The Sea Priestess

by Dion Fortune

  CHAPTER II

  I MUST say I loved that place. My sitting-room had four dormer windows, full south, and my bedroom faced east and the sun called me every morning. I fixed up a wide brick hearth and burnt peat from the marshes; and had the space either side of it shelved, and began to collect the books I had always wanted. I had never been able to do that before because there wasn't room in my bedroom and I disliked the idea of having my books about the house. There is something very intimate and personal about one's books. They reveal so much of one's private soul. I had no mind to wear my books on my sleeve for my sister to peck at. Besides, they would probably have corrupted the Friendly Girls and set the servants talking- I am afraid it was rather mean of me, but I very much disliked the idea of my sister visiting my stable. I suppose she is a decent creature in her way, in fact she is very highly thought of in the town, but we have got nothing in common. My mother always called me the changeling; God knows how I came to be born into our family. My sister and I have always been like cat and dog, and since I developed my asthma and my temper got short, I have been (he cat. Anyway, I didn't want her. All the same, I knew it was hopeless to try and keep her out; all I could do was to put a Yale lock on the door and make her knock for admission. Things turned out better than I expected, however, for she fell foul of Sally right away by pulling her up over her work. Sally, I admit, was not a good duster, but she was a champion cook. My sister, on the other hand, was a good cleaner but a foul feeder. Sally told my sister that she worked for me, and wasn't taking orders from anybody but me. My sister came to me and demanded Sally's head on a charger. I said that Sally suited me and I wasn't going to sack her. I liked dirt. It made the place more homely. My sister said she wouldn't enter the place again while Sally was there, even if I lay on my death-bed. I said Right-o, that suited me fine. So we left it at that, and she kept her word. So it ended that my partner Scottie and the doctor were the only folk who ever set foot in the place. And they loved it. The trouble was that when they got in, they couldn't be got out, but just sat warning. Now they were very good chaps in their way, especially Scottie; in fact there were plenty of decent chaps in the town and round about, fellows you could go to in a difficulty. I knew them all and was friendly with everybody, as it was my business to be; but all the same, I had no real friends, except perhaps, Scottie, in his queer way. He and I have nothing in common, and we each go our own way, but I can trust him in any emergency; there are worse foundations for a friendship than that. He is an odd bird with an odder history. His parents were on the stage; and when they were here with a touring company, they went sick with the flu, and died of it, first one, and then the other, and little Scottie ended up in the workhouse. But even at the tender age of three his Scotch accent was well established. It has never been eradicated, and whatever came after was budded on the parent stock. He picked up the local dialect from the paupers, and God willed it that the master and his wife should be Cockneys; the result is a regular plaid of an accent. Fortunately he is a man of few words. But what with his portentous silences and my disinclination to drive a hard bargain, we built up a terrific local reputation for probity, which in the long run paid us better than larger profits on the individual deals, though my sister foamed at the mouth when she heard of some of them. If everybody had their rights, she would have been running the business and I the Girls' Friendly. Scottie's education was the usual, but the Scotch came out in him and he made the most of it. If there had been anyone to see about scholarships for him, he would probably have got on; but there was no one, and as soon as he finished school age, they got him a job with us as office boy and made him selfsupporting. My education was also the usual. I was sent to the local academy for the sons of gents, and that just describes us. It was a debilitating establishment for both mind and body. I got no good from it that I know of; but then, on the other hand, I don't know that I took any particular harm. It closed down when the head ran away with the damsel from the local sweetshop. An appropriate end, for it was an establishment that combined saccharine and muck in an amazing manner--impractically high precepts in the class-rooms, and unbelievably low practices in the dormitories. Even at that tender age I used to wonder if the head had ever been a boy himself, and doubted it. I gathered such worldly wisdom as falls to the lot of adolescent louts under such circumstances, which I suppose is better than nothing. I never went away from home except for short holidays. When I arrived at the office under my father, Scottie was already well established and had developed the most extraordinary