The Sea Priestess

by Dion Fortune

  CHAPTER VI

  OF course the inevitable happened, and I developed a feverish cold and went down with a go of asthma. Miss Lc Fay Morgan rang up the office to make another appointment, as she hadn't finished her business with me. Scottie told her I was ill, and offered himself. She waved him aside and demanded details of my symptoms, which Scottie wouldn't give, disapproving of her thoroughly. Finally one of them hung up on the other, but I was never able to find out which. Scottie went and saw Headley and put the worst possible face on everything; but Headley told him to shut his mouth and look the other way, as he couldn't prove anything, and had better not try. You can't have an inquest unless you have a corpse, and there wasn't any corpse, so far as we knew; or at any rate, it there were, Miss Le Fay Morgan was walking about inside it. I have a suspicion that Scottie also consulted Headley about the possible effect Miss Morgan might have on my morals, and that Headley thought she might be good for me. Anyway, Scottie drew blank at both burrows and came home in a bad temper. Then he gave me a talking-to, but I wheezed at him and pretended to be semi-conscious. If you have got to have asthma, you may as well get some good out of it. Anyway, I gathered one thing from the rather heated, onesided conversation--that I should not be required to track Miss Le Fay Morgan to earth in the interests of abstract justice, a thing for which I have never been able to work up the slightest enthusiasm. Scottic went back to the office nowise sweetened in temper by the interview, and, I rather fancy, made the office boy's life a burden to him. Anyway, the office boy got back at him in a very unexpected manner, and one that had far-reaching consequences in my affairs. The office boy has the job of working the switch-board of the telephone extensions, and the trouble is that if you get a boy intelligent enough to manage the switch-board, he is intelligent enough to take an interest in the conversations, and this particular office boy had apparently been listening-in while Scottic and Miss Morgan had spat at each other, and had drawn his own conclusions as to the lie of the land. At any rate, when a lovely lady walked into the office next afternoon and demanded news of me, he did not refer her to Scottie in the inner office, but acted on his own responsibility, and told her everything he knew, and a lot he didn't. I shouldn't be surprised if half a crown changed hands, either. Anyway, the office boy played hookie from the choir practice that night and went to the pictures. This I know because the vicar asked my sister to ask me to speak to him, which I declined to do, it not being my business, and in any case a decidedly mean advantage to take of the kid. Neither my sister, nor the vicar, nor Scottie, needless to say, ever heard a breath of Miss Le Fay Morgan. That youth was a sportsman. Now whether it was the half-crown or pure chivalry I shall never know, and it is not a question I should care to put, or one to which I should be likely to receive a true answer if I put it, but the office boy led the lovely lady down into the basement, and out into the back-yard, and through the shrubbery down to my abode. He put his head in at the kitchen window and called to Sally, as he was in the habit of doing when he brought my letters, and Sally unlatched the door and left him to climb down from the window and let himself in, as she was in the habit of doing with anyone like himself or Scottie whom she knew well; and in marched the youth, and up the stairs, and showed Miss Le Fay Morgan into my room without pausing to inquire whether I was suitably clad. Needless to say, I wasn't, being in pyjamas and dressinggown, though, thank God, I had shaved. "As I am the person responsible for your illness, I thought I had better come and tell you how sorry I am," said Miss Lc Fay Morgan. I was so completely taken aback I could only stare at her. I had just had a shot of dope, and that is a thing that docs not quicken the wits, though it may loosen the tongue under certain circumstances, as I was to find to my cost. I started to get up off the sofa and do the polite, but she pushed me back again and covered me up with the rug, most motherly. Then she sat down beside me on the big pouf intended for my tray. "Why aren't you in bed?" said she. "Because I hate being in bed," said I. "I would much sooner get up and wander about." Now theoretically I am entirely unconventional, but never having had anything to do with unconventional women, I was thoroughly off my stroke with her, and as prim as a curate. My head was also very swimmy with the dope, and I did not know exactly what I might be saying or doing next if I let myself go under the circumstances. Alone like this, with a woman whom I knew to be a Bohemian, I was like a teetotaller at his first cocktail party. Miss Le Fay Morgan began to smile, "is it against professional etiquette to make friends with a client?" she said. "No," said I. "It is not against professional etiquette, but I think that a man is a fool who does it." She looked taken aback, and the minute I had spoken I was "aimed sorry, and felt that I had thrown away such a chance 3s Would never come my way again. For this was the very thing I had wanted to go to London for, and yet I couldn't break out of my shell and meet it half-way. I guessed it was the d pe that was letting me down. Whatever is in comes out, Warently, under the influence of dope. I'flatter myself I should have managed to be a bit more tactful than that if in my sober senses. Miss Morgan looked at me pretty sharply, and I guess she saw I wasn't my normal self. At any rate, she took no notice rudeness and turned the conversation. "hat a charming room you have," she said. 1 acquiesced gratefully. I have often wondered," said she, "what sort of houses people choose for themselves who know all there is to know about houses." 