Living Alone | Page 6

a
woman, even in war-time. Often the brutes are savage, and always they
are obstinate. The shop-lady could not afford to go to the City by Tube,
not to mention the ferry fare, which was rather expensive and erratic,
not being L.C.C. Of course a flash of lightning is generally available
for magic people. But it is considered not only unpatriotic but bad form
to use lightning in war-time.
The shop was not expecting customers on Sunday, but its manageress
had hardly got her head well into the basin when somebody entered.
She stood up dripping.
"Is Miss Thelma Bennett Watkins at home?" asked Sarah Brown, after
a pause, during which she made her characteristic effort to remember
what she had come for.
"No," said the other. "But do take a seat. We met last night, you may
remember. Perhaps you wouldn't mind lending me one-and-twopence
to buy two chops for our luncheon. I've got an extra coupon. There's
tinned salmon in stock, but I don't advise it."
"I've only got sevenpence, just enough to take me home," answered
Sarah Brown. "But I can pawn my ear-rings."
I dare say you have never been in a position to notice that there is no
pawn-shop on Mitten Island. The inhabitants of model villages always
have assured incomes and pose as lilies of the field. Sarah Brown and
her hostess sat down on the counter without regret to a luncheon
consisting of one orange, found by the guest in her bag and divided,
and two thin captain biscuits from stock. They were both used to
dissolving visions of impossible chops, both were cheerfully familiar
with the feeling of light tragedy which invades you towards six o'clock
P.M., if you have not been able to afford a meal since breakfast.

"Now look here," said Sarah Brown, as she plunged her pocket-knife
into the orange. "Would you mind telling me--are you a fairy, or a
third-floor-back, or anything of that sort? I won't register it, or put it on
the case-paper, I promise, though if you are superhuman in any way I
shall be seriously tempted."
"I am a Witch," said the witch.
Now witches and wizards, as you perhaps know, are people who are
born for the first time. I suppose we have all passed through this fair
experience, we must all have had our chance of making magic. But to
most of us it came in the boring beginning of time, and we wasted our
best spells on plesiosauri, and protoplasms, and angels with flaming
swords, all of whom knew magic too, and were not impressed. Witches
and wizards are now rare, though not so rare as you think.
Remembering nothing, they know nothing, and are not bored. They
have to learn everything from the very beginning, except magic, which
is the only really original sin. To the magic eye, magic alone is
commonplace, everything else is unknown, unguessed, and undespised.
Magic people are always obvious--so obvious that we veteran souls can
rarely understand them,--they are never subtle, and though they are new,
they are never Modern. You may tell them in your cynical way that
to-day is the only real day, and that there is nothing more
unmentionable than yesterday except the day before. They will admire
your cleverness very much, but the next moment you will find the
witch sobbing over Tennyson, or the wizard smiling at the quaint
fancies of Sir Edwin Landseer. You cannot really stir up magic people
with ordinary human people. You and I have climbed over our
thousand lives to a too dreadfully subtle eminence. In our day--in our
many days--we have adored everything conceivable, and now we have
to fall back on the inconceivable. We stand our idols on their heads, it
is newer to do so, and we think we prefer them upside down. Talking
constantly, we reel blindfold through eternity, and perhaps if we are
lucky, once or twice in a score of lives, the blindfolding handkerchief
slips, and we wriggle one eye free, and see gods like trees walking. By
Jove, that gives us enough to talk about for two or three lives! Witches
and wizards are not blinded by having a Point of View. They just look,

and are very much surprised and interested.
All witches and wizards are born strangely and die violently. They are
descended always from old mysterious breeds, from women who
wrought domestic magic and perished for its sake, and from men who
wrought other magic among lost causes and wars without gain, and fell
and died, still surprised, still interested, with their faces among flowers.
All men who die so are not wizards, nor are all martyred and
adventuring women witches, but all such bring a potential strain of
magic into their line.
"A witch," said Sarah