Chapter 5: Introduction to Chapter

the Second
5: Introduction
Law of Thermodynamics
to the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Solution Manual for Principles of Engineering

Thermodynamics 1st Edition Reisel
1285056477 9781285056470
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CHAPTER 5: INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND LAW OF

THERMODYNAMICS
5.1) Describe some of the characteristics that make the following processes
irreversible:
(a) liquid water flowing through a pipe;
(b) a block of lead being melted from the heat of a furnace;
(c) air being compressed isothermally in a piston-cylinder assembly;
(d) hydrogen and oxygen reacting to form water.

Solution:

Some features which make each case irreversible:

(a) Friction between the water and the pipe; viscosity of the water resulting in internal
frictional losses
(b) Heat transfer over a finite temperature difference; phase change of the lead
(c) Heat transfer over a finite temperature difference (heat must be removed during
compression to keep the process isothermal; friction between the piston and the cylinder.
(d) Mixing process between the hydrogen and oxygen; chemical reaction which will
release heat; heat transfer over a finite temperature difference (between water and
surroundings)

5.2) Describe some of the characteristics that make the following processes
irreversible:
(a) liquid water at 1 atm being heated and vaporized to steam at 1 atm and 200oC;
(b) carbon dioxide gas being mixed with nitrogen gas;
(c) a ball rolling down an inclined plane;
(d) air escaping a popped balloon.

Solution:

Some features which make each case irreversible

(a) Heat transfer over a finite temperature difference (source must be at least 200oC,
while boiling is at 100oC); friction in expansion.
(b) Mixing process between gases

161
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Chapter 5: Introduction to Chapter
the Second
5: Introduction
Law of Thermodynamics
to the Second Law of Thermodynamics

(c) Friction between ball and surface; Friction between ball and air
(d) Unrestrained expansion of a gas

5.3) Provide some suggestions as to how the following processes could have lower
degrees of irreversibility:
(a) a piston sliding against a cylinder wall;
(b) condensing water vapor at 1 atm;
(c) heating a metal to its melting point in a furnace.

162
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Chapter 5: Introduction to Chapter
the Second
5: Introduction
Law of Thermodynamics
to the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Solution:

(a) Friction between the piston and the cylinder wall could be reduced by using a
lubricant or by machining the surfaces to a smoother finish.
(b) Use a coolant temperature whose temperature is below, but close to 100oC, to
minimize the temperature difference across which heat transfer occurs.
(c) Keep the furnace temperature just above the melting point temperature of the metal.
Slowly preheat the metal with heat from sources closer in temperature to the metal
temperature – for instance, pass the furnace exhaust gases over the metal in a counter-
flow fashion.

5.4) Provide some suggestions as to how the following processes could have lower
amounts of irreversibility:
(a) liquid water flowing through a pipe;
(b) steam expanding through a turbine;
(c) the tire of an automobile rolling down a road.

Solution:

(a) Smooth the walls of the pipe, and minimize any bends in the pipe. Insulate the pipe.
(b) Insulate the turbine, minimize the amount of liquid in the turbine, smooth turbine
blades.
(c) Smooth the road and the tire to reduce friction.

5.5) A reversible heat engine operates between temperatures of 1200 K and 350 K.
The heat engine produces 150 kW of power. Determine the rate of heat input from the
high-temperature reservoir, and the rate of heat rejected to the low-temperature reservoir.

Given: TH = 1200 K; TC = 350 K; W = 150 kW

Solution:

For a reversible heat engine,  = max = 1 – TC/TH = 0.708

So, QH = W/ = 150 kW / (0.708) = 212 kW
For a cycle, such as this heat engine, Wcycle = Qcycle
There are two heat transfers and one power, so Q cycle = QH + Q C = W
So, QC = 150 kW – 212 kW = -62 kW

5.6) A reversible heat engine receives 250 kW of heat from a high-temperature

reservoir at 600 K, and produces 140 kW of power. What is the temperature of the low-
temperature reservoir?

163
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Chapter 5: Introduction to Chapter
the Second
5: Introduction
Law of Thermodynamics
to the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Given: TH = 600 K; QH = 250 kW; W = 140 kW

164
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Chapter 5: Introduction to Chapter
the Second
5: Introduction
Law of Thermodynamics
to the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Solution:

W
For a heat engine,  = QH
= 0.560
As this is a reversible heat engine,  = max = 1 – TC/TH = 0.560
Solving for TC = 264 K

5.7) A reversible heat engine receives 25,500 Btu/hr of heat from a high-temperature
reservoir at 1100 R, and produces 4.2 hp of power. What is the temperature of the low-
temperature reservoir.
Btu Btu
Given: TH = 1100 R; Q H = 25,500 ; W = 4.2 hp = 10,689
hr hr

Solution:

W
For a heat engine,  = Q = 0.419
H
As this is a reversible heat engine,  = max = 1 – TC/TH = 0.419
Solving for TC = 639 R

5.8) A reversible heat engine receives 500 kW of heat from a reservoir at 750 K and
rejects 200 kW of heat to the low-temperature reservoir. What is the temperature of the
low-temperature reservoir?

Given: TH = 750 K; QH = 500 kW; QC = −200 kW

Solution:

W
For a heat engine,  =
QH
For a cycle, such as this heat engine, Wcycle = Qcycle
There are two heat transfers and one power, so Q cycle = QH + Q C = W
So, W = 300 kW
Then,  = 300 kW/500 kW = 0.600
As this is a reversible heat engine,  = max = 1 – TC/TH = 0.600
Solving for TC = 300 K

5.9) A heat engine operates between reservoirs at 700 K and 400 K. The heat engine
receives 1500 kW of heat from the high-temperature reservoir. What is the maximum
power that the heat engine can produce?

