CHAPTER VII
THE FAERY FARM
Sarah Brown, finding herself unfetched by the witch, went home aloneas soon as the 'buses began putting out to sea after the storm. Sheexpected to find the witch at home, but only the Dog David and Peonywere in the House of Living Alone. David lay on Peony's bed, and Peonyunder it. Sarah Brown saw them as she passed their open door.
"Ow Marmaduke!" said Peony, "is it all over? Are you sure? Them 'uns isso bloody deceitful you never know but what they might go an' blow abugle or two to mike believe they'd done, an' then drops bombs on usjust as we was comin' 'appily out from under our beds."
Peony, with a touching faith in the combined protective powers of twelveinches of mattress and nine inches of dog, had been reading a littlepaper book called _Love in Society_ by the light of an electric torch.
"It's all truly over," said Sarah Brown, who had come home through aroar of rumour. "They say we've brought down at least one Boche. In factthe ferryman says his aunt telephoned that the special on her cornersays a female Boche was brought down. But that hardly sounds likely.Hasn't the witch come home yet?"
"Lawd no," replied Peony. "The dear ol' Soup never comes 'ome of amoonlight night. It's my belief she goes to Maiden'ead among the Jews,to keep out of the wiy, and 'oo's to blime 'er?"
"Well, that's all right," said Sarah Brown. "For now I shall be able tobuy--without pawning anything for the moment--a little land outfit fromstock. I know she has some."
The night was by then far from young, in fact it was well into itssecond childhood. But Sarah Brown and the Dog David sought and tried onland outfits for several hours.
The shop was divided into three horizontal departments. Nearest thefloor were the foodstuffs; biscuit tins buttressed the counter on everyside; regiments of Grape-nuts, officered by an occasional Quaker Oat,stood in review order all round the lower shelves. On the counter littlecastles of tinned fruit were built, while bins beneath it held thevaried grain, cereal, and magic stock. About on a level with one's headthe hardware department began: frying-pans lolled with tin coffee-potsover racks, dust-pans divorced from their brushes were platonicallyattached to flat-irons or pie-dishes, Stephen's Inks were allied withpenny 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 inshining armour. Against the ceiling the drapery section was found.Overalls, ready-made breeches, babies' socks, and pink flannelettemysteries hung doubled up as if in pain over strings nailed to therafters. From this department Sarah Brown, balanced upon three largebiscuit tins placed on the counter, chose her outfit with vanity andcare. The general effect was not good, but she did not know this, forshe studied the parts separately in a six-inch mirror. She was filledwith a simple pleasure. For she was always absurdly moved by littleexcitements, and by any prospect of a changed to-morrow. She was notreally used to being alive at all, and that is what made her take tomagic so kindly.
"In six hours," she said, "I shall be on my way to something utterlynew."
And in six hours she was on her way, whistling, across the Parish ofFaery. The Dog David ran in front of her among the daisies. The rabbitscan never be caught in this land of happy animals, but they give goodsport and always play fair.
David Blessing Brown, a dog of independent yet loving habit, had spentabout four-fifths of his life in the Brown family. He was three yearsold, and though ineligible for military service, made a point of wearingkhaki about his face, and in a symmetrical heart-shaped spot near histail. To Sarah Brown he was the Question and the Answer, his presencewas a constant playtime for her mind; so well was he loved that heseemed to her to move in a little mist and clamour of love. With everyone else she held but lame intercourse, but her Dog David and shewithheld no passing thought from each other. They could often be heardby unmattering landladies and passers-by exchanging views in the strongSuffolk accent that was a sort of standing joke between them. I believethat Sarah Brown had loved the Dog David so much that she had given hima soul. Certainly other dogs did not care for him. David said that theyhad found out that his second name was Blessing, and that they laughedat him for it. His face was seamed with the scars of their laughing. ButI know that the enmity had a more fundamental reason than that. I knowthat when men speak with the tongues of angels they are shunned andhated by men, and so I think that when dogs approach humanity too nearlythey are banished from the love of their own kind.
