Part 13

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, I _believe_,” 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 would _look_ better,” 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 the table 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--_work_ in 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’t _mean_ to 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. I _will_ be 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 a _jeune femme rangée_ and 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. _I_ shouldn’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--You _must_ get 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. _Quite_ recently. 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. You _walk_ downstairs. Pinching is forgiven but not forgotten. You can leave your map, sir--and that star thing--as visible signs of your occupation. No, Susan--on foot.”

§ 6

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 of _Wilkins’ 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 DOWNS

_A Pedestrian Novel_

BY ROBERT ROOTHING

CHAPTER THE FIRST

WHICH 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 was extremely 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 books _yet_. But--it _is_ ridiculous, 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 fact _started_ a 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, if _you_ say 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.”

§ 7

“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 quite _harmless_ lunatic, 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. I _must_ have 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-saving pantry 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 he _does_ think 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 we _all_ thought 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 what _is_ going 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. _He_ wants 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 that sort. It _is_ the 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.

“He _is_ rather 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 from _somewhere_!”

“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 even a spider could spin a yarn out of an empty stomach. Tessy, have you just simply _lost_ the cream or have you put it away in a new place very carefully for me to guess? Oh, right-o! I’ve got it.”

§ 8

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 to another, 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.