Given: TH = 700 K; TC = 400 K; QH = 1500 kW

165
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random and unrelated content:
jolly little girls with an amused interest in their stalky little legs, before
they said Shush! and put them away.
Christina Alberta’s speculative vein took charge for a time. What
becomes of legs that are put away and never looked at and encouraged?
Do they get etiolated and queer, dead-white and funny-shaped and afraid
of the light? And after you’ve really packed your body away and
forgotten it, nothing is left of you but a head sticking out and hands that
wave about and feet with hidden and distorted toes; and you go about
between meal-times and take trips in chars-à-bancs to see what every one
sees and feel what every one feels, and you play games by rule and
example according to your age and energy, and become more and more
addicted to Patience until you are ready to cover yourself up in bed for
the last time of all and die. Evasion! And the fuss they had caused
getting born! The fuss, the morality and marriages and everything that
was necessary before these vacuous lives were begotten!
But it was all evasion, and the life shown in these Tatlers and Sketches
was evasion just as much. Just as much. All these photographs of the
pushful pretty, the actresses for sale and the daughters who had to be
sold, looked at you with just your own question in their eyes: “Is this the
Life?” The unending photographs of Lady Diana This, and Lady
Marjorie That, and Mr. So-and-So and a Friend of the Duke of York or
the Duchess of Shonts, at dog-shows, at horse-shows, at race meetings,
at royal inaugurations and the like, were inevitably suggestive of
obstinate doubts that were in need of a perennial reassurance. The
photographs of people playing tennis and suchlike games were livelier,
but there, too, if you care to look at it, were evasions. Evasions.
Evasions.
Christina Alberta turned over the back numbers of the Sketch without
looking at the pictures before her eyes.
What was this Life she and these people and every one by games and
jokes and meetings and ceremonies and elaborate disregards and
concealments were all evading? What was this great thing outside, this
something like a huge, terrible, attractive and compelling black monster,
beyond the lights, beyond the movements and appearances, that called to
her and challenged her to come?
One might evade the call of it by playing Patience and games perhaps.
One might evade it by living by rule or custom. People seemed to do so.
A time might come when that call to Christina Alberta to be Christina
Alberta to the uttermost and fulfil her mysterious mission to that
immense being beyond the lights might no longer distress her life. She
had thought that in a certain recklessness and violence with herself she
might fight her way out to the call. She had made love now. Anyhow, she
hadn’t evaded that. But—was it going to matter as much as she had
thought it would matter? She and her little friends were playing
desperate games with the material of love in a world where Dr. Marie
Stopes and Mr. D. H. Lawrence were twin stars, and it was just
something you went through—and came out much as you had been
before. More restless, perhaps, but no further on. It left you just where
you had been, face to face with the unsolved darkness and that
mysterious, distressing, unanswerable call to come out of it all and really
live and die.
She had made love.... Queer it had been....
These furtive people were watching and watching her, reading her
thoughts, perhaps, penetrating her....
Christina Alberta shut her copy of the Sketch with something of a snap,
and walked out of the drawing-room with a serene expression. She shut
the door behind her and went downstairs to find what had happened to
her father in the smoking-room.
“I’m leaving the best part of the talk behind me,” reflected Christina
Alberta.

§6

She found that her father and the gentleman from the forests of Burmah,
after a very prolonged and brilliant “h’rrmping” match, had settled down
to conversation. But unhappily the conversation was unsuitable for her.
“Siam, Cambodia, Tonquin, the country is full of such temples. They
take you there and show you them.”
“Wonderful,” said Mr. Preemby. “Wonderful. And you do not think the
carvings you speak of—? Some high symbolism?”
Both gentlemen became aware of Christina Alberta, attentive and
hovering.
“Symbolism,” said the arboreal gentleman, “Symbolism,” and had
complicated pharyngeal difficulties. “Heathenish indecency. Difficult to
discuss.... Presence of young lady.... H’rrmp.”
“H’rrmp,” said Mr. Preemby. “Had you come down to say good night,
my dear? We are having a rather—rather technical talk.”
“Sounds like it, Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, and went round and sat
on the arm of his chair for a moment.
“Good night, little Daddy,” she said.
Reflective moment.
“I think this Tumbridge is going to suit me,” said Mr. Preemby.
“I hope it will, little Daddy. Good night.”