Sarah Brown was not altogether unfamiliar with the Parish of Faery, butshe never failed to be surprised by the enchantment of the EnchantedForest. The Green Ride runs straight through it, so incredibly straightthat as you walk along it the end of it is at the end of your sight, andis like a star in a green sky. There is a dream that binds your mind asyou cross the forest; it is like an imitation of eternity, so that, asyou pass into the forest's shade, time passes from before you, and, asyou pass out of it, you seem to have lived a thousand quiet and utterlyforgotten lives. Clocks and calendars have no meaning in the forest; theseasons and the hours haunt it at their will, and abide by no law. Justas the sun upon a stormy day makes golden a moving and elusive acre inour human woods, so the night in the Enchanted Forest comes and goeslike a ghost upon the sight of lovers of the night. For there you maystep, unastonished, from the end of a day into its beginning; there thesummer and the winter may dodge each other round one tree; there you maysee at one glance a spring hoar frost and an autumn trembling of airs, awild cherry tree blossoming beside a tawny maple. The forest is so deepand so thick that it provides its own sky, and can enjoy its ownimpulses, and its own quiet anarchy. There you forget that sky of oursacross whose face some tyrant drives our few docile seasons inconventional order.
I think the Dog David in his own way shared the dream that leadswayfarers through the Enchanted Forest. When he came out with SarahBrown under the tasselled arch of Travellers' Joy that crosses the endof the Green Ride, he was all shining and dewy with adventure, and histail was upright, as though he were pretending that it carried a flag.
On an abrupt hill in the middle of an enormous green meadow a Castlestood, just as Richard had predicted. It was To Let, and was not lookingits best. Some man of enterprise, taking advantage of its forlorncondition, had glued an advertisement upon its donjon keep. You couldalmost have measured that advertisement in acres; it recommended a facecream, and represented a lady with a face of horrible size, whosenaturally immaculate complexion was marred by the rivets and loopholesof the donjon keep itself, which protruded in rather a distressing way.
Oak trees stood round the foot of that pale hill, and the general effectwas rather that of parsley round a ham.
Between two oaks Sarah Brown, following directions, found the beginningof the Daisified Path. There were not only daisies all over the path butreal violets on either side of it. The daisies looked one in the face,but the violets did not, because they had morbidly bad manners. Still ofcourse manners are very small change and count for very little; theviolet, being an artist, is entitled to any manners it likes, while thedaisy has no temperament whatever, and no excuse for eccentricity.Grasshoppers tatted industriously and impartially among the daisies andthe violets.
Here outside the forest there was weather again, and the weather wasmore promising than generous. It continued to promise all day withoutexactly explaining what its promise was, and without achieving anyspecial fulfilment. Fine silver lines of sunlight were ruled at a steepangle across a grey slate view.
At the gate of Higgins Farm, Sarah Brown was a little disconcerted tofind a small dragon. It was coiled round a tree beside the clipped boxarchway. It was not a very fine specimen, being of a brownish-greencolour, and having lost the tip of one wing. Its spine was serrated,especially deeply between its shoulder blades, where it could raise asort of crest if angered or excited. But at present it was asleep, itssaturnine and rather wistful face rested upon one scaly paw.
Sarah Brown was uncertain what to do, but the Dog David took the matterinto his own paw
s by mistake. He had just met one of the castle dogs,one of those tremulous-tailed creatures who spend themselves in a ratherpathetic effort to sustain an imaginary reputation for humour. Davidretorted to this dog's first facetious onslaught with a kindly quip,they trod on each other once or twice with extravagant gestures, andthen parted hysterically, each supposing himself to be pursued by theother. It was then that David tripped over the dragon's barbed tail.David squeaked, and the dragon awoke. It uncoiled itself suddenly likea broken spring.
"Gosh," it said. "Asleep again! I was waiting for you, and the sun on myback always makes me sleepy. I am the foreman. Higgins telephoned thatyou were coming."
