CHAPTER THE FIRSTIncognito
MR. PREEMBYhad disappeared from Christina Alberta’s world. For a time he must disappear almost as completely from this story. Mr. Preemby fades out. Taking over his outward likeness we have now to tell of another and greater person, Sargon the First, the Magnificent One, King of all Kings, the Inheritor of the Earth.
It is no doubt a very wonderful and glorious thing to discover that instead of being the rather obscure widower of a laundry proprietor with no particular purpose in the world one is Lord of the Whole World, but it is also, to a conscientious man anxious to do right, an extremely disturbing and oppressive discovery. And at first it is natural that there should be something a little confusing to the mind in this vast and glittering idea. It was an idea that carried with it an effect of release and enlargement. For purposes as yet obscure, he had been caught like a caged creature in that limited and uninteresting Preemby life. His imagination had rebelled against its finality; some deep instinct had warned him that his life was an illusion; in moments of reverie, and sometimes between sleeping and waking, there had been intimations of a light and purpose beyond the apparent reality. Now abruptly, as though a portal swung open, as though a curtain was drawn, that light poured upon him dazzlingly. His was no single life that begins and ends and is done with like an empty song.His existence was like a thread that shone and vanished and returned in the unending fabric of being; that was woven into a purpose. In the past he had been Porg in the city of Kleb, and he had been Sargon and Belshazzar. Many others had he been, but those memories still slumbered under the dark waters of forgetfulness. But the memory of Sargon shone bright. It was his Sargon self that had returned and no other of his selves. For some reason that was still obscure the Power that ruled his life needed him to be Sargon once again, in this great distressful world of to-day. Sargon had begun life humbly as an outcast babe and had risen to restore and rule and extend a mightier Empire than the old world had ever seen before. Certain qualities (h’rrmp) had been displayed by Sargon, and because of these qualities the Power had called upon him again.
A whole series of memories was unfolding in his mind. With an extraordinary convincingness he recalled his youth, memories of those distant days in Sumeria where the Power had set him on high. They were so bright and so pleasing that already they were thrusting his recollections of Sheringham and Woodford Wells into the background, making a fading phantom of his Preemby existence. He had never cherished these latter experiences, never turned them over in his mind with any pleasure. But his newly-restored memories were memories to dwell upon. There were pictures of his early life when he was a foundling, a mysterious foundling at the court of his predecessor. (That predecessor’s name still escaped him.) Young Sargon was a fair and blue-eyed youth, a thing rare in brown Sumeria, and he had been found floating down the great river in a little cradle boat of rushes and bitumen, and he had been taken and adopted by the ruler of the land. And already as a lad he was pointed out as having an exceptional wisdom, as being able to do what other men could not do, he had the genius of the ruler. It was notthat he had great cleverness nor great skill nor strength. Many of those about him excelled him in these minor things—in cleverness and memory work in particular, Prewm, the son of the Grand Vizier, excelled him—but he had the true, the kingly wisdom beyond them all.
“The true, the kingly wisdom,” said Mr. Preemby-Sargon aloud and came into sharp collision with a tall, dark gentleman hurrying from St. James’s Park towards St. James’s Palace. “Sorry!” cried Mr. Preemby-Sargon.
“My fault,” said the tall, dark gentleman. “Late for an appointment.” And swept on.
Odd! Where had Mr. Preemby—or Sargon—seen that face before? Could it be—Something connected it vaguely with Sheringham and sunlit sand. And then Sumeria came uppermost and the tall, dark gentleman became the chieftain of a desert tribe, a desert tribe amidst the sands.
The ruffled surface became calm again, and that boyhood in Sumeria resumed possession of the mirror. Where were we? Even in those early days men had marked a gravity in the lad beyond his years. He had avoided puerile games. In all his lives he had avoided puerile games. No cricketer even at Sheringham. Modestly but firmly this youth had raised his voice in the council chamber and his words were seen to be wisdom. The old men had sat around marvelling. “He sayeth Sooth,” they said in their antique Sumerian way. A soothsayer. He was also called the Young Pathfinder.
Before Sargon was fifteen the old childless ruler, beset by enemies, threatened with plots, had marked him. “This boy might save the state.” Then, while yet only a few days over eighteen he was given charge of an expedition to pacify the mountain folk of the north and persuade them not to ally themselves with the Enemy of the North. He did more than he was told to do. He went through the mountain land into the plains beyond, and gave battle tothe Enemy of the North and defeated him and smote him severely. After that all men perceived that he must be the new Lord and Master of Sumeria, the successor of his aged Patron. All applauded with sincerity except Prewm the Clever (already adorned with precocious sprouting whiskers) and he applauded with envy in his eyes. And then came the days of the Succession, and the Inauguration of the Harem, beautiful days. And after that the birth of the Princess Royal, his only child, and that great expedition into the deserts of the south. And more expeditions and great law-makings, wise laws and wiser, and crowds of applauding, grateful people and happy villages. Life became happy universally. Prewm plotted and rebelled and was dealt with after the simple custom of the time. That was a regrettable necessity, a thing not to be dwelt upon. The frontiers spread and the great peace spread; Russia, Turkey in Europe, Persia, India, Ancient Egypt, Somaliland, and so on and so forth, were conquered and made happy. America and Australia and the remains of Atlantis, still not completely submerged, were discovered. They were forgotten again afterwards, but they were really discovered then—and paid tribute. A League of Nations was established.
All the world told of the goodness of Sargon and lived golden days. For Sargon ruled by the light of justice in his heart. He mitigated the sacrifices in the Temples and introduced a kind of Protestantism into the creeds and services. The people made songs praising him. Passing men and women would run to kiss his hand. Nor did he deny himself to his people. That confidence was his end. Came alas! the assassin’s knife, the black assassin, a madman, a stranger——!
It was wonderful. He could remember his people mourning after he was dead.
