THE COMMITTEE COMES TO MAGIC
I don't suppose for a moment that you know Mitten Island: it is a
difficult place to get to; you have to change 'buses seven times, going
from Kensington, and you have to cross the river by means of a ferry. On
Mitten Island there is a model village, consisting of several hundred
houses, two churches, and one shop.
It was the sixth member who discovered, after the committee meeting,
that the address on the forsaken broomstick's collar was: Number 100
Beautiful Way, Mitten Island, London.
The sixth member, although she was a member of committees, was neither a
real expert in, nor a real lover of, Doing Good. In Doing Good, I think,
we have got into bad habits. We try in groups to do good to the
individual, whereas, if good is to be done, it would seem more likely,
and more consonant with precedent, that the individual might do it to
the group. Without the smile of a Treasurer we cannot unloose our
purse-strings; without the sanction of a Chairman we have no courage;
without Minutes we have no memory. There is hardly one of us who would
dare to give a flannelette nightgown to a Factory Girl who had Stepped
Aside, without a committee to lay the blame on, should the Factory Girl,
fortified by the flannelette nightgown, take Further Steps Aside.
The sixth member was only too apt to put her trust in committees.
Herself she did not trust at all, though she thought herself quite a
good creature, as selves go. She had come to London two years ago, with
a little trunk and a lot of good intentions as her only possessions, and
she had paid the inevitable penalty for her earnestness. It is a sad
thing to see any one of naturally healthy and rebellious tendency stray
into the flat path of Charity. Gay heedless young people set their
unwary feet between the flowery borders of that path, the thin air of
resigned thanks breathed by the deserving poor mounts to their heads
like wine; committees lie in wait for them on every side; hostels and
settlements entice them fatally to break their journey at every mile;
they run rejoicing to their doom, and I think shall eventually find
themselves without escape, elected eternal life-members of the Committee
that sits around the glassy sea.
The sixth member was saved by a merciful inefficiency of temperament
from attaining the vortex of her whirlpool of charity. To be in the
vortex is, I believe, almost always to see less. The bull's eye is
generally blind.
The sixth member was a person who, where Social Work was concerned, did
more or less as she was told, without doing it particularly well. The
result, very properly, was that all the work which a committee
euphemistically calls "organising work" was left to her. Organising work
consists of sitting in 'buses bound for remote quarters of London, and
ringing the bells of people who are almost always found to be away for a
fortnight. The sixth member had been ordered to organise the return of
the broomstick to its owner.
Perhaps it would be more practical to call the sixth member Sarah Brown.
The bereaved owner of the broomstick was washing her hair at Number 100
Beautiful Way, Mitten Island. She was washing it behind the counter of
her shop. She was the manageress of the only shop on Mitten Island. It
was a general shop, but made a speciality of such goods as Happiness and
Magic. Unfortunately Happiness is rather difficult to get in war-time.
Sometimes there was quite a queue outside the shop when it opened, and
sometimes there was a card outside, saying politely: "Sorry, it's no use
waiting. I haven't any." Of course the shop also sold Sunlight Soap, and
it was with Sunlight Soap that the shop-lady was washing her hair,
because it was Sunday, and this was a comparatively cheap amusement. She
had no money. She had meant to go down to the offices of her employer
after breakfast, to borrow some of the salary that would be due to her
next week. But then she found that she had left her broomstick
somewhere. As a rule Harold--for that was the broomstick's name--was
fairly independent, and could find his way home alone, but when he got
mislaid and left in strange hands, and particularly when kindly finders
took him to Scotland Yard, he often lost his head. You, in your
innocence, are suggesting that his owner might have borrowed another
broomstick from stock. But you have no idea what arduous work it is,
breaking in a wild broomstick to the saddle. It sometimes takes days,
and is not really suitable work for a woman, even in war-time. Often the
brutes are savage, and always they are obstinate. The shop-lady could
not afford to go to the City by Tube, not to mention the ferry fare,
which was rather expensive and erratic, not being L.C.C. Of course a
flash of lightning is generally available for magic people. But it is
considered not only unpatriotic but bad form to use lightning in
war-time.
