Living Alone — 9 - The House of Living Alone Moves Away
CHAPTER IX THE HOUSE OF LIVING ALONE MOVES AWAY
When Sarah Brown and Richard, followed by the Dog David, reached the Mitten Island Ferry, after travelling slowly by moonlight, they were surprised to see a great crowd of people banked up on the Island, and one man in the uniform of a policeman, standing alone on the mainland.
About ten yards from land the ferryman sat in his boat, rowing gently to keep himself stationary in the current.
"You'll 'ave to come to shore now," said the policeman, in the tone of one exhausted by long argument.
"'Ere's some more parties wanting to cross."
He turned to Richard.
"Look 'ere, mate," he said.
"I'm 'ere in the discharge of my dooty, and this ferryman is obstructin' me."
"Deah, deah," said Richard.
The ferryman said: "If the King of England--why, if the two ghosts of Queen Victoria and Albert the Good--was waiting to cross now, I wouldn't come in for them, not if it was going to give you a chance to set foot on Mitten Island."
The crowd across the river, divining that a climax of defiance was being reached, shouted: "Yah, yah," in unison.
"Is either of you parties an 'ouse'older on Mitten Island?"
asked the policeman of Sarah Brown and Richard.
"I am," said Richard, to his companion's surprise.
"Can you give me any information regarding the whereabouts of a cherecter known under any of these names: Iris 'Yde, T. B.
Watkins, Hangela the Witch, possibly a male in female disguise, believed to conduct a general shop and boardin' 'ouse on Mitten Island?"
"There is only one shop on Mitten Island," said Richard.
"And one boarding house.
All in one.
I own it.
I can recite you the prospectus if you like.
I have a superintendent there.
I have known her all my life.
I
did not know she was believed to be a male in female disguise.
I did not know she had any name at all, let alone half-a-dozen."
The policeman seemed to be troubled all the time by mosquitoes.
He slapped his face and his ears and the back of his neck.
He succeeded in killing one insect upon the bridge of his nose, and left it there by mistake, a strangely ignoble corpse.
Sarah Brown suspected Richard of some responsibility for this untimely persecution.
"That party is charged with an offence against the Defence of the Realm Act," said the policeman,--"with being, although a civilian, in possession of a flying machine, and--er--obstructin' 'Is Majesty's enemies in the performance of their dooty."
"Oh deah, deah," said Richard.
"Deah, deah, deah...."
"Do either of you know the present whereabouts of the party?"
persisted the policeman.
Attacked on every side by insects, he was becoming rather pathetic in his discomfort and indignity.
His small eyes, set in red fat, stared with uncomprehending protest; his fat busy hands were not agile enough to defend him.
He felt unsuccessful and foolish, and very near the ground.
He wished quite disproportionately to be at home with his admiring wife in Acton.
Sarah Brown shook her head in reply, and Richard could say nothing but "Oh deah, deah...."
"May I take your name and 'ome address, and regimental number, please, young man," said the policeman, after a baffled pause.
"Now my address," said Richard, with genuine shame, "is a thing I honestly can never remember.
I know I've heard it; I've tried and tried to learn it at my mother's knee.
It begins with an H, I think.
That's the worst of not being able to read or write.
I can describe the place to you exactly, a house with a lot of windows, that sees a long way.
If you turn your back on the Marble Arch, and go on till you get to a big poster saying Eat Less Meat, and then turn to your right--(pointing to the left)--or again, if you go by air as the crow flies--or rather as the witch flies----" "You shall 'ear of this foolery, my fine feller," said the distressed policeman, almost with a break in his voice.
"Seein' as 'ow you refuse information, an' this ferryman thinks fit to defy the law, I 'ave no course open but to whistle for my mate, and leave 'im 'ere while I telephone for a police-boat."
He raised his whistle to his lips, but before he could blow it, the climax of this the least successful evening of his life, overwhelmed him.
A shadow swept over the party, a large flying substance caught him full on the back of the neck and knocked him off the landing-stage into the river.
The witch on Harold her Broomstick landed on the spot vacated by the policeman.
"Oh, look what I've done, look what I've done ..."
she exclaimed in an ecstasy of vexation.
There was no need to tell anybody to look.
Five hundred odd people were already doing so with enthusiasm.
