CHAPTER VI
AN AIR RAID SEEN FROM ABOVE
The moonlight lay like cream upon the pavement when the witch andHarold her broomstick left the Higgins' doorstep. London was a stillSwitzerland in silver and star-grey, unblotted by people. There was ahint of pale green about the moonlight, and the lamps with their dimlight downcast were like daffodils in faery fields.
The witch mounted. Harold, who was every inch a thoroughbred and veryhighly strung, trembled beneath her, but not with fear. They reachedPiccadilly Circus with supernatural speed, and flashed across it. Thesound of people singing desultorily while taking shelter in the Tubefloated up to them. Here the witch said "Yoop" to Harold, and he rearedand shot upwards, narrowly missing the statue of One In A Bus-catchingAttitude, which marks the middle of the Circus.
As soon as the witch had out-distanced the noise of expectant London,she heard quite distinctly the approach of London's guests. They camewith a chorus of many notes, all deep and dangerous.
There were a few clouds wandering about among the stars, and to one ofthese the witch and her faithful Harold repaired. A cloud gives quitereasonable support to magic people, and most witches and wizards havediscovered the delight of paddling knee-deep about those quicksilvercontinents. They wander along shining and changing valleys under a mostardent sky; they climb the purple thunderclouds, or launch the firstsnowflake of a blizzard; they spring from pink stepping-stone to pinkstepping-stone of clouds each no bigger than a baby's hand, across greatsunsets. Often when in London I am battling with a barrage of rain, orfalling over unseen strangers into gutters during fogs, I think happilyof the sunlit roof of cloud above my head, and of the witches andwizards, lying on their backs with their coats off, among cloud-meadowsin a glory of perfect summer and sun.
The witch, with one soothing hand on the bristling mane of her Harold,lay on her front on the cloud she had chosen, and looked down through alittle hole in it. It was practically the only cloud present that wouldhave afforded reasonable cover; the others were mere wisps of sky-weedfloating in the moonlight.
There was a greater chorus of aeroplanes below her now; the whole skywas ringing with it. The witch could hear a deep bass-voiced machine, abaritone, a quavering tenor, and--thin and sharp as a pin--a littletreble sound that made Harold rear and struggle to be free.
"Another witch," said the witch. "I was wondering why the Huns hadn'tgot their magic organised by now." She mounted her Harold and slippedoff the cloud.
The guns were shouting now, and the shells wailed and burst not so veryfar below them, but Harold trembled no longer. More quickly than afalling star he swooped, and in a second the alien witch was in sight,an unwieldy figure whose broomstick sounded rather broken-winded,probably owing to the long-distance flight and to the fourteen stone ofTeutonic magic on its back. There was a wicked-looking apparatusattached to the collar of the German broomstick, obviously designed tosquirt unpleasant enchantments downward. This contrivance was apparentlygiving some trouble, for the German was so busy attending to it that atfirst she did not see or hear the approach of Harold and his rider. Shewas aroused to her danger by a heavy chunk of magic which struck andnearly unseated her. In a second, however, she was ready with a parryingenchantment, and the fight began. The two broomsticks reared and circledround each other, and over and under each other. From their riders'finger-tips magic of the most explosive kind crackled, and incantationsof such potency were exchanged that, I am told, the tiles andchimney-pots of the streets below suffered a good deal. Round and roundand over and under whirled the broomsticks, till the very spaces wentmad, and London seemed to rush down nightmare slopes into a stormy sky,while its lights swung from pole to pole and were entangled with thestars.
Both broomsticks were by now so uproariously excited that neither witchwas able to aim her magic missiles very carefully, and indeed it was notlong before Harold passed entirely beyond control. After buckingviolently once or twice, he gave a wild high cry that was like the windhowling through the fierce forest past of his race, and fell upon theother broomstick, fixing his bristles into its throat. The shock of thecollision was too much for both witches. Our witch--if I may call herso--was shot over Harold's head, and landed on the ample breast of heradversary, who, in consequence, lost her balance. They fell togetherinto space.
"Oh, lost, lost, ..." cried our witch, and thoughts rushed through hermind of green safe places, and old safe years, and the little hut in apale bluebell wood, where she was born. She had time to remember theblue ground, dimpled and starred with sunlight, and the way the beespulled over the bluebells and swung on them to the tune of cuckoos in aMay mist; she had time to think of the green globe ghosts of thebluebells that haunted the wood after the spring was dead. Bluebells andbeing young were in all her thoughts, and it was some time before shenoticed how slowly she and her enemy were falling.
For they were locked together. And the enemy witch's cloak, an orthodoxwitch cloak except for its colour, which was German field-grey insteadof red, was spread out like a parachute, and was supporting them upontheir peaceful and almost affectionate descent.