§7

Christina Alberta’s first evening at the Petunia Boarding House has been
described with some particularity because it is a sample of all the still
and uneventful evenings that seemed to lie before Mr. Preemby there. It
impressed her as an unfathomable enormity of uneventfulness in which
nothing harmful or disturbing could conceivably occur to him. The last
remote possibility of imaginative disturbance seemed to remove itself
next day when Mrs. Bone announced to the whiskered gentleman’s wife
that she and her husband were off to Bath on the morrow: they were in
luck it seemed; they had got the exact rooms for the winter in the exact
boarding house they had always had their eyes on. “Tunbridge seems so
bleak,” she said. “After Burmah.”
The dinner was like the previous dinner; the Birds of Passage had gone
and Mr. Preemby astonished himself, Christina Alberta, the chubby maid
and the assembled company by demanding whether it was possible to
send out (h’rrmp) for a bottle or flask of Chianti. “It’s an Italian wine,”
said Mr. Preemby to inform and help the chubby maid in her inquiries.
But there was no Chianti on the wine-list supplied, and after a
conversation markedly reminiscent of that of the Birds of Passage
overnight, the Preemby table was stocked with a bottle of Australian
Burgundy and, at Christina Alberta’s request, a bottle of mineral water.
After this display of initiative, self-assertion and social derring-do, Mr.
Preemby did little but h’rrmp throughout the rest of the meal.
The subsequent life of the drawing-room was also vacantly similar to the
previous evening. Christina Alberta got her possibly illegal cigarette in
the lounge, indeed she smoked two, and Miss Margaret Rewster looked
at her through the bead curtain near the office and Miss Emily had a sniff
from the landing upstairs, though nothing was said. And then Mr.
Preemby followed Major Bone into the smoking-room to gather
whatever further information he could about the temple decorations and
religious customs of the peoples of further India. He was inclined to
think Major Bone rather biased by evangelical prejudice. But Major
Bone was not even indignant about Eastern religions that night. He
wanted to talk about Bath, and he talked about Bath. He told Mr.
Preemby in very great detail about a remarkable occurrence at Bath. He
had met a gentleman named Bone, a gentleman much of his own age and
appearance, a Captain Bone who had also once been in Burmah. He
detailed various extremely dramatic conversations between himself and
the other Bone, occasionally going back and correcting himself. They
had made the most elaborate comparison of their genealogies, and it did
not appear that they were even remotely related. “Most curious
coincidence that has ever occurred to me,” said Major Bone. “In Bath. In
nineteen-eh-nine.”
In the drawing-room Patience prevailed and Mrs. Bone was talking about
Bath. The cheerful wife of the whiskered gentleman said “Deavning” to
Christina Alberta quite suddenly.
“Oh! Good evening,” said Christina Alberta.
“You had a walk to-day?”
“We’ve been to see the Toad Rock and the High Rock and Eridge Park.”
“Quite a nice walk,” said the cheerful lady, and restored her attention to
Mrs. Bone. Christina Alberta gathered she was to be noticed, but not
made a pet of.
There was nothing for it but to go through the Tatlers and Sketches again.
This time the pictures were exhausted, but there were reviews of books
and one or two short stories. Christina Alberta read them all.
When she went to say good night to her Daddy she had come to a
decision. “Daddy,” she said, “on Thursday, that’s the day after to-
morrow, I must go back to London. There are some lectures beginning.”
Mr. Preemby made no effective opposition.
The third evening was in countenance like the second except that the
Bones had gone and that Christina Alberta was sustained by the thought
that next day she would pass from the vacuities of Tunbridge to the
tangled riddles of London. And there was a Bird of Passage present, an
untidy young man of the student type with a lot of hair imperfectly
controlled by unguents whose motor bicycle had broken down just
outside Tunbridge Wells. He lived somewhere away in the north, it
seemed, in Northumberland; he would have to wait in Tunbridge for two
or three days while some broken part of his machine was replaced from
Coventry; he had taken refuge in the Petunia Boarding House and it was
jolly hard luck on him. He couldn’t budget for a trip to London; he
would just have to sit down in Tunbridge. He was a Cambridge
undergraduate and a geologist; he had a bag of specimens on his
machine. These facts he conveyed across the width of the room to Mr.
Preemby in the course of a rather one-sided conversation.
From the first Christina Alberta did not like this young gentleman from
Cambridge. He was like a younger, cruder Teddy Winterton, with
impudent bad manners instead of impudent good manners, and with
neither bodily grace nor good looks. And while he spoke to Mr. Preemby
he glanced at her. But she had no inkling of the part he might play in the
life of her Daddy and herself.
When she and her Daddy went into the lounge for coffee and her
cigarette, the young man came and placed himself at an adjacent table
and initiated some more conversation. Was Tunbridge Wells an amusing
place? Was there any chance of his getting any golf or tennis?
“There are a number of delightful walks,” said Mr. Preemby.
“Not much fun alone,” said the young man.
“There are the pleasures of observation,” said Mr. Preemby.
“All this country has been pretty well worked over,” said the young man
of science. “Is there a Museum here?”
Mr. Preemby did not know.
“There ought to be a Museum in every town.”
Presently the coffee and the cigarettes were finished. This evening Mr.
Preemby was for the drawing-room. Major Bone had gone, the smoking-
room had no attractions, and Mr. Preemby had exchanged a few amiable
words with the gentleman with whiskers and hoped to follow them up.
Christina Alberta went with him. At the sight of the old Tatlers and
Sketches she remembered she had bought a book in the High Street that
day, a second-hand copy of Rousseau’s Confessions. She went off to get
it. She found the young gentleman from Cambridge still sitting in the
lounge smoking cigarettes.