"Oh, what a dreadfully bad landing!
Oh, Harold, how could you be so careless?"
She took the cringing Harold by the mane and slapped him violently once or twice.
Richard stretched out his riding-crop to the splashing policeman, murmuring: "Oh deah, deah...."
"Don't be frightened," said the witch to the policeman.
"We'll soon get you out, and the water's so shallow you can't sink.
Talking of sinking, Richard, there's a question that puzzles me rather.
If a rat got on to a submarine, how would it behave?
A submarine, you see, is a sinking ship, and rats pride themselves so on knowing when to----" Sarah Brown seized the witch by the shoulder.
"Go away, witch," she said.
"How d'you mean--go away?"
asked the witch.
"I've only just this minute come."
"Go away, go away," was all that Sarah Brown could manage to repeat.
"Oh, very well," said the witch in her offended grown-up voice.
"I can take a hint, I suppose, as well as anybody.
I'm going."
She seated herself with an irritable flouncing movement on Harold's saddle, and flew away.
The policeman climbed out of the water, looking like an enraged seal.
Peals of laughter from the other side of the moonlit river robbed him of adequate words.
"Not ser fast, my fine feller," he roared, seeing Richard kissing the Horse Vivian on the nose, preparatory to riding away.
"Don't you think for a minute I don't know 'oo's at the bottom of this."
"You don't know how tired I am of loud noises," said Richard, lifting one foot with dignity to the stirrup.
"You don't know how bitterly I long to be still and hear things very far off ...
but always there is an angry voice or the angry noise of guns in the way...."
He twined one finger negligently into the mane on the Horse Vivian's neck, and pulled himself slowly into the saddle.
The policeman stood mysteriously impotent.
Water dripped loudly from his clothes and punctuated Richard's quiet speech.
"Dear policeman," continued Richard.
"I believe you have talked so much to-night that you haven't heard what a quiet night it is.
You are smaller than a star, and yet you make more noise than all the stars together.
You are not so cold as the moon, and yet your teeth chatter more loudly than hers.
The heat of your wrath is less than the heat of the sun, and yet, while he is silent and departed, you fill the air with clamour, and--if I may say so--seem to be outstaying your welcome.
Oh, dear policeman, listen....
Do you know, if there were no London on this side and no War on that, the silence would be deep enough to fill all the seas of all the worlds...."
He shook the reins, and the Horse Vivian moved, treading quietly on the strip of grass that borders the path to the ferry.
"I am going to talk to my True Love now," said Richard, his voice fading away as he rode.
"My True Love's voice is the only voice that is a little more beautiful to me than silence...."
For a moment he looked every inch a wizard.
Every button on his uniform and every buckle on the Horse Vivian's harness caught the moonlight, and changed into faery spangles as he turned and waved his hand before disappearing.
The policeman seemed quieted, as he looked at Sarah Brown sitting, white and haggard with pain, on the river bank, with her arm round the shivering David.
"In a minute, in a minute, my One," she was saying to David.
"We are nearly home now.
We shall soon be quiet now."
There was always something startlingly inoffensive about Sarah Brown's appearance.
"I'd like to know 'oo was responsible for this houtrage, all the same," said the policeman.
Sarah Brown did not hear him, but she said: "Oh, I am so very sorry it happened.
It was a pure accident, of course, but it is so terrible to see any one have an accident to his dignity.
You must forget it quickly, you must run and find someone who knows you at your best, you must tell her a fine revised version of the incident, and then you will feel better."
The ferryman shouted: "I don't mind coming in now to fetch this young woman.
You can come too now if you like, Mr. Pompous-in-the-Pond, for the party you're looking for is not at home, and I've no doubt but what that crowd over there will give you a gay welcome."
"I'll look into the metter to-morrer," said the policeman.
"You 'aven't 'eard the last of this, none of you 'aven't, not by a long chalk.
I've a good mind to get the Mayor to read the Riot Act at you."
As Sarah Brown landed on Mitten Island she could not distinguish the faces of the waiting crowd, but she heard sharp anxious voices.
"They ain't goin' to get 'er, not if I knows it."
"She never speaks but kindness, the dear lamb."
"She's more of a saint than any in the Calendar."
"She gave my Danny a room in 'er house, and put 'eart into 'im after 'e lost 'is sight in the War."
