by Dion Fortune
CHAPTER III
WELL, to continue. I said my power to build up my reincarnation phantasies developed gradually. That is true in a way, and in a way it isn't. It developed in a series of jerks. I would go for some time and get nothing, and then I would get a sudden step forward. Then I would go on again for another blank patch, and then another step. I had read in the Theosophical literature that the best way of remembering your past incarnations was to go over the day backwards every night when you got to bed. I tried that, but I don't think there is anything in it. You do not actually think backwards, you think in a series of disconnected pictures arranged in the reverse order, which is not the same thing. At least, I did, and if anybody does anything different, I should be interested to hear what it is. Personally, I think a lot of that stuff is eye-wash. I had always been fascinated by ancient Egypt, and as in these realms of fancy there is no extra charge for anything, it amused me to think that in a past incarnation I had been an Egyptian. That left rather a long gap between now and then, during which I slept with the worms, a boring occupation, so I decided that I had also been an alchemist who, needless to say, discovered the Philosopher's Stone. Then, one Sunday evening, I went to church with the family, as I do occasionally for the sake of peace and quietness and the business, for one must do these things when one lives in a small place. There was a visiting parson who read the lessons, and he read them rather well. I had never realised before what magnificent literature the Authorised Version is. We had the part about the Flight into Egypt, and the gold, and frankincense and myrrh, and the Three Wise Men who were led of a star, and I was fascinated by it. When I got home I hunted up the Bible that had been given me when I was christened, and that I had never looked at since, save under compulsion, and read it all up. I also read about Moses being trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and Daniel in the wisdom of the Babylonians. We hear a lot about Daniel in the lions' den, but we hear nothing at all about Daniel in his official capacity as Beltcshazzar, head magician to the king of Babylon and satrap of Chaldea. Another thing that interested me was that curious business of the battle of the kings in the valley, four against five--Amraphel, king of Shinar; Arioch, king of Ellasar; Chcdorlaomer, king of Elam, and Tidal, king of nations. I knew nothing whatever about them, but their names were magnificent and sang in my head. Then there was the even odder incident of Melchisedek, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who went out to meet Abraham, bearing bread and wine after the fight was over and the kings were all sunk in the slime-pits. Who was this priest of a forgotten worship whom Abraham honoured? I admit candidly that there is a great deal about the Old Testament worthies that I do not find admirable, but these I found fascinating. So I added a Chaldean incarnation in the days of Abraham to my collection. Then my efforts met with a set-back. I saw a lecture on reincarnation advertised at the local lodge of the Thcosophical Society, so I went to hear it, and it sounded good to me. But in the question-time at the end a lady got up and said that she was the reincarnation of Hypatia, and the chairman got up and said she couldn't be, as that was Mrs. Bcsant; then the lady started to argue, and they played a tune on the piano to drown her voice, and I went home with my tail between my legs and dropped Chedorlaomer and Co. into the discard. I was a bit shy of reincarnation fantasies for some time after that, and took up my old interest in communing with the Moon. The little river under my windows was tidal, and one could tell by its voice what the tide was doing away on the coast. Just above our garden was a weir that marked the end of the tide-water. When the tide was high it was silent, but when the tide was low, there was a lovely silver waterfall effect. There was also'a distinct smell of the sea at such times that I rather liked, though I believe it was supposed to be very unwholesome. It always puzzled the doctor why I, an alleged asthmatic, could bear to live over water like that, and he put it down to its being salt water. But as a matter of fact, I think my asthma started over the hell of a shindy with my family, and I got the first relief from it when I cleared out into the stables and slammed the door behind me. After all, asthma is not the same as bronchitis. There is nothing actually wrong with the works. It is simply that your extensors and flexors cannot agree to differ and jam the bellows. Anyway, I liked the seawecdy smell that came up to me when the tide was low; the mist that rose from the water lay in the deep ravine and never got as far as my windows, but looked like a series of pools and lagoons with the moonlight on it and the trees rising out of it like ships in full sail. And when the tide was making away on the bay, and the salt water pushing