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 exc
eptional, 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 e
normous 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.
The Big Book of Classic Fantasy Page 116