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.