“Pretty gloomy here,” he said.
“Oh! I don’t know,” said Christina Alberta with an open mind, pausing
before him.
“Nothing much doing—what?”
“It’s not a Gala Night.”
“I’m stranded.”
“You must bear up.”
“S’pose you wouldn’t be disposed to come out for a bit and forage
around for some fun?” said the young man from Cambridge, taking his
courage in both hands.
“Sorry,” said Christina Alberta conclusively, and turned to go on.
“No offence?” said the young man from Cambridge.
“Nice of you to think of me,” said Christina Alberta who would rather
have been thought utterly shameless than the least bit prudish. “Good
hunting.”
And the young man from Cambridge perceived that he was dismissed.
Christina Alberta went into the drawing-room for another tremendous
bout of nothingness. But anyhow she had got Rousseau to read, and to-
morrow she would be in London.
About the Rousseau—? She had always wanted to know how she stood
towards Rousseau.
He carried her on to ten o’clock. But she didn’t think much of Rousseau.
He ought to have known a few of the New Hope Club girls. They’d have
shown him.

§8

For three weeks Christina Alberta did not return to Tunbridge Wells, and
when she returned she had passed through a variety of experiences that
will have their due effect upon the course of this story. This story is the
story of Mr. Preemby, and we have little sympathy with that modern sort
of novel which will not let a girl alone but must follow her up into the
most private and intimate affairs. Christina Alberta was perplexed and
worried and would have hated the pursuit of such a searchlight. Suffice it
that events had crowded so closely upon her that for whole days together
she thought scarcely at all of her possibly quite lonely little Daddy at
Tunbridge Wells. Then came a letter that brought her bustling down.
“I think it only right to tell you,” said the letter, “that Very Important
Communications indeed have been made to me of the Utmost
Importance, and that I ought to tell you about them. They seem to alter
all our lives. I know you are immearced in your studies, but these
Communications are so Important that I want to talk them over with you
soon. I would come up to the Studio to tell you about it all, but very
likely Mr. Crumb might be in and I would much prefer to tell you here
on the Common amid more congenial surroundings. Some of it you will
find almost unbeleavable.”
“Communications?” said Christina Alberta, re-reading the letter.
“Communications?”
She went down to Tunbridge Wells that afternoon.
 CHAPTER THE FIFTH
The Scales Fall from Mr. Preemby’s Eyes

§1

“THE scales,” said Mr. Preemby, “have fallen from my eyes.”

He had chosen a seat upon the Common which commanded an extensive
view of the town, the town crowned by the green cupolas of the Opera
House and lying as though the houses had been shot out of a cart down
the long incline to the Pantiles. Beyond were the wide distances of the
Kentish hill country, blue and remote.
Christina Alberta waited for more.
“This experience,” said Mr. Preemby, speaking with an occasional
h’rrmp; “all these experiences—difficult to relate. Naturally I think you
are of a sceptical disposition—taking after your dear mother. She was
very sceptical. Of psychic phenomena in particular. She said it was
Nonsense. And when your dear mother said a thing was Nonsense, then
it was Nonsense. It only made things disagreeable if you argued it was
anything else. As for myself—always the open mind. No dogma either
way. I just refrained.”
“But, Daddy, have you been having psychic experiences? How could you
have psychic experiences down here?”
“Let me tell you the story in due order. I want you to see it as I saw it—
in due order.”
“How did it begin?”
Mr. Preemby held up a propitiatory hand. “Please! In my own way,” he
said.
Christina Alberta bit her lips and scrutinized the tranquil resolution of his
profile. There was no hurrying him; he had to tell his tale as he had
prepared it.
“I do not think,” said Mr. Preemby, “that mine is a very credulous sort of
mind. It is true I am not given to argument. I do not say very much. But I
think and observe. I think and observe and I have a kind of gift for
judging people. I do not think I am a very easy man to deceive.
“And it is to be noted that I started the whole affair. It began at my
suggestion. I do not know what put it into my head, but I do know that it
was me started the whole thing going.
“You know, after your departure our little band at the Petunia Boarding
House was reduced to just six persons, not counting the young gentleman
from Cambridge who was, as Miss Rewster says, a Bird of Passage.
Naturally the six of us felt rather drawn together. There were the two
Miss Solbés, both very intelligent young ladies, and there were Mr.
Hockleby and Mrs. Hockleby, and Miss Hockleby, and there was me. We
were drawn together at lunch after you had gone off—it was a little
showery and we had a fire in the drawing-room and Miss Solbé, the one
with the glasses, tried to show me one of her Patiences. We got into quite
an interesting argument about whether it was possible to will which card
would turn up next. I have always inclined to the view that for certain
people, people with the necessary gift, it was possible to do so, but Mr.
Hockleby showed himself extremely sceptical in the matter. He said that
if there was a card on the top of the pack ready to turn up, and if one
willed that a different card should turn up, then that meant that one had
really by sheer will force to re-manufacture two of the cards in the pack,
make them over again, each into the other, make them blank, reprint
them and everything. But I tried to explain to him that this is not
philosophically sound because of predestination. If you were predestined
to will that such a card should be on the top of the pack, then that card
was also predestined to be there. He argued——”
“But is it necessary to tell me all this, Daddy, before we get to your
psychic experience?”
“It is just to illustrate the fact that Mr. Hockleby was an extremely
sceptical person.”
“Was that young man from Cambridge present at the discussions?”
“No-oh. No. He was not. He had probably gone down to the Garage to
see if his Spare Part had come. He was always going down to the Garage
to see about his Spare Part.”

