Living Alone Part 6

"Why, of course," said the witch impatiently. "Magic generally suffered _because_ it was so sane. I thought everybody knew that."

"All habits. All habits," chanted Sarah Brown. "What is this Charity, this clinking of money between strangers, and when did Charity cease to be a comforting and secret thing between one friend and another? Does Love make her voice heard through a committee, does Love employ an almoner to convey her message to her neighbour?"

"Not that I know of," sighed the witch. "Sarah Brown, how long do you want me to keep quiet, while you say things that everybody surely knows?"

But Sarah Brown went on. "The real Love knows her neighbour face to face, and laughs with him and weeps with him, and eats and drinks with him, so that at last, when his black day dawns, she may share with him, not what she can spare, but all that she has."

The Dog David grunted a little, by way of rather dubious applause. Sarah Brown, with her own voice printed loud and stark upon the retina of her hearing, felt a little abashed. But presently she added in a whisper: "Listen. I am a spy. I am a lover of specially recommended neighbours only. I am here to help to give the black cloud Tyranny a rather dirty silver lining. I am the False Steward, in the interest of the Superfluously Comfortable. My Masters sit upon the King's Highway, taking toll in bitterness and humiliation from every traveller along that road. For surely comfort is every man's heritage, surely the happy years should come to every man--not doled out, not meanly dependent on his moral orthodoxy, but as his right. The fat philanthropist is a debtor, but he behaves like a creditor; he distributes obligations with his gold, yet he has no right to the gold he gives. He makes his brother beg upon his knees for the life and the health and the dear opportunity that should have been that brother's birthright."

"You are possessed, dear Sarah Brown," said the witch. "Don't be frightened, it will soon pa.s.s off. I knew a girl who had an attack very much like this; while she was under its influence she made up a psalm pretty nearly as good as one of David's. Her mother was much alarmed about her. But she recovered quite quickly, except that she left her job as typist in a mind-improving inst.i.tute and went to sea as a stewardess."

Sarah Brown talked on, louder and louder. "Too long I have been a servant in the house of this stranger, this greedy Charity; too long have I sat--a silly proxy for the Too-Fortunate--in this narrow stiff-backed judgement-seat from ten till three daily. There is Love and April outside the window, there is too much wind and laughter outside to allow of the forming of Habits. I have seen Love and the Spring only through the gla.s.s of a charity office window, the rude voices of children and sparrows and other inheritors of opportunity have been dulled for me by grey panes. The white s.h.i.+ps ... Castle-of-Comfort ...

Cloud-i'-the-Sun have sailed into port from the open sky without a cargo for me...."

"Good G.o.d!" said Sarah Brown, pus.h.i.+ng David from her. "What has happened to me? I have become sentimental."

The room seemed to her wild imagination to be full of the spirits of parsons and social workers with flaming swords, pointing at the door.

"Well, that's the end of that job," said the witch. "I'll tell you what, let's go and sit on the Swing-leg Seat on the Heath. The air there and the look of Harrow church steeple'll do you good."

"I am d.a.m.ned. I am a Cautionary Case," cried Sarah Brown, and she slunk behind the witch through the frowning gate of her Eden of fair inks and smooth white surfaces. She had shared with David the remains of her Sandwich of Knowledge; she had left on the table her puny paper defiance. David, except that he had required but little temptation, had played Adam's part very creditably in the affair. For him Eden had been a soft warm place, and he was anxious to blame somebody--the woman for choice--for the loss of his comfort. He followed her out into the cold, to become, as you shall hear, like Adam, a tiller of the soil.