1 thought that if she could see Scottie's abode, or our main building, for that matter, she would be disillusioned. "he began to walk around and look at my books, which made me squirm. I hate people looking at my books, they are too revealing. I especially hated Miss Morgan looking at them, for - was certain she was the last word in sophistication and culture, and I am not. My books arc a most miscellaneous collection. I think she saw me squirm--she was a most perceiving person--for she turned away from my books and went over to the window and looked out. I am not responsible for the landscape, so I did not mind that. Jhcn she heard the voice of the weir. ^s that the river down below you?" she said. ^old her it was. The one that comes out at Dickmouth?" I told her that was so. "This is the Narrow Dick," I said. "Where the Broad Dick is, I have never been able to discover. It is not marked on the maps." "There is no Broad Dick," said she. "The original name of this river was the River Naradck. 'Narrow Dick' is only a corruption of it." "How do you know?" said I. "Because I am interested in such things, and I have looked it up," said she. "Where did you get hold of it?" said I, for I was keen on the archaeology of the district myself, and thought I knew it pretty thoroughly, but I had never come across that before. She smiled a queer smile. "If I told you, you wouldn't believe me, any more than you believe me when I tell you that I am Vivian Le Fay Morgan." There was something startlingly familiar about the name that completely distracted my attention for the moment. I couldn't think where I had heard it before, or what significance was attached to it, and yet I felt sure it had a very vital significance if I could only recall it. Miss Le Fay Morgan smiled again. "I suppose you do not know it," she said, "but although you got my name right at Dickmouth, to-day you are calling me Miss Morgan Lc Fay." Then I remembered. Morgan Le Fay was the name of King Arthur's witch sister, to whom Merlin taught all his secret knowledge. She smiled again. "I am part Breton, part Welsh," she said. "My father called me Vivian after Vivian Lc Fay, the wicked young witch who beguiled Merlin in his old age in the forest of Broceliande. Perhaps he was right, I do not know. But Miss Morgan would never call me that; she hated it; and when she left me her money), she stipulated that I should take her name. I wonder what she would have said if she had heard your version of it!" It rubbed my fur the wrong way to hear her lying; I wasn't going to acquiesce, and I couldn't very well tell her to her face I disbelieved her, so I offered no comment and changed the subject. "You still haven't told me your authority for the statement that the name of the Narrow Dick was once Naradck." "Are you keen on archaeology?" "On local archaeology, yes, very." "Then perhaps you can tell me the whereabouts of the cave under Bell Knowie where the tide rises and falls." For a moment I w
as about to answer her, for I knew exactly where the cave was; I had a perfectly clear picture of it in my mind's eye; it was in a particular fold on the side of the hill towards the old bed of the river, now dry save for a slender trickle of surface-water after rain. Then all of a sudden I remembered that the only thing I knew about that cave I had learnt in the curious dream I had had of the coming of the seapriestess, and that the woman in front of me was strangely like the sca-priestess. I raised myself on my elbow and stared at her. I couldn't speak. I was utterly bewildered. She looked at me with a very curious expression in her eyes. I think she too was surprised. She hadn't expected such a reaction. "Is there any such cave about here, or--any tradition of such a cave?" I shook my head. "Not to my knowledge," I said. "Then--why did you react so violently when I asked you about the sea-cave? What do you know about it? " I was at a disadvantage. I could only roll over on my pillows and stare out of the window. She kept silent and waited. She knew I would have to answer sooner or later. I was in that mood when I didn't care. Dope always has that effect on me. I rolled back and faced her. "Well, if you want to know," I said, "I had a very curious experience recently, after I'd had an injection of morphia. I dreamed of the country round here as it must have been in prehistoric times, and there was a sea-cave then, though there isn't now, because the sea has receded and the river shifted, and the cave silted up. I have traced that cave, and it is probably there all right, though you can't see it. It gave me a queer turn to find the signs of it in a fold of the rock; but one can explain that by subconscious memory. But it gave me a much queerer turn to hear you refer to it, for I have never spoken of it to a living soul. Did you dream of it too? Or is it a thing that is known historically?" "I did not dream of it, I saw it in a crystal." "Good Lord," said I. "Where are we getting to?" "That is what I would like to know," said she. "Look here," I said, "I have got a load of dope on board. I think I had better keep quiet, I am only talking nonsense." "Not at all," said she. "You are talking perfectly good sense, though I admit you would be wise to choose your audience." I laughed. I think I was half tipsy with the drug. "You wouldn't think I was talking sense," I said, "if I told you the whole of that dream, for I saw you in it. If