§2

Mr. Preemby h’rrmped and began a new section of his narrative.

“It was in the evening after dinner,” he said, “that things really began. I
went into the smoking-room—to smoke—and afterwards I went into the
drawing-room, and when I went into the drawing-room I had no more
thought of occult phenomena, Christina Alberta, than I had of flying over
the moon. But as I came into the drawing-room I saw Miss Solbé looking
at her Patience cards which she had just put out, and the way she was
holding her hands on the table reminded me of the way I had read that
people put their hands together on the table when they were trying
experiments in table-turning. And almost without thinking I said: ‘Why,
Miss Solbé, the way you are holding your hands is just the way they do
when they are going to do table-turning!’ I said it just like that.
“Mr. Hockleby was reading his paper at the time—the Times, I think, but
it may have been the Morning Post—but he put it down when he heard
me say that and he looked over his glasses at me and said, ‘You don’t
believe in that sort of thing, Mr. Preemby, surely?’
“His wife was sitting with her back to me and from the way she spoke I
think she must have been eating some sort of sweet or lozenge at the
time. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘We did it at home dozens of times before I was
married.’
“And I don’t know what put it into my head, Christina Alberta; it seemed
almost as though it was something behind myself that did it, or it may
have been a sort of antagonism I have always felt about that man
Hockleby; but anyhow, I said, ‘I’d really like to try some of this table-
turning.’
“The younger Miss Solbé, she’s really quite a charming young lady when
you get to know her, and it seems she has been reading a little occult
literature lately——”
“How old is she, Daddy?” asked Christina Alberta, regarding him with a
look of novel suspicion.
“I don’t think she can be very much more than thirty-two or three.
Thirty-four at the outside. And really quite well-read, quite well-read.
Well, anyhow, she said she would like to try it. And Miss Hockleby,
evidently she had been brought up on strictly sceptical lines by her
father, she was curious too. So to cut a long story short, we tried it. Only
Mr. Hockleby objected and Mrs. Hockleby overruled that. She was the
only one among us who had ever seen anything of the sort before, and so
it was she who arranged things and told us what to do. We chose a very
solid table, the one that usually has the big aspidistra on it, and while we
were turning out the light——”
“But why did you do that, Daddy?”
“One always does that,” said Mr. Preemby. “It makes the atmosphere
more favourable. We lit a candle which Miss Margaret Rewster got for
us and turned out all the electric lights; and while we were doing this, in
came young Mr. Charles Fenton and said—what did he say? A peculiar
expression. Ah, yes! ‘Gollys,’ he said, ‘what’s up?’”
“Was that the young man with the motor bicycle?”
“Yes. The young man from Cambridge. We explained what we were
doing and asked him to join us. He declared he knew nothing of psychic
phenomena, had never experimented with it at all and seemed very
doubtful about taking part in the trial. ‘I don’t think there’s anything in
it,’ he said. ‘We shall just waste our time.’ Indeed I remember now that
he did go out intending to visit a music-hall, and then he came back and
said it was raining. It’s very important to note that he was not at all eager
to join us and that he was quite uninformed about occult things because,
you see, as I will tell you, we found out presently that he was a person of
exceptional psychic gifts, much greater psychic gifts than anyone else
among us.
“Well, we arranged ourselves about the table in the usual manner,
thumbs and little fingers touching, and for a time nothing seemed to
happen at all. We found Miss Emily Rewster was peeping in through the
slightly open door, and perhaps that may have had an unfavourable
influence. I suppose she wondered what we were doing and why we had
asked her sister for a candle. Then Mr. Fenton got very restive and
grumbled to himself and said it was the silliest way of passing an
evening he had ever tried. It was a little difficult to persuade him to keep
silence and persevere. ‘All right,’ said he, with a kind of resentment.
‘Have it your own way.’ And then suddenly came two violent raps, raps
like little pistol shots, not immediately under the table it was, but as if it
was in the air a foot or so under the table. And then the table began to
move. Slowly at first, shifting along the floor, and then quite strongly
twisting and pushing up against our hands. It was very weird and
impressive, Christina Alberta, very weird and impressive indeed. It rose
nearly two feet I should think and then Mr. Hockleby broke the circle
and it fell rather heavily, I fancy, and the leg hit his shin. He uttered an
exclamation and stooped to rub his leg, and in the indistinct light he hit
his head on the edge of the table. It seemed almost a judgment on his
scepticism I thought. We turned up one or two of the lights to attend to
him. ‘I don’t like this,’ said Mr. Fenton. ‘This is a bit too rum for me.’
“I asked him to try just once more.
“‘I don’t like this table riding up like this,’ he said. ‘It’s such a bad
example for the chairs. Suppose some of them start playing cup and ball
with us! You might get a nasty toss from a buck-jumping chair. And
besides, it’s a lot too like a Channel crossing for my taste.’
“I think we were all a good deal excited by what had happened, and all
the others, even Mr. Hockleby, were eager to continue.
“‘Next time I shall press down,’ he said. I think he was a little suspicious
that either his wife or me had something to do with the phenomena.
Evidently spiritualism was a long-standing dispute between him and his
wife. His wife said she had seen tables move before, but none so actively
as this one had done.
“Down we sat again. We had hardly waited a minute before the table
began rocking about in the most extraordinary fashion, and then
absolutely flew up so violently that the elder Miss Solbé was thrown
back over that Ottoman there is there, and I was bumped under my chin.
At the same time there was a perfect volley of cracks, like somebody
cracking his fingers, but ever so much louder. It was quite a comfort to
have the lights up again and see Mr. Hockleby holding the table down
firmly in its proper place. ‘Damn you,’ he said—quite loudly. ‘Damn
you. Keep down.’ Miss Hockleby and her father picked up Miss Solbé,
who was on the floor in a sort of hysterical fit of laughter, with her feet
waving about.
“‘I don’t like this,’ said Mr. Fenton. ‘It goes through one like an electric
shock.’
“He spoke quite simply.
“The only one of us who had had any experience with occult phenomena
was Mrs. Hockleby, and she had not done anything of the sort since her
marriage to Mr. Hockleby five or six years before, because of his
scepticism. She said now that it was very evident that some very strong
and resolute spirit was present and was trying to communicate with us,
and she explained a simple and safe method of getting into
communication. We were to reform the circle round the table and we
were to call over the alphabet, and when we came to the letter the spirit
wanted there would be a rap and so we should be able to arrive at
something definite. There is a sort of code quite well understood it seems
in the spirit world, in which you convey ‘No’ by one rap and ‘Yes’ by
two, and so on.
“We set to work at this,” said Mr. Preemby. “We asked if the spirit would
like to spell out anything and it answered with two very loud raps, and
then Mr. Hockleby read out the letters: A B C and so on. When it got to
S the spirit gave a rap so loud it made me jump.”
“And what did you spell out, Daddy?”
“A name quite unknown to me then— , and then .
We asked: was the spirit that was communicating with us Sargon? The
answer came No. Was Sargon present? Yes. Then who was our
communicant? . Who was Oujah? . It was a very slow
process spelling out the words in this way, and by the time we had got so
far we were all very tired. Mr. Fenton in particular was very tired. He
yawned and seemed greatly exhausted, and said at last he felt so weary
and muzzy that he must go to bed. That was really very natural, because
though none of us realized it at the time he was the actual medium under
Oujah’s control. He went to bed and we tried to go on without him, but
the magic had departed and we could not get so much as a rap. So we sat
for a time talking all this over. Mr. Hockleby in particular was greatly
flabbergasted, and then the rest of us went to bed.”
“Evidently Mr. Fenton made the raps,” said Christina Alberta.
“Evidently his presence was necessary for the raps to be made,”
corrected Mr. Preemby. “Quite unconsciously he was a Mejum.”
There was a pause.
“Go on with the story,” said Christina Alberta.