CHAPTER V

AN AIR RAID SEEN FROM BELOW

Magic is a disconcerting travelling companion. While seldom actually conspicuous, it seems to have a mysterious and varying effect on the surrounding public. I have met travellers by Tube who tell of strange doings in those regions, when the conductor of one compartment fell suddenly in love with the conductress of the next, and they ran to each other and met in the middle of the car. As n.o.body opened the gates or rang the bells, the bewildered train stood for hours at Mornington Crescent before any member of the watching public could find the heart to interrupt the pretty scene. It is patent that a magic person must have been the more or less deliberate cause of this episode. Then again, there is the story of the 'bus that went mad, just as it was leaving its burrow at Dalston. It got the idea that the kindly public was its enemy. You should have seen the astonishment of Liverpool Street and the Bank as it rushed by them. Old ladies about to ask it whether it went to Clapham--its label said it was bound for Barnes--stood aghast, and their questions died on their lips. Policemen put up their hands against it,--it ran over them. It even learned the trick of avoiding the nimble business man by a cunning little skid just as he thought he had caught it. You will hardly believe me, but that 'bus ran seven times round Trafalgar Square, until the lions' tails twisted for giddiness, and Nelson reeled where he stood. I don't know where it went to that day, certainly not to Barnes, but late in the evening it burst into another 'bus's burrow at Tooting, its sides heaving, its tyres worn to the quick, its windows streaming with perspiration, and a great bruise on its forehead where a chance bomb had struck it. I believe the poor thing had to be put out of its misery in the end. And what was the reason of all this? It was found that a wizard, called Innocent, of Stoke Newington, had been asleep on the top all the time, having forgotten to alight the night before, on his return from the City.

Sarah Brown, on the night of Lady Arabel's supper party, was unaware of the risk she ran in entering a public conveyance in company with a witch. But she was spared to a merciful extent, for nothing happened on any of the 'buses they boarded, except that, as they crossed the Ca.n.a.l, a cloud of sea-gulls swooped and swirled into the 'bus, resting awhile on the pa.s.sengers' willing shoulders before disappearing again. Also the pa.s.sengers on the Baker Street stretch sang part-songs, all the way down to Selfridge's. The conductor turned out to have rather a pleasing tenor voice.

The witch and Sarah Brown knocked at the Higgins' door five minutes before supper-time. Lady Arabel herself opened it.

"My dears, isn't it too dretful. All our servants are gone. It's an extraordinary thing, they never can stand Rrchud and his ways."

The tactful Sarah Brown nudged the witch. "Better not stay," she murmured.

"Of course we'll stay," replied the witch loudly. "I'm horribly hungry, and there's sure to be some supper."

"Certainly there is," added Lady Arabel. "I cooked it myself. Do you know, I've never seen a cookery book before, and the little pictures of animals with the names of joints written all over them shocked me dretfully. I feel I could have a too deliciously intimate conversation with a bullock now."

The house of Higgins had an enormous hall to which a large number of high windows gave the impression of a squint. I should think two small Zeppelins could have danced a minuet under its dome. Sarah Brown and the witch put on their cathedral look at once, by mistake, and propping their chins upon their umbrellas gazed reverently upward.

"Too dretful, a house of this size without servants," said Lady Arabel.

"The fourth footman was the last to go. He said even the Army would be better than this. He liked spooks, he said, at second hand, but not otherwise. Too funny how people take dear Rrchud seriously. I'm glad to say the orchestra has stayed with us. Come into Rrchud's study, won't you, while I just go and help the first violin to dish up the soup."

Sarah Brown and the witch were left in a small room that opened on to the great hall. It was furnished rather like a lodging-house parlour.

There was a thermometer elaborately disguised as a model of the Eddystone Lighthouse on the mantelpiece, flanked on each side by a china boot in pink, with real bootlaces, and a pig looking out of the top of each. There were pictures on the walls, mostly representing young ladies, more or less obviously in love, supported by rustic properties.

I have noticed that the girl's first love is the monopoly of the Victorian painter, whereas the boy's is that of the novelist, but I do not know the reason of this.

There was a slight clap of thunder and Richard entered. He would have been very obviously a wizard even without the thunder, and seemed much less innocent about his magic than the witch. He had pale hair, a pale face, and eyes that did not open wide without a certain effort on the part of the brows.

"You are despising my ornaments," he said to Sarah Brown. "I admire them awfully. I don't like really clever art. Do you know, it makes me sneeze."