For all I know they might have alighted gently in the Strand, and theauthorities might by now be regretting the capture of a mostembarrassing and unaccountable prisoner. But something intervened. Thecloud, like a sheep suffering from the lack of other sheep to follow,had not yet quitted the scene. The witches' battle had tended upward,and it had ended several hundred feet above the level of the cloud,which was apparently sinking. The downward course of the combatants'fall was therefore arrested, and they found themselves stillinterlocked, prostrate and embedded, with their eyes and mouths full ofwoolly wisps of cloud.
Our witch was the first to recover herself. She stood up and brushedherself, remarking: "By jove, that parachute cloak of yours is a greatdodge. I wish I'd thought of it. I always keep my full-dress togs putaway, like the ass that I am. A stitch or two, and a few lengths ofwhalebone would have done the trick."
The German was an older woman, and less adaptable to the strange chancesof War. She was silent for a few minutes, seated in the small cratermade in the cloud by her fall. She was not exactly ugly. She had thesort of face about which one could not help feeling that one could havedone it better oneself, or at least that one could have taken moretrouble. It seemed moulded--even kneaded--carelessly, in very softmaterial. Beneath her open cloak her dress was of the ordinary German_Reform-Kleid_ type, and her figure had the rather jelloid appearance ofthose who affect this style. Her regulation witch's hat was by now,probably, in the Serpentine, and her round head was therefore disclosed,with two stout sand-coloured plaits pursuing each other round it.
The witches faced each other for some seconds. A long way away theycould hear the spitting and crackling sound of the two broomsticksfighting. Looking up, they could see the combatants, like black cometsin collision. Our witch, who had good sight, saw that the enemybroomstick was upper-most, and that the writhing Harold was being shakenlike a mouse. Their bristles were interlocked. One twig floated downbetween the witches, and our witch recognised it as coming from her poorHarold's mane. As, for this purpose, she brought her eyes to herimmediate surroundings, it seemed to her suddenly that the sky wasgrowing larger, and then she realised that this was because their refugewas growing smaller. The edges of the cloud were dissolving. She saw atlast her peril and her disadvantage. If Harold should be killed ordisabled she could never reach the earth again, except by means of afatal fall of several thousand feet. The enemy witch, with heringenious cloak contrivance strapped securely about her, stood areasonable chance of escape. But our witch was an amateur in War, shewas without support, forlornly dressed in her faithful blue sergethree-year-old, and her little squirrel tippet.
Magic, as you know, has limitations. Fire is of course a plaything inmagic hands. Water has its docile moments, the earth herself may betampered with, and an incantation may call man or any of his possessionsto attention. But space is too great a thing, space is the i
nconceivableHand, holding aloft this fragile delusion that is our world. There is nopower that can mock at space, there is no enchantment that is not lostbetween us and the moon, and all magic people know--and tremble toknow--that in a breath, between one second and another, that Hand mayclose, and the shell of time first crack and then be crushed, and magicbe one with nothingness and death and all other delusions. This is whymagic, which treats the other elements as its servants, bows beforespace, and has to call such a purely independent contrivance as abroomstick to its help in the matter of air-travel.
The witches faced each other on their little unstable sanctuary in thekingdom of space. Our witch felt secretly sick, and at the same time shetore fear from her mind, and knew that death was but an imperfectly keptsecret, and that not an evil one. After all, we have condemned itunheard.
Both witches could talk a magic tongue, and make themselves mutuallyunderstood. Neither knew the other's natural tongue. But when our witchnoticed several large ferocious tears rolling down her opponent'scheeks, she was able, by means of magic, to say: "Great Scott, my goodperson, what are you crying for?"
"I am not crying," replied the German witch. "I would not allow one tearof mine to fall upon and water one possible grain of wheat in thisaccursed country of yours. Certainly I am not crying."
"Accursed country?" echoed the astounded English witch. "How d'youmean--accursed? This is England, you know. England hasn't done anythingaccursed. Aren't you muddling it up with Germany?"
"England is the World Enemy," said the German, evidently pleased to meetsomeone to whom this information was fresh. "Throughout the ages she hasbeen the Robber State, crushing the weaker nations, adding to her ownwealth by treachery, and now forcing this war of aggression upon herpeace-loving neighbours."
Our witch laughed. She was forgetting her danger. "This is really ratherfunny," she said. "Do you know what's happened? You've been reading the_Daily Mail_ and misunderstanding it. The whole of that quotationapplied to Germany, not England. It's Germany that's being naughty. Youmade a mistake, but never mind, I won't repeat it."
The German took no notice of this. The past three years had made her anadept in taking no notice.