§3

“The next evening was wet again, and as his Spare Part hadn’t come Mr.
Fenton was able to join us once more. He made some little objection at
first because he said he and his people were all Particular Baptists, and
he was doubtful whether this sort of thing was not Necromancy and
forbidden in the Bible. But I persuaded him out of that. And this time we
spelt out a quite singular message. It was , !
!
“Even from the first I had had a feeling that those messages from Sargon
had something to do with me. Now suddenly conviction came upon me. I
asked ‘Is Sargon present?’ ‘Yes.’ I knew it would be so. ‘Is it anyone in
the circle?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Is it this gentleman?’—pointing to Mr. Hockleby. A
very loud No. ‘Is it me?’ ‘Yes.’
“Mr. Hockleby I noted at the time looked annoyed—as though he felt it
was he who ought to be Sargon.
“Then young Mr. Fenton stood up suddenly. ‘Oh! I can’t stand any more
of this,’ he said. ‘My head feels quite muzzy. I’m sure this sort of thing is
harmful.’ He walked across the room and sat down suddenly with his
hands hanging over the arms of the chair—it was one of the big arm-
chairs covered in cretonne. We all felt very much concerned, but as for
myself I was all in a daze at the thought of being this Sargon and being
called upon so openly to rouse myself to action. I did not understand
fully as yet all that it meant to me, but I did realize that it meant a very
great deal.”
“But what did you think it meant?” said Christina Alberta sharply, and
her perplexed gaze searched his profile. His blue eyes stared at things far
away beyond the distant hills, strange things, fantastic empires, secret
cities, mystical traditions, and his brows were knit in the effort to keep
his story together.
“All in good time,” said Mr. Preemby. “Let me tell my story in my own
way. I was telling you, I think, that young Mr. Fenton said he felt heavy
and strange. Mrs. Hockleby happily was quite equal to that situation. She
had seen the same thing before. ‘Don’t struggle against it,’ she said. ‘Let
yourself go. Just lean back in your chair. If you want to lie quiet, do. If
you want to say anything, do. Let the influence work.’ And she turned to
me and whispered ‘trance.’
“‘What is a trance?’ said Mr. Fenton—just like that. ‘What is a trance?’
“She began moving her hands in front of his face, ‘making passes,’ I
think they call it. He shut his eyes, gave a sort of sigh and his head lolled
back. We all sat round him waiting, and presently he began to mutter.
“At first it was just nonsense. ‘Oojah Woojer Boojer,’ words like that.
Then more distinctly, ‘Oujah the Wise Man, Sargon’s servant. Oujah
comes to serve Sargon. To awaken him.’ After that he seemed to wander
off into sheer rubbish. ‘Why is a mouse when it spins?’ he whispered in
his own voice and then, ‘That damned Spare Part.’
“Mrs. Hockleby said that was quite characteristic of this sort of trance,
and then Mr. Hockleby got a writing-pad and a pencil to take down
anything more that was said.
“And presently when Mr. Fenton spoke again, he did not speak in his
own voice but in a kind of hoarse whisper quite different from his usual
voice. It was the voice of this Oujah speaking—Oujah the control. With
a slight accent—Sumerian I suppose.
“Well, the things he said were very astonishing indeed. I think that this
Oujah was anxious to secure my attention by convincing me that he
knew of things, intimate things that nobody else could know. At the same
time he did not wish the others to know too clearly what he was aiming
at. How did it go? What can I remember? Mr. Hockleby has a lot of it
written down, but so far I have not had time to make a copy. ‘Child of
the sea and the desert,’ he said, ‘the blue waters and the desert sand.’ Is it
too fanciful to find an allusion to Sheringham in that? ‘Cascades and
great waters and a thing like a wheel on a blue shield.’ That is more
puzzling. But ‘cascades and great waters’ set me thinking of our big
washers. And you remember the swastika on our blue delivery vans,
Christina Alberta? Is not that oddly suggestive of a thing like a wheel on
a blue shield? The Norse peoples called the swastika the fire-wheel.
‘Armies with their white garments fluttering, the long lines drawn out—
armies of delivery.’ That again is queer. One is reminded of armies and
also—don’t think me absurd!—of the drying-ground and the vans. It is
like one thing becoming transparent and your seeing the other behind it.”
“Are you sure of the exact phrases, Daddy?”
“Mr. Hockleby has them written down. If I have not got them quite right
you will be able to read his notes.”
“The swastika may be a coincidence,” said Christina Alberta. “Or you
may have been drawing it on the edges of the newspaper. You do
sometimes. And he may have seen it.”
“That does not account for the blue ground. He laid great stress on the
blue ground. And there were other things; matters known only to me and
your dear mother. I could not tell you them without telling you
everything. And small things, entirely private to me. The name of my
late grandfather at Diss. Munday his name was. It is sometimes difficult
to argue about things although one may be absolutely convinced. And all
this was mixed up with broken sentences about a great city and the two
daughters of the western King and the Wise Man. And also he called me
Belshazzar. Belshazzar seemed to drift in and out of his thoughts. ‘Come
again to a world that has fallen into disorder.’ These are remarkable
words. And then ‘Beware of women; they take the sceptre out of the
hands of the king. But do they know how to rule? Ask Tutankhamen.
Ask the ruins in the desert.’”
“Pah,” said Christina Alberta. “As though women have ever had a fair
chance!”
“Well, anyhow, Mr. Hockleby has that written down.... And it seemed to
me that this too applied to me, for because of my great fondness for your
mother I had let so many years of my life slip away. He said many other
things, Christina Alberta, richly suggestive things. But I have told you
enough for you to understand what has happened. In the end Mr. Fenton
came-to quite suddenly, much more suddenly than is usual in such cases,
Mrs. Hockleby said. He sat up and yawned and rubbed his eyes. ‘Oh,
Lord!’ he said, ‘what nonsense all this is! I’m going to bed.’
“We asked him if he felt exhausted. He said he was. ‘Absolutely fed up,’
were his actual words.
“We asked him if that was the end of his message.
“‘What message?’ he said. He had absolutely no memory of his
communications at all. ‘Have I been talking?’ he asked. ‘This isn’t the
sort of thing one ought to get up to. What sort of things have I been
saying? Nothing objectionable I hope. If so I apologize. I mustn’t do any
more of this sort of thing.’
“Mrs. Hockleby told him she had never met anyone with such a promise
of great psychic power as he had, before. He said he was really very
sorry to hear it. She said he owed it to himself to cultivate so rare and
strange a gift, but he said That wouldn’t do for his people at all. The rain
had stopped and he said he thought he would take a walk down to the
Pantiles and back before turning in. Perfectly simple and natural he was
from first to last, and rather unwilling. And he really did look tired out.”
“Didn’t he laugh once?” asked Christina Alberta.
“Why should he? He seemed a little afraid of what he had transmitted.
The next day his Spare Part came. Mrs. Hockleby did her utmost to try to
get him once more in the afternoon and develop his Communication, but
he would not do so. He was full of questions about the ferry at Tilbury
and the time of high tide. He would not even give us his name and
address. When I spoke of sending Mr. Hockleby’s notes to the Occult
Review he was suddenly quite alarmed. He said that if his name appeared
in connection with them it might mean a very serious row with his
family. He would not even allow us to put a Mr. F. from Cambridge. ‘Put
quite another name,’ he said, ‘quite a different name. Put anything you
like that does not point to me, a Mr. Walker, say, from London. Or
something of that sort.’
“Of course there was nothing for us to do but agree.”