Directly he spoke, one saw that he was making the usual effort of magic to appear real. Witches and wizards lead difficult lives because they have no ancestry working within them to prompt them in the little details. Whenever you see a person being unusually grown-up, suspect them of magic. You can always notice witches and wizards, for instance, after eight o'clock at night, pretending that they are not proud of sitting up late. It is all nonsense about witches being night birds; they often fly about at night, indeed, but only because they are like permanent children gloriously escaped for ever from their Nanas.

"This picture," added Richard, "seems to me very beautiful." The picture might have cost a s.h.i.+lling originally, framed, or it might have been attached to a calendar once. It was a landscape so thick in colouring and so lightless that it failed to give an outdoor impression at all.

There was a river and waterfall like well-combed hair in the middle, and a dozen leaden mountains lying about with--apparently--pocket-handkerchiefs on their tops, and a dropsical-looking stag drinking. "I can't imagine," insisted Richard, "that there could be a more beautiful picture than that, but perhaps it appeals to me specially because father and mother and I so often talk about the place together--the place like that, near to the mountain where I was born. That was in the Rockies, you know, and just below our mountain I am sure there was a canyon like that--I dream of it--with milky-green water running under and over and round the most extraordinary shapes of ice, and cactuses like green hedgehogs in the crevices of the rocks, and great untidy pine-trees clinging to an ounce of earth on an inch of flat surface. And the rocks are a most splendid rose-red, and lie in steep layers, and break out into shapes that are so deliberate, they look as if they must mean something. Indeed they do...."

A stave played by a 'cello called them to supper, and, as they returned to the hall, a burst of earnest music from the whole orchestra partially drowned the clap of thunder that again marked Richard's pa.s.sage through the door. Sarah Brown felt sure that Lady Arabel arranged this on purpose. The wizard's mother obviously had great difficulty in not noticing the phenomena connected with her son, and she wore a striving smile and a look of gla.s.sy and well-bred unconsciousness whenever anything magic happened.

At the end of the hall the orchestra, arranged neatly in a crescent, was busily employing its violins in a unanimous melody of so rude and destructive a nature that it seemed as if every string must be broken.

This mania spread until even the outlying ba.s.soons, triangles, and celestas were infected. A piercing note of command, however, from a clarinet caused a devastating dumbness to fall suddenly on every instrument except the piano, which continued self-consciously alone. The pianist looked at the ceiling mostly, but one note seemed to be an especial favourite with him, and whenever he played it he looked closely and paternally at it, almost indeed applying his nose to it. All at once, just as Sarah Brown was beginning to imagine that she could catch the tune and the time, the music ceased, apparently in the middle of a bar. Richard sneezed once or twice. That unsophisticated wizard was evidently enjoying himself in the practice of his art. One felt that magic was not encouraged in the Army, and that the supernatural orgy in which he was now indulging was the acc.u.mulated reaction after long self-control. Strange noises of unnatural laughter, for instance, proceeded from distant corners of the hall, and each of the electric lights in turn winked facetiously. The string of the double ba.s.s broke loudly, and the new string which its devotee laboriously inserted also broke at once. The performer looked appealingly at Lady Arabel, but she refrained from meeting his eye. A blizzard of b.u.t.terflies enveloped the table. This was evidently rather a difficult trick, for the spell collapsed repeatedly, and from one second to another Sarah Brown was never quite sure whether there were really Purple Admirals drowning in her soup or not.

"You are so lucky," sighed the witch, "plenty of room and every facility. I myself am so dreadfully cramped and hampered. I often have to boil my incantations over a spirit lamp, and even that is becoming difficult--no methylated."

"Not really lucky," said Richard. "In France the smallest pinch of magic seems to make the N.C.O. sick, and that's why I never got my stripe. To keep my hand in, I once did a little stunt with the sergeant's cigarette: it grew suddenly longer as he struck a match to light it, and went on growing till he had to ask me to light it for him, and then it shrank up and burnt his nose. Of course he couldn't really bring the thing home to me, but somehow--well, as I say, I never got my stripe."