back the fresh water and banking it up against the weir till the sluices at the mouth should open at the turn of the flood, there was a curious voice in the water as it gurgled and eddied; a restless, contending voice, as if sea and land were at loggerheads. I used to listen to the land-water trying to push back the sea-water, and remembered what I had read of our local archaeology, for this part of the world was all drowned land. There were knolls that rose like islands in the salt marsh, and sea-ways through the slime when the tide was high, for all the earth about here is estuary silt, brought down from the hills of Wales. If the sea-banks went on the bay, the saltings would be six feet deep in flood-water. Dutch William made the banks, and they burst once, and the water came up to our church. That is why there are sluices at Dickmouth that only open at half-tide. It is all salt marsh between us and the sea, and the town stands on the first of the rising ground. Behind the town is a wooded ridge that carries the road, and coming home along it in the dusk one can see the marshes full of mist, mile after mile, and when the moon is bright, it looks like water, and one could believe that the sea had come again to drown the land. There has always been a strange fascination for me in the story of the lost land of Lyonesse, with its drowned churches whose bells ring fathoms deep. I have been out in a row-boat off Dickmouth and seen distinctly through the clear still water of a neap-tide the walls and towers of an old monastery that was drowned when the river shifted its bed one night of storm. I have often thought, too, of the Breton legend of the lost city of Ys and its magicians; and how treachery delivered the keys of the sea-gates one night, and the sea came in and whelmed it. And I wondered what was the riddle of Carnac, and our own Stonehenge, and who were the men who built them, and why? And it seemed to me that there were two worships, one of the sun, and one of the moon; and that my love of the moon and the sea was the older and was to the other as the other is to us. And I could believe that the druids, priests of the sun-cult, must have looked upon the strange sea-fires of a forgotten worship as we look upon the barrows and dolmens. For it came to me, I do not know why, that those who worshipped the moon and the sea built great fires at the uttermost neap, and as the tide came in, it took them. I could see the flaming pyre of drift on the rocks laid bare but once a year. Black rock, covered with deep-sea slime and giant fucus and great thriving shell-fish that fear no fisher. There was the pyramidal pyre of burning drift, blue-flamed from the salt. And the slow waves licked towards it as the tide rose, and it hissed and blackened below, till at last the high fiery crest fell sparkling into the water, and all was still save for the slow quiet wash of the dark waves on the rocks again, taking back to their depths the giant fucus and great shell-fish. Sometimes these visions of the inward-looking eye had a strange reality and validity for me. In them I could do what is very seldom done in a dream--I could smell the peculiar, acrid smell of burning wood extinguished by salt-water.
CHAPTER IV
WELL, things went on with me much as usual, no better, and no worse; in fact I think on the whole a little better, after one diabolical bout of asthma, and it came towards spring again, and round about March quarter-day, when of course we were particularly busy in the office, I had a very curious experince. The doctor had seen fit to shoot me full of dope without waiting for me to get into extremis, having had the wind put up him by my last performance, and I was lying in my usual moribund condition, not caring if the skies fell in on roe, when I had a queer vision between sleeping a
nd waking. I seemed to go out of my body and leave it behind me after the manner that Muldoon describes, and I found myself out in the saltings towards Bell Head. I remember noting with a feeling of surprise that it was all firm level yellow sand-banks instead of the dark alluvial mud we have nowadays. Obviously there were no sea-dykes, but apparently when it was water, it was water, and when it was land, it was land, instead of the marshy mixture we have nowadays. It seemed to me that I was standing on a rocky outcrop with nesting sea-birds all around me, and above my head, on a high pole, was a fire-basket. Behind me, on the scanty beach, a small row-boat, or rather paddle-boat, was drawn up, and it was exactly like the picture of coracles in the history books. I was waiting beside the beacon ready to light it when a ship should be coming up the channel through the marshes, and we had been waiting and watching for days for that ship, for it came from a far sea-voyage, and I was getting pretty sick of it. Then, unexpectedly close, I saw the ship through the sea-mist and the dusk. And she was a long low craft, undecked amidships where there were rowers, and she had a single mast with a great purple sail, and on the sail were embroidered the faded