by Dion Fortune
CHAPTER VIII
THE arrangement was that as soon as I was fit again, I should ring up Miss Le Fay Morgan at her hotel at Dickmouth and arrange a house-hunting expedition. And believe it or not, I was as lively as a grig next morning, instead of my usual laborious convalescence. However, I lay doggo for a bit because I wanted to do some quiet thinking. I had, in fact, quite a lot to think about. One of two things was obvious; either Miss Morgan was telling the truth, or she wasn't. And supposing she weren't, what then? Headley had already told us not to meddle in what was not our business, and given it as his opinion that we were unlikely to be involved if subsequent unpleasantness developed; at any rate, it was better to chance it rather than run our heads into an immediate hornets' nest, possibly get ourselves had up for libel, and lose business to a certainty. The latter argument appealed to Scottie, and he took a reef in his conscience. The worst that could happen to us, even if Miss Morgan the Third had murdered Miss Morgan the Second, was that the judge would give us a piece of his mind at the trial. No one was likely to go to jail over it. Scottie simmered down after that, though he was always a smouldering volcano on the subject of Miss Morgan, whatever her numbering, for he thought she was very, very bad for my morals; and the spiritualism, of which he soon came to suspect us--though I swore it was archaeology, for I had to tell him a certain amount in order to make him keep quiet--he considered even worse for the soul, being unnatural, whereas flagrant immorality is natural. Anyway, what with one thing and another, it was a grief to Scottie, and we spoke of it as seldom as we could. So as far as I could make out, even if Miss Morgan turned out to be a liar and a vamp and a general adventuress, I did not see that I could come to any very grievous harm at her hands if I did not part with any money, at least, not more than I could comfortably spare, for one expects to pay for one's fun within reason; and even if she were all Scottie said she was, I was going to have the time of my young life. In fact I was going to have the time of my young life if she were the half of what he said she was, and I thought I was due for it, having had a pretty lean season heretofore. If, of course, what she said was the truth, as I more than half felt it to be, well, then we were in for big things. So I decided to have something on Miss Morgan both ways; I was entirely game for an adventure in the fourth dimension and if that did not materialise--if that is the right word to use in this connection--I was not averse to a reasonable amount of vamping. So I got up round about noon next day, and crawled into the office, trying to look debilitated, for I had never felt so full of go in my life, and began to shuffle over the lists of suitable residences in the Dickmouth and Starber neighbourhoods that might fill the bill for Miss Le Fay Morgan. When Scottie learnt what I was doing, he sniffed portentously but ceased to rumble. Business is business in Scotland. She wanted something isolated, with large rooms and a basement, that wasn't overlooked, and as near the sea as possible. In fact a sea-view from some windows at any rate was indispensable. I cursed when I thought of the white elephants I had practically given away with a pound of tea that would have suited her just nicely. Basements and isolation spell the servant problem in large letters, and you pretty nearly have to pay people to live in houses of that description. I had seriously I thought at times of driving round the Morgan estate chucking ; cans of petrol and cigarette-ends through the windows. It would have been an economy in the long run. Then I suddenly bethought me that we had the very thing she wanted, though Scottie cursed me for not letting sleeping white elephants lie and selling her someone else's property and making a bit on the deal, for in fact, not only we had it, but she had it. Out beyond Dickmouth, on the far side of the River Dick, was a big headland running right out into the sea for over a mile. At the end of it was a dismantled fort that the War Office had abandoned to the jackdaws as out of date and that my pater had picked up for the Morgan estate as a bargain. He had thought it would make a fine hotel, with a golf-links on the down behind it; but he omitted to inquire about the water supply before he bought it, and when he