To this discussion, and indeed to all the enchantments, Lady Arabel paid no attention, but continued to talk a little nervously on very insipid subjects. Her eyes had the pathetic look often seen in stupid people's eyes, the "Don't-listen-to-me" look, "I am not saying what I should like to say. The real Me is better than this."

Finally Richard indulged in a trick that was evidently a stock joke among magic people, for the witch laughed directly it began. Just as the hostess, with poised fork and spoon, was about to distribute the whitebait, the round table began to spin, and the whitebait were whisked away from her. The table continued to spin for a moment, with a deep thrilling organ sound, and when it stopped, the whitebait were found to have a.s.sembled opposite to Richard's place. He distributed them gravely.

Lady Arabel turned scarlet, and murmured to Sarah Brown: "So dretfully ingenious, and so merry."

Sarah Brown took pity on her, and began talking at random. The orchestra was busy again, and to the tune of a loud elusive rag-time, she shouted: "Do you know, I gave my job the sack this morning. I shall be on the brink of starvation in three and a half days' time. That's counting a box of Oxo Cubes I have by me. You don't happen to know of a suitable job. I can't cook, and if I sew a b.u.t.ton on it comes off quicker than if I hadn't. But I once learnt to play the big drum."

"My dear," said Lady Arabel, instantly motherly. "How too dretful. I wish I knew of something suitable. But--war-time you know,--I'm afraid I shan't be justified in keeping on the orchestra, certainly not in adding to it. Besides, of course, although women are simply too splendid nowadays, don't you think the big drum--just a wee bit unwomanly, my dear. However----"

"Are you clever?" asked Richard.

"Yes, she is," said the witch proudly. "She writes Minor Poetry. I saw a bit by her in a magazine that had no pictures,--the bit of poetry was between an article on Tariff Reform and a statement of the Coal Situation, and it began 'Oh my beloved....' I thought it was a very beautiful bit of Minor Poetry, but somehow I couldn't make it fit in with the two articles. That worried me a little."

"If you'd try your best not to be clever I'd give you a job," said Richard, who with a rather tiresome persistence was now levitating the chicken, so that, invisibly suspended at a height of eighteen inches above the middle of the table, it dripped gravy into a bowl of daffodils. "In fact I will give you a job. I have a farm called Higgins Farm, just about half-way between sea-level and sky-level. You can be a Hand, if you like, at sixpence an hour. You can get there from Mitten Island every day quite easily, and I'll tell you how. It's just the other side of the Parish of Faery, on your right as you reach the mainland from Mitten Island. You follow the Green Ride through the Enchanted Forest, until you come to the Castle where the Youngest Prince--who rescued one of the Fetherstonhaugh girls from a giant and married her--used to live. The Castle's to let now; she is an ambulance driver in Salonika, and he a gunner--just got his battery, I believe.

Below the outer wall of the Castle you will see the Daisified Path, and that leads you straight to the gate of Higgins Farm, under a clipped box archway."

"I haven't got a land outfit," said Sarah Brown. "But I saw a pair called Mesopotamian Officer's Model, with laces and real white buckskin collision mats between the knees, that would fit me, and I can p.a.w.n my----"

At that moment there was a loud report. Every one looked at the double ba.s.s, but all his strings were for the moment intact.

"A maroon," said the witch.

"My dears," exclaimed Lady Arabel, much relieved to hear that this new sensation was not supernatural. "How too dretfully tahsome with the sweet and the savoury still to come. Do you know, I promised Pinehurst--my husband--never to remain in this house during an air-raid.

It was his own fault, the dear thing; he had a craze for windows; this house has more gla.s.s s.p.a.ce than wall, I think, and Pinehurst, in his spare time, used always to be making plans for squeezing in more windows. Our room is like a conservatory--so dretfully embarra.s.sing. So I always take my knitting across the road to the crypt of St.

Sebastian's, and I'm sure you won't mind coming too. You might have brought a box of spellicans, or a set of table croquet, but I'm afraid the Vicar wouldn't like it. A nice man but dretfully particular. We must wait for the end of this piece, the first violin is so touchy."

They all waited patiently while the piece continued. It was a plain uneventful piece, composed by a Higgins relative and therefore admired in the household.