The shop was not expecting customers on Sunday, but its manageress had
hardly got her head well into the basin when somebody entered. She stood
up dripping.
"Is Miss Thelma Bennett Watkins at home?" asked Sarah Brown, after a
pause, during which she made her characteristic effort to remember what
she had come for.
"No," said the other. "But do take a seat. We met last night, you may
remember. Perhaps you wouldn't mind lending me one-and-twopence to buy
two chops for our luncheon. I've got an extra coupon. There's tinned
salmon in stock, but I don't advise it."
"I've only got sevenpence, just enough to take me home," answered Sarah
Brown. "But I can pawn my ear-rings."
I dare say you have never been in a position to notice that there is no
pawn-shop on Mitten Island. The inhabitants of model villages always
have assured incomes and pose as lilies of the field. Sarah Brown and
her hostess sat down on the counter without regret to a luncheon
consisting of one orange, found by the guest in her bag and divided, and
two thin captain biscuits from stock. They were both used to dissolving
visions of impossible chops, both were cheerfully familiar with the
feeling of light tragedy which invades you towards six o'clock P.M., if
you have not been able to afford a meal since breakfast.
"Now look here," said Sarah Brown, as she plunged her pocket-knife into
the orange. "Would you mind telling me--are you a fairy, or a
third-floor-back, or anything of that sort? I won't register it, or put
it on the case-paper, I promise, though if you are superhuman in any way
I shall be seriously tempted."
"I am a Witch," said the witch.
Now witches and wizards, as you perhaps know, are people who are born
for the first time. I suppose we have all passed through this fair
experience, we must all have had our chance of making magic. But to most
of us it came in the boring beginning of time, and we wasted our best
spells on plesiosauri, and protoplasms, and angels with flaming swords,
all of whom knew magic too, and were not impressed. Witches and wizards
are now rare, though not so rare as you think. Remembering nothing, they
know nothing, and are not bored. They have to learn everything from the
very beginning, except magic, which is the only really original sin. To
the magic eye, magic alone is commonplace, everything else is unknown,
unguessed, and undespised. Magic people are always obvious--so obvious
that we veteran souls can rarely understand them,--they are never
subtle, and though they are new, they are never Modern. You may tell
them in your cynical way that to-day is the only real day, and that
there is nothing more unmentionable than yesterday except the day
before. They will admire your cleverness very much, but the next moment
you will find the witch sobbing over Tennyson, or the wizard smiling at
the quaint fancies of Sir Edwin Landseer. You cannot really stir up
magic people with ordinary human people. You and I have climbed over our
thousand lives to a too dreadfully subtle eminence. In our day--in our
many days--we have adored everything conceivable, and now we have to
fall back on the inconceivable. We stand our idols on their heads, it is
newer to do so, and we think we prefer them upside down. Talking
constantly, we reel blindfold through eternity, and perhaps if we are
lucky, once or twice in a score of lives, the blindfolding handkerchief
slips, and we wriggle one eye free, and see gods like trees walking. By
Jove, that gives us enough to talk about for two or three lives! Witches
and wizards are not blinded by having a Point of View. They just look,
and are very much surprised and interested.
All witches and wizards are born strangely and die violently. They are
descended always from old mysterious breeds, from women who wrought
domestic magic and perished for its sake, and from men who wrought other
magic among lost causes and wars without gain, and fell and died, still
surprised, still interested, with their faces among flowers. All men who
die so are not wizards, nor are all martyred and adventuring women
witches, but all such bring a potential strain of magic into their line.
"A witch," said Sarah Brown. "Of course. I have been trying to remember
what broomsticks reminded me of. A witch, of course. I have always
wished to be friends with a witch."
The witch was unaware that the proper answer to this was: "Oh, my Dear,
_do_ let's. Do you know I had quite a _crush_ on you from the first
minute." She did not answer at all, and Sarah Brown, who was tired of
proper answers, was not sorry. Nevertheless the pause seemed a little
empty, so she filled it herself, saying pedantically: "Of course I don't
believe friendship is an end in itself. Only a means to an end."