It preceded her through the little green archway that led to the farm.The sight reminded Sarah Brown of watching from Golders Green TubeStation the train one has just missed dive into the tunnel. Shefollowed.
On the other side of the archway the whole view of the plain calledHiggins Farm met the adventurer. The farm-buildings were heapedgraciously together on a little wave in the sea of ploughed fields.Except for two pale ricks in their midst, they exactly matched theirsurroundings, they were plastered dark red, and thatched with very oldgreen and brown thatch. Beyond the buildings was a little wood, itsinterior lighted up with bluebells, and this wood merged into anorchard, where a white pony and an auburn pig strove apparently to eatthe same blade of grass. The various sections of the farm land laymapped out in different intensities of brown, very young green, andmaturer green, and each section was dotted with people. They seemedsmall people even from a distance, and, as Sarah Brown advanced at thetail of the dragon, she saw that the workers were all indeed underordinary human size. The tallest, a man guiding a miniature ploughbehind a tall horse, might have reached Sarah Brown's shoulder. None ofthem seemed hard at work, they stood talking in little groups. One groupas they passed it was trafficking in cigarette cards. "I want to get myGold Scale set of English Kings complete," a voice was sayingtragically. "Has nobody got Edward the Confessor?" None of them took anynotice of the foreman.
"I'm afraid I haven't got the gift of discipline," sighed the dragon."And fairies are of course abnormally undisciplined creatures. Still, wesimply can't get any one else, and Higgins will not apply for a fewGerman prisoners. Get on with your work, you people, do. There, you see,they defy me to an extent. Ever since the cowmen dipped me in thehorse-pond my authority's gone--gone where the good niggers go."
I find that there are quite a lot of people who cannot say the word"gone" without adding the clause about the good niggers. These peoplehave vague minds, sown like an allotment with phrases in grooves.Directly the dragon said "to an extent" without qualifying the extent,one saw why it had no gift of discipline.
"I wouldn't attempt this job," it continued, winding breathlessly alongthe rutty road, "only I am under a great obligation to Richard Higgins.I am a _protidgy_ of his, you know, he rescued me from a lot ofmischievous knights who were persecuting me. One of them had tied histin hat to my tail, I remember, and the rest were trying to stick theirnasty spears between my scales. Really, you know, it was quitedangerous. I have known a fellow's eye put out that way. I am not verygood at fighting, though I might have tackled one at a time. RichardHiggins rode right into the midst of them, knocking them right andleft. Gosh, he gave them a talking to, and they slank away. He took mycase up after that, made enquiries, and gave me this job. We scrapealong somehow, but I'm afraid I'm not really suited for it."
They reached a part of a field in which broad beans were enjoying aninnocent childhood among white butterflies.
"If you wouldn't mind," said the dragon shyly, "I should like you to hoebetween the rows of these beans. You will find a hoe against the bigstack. This is your row, I reserved it for you."
All the other rows were occupied by fairy women with their skirts tuckedup--for only your amateur land-woman wears breeches. They all had hoes,but were not using them much. They were singing curious old round songslike summer dreams; you could hear strange fragments of phrases passingfrom voice to voice. They took no notice of Sarah Brown, and she beganto work.
"Oh, my One," she said to David. "How happy this is. No wonder theysing. Any one must sing working like this in great fields. Why, I evenremember that the Shropshire Lad whistled once by mistake, whileploughing, on his own admission, until a fatalistic blackbird recalledhim to his usual tragic mind."
David sat uncomfortably on a broad bean, protesting against this newmania. For a moment he had thought that she was seeking for a mouse withsome patent mouse-finding implement. He had even tried to help her, andturned over a clod with a critical paw, but one sniff had showed him theempty futility of the thing.
Sarah Brown hoed rather happily for a couple of hours, and then shebegan to count the beans still waiting trustfully in the queue, waitingto be attended to and freed from their embarrassments. There wereninety-six, she decided, standing up ostensibly to greet an aeroplane.She became very glad of the occasional aeroplanes that crossed above herfield, and gave her an excuse for standing with a straight back to watchthem. Aeroplanes, crossing singly or in wild-bird formations, are socommon in the sky of Faery that every one in those parts, while turninghis own eyes inevitably upwards, secretly thinks his neighbourlamentably rustic and unsophisticated for looking at them.