"She's the good fairy of the Island."
"She grew all them Sweet Williams in my garden in one night, when I first come 'ere and was 'omesick for Devon."
"The law's always after saints and fairies, always 'as bin."
"But the law can't catch 'er."
"The law has driven her away," said Sarah Brown.
"There is no magic now on Mitten Island."
She staggered through the open door of the Shop.
"This is Richard's house," she said to herself as she entered, and felt doubly alone because Richard was far away, riding to his True Love.
She struck her last match, lit the lantern, and looked round.
There was no sound in the house of Living Alone, she thought there would never again be any magic sound there to penetrate to her imprisoned hearing.
The aprons hanging from the ceiling near the door flapped in the cold wind, and she thought they were like grey bats in a cave.
The breeze blew out the open lantern.
Ah, how desolate, how desolate....
A piece of paper was impaled upon the counter by means of a headless hatpin.
There was something very largely and badly written on it.
Sarah Brown read: "Well Soup it looks like my Night's come and what dyou think Sherry's come too.
Im an me as gone off to a place e knows that's a fine place for such a boy as Elbert to be born in so no more at present from your true Peony."
Sarah Brown climbed up the short stairway, painful step by painful step, to her cell.
She sat on her bed holding her throbbing side, and breathing with fearful caution.
She looked at the empty grate.
She put a cigarette in her mouth, the unconscious and futile answer of the Dweller Alone to that blind hunger for comfort.
But she had no matches, and presently, dimly conscious that her groping for comfort had lacked result, she absently put another cigarette into her mouth, and then felt a fool.
She stared at the cold window.
The sky seemed to be nailed carelessly to it by means of a crooked star or two.
These are the terrible nights of Living Alone, when you have fever and sometimes think that your beloved stands in the doorway to bring you comfort, and sometimes think that you have no beloved, and that there is no one left in all the world, no word, no warmth, nor ever a kindly candle to be lighted in that spotted darkness that walls up your hot sight.
Again on those nights you dream that you have already done those genial things your body cries for, or perhaps That Other has done them.
The fire is built and alight at last, a cup of something cool and beautifully sour stands ready to your hand, you can hear the delicious rattle of china on a tray in the passage--someone coming with food you would love to look at, and presently perhaps to eat ...
when you feel better.
But again and again your eyes open on the cold dumb darkness, and there is nothing but the wind and strange sinister emptiness creaking on the stair.
These are the terrible nights of Living Alone, yet no real lover of that house and of that state would ever exchange one of those haunted and desert nights for a night spent watched, in soft warm places.
Sarah Brown was not long left alone that night to look at the strip of moonlight on the cold ashes of her fireplace.
The Shop below shook suddenly with many footfalls, and the metallic officious barking of the Dog David rent the still air of her cell.
A man's voice at the foot of the stairs said: "I can hear a dog barking."
And a woman's voice followed it: "Angela, dear, is that you?"
Sarah Brown was only aware of a vague and irksome disturbance.
She groped to her door, opened it, and shouted miserably: "Go away, policeman, go away.
She is not here."
Lady Arabel came up, flashing an electric torch.
"My dear, you look dretfully ill.
Why look, you are trembling.
Why look, your little dog is making your counterpane muddy.
Don't be afraid for Angela, we are all here to try and help her."
"All here?"
"Yes, Meta and the Mayor and Mr. Tovey and Mr. Frere.
Let me help you into bed, and then you shall tell me what you know of her.
You have had a dretfully trying time."
"I am well," said Sarah Brown ungraciously.
"You are none of you going to help the witch without me."
"Ah, this is all very dretful," sighed Lady Arabel.
"Most foolish of us to come here all together like this, after the policeman took our names and addresses, and was dretfully impertinent and suspicious.
But Meta insisted.
I quite expect to spend the next twenty-four hours in gaol, or else to be shot for Offence of the Realm.
In fact, speaking as a ratepayer, I think the police ought to have done it before.
Still, Meta thought we might perhaps be able to help Angela....
Meta has many friends who seem influential ...
but _so_ talkative, my dear."
She led the way downstairs.
Mr. Tovey and the Mayor were talking at the foot of the stairs, Mr. Frere was listening sardonically.
As Sarah Brown went past them into the Shop, she smelt the unflower-like scent that always denoted the presence of Miss Ford.
