Living Alone

sea after the storm. She expected to find the witch at home, but only the Dog David and Peony were in the House

ful you never know but what they might go an' blow a bugle or two to mike believe they'd

ve inches of mattress and nine inches of dog, had been reading a littl

ught down at least one Boche. In fact the ferryman says his aunt telephoned that the special on her corn

of a moonlight night. It's my belief she goes to Maiden'ead am

hall be able to buy-without pawning anything for the mom

l into its second childhood. But Sarah Brown and the Dog

ts over racks, dust-pans divorced from their brushes were platonically attached to flat-irons or pie-dishes, Stephen's Inks were allied with penny mugs or tins of boot polish in an invasion of the middle shelves, and a wreath of sponges crowned the champion of a row of kettles in shining armour. Against the ceiling the drapery section was found. Overalls, ready-made breeches, babies' socks, and pink flannelette mysteries hung doubled up as if in pain over strings nailed to the rafters.

, "I shall be on my way

Dog David ran in front of her among the daisies. The rabbits can never be caug

e in a little mist and clamour of love. With every one else she held but lame intercourse, but her Dog David and she withheld no passing thought from each other. They could often be heard by unmattering landladies and passers-by exchanging views in the strong Suffolk accent that was a sort of standing joke between them. I believe that Sarah Brown had loved the Dog David so much that she had given him a soul. Certainly other dogs did not

m before you, and, as you pass out of it, you seem to have lived a thousand quiet and utterly forgotten lives. Clocks and calendars have no meaning in the forest; the seasons and the hours haunt it at their will, and abide by no law. Just as the sun upon a stormy day makes golden a moving and elusive acre in our human woods, so the night in the Enchanted Forest comes and goes like a ghost upon the sight of lovers of the night. For there you may step, unastonished, from the

me out with Sarah Brown under the tasselled arch of Travellers' Joy that crosses the end of the Green Ride, he was

antage of its forlorn condition, had glued an advertisement upon its donjon keep. You could almost have measured that advertisement in acres; it recommended a face cream, and represented

t pale hill, and the general effect w

ooked one in the face, but the violets did not, because they had morbidly bad manners. Still of course manners are very small change and count for very little; the violet, being an artist, is e

ontinued to promise all day without exactly explaining what its promise was, and without achieving any

t a very fine specimen, being of a brownish-green colour, and having lost the tip of one wing. Its spine was serrated, especially deeply between its shoulder b

athetic effort to sustain an imaginary reputation for humour. David retorted to this dog's first facetious onslaught with a kindly quip, they trod on each other once or twice with extravagant gestures, and then parte

, and the sun on my back always makes me sleepy. I am

The sight reminded Sarah Brown of watching from Golders Green Tube St

, and this wood merged into an orchard, where a white pony and an auburn pig strove apparently to eat the same blade of grass. The various sections of the farm land lay mapped out in different intensities of brown, very young green, and maturer green, and each section was dotted with people. They seemed small people even from a distance, and, as Sarah Brown advanced at the tail of the dragon, she saw that the workers were all indeed under

l, we simply can't get any one else, and Higgins will not apply for a few German prisoners. Get on with your work, you people, do. There,

t the good niggers. These people have vague minds, sown like an allotment with phrases in grooves. Direct

his tin hat to my tail, I remember, and the rest were trying to stick their nasty spears between my scales. Really, you know, it was quite dangerous. I have known a fellow's eye put out that way. I am not very good at fighting, though I might have tackled one at a time. R

ch broad beans were enjoying an innoc

ou to hoe between the rows of these beans. You will find a hoe

s. They all had hoes, but were not using them much. They were singing curious old round songs like summer dreams; you coul

ike this in great fields. Why, I even remember that the Shropshire Lad whistled once by mistake, whil

hat she was seeking for a mouse with some patent mouse-finding implement. He had even tried to help her,

d, standing up ostensibly to greet an aeroplane. She became very glad of the occasional aeroplanes that crossed above her field, and gave her an excuse for standing with a straight back to watch them. Aeroplanes, crossing singly

ght. The ragged rooks of Faery at once hurry into the air to show their laborious imitator how this should be done. The spirit of frivolous competition enters into the aeroplane, its duty is flung to the winds. It flaunts itself up and down once or twice, as if to say: "Now look, everybody, I'm going to be clever." Then it goes mad. It leaps upon imaginary Boches, it stands upon its head and falls downward until the very butterflies begin

pean War that gave it birth; it thinks of its mates scanning the sky for its coming; its frivolity ebbs suddenly. The eastern sky bec

nd striving to reach its hearing with loud shrill cries. There was very little difference between these fairies and other lady war-workers. In fact they were only distinguishable by thei

ertook them, and while conscious of that touch of interested scorn always felt by the One t

nding her of many doctors' warnings against manual work. She could feel, so to speak, the distant approaching tra

itched, clamoured monotonously upon her brain. Th

his row of beans was given me to hoe, an

very weary of having her life interrupted by her weakness that anything that she had begun to do always seemed to her worth finishi

n," thought Sarah Brown. "What's that?