remains of a crimson dragon. As she drew close I shouted--it was too late to fire the beacon. They dropped the sail with a run, and backed water with the oars and just kept her off the sand-bank. And as they drifted past within a stone's throw, I saw, sitting high on the stern poop, a woman in the carven chair. She had a great book in her lap, and at the commotion with the sail she raised her head, and I saw that she had a pale face and scarlet lips, and long dark hair like seaweed in the tide. Round her hair, binding it, was a gold and jewelled band. For those few moments as the boat wore off the sand-bank I looked into her face, and she into mine; and her eyes were strange eyes, as of a seagoddess. I remembered that the boat we were awaiting was bringing a strange priestess from the land beyond the sunset who was needed for our worship, for the sea was breaking the dykes and drowning the land and it was said that she had the magic that could master it. Now this, I thought, is the seapricstess we have been awaiting. And I looked at her, and she looked at me. Then she passed in her boat and disappeared in the mist and the dusk, and I knew that she was going to the high knoll that rose from the estuary some miles inland. On its crest was an open temple of stones and a perpetual fire, sacred to the sun; but underneath was a sea-cave where the water rose and took the sacrifices bound alive to the rocks. It was rumoured that the sea-priestess would require many sacrifices for her goddess, and when I remembered her cold strange eyes, I believed it. Then I had to pull myself together and help Scottie with the quarterly accounting, and there was no more time for daydreaming of sea-priestesses or anything else. Now it so happened that back in my grandfather's time there had been an old gentleman of the name of Morgan who had owned a lot of land around these parts, and as he got ancient he put it in the hands of our firm as agents to manage it. Then he departed, and left an old sister to carry on. And the old sister had a companion, supposed to be a niece, a foreignlooking woman, reputed to be of French extraction. The Morgans themselves must have been Welsh at some time, as the name indicates; anyway, they never really seemed to belong round about, though they had been here for countless generations. Well, the old lady made a will leaving everything to the companion, which was not unreasonable, as she had neither kith nor kin, being the last of her line; and she left it on condition that the companion took the name of Morgan, which she did, calling herself Lc Fay Morgan, she having originally been a Miss Le Fay. Of course the neighbourhood never managed the Le Fay Morgan, and when the generation that had known her as Miss Le Fay died out, the next generation called her Miss Morgan, touts courte. My father, acting for old Miss Morgan the First, had hocked all the agricultural land to which old Colonel Morgan had pinned his faith, and bought plots at Dickmouth, believing it to be a rising seaside town, for the railway had got as far as us, and was expected to go on to the coast. But as luck would have it, there came a slump in railway-building at that moment, and the railway stopped where it was. Consequently he had sold everything that was worth having and bought what wasn't, and luckily for him the old lady died or I should imagine he would have heard about it. In anticipation of the expected seaside boom he had put up rows and terraces of pretentous family mansions in every direc tion at Dickmouth. There were shops and a dreadful mangy arcade where the station ought to have been but wasn't, and there was a site for a pier, which, thank God, was never built. With the coming of motors, Dickmouth had perked up a bit, and in the end we had got practically everything let--at a price; but there was precious little profit on that estate by the time we had finished propping it up and sticking it together, for the pater had been the prophet Jeremiah of all the jerrybuilders. Consequently the companion, who ought to have been well off if she had had what the old lady had intended her to have, only got just about enough to hold body and soul together and keep her in black bombazine. Then, after we had fixed up all the twenty-one year leases at knock-out prices, the railway pulled itself together and did the last lap, and our seventy-five pound leases commanded pre miums of four or five hundred when they changed hands. However, all things come to an end in time, even leases, and it was our turn now. I had been able to send Miss Morgan the Second some quite decent cheques for the last few quarters, so it looked as if she would have a bit of prosperity in her declining years to make up for the uncommon lean rime she must have had in her middle ones. A lot had to be done about that estate now that the leases were falling in. I didn't think it was the slightest use patching up my father's white elephants any more. In fact, some of them had forestalled the leases by falling in on their own account. The rest were coming home to roost, or