The white glove of a policeman against Mr. Preemby-Sargon’s chest just saved him from stepping in front of amotor ’bus. He recoiled dexterously. He was in Trafalgar Square, a great meeting-place, a confluence. Here in the warm light of the October afternoon was a crowd even greater than the Sumerian crowds. Here he would observe them. They were dark crowds, anxious-faced crowds. His coming back had to do with them. There had been a great war, much devastation; the world was wounded and unable to recover. The poor rulers and politicians of this age had no wisdom, had no instinct for the fundamentally right thing. Once more a leader and a saviour was required, one who had the wisdom that counts.
It was Sargon that walked under the noses of Nelson’s lions and made his way past the statue of George the Fourth to the balustrading that commands the square. He took up his position there for a long survey. He looked down Whitehall to the great tower of the Houses of Parliament and Whitehall was full of a golden haze set with a glitter of traffic. The stream of omnibuses, cars, and motor vans poured up to mingle with the streams that came out of Northumberland Avenue and the Strand, and the joint flow sundered again to the left of him and to the right away to Pall Mall, across the square there. No street lamps were lit as yet, but in the rounded bluffs of building to the left a few windows were warm with lights. Below, across the square, thin streams of pedestrians flowed like ants from one point to another and the squat little station of the Tube Railway perpetually swallowed up dots and clumps of individuals. Some sort of meeting was going on at the foot of the Nelson column, a mere knot of people without evident enthusiasm. Men with white and red placards about Unemployment were distributing white handbills and shaking collecting boxes. Immediately underneath a few poorly-dressed children ran about and played and squabbled....
Just a little patch this was in one of his cities. For, you see, by the lapse of time and the development of his ancientempire, he was the rightful owner and ruler of this city and of every other city in the world.
And he had come back to heal the swarming world’s disorders and reinstate the deep peace of old Sumeria once again.
But how to set about this task?
That was the difficulty. There must be no Half Advent. He must take hold swiftly and decisively he realized, and from the balustrading in front of the National Gallery it looked a large, loose, scattering sort of world to take hold of. It might refuse to be taken hold of. If he began now, if he began to shout from this place, it was more than likely that no one would heed him. He must watch warily for his opportunity andmake no mistakes. It did not become the Lord and Restorer of the Whole Earth to make mistakes.
Now, for example, that had nearly been a mistake at Buckingham Palace. It had blown over all right but it might have had serious consequences. People did not know the Master yet, had no inkling. “They might,” said Sargon, lapsing into a Preemby homeliness “have run me in. And a Pretty Fool I should have looked then!”
There must be no more hasty action of that sort.
No. Indeed it became him rather to wait for guidance.
The Power that had brought him back into the world and awakened him to a sense of his true identity and his mission, might be trusted presently to send him an enlightened supporter or so—who would recognize him. Because, of course, he must resemble the monarch he had been—even as Hockleby had been recognizably like Prewm. As he weighed this thought his hand sought his moustache and he twisted it thoughtfully. It was in effect a disguise. Meanwhile—? Meanwhile he must see what he could,determine the mood of the people and learn their particular needs and distresses. He could go among his people unsuspected—like Haroun al Raschid, but for a wiser purpose....
“Haroun al Raschid,” whispered Sargon and looked up to Lord Nelson and nodded to him in a friendly way. “Haroun al Raschid. Would that my pocket was full of pieces of gold! But of that to-morrow. That man—what was his name?—Preemby had a bank somewhere.”
He felt for his breast pocket. The cheque-book was still there. One signed the cheques “A. E. Preemby”—queer, but one did. This A. E. Preemby had played the part of a chrysalis. His hoard remained.
In the Strand his Majesty caught a glimpse of his reflection in a shop window. His hair was a little disordered, and he disliked to have his hair disordered. He went into a hat shop that presented itself conveniently and bought himself a hat.
He took out his little note-case to pay—a reassuring thing to do. For in it were no less than seven pound-notes. He counted them with satisfaction. After paying up at Tunbridge he had drawn again on his bank. He hesitated whether he should give largesse to the shopman—and did not do so.
It was not another grey felt hat with a black ribbon he bought; it was an exceptional felt hat with a large brim such as an artist or a literary personage might have chosen. It was not the hat that Albert Edward Preemby, the restrained, the hesitating, would have bought; it was much more Sargon’s sort of hat. Yet not pure Sargonesque; there was a touch of disguise about it still, a more manifest disguise. The brim came down over one’s brow. Onecould see ever and again in shop windows and incidental mirrors that now a shadow of mystery lay upon those brooding blue eyes.
He made his way eastward towards Aldwych and so into Kingsway, looking now at the shops, now scanning the faces of the people.
To-day he was The Unknown. Scarce a soul that gave him a second glance. But soon would come discovery and then all this careless jostling crowd would be magnetized as he passed, would turn with one accord to him. They would salute and whisper and wonder. And he must be ready for them, ready to guide their destinies forthwith. It would not do to stand at a loss and say “Er,” to stand collecting his thoughts and clear his throat, “H’rrmp.”
Terrible the responsibility that lay upon him! But he would not shirk it. What should be his opening words to them when the moment of revelation came? “First;—Let there be Peace!” Better words than that one could not imagine. He muttered to himself; “Peace and not War among the Nations. Peace and not War among individuals. Peace in the street—in the workroom—in the shop.Peace.
“Love and Peace. I, Sargon the Magnificent, command it. I, Sargon, have come back after many ages to give Peace to the Whole World.”
A shop window drew him. It was a map shop and prominently displayed in the window was a map ofEurope after the Treaty of Versailles:—Two and Sixpence.He stood looking at that. It would all have to be altered again. That was just part of his task. Then he surveyed the rest of the window. Behind the map of Europe there hung a wall-map of the world. He would need such a map of the world; you cannot rule the world without a map of it. Or you may forget large portions. Or would a globe be better? Maps are all to be seen at once, and besides they are more portable. Furthermore, the shopdid not seem to sell globes and he did not know where globes were to be bought. He went in and bought the world map and emerged again on Kingsway after an interval, with a roll four feet long under his arm. He was also carrying an ingenious flat-paper planisphere which had caught his fancy as he stood at the counter. It might be useful, he felt, for astrological purposes.
