“But we can’t leave him to get into a mess here.”
“But how can we help him?”
§ 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.”