Every aeroplane that crosses Faery feels, I suppose, the reflected magicfrom the land below, for there is never one with the barest minute tospare that does not pause and try to be clever over Higgins Farm. Youmay see one industriously climbing the clouds over the Enchanted Forest,evidently trying hard to be intent on its destination. You may see itfalter, struggling with its sense of duty, and then break weakly into amild figure eight. The ragged rooks of Faery at once hurry into the airto show their laborious imitator how this should be done. The spirit offrivolous competition enters into the aeroplane, its duty is flung tothe 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. Itleaps upon imaginary Boches, it stands upon its head and falls downwarduntil the very butterflies begin to take cover, it stands upon its tailand falls upward, it writes messages in a flowing hand across the skyand returns to cross the t's. It circles impertinently round your head,fixing its bold tricolour eye upon you until you begin to think theremust be something wrong with your appearance. It bounds upon a field ofonions and rebounds in the same breath from the topmost cloud of heaven.The rooks return disconsolately to their nests.
Then you may see the erring machine suddenly remember itself, and checkitself in the act of some new paroxysm. It remembers the European Warthat gave it birth; it thinks of its mates scanning the sky for itscoming; its frivolity ebbs suddenly. The eastern sky becomes once moreits highway instead of its trapeze. It collects its wits, emits a fewcontrite bubbles of smoke, and leaps beyond sight.
Whenever this happened, the female fairies behaved in a very plebeianand forward manner, waving their hoes at each machine, encouraging it bybrazen gestures to further extravagances, and striving to reach itshearing with loud shrill cries. There was very little differencebetween these fairies and other lady war-workers. In fact they were onlydistinguishable by their stature and by the empty and innocentexpression of their faces. Also perhaps by their tuneful singing, and bya habit of breaking out suddenly into country dances between thebean-rows.
Sarah Brown, who worked a great deal more industriously than any oneelse in sight, soon overtook them, and while conscious of that touch ofinterested scorn always felt by the One towards the Herd, found reliefin watching their vagaries, and presently in speaking to them.
For she needed relief, poor Sarah Brown, her disabilities were catchingher up; a hoarse contralto cough was reminding her of many doctors'warnings against manual work. She could feel, so to speak, the distantapproaching tramp of that pain in her side under whose threat she hadlived all her life. But there were seventy-five beans yet.
The note of her hoe, a high note not quite true pitched, clamouredmonot
onously upon her brain. Three blisters and a half were persecutingher hands.
"Let them blist," she said defiantly. "This row of beans was given me tohoe, and Death itself shall not take it from me."
She could almost imagine she saw Death, waiting for her tactfully beyondthe last bean. She had no sense of proportion. She was so very weary ofhaving her life interrupted by her weakness that anything that she hadbegun to do always seemed to her worth finishing, even under torture. Tofinish every task, in spite of all hindrance, was her only ambition, butit was almost always frustrated.
Seventy more beans. "Three score and ten," thought Sarah Brown. "What'sthat? Only a lifetime." She bent to her work.
A great clump of buttercups bestrode her bean row, and as after astruggle she dragged its protesting roots from the earth, something fellfrom it.
"Oh, a nest," she gasped. "Look, I have hoed up a nest."
"Good gracious," exclaimed a fairy. "Look what she's done. It'sClement's nest, poor chap, he only married in February. Say, girls,here's Clement's semi-detached gone up."
Cries of consternation were heard from every bean-row.
Clement's nest was really almost more than semi-detached. It had beenbut lightly wedged between two buttercup stalks. The two eggs in it wereat once unseated, and one was broken. Sarah Brown was deeply distressed.
"What a blind fool I am," she said, trying helplessly to replace thenest. "Won't Clement ever come back?"