"I don't know what you mean," said the witch, after wrestling
conscientiously with this remark for a minute. "Do tell me--do you know
yourself, or are you just saying it to see what it means?"
Sarah Brown was obviously damped by this, and the witch added kindly: "I
bet you twopence you don't know what this place is."
"A shop," said Sarah Brown, who was sitting on the counter.
"It is a sort of convent and monastery mixed," replied the witch. "I am
connected with it officially. I undertook to manage it, yet I forget
what the proper word for me is. Not undertaker, is it?"
"Superintendent or secretary," suggested Sarah Brown moodily.
"Superintendent, I think," said the witch. "At least I know Peony calls
me Soup. Do you live alone?"
"Yes."
"Then you ought to live here. This is the only place in the world of its
kind. The name of this house is Living Alone. I'll read you the
prospectus."
She fell suddenly upon her knees and began fighting with a drawer. The
drawer was evidently one of the many descendants of the Sword
Excalibur--none but the appointed hand could draw it forth. The witch,
after a struggle, passed this test, and produced a parchment covered
with large childish printing in red ink.
"My employer made up this," said the witch. "And the ferryman wrote it
out for us."
This is the prospectus:
The name of this house is Living Alone.
It is meant to provide for the needs of those who dislike hotels,
clubs, settlements, hostels, boarding-houses, and lodgings only
less than their own homes; who detest landladies, waiters,
husbands and wives, charwomen, and all forms of lookers after. This
house is a monastery and a convent for monks and nuns dedicated to
unknown gods. Men and women who are tired of being laboriously kind
to their bodies, who like to be a little uncomfortable and quite
uncared for, who love to live from week to week without speaking,
except to confide their destinations to 'bus-conductors, who are
weary of woolly decorations, aspidistras, and the eternal two
generations of roses which riot among blue ribbons on hireling
wall-papers, who are ignorant of the science of tipping and
thanking, who do not know how to cook yet hate to be cooked for,
will here find the thing they have desired, and something else as
well.
There are six cells in this house, and no common sitting-room.
Guests wishing to address each other must do so on the stairs, or
in the shop. Each cell has whitewashed walls, and contains a small
deal table, one wooden chair, a hard bed, a tin bath, and a little
inconvenient fireplace. No guest may bring into the house more than
can be carried out again in one large suit-case. Carpets, rugs,
mirrors, and any single garment costing more than three guineas,
are prohibited. Any guest proved to have made use of a taxi, or to
have travelled anywhere first class, or to have bought cigarettes
or sweets costing more than three shillings a hundred or
eighteenpence a pound respectively, or to have paid more than three
and sixpence (war-tax included) for a seat in any place of
entertainment, will be instantly expelled. Dogs, cats, goldfish,
and other superhuman companions are encouraged.
Working guests are preferred, but if not at work, guests must spend
at least eighteen hours out of the twenty-four entirely alone. No
guest may entertain or be entertained except under special license
obtainable from the Superintendent.
There is a pump in the back yard. There is no telephone, no
electric light, no hot water system, no attendance, and no modern
comfort whatever. Tradesmen are forbidden to call. There is no
charge for residence in this house.
"It certainly sounds an unusual place," admitted Sarah Brown. "Is the
house always full?"
"Never," said the witch. "A lot of people can swallow everything but the
last clause. We have at present one guest, called Peony."
She replaced the prospectus in the drawer, which she then tried to shut.
While she was engaged in this thundering endeavour, Sarah Brown noticed
that the drawer was full of the little paper packets which she had seen
the day before in the witch's possession.
"What do you do with your magic?" she asked.
"Oh, many things. Chiefly I use it as an ingredient for happiness,
sometimes to remind people, and sometimes to make them forget. It seems
to me that some people take happiness rather tragically."
"I find," said Sarah Brown, rather sententiously, "that I always owe my
happiness to earth, never to heaven."
"How d'you mean heaven?" said the witch. "I know nothing about heaven.
When I used to work in the City, I bought a little book about heaven to
read in the Tube every morning. I thought I should grow daily better.
