Living Alone Read online

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

  LIVING ALONE

  BY

  STELLA BENSON

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

  MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITEDST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON1920

  _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 _Athenaeum_ 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....