He began to think vaguely of his possible destination. Whither was he going?
He was seeking quarters, he was seeking indeed some lonely hermitage. He had slipped away from the Princess Royal, who also had come back—rather needlessly he thought—into this modern world, because it was necessary for him to be absolutely alone for a time. He had to spend some days or weeks in spiritual struggle and meditation and mental purification before his revelation came. Even she might not minister to him during that period. She was devoted, but she hampered him. Indeed, she hampered him greatly. She did not fully understand. Her remarks and questions were generally disconcerting and sometimes downright annoying. It was quite probable that the metamorphosis might never occur with her about. And, besides, always in the history of great Visitants and marvellous returns there had been this opening phase of withdrawal and self-communion. Buddha, Muhammad; they had all done it. Perhaps he would fast. Perhaps fasting would be necessary. Perhaps there would be Celestial Visitants.
He wished he knew more of the technique of fasting. Did one just stop having meals or were there ceremonies and precautions? But of that later. First he had to find that quiet room, his secret place of final preparation.
Presently he found himself in the grey squares of Bloomsbury and every house he passed displayed in its window a genteel card offering “Apartments” or “Bed and Breakfast.” Here also were “Private Hotels” and even aplain “Boarding House.” Well, here no doubt it had to be. A simple room amidst his unsuspecting people, a simple, simply furnished room.
But through all Bloomsbury, to judge by the dark green and silver cards in its ground-floor windows, was offering shelter and sustenance to the homeless and the stranger, the new Lord of the World found it no easy matter to secure that simple room he needed for his own use. For more than an hour he was visiting one grey house after another, knocking, standing on doorsteps, entering passages laid with immemorial oilcloth, and demanding a sight of the accommodation offered, inspecting it, asking prices—and—it became more and more evident—arousing suspicion. The people stared at his rolled-up map and his planisphere and seemed to dislike them instinctively. He had not expected such blunt demands for information; his vague mysteriousness was swept aside, he found himself difficult to explain. They wanted to know how he was occupied and when he would like to move in. None of them seemed prepared for him to just sit down in his room there and then. They expected him to go out and fetch his luggage. It undermined his confidence that behind him there was no luggage. All these people, he realized more and more distinctly, would expect him to produce luggage and might behave unreasonably if he did not do so. A mere readiness to pay in advance, he gathered, was not enough for them.
He had counted upon finding kind and simple people behind these lodging-house doors, people who would accept him and look up to him from the first and wonder about him and his planisphere, speculate about its significance and gradually realize the marvellous visitant that had come to them. But the people he saw were not simple people.Mostly they were dingy, sophisticated people. They came up out of basements in a mood of sceptical scrutiny, men in shirt sleeves, morose for the most part and generally ill-shaven; extremely knowing and anything but virginal young women, grimy looking older women, hungrily lean or unwholesomely fat. One had a goitre-like growth. And always there was something defensive in their manner.
And the rooms he saw were even less simple than the people. His consciousness was invaded by a sense of the vast moral changes that had happened to the world since he had ruled the white-robed honesty of his Sumerian irrigators. Then a room would have a table, a seat or two, a shelf with a few phials, an image or suchlike religious object, a clay tablet and a writing style, perhaps, if the occupant was educated. But these rooms were encumbered with contradictions. They had windows to let in the light and dark curtains to keep it out. Sargon’s hidden second youth in the laundry had made him very sensitive to dirtiness, and the cotton-lace curtains of those places were generally very dirty indeed. Electric light was still rare in “apartments”; mostly they were lit from gas brackets that descended from the centre of the ceiling and carried globes of frosted and cut glass. Always there was a considerable table in the centre and two uneasy arm-chairs. And there were lumpish sideboards of shiny, liver-coloured wood and comfortless sofas and incredible ornaments. Sometimes the rooms, and particularly the bedrooms, had a meretricious smartness and gaiety with mezzotints of ladies in the natural state trying to pass themselves off as allegorical figures or of the Baths in the congested harems of wealthy, rather than refined, Orientals. The over-mantels were extraordinary affairs and much loaded with crockery ornaments, little jars, small gilt-winged angels, red devils, or encouraging looking ladies in bathing-dresses that were too tight for them. A common form of decorationwas to fasten up plates on the wall much as one sees vermin nailed up on a barn.
A considerable number of these homes for hire were as shabby as roadside tramps. One stood out in his memory as faded and dusty and grey and threadbare beyond the possibility of reality. His self-absorption was penetrated by the wonder of who could live and who could have lived in such quarters. All his life had been amongst clean and bright surroundings; it was rare that he had any glimpses of that worn and weary stratum of English town life in which things are patched indeed, but in which it is rare for anything to be mended or cleaned and incredible that anything should be replaced. Even the air in these rooms seemed long out of date and the glass over the rusty engravings of the Monarch of the Glen and the Stag at Bay spotted by remote ancestral flies.
“Does anyone ever stay here?” asked Sargon of the shattered-looking lady in charge.
He did not realize the cruelty of his question until he had asked it.
“My last gentleman stayed here fifteen years,” said the shattered lady. “He was a copying clerk. He died in hospital this June. Dropsy. He always found this very satisfactory—verysatisfactory. I never knew him complain. He was a very good friend to me.”
A great desire for fresh air came upon Sargon. “How much are these rooms?” he asked. “I must think it over. Think it over and let you know.”
She asked her price, the usual price in that street, but as she led the way down to the door she said: “If it’s too much—If you made an offer, sir——”
Despair looked out of her grime-rimmed eyes.
“I must think about it,” said Sargon and was once more at large.
Why did people get so dirty and dismal and broken down? Surely in Sumeria there were never lives like that!It would have to be altered; all this would have to be altered when the Kingdom came.