found that it depended on rain-water tanks, he knew it was a nonstarter as a hotel. It might do for a couple of dozen Tommies who didn't wash over-much, but it was no use for the Grand Imperial Palace he had in mind. So he wrote it off as a total loss and did no more about it, except to let the rabbiting to whoever wanted it; and when the farm at the landward end became derelict, no one wanted it because it was too far from anywhere. So I made up my mind to take Miss Morgan at her face value, plant one of her own white elephants on her, get a bit of fun out of life in general, and leave Scottie to pray for my soul if it needed it. I threw myself whole-heartedly into the adventure, feeling it was heads I won and tails I couldn't lose much, rang up Miss Morgan on the phone, told her that a special Providence was watching over her, which she seemed to believe, and that the Priest of the Moon had got his temple all fixed up and waitTHE ing for her; I asked her to get a luncheon basket from the hotel (for I did not see myself explaining matters to my sister, who would certainly have considered Miss Lc Fay Morgan long past picnicking), and arranged to call for her next morning bright and early and take her to see the temple the Lord had provided. But as soon as I set eyes on her I could have kicked myself for the way I had been thinking of her. Whatever she might or might not be when judged by conventional standards--and the friend of South American presidents was not likely to be very conventional--she was no fraud, I knew that. She was absolutely sincere, and if what she said wasn't true, it was not because she was lying but because she was hallucinated. I was wondering how she was going to manage in her highheeled shoes if I couldn't get the car all the way to the fort; but when she came out of the hotel I saw that she had changed them for a more substantial pair, which, though they looked useful, were nevertheless stream-lined. Apparently it was possible for a woman to get a workmanlike shoe that was not cut on the lines of a canal-barge, though my sister said it wasn't. She had also changed into a loose, blankety sort of coat of greygreen, with a big, fluffy, upstanding collar of light-coloured fur. Over the top of it one could just see her eyes, but no more. Apparently no one ever did see Miss Le Fay Morgan's face in the open street. There was a queer, unusual kind of smartness about the whole kit; I could see the loungers in the sun parlour watching her. I had never before had the experience of being the escort of a woman whom other men obviously coveted, and if there were any lingering languidness left over from my attack, it effectually tonicked it. She was very charming and very friendly, but what with wanting to kick myself for the way I had been feeling, and pride of possession at being seen out with her, I was off my social stroke for the moment and very much the auctioneer, for which I could have kicked myself again with compound interest. But these things are like the asthma, the more you strain at them, the tighter they jam. Anyway, she took her cue from me, and drew in her horns, and I jumped to the conclusion I had wrecked the outing and shut up completely. Although we could see Bell Head lying like a stranded whale on the far side of the bay, I had to drive nearly back to Dickford before we could make for it, for the ferry at the river-mouth didn't take cars. However presently we came to the swingbridge that lets through the coasters bringing coal, and got across into the marshes. Here the land changed, and with it my mood, for this was the country I had seen in my dream when I first met Morgan Ie Fay, if that were whom she really was, as I half suspected. At our backs lay the long ridge on the furthermost spur of which Dickford was built, taking advantage of the first firm ground and the lowest ford. All old towns have their situations chosen for them by necessity, and it amused me, going about the country as my work took me, to try and determine why a hamlet stood in a particular place or a road ran as it did. One could trace the end of the furthermost shelf of the ridge under the soil by the line of farms that followed the line of springs. This part of the marsh was divided up by high dykes and water-cuts, and in the unwholesomely green grass cattle were grazing; but as we got further along, the dykes ceased and the land was given over to those it belonged to--the waterfowl and the old gods.