you believe that, I'll believe that you are Miss Le Fay Morgan, or Morgan Lc Fay, for the matter of that." She looked at me, and her eyes suddenly glowed as they had done when she saw the effect she had on me when she put back her collar on that first day. "I know you speak the truth," she said slowly, "for I saw you recognised me when I showed you my face." "Yes, I recognised you all right, *' I said, and laughed. "Don't laugh like that," she said* "you set my teeth on edge." "I beg your pardon," said I. *' '^'s a mad world, my masters.' " "No," said she, "not mad. weak-minded. And you and I are just a little bit saner than most, and we src fortunate enough to have met each other. Let's put the cards on the table, shall we? I will tell what I know if you will tell what you know." This was not a proposition to p^ before a house agent, especially one who had been trained by Scottie, but I was dead to the wide, and shot full of dope, and fed to the teeth with my illness, and I just didn't care at that moment if life went up in flames, or fell into the cellars, or blew to glory generally. That must be my excuse, if excuse is needed. So I told her. It was very difficult to tell coherently, and of course I began at the wrong end, but by dint of questioning and patience she got it pieced together. "You got the sea-priestess through the moon," she said, "for the moon rules the sea. They are not two separate experiences, but two consecutive parts of the same experience. And now-- you have got me. I am the third part of the experience that completes it, you know." I gently pressed the tender spot on my arm where Beardmore, our medico, had shoved in his needle. "I have had a lot of dope," I said. "I guess you are an hallucination." She laughed. "Now I will tell you my half of the story," said she, "and then you shall judge."

  CHAPTER VII

  IT was certainly a startling tale Miss Le Fay Morgan told, and boiled down, it amounted to this. Her ancestors had been a Huguenot family from Brittany who had settled in England at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They had married other French refugees, and later had intermarried with the English, and all had gone on quite peacefully until the last of the line, her father, had married a Welshwoman, and then the two Keltic stocks, the Breton and the Welsh, had reinforced each other and produced her. "I am fey by nature as well as by name," she said. Then her father died, and she was left to shift for herself, and had got on to the stage in the chorus of a provincial pantomime, and thence worked her way up. "My greatest success," said she, "was as the Demon Queen in 'Jack and the Beanstalk'." I believed her. She must have made a magnificent female Mephistopheles. Anyway, it was a precarious existence, and when she got the chance of a job with Miss Morgan through the good offices of a mutual cousin, she took it on. Those were the days when table-turning was the vogue; old Miss Morgan was very keen on it and made her new companion lend a hand when she gave a table-turning party to some like-minded neighbours; and the table, which had hitherto only scraped its feet a little, suddenly rose on its hind legs and danced a jig. Old Miss Morgan was thrilled to the marrow-bones, and so, for the matter of that, was Miss Le Fay, and they went at it hammer and tongs. The table proving unwieldy, they got a Planchette, and it was the Planchette that first talked about the sea-cave in Bell Knowle. "If you find that," said the Planchette, "you will find the key to everything." Naturally it gave Miss Morgan the Second a shake-up when she found I had learnt about the sea-cave in the way I had. I told her all I knew about the archaeological point of view. Bell Knowle was really Bel, or Bael Knowle, the hill of the sun-god, where right down into historical times they burnt the Bale-fires on May-eve, the night of Beltane. Of recent years a dear soulful lady had revived the pretty custom, and even gone so far as to get the vicar to grace the proceedings. Little did he know what he was assisting at! Planchette had quite correctly declared that the seand Miss Le Fay was in possession of her estate. Later on, Miss Le Fay abandoned Planchette for the crystal, and then, of course, her notes ceased to be evidential, save for the element of prophecy in their contents, which I must say was most marked. Well, it seemed that the first communicator to avail himself of the line of communication opened up by Planchcttc was the drowned monk, very anxious to explain himself. He apparently wanted to justify what they had been doing at their abbey that had caused the sea to overwhelm them, and wished it to be realised that they had not been a rackety crowd, as tradition averred, but had been experimenting along original lines, and it was an experiment gone wrong, not commonplace debauchery, that had led to the catastrophe. He said, and I could bear him out, that our district had been quite a centre of ancient civilisation, and that a certain brother, who I suppose nowadays would be called a psychic, had had a lot of queer dreams, and on the strength of these they had gone exploring into the backward and abyss of time, where no Christian ought to go, and had got so fascinated and caught up with the whole thing that it was like taking to drink; and the old abbot was the worst of the lot--fairly mad on it. The little monk who came through was nobody in particular, just one of the rank and file and always thoroughly scared of the whole proceedings. In fact he would not talk about them more than he could help; all he wanted was to have masses said for his soul so that he could settle down and get some rest. So Miss Morgan the