air of an elderly clerk who has been with the firm for generations. He always spoke of my father as Mr. Edward after my arrival, as if he had held his position under his father. But even when he is sitting on my bed he never calls me anything except Mr. Wilfred. We were just about the same age, but whereas Scottie was already a circumspect business man, I was a callow hobbledehoy. I liked old Scottie from the firsc, but my father put his foot down on any sort of personal friendship owing to his workhouse origin. However, when my father's death threw everything into confusion, it was Scottie who steadied things. Our old head clerk just wept. Scottie and I had to shore him up, youngsters though we were. Everyone thought it was he who steered me through, and so you would have thought it was to hear him talk after the troubles were over, but as a matter of fact, it was Scottie. When my asthma began I soon saw that I was going to be a very uncertain quantity in the business. It was no good relying on me for routine work. I never have been a good auctioneer even at the best of times. A good auctioneer is the gift of God. Moreover, I am slightly short-sighted, and I either get myself accused of favouritism by indignant females because I miss their bids, or else knock things down to people who don't want them. I once sold five lots to an unfortunate individual with a running cold before I realised that he was repressing sneezes and not bidding. My speciality is valuing. I'll value anything except pictures. When the doctor saw the way I was shaping, he told me I ought to take a partner. I asked him to break it gently to my family that a partner would have to be taken into the business. He did, and they agreed. They still had their original wind-up over me. What they didn't agree to, though, was the partner I chose, which was Scottie. They had hoped we should get something County that wanted to mend its fallen fortunes. They raised a terrific yelp, as I knew they would. I admit he is horribly common; that his taste in clothes is deplorable and his H-s uncertain; but he is honest and shrewd and kindly, and a dashed good worker, so I persevered. I cannot see that I have let the business down, as our sort of clients don't call on their house-agents in any case. They never have on us, anyway, and I have never cherished any illusions that they ever would, even if my sister has. To want workers for a flag-day is one thing: to want the pleasure of your company is another. There is no one I would sooner have come and sit with me after a go of asthma than old Scottie, and that is a pretty good test. He sits like a hen and says not a word, but is uncommon matey all the same. So I took him into partnership, and I think I had the best of the bargain. It is a curious characteristic of my family that they will oppose a thing tooth and nail even when they have nothing to put in its place. Scottie got married soon after he was made a partner. I suppose that is bound to make a difference to a friendship, even if you like the wife, and I didn't. She was all right in her way. My sister thought her a very worthy girl. She was the daughter of the local undertaker. Now auctioneers are a cut above undertakers--I don't quite know what undertakers pair off with--so I should have thought she would have considered that that was letting the business down still further, but apparently not. Odd, isn't it, that Scottie's commonness doesn't worry me, but I can't stand his wife's; and her commonness doesn't worry my sister, but she can't stand his. Scottie's marriage left a gap in what had never been very densely populated. He wasn't much of a companion, but he was a friend all right. After Scottie had settled down to the partnership I took no part at all in the routine, but stuck altogether to valuing. That was the part of the business I liked. It took me about the country
and I met interesting people, especially when the assizes were on, for I was often wanted as an expert witness, which is a great lark if you have a sense of humour. Sometimes one barrister had me to give evidence, and sometimes another, and the fellow who had held me up as the last word at one assize would be trying to make out I was mud at the next. Then after it was all over I would dine with them at the "George", and the landlord, who was a pal of mine, would set to work to make us all tight. He never managed it with me, not unduly, at any rate, because I knew his stock, for I used to pick the stuff up for him at the auctions--and jolly good some of it was, too--but we generally fixed them, between us. Now all that sort of thing is very good fun, and I thoroughly enjoy it; but the barristers were here to-day and gone to-morrow, and though I enjoyed them enormously while I had them, it never ripened into friendship. However, in the end I settled down, more or less, with Sally and my books and the wireless; everybody said I was damned unsociable, but God knows I wasn't unsociable if I could have got the sort of society I liked. I am afraid I played my asthma for all it