Sargon thought. “I shall not have to go back to that Place again?”
“I hope not.”
The flushed face became very earnest. “Promise me not. Promise me not. I couldn’t endure it.”
“No need to be anxious,” said Bobby. “Here, you are quite safe.”
“And there will be no need to get into that side-car again?”
“None.”
“Never?”
“No.”
“It bumped—horribly.... Where is Christina Alberta?”
Bobby did not answer for a moment or so.
“Perhaps I ought to explain. I do not know who Christina Alberta is. I took you out of the asylum because I do not believe you are mad. But I know nothing of your family. I know nothing about your circumstances at all. I just couldn’t bear the thought of you in an asylum.”
Sargon lay in silence for a little while with his blue eyes on Bobby’s face. “You were sorry for me?”
“I liked you from the very first moment I saw you in Midgard Street.”
“Liked me? But you believed I was Sargon, King of Kings?”
“Practically,” said Bobby.
“You didn’t. Neither, I suppose, did I.”
The vague blue eyes left Bobby’s face and stared out of the window at the sky. “I have been very much confused in my mind,” said Sargon. “Even now I am not clear. But I realize I am confused. Christina Alberta is my daughter. The Princess Royal I called her. In Sumeria. She is a very dear, bold girl. She is all I have. I left her and came away from her, and I must have distressed her greatly.”
“Then she may not know where you have been?”
“She may be looking for me.”
“Where is she?”
“I have been trying to remember. It was in a studio somewhere—with peculiar pictures. I never liked those pictures. A studio in a Mew. It had a name but I cannot remember its name. It is stupid of me. Probably Christina Alberta is there with her friends—still wondering what has become of me.”
“At the—at the Place, they told me your name was Preemby.”
“Albert Edward Preemby.... I wonder.”
He lay reflecting for a time. “I remember that for a long time I thought I was Albert Edward Preemby, a small creature, a little man living a mean life in a laundry. A laundry with large blue vans. The swastika. You cannot imagine what a small, insignificant life it was that this Preemby led. And then suddenly I thought I could not possibly be Preemby and also an immortal soul. Either there was no Preemby, I thought, or there was no God. There could not possibly be both. It perplexed and worried me very much. Because there I was—Preemby. I am not good at thinking—all my thinking goes off into a kind of dreaming. And then when there came evidence that seemed satisfactory—perhaps I jumped at what I was told. But Sargon must have been a great king, a very great king, and I am small and weak and not very intelligent. When the keepers and attendants bullied me and ill-treated me I did not behave as a great king should have behaved, and when I saw them doing evil things to other—other patients, I did not interfere. Yet all the time I think I am something different from the Albert Edward Preemby I used to be, something more and something better. But it leaves me confused to think who I am, and I am very tired. Perhaps, when I have rested a day or two, I may be better able to think about these things.”
The faded voice died away. The blue eyes remained staring tranquilly at the sky.
Bobby said nothing for a little while. Then he remarked, “I have seen men ill-treated.”
And then; “and I am not so slight as you are.”
He said no more. It did not seem as though Sargon had heard him. Bobby stood up.
“You must rest. You are perfectly safe here. If we can remain unnoted here for two weeks then it will be impossible ever to send you back to that place again. Are you comfortable?”
“It is a beautiful bed,” said Sargon.
But beautiful though the bed was it was not sufficient to arrest the trouble in Sargon’s aching chest. He seemed very exhausted that evening. In the night he began coughing; he coughed so distressingly that Bobby went in to him. In the morning he was spiritless and did not want to eat. Bobby sat in the room downstairs working at the pile of Aunt Suzannah correspondence that Billy had sent on to him. He was half-minded to appeal to Tessy to come down and help with the nursing, but there was no bedroom available for her. Mrs. Plumer pressed for a doctor and he put her off. Finally, on her own responsibility, she brought in a young man who was just starting a practice in the place. Bobby had a terrifying interview, but the young doctor betrayed no suspicions. On the whole, he was reassuring. There was congestion of the lungs but nothing worse. Sargon must keep very warm and take this and that. No urgent need for a nurse. Keep him warm and give him his medicine.
Late in the evening Bobby went up to say good night and found Sargon better and more talkative.
“I have been thinking of Christina Alberta and I should like to see her. I would like to see her and tell her things I have been thinking about her. I have been thinking out all sorts of curious things. Perhaps I am not so much to her as she may think. But chiefly I want to talk to her about a young man I dislike. What was he called? When I was last at Lonsdale Mews, she danced with him.”
“Lonsdale Mews!”
“Yes, yes, of course. I had forgotten. Eight Lonsdale Mews, Lonsdale Road, Chelsea. But my mind is very confused and I do not know what I should say to her even if she came.”
Bobby wrote down the address forthwith.
“And this Christina Alberta is all you have?” he asked.
“All I have.
“Twenty. Quite a child really. I ought never to have left her. But there came a sort of wonder upon me—As though the world was opening. It made everything else seem very trivial.”