Only the road was dyked now, and in the roadside ditches stood herons that didn't give a damn for us--they saw so little traffic they didn't know what it meant, and thought that if they froze as they were accustomed to, we couldn't see them any more than the fish could. Suddenly the blue devils that were on me departed, and I turned to Miss Morgan and said: "This was where I had to pilot you with fog-flares the first time you came." I couldn't see whether she smiled or not inside her great furry collar, but her voice came all deep and golden: "You remember that, then?" "Maybe," said I, and concentrated on my driving, for I had stampeded myself with my own remark. Having so little to do with women, I am apt to be either crudely brusque or much too formal. Anyway, the driving needed concentrating on, for we were now on a narrow, grass-grown track carried on a tenfoot dyke, and I had no wish to join the herons. Away on our left Bell Knowie rose in a perfect pyramid from the wide waste of the marshes. Fir-trees grew in the folds of its sides, but its crest was bare to the winds and rather noble, seen over that level land. I pulled up and pointed out the hollow that in my opinion held the old sea-cave, and from the vantage-point that even a ten-foot rise gives in those alluvial flats, I traced for Miss Morgan the shallow winding ditch marked by the gleam of standing water here and there in its bottom, which was all that was left of the ancient River Dick before it changed its course and drowned the monastery. She naturally wanted to turn aside and inspect it, being a woman, but it was impossible to do so as there was no bridge over the water-cuts nearer than Starber, three miles further on, the next coastal town to Dickmouth, if town it could be called. It was really nothing but a fishing village these days. Once it had been a haven of some dimensions, and was listed in Doomsday Book as such, for the scour of the Dick kept the harbour open; but when the river shifted, the glory departed, and now only such boats as could be beached made use of it. Behind the town, however, were the traces of long lines of masonry that had once been massive qusys but had long since been used as a quarry to build and pave the entire district, and only the trenches that marked the footings now remained. My father had bought up the last of them and built quite a lot of his white elephants out of the stone, and I well remember going out with him as a kid in his dog-cart, before motors had reached the likes of us, and seeing the enormous blocks being split with wedges before they could be handled. It was Cyclopean masonry all right, and the cement, wafer-thin, was of such tenacity that it was easier to split the stone than the join. If I knew the secret of that cement, I would make a fortune. We have nothing like it to-day. I mentioned this to Miss Morgan, and heard her laugh. "Do you know that Starbcr is Ishtar's Becre, or harbour? That was the place I was making for when you nearly let me run on a sand-bank because you were day-dreaming then as you do to-day." "I'm frightfully sorry," I said. "I'm not half as loopy as I look, I'm not really, when you get to know me." "Do you ever let anyone get to know you?" said she.
CHAPTER IX
THE embankment carried the road across the shallow groove of the ancient Dick, paying the tribute of a drainpipe to that once navigable stream. Here we could see distinctly the remains of what had evidently been the old tow-path, trodden, I expect, by the feet of slaves when the unhandy seaboats lowered their lateen sails and were towed up the winding water-way through the marshes to Dickford, where they met the tinmen from the hills behind the ridge. Taking advantage of the banked path, a narrow track turned off towards the sea, and this we followed, for it brought us by a winding way to the derelict farm at the foot of Bell Head, also Miss Morgan's property. We looked at it over the fallen dry-stone wall that separated its narrow yard from the wide marsh. At some time it had been white-washed, as is the custom hereabouts, but the whitewash was gone, save for a leprous patch here and there, and the stones were as grey as the salt marsh grass. The house was low and squat and boxlike, such as a small child that had no talent might draw on a slate. There were no signs of a garden, but a patch of ranker growth showed where the manure-heap had been, ominously close to the back door --you can tell the grade of a tenant by his sanitary arrangements better than by anything else--but the steep grassy slope that led up to the face of the rock behind the house showed the dints and ridges of cultivation. Bell Head was shaped like a couchant lion with his tail to the sea and the farm lay between his paws, getting what shelter it might from the westerly gales. The slope that led up to the lion's chest had at some time been terraced, though the plough of more recent operations had gone over the terraces before all had been given back to the thistles and slow-growing sea-down grass. Miss Morgan remarked at once on the lion-form, and pointing to the terraces between its paws, said: "That was where they grew their vines." "Who?" said I taken aback. "The people who used Bell Knowie as a temple. I will grow vines there again if I come back here." We came now into a road that was the work of the War Department, and had been laid out by the simple expedient of drawing a line on a map with a ruler and leaving fatiguing Tommies to hack it out at their leisure. This line was carried diagonally across the steep pitch of the landward end of the Head on a ledge, and at the hairpin bend at the top I feared the car