Then as the twilight deepened Sargon discovered just the peaceful room he desired. It announced itself hopefully not by the usual printed card but by a hand-written tablet saying “A Room to Let,” in a window that had no lace curtains but little purple ones enhancing rather than concealing a bare-looking white room lit pleasantly by the flickering of a fire. There were one or two pictures—real coloured pictures—hanging on the white wall. Rather wearily Sargon lifted the knocker and supplemented its appeal by pressing the electric bell.
There was no immediate answer, and he knocked a second time before the door opened. A slender young man appeared holding a small girl perched on his shoulder. She regarded Sargon gravely with very dark grey-blue eyes.
“Everybody seems to have gone out,” said the slender young man in a very pleasant voice. “What can I do for you?”
“You have a room to let,” said Sargon.
“Thereisa room to let here, yes,” said the slender young man and his appreciative dark eyes took in the details of the figure in front of him.
“Could I see it?”
“I suppose he mightseeit, Susan,” the young man hesitated.
“Of course the gem’s got to see it,” said the small girl. “If Mrs. Richman was here she’d show it him fast enough, old stoopid.” And she pulled the slender young man’s hair—affectionately but very, very hard.
“You see,” the young man explained. “The landlady is out.Don’t, Susan. And the landlady’s lady assistant isout, too. Every one is out—and we’re sort of unofficially left in charge somehow. Properly, I ought not to have answered the door.”
“But I told you to—silly!” said the little girl.
The young man made no definite move. Instead, he asked a question. “Is that a map, sir, you are carrying?” he asked.
“It is a map of the world,” said Sargon.
“Very helpful I should think, sir. And so you found your way here. Well—The room’s upstairs if you’d come up. Hold tight, Susan, and try not to strangle me.” And he led the way up the staircase.
It was just the usual staircase and hall with oilcloth and wall-paper to imitate some exceptionally bilious coarse-grained wood. As they ascended the young lady ran great risks in her resolution never to take her eyes off Sargon and his map. She twisted round a complete circle and forced her bearer to stop on the first landing and readjust her. “If you pull my hair once more,” said the slender young man, “I shall put you down and never, never, never give you a ride again. It’s on the next floor, sir, if you’d go first.”
The room appeared delightfully free from unnecessary furnishings. There was a little plain bed, a table under the window, and a gas-stove, and the walls were papered in brown paper, adorned with commonplace but refreshing Japanese colour prints. There was a recess one side of the fire-place with three empty shelves painted like the mantelpiece, a deep blue. The young man had clicked on an electric light, which was pleasantly shaded.
“It’s rather plain,” said the young man.
“I like it,” said Sargon. “I have no use for superfluities.”
“It used to be my room,” said the young man, “but now I share the dining-room floor with the people downstairs and I’ve given this up. It’s rather on my conscience——”
“People downstairs—what people downstairs? There aren’t no People downstairs. It’s Daddy and Mummy he means,” said the young lady.
“It’s rather on my conscience,” said the young man, “that I persuaded Mrs. Richman to alter the furniture. It isn’t to everybody’s taste.”
“May I ask,” said Sargon, “how much the room might be?”
“Thirty shillings, Ibelieve,” said the young man, “with breakfasts.”
Sargon put down his map and the planisphere upon the table. He felt that he must secure this room or be for ever defeated.
“I am willing,” he said, “to take the room. I would pay for it in advance. And take up my quarters at once. But, I must warn you, my position in the world is peculiar. I give no reference, I bring no luggage.”
“Except of course these charts,” said the young man. “Haven’t you—for instance—a toothbrush?”
Sargon thought. “No. I must get myself a toothbrush.”
“I think it wouldlookbetter,” said the young man.
“If necessary,” said Sargon, “I will pay for two weeks in advance. And I will get myself all necessary things.”
The young man regarded him with an affectionate expression. “If it was my room I should let you have it like a shot,” he said. “But Mrs. Richman is the landlady and in many respects she’s different from me. Have you—travelled far, sir?”
“In space,” said Sargon, “No.”
“But in time, perhaps?”
“In time, yes. But I would rather not enter into explanations at present.”
The young man’s interest and amusement deepened. He put Susan down on her feet. “Might I look at your map?” he asked.
“Willingly,” said Sargon. He unrolled the map on thetable and put his finger on London. “We are here,” he said.
“Exactly,” said the young man, helping to hold the map on the table from which it seemed likely to slip.
“It is still the most convenient centre in the world,” said Sargon.
“For almost any purpose,” said the young man.
“For mine, yes,” said Sargon.
“And that star thing—that must be a great help?”
“It is,” said Sargon.
“I suppose you would—workin the room? It would be just yourself? There would be no coming and going of people?”
“None. While I was here, no one would know me. Afterwards perhaps. But that does not concern us. Here I should remain incognito.”
“Incognito,” the young man repeated, as though he considered the word. “Of course. Naturally. By the by, sir, might I ask your name? (If you hit me again, Susan, I shall do something cruel and dreadful to you.) We’d have to know your name.”
“For the time I think Mr.—Mr. Sargon.”
“Of course,” said the young man, “for the time. Sargon—wasn’t that an Assyrian king, or does my memory betray me?”
“It is not the Assyrian Sargon in this case, it is the Sumerian Sargon, his predecessor.”
“Not a word more, sir—I understand. You must be fatigued after your long journey and I should love—I should dearly love to let you the room.Wow!Susan, you go downstairs. Pinching I can’t stand. Come along. You go down to your own proper room and let’s have no nonsense about it.Come!”
Susan backed to the wall and prepared to resist tooth and nail. “I didn’tmeanto pinch, Bobby,” she said. “I didn’t mean to pinch. Troof and really! I was just feelin’your trousis. Oh, don’t take me down, Bobby! Don’t take me down. Iwillbe good! I’ll be awful good. I’ll just stay here and look at the funny geman. If you take me down, Bobby——”
“Now, is this a real reformation, Susan—a conversion, a change of heart? Will you be ajeune femme rangéeand all that, if I forgive you?”