"And now," she added. "After all these weary months of hoping, andlong-distance broomstick practice, and of parachute practice, and ofconflict with narrow officialdom, I have come--and this is the result. Iam separated from my broomstick, which has all the germ-bombs hangingfrom its collar--the germs are those of dissension and riot--I ammarooned upon an English cloud, with no enemy at my mercy but a paltryand treacherous non-combatant----"
"At your mercy," breathed our witch, remembering. She looked up. Thebroomsticks were closer now, and through the breathless air, amidst thedream-like firing of the guns below, she could hear the difficultgasping of the hard-pressed Harold, still fighting bravely but withhardly a twig on his head.
The tide of space was coming in. The edge of the cloud was barely sixinches from her hand. Our witch's mind overflowed with the thought ofinvasions and the coming in of tides. It seemed that all her life shehad been living on a narrowing shore. She remembered all her dawns asprecarious footholds of peace on a threatened rock, and all her eveningsas golden sands sloping down into encroaching sleep. She realisedEverything as a little hopeless garrison against the army of Nothing.
She clutched a pinch of cloud nervously, and it broke off in her hand.She recalled her senses with a devastating effort.
"Do you mean to say," she said, after a moment, "that poor dear Germanyreally believes that she is right and we are wrong? I suppose, when youcome to think of it, a man-eating tiger feels the same way. It fightswith a high heart, and a hot reproach, just as we do----"
"We are Crusaders," said the German. "Crusaders at War with Evil."
"Why, how funny--so are we," said our witch. "But then how very peculiarthat two Crusaders should apparently be fighting each other. Where thenis the Evil? In No Man's Land?"
"We are fighting," recited the German glibly, "because England is theWorld Enemy. Throughout the ages she has been the Rob----"
There was a violent explosion quite close to them, and the cloud reeledand shook. About a foot of the German end of it broke off and wasdissolved.
"We're within range of our guns," said our witch, looking down. "Thiscloud must be sinking."
"It will never sink enough to save you," said the German, trying toconceal the nervousness with which she rearranged her rigid-lookingcloak round her. She seemed to be sinking herself to a certain extent;perhaps the warmth of her emotions was melting the cloud beneath her.Certainly she now sat, apparently squat as an idol, her figure submergedin cloud to the waist.
The English witch looked down, singing a little to keep up her _morale_.London looked exactly like the maps you buy for sixpence fromsad-looking gentlemen in the Strand, only it was sown with a thin cropof lights, and was chiefly designed in grey and darker grey, and theTubes did not show so indecently. With surprising clearness the rhythmicwhispering of the trains and the scanty traffic could be heard, and onceeven the shrill characteristic voice of an ambulance. Somehow space didnot seem disturbed by these sounds; its quietness pressed upon thelisteners' minds like a heavy dream, and there was no real believing inanything but space. Our witch felt she could have smudged London off theface of space with her finger, and the thought of seven million livesinvolved in the fate of that sliding chart carried no conviction to her.She forced into her mind the realisation of humanity, and of littlelives lived in little rooms.
"As one Crusader to another," she said, "do you find it does much goodin the war against Evil to drop bombs on people in their homes? Afterall, every baby is good in bed, and even soldiers when on leave areanti-militarist."
"It always does good to exterminate vermin in their lair," said theGerman, trying restlessly to raise herself more to the level of herlighter companion, who was still perched on the surface of the cloud."It is at home that Evil is originated, it is at home that English womenconceive and bear a new generation of enemies of the Right, it is athome that English children are bred up in their marauding ways. It ison the home, the vital place of Evil, that the scourge should fall."
"Oh, but surely not," said our witch eagerly. "It is at home that peopleare kindly and think what they will have for supper, and bathe theirbabies. Men come home when they are hurt or hungry, and women when theyare lonely or tired. Nobody is taught anything stupid or internationalat home. You can bring death to a home, but never a righteous scourge.Nobody feels scourged or instructed by a bomb in their parlour, theyjust feel dead, and dead without a reason."
The cloud was very small now. The filmy edges of it were faintly risingand falling like the seaweed frill of a rock in the sea. The witch kepther eyes on her opponent's face, because to look anywhere else gave hera white feeling in her head.
"Crusades of the high explosive kind," she said, "can work only onbattle-fields. Indeed, even on battle-fields--ah, what are we about,what are we about? We are neither of us killing Evil, we are killingyouth...."
"I know, I know," wept the German witch. "My wizard fell at VimyRidge...."
"You are talking magic at last," said our witch. "Dear witch, why don'tyou go home and ask how it can be a good plan for one Crusader againstEvil to blow up another? How can two people be righteously scourgingeach other at the same time? It is like the old problem of two serpentseating each other, starting at the tail. There must be somemisunderstanding somewhere. Or else some real Evil somewhere."