But I couldn't see that I did."
Sarah Brown was naturally astonished to meet any one who did not know
all about heaven. But she continued the pursuit of her ideas on
happiness. Sarah Brown meant to write a book some day, if she could find
a really inspiring exercise-book to start in. She thought herself
rather good at ideas--poor Sarah Brown, she simply had to be confident
about something. She was only inwardly articulate, I think, not
outwardly at all, but sometimes she could talk about herself.
"Heaven has given me wretched health, but never gave me youth enough to
make the wretchedness adventurous," she went on. "Heaven gave me a thin
skin, but never gave me the natural and comforting affections. Heaven
probably meant to make a noble woman of me by encrusting me in
disabilities, but it left out the necessary nobility at the last moment;
it left out, in fact, all the compensations. But luckily I have found
the compensations for myself; I just had to find something. Men and
women have given me everything that such as I could expect. I have never
met with reasonless enmity, never met with meanness, never met with
anything more unbearable than natural indifference, from any man or
woman. I have been, I may say, a burden and a bore all over the world; I
have been an ill and fretful stranger within all men's gates; I have
asked much and given nothing; I have never been a friend. Nobody has
ever expected any return from me, yet nothing was grudged. Landladies,
policemen, chorus girls, social bounders, prostitutes, the natural
enemies, one would say, of such as I, have given me kindness, and often
much that they could not easily spare, and always amusement and
distraction...."
"Ah, how you interest and excite me," said the witch, whose attention
had been frankly wandering. "You are exactly the sort of person we want
in this house."
"But--ill?" said Sarah Brown pessimistically. "Oh, witch, I have been so
wearisome to every one, so constantly ill. The first thing I get to know
about a new hostess or a landlady is always the colour of her
dressing-gown by candlelight, or whether she has one."
"Illnesses are never bad here," said the witch. "I bet you twopence I've
got something in the shop that would make you well. Three fingers of
happiness, neat and hot, at night--"
"But, witch--oh, witch--this is the worst of all. My ears are failing
me--I think I am going deaf...."
"You can hear what I say," said the witch.
"Yes, I can hear what you say, but when most people talk I am like a
prisoner locked up; and every day there are more and more locked doors
between me and the world. You do not know how horrible it is."
"Oh, well," said the witch, "as long as you can hear magic you will not
lack a key to your prison. Sometimes it's better not to hear the other
things. You are the ideal guest for the House of Living Alone."
"I'll go and fetch David my Dog and Humphrey my Suit-case," said Sarah
Brown.
At that moment a taxi was heard to arrive at the other side of the
ferry, and the ferryman's voice was heard shouting: "All right, all
right, I'll be there in half a tick."
"I hope this isn't Peony in a taxi," said the witch. "I get so tired of
expelling guests. She's been drawing her money, which may have been
tempting."
They listened.
They heard someone alight from the ferry-boat, and the voice of Miss
Meta Mostyn Ford asking the ferryman: "Do you know anything about a
young woman of the name of Watkins, living at Number 100 Beautiful
Way----"
"No, he doesn't," shouted the witch, opening the shop door. "But do step
in. We met yesterday, you may remember. I'll ask the ferryman to get
half-a-dozen halfpenny buns for tea, if you will be so kind as to lend
me threepence. We don't bake ourselves."
"I have had tea, thank you," said Miss Ford. "I have just come from a
little gathering of friends on the other side of the river, and I
thought I would call here on my way home. I had noted your address----"
She started as she came in and saw Sarah Brown, and added in her
committee voice: "I had noted your address, because I never mind how
much trouble I take in following up a promising case."
Sarah Brown, on first hearing that trenchant voice, had lost her head
and begun to hide under the counter. But the biscuit-tins refused to
make room, so she drew herself up and smiled politely.
"How good of you to go to a little gathering of friends," said the
witch, obviously trying to behave like a real human person. "I never do,
except now and then by mistake. And even then I only stay when there are
grassy sandwiches to eat. Once there were grassy sandwiches mixed with
bits of hard-boiled egg, and then I stayed to supper. You didn't have
such luck, I see, or you would look happier."
