THE PAST
The learned gentleman had let his dinner get quite cold. It was mutton chop, and as it lay on the plate it looked like a brown island in the middle of a frozen pond, because the grease of the gravy had become cold, and consequently white. It looked very nasty, and it was the first thing the children saw when, after knocking three times and receiving no reply, one of them ventured to turn the handle and softly to open the door. The chop was on the end of a long table that ran down one side of the room. The table had images on it and queer-shaped stones, and books. And there were glass cases fixed against the wall behind, with little strange things in them. The cases were rather like the ones you see in jewellers' shops.
The 'poor learned gentleman' was sitting at a table in the window, looking at something very small which he held in a pair of fine pincers. He had a round spy-glass sort of thing in one eye--which reminded the children of watchmakers, and also of the long snail's eyes of the Psammead. The gentleman was very long and thin, and his long, thin boots stuck out under the other side of his table. He did not hear the door open, and the children stood hesitating. At last Robert gave the door a push, and they all started back, for in the middle of the wall that the door had hidden was a mummy-case--very, very, very big--painted in red and yellow and green and black, and the face of it seemed to look at them quite angrily.
You know what a mummy-case is like, of course? If you don't you had better go to the British Museum at once and find out.
Anyway, it is not at all the sort of thing that you expect to meet in a top-floor front in Bloomsbury, looking as though it would like to know what business YOU had there.
So everyone said, 'Oh!' rather loud, and their boots clattered as they stumbled back.
The learned gentleman took the glass out of his eye and said--'I beg your pardon,' in a very soft, quiet pleasant voice--the voice of a gentleman who has been to Oxford.
'It's us that beg yours,' said Cyril politely. 'We are sorry to disturb you.'
'Come in,' said the gentleman, rising--with the most distinguished courtesy, Anthea told herself. 'I am delighted to see you. Won't you sit down? No, not there; allow me to move that papyrus.'
He cleared a chair, and stood smiling and looking kindly through his large, round spectacles.
'He treats us like grown-ups,' whispered Robert, 'and he doesn't seem to know how many of us there are.'
'Hush,' said Anthea, 'it isn't manners to whisper. You say, Cyril--go ahead.'
'We're very sorry to disturb you,' said Cyril politely, 'but we did knock three times, and you didn't say "Come in", or "Run away now", or that you couldn't be bothered just now, or to come when you weren't so busy, or any of the things people do say when you knock at doors, so we opened it. We knew you were in because we heard you sneeze while we were waiting.'
'Not at all,' said the gentleman; 'do sit down.'
'He has found out there are four of us,' said Robert, as the gentleman cleared three more chairs. He put the things off them carefully on the floor. The first chair had things like bricks that tiny, tiny birds' feet have walked over when the bricks were soft, only the marks were in regular lines. The second chair had round things on it like very large, fat, long, pale beads. And the last chair had a pile of dusty papers on it. The children sat down.
'We know you are very, very learned,' said Cyril, 'and we have got a charm, and we want you to read the name on it, because it isn't in Latin or Greek, or Hebrew, or any of the languages WE know--'
'A thorough knowledge of even those languages is a very fair foundation on which to build an education,' said the gentleman politely.
'Oh!' said Cyril blushing, 'but we only know them to look at, except Latin--and I'm only in Caesar with that.' The gentleman took off his spectacles and laughed. His laugh sounded rusty, Cyril thought, as though it wasn't often used.
'Of course!' he said. 'I'm sure I beg your pardon. I think I must have been in a dream. You are the children who live downstairs, are you not? Yes. I have seen you as I have passed in and out. And you have found something that you think to be an antiquity, and you've brought it to show me? That was very kind.
I should like to inspect it."
'I'm afraid we didn't think about your liking to inspect it,' said the truthful Anthea. 'It was just for US because we wanted to know the name on it--'
'Oh, yes--and, I say,' Robert interjected, 'you won't think it rude of us if we ask you first, before we show it, to be bound in the what-do-you-call-it of--'
'In the bonds of honour and upright dealing,' said Anthea.
'I'm afraid I don't quite follow you,' said the gentleman, with gentle nervousness.
'Well, it's this way,' said Cyril. 'We've got part of a charm.
And the Sammy--I mean, something told us it would work, though it's only half a one; but it won't work unless we can say the name that's on it. But, of course, if you've got another name that can lick ours, our charm will be no go; so we want you to give us your word of honour as a gentleman--though I'm sure, now I've seen you, that it's not necessary; but still I've promised to ask you, so we must. Will you please give us your honourable word not to say any name stronger than the name on our charm?'
The gentleman had put on his spectacles again and was looking at Cyril through them. He now said: 'Bless me!' more than once, adding, 'Who told you all this?'
'I can't tell you,' said Cyril. 'I'm very sorry, but I can't.'
Some faint memory of a far-off childhood must have come to the learned gentleman just then, for he smiled. 'I see,' he said.
'It is some sort of game that you are engaged in? Of course!
Yes! Well, I will certainly promise. Yet I wonder how you heard of the names of power?'
'We can't tell you that either,' said Cyril; and Anthea said, 'Here is our charm,' and held it out.
With politeness, but without interest, the gentleman took it.
But after the first glance all his body suddenly stiffened, as a pointer's does when he sees a partridge.