§4

“And that was the whole of your communication, Daddy?”

“It was only the beginning. Because after that I began to remember. I
began to remember more and more.”
“Remember?”
“Things from my other lives. Memories stored up. This young Mr.
Fenton was, so to speak, no more than the first cut in the curtain of
forgetfulness that hung between this present life and all my previous
existences. Now it was rent and torn open so that I could see things
through it at a dozen points. Now I begin to realize what I really was and
what I can really be....
“You know, Christina Alberta, I have never actually believed I was
myself—not even as a schoolboy. And now it is interesting, I know and
understand clearly that I am somebody else. I have always been
somebody else.”
“But who do you believe you are, Daddy?”
“So far as I can gather I was first a chief called Porg in a city called Kleb
in the very beginning of the world, æons and æons ago, and I tamed my
people and taught them many things. Then afterwards I was this Sargon
—Sargon the King of Kings. There is very little about him here in the
Public Library, in the Encyclopædia Britannica; an upstart who took his
name, my name, three thousand years later, an Assyrian fellow is the
Sargon they tell about—he got mixed up with the Jews and he besieged
Samaria—but I was the original Sargon long before there were Jews or
anything of the sort, long before Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. And
afterwards I was Belshazzar, the last crown prince of the Babylonians,
but that is not very clear. That remains obscure. Only one part of the
record is lit—as yet. And possibly I have been other people. But the
figure that stands out in my memory now is Sargon. It is his memories
have been returning to me. It is he who has returned in me.”
“But Daddy, you don’t really believe all this?”
“Believe!—I know. Long before this Communication came to me I had
had those intimations,—that assurance that I was somebody else. Now I
see clearly. I can remember days in Akkadia now just as clearly as I can
remember days in Woodford Wells. I could almost doubt whether I have
ever lived at Woodford Wells; it seems so far away now. It was when I
was in bed the night after Mr. Fenton had gone that these memories
began to come. I was in bed, and then suddenly I was not in bed—I was
reclining on a couch under a canopy, a canopy of pure white wool very
finely woven and embroidered with emblems and symbols and suchlike
things in golden thread, and I was upon my state barge upon the
Euphrates. Two King’s daughters, sisters, with slender necks, not unlike
the two Miss Solbés except that they were fairer—and decidedly younger
—much younger—and clad rather more in accordance with the
requirements of a warm climate, chiefly in woven gold—sat and fanned
me with fans of Eagles’ feathers dyed a royal purple. And at my feet sat
my councillor Prewm, who was oddly enough extremely like Mr.
Hockleby—just the same iron-grey whiskers and with the same little
tufts of hair over his ears. He was wearing an extremely tall cap of some
black woollen substance, and he was making memoranda with a wooden
style on a tablet of wet clay. It was like writing on a mud pie. And
beyond him were the officers of the boat on a kind of bridge—they were
wearing leather helmets studded with brass—and then one saw the
rowers below, chained to their oars, and then on either side spread the
broad brown river just crinkled by the breeze. The little boats fled to
make way for us. They had coarse, square sails, and they lowered them
and turned them about all in precisely the same way at precisely the
same time. It was very pretty to see. Along the banks were little villages
of mud-brick houses and clumps and lines of palm trees; and everywhere
there were primitive contrivances, great bent poles of wood like giant
fishing-rods, for raising water out of the river for the cultivation of the
land. And the people were all crowded along the water’s edge and
bowing with their hands and foreheads in the water and crying, ‘Sargon
the Conqueror, Sargon, King of Kings!’”
“But Daddy, this was a dream?”
“How could I dream of things I had never seen nor heard of before?”
“One does.”
“One does not,” he replied with a quiet, invincible obstinacy. “I
remember I was coming back from the South where I had given peace to
a multitude of warring tribes, Elamites and Perrizites and Jebusites and
people of that sort, and I was returning to my capital. I remember
distinctly many details of the campaign and I know that with an effort I
could recall more in the proper order. In dreams absurd things happen,
dreams when you think them over afterwards are all at sixes and sevens,
but this is all sane and orderly. One might think, Christina Alberta, that I
had never dreamt dreams and that all these memories of that previous
existence which crowd upon me now were a deception of my
imagination! But I can go right back as if it was yesterday, and I am surer
by far that I am Sargon than that I am Albert Edward Preemby your
father. The former is my true self, the latter is just a very simple,
unpretending wrapping that for some purpose, at present inexplicable to
me, has hidden me from the world.”
He waved his hand with a bolder gesture than was habitual to him. He
sat with his eyes wide open, looking at unseen things.
The girl regarded him for some seconds in silence. She was trying to
grasp the full import of this amazing speech.
“And this was your Communication?” she said at last.
“You have to know,” he said. “You have to serve and help me.”
(Help him! How could she help him or herself? How far was this thing
going? What was she to do?)
“Have you told anyone else of this, Daddy?” she asked abruptly. “Have
you told anyone else?”
He turned his solemn little face towards her.
“Ah, there,” he said, “we have to be very discreet and careful—very
careful indeed. Here and now is not the time to proclaim that Sargon,
King of Kings, has come back to the civilization he did so much to
found. One has to be careful, Christina Alberta. There is a spirit of
opposition.
“For instance, I have told something of my first vision—dream you may
call it if you like—to Mr. Hockleby. I described the resemblance between
himself and Prewm. He was by no means pleased. His is a seditious,
insubordinate nature. And besides—since then—I have recalled what
happened—on the advice of Oujah—to Prewm....
“And I have realized since then that, though one may be convinced
oneself, it does not follow that one will convince other people. It is true
that Miss Hockleby and the two Miss Solbés have asked me to tell them
more of my dreams—they too call them dreams. But their manner was
curious rather than respectful and I have been extremely reserved with
them.”
“That’s my wise Daddy,” said Christina Alberta, “You have to think of
your dignity.”
“I have to think of my dignity, certainly. Nevertheless—” His hands went
out in a new amplitude of gesture. “Here I am and this is my world. My
world! I nursed it in its infancy. I taught it law and obedience. Here I am,
the most ancient of monarchs. Rameses and Nebuchadnezzar, Greece
and Rome, the Kingdoms and Empires, things of yesterday—interludes
while I have been sleeping. And clearly I have been sleeping. And
clearly I have not been sent back to the world without a mission. This is
a great and crowded world now, Christina Alberta, but it is in a sad state
of disorder. Even the newspapers remark upon it. People are not happy
now. They are not happy as they were under my rule in Sumeria
thousands of years ago. In the sunshine and abundance of Sumeria.”
“But what can you do, Daddy?”
“Dear Princess, my child, that I have to think out. Nothing hastily;
nothing rashly.”
“No,” said Christina Alberta.
There came a pause. “One person only seems to have any belief in me.
The younger Miss Solbé—— Did you say anything, dear?”
“No. Go on.”
“I have asked her if she too has had any dreams, any vague memories of
a previous existence. She seems to have had something confirmatory in a
shadowy sort of way. Very vague intimations. She tells them timidly,
when her sister is not about. But she is under a misapprehension that her
relationship to me was a particularly close and special one. She was not
my Queen. There she is wrong. It is perhaps natural for her to think so,
but I remember quite distinctly how it was. She was one of the Twenty
Principal Concubines who carried the Eagle fans.”
“Have you told her that?”
“Not yet,” said Mr. Preemby. “Not yet. One has to go discreetly in all
these things.”
Another pause followed. Christina Alberta looked at her wrist-watch.
“My word!” she cried. “We shall be late for lunch!”
She noted as they walked back towards the Petunia Boarding House that
his bearing and manner had undergone a subtle change. He seemed
larger and taller and his face was serener and he held his head higher. He
did not h’rrmp once. He seemed to expect people and things to get out of
his way, and it was as if the path was a carpet that was being unrolled
before his advance. Had she been able to see herself she would have
remarked an equal change in her own carriage. The dance had gone out
of her paces. She walked like one upon whose shoulders the
responsibilities of life might easily become overwhelming.
They were late for lunch and all the other boarders were in their places,
beginning. Every one turned to look at Mr. Preemby’s face as they came
in, and then they glanced at one another. “So you’ve come back to us,”
said Mrs. Hockleby to Christina Alberta, meeting her eye.
“It’s jolly to be back,” said Christina Alberta.
 CHAPTER THE SIXTH
Christina Alberta Consults a Wise Man