"I don't go to my friends for their food, but for their ideas," said
Miss Ford.
Sarah Brown was gliding towards the door.
"Oh, don't go," said the witch, who did not recognise tact when she met
it. "I have sent Harold the Broomstick for your Dog David and your
Suit-case Humphrey. He is an excellent packer and very clean in his
person and work. Please, please, don't go. Do you know, I live in
constant dread of being left alone with a clever person."
"I must apologise for my intrusion, in that case," said Miss Ford, with
dignity. "I repeat, I only came because I saw yours was an exceptional
case."
There was a very long silence in the growing dusk. The moon could
already be seen through the glass door, rising, pushing vigorously aside
the thickets of the crowded sky. A crack across the corner of the glass
was lighted up, and looked like a little sprig of lightning, plucked
from a passing storm and preserved in the glass.
Miss Ford suddenly began to talk in a very quick and confused way. Any
sane hearer would have known that she was talking by mistake, that she
was possessed by some distressingly Anti-Ford spirit, and that nothing
she might say in parenthesis like this ought to be remembered against
her.
"Oh, God," said Miss Ford, "I have come because I am hungry, hungry for
what you spoke of last night, in the dark.... You spoke of an April
sea--clashing of cymbals was the expression you used, wasn't it? You
spoke of a shore of brown diamonds flat to the ruffled sea ... and
white sandhills under a thin veil of grass ... and tamarisks all blown
one way...."
"Well?" said the witch.
"Well," faltered Miss Ford. "I think I came to ask you ... whether you
knew of nice lodgings there ... plain wholesome bath ... respectable
cooking, hot and cold ..."
Her voice faded away pathetically.
There was a sudden shattering, as the door burst open, and a dog and a
suit-case were swept in by a brisk broomstick.
"I am so sorry, Miss Watkins," said Miss Ford stiffly. Her face was
scarlet--neat and formal again now, but scarlet.--"I am so sorry if I
have talked nonsense. I am rather run down, I think, too much work, four
important meetings yesterday. I sometimes think I shall break down. I
have such alarming nerve-storms."
She looked nervously at Sarah Brown. It is always tiresome to meet
fellow-members of committees in private life, especially if one is in a
mood for having nerve-storms. People may be excellent in a philanthropic
way, of course, and yet impossible socially.
But Sarah Brown had heard very little. She always found Miss Ford's
voice difficult. She was on her knees asking her dog David what it had
felt like, coming. But David was still too much dazed to say much.
"You must not think," said Miss Ford, "that because I am a practical
worker I have no understanding of Inner Meanings. On the contrary, I
have perhaps wasted too much of my time on spiritual matters. That is
why I take quite a personal and special interest in your case. I had a
great friend, now in the trenches, alas, who possessed Power. He used to
come to my Wednesdays--at least I used to invite him to come, but he was
dreamy like you and constantly mistook the date. He helped me
enormously, and I miss him.... Well, the truest charity should be
anything but formal, I think, and I saw at a glance that your case was
exceptional, and that you also were Occult----"
"How d'you mean--occult?" asked the witch. "Do you mean just knowing
magic?"
"A strange mixture," mused Miss Ford self-consciously. It is impossible
to muse aloud without self-consciousness. "A strange and rather
interesting mixture of naïveté and power. The question is--power to what
extent? Miss Watkins, I want you to come to one of my Wednesdays to meet
one or two people who might possibly help you to a job--lecturing, you
know. Lectures on hypnotism or spiritualism, with experiments, are
always popular. You certainly have Power, you only want a little
advertisement to be a real help to many people."
"How d'you mean--advertisement?" asked the witch. "This new
advertisement stunt is one of the problems that tire my head. I am
awfully worried by problems. The world seems to be ruled by posters now.
People look to the hoardings for information about their duty. Why don't
we paste up the ten commandments on all the walls and all the 'buses,
and be done with it?"
