LIVING ALONE ***

Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

LIVING ALONE

BY

STELLA BENSON

AUTHOR OF "I POSE," "THIS IS THE END"

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1920

_First Edition 1919_ _Reprinted 1920 (twice)_

This is not a real book. It does not deal with real people, nor should it be read by real people. But there are in the world so many real books already written for the benefit of real people, and there are still so many to be written, that I cannot believe that a little alien book such as this, written for the magically-inclined minority, can be considered too assertive a trespasser.

I have to thank the Editor of the _Athenæum_ for allowing me to reprint the poem "Detachment" and the first chapter of this book. The courtesy of the Editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ in permitting me to use again any of my contributions to his paper also enables me to include in the fifth chapter the tragic incident of the Mad 'Bus.

S.B.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

MAGIC COMES TO A COMMITTEE 1

CHAPTER II

THE COMMITTEE COMES TO MAGIC 19

CHAPTER III

THE EVERLASTING BOY 53

CHAPTER IV

THE FORBIDDEN SANDWICH 75

CHAPTER V

AN AIR RAID SEEN FROM BELOW 97

CHAPTER VI

AN AIR RAID SEEN FROM ABOVE 129

CHAPTER VII

THE FAERY FARM 155

CHAPTER VIII

THE REGRETTABLE WEDNESDAY 195

CHAPTER IX

THE HOUSE OF LIVING ALONE MOVES AWAY 221

CHAPTER X

THE DWELLER ALONE 257

THE DWELLER ALONE

My Self has grown too mad for me to master. Craven, beyond what comfort I can find, It cries: "_Oh, God, I am stricken with disaster_." Cries in the night: "_I am stricken, I am blind_...." I will divorce it. I will make my dwelling Far from my Self. Not through these hind'ring tears Will I see men's tears shed. Not with these ears Will I hear news that tortures in the telling.

I will go seeking for my soul's remotest And stillest place. For oh, I starve and thirst To hear in quietness man's passionate protest Against the doom with which his world is cursed. Not my own wand'rings--not my own abidings-- Shall give my search a bias and a bent. For me is no light moment of content, For me no friend, no teller of the tidings.

The waves of endless time do sing and thunder Upon the cliffs of space. And on that sea I will sail forth, nor fear to sink thereunder, Immeasurable time supporting me: That sea--that mother of a million summers, Who bore, with melody, a million springs, Shall sing for my enchantment, as she sings To life's forsaken ones, and death's newcomers.

Look, yonder stand the stars to banish anger, And there the immortal years do laugh at pain, And here is promise of a blessed languor To smooth at last the seas of time again. And all those mothers' sons who did recover From death, do cry aloud: "_Ah, cease to mourn us. To life and love you claimed that you had borne us, But we have found death kinder than a lover_."

I will divorce my Self. Alone it searches Amid dark ruins for its yesterday; Beats with its hands upon the doors of churches, And, at their altars, finds it cannot pray. But I am free--I am free of indecision, Of blood, and weariness, and all things cruel. I have sold my Self for silence, for the jewel Of silence, and the shadow of a vision....

CHAPTER I

MAGIC COMES TO A COMMITTEE

There were six women, seven chairs, and a table in an otherwise unfurnished room in an unfashionable part of London. Three of the women were of the kind that has no life apart from committees. They need not be mentioned in detail. The names of two others were Miss Meta Mostyn Ford and Lady Arabel Higgins. Miss Ford was a good woman, as well as a lady. Her hands were beautiful because they paid a manicurist to keep them so, but she was too righteous to powder her nose. She was the sort of person a man would like his best friend to marry. Lady Arabel was older: she was virtuous to the same extent as Achilles was invulnerable. In the beginning, when her soul was being soaked in virtue, the heel of it was fortunately left dry. She had a husband, but no apparent tragedy in her life. These two women were obviously not native to their surroundings. Their eyelashes brought Bond Street--or at least Kensington--to mind; their shoes were mudless; their gloves had not been bought in the sales. Of the sixth woman the less said the better.

All six women were there because their country was at war, and because they felt it to be their duty to assist it to remain at war for the present. They were