"Mrs. Clement won't," said the nearest fairy. "She is almost hystericalabout the sanctity of the home, and all that. She'll probably get adivorce now."
"Oh, poor Clement, poor Clement," said Sarah Brown. "Will he be terriblycut up?"
"There he is," replied the fairy, pointing upward. "He's watching you.That's Clement's voice you hear."
"Clement's voice," exclaimed Sarah Brown. "Singing like that? Why, hesounds perfectly happy."
"Perfectly happy," mocked the fairy. "His family only sings like thatwhen it's upset. Perfectly happy indeed! Can't you understand tragedywhen you hear it?"
Sarah Brown with despairing care tucked the nest up under a bean, andreplaced the unbroken egg.
"Do you mean to tell me, then," she said, after a busy painful pause,"that Shelley probably misunderstood that lark he wrote a poem about? Hecalled it a blithe spirit, you know, because it sang. Do you suppose itwasn't one?"
"Certainly not," said the fairy. "I don't know the actual facts of thecase, but without a doubt your friend Shelley was standing on theunfortunate bird's nest all the time he was writing his poem."
Sarah Brown, with a deep sigh, began hoeing again.
Fifty beans yet.
She had altogether ceased to find pleasure in the day. Pain is anextinguisher that can put out the sun. She had ceased to find pleasurein the singing of the birds, the voice of the pigeon sounded to her nomore than an unbeautiful falsetto growl. She was irritated by the factthat the cuckoo had only one song to sing. She tried not to hoe in timeto that song, but the monotony of it possessed her. Her row of beansstretched in front of her right across the world; every time she lookedalong it the end seemed farther away. Every time she raised her hoe thesword of pain slipped under her guard.
The Dog David, impatient of her unnatural taste in occupations, hadforsaken her. She could trace his course by a moving ripple across thepotato patch, just as a shark's movement seams the sea.
Forty beans.
Time wears a strangely different guise out of doors. Under the sun timestands almost still. Only when every minute is a physical effort do youdiscover that there really are sixty minutes in an hour, and that onehour is very little nearer to the evening than another. People who workindoors under the government of clocks never meet time face to face.Their quick seconds are dismissed by the clicking of typewriters, andwhen their typewriters fall silent, their day is over. We of Out ofDoors have a daily eternity to contend with during which only our handsare busy; our minds may grow old and young again between sunrise andsunset; the future may be remade in an hour, hope killed and rebornbefore a blackbird's song is over. We know the length of days. And aftermany slow months of stress we come back again, old and bewildered withmuch silence and much wondering, to our friends in offices, and findthem unchanged, floating innocently on the surface of time.
Sarah Brown dropped her hoe and fell upon her knees.
"I can't hoe any more," she said. "There are twenty-five more beans, butI can't hoe them."
"Why should you?" asked the nearest fairy indifferently. "The foremannever notices if we shirk. We always do."
"I said I would hoe this row," said Sarah Brown. "But I am accursed. Itis a good thing at least to know one's limitations."
Even in affliction she was prosy.
"I would advise you to go and have your dinner," another fairy said."Only that I ate your sandwiches as I passed just now. But I left alittle lemonade in your bottle. Go under the trees and drink it."
"I can't move," said Sarah Brown.
"Sit there then," said the fairies, and passed on, tickling but notuprooting the weeds in their rows. Fairies are never ill. They haveimmortal bodies, but no souls. If they see you in pain, they simplythink you are flaunting your superiority and your immortal soul in theirfaces.
The dragon undulated up the field. "Very nicely hoed," he said, lookingvaguely at Sarah Brown's row. "Much better than the other rows. Havingyour dinner? Quite right too."
He never noticed the twenty-five unhoed beans.
Sarah Brown sat on the edge of a shore of green shadow, and a sea of sunspeckled with buttercups was before her. David Blessing came and leanedagainst her. His first intentions were good, he kissed her hurriedly onthe chin, but after that he kissed the sandwich bag.