"Now listen, Miss Watkins," persisted Miss Ford. "I want you to meet
Bernard Tovey, the painter, and Ivy MacBee, who founded the Aspiration
Club, and Frere, the editor of _I Wonder_, and several other regular
Wednesday friends of mine, all interested in the Occult. It would be a
real opportunity for you."
"I am afraid you will be very angry with me," said the witch presently
in a hollow voice. "If I was occult last night--I'm awfully sorry, but
it must have been a fluke. I seem to have said so much last night
without knowing it. I'm afraid I was showing off a little."
The painful tears of confession were in her eyes, but she added,
changing the subject: "Do you live alone?"
"Yes, absolutely," said Miss Ford. "My friends call me a perfect hermit.
I hardly ever have visitors in my spare room, it makes so much work for
my three maids."
"I suppose you wouldn't care to divorce your three maids and come and
live here," suggested the witch. "I could of course cure you of the
nerve-storms you speak of. Or rather I could help you to have
nerve-storms all the time, without any stagnant grown-upness in between.
Then you wouldn't notice the nerve-storms. This house is a sort of
nursing home and college combined. I'll read you the prospectus."
* * * * *
"Very amusing," said Miss Ford, after waiting a minute to see if there
was any more of the prospectus. She had quite recovered herself, and was
wearing the brisk acute expression that deceived her into claiming a
sense of humour. "But why all those uncomfortable rules? And why that
discouragement of social intercourse? I am afraid the average person of
the class you cater for does not recognise the duty of social
intercourse."
"This house," replied the witch, "caters for people who are outside
averages. The ferryman says that people who are content to be average
are lowering the general standard. I wish you could have met Peony, the
only guest up to now, but she is out, and may be a teeny bit drunk when
she comes in. She has gone to draw her money."
"What sort of money?" asked Miss Ford, who was always interested in the
sources of income of the Poor.
"Soldier's allotment. Unmarried wife."
The expression of Miss Ford's face tactfully wiped away this bald
unfortunate statement from the surface of the conversation. "And how do
you make your boarding-house pay," she asked, "if there is no charge for
residence?"
"How d'you mean--pay?" asked the witch. "Pay whom? And what with? Look
here, if you will come and live here you shall have a little Wednesday
every week on the stairs, under license from me. Harold the Broomstick
is apt to shirk cleaning the stairs, but as it happens, he is keeping
company with an O-Cedar Mop in Kentish Town, and I've no doubt she would
come over and do the stairs thoroughly every Tuesday night. Besides, we
have overalls in stock at only two and eleven three----"
"Oh, I like your merry mood," said Miss Ford, laughing heartily. "You
must remember to talk like that when you come to my Wednesdays. Most of
my friends are utter Socialists, and believe in bridging as far as
possible the gulf between one class and another, so you needn't feel
shy or awkward."
The splashing of the ferry-boat was once more heard, and then the shop
quaked a little as a heavy foot alighted on the landing-stage. The
ferryman was heard saying: "I don't know any party of that name, but I
believe the young woman at the shop can help you."
Lady Arabel Higgins entered the shop.
"What, Meta, you here? And Sarah Brown? What a too dretfully funny
coincidence. Well, Angela dear, I made a note of your address yesterday,
and then lost the note--too dretfully like me. So I rang up the Mayor,
and he said he also had made a note, and he would come and show me the
way. But I didn't wait for him. I wanted to talk to you about----"
"Well, I must truly be going," interrupted Sarah Brown. "I'll just nip
across to the Brown Borough and find a pawn-shop, being hungry."
"There is no need for any one to move on my account," said Lady Arabel.
"You all heard what Angela said last night in her little address to the
committee in the dark. I don't know why she addressed her remarks
particularly at me, but as she did so, there is no secret in the matter.
Of course, just at first, it seemed dretful to me that any one should
know or speak about it. I cannot understand how you knew, Angela; I am
trying not to understand...."
She took up a thin captain biscuit and bit it absent-mindedly. It
trembled in her hand like a leaf.