§1

CHRISTINA ALBERTA and Paul Lambone had been great friends for nearly
a year. He liked her and admired her, and as became his literary line of
work, he studied her. And she liked him and trusted him, and showed off
a good lot when she was with him.
Paul Lambone wrote novels and short stories and books of good advice,
and he was particularly celebrated for the pervading wisdom of his
novels and the excellence of his advice. It was his pervading wisdom that
had picked him up out of the general poverty of writers and placed him
in a position of comparative prosperity. Not that his conduct of his affairs
was wise, but that the quality of his wisdom was extremely saleable.
Some writers prosper by reason of their distinctive passion, some by
reason of their austerity and truth, some by their excellent invention, and
some even by simple good writing, but Paul Lambone prospered because
of his kindness and wisdom. When you read the stories you always felt
that he was really sorry for the misfortunes and misbehaviour of his
characters and anxious to help them as much as he could. And when they
blundered or sinned he would as often as not tell you what was the better
course they might have chosen. His book of advice, and particularly his
Book of Everyday Wisdom and his What to Do on a Hundred and One
Occasions sold largely and continually.
But like that James, King of England, to whom the Bible was dedicated,
Paul Lambone was far wiser in his thoughts and counsels than in his acts.
In small matters and most of the time his proceedings were foolish or
selfish or indecisive or all of those things. His wisdom did not reach
below the level of his eyes, and his face and body and arms and legs
were given over to the unhappiest tendencies which were restrained by
his general indolence rather than by any real self-control. He was very
well off chiefly because he was lazy; he asked the highest possible prices
for everything he wrote because that was just as easy as asking the
lowest, and there was always a chance that the bargain would not come
off and then he would be saved the trouble of correcting his proofs. He
accumulated money because he was too unenterprising to buy things or
incur the responsibility of possessions, and so he just let a trust invest it
for him. His literary reputation was high because a literary reputation in
England and America depends almost entirely upon apparent reluctance
of output. The terse beauty of his style was mainly due to his sedulous
indisposition to write two words where one would suffice. And in the
comfort and leisure his indolence accumulated for him, he sat about and
talked and was genially wise and got fatter than was becoming. He tried
to eat less as a preferable alternative to taking exercise, but in the
presence of drink and nourishment his indolence flagged and failed him.
He went about a good deal, and was always eager for new things because
they saved him from boredom, the malign parent of much needless
activity. He had an expensive little cottage near Rye in Kent to which he
could motor without needless trouble whenever London bored him, and
directly his cottage bored him he would come back to London. And he
visited people’s houses a lot because it was too troublesome to resist
invitations.
There were, it must be admitted, limits to the wisdom of Paul Lambone.
It is often more difficult to see what is near us than what is far away;
many a stout fellow who looks with a clear, discerning eye upon the
universe sees little of his toes, and ignores the intervening difficulty; and
something sub-conscious in Paul Lambone’s mind obstinately refused to
recognize the defective nature of many of his private acts. He knew he
was indolent, but he would not allow himself to admit that his indolence
was fundamental and vicious. He thought there was a Paul Lambone in
reserve of very great energy. He liked to think of himself as a man of
swift and accurate decisions who, once aroused, was capable of
demoniac energy. He had spent many an hour in arm-chairs, on garden
seats, and on Downland turf, thinking out his course of action on various
possible occasions of war, business, criminal attempt or domestic crisis.
His favourite heroes in real life were Napoleon, Julius Cæsar, Lord
Kitchener, Lord Northcliffe, Mr. Ford, and suchlike heroic ants.
He liked Christina Alberta because of her tremendous go. She was
always up to something; she preferred standing to sitting, and she kicked
her legs about while she talked to you. He idealized her go; he attributed
to her much more go than she really had. He was secretly persuaded that
her blood must be like a bird’s, a degree or so above normal. He felt that
in imagination she had much in common with him. He called her the
Last Thing, the Van, the Ultimate Modern Girl, and the Life Force. He
openly professed pity for the unaided single-handed man who would in
accordance with our social laws presently have to marry her and go her
pace and try to keep her in order.
She had been to tea with him once or twice. She perceived his admiration
and suspected a certain affection, and she basked in admiration and
affection. She liked his books and thought he was very like what he
thought he was himself. She told him all sorts of things about herself just
to lift his eyebrows.
And he was wise all over her and round and about her, tremendously
wise.

§2

It was quite interesting to be rung up by Christina Alberta and asked if

she might come for tea and advice. “Come along now,” he said. “I’m
probably all alone for tea.”
And as he replaced the instrument he said: “Now I wonder what the
young woman has been up to! And what she wants me to do for her.”
He went back to his sitting-room and spread himself on his very nice
Persian hearthrug, and regarded the pretty silver kettle that swung over
his spirit lamp. “It won’t be money,” he considered. “She isn’t the sort
that tries to get money....
“She’s barked her shins on something....
“Girls nowadays are a lot too plucky—they’re a lot too plucky
altogether.... I hope it’s nothing serious.... She’s just a kid.”
Christina Alberta appeared in due course. Erect as ever, but nevertheless
looking a little dashed and subdued.
“Uncle,” she said—for that was her theory of their relationship—“I’m in
trouble. You’ve got to give me all sorts of advice.”
“Take off that brigand’s cloak,” he said, “and sit down there and make
me some tea. I’ve been watching your love affair out of the corner of my
eye for some time. I’m not surprised.”
Christina Alberta paused with her cloak in her hand and stared at him.
“That’s nothing,” she said. “I can manage that little affair all right. Such
as it is. Don’t you worry about me, in that respect. Don’t imagine things.
But there is something—something different.” She threw the cloak over
a chair back and came and stood by the silver tea-tray.
“You know my Daddy,” she said, arms akimbo.
“I never saw a more dissimilar parent.”
“Well—” She considered how she should put it. “He’s behaving queerly.
So that people may think—people who don’t know him—that he’s going
out of his mind.”
Mr. Lambone reflected. “Was it ever such a very serious mind to go out
of?”
“Oh! don’t make jokes. His mind was good enough to keep him out of
trouble, and now something’s happened and it isn’t. People will think—
some of them think already—he is mad. They may take him away. And
there’s just him and me. It’s serious, Uncle. And I don’t know what I
ought to do. I don’t know enough to know. I’m scared. I’ve got no
friends that I can talk to about it. None. You’d think I’d have women
friends. I haven’t. I don’t get on with older women. They want to boss
me. Or I think they do. And I irritate them. They know, they feel—the
proper ones—that I don’t—oh! respect their standards. And the other
sort just hate me. Because I’m young. The girls I know—no good for
what I want just now.”
“But isn’t there a man,” said Lambone, “on whom you have a sort of
claim?”
“You know who it is, I suppose?”
He was frank. “Things rather show.”
“If you know him—” She left the sentence unfinished.
“I know the young man only very incidentally,” he said.
“I go to Teddy,” said Christina Alberta without any further reservations.
“I went to him as a matter of fact before I telephoned to you. He hardly
listened to what I had to say. He didn’t bother.” She winced. Suddenly
tears stood in her eyes. “He was just loafing about in his studio. He
kissed me and tried to excite me. He would hardly listen to what I had to
tell him.... That I suppose is what one gets from a lover.”
“So it’s got to that,” Paul Lambone reflected with hidden dismay, and
then remarked a little belatedly: “Not every lover.”
“Mine—anyhow.”
“And you came away?”
“Well! What do you think?”
“H’m,” said Lambone. “You have barked your shins, Christina Alberta!
More than I thought.”
“Oh, Hell take Teddy!” said Christina Alberta, putting it on a bit and
helping herself by being noisy. “What does that matter now? I’ve done
with Teddy. I was a fool. Never mind that. The thing is my Daddy. What
am I to do about my Daddy?”
“Well, first you’ve got to tell me all about it,” said Lambone. “Because at
present, you know, I’ve hardly got the hang of the trouble. And before
you do that you sit down in that easy chair and I make the tea. No, not
you. Your nerves are on edge and you’ll upset something. You’ve been
having your first dose of adult worry. Sit down there and don’t say
anything for a minute. I’m glad you came along to me. Very glad.... I
liked that Daddy of yours really. Little innocent-eyed man he was. Blue
eyes. And he was talking—what nonsense was he talking? About the
Lost Atlantis. But it was quite nice nonsense.... No, don’t interrupt. Just
let me recall my own impression of him until you’ve had your tea.”

§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