by Dion Fortune
CHAPTER X
I HAVE always been a notable exponent of what is called doorstep wit: that is to say, all the admirable things one thinks of as the door shuts behind one, and that might have been said with such telling effect if one had only thought of them earlier. I have the additional disadvantage that the mechanism does not work impartially with me, for when my temper rouses, I have a quick and bitter tongue, often to my lasting regret. But when I am moved emotionally, and would particularly like to respond, I am a dumb dog. I could not expect Miss Morgan to persevere in the face of my boorishness. It was a most odd thing that the very companionship I had wanted to go to London to seek had sought me out here, after I had abandoned all hope of it--and yet here was I turning it down with both hands so persistently as to leave no possible doubt in anyone's mind as to what my apparent feelings might be, whatever were my real ones. I made up my mind that when next I expected to meet Miss Morgan I would have a couple of drinks, and see if that would loosen my inhibitions. One consolation, however, remained to me--Miss Morgan had charged me with the task of transforming the fort into a human habitation, for the place where a pre-War government kept Tommies could hardly be reckoned as that. So in any case I must see her again, not once, but several times. I pinned my hope to the fact that I might get a little tamer as the novelty wore off. I cast about for a firm to do the job. I did not want to use our usual contractors as I did not want gossip; finally I lit upon a quaint old boy well-known locally for church repairs, a highly specialised form of building, and one for which there is considerable scope round our way, for we have some lovely village churches. This old' boy, Bindling by name, used to load all his gear, his three old workmen, which were all he had, and his idiot son, into a huge hay-cart with a couple of hairy old horses to pull it, and set out for the job in any of four counties. They walked up all the hills, and they walked down all the hills, so they took some time to arrive after the contract was signed, and when they got there, they never hurried; but then, on the other hand, they never stopped; so in the end they got through as soon, and sometimes sooner, than more orthodox and up-to- date contractors. The idiot son was an inspired carver, and though they had to tether him to the scaffolding to prevent him coming down the quickest way when the whistle went, which consisted in stepping off into thin air, he was really the backbone of the business. Old Bindling trundled out to the fort, arriving there in the course of a week or ten days. How he ever got up that Army road and round that hairpin bend, God only knows, but he did. The fort had been built to stand gunfire, so no structural repairs were needed, but of course there wasn't a pane of glass left in the windows or a door on its hinges, thanks to trippers, and there was something dead in the water supply. It turned out only to be a jackdaw in the end, but you would never have believed one miserable bird could have gone so far--or got so high! I can do an architect's work, though I have never taken an architect's degrees, so I got the place measured up while Mr. Bindling and his party fished for the jackdaw--whom we were all convinced must be at least a sheep--taking turns at the job--one down, t'other come on, the idiot son standing the atmosphere best. He had some remarkable qualities, had that youth, for all he lacked in other directions. I wanted to transform a place that looked like a jail into a temple for my sea-priestess, as I called Miss Morgan behind her back, lacking the nerve to call her to her face, though I am sure she would have liked it. I had not got an easy job on hand, for to stick ornamentation on that grim stone structure was useless, it would merely look like a tipsy deacon in a paper cap. I turned over many books dealing with architecture all over the world--Miss Morgan never knew how near she came to getting an Aztec temple to live in--and finally lit on one that struck the right note, and drew my inspiration therefrom. It was an old monastery in the Apennines that had become the villa of a rich American, and the architect had done his job well, retaining the original stark severity, but breaking it by the line of his windows and softening it with a pergola. I roughed out my ideas, and saw that the fort would take to them kindly; then I worked up a scale drawing and sent it off to Miss Morgan, who of course had long since returned to London. She sent back a letter that made me feel warm for a week-- "I knew when I saw your room that you were an artist, but I did not know that you were such an artist as this." Needless to say, I returned thanks on the office paper in the covering letter to an estimate. I would! It was obviously impossible to follow my model slavishly and have a creeper-covered pergola. Any creeper except ivy would have gone out to sea the first wild night, and ivy would have taken a generation, possibly two, to cover a pergola in that situation. So I turned to and designed a stone-built pergola covered with carved sea-plants and queer sea-beasts. I nearly lost my life off the point of rock trying to fish up giant fucus to act as a model. Old Bindling, who caught me by the collar as I skidded towards deep water, told me that every place that is intended for a sacred edifice, even the humblest Little Bethel, always demands a life in its building. That is why he repairs churches, but won't ever build them. He little knew that he was preparing a temple for the sea-gods at the present moment, and that it was the second time they had come dashed near to having my life! Uplifted by previous appreciation, I took a lot of trouble with the designs for the carvings on that pergola, and felt rather pleased with them when I finally packed them off to Miss Morgan by registered post where she was holiday-making on the Continent. But not only did she write back even more warmly than before, but she showed them to someone she knew, and they were reproduced in an art journal. Then she had them framed. She never knew it, but I had to do the dashed lot over again out of my head for the idiot Bindling to work from. Of course I did not do the second lot in as much detail as the first, and any way, it was a labour of love in which I worked off some of the libido that had got dissociated by the various bricks I had dropped in my dealings with her. I had broken the grim line of the existing buildings by putting Gothic arches