"Yes, it is true that Rrchud isn't like other women's boys. You know it,
Meta. Angela evidently knows it, and--at least since yesterday--I know
that I know it. His not being able to read or write--I always knew in my
heart that my old worn-out tag--'We can't all be literary
geniuses'--didn't meet the case. His way of disappearing and never
explaining.... Do you know, I have only once seen him with other boys,
doing the same as other boys, and that was when I saw him marching with
hundreds of real boys ... in 1914.... It was the happiest day I ever
had, I thought after all that I had borne a real boy. Well, then, as
you know, he couldn't get a commission, couldn't even get his stripe,
poor darling. He deserted twice--pure absence of mind--it was always the
same from a child--'I wanted to see further,' he'd say, and of course
worse in the trenches. Why, you know it all, Angela dear--at least,
perhaps not quite all. I should like to tell you--because you said that
about the splendour of being the mother of Rrchud....
"Pinehurst--my husband, he is a doctor, you know--had that same passion
for seeing further. He was often ill in London. I said it was asthma,
but he said it was not being able to see far enough. We were in America
for Rrchud's birth, and Pinehurst insisted on going West. I took the
precaution of having a good nurse with me. Pinehurst said the East was
full of little obstacles, and people's eyes had sucked all the secrets
out of the horizon, he said. I like Cape Cod, but he said there was
always a wall of sea round those flat wet places. We stayed in a
blacksmith's spare room on the desert of Wyoming, but even that horizon
seemed a little higher than we, and one clear day, in a pink sunrise, we
saw something that might have been a dream, my dears, and might have
been the Rockies. Pinehurst couldn't stand that, we pushed west--so
tahsome. We climbed a little narrow track up a mountain, in a light
buggy that a goldminer lent us. Oh, of course, you'll think us mad,
Meta, but, do you know, we actually found the world's edge, a place with
no horizon; we looked between ragged pine trees, and saw over the
shoulders of great old violet mountains--we saw right down into the
stars for ever.... There was a tower of rocks--rose-red rocks in sloping
layers--sunny hot by day, my dears, and a great shelter by night. You
know, the little dark clouds walk alone upon the mountain tops at
sunset--as you said, Angela--they are like trees, and sometimes like
faces, and sometimes like the shadows of little bent gipsies.... I used
to look at the mountains and think: 'What am I about, to be so worried
and so small, in sight of such an enormous storm of mountains under a
gold sky?' I think of those rocks often at night, standing just as we
left them, all by themselves, under that unnatural moon,--it was an
unnatural moon on the edge of the world there,--all by themselves, with
no watching eyes to spoil them, as Pinehurst used to say, not even one's
own eyes.... You'll say that adventure--my one adventure--was
impossible, Meta. Yes, it was. Rrchud was an impossible boy, born on an
impossible day, in an impossible place. Ah, my poor Rrchud.... My dears,
I am talking dretful nonsense. We were mad. You'd have to know
Pinehurst, really, to understand it. Ah, we can never find our mountain
again. I can never forgive Pinehurst...."
"You can never repay Pinehurst," said the witch.
Lady Arabel did not seem to hear. For a long time there was nothing to
be heard but Sarah Brown, murmuring to her Dog David. You must excuse
her, and remember that she lived most utterly alone. She was locked
inside herself, and the solitary barred window in her prison wall
commanded only a view of the Dog David.
Rrchud's mother said at last: "I really came to tell you that Rrchud
came back on leave unexpectedly last night. Of course you must meet
him--"
"Rrchud home!" exclaimed Miss Ford. "How odd! I was just telling Miss
Watkins about his Power, and how strongly she reminded me of him. Do
tell him to keep Wednesday afternoon free."
Lady Arabel, ignoring Miss Ford by mistake, said to the witch: "Will you
come on Tuesday to tea or supper?"
"Supper, please," said the witch instantly. Tact, I repeat, was a
stranger to her, so she added: "I will bring Sarah Brown too. I bet you
twopence she hasn't had a decent meal for days."
And then the Mayor arrived. The witch saw at once that there was some
secret understanding between him and her that she did not understand.
Her magic escapades often left her in this position. However, she winked
back hopefully. But she was not a skilled winker. Everybody--even the
Dog David--saw her doing it, and Miss Ford looked a little offended.