“I’ll be anyfing, Bobby dear, flet me stay.”
“Well! cease to exist then—for all practical purposes and I’ll forgive you. What can the nice gentleman think of you, Susan? And you more than five!Bah!We were saying, Mr. Sargon—? Yes, of course, I was saying that you ought to take the room. Payment in advance will be accepted.But—there is that toothbrush. And other small—what shall I say?—realistic touches.Ishouldn’t mind personally, but I’m only an agent, so to speak. Properly I am a sort of writer. Properly I ought to be writing a novel now, but, as you see, Mrs. Richman has left the house on my hands and my friends downstairs have left this charming young lady on my hands—Put that tongue back at once, Susan. Unladylike child!—and here we are! But as I’m saying, Mrs. Richman is the principal. She has her fancies about lodgers. It is useless to dispute about them. She will want a show of luggage. She will insist. But that is really not an insurmountable difficulty. This—you will remember the name?—is Nine Midgard Street. If you go out from here and turn to the left, take the third to the right and go straight on, you will come to a main thoroughfare full of ’buses and trams and traffic and light and noise, and at the corner you will find a shop where they sell second-hand trunks and bags. Now if you bought an old, battered, largish bag—and then went across the road to a chemist’s shop and got those washing things you need—Oh! and a reserve collar or so at the outfitter’s next door—Youmustget such things.... You see the idea?”
Sargon stood in front of the unlit gas-stove. “This seems to be acting a falsehood.”
“But you must have clean collars sometimes,” protested the young man.
“I admit that,” said Sargon.
“And then you can settle down here and tell me about that business of yours. Otherwise, you know, you’ll just wander about.”
“Your suggestion is really quite a helpful one,” said Sargon, getting the thing into focus. “I shall adopt it.”
“You won’t lose the way back?”
“Why should I?”
“Nine Midgard Street.”
“I shall remember.”
“Queer world it is,” said the young man; “isn’t it? How did you leave the old folks in—Sumeria?”
“My people were happy,” said Sargon.
“Exactly. I’ve been there since.Quiterecently. But the weather wasn’t good and I got knocked about by a shell and had a nasty time as a wounded prisoner. Hot. Crowded. No shelter. Nothing cool to drink. But in your time it was different.”
“Very,” said Sargon.
“And now—by Jove! that kettle is boiling over all by this time, Susan. Come down to my room, such as it is, and have a cup of tea, sir. And then you can go out and make those little arrangements of yours and dig yourself in so to speak before Mrs. Richman comes back. This, by the by, is your gas meter. You get gas by the shilling in the slot arrangement.”
“You are being very, very helpful to me,” said Sargon. “It shall not be forgotten when my time comes.”
“Nothing. It just happened you came into my hands so to speak. No, Susan, we don’t. Youwalkdownstairs. Pinching is forgiven but not forgotten. You can leaveyour map, sir—and that star thing—as visible signs of your occupation. No, Susan—on foot.”
The young man’s room was bookish and rather untidy, and Susan had been killing toys on the carpet—a china-headed doll and something or other of yellow painted wood appeared to be the chief victims. The doll had bled sawdust profusely. Dark curtains were drawn and a green-shaded electric light threw all the apartment into darkness except the floor. There was a gas-fire with a gas-ring on which a boiling kettle steamed like an excited volcano; there was a deal table on which was a big pile of letters address to “Aunt Suzannah” c/o Editor ofWilkins’ Weekly, and there was a large untidy desk on which was another litter of letters evidently receiving attention, and in the midst of the desk a writing-pad, on which reposed a squeezable tube of liquid glue and a half-mended toy. The glue oozed upon the face sheet of the writing-pad beneath these words, written in a beautifully neat handwriting:
UPS AND DOWNSA Pedestrian NovelBY ROBERT ROOTHINGCHAPTER THE FIRSTWHICH INTRODUCES OUR HERO
Beyond that the novel did not seem to have progressed.
With the dexterity of long-established usage Bobby made tea and produced plum-bread and butter. Meanwhile he kept a wary eye on Susan who had sat down by the waste-paper basket and was tearing up paper, and attended to the remarks and attitudes of his remarkable visitor.
Sargon already liked this young man enormously. It wasextremely reassuring and encouraging to meet such kindly acceptance and understanding after the chill and doubt and ugliness of the previous hour’s experiences. And it was nice and refreshing to have tea. A sort of grey insecurity, a threat of suppression that had come over his mind, vanished in this genial atmosphere. The shrivelled incognito expanded. The hidden mystery beneath it grew rich and full once more. This young man—he seemed ready to believe anything. Sargon walked up and down with his hands behind his back as if in the profoundest meditation. He would have muttered a few phrases in Sumerian, but for some reason he had quite forgotten that forgotten tongue.
“And so you write books?” he said regally.
“Not books,” Bobby answered over his shoulder; he was now toasting a circle of plum-bread. “Not booksyet. But—itisridiculous, isn’t it?—I am a bit of a poet and all that sort of thing, and a journalist of sorts. Just answers to correspondents—laborious, but a living.” He indicated the piles of letters on the deal table. “As for books—I have as a matter of factstarteda novel—it’s on that desk—but that’s only in the last few days. And it’s so difficult to get a lot of time to oneself to really let oneself go with it.”
“Inspiration,” said Sargon understandingly.
“Well, one must let oneself go a bit, I suppose; particularly at first. But there’s always something one must do cropping up to prevent it.”
“With me also.”
“No doubt.”
“That is why,” said Sargon, “I am withdrawing into this solitude. To collect my forces. In Sumeria it was always the practice, before any great undertaking, to go out into the wilderness for a certain tale of days.”
“If I go out into the wilderness I get so lonely in the evenings,” said Bobby. “Ssh!That was the front door.”