, and as after a struggle she dragged its protest

gasped. "Look, I h

. It's Clement's nest, poor chap, he only married in Febr

tion were heard fr

ut lightly wedged between two buttercup stalks. The two eggs in it were

trying helplessly to replace the n

is almost hysterical about the sanctity of the home

ment," said Sarah Brown. "W

pointing upward. "He's watching yo

rah Brown. "Singing like that?

y sings like that when it's upset. Perfectly happy i

tucked the nest up under a bean

Shelley probably misunderstood that lark he wrote a poem about? He called

the case, but without a doubt your friend Shelley was standing on

h a deep sigh, b

bean

her no more than an unbeautiful falsetto growl. She was irritated by the fact that the cuckoo had only one song to sing. She tried not to hoe in time to that song, but the monotony of it possessed he

had forsaken her. She could trace his course by a moving ripple

y be

never meet time face to face. Their quick seconds are dismissed by the clicking of typewriters, and when their typewriters fall silent, their day is over. We of Out of Doors have a daily eternity to contend with during which only our hands are busy; our minds may grow old and young again between sunrise and sunset; the fu

ed her hoe and fe

id. "There are twenty-five mor

airy indifferently. "The foreman neve

Brown. "But I am accursed. It is a good

liction she

. "Only that I ate your sandwiches as I passed just now. But I left

ve," said S

ir rows. Fairies are never ill. They have immortal bodies, but no souls. If they see you in pa

said, looking vaguely at Sarah Brown's row. "Much better

d the twenty-fi

ttercups was before her. David Blessing came and leaned against her. His first intentions

whether she could cut

he said. "The said mind being en

ank into a warm tropical sea of thought. She was no real thinker, but she thought much about thinking, and was passionately interested in watching her own mind at work. Thought

the sound of his voice, she could not recall anything that he had said. Yet she felt again the magic feeling of meeting him, and dreamt of all the things that might have happened, and that might yet happen, yet never would happen, between him and her. All the best things that she remembered had only happened in her dreams, her imagination no s

f Richard's Richard, but of some

t was only when she realised that he was riding up her bean-row, and partially undoing the work o

, it had wakened into a live and electric blue the Enchanted F

m of hairpins up and down their rows. The dragon was rippling anxiously along at the heels of

in his breathy pathetic voice. "I left her hard at work. They're all the sam

itely of Sarah Brown, in the manner of an advertisement of a cure for indigestion, as he approac

y, if faintly. "I am a stricken and useless parasite on

enquiringly over several pockets. "Or would you rather try a natty little spell I thought

e. Give it to me,

and suffocating seas without rest. Her eyes felt dried up with fever, and whenever she shut them, the darkness was f

ch by wiping it helplessly against his riding breeches. He seemed to have none of the small skill in details

wrap it in," he murmured. "I'm afraid t

rd with the anxious sympathy of one ineffectual for another, it said: "Let me,"

ard's hand among the beans, and a

c, and saw soundless words moving Richard's little kh

could see. Now, of course, she knew what seeing was, and for the first time she was aware of the real sizes of things. Poor man measures all things by the size of his own foot. He looks complacently at the print of his boot in the mud, and notices that

wind rushing through the hair on his back. The blue sky was just a lampshade, clipped on to the earth to shield it from t

and she was everywhere. She could have counted the hairs on David's he

ed upon her. The dragon dawned once more upon her sight, it was inquisitively watchin

r heavy sunset. The fields were fu

opened her mouth to say something absolutely impossible to Richard. David's c

was a mistake. A spell of that strength ought to have set you dancing

by a little red light on his breast, and a little green light on his tail. Richard was fond of making elabo

nodded good-bye, and disappeared into its home, a low tunnel-like barn, evidently built specially for it, with a door at eac

memory as a puzzled soul born tragically out of its time, a shorn la

on a tall horse, with Richard walking beside her

hrough it it exacts toll in the shape of a dream. By way of receipt, to every trav

es were always made for two. She was not a real woman, she was morbidly bodiless. Strange though it may seem, the kind, awkward, absent-minded touch of Richard as he had lifted her on to the Horse Vivian's back had been for her the one flaw in that enchanted ride. She could not

ards at a time, and were twitched aside as though by a string or a reminding conscience. The telegraph wires, bound for the post office of Faery, run through the Enchanted

ay at silent and enchanted moments-"that if all the magic in this Forest were collected tog

Sarah Brown.

ne mo

said Sar

en anything like thoroughly est

ted Sarah Brown, trying to talk intelligently and t

nd is supported by men who had forgotten magic, it is the result of the coming to an end of a spell. Haven't you noticed that a spel

ed with Keats and Shell

't read, you know. But obviously what was wrong with the

ies? If the spell came to an end,

grows, the greater will magic grow to save it. Magic only dies in a tepid world. I think there is now more magic in the world than ever before. The soil of France is alive with it, and as for Belgium-when Belgium gets back home at last she will find her desecrated house enchanted.... And the s

estaurant, even after three glasses of champagne. For this reason, although the borders of the Enchanted Forest are said to be widening, it is to be hoped that they will not encroach beyond the confines of the Parish of Faery. What would

e, bent awkwardly into an attitude of pain forgotten and ecstatic attention. It was his dearest moment that they saw, a moment without death. For he was a prisoner in a perfect spell; he was utterly entangled in the looped and ensnaring song of a nightingale

reen Ride, but that did not matter to Sarah Brow

denly a searchlight glared diagonally across the end of the R

. "I thought I was ta

as they emerged from the Forest. "I mean, I