Sarah Brown wondered whether she could cut her throat with a hoe.
"Suicide while of sound mind," she said. "The said mind being entirelysick of its unsound body."
If she sat absolutely still and upright the pain was bearable. But evento think of movement brought tears of pain to her eyes. She detached hermind from her predicament, and sank into a warm tropical sea of thought.She was no real thinker, but she thought much about thinking, and waspassionately interested in watching her own mind at work. Thought waslike sleep to her, she sank deeply into it without reaching anythingprofound, nothing resulted but useless dreams, and a certain comfortingand defiant intimacy with herself.
She thought of Richard, and wished that she could have hoed a blessinginto every bean of his that she had hoed. She noted half-consciously andwithout surprise that the thought of him was beautiful to her. Shecould not conjure up his face before her mind, because she always forgotrealities, and only remembered dreams. She could not imagine the soundof his voice, she could not recall anything that he had said. Yet shefelt again the magic feeling of meeting him, and dreamt of all thethings that might have happened, and that might yet happen, yet neverwould happen, between him and her. All the best things that sheremembered had only happened in her dreams, her imagination no soonersipped the first sip of an experience than it conjured up for her greatabsurd satisfying draughts of nectar, for which the waking Sarah Brownmight thirst in vain. But there was no waking Sarah Brown. Her life wasonly a sleep-walking; only very rarely did she awake for a moment andfeel ashamed to see how alert was the world about her.
So she thought of Richard, not of Richard's Richard, but of some paleprivate Richard of her own.
The approach of Richard upon a white horse for some time seemed only anextension of her dream. It was only when she realised that he was ridingup her bean-row, and partially undoing the work of her hoe, that sheawoke suddenly with a start, and caught and tore her breath upon a pinof pain.
It seemed that the afternoon had now long possessed the fields, it hadwakened into a live and electric blue the Enchanted Forest which she hadlast noticed shimmering in its noon green.
All the workers at the approach of Richard were working busily, bentostentatiously in the form of hairpins up a
nd down their rows. Thedragon was rippling anxiously along at the heels of the white horse; ahelpless hoping for the best expressed itself in every spike along hisspine.
"I don't really know why she's idling like that," Sarah Brown heard himsay in his breathy pathetic voice. "I left her hard at work. They're allthe same when my back's turned. A fellow needs to have eyes at the tipof his tail."
"Are you suffering from that Leverhulme six-hour-working-day sort offeeling?" asked Richard politely of Sarah Brown, in the manner of anadvertisement of a cure for indigestion, as he approached. "I think it'sjust splendid how receptive and progressive working people are in thesedays."
"I was meditating suicide," replied Sarah Brown candidly, if faintly. "Iam a stricken and useless parasite on the face of your fine earth. Butmy hoe is too blunt."
"I have a pocket-knife with three blades I could lend you," saidRichard, slapping himself enquiringly over several pockets. "Or wouldyou rather try a natty little spell I thought of this morning while Iwas shaving. I think any one stricken might find it rather useful."
"Ah, give it to me. Give it to me," said Sarah Brown.
The pain was like a wave breaking upon her, carrying her away from hersafe shore of shadow, to be lost in seething and suffocating seaswithout rest. Her eyes felt dried up with fever, and whenever she shutthem, the darkness was filled with a jumble of nauseating squares inblue upon a mustard-coloured background. The smell of beans wasterrible.
Richard fumbled with something very badly folded up in newspaper. Healso tried ineffectively to light a match by wiping it helplesslyagainst his riding breeches. He seemed to have none of the small skillin details that comes to most people before they grow up. He dideverything as if he were doing it for the first time.
"I had nothing but the _Morning Post_ to wrap it in," he murmured. "I'mafraid that may have spoilt the magic a little."
It was the dragon finally who produced the necessary light. Afterwatching Richard with the anxious sympathy of one ineffectual foranother, it said: "Let me," and kindly breathed out a little flame,which set the packet aflare for a moment.