He went out upon the staircase and stood listening.
“Mrs. Richman,” Sargon heard him call.
“S’me,” said a lady’s voice.
“Here’s a lodger for the second-floor front.”
“I bin to the pictures,” said the voice outside. “Mary and Doug—a fair treat.”
A corpulent lady in a black bonnet appeared breathing heavily. She panted a few obvious questions and Bobby hovered helpfully at Sargon’s elbow to prevent him making any mistakes. “He’ll pay in advance,” said Bobby.
“That’s awright,” said Mrs. Richman. “When will he move in?”
“He’s getting his luggage right away,” said Bobby.
“I suppose it’s all right,” said Mrs. Richman.
“I know his people. At least I know about them. I’ve been in his part of the country. You can be quite sure he’s all right,” said Bobby.
“Well, ifyousay so,” said Mrs. Richman. “’Ope you’ll be comfortable, Mr.——”
“Mr. Sargon.”
“Mr. Sargon.”
And after a few rather vague comments on the weather Mrs. Richman withdrew. “And now,” said Bobby, “I’ll just unload Susan on her and come with you for that bag. It’s extraordinary how people lose their way in London at times.”
“I’ve let the second-floor front to a lunatic,” said Bobby, breaking the news to his ground-floor friends, Mr. and Mrs. Malmesbury.
“Oh,Bobby! and with Susan about!” cried Mrs. Malmesbury reproachfully.
“But he’s a quiteharmlesslunatic, Tessy—and he had to be taken in somewhere.”
“But a lunatic!” said Mrs. Malmesbury.
“I only said that for effect,” said Bobby. “He’s really morbidly sane. I wouldn’t have let him go for anything. Some day when I really get to work on that novel I’ll put him in. Imusthave material, Tessy. And he’s wonderful.”
He was preparing supper for the Malmesburys and himself. He was frying some sausages and potatoes over a gas-ring. Previously Bobby had done most of the putting of Susan to bed, and he had sat and told her stories according to custom until she was fast asleep. Tessy Malmesbury was out of sorts; she had a neuralgic headache, Billy Malmesbury had taken her for a walk in Regent’s Park and she had come home exhausted; things would have gone to pieces badly if Bobby had not taken them in hand.
Tessy was never very well nowadays; she was a slight and fragile little thing and Susan had been a violent and aggressive child long before she was born. In the long-lost days before the war when Bobby had seen Tessy first she had been the lightest, daintiest, most perfect thing imaginable; he had compared her to a white petal drifting down through sunlight, and almost written a poem about her; he had loved her tremendously. But it had seemed to him impossible to make love to so exquisite a being, and Billy Malmesbury, who was less scrupulous, had slipped in front of him and married her; she had not appreciated the delicacy of not making love to her. And then came the war and wounds and here they all were again, fagged and near the thirties, in a world where their small annuities brought them far less than they had promised to do. Billy was the junior partner of an architect and much encumbered with drawing-boards. He was a large-framed young man with a big, round, good-looking, slightly astonished face, pleasantly dappled with freckles. He had a great protective affection for Bobby. He sat now and designed a new sort of labour-savingpantry and, with a sense of infinite protection, let Bobby get the meal.
“And now I can tell you,” said Bobby, when at last all three of them were sitting at table.
“It’s a little dear of a lunatic,” he said. “If it’s a lunatic at all.”
“I hope it isn’t,” said Tessy.
“He’s quite tidy in his person and he hangs together—mentally he hangs together—and his eyes aren’t in the least wild. A leetle too bright and open perhaps. But hedoesthink the world belongs to him.”
“Well, Susan does that,” said Billy.
“And so does Billy,” said Tessy.
“But not quite with the same air of magnificent responsibility. You see he thinks he’s a certain Mesopotamian monarch called Sargon—I’ve heard of him because we had a little dust-up with the Turks round and about his stamping ground—he thinks he’s this Sargon come again and come somehow—that bit’s a little difficult—into the empire of the whole earth. It was Sargon, you know, who started all these British Lions and Imperial Eagles in the world. And so he proposes to take possession of the planet, which is in such a frightful mess——”
“Hear, hear!” said Billy.
“And put it in order.”
“What more simple?” cried Tessy.
“Exactly. Why haven’t weallthought of that?” said Billy.
“But where does he come from?” asked Tessy.
“Not a sign. He might be a suburban nurseryman or a small draper or something of that sort. I can’t place him. One or two phrases he used suggested a house-agent. But he may have picked them up from advertisements. And his first proceeding—perfectly rational—was to buy a map of the world. Naturally if you are going to rule the world, you ought to have a map of it handy.”
“Has he any money?”
“Enough to pay his way. He’s got a small note-case. That seems to be all right. After we’d got a bag for him—he hadn’t any luggage, and I thought he’d better buy a bag to satisfy Mrs. Richman—we sat down upstairs and had a simple straightforward talk about the world and what had to be done with it. Most instructive.”
Bobby helped himself to some more fried potatoes.
“And whatisgoing to be done with it?”
“Let me see,” said Bobby; “it’s quite an attractive little programme. Rather I think on the lines of the Labour programme. Only simpler and more thorough. The Distinction of Rich and Poor is to be Abolished Altogether. Women are to be Freed from all Disadvantages. There is to be No More War. He gets at the roots of things every time.”
“If those are the roots,” said Billy.
“But isn’t the real question how to do it?” asked Tessy, “Aren’t we all agreed about those things—in theory?”
“In theory, yes,” said Bobby. “But not in reality. If every one really wanted to abolish the difference of rich and poor it would be as easy as pie to find a way. There’s always a way to everything if you want to do it enough. But nobody really wants to do these things. Not as we want meals. All sorts of other things people want, but wanting to have no rich and poor any more isn’t real wanting; it is just a matter of pious sentiment. And so it is about war. We don’t want to be poor and we don’t want to be hurt or worried by war, but that’s not wanting to end those things.Hewants to end them.”