was going to roll over backwards. I thought of the Tommies toiling up here with their supplies before the days of motor-lorries, and felt sorry for them. After that one soul-searing bend the road ran straight again for the full length of the headland till it dipped out of sight at the point. Above us on the crest of the down were many loose piles of stonelike cairns, in which Miss Morgan was interested; but I would not let her stray off to look at them then, but drove straight ahead through ten million skipping rabbits till we came to the dip of the road and saw the fort. Miss Morgan began to bubble with excitement at my side. It was a small place, sunk to protect it from gun-fire, and built of the local limestone by the same unimaginative architect who had laid out the road with a ruler. The rotting gate was off its hinges, and we drove straight into the forecourt. Behind us were the barracks; in front, a semicircle of gun-emplacements; ahead, a long tongue of half-tide rock ran out into the water, and one had only to look at the popple and swirl round the point to know the way the tides ran even on a still day. In stormy weather I should imagine the waves made a clean breach of it. Miss Morgan took one look round and pronounced the place her ideal. I thought of what life must have been like here for the poor God-damn Tommies, and carried the luncheon basket to a sheltered gun-emplacement. Miss Morgan, however, would not settle down to lunch yet, but climbed up an embrasure and walked out to the end of the long razor-back spit that ran some fifty or sixty feet out into the water, and stood at the very edge of the oncoming waves, gazing out to sea. I was uneasy about her, for if she had skiddcd on those barnacled stones, nothing could have saved her, with the tide running like a mill-race, so I called to her to come and look at the bathing-beach. She did not answer, but stood there while I smoked three cigarettes, giving back a step at a time before the advancing waves, for the tide was rising. In her grey-green blanket-coat she was exactly the same colour as the sea, hardly distinguishable from it as she stood there in the half-light of the grey day, the loose folds of her coat flap-flapping like a flag in the wind. Then she took of? her hat, pulled a carved tortoise-shell comb out of her hair, and .ihook loose a flying black mane; I watched her, fascinated; much more fascinated than I ought to have been; I had never met a woman who behaved like this before. I smoked that second cigarette pretty fast. However, I had simmered down by the time I had smoked the third, and as I thought that she had stood there long enough, leaning up against the wind with her hair flying and her clothes blowing, I climbed down, intending to help her back up the rocks. She turned and put out her hand. I thought it was to steady herself for the climb back, so I took it--but no; she drew me down to stand beside her on the narrow point, and kept hold of me. "Come and feel the sea," she said. I stood silently beside her, leaning up against the pressure of the wind as she had done. It was not cold, but a warm and glowing wind that wrapped you round with strong pressure. At our feet there was a perpetual slapping of small ripples, and fu
rther out a steady boom-swish as the breakers hit the rocks. It was fascinating. The sea, deep and in its strength, was all around us save for that narrow knife-edge of wave-swept rock that stretched away back to the fort. I gave myself up to the glamour of it, standing there beside her. Then I noticed a thing I have noticed before when listening to waves breaking on rocks--the sound of the bells in the water. It is, of course, an illusion produced by the noise; a kind of reverberation within the car itself, fatigued by the rhythmical din. I can only compare it to the sound one would hear if the song of the sea in a shell had a throb in it. I listened fascinated; and as I listened it lost its elusive, wind-in-a-shell quality, and became a definite beat, and than a brazen clangour coming up from the very depths as if they were opening upon the seapalaces. Then I was suddenly aroused by a voice in my car: "My dear boy, wake up, or you will fall in!" I turned, startled, to find Miss Le Fay Morgan beside me, still holding my hand. We climbed back over the steep slippery ledges. I admit I looked over my shoulder to see if the sea-gods were following. It had seemed to me that at the moment when her voice interrupted me I had stood at the place where two kingdoms meet and the gates of the sea-kingdom were being opened to me. I suppose, in other words, that meant drowning, and I should have gone by that cold path to join the sea-people if Miss Lc Fay Morgan had not roused me. Then we had lunch, and I drove her home. I was glad she liked the place, for I felt that I had been a wash-out as a companion on an expedition. As we parted outside her hotel, for I would not come in and have tea with her, she suddenly put her hand on my arm and said: "When will you realise that I have no ulterior motive in trying to make friends with you?" I was so taken aback that I couldn't think of a word to say, and could not have trusted my voice to say it if I had. I muttered something ungracious and fled. I would have left my garment in her grasp, like the biblical gentleman, if she had hung on. On the way home I was stopped by our local traffic cop, who said that if he had not known me, he would have run me in. He asked me what possessed me to drive like that, was it something the doctor had given me for my asthma? I said it might have been, and he advised me, as one man to another, to put up with the asthma.