The ashes fluttered down from Richard's hand among the beans, and a thinviolet stalk of smoke went up.
Sarah Brown smelt the unmistakable sour smell of magic, and sawsoundless words moving Richard's little khaki moustache. Then she foundthat she had disappeared.
She had never done this before, she had always been present to disturband interrupt herself. She had never seen the world before, exceptthrough the little glazed peepholes, called eyes, through which hereveryday self rather wistfully believed that it could see. Now, ofcourse, she knew what seeing was, and for the first time she was awareof the real sizes of things. Poor man measures all things by the size ofhis own foot. He looks complacently at the print of his boot in the mud,and notices that the ant which he crushed was not nearly as big as hisfoot, therefore the ant does not matter to him. He also notices thatthose same feet of his would not be able to walk to the moon within areasonable time, therefore the moon does not matter to him.
But Sarah Brown had disappeared, and therefore could not measureanything. The spider strode from hill to hill, with the wind rushingthrough the hair on his back. The blue sky was just a lampshade, clippedon to the earth to shield it from the glare of the gods, beyond it was amere roof of eternity, pricked with a few billion stars to keep it wellventilated.
Sarah Brown had for a while all the fun of being a god. She was nowhereand she was everywhere. She could have counted the hairs on David'shead. The world waved like a flower upon a thin purple stalk ofsmoke....
Her eyes began to see again. She was aware, of the hollowed tired eyesof Richard fixed upon her. The dragon dawned once more upon her sight,it was inquisitively watching developments, while pretending to claw aweed or two out of a neighbouring bean-row.
The horizon was rusty with a rather heavy sunset. The fields were fullof twilight and empty of fairies.
Sarah Brown came to herself with a start, she was shocked to find thatshe had opened her mouth to say something absolutely impossible toRichard. David's chin was resting on her hand. Her side felt frozen anddangerous but not painful.
"It didn't altogether answer," said Richard. "I'm afraid the wrappingwas a mistake. A spell of that strength ought to have set you dancingin three minutes. I'll take you home on my horse. His name is Vivian."
The Horse Vivian, who was so white as to be almost phosphorescent in thedusk, was now further illuminated by a little red light on his breast,and a little green light on his tail. Richard was fond of makingelaborate and unnecessary arrangements like this, while neglecting toacquire skill in the more usual handicrafts.
Sarah Brown, a person of little weight, was placed astride on the backof the Horse Vivian. Richard walked beside. The dragon nodded good-bye,and disappeared into its home, a low tunnel-like barn, evidently builtspecially for it, with a door at each end, and a conveniently placedchimney which enabled it to breathe enough fire to cook its mealswithout suffocating itself.
Sarah Brown never saw the dragon again, but it stayed always in hermemory as a puzzled soul born tragically out of its time, a shorn lamb,so to speak, to whom the wind had not been sufficiently tempered.
Now this ride home, through the Enchanted Forest, on a tall horse, withRichard walking beside her, was the most perfect hour of Sarah Brown'slife.
The Enchanted Forest is only an accumulation of dreams, and from everytraveller through it it exacts toll in the shape of a dream. By way ofreceipt, to every traveller it gives a darling memory that neither deathnor hell nor paradise can efface.
Sarah Brown knew that her dream and Richard's could never meet. The factthat he was thinking of some one else all the way home was not hiddenfrom her. But she was a person used to living alone, she could enjoyquite lonely romances, and never even envy real women, whose romanceswere always made for two. She was not a real woman, she was morbidlybodiless. Strange though it may seem, the kind, awkward, absent-mindedtouch of Richard as he had lifted her on to the Horse Vivian's back hadbeen for her the one flaw in that enchanted ride. She could not beartouch. She had no pleasure in seeing or feeling the skin and homespunthat encloses men and women. She hated to watch people feedingthemselves, or to see her own thin body in the mirror. She ought reallyto have been born a poplar tree; a human body was a gift wasted on her.