Sarah Brown herself was accompanied by nothing more seductive than a faint smell of gasoline, showing that her clothes had lately been home-cleaned.
In the darkness of the Shop she saw Miss Ford stooping, trying to shut the big difficult drawer in which the witch kept her magic.
"It is frightfully explosive," said Sarah Brown.
Miss Ford started and straightened her back.
"Ah, Miss Brown....
I was just looking about...."
Sarah Brown sat gasping on the counter, and the rest of the party re-entered the Shop, bringing the lantern.
"How very absurd all this is," said Miss Ford nervously,--"taking such a great deal of trouble about a necessitous case."
"America is in my mind," said Lady Arabel.
"If we could get her there.
Anybody who has done anything silly goes to America.
Indeed, if I remember rightly, America is entirely populated with fugitives from somewhere else.
So dretfully confusing for the Red Indians.
They say the story of the Tower of Babel was only a prophecy about the Woolworth Building--" "You couldn't get a passport," said Mr. Darnby Frere, who was the only person present really conscious of sanity.
"Only a miracle could produce a passport in these days, especially for a fugitive from justice."
"Only a miracle--or magic," said Sarah Brown.
Miss Ford moved instinctively behind the counter towards the open drawer full of ingredients for happiness.
"We must remember," added Mr. Frere, "that, after all, she did break the law.
In fact I cannot for the life of me imagine why on earth we are all--" "Oh, Darnby, do be sensible," said Miss Ford.
"Of course we know it is wrong to break the law, but in this case--well, I myself should be the last to blame her."
"No, not the last," said Sarah Brown.
"What do you mean?"
"Certainly not the last.
Probably not even the penultimate one.
You flatter yourself."
"Why, surely some of you ladies, movin' in the 'ighest circles, knows of gentlemen in the Foreign Office that would do a little shut-eye job, for old times' sake," suggested the Mayor.
This was a challenge to Miss Ford.
She ceased to gaze haughtily on Sarah Brown.
"Men from three departments of the Foreign Office are fairly regular Wednesday friends of mine," she said.
"But I could hardly trouble any of them on--er--so trivial a matter."
There was silence, while Miss Ford toyed gingerly with one of the paper packets out of the witch's drawer.
Presently she said: "What about Richard?"
Lady Arabel showed sudden irritation.
"There you go again, Meta; I have spoken to you of it again and again.
It's Rrchud this and Rrchud that whenever anything in the least tahsome or out of the way happens.
One would think you considered the poor boy a wizard."
"You needn't lose your temper, Arabel," said Miss Ford coldly.
"I only meant that Richard might be useful, having so many friends, and such skill in ...
chemistry...."
As if unconsciously she tore off one corner of the packet of magic she held before adding: "And besides, as I have often told you, I believe Richard to have real Occult Power, which would give him a special interest in this case."
Sarah Brown, who was burying her face in her hands and missing much of the conversation, caught the name of Richard, and said: "Richard has gone to his True Love."
A tempest of restrained embarrassment arose.
"She's feverish," murmured Miss Ford, turning scarlet.
"My dear Sarah," said Lady Arabel tartly.
"You are quite mistaken, and I must beg of you to be careful how you repeat idle gossip about my son.
Rrchud is at his office.
You know it is only open at night--one of Rrchud's quaint fancies."
"I will ring up his office," said Miss Ford, deciding to ignore Sarah Brown both now and in future.
"Where is the telephone?"
"There is none," replied Sarah Brown.
"This is the House of Living Alone."
Miss Ford was pouring a grain or two of the magic into her palm.
"How very credulous people are," she said with a self-conscious smile.
"If Thelma Bennett Watkins were here she would credit this powder with--" She stopped, for an astonishing sharp smell filled the Shop.
Almost immediately a curious wheezy sound, punctuated by taps, proceeded from the corner.
It was Mr. Bernard Tovey trying to sing, "Mon coeur s'ouvr' à ta voix," and beating time by swinging his heels against the counter on which he sat.
Sarah Brown felt suddenly well.
She trembled but was well.
She jumped off the counter.
"I will run across, if you like," she said, "and ring up Richard from the ferryman's house.
He may have left his True Love now.
I am not deaf on the telephone, and the ferryman won't admit strangers."