“But how’s he going to set about it?” said Billy.
“That is still a little vague. I think there is to be a sort of Proclamation. He’s thinking that out upstairs now. He seems to think that he has to call up some sort of disciples. Then I think he will go down to Westminster and take the Speaker’s place on the Woolsack or something of thatsort. Itisthe Speaker sits on the Woolsack, isn’t it? Or is it the Lord Chancellor? Anyhow, there are to be demonstrations—on a large and dignified scale. The people have forgotten the ancient simple laws, he says. He himself had forgotten them. But he has remembered them now; they have come back to him, and presently every one will remember them, all the great old things, justice, faith, obedience, mutual service. As it was in Ancient Sumeria. Dreamland Ancient Sumeria, you know. The dear old Golden Age. He has come to remind people of the true things in life—which every one has forgotten. And when he has reminded them every one will remember. And be good. And there you are, Tessy! I hope it will affect Susan—but I don’t feel at all sure. I have a sort of feeling that Susan could stash up any golden age they started in about five minutes, but then perhaps I’m a bit prejudiced about her.”
“It’s rather wonderful all the same,” said Billy.
“Heisrather wonderful. He sits up there and looks at you with his little round innocent face and tells you all these things. And, assuming he’s Lord of the World, they’re perfectly right and proper. He sits with the map of the world unrolled on the table. I ventured to suggest that he would require a lot of subordinate rulers and directors. ‘They will come,’ he said. ‘No office, no duty shall be done henceforth except by the Proper People. That has been neglected too long. Let every man do that he is best fitted to do. Then everything will be well.’”
“And when’s all this to begin?” asked Billy.
“Any time. I don’t think—” Bobby’s expression became profoundly judicial. “I don’t think he’ll do anything for a day or so. I pointed out to him that he ought to consider his demonstrations very carefully before he makes them, and he seemed inclined to agree. Some mistake, he says, has occurred already—I couldn’t find out what. Apparently to-morrow he is just going to look at London,quietly but firmly, from the Monument and from the Dome of Saint Paul’s. And also he wants to observe the manners of his subjects in the streets and railway stations, and wherever there is a concourse of people. The scales have fallen from his eyes, he explains, and now that he knows that he is Lord of the World he realizes how distressed and unsatisfactory everybody’s life is—even when they don’t know it’s unsatisfactory. His own life was terribly unsatisfactory he says, unreal and frustrated, until he awoke and realized the greatness of his destiny.”
“And what was that life of his?” asked Tessy.
“I tried to get that. And he caught the eager note in my voice I suppose, and shut up like an oyster. The draper’s shop perhaps. Or a milk-round. I wonder.”
“But, Bobby,” cried Billy in the expostulatory tone of one who remonstrates with wild unreason; “he must come fromsomewhere!”
“Exactly,” said Bobby. “And somewhere must be looking for him. But you can’t always hurry these things. And meanwhile I take it it’s our bounden duty to keep an eye on him and see that he doesn’t bump himself too hard or fall into the wrong hands.... Until some one comes along.... Don’t you get up, Tessy, you’re tired.”
And Bobby jumped to his feet and proceeded to change the plates and dishes while Billy fell into a profound meditation upon the problem of the new neighbour upstairs.
Presently he smiled and shook his head in kindly disapproval.
“This will suit Bobby all right,” he said to Tessy. “Whenever he ought to be upstairs in his own room getting on with that novel of his he will be up on the second floor talking to—what is it?—Sargon.”
“Accumulating material,” corrected Bobby from the Welsh dresser where he was turning a tin of peaches out into a glass dish. “Accumulating evidence.... Not evena spider could spin a yarn out of an empty stomach. Tessy, have you just simplylostthe cream or have you put it away in a new place very carefully for me to guess? Oh, right-o! I’ve got it.”
Let us be frank about it; Sargon had his doubts.
Not always. There were times when his fantasy was bravely alive and carried him high above any shadow of uncertainty, and he was all that he could have ever wished to be. Then Mr. Preemby was almost forgotten. But there were moments, there were phases, when he became aware of a cold undertow of conviction that he was after all just Mr. Preemby, Mr. Preemby, formerly of the Limpid Stream Laundry, making believe, carrying it off and perhaps presently failing to carry it off. This chill flow of doubt could even oblige him to reason with himself, force him into a definite reassurance of himself. He would debate the whole question, candidly, fairly. Surely there was no deception, could have been no deception, about that séance. “Told me things no one but I could have known,” he would repeat. “I pin my faith to that.”
He knew that Christina Alberta had not really believed. It was just because of her revealing scepticism that he had fled from her. She had asked questions, tearing, rending questions, and she had said “Um.” It is not proper to say “Um” to world emperors. If presently he fasted or went into a trance, he felt sure that she would come and stand about beside him and say “Um,” and spoil everything. Well, anyhow, he was away from that for a bit. But to be away from doubt was not enough. The great discovery threatened to evaporate. He wanted the comfort of the disciple. He wanted help and reassurance.
Bobby had comforted him greatly. While Sargon had been going from one suspicious lodging-house keeper toanother, the faith of the new Saviour of mankind had weakened dreadfully. But Bobby from the first had had something deferential in his manner, had seemed to understand. His questions had grown more and more intelligent. Perhaps he was to be the first of the reawakened adherents. Perhaps presently he would be recognizable as some faithful servant in that still so largely forgotten past, a trusted general perhaps or some intimate court official.
Yet even when Sargon doubted he believed. It is a very comprehensible paradox. He knew clearly that to be Sargon was to be real, was to signify and make all the world signify, was to go back into the past and reach right out into the future, was to escape altogether from the shrivelled insignificance of the Preemby life. To be Sargon was to achieve not only greatness but goodness. Sargon could give and Sargon could dare. Sargon could face lions and die for his people, but Preemby could go round three fields, had been known to go round three fields, to evade the hostility of a barking terrier. Preemby’s world was dust and dirt, a mud speck in infinite space, and there was no life on it but abjection. Preemby was death; Sargon was rebirth into a world of spacious things. Not very clearly did Sargon achieve these realizations, but he felt them throughout his being. Something had happened to him of inestimable value and truth; he had to cling to this gift and hold it and keep it or be for ever fallen. Christina Alberta notwithstanding, the whole world notwithstanding.