whatever it is white elephants do when their day is over. I had got her a decent figure for the site of the pier, and a really handsome one for that dreadful arcade, which had been boarded up as a dan gerous structure for the last five years. But I thought it was a pity to sell any more sites as I happened to know from inside information that the railway was going to be electrified. So I thought I would see if I couldn't do a deal with Miss Morgan, and we would find the money for rebuilding and share the proceeds with her. It would be a dashed good deal for her, and we should pick her up a bit at every corner and turn in the proceedings. That is how house-agents live--nibble, nibble, nibble, all down the line. My father had let these blessed white elephants on repairing leases as far as possible. A repairing lease is a curious arrangement whereby one man spends money on another man's property. Towards the end of the lease he just naturally doesn't spend it. My father had also believed in using a thin layer of cement as a facing for cheap brick. This is all right if you use a good cement that sticketh. closer than a brother; but if you don't, and the pater just naturally wouldn't, it comes up like gumboils on the first frosty night and then blows off on the first windy one. The poor devils who took those houses on repairing leases got a dashed thin deal. Well, the houses and leases were all falling in together, and something had to be done about it. Scottie was going up to London to give evidence in some lawsuit of a client of ours, and I suggested to him that he should call on Miss Le Fay Morgan and put before her my idea for rebuilding instead of selling sites. It is my experience that women take things in much better when they are told than when they are written to. As a matter of fact, being out of their depth when it comes to house property, they judge the man and not the scheme. I knew that Scottie was bound to make a good impression with his overwhelming air of prudence and probity, so I sent him along. In due course he came back, like Noah's dove, but it wasn't an olive branch he had in his mouth, not by a long chalk. He had met with scandal. It appeared that he had gone to the address we had on our books, and it turned out to be a kind of converted mews that had become a studio. Old Scottie had toiled up a chicken-ladder to what should have been the hayloft, and found that all the chairs had the legs sawn off, so that one was practically sitting on the floor, and round all the walls were divans made by the simple expedient of putting boxmattresses on the floor and throw
ing Persian rugs over them. Scottie knew they were box-mattresses because he turned up their skirts and had a look. Mattresses were inextricably associated in Scottie's mind with beds, and he was shocked. I pointed out that there was safety in numbers, but it did no good. I said I was shocked myself at him lifting their petticoats and looking at their legs. That did still less good. He said that as soon as ever he came in and saw those sawn-off chairs, he knew there was something wrong, and when the lady came in, he knew he was right. "How long have we done business with the leddy?" said he. "God knows," said I. Scottie sniffed; he never gets used to hearing me take the name of the Lord in vain. "Her name was on the books when I joined the furrm," he said. "Her name was on the books when I was born," I said. "Weel, what age would ye say she was?" said Scottie. "Getting on," said I. "I'm thirty-six, and she was pasting into my parent properly from the earliest I can remember." "Aweel," said Scottie, "a leddy came into the room, if room ye call it--I should call it a barrn myself--and I said to her: 'I wish to see Miss Le Fay Morgan.' And she said: 'I am Miss Le Fay Morgan.' And I said: 'Ye are verra wcelprcsairvcd, madam, if ye will pardon my sayin' so.' And she went a verra bright pink and said: 'I think ye had better do yer business by letter,' and I said: 'I think I better had.' " From all which I gathered that the lady with whom we had been doing business for years as Miss Le Fay Morgan jolly well wasn't Miss Le Fay Morgan, whoever else she might be. Well, that put us in rather a queer position. Was it our business to rout out the genuine Miss Le Fay Morgan? We had a look at the correspondence, which was as bulky as the family Bible, and the signature never varied, right down through the ages. I took the first and last and a selection of intermediates, and went over to see the bank-manager; he and his cashier had a look at them and pronounced them perfectly O.K. I came back to Scottie, and we scratched our heads. At that moment the afternoon post came in, and we scratched our heads still further, for there was a letter from Miss Le Fay Morgan to say she was at the Grand Hotel, Dickmouth, and would the senior partner go over and take her round the property, "as she had always transacted her business with his father". "A preecocious bairn," was Scottie's comment. "Will ye go? "You bet I'll go," said I. "Don't parrt with any money," said Scottie.