was worth. So I read variously, and I read quccrly. I read a lot of Theosophical stuff, for one thing, which I couldn't have done, not in comfort, anyway, if I had still been at the house. Some of it I liked, and some I didn't. I accepted reincarnation; it was the best thing of its kind I had ever come across and helped me a lot. This life looked like being a wash-out, so I pinned my hopes to the next. When I had nothing better to do, I used to think about the last. I always had to lay up for a day or two after a bout of asthma; one gets rather fed up with books after a bit, and I had never encouraged visitors at the best of times, and these were not the best of times with me. I probably could not have talked if they had come. So I used to lie and think and wonder, and amuse myself by reconstructing my past lives. Now it is an odd thing that I, who cannot piece together a plot for a novel to save my life, much as I like observing people, could construct the most elaborate and fantastic past incarnations for myself. Moreover, after I had been working at them all day, as I would be when I was getting over a bout of asthma, I would begin to dream about them, and on the occasions when I had to be doped I would dream of them with extraordinary vividness. I used to lie between sleeping and waking, and I don't suppose I should have stirred if the house had gone on fire under me. In that state my mind seemed to possess a power of penetration it possessed at no other time. In the ordinary way I skated about over surfaces, and saw no further through a brick wall than most, and my own feelings were an obscure muddle to me, overlaid by what I ought to be, and honestly tried to be. But when I lay doped like this, I had no delusions. Now the odd thing about this state was its curious inverted sense of reality. Normal things were far away and remote and didn't matter: but in the inner kingdom, as I called it, to which I had been transported by the prick of a syringe, my wishes were law, and I could create anything I wanted by just thinking about it. I have a pretty good idea why people take to dope to escape from reality, and abandon life for pipe-dreams and never miss it. I dare say I owe a good deal to the Dangerous Drugs Act. I can best compare my life to a vitaminless diet--plenty of nutritive bulk, but the little something that meant health was lacking. I suppose my trouble was really spiritual scurvy. They say that badly-managed horses develop stable vices, such as crib-biting. What with my dope dreams and Theosophical reading, I began to get on to Peter Ibbctson's idea of "dreaming true". I gradually learnt the knack of day-dreaming, and although I could not obtain the same reality as I got when I was doped, I got quite a bit, and every now and again a day-dream would carry over into a night-dream and I got something really worth while. What I was doing, was, I suppose, really a very superior sort of novel-reading. For after all, we read novels as a kind of supplement to daily life. If you look over the shoulder of the mildest man in the railway carriage, you will find he is reading the bloodiest novel. The milder the man, the bloodier the novel--and as for maiden ladies----! Any particularly toughlooking individual, with overseas tan still on his skin, is probably reading a gardening paper. Thrillers arc, it seems to me, an attempt to vitaminise our spiritual diet. Of course the difficulty is to get exactly the thriller prescription you want. One may be able to identify oneself with the hero for vicarious adventure, but the heroines are always so piffling. I gradually got more and more expert at compounding my own romantic prescriptions, and less and less dependent on the ready-made kind. Almost I came to look forward to my bouts of asthma because I knew it meant a dose of dope; for then the phantasies would become real and take charge, and I would "see life" in the most extraordinary fashion. I also developed my power of "feeling-with" nature things. I had had my first experience of this when I accidentally got in touch with the Moon during my first attack; later I read some of Algernon Blackwood's books; also The Projection of the Astral Body, by Muldoon and Carrington. These gave me ideas. Muldoon had poor health, and when he was lowered by illness he found he could slip out of his body. Asthma is also a lowering thing at tha time. Mystics who want visions always fast; any asthmatic who wants a night's sleep always sleeps on an empty stomach. Put the three together, the asthma, and the drugs, and going supperlcss to bed, and you have all the conditions for slipping out of your body, or so it seems to me. The only drawback is that it was odds-on as to whether one slipped back again. To be perfectly honest, I should not have minded very much if I hadn't--in theory anyway, though on the one or two occasions when I nearly put it to the test I fought like a fiend. I hope this doesn't bore you, but it amused me enormously at the time. And anyway, one cannot please everybody, so one may as well please oneself.