Living Alone | Page 4

"I forget," said the Stranger. "I remember that I put down my trade as
Magic, and they registered it on my card as 'Machinist.' Yet Magic, I
believe, is a starred profession."
"What is your trade really?" asked Miss Ford.
"I'll show you," replied the Stranger, unbuttoning once more the flap of
her pocket.
* * * * *
She wrote a word upon the air with her finger, and made a flourish
under the word. So flowery was the flourish that it span her round, right
round upon her toes, and she faced her watchers again. The committee
jumped, for the blind ran up, and outside the window, at the end of a
strange perspective of street, the trees of some far square were as soft
as thistledown against a lemon-coloured sky. A sound came up the
street....
The forgotten April and the voices of lambs pealed like bells into the
room....
Oh, let us flee from April! We are but swimmers in seas of words, we

members of committees, and to the song of April there are no words.
What do we know, and what does London know, after all these years of
learning?
Old Mother London crouches, with her face buried in her hands; and
she is walled in with her fogs and her loud noises, and over her head
are the heavy beams of her dark roof, and she has the barred sun for a
skylight, and winds that are but hideous draughts rush under her door.
London knows much, and every moment she learns a new thing, but
this she shall never learn--that the sun shines all day and the moon all
night on the silver tiles of her dark house, and that the young months
climb her walls, and run singing in and out between her chimneys....
* * * * *
Nothing else happened in that room. At least nothing more important
than the ordinary manifestations attendant upon magic. The lamp had
tremulously gone out. Coloured flames danced about the Stranger's
head. One felt the thrill of a purring cat against one's ankles, one saw its
green eyes glare. But these things hardly counted.
It was all over. The Mayor was heard cracking his fingers, and
whispering "Puss, Puss." The lamp relighted itself. Nobody had known
that it was so gifted.
The Mayor said: "Splendid, miss, quite splendid. You'd make a fortune
on the stage." His tongue, however, seemed to be talking by itself,
without the assistance of the Mayor himself. One could see that he was
shaken out of his usual grocerly calm, for his feverish hand was
stroking a cat where no cat was.
Black cats are only the showy properties of magic, easily materialised,
even by beginners, at will. It must be confusing for such an orderly
animal as the cat to exist in this intermittent way, never knowing, so to
speak, whether it is there or not there, from one moment to another.
The sixth member took a severely bitten pen from between her lips, and
said: "Now you mention it, I think I'll go down there again for the

week-end. I can pawn my ear-rings."
Nobody of course took any notice of her, yet in a way her remark was
logical. For that singing Spring that had for a moment trespassed in the
room had reminded her of very familiar things, and for a few seconds
she had stood upon a beloved hill, and had looked down between beech
trees on a far valley, like a promised land; and had seen in the valley a
pale river and a dark town, like milk and honey.
As for Miss Ford, she had become rather white. Although the blind had
now pulled itself down, and dismissed April, Miss Ford continued to
look at the window. But she cleared her throat and said hoarsely: "Will
you kindly answer my questions? I asked you what your trade was."
"It's too dretful of me to interrupt," said Lady Arabel suddenly. "But,
do you know, Meta, I feel we are wasting this committee's time. This
young person needs no assistance from us." She turned to the Stranger,
and added: "My dear, I am dretfully ashamed. You must meet my son
Rrchud.... My son Rrchud knows...."
She burst into tears.
The Stranger took her hand.
"I should like awfully to meet Rrchud, and to get to know you better,"
she said. She grew very red. "I say, I should be awfully pleased if you
would call me Angela."
It wasn't her name, but she had noticed that something of this sort is
always said when people become motherly and cry.
Then she went away.
"Lawdy," said the Mayor. "I didn't expect she'd go out by the door,
somehow. Look--she's left some sort of hardware over there in