"There is," said the German, recovering herself. "England is Evil.England is the World Enemy. Throughout the ages she has been the RobberState, crushing----"
But she had little luck. Once more she was interrupted by an explosion,a much louder one, directly above them. Our witch hardly heard thenoise; she seemed suddenly to have found the climax of her life, and theclimax was pain. There was pain and a feeling of terrible change allover her, smothering her, and a super-pain in her shoulder. After asecond or two
as long as death, she realised dimly that she was alltensely strung to an attitude, like a marionette. Her hands were uptrying to shield her head, her chin was pressed down to her drawn-upknees. Her blue serge shoulder was extraordinarily wet and immovable.She looked along the cloud. Her enemy was not there. There was a roundhole in the cloud, and as she leaned painfully towards it, she could seea few of the lights of London, and something falling spasmodicallytowards them.
The cloud had been shaken to its foundations by the two explosions, andthe German witch, who had been seated perhaps on a seam in the material,or at any rate on one of the less stable parts of the fabric, had fallenthrough. Her parachute cloak, in passing through the hole in the cloud,had been turned inside out above her head, and rendered useless. Overand about her falling figure her broomstick darted helplessly, utteringcurious sad cries, like a seagull's.
Even as the English witch watched her enemy's disaster, the larger partof the cloud, weakened by all the shock and movement, broke away with ahissing sound. The witch's feet hung now over space, she dared not move;she had difficulty in steadying herself with her unwounded arm, for herhand could find only a quicksand of dissolving cloud to lean on. She hadno thoughts left but thoughts of danger and of pain.
But Harold the Broomstick came back. The witch heard a rustling soundclose to her, and it startled her more than all the noise of the guns,which had come, as it seemed, from the forgotten other side of eternity.The rough head of Harold appeared over the cloud's edge, and insinuateditself pathetically under her arm. Very carefully and very painfully thewitch reached a kneeling position, damaging her refuge with everymovement in spite of her care. She gasped with pain, and Harold tried tolook very strong and hopeful to comfort her. He straightened his back,and she crawled into the saddle. The tremor of their launching split thecloud into several parts, which disintegrated. There was no morefoot-hold on it; the tide had come up and submerged it.
Harold the Broomstick was crippled, he stumbled as he flew, sometimes hedropped a score of feet, and span. He did stunts by mistake.
They had not strength enough between them to get home. They made aforced landing in the silver loneliness of Kensington Gardens. It was afortunate place, for there is much magic there. Wherever there arechildren who pretend, there grows a little magic in the air, andtherefore the wind of Kensington Gardens thrills with enchantment, andthe Round Pond, full of much pretence of great Armadas, crossed andre-crossed with the abiding wakes of ships full of treasure and romance,is a blessed lake to magic people.
The witch bathed Harold, her broomstick, in the Round Pond. He evidentlyfelt its healing quality at once, for after the first minute ofimmersion, he swam about exultantly, and shook drops full of moonlightout of his mane.
The bugles sounded All-clear in many keys all round the ear's horizon;their sound matched the waning moonlight.
The witch bathed her shoulder, and then she found her way to a littlequiet place she knew of, where no park-keeper ever looks, a place wheresecret and ungardened daffodils grow in springtime, a place where allthe mice and birds play unafraid, because no cat can find the waythither. You can see the Serpentine from that place, and the bronzeshadows under its bridge, but no houses, and no railways, and no signsof London.
Here the witch made a little fire, and leaned three sticks together overit; she lighted the fire with her finger-tip and hung over it the littlepatent folding cauldron, which she always carried on a chatelaineswinging from her belt. And she made a charm of daisy-heads, andspring-smelling grasses, and the roots of unappreciated weeds, and themosses that cover the tiny faery cliffs of the Serpentine. Over themixture she shook out the contents of one of her little paper packets ofmagic. All this she boiled over her fire for many hours, sitting besideit in the silver darkness, with her knees drawn up and her hands claspedin front of them. The trees sprang up into the moonlight like darkfountains from the pools of their own shadows. Little shreds of cloudflowed wonderfully across the sky. There was no sound except the soundof the water, like an uncertain player upon a little instrument. Thecharm was still unfinished when the dawn passed over London, and the suncame up, the seed of another day, sown in a rich red soil. The trees ofthe Gardens remembered their daylight shadows again, and forgot theirmystery. The water-birds, after examining their shoulder-blades withminute care for some moments, launched themselves upon a lake ofdiamonds. There seemed a veil of mist and bird-song over the world. Thesudden song of the birds was like finding the hearing of one's heartrestored, after long deafness.
The witch anointed her shoulder with the charm, after having first madea drop of potion out of the bubbles in it. This potion she drank, andwas healed of her wound and her weariness, and of all desires except adesire to sleep with her face among the daffodils. She was the mostbeautifully alone person in the world that morning; nobody could havefound her. A thin string of very blue smoke went up from her faint fireand was tangled among the boughs of a flowering tree, but the coarse eyeof a park-keeper could never have seen it. She had escaped from the netof the cruel hours; for her the stained world was washed clean; for herall horror held its breath; for her there was absolute spring, and aninnocent sun, and the shadows of daffodils upon closed eyes....