First arranged to have masses said for the whole party, finding the local priest unexpectedly sympathetic. Of course masses have to be paid for. But Miss Le Fay said it wasn't altogether that. He seemed to understand a good deal without having to be told very much. They were not sorry to see the last of the little monk, as he burbled away about his sins and wouldn't tell them about the things they were really interested in, which I suppose, after all^ were his sins, but not in the way he understood them. So they cleared the line and tried for someone else, and this time they landed a big fish that precious nearly pulled them in. At any rate, they landed the spirit who said he had been the one that had communicated with the old abbot through his mediumistic monk. This individual called himself the Priest of the Moon, and believe me, he was a heavyweight. I met him afterwards, and I know. He, apparently, did not mind about sin, and was anxious to revive the old worship and get back to work again. So these two good womcii undertook to lend him a hand. God knows why, with the example of that drowncd-out monastery before their eyes; but these things have an extraordinary fascination like, as I said before, taking to drink; for here was I doing exactly the same thing myself, with the awful example staring me in the face equally. Well, Miss Morgan was pretty ancient, and Miss Le Fay, by her own account at any rate, no chicken, and the old lady began to sicken for her last illness and had to be nursed day and night, so there was no chance for any more spooking for the time being; but old Miss Morgan made Miss Le Fay promise that she would carry on with the job as soon as she was free to do so, and left her her money on that condition, though of course it did not appear in the will. And then, thanks to my unlucky pater, there was no money worth mentioning to leave, so all the plans were hung up. Now, however, that things were improving. Miss Le Fay wanted to open up matters again, and wanted my help in so doing. She put it quite as a business deal; she wanted a property purchasing and putting in order, but I felt pretty certain she had got a few cards up her sleeve that she wasn't putting on the table at that moment. So Miss Morgan the Second took her scanty pittance and went to live on the Continent, as many another old maid in straitened circumstances has done before her, living being cheaper there than here. But she took her Planchettc with her, and presently purchased a crystal, and the Priest of the Moon apparently came along too. Anyway, the work went forward, in theory, if not in practice. And then a queer thing began to happen. Miss Le Fay, or Miss Le Fay Morgan, as I suppose she ought to be called now, considering herself in the sear and yellow leaf, was in the habit of knocking about alone in these Latin countries in a way a young girl couldn't dare do; but presently she found it didn't pay. The local bucks began to make themselves an awful nuisance, especially after she had spent the evening with Planchette and the Priest of the Moon; and as soon as she began with the crystal, things became impossible, and she jolly well had to watch her step as if she were young and lovely. It took her a long time to realise things, for she was wearing out Miss Morgan's wardrobe, but one day a dressmaker offered her a job displaying styles at the races, and you could have knocked her down with a feather. She took on the job, and had a high old time, and then she went back to the stage again. She never, she said, caught on in the Anglo-Saxon countries, where they like their chickens tender, but in the Latin countries, where they appreciate "It" for its own sake, she was Queen of the May. She was out in the Argentine at the time when it was opening up, and she was out in Mexico in the great days, and knew Diaz; and anyway, what with one thing and another, and I didn't ask too closely what they were, she got a bit of money put by, enough with what she had from the estate to save her from the need of working, and she had come home to London and settled down in the flat-cum-hayloft where Scottie found her, and got busy in good earnest. It was no wonder Scottie, being Highland Gaelic, took fright at that hayloft, for it was where she did her stunts. Those were the bulletins up to date; and then cash began to come in in bulk, and she saw that the time was ripe for carrying out the original plan. She also saw, however, that Scottie was in for a fearful attack of Calvinistic conscience, and to explain to him what she had explained to me was perfectly useless, and that if she couldn't straighten things out in some way, she was going to have trouble. She guessed howver, having known the old man, that I might be a horse from a different stable, so had come down "on spec", also to spy out the land with a view to her forthcoming scheme, and found that I, all unknowingly, had crossed the same trail. "And do you believe me now?" said she at the end of it all. "Yes," said I, "I do. For if you were telling lies, you would tell better ones than these." Then in came Sally with my tea, and looked as taken aback as if she had seen a ghost when she perceived that I had company. She hung havering in mid-air for a moment or two, not quite sure which way she was going to take things, for, as I remarked before, I had got the dog's job with her, and not even an old age pension kills out the Old Eve in the feminine breast. However in the end she apparently decided that the lovely lady would cheer me up, so she fetched another cup and cut some more bread and butter with a good grace. I was truly thankful for that, for if Sally had turned awkward, we had the makings of a mess.