As she left, the smell of magic was getting stronger and stronger.
Mr. Tovey, still impersonating Delilah in the corner, was approaching the more excitable passages of the song.
Miss Ford was saying, "Really, Bernard...."
Sarah Brown felt a slight misgiving.
A warm and rather dramatic-looking light was shining behind the red curtain of the ferryman's lattice window, as Sarah Brown crossed the moonlit road.
She delighted, after her recent black hours, to think of all those people in the world who were sitting stuffily and pleasantly in little ugly rooms that they loved, doing quiet careful things that pleased them.
And she told herself that the thought of Richard's little office, alone and alight in the deserted City every night, would comfort her often in the darkness.
The ferryman opened his door, and invited her genially to his telephone.
He had been sitting at his table, surrounded by the snakes that for him took the place of a family.
On the table was a bowl of milk from which a large bull-snake, in a gay Turkey-carpet design, was drinking.
A yellow and black python lay coiled in several figures of eight in the armchair, and an intelligent-looking small dust-coloured snake with a broad nose and an active tongue leaned out of the ferryman's breast pocket.
"Aren't they beautiful?"
he said, with shy and paternal pride, as Sarah Brown tried to find a place on which the python would like to be tickled or scratched.
Somehow the python has a barren figure, from a caresser's point of view.
The ferryman went on: "There is something about the grip and spring in a snake's body that makes me feel giddy with pleasure.
Snakes to me, you know, are just a drug, sold by the yard instead of in bottles.
My brain is getting every day colder and quieter, and all through loving snakes so."
Sarah Brown rang up Richard's office, and the over-refined voice of a young gentleman clerk answered her.
Mr. Higgins was not in the office.
Mr. Higgins had left particular word that if any one wanted him they were to be told that he had--er--gone to his True Love.
But any minor business matter connected with magic could be attended to in his absence.
Mr. Higgins spending so much of his time on the battlefield at present, a good deal of the routine work had to be done in any case by the speaker, his confidential clerk.
Passports to America?
Perfectly simple.
The office had simply to issue blank sheets treated in a certain way, and every official to whom the sheet should be presented would read upon it what he would want.
But Mr. Higgins would have to affix his mark and seal.
Mr. Higgins would be in the office sometime to-night, probably within the hour.
How many passports?
"Two," said Sarah Brown.
"One for my friend and one for me.
A dog doesn't need one, does he--a British dog?
I will book the berths to-morrow.
I can pawn my--or rather, I can sell my War Loan."
As she hung up the receiver, the ferryman asked: "Are you having a party up at the Shop, in the superintendent's absence?"
"Not intentionally," replied Sarah Brown.
"Why?"
"Well, I just wondered.
There's a noise like a thousand mad gramophones playing backwards, coming from there."
Sarah Brown's misgivings returned like a clap of thunder.
She rushed back to the Shop.
The lantern was standing in the middle of the floor, its glass was shattered, and out of each of its eight panels streamed a great flame six or seven feet high, like the petal of an enormous flower.
Facing these flames stood Miss Ford and Mr. Tovey, hand in hand, each singing a different song very earnestly.
Lady Arabel had found somewhere a patent fire extinguisher, and was putting on her glasses in order to read the directions.
Mr. Frere was hesitating in the background with a leaking biscuit tin full of water.
The Mayor was gone.
"Great Scott!"
said Sarah Brown.
You'll burn the place down.
Look at that row of petticoats up there, catching fire already.
What have you done with the Mayor?"
"We made him invisible by mistake," whispered Mr. Tovey.
"But sh--sh, he doesn't know it yet."
"Nothing matters," said Miss Ford.
"We are all going to America."
And she continued her song, which was an extempore one about the sea.
"But that's no reason why you should burn the house down," said Sarah Brown.
"That's what I thought," agreed Mr. Frere.
"But water won't put out that flame."
The singers fell silent.
Only the voice of the invisible Mayor could be heard, singing, "If those lips could only speak," in a loud tremulous voice, to the accompaniment of his own unseen stamping feet.
"You've been putting magic into that flame," said Sarah Brown distractedly.
"I told you it was dangerous.
Nothing will put magic out, except more magic.
What will the witch say?"
"It doesn't matter what anybody says," said Miss Ford.
