He would have liked to have had a swift strong hand-clasp first, but you can’t do that sort of thing with a chap who will always keep both hands in his trouser pockets. He darted off, and his friend followed discreetly in a state between amusement and dismay, and at such a distance as seemed to him to exonerate him from any personal complicity with the social revolution.
“Where are we going?” asked the young Etonian as he came up with the hindmost of the out-of-work ex-soldiers.
“He knows,” said the out-of-work ex-soldier, indicating Sargon.
§ 3
But that was exactly what our dear Sargon did not know. By this time he was no longer a convinced and complete Sargon. A scared and doubting and protesting Preemby was struggling back into his being.
Up to the beginning of the calling of the disciples Sargon had ruled in his own soul assured and unchallenged. But he had expected his disciples to respond to his call, to recognize and remember, to be immediately understanding and helpful. The calling was to have been like the lighting of a lamp in their minds and the world about them. He had expected not only his own clear and unquestioning conviction but accession and reinforcement for it. And so leaping from soul to soul the restoration of Humanity, the Empire of Sargon would have spread. For disciples who made conditions, for disciples who followed, gesticulating strangely and spluttering and bubbling and stammering injurious criticisms, for disciples who asked for a minimum wage, and for disciples who came limping after one calling “Hi!” as though one was a cab, Sargon was totally unprepared.
Had he called these disciples rashly? Had he been premature again? Had he made another mistake?
These were unpleasantly urgent questions for a Master to solve while he was going briskly to nowhere in particular about four miles an hour along Holborn with his following gathering at his heels. Perhaps all leadership is a kind of flight. In every leader of men perhaps the fugitive has been latent. In Sargon now it was more than latent; it was awake and stirring, and its name was Preemby.
Since first mankind in its slow ascent from mere animalism became susceptible to Prophets and Great Teachers and Leaders there must always have been something of this internal conflict between the greatness of the mission and something discreetly less, and there must also have been always something of this clash of the disciples’ quality and motive with the teacher’s expectations. The very calling of disciples seems to admit a sense of weakness on the prophet’s part. Their calling puts him in pledge. He puts himself in pledge to them. They will, he knows, hold him to it when he falters; deep gregarious instincts assure him he will not desert his declaration to them even when he might desert himself. They desert him—inevitably. In the whole record of the world there is only one unvarying, faithful disciple, Abu Bekr. All other disciples failed and crippled their Masters and misled them. They deserted or they drove the prophet whither he would not go. Great things and little things of the same kind follow the same laws. At the head of that small wedge of commotion driving along lamp-lit Holborn in the October twilight went Sargon the Lord and Protector of Mankind, the Restorer of Faith and Justice, the Magnificent One, and though he was already aware of an error made and dangers incurred, he was still resolved to pull a great occasion by some stupendous gesture out of the jaws of disaster. And closer than his shadow was Preemby, scared nearly out of his wits, ready for a desperate headlong bolt down any side turning, a bolt from explanation, a bolt from effort, a bolt back to Preembyism and infinite nothingness.
Suddenly there came to Sargon a reassuring voice, the voice of one who had at least seemed to believe and accept.