So he walked up and down his little upper room in Midgard Street and elaborated his conception of his new rôle as lord and protector of the whole world. Twilight gave place to night but he did not turn on the light. He liked the friendly darkness. All visible things are limiting things, but the darkness goes out and beyond everything to God. “I must look,” he said. “I must watch and observe. But not for too long. There is action. Action gives life. Thatfellow Preemby, poor soul, he could look at things, but dared he lift a finger? No! Everywhere suffering, everywhere injustice and disorder, the desert and the wilderness breaking back in on us and he did nothing. If one does not call and call aloud, how can one expect an answer? In this world, vast, terrible—strikes—hoardings—adulteration—profiteers.... Nevertheless men who once lived bravely and did their duty.... Who may do it again.... Once they hear the call. Awake! Remember! The High Path. Simple Honour. Sargon calls you.... H’rrmp....”
He came to a halt at his uncurtained window and looked out on the plain, flat face of the opposite houses, pierced here and there by a lit window. Most had the blinds drawn, but just opposite a woman worked by lamp-light at a table, sewing something, her needle hand flew out perpetually and the book and one hand and the cuff of a reader came also into the picture, the rest of him hidden behind the curtain. At a bedroom window there was a looking-glass, and a girl tried on a hat and looked at it this way and that; then suddenly she vanished, and after a little interval the light went out.
“All their scattered lives,” said Sargon, holding out his arms with a benevolent gesture, “knitted—drawn together by wisdom and love. A rudder put on the drifting world.”
Came a knock at the door. “Come in,” said Sargon.
Bobby appeared. “Getting on all right, sir?” he said in his engaging subaltern manner. He clicked on the electric light and came into the room. (Cadaverous and pleasant face he had; surely one would remember presently what he had been.) “Wondered if you were eating anything to-night?” he asked.
“I quite forgot eating,” said Sargon. “Quite. My mind—troubled by many grave matters. I have much to think of, much to plan. The hour grows late. The time is near. I wonder if the serving woman here——?”
“Only breakfasts,” said Bobby. “Here we are on bed and breakfast terms strictly. The rest is with ourselves. For an emergency like this there is nothing so good as the Rubicon Restaurant. The Grill Room keeps open quite late. They will do you a chop or a cutlet. Or ham and eggs. Very good ham and eggs—crisp ham. You go out from here, turn to the left at the second corner, and go right down Hampshire Street until you come to it. You’ll have no difficulty in finding it.”
The word “crisp” had settled it.
“I will avail myself,” said Sargon.
“And it’s equally easy to find your way back,” said Bobby with a faint flavour of anxiety in his voice.
“Have no fear, young man,” said Sargon in a tone of jolly reassurance. “Have no fear. I’ve found my way in many climes and under many conditions—the wild mountains—the trackless desert. Time and space.”
“Of course,” said Bobby. “I forgot that.
“Still—London is different,” said Bobby.
The next day at about half-past four in the afternoon a small but heavily moustached figure, with eyes full of blue determination, emerged from Saint Paul’s Cathedral and stood at the top of the steps before the great doors, surveying the jostling traffic of Ludgate Hill and the Churchyard. There was a sort of valiant uncertainty in the figure’s pose, as though it was equally resolved to be up to something, and uncertain about what it meant to do. London had been looked at from the top of the Monument and from the Cathedral dome on a crystal-clear October day, and it had betrayed an unusual loveliness and greatness under the golden sunshine. But it had shown itself, too, as a vast dreamy multitudinousness in which none but those who are resolute and powerful in action can hope to escapebeing swallowed up. It had stretched away to wide sunlit stretches that seemed to be the horizon, and then up in the leaden-blue other stretches had been visible of houses, of shipping, of distant hills. The vans and carts in the shadowed streets below had looked like toys; the people were hats and hurrying legs and feet, curiously proportioned. And over all an immense dome of kindly cloud-flecked sky.
He had walked round the little gallery under the ball, muttering: “A wilderness. A city that has forgotten....
“How fair it might be. How great it might be!
“How fair and great itshallbe!”
And now he had come down again from these high places and the time had come for him to gather together his disciples and ministers and inaugurate the New World. He had to call them. Followers would not come to him unless he called them; they would wait for him to act, not know even of what awaited them until he called them, but when he called them they would surely come.
It was with an extraordinary sense of power over men’s destinies that he stood now upon Saint Paul’s steps and reflected that even now men and women might be passing by, among these busy men thronging the pavement, among the people in omnibuses, among the girls clattering away at their typewriters behind the upstairs windows, over whose busy, petty, undistinguished lives hung the challenge of his summons. Yonder perhaps was his Abu Bekr, his right-hand man, his Peter. Let them wait a little longer. He waved the traffic onward with a gesture of kindly encouragement. “Soon now,” he said, “very soon. Go on while ye may. Even now the sorting of the lots begins.”
Yet a moment more he stood still and silent, a statuette of destiny. “And now,” he whispered; “and now....
“And first——”
He was no longer troubled by his oblivion of the Sumerian tongue. In the night he had recovered the giftof tongues; he had muttered strange words in the darkness, and understood.
“H’rrmp,” he said, a word common to many tongues, clearing the way after five thousand years for the return of the forgotten sounds to a renewed use in the world of men. “Dadendo Fizzoggo Grandioso Magnificendodidodo—yes,” he whispered. “The Unveiling of the Countenance. The First Revelation. Then perhaps they will see.”
And slowly he descended the steps, his eyes searching the convergent frontages of the Churchyard for some intimations of a barber’s shop.