As they passed along the Green Ride, the red light from the HorseVivian's neck made a sort of heralding ghost before them on the grass.Bats darted above them for a few yards at a time, and were twitchedaside as though by a string or a reminding conscience. The telegraphwires, bound for the post office of Faery, run through the EnchantedForest, and the poles in the faint light were like tall crucifixes. Along way off, through the opening at the end of the Forest, were thelittle lights of Mitten Island.
"Do you know," said Richard--and this is unfortunately the sort of thingthat young men do say at silent and enchanted moments--"that if all themagic in this Forest were collected together and compressed into aliquid form, it would be enough to stop the War in one moment?"
"My hat!" said Sarah Brown. "In one moment?"
"In one moment."
"My hat!" said Sarah Brown.
"The powers of magic haven't been anything like thoroughly estimatedeven yet," said Richard.
"I suppose the War was made by black magic," suggested Sarah Brown,trying to talk intelligently and to be faithful to her own thoughts atthe same time.
"Good Lord, no," replied Richard. "The worst of this war is that it hasnothing whatever to do with magic of any sort. It was made and issupported by men who had forgotten magic, it is the result of the comingto an end of a spell. Haven't you noticed that a spell came to an end atthe beginning of the last century? Why, doesn't almost every one seesomething lacking about the Victorian age?"
"Something certainly died with Keats and Shelley," sighed Sarah Brown.
"Oh well," said Richard, "I don't know about books. I can't read, youknow. Bu
t obviously what was wrong with the last century was just thatit didn't believe in fairies."
"Does this century believe in fairies? If the spell came to an end, howis it that we are so magic now?"
"This century knows that it doesn't know everything," said Richard. "Andas for spells--we have started a new spell. That's the curious part ofthis War. So gross and so impossible and so unmagic was its cause, thatmagic, which had been virtually dead, rose again to meet it. The worse aworld grows, the greater will magic grow to save it. Magic only dies ina tepid world. I think there is now more magic in the world than everbefore. The soil of France is alive with it, and as for Belgium--whenBelgium gets back home at last she will find her desecrated houseenchanted.... And the same applies to all the thresholds in the worldwhich fighting-men have crossed and will never cross again, except inthe dreams of their friends. That sort of austere and secret magic, likea word known by all and spoken by none, is pretty nearly all that isleft to keep the world alive now...."
Richard seemed to be becoming less and less of a man and more and moreof a wizard the farther he penetrated into the Enchanted Forest. He wassaying things that would have embarrassed him very much had they beensaid in the Piccadilly Restaurant, even after three glasses ofchampagne. For this reason, although the borders of the Enchanted Forestare said to be widening, it is to be hoped that they will not encroachbeyond the confines of the Parish of Faery. What would happen if itstrees began to seed themselves in the Strand? Imagine the Stock Exchangeunder the shadow of an enchanted oak, and the consequent disastrouswearing thin of the metal casing in which all good business men keeptheir souls.
Sarah Brown thought if rather a curious coincidence that so soon afterthey had spoken of the dead Keats they should see him alive. They sawhim framed in a little pale aisle of the Forest, a faintly definedfragile ghost, crouched against the trunk of a tree, bent awkwardly intoan attitude of pain forgotten and ecstatic attention. It was his dearestmoment that they saw, a moment without death. For he was a prisoner ina perfect spell; he was utterly entangled in the looped and ensnaringsong of a nightingale. The song was like beaten gold wire. Never againin her life did Sarah Brown profane with her poor voice the words that aperfect singer begot in a marriage with a perfect song. But inunhappiness, and in the horrible nights, the song came to her,always....
The travellers were approaching the end of the Green Ride, but that didnot matter to Sarah Brown, for there had been nothing lacking all theway.
"Love----," began Richard in a loud exalted voice, and then suddenly asearchlight glared diagonally across the end of the Ride, over MittenIsland, and quenched the magic of the moment.
"Sorry," said Richard. "I thought I was talking to my True Love."
"I'm sorry you weren't," said Sarah Brown, as they emerged from theForest. "I mean, I'm sorry it was only me you were talking to."