to all the windows. The entrance to the fort was by a most giddy-making, plank bridge that spanned no end of a moat, a really efficient affair. I replaced the rotting timbering with a lovely little round-arched stone bridge copied from one in Cumberland that I had seen on a walking holiday before I had my asthma. Into the tunnel-like entrance that passed under the officer's quarters and gave access to the courtyard, and which I gothicked interiorly as I couldn't do it exteriorly without bringing the bally place down on our heads, I put enormous double doors of oiled oak, copied from the cathedral and decorated with some very fine wrought-iron hinges, which I made with the help of our local blacksmith from my own designs, and as nice a bit of genuine craftsmanship, if I may say so, as anyone could wish to see. Getting this job done gave the show away to a certain extent, and my sister was on to it like a hawk; but the special Providence about which I had ragged Miss Morgan still watched over us, and the hinges were borrowed for a local arts and crafts exhibition, and then borrowed for a London one, so a slight cloud of glory spread over the family, and my sister, who had no fault to find with my goings-on, believing Miss Morgan to be rising ninety, forgave me for telling her nothing. "Has Miss Morgan still got all her faculties?" she asked one day. "She seems all right to me," I said, "but Scottie thinks she's frail." So he did, but not in the way they took it. After that they became reconciled to my being more and more out at the fort, going there nearly every day, in fact. I found the sea-air was doing wonders for my asthma, which they also observed, so altogether Fate was playing into my hands. Not that I ever place too much reliance in that temperamental goddess, for she has always had a knack of leading me on and then giving me away. I suppose that is inevitable in a place where everybody knows everybody, that is riddled with poachers, and where all the courting is done under hedges; what the poachers miss, the loving couples see, and as both parries, owing to the nature of their activities, are obliged to keep a sharp look-out, not much passes unnoticed. I have finally come to the conclusion that frankness is the better part of discretion in this district, though I have no conscientious
objection whatever to telling lies to people who inquire about what docs not concern them. I suppose that comes of being educated at our local academy for the sons of gents, where the first thing one learnt, and the only thing one learnt thoroughly, was to extricate oneself from difficulties with the aid of the imagination. Being, as Miss Morgan said, an artist, and in more ways than she knew of, I excelled at this. Had I been a pukka sahib with an old school tie, it might have been otherwise; but one needs considerable capital to achieve honour without martyrdom, and all our capital was tied up in the family business. It is a curious thing, however, that though my sister has called me a liar times without number, she has never caught me out, having always pitched on the wrong thing owing to her limited knowledge of human nature. Recently I have not bothered so much whether they knew things or not, my newly-acquired temper protecting me. All my life long, till I developed asthma, I had been a mother's boy. Then, with the coming of the asthma, I broke out. It is said that the gods always make you pay the price for any great blessing, but in my case, having sent me a pretty unmitigated curse, they funded up handsomely in other directions. I can honestly say, with my hand on my heart--what's left of it-- that if I had the chance to choose between being an asthmatic or a mother's boy for the rest of my life, and having tried both, I would choose to be an asthmatic. My family took it hard, however, when I began telling them to go to hell. It was like being bitten by a rabbit. We worked on the fort all the summer, and I must say it was a success. From the landward side it looked like the remains of a ruined abbey, for it had the pointed windows, but not the pointed roof. The roof was as flat as would throw off the water in order to give minimum resistance to the wind, and most of the slates having gone to glory long ago, I roofed it with split stone like a Cotswold cottage, and it looked rather well. The three gun-cmbrasurcs had shallow, semicircular steps leading up to them, and low balustrades, all carved with seahorses and other queer beasts; and I had made a stair and path down to the point of the rocks, balustraded as far as I dare, for I had no wish to have Miss Morgan skidding off into deep water as I had so nearly done. I had also made a delightful, winding, balustraded balcony leading down to the bathingbeach, a little cove looking out to sea, just under the lee of the headland. It was here that drift-wood came ashore in surprising quantities; I did not think Miss Morgan would ever need to cart coal if she cooked with oil, as I expected she would. Whenever the idiot had nothing else to do, we put him on to fishing out the drift-wood to keep him out of mischief. If he were not kept busy, he was given to setting things on fire. I wanted to get a good stock of drift-wood well dried out against Miss Morgan's arrival, for I thought it would be rather nice for my sea-pricstess to have a genuine sea-fire to welcome her, for the blue flame of the salt-soaked wood is so beautiful. I put navvies to work on the hairpin bend and took the worst of the venom out of it, though it was still pretty tricky, and we got the furniture vans up without accident, though I admit there was plenty of cursing. Miss Morgan sent a man and his wife to take charge at the farm--Cornish folk, the square kind, as broad as they are long, and as thick as they are wide. I could see they both adored her. It was to be their job to look after the place. They were to live at the farm, and to trundle out and do what was required at the fort, and trundle back when they had finished, and Miss Morgan told me to get them a car to trundle in as it was all of a mile and a bit over. The car for the job had to be considered carefully, as there were not the makings of a chauffeur in Trethowen--it was too much, I knew, to expect him to change gear--so although he had to have power to get up the gradient, I didn't want to give him a car that would get away with him. Finally I found an old ancient Ford of the original vintage that could shin up a telegraph-pole; a high, hump-backed two-seater with a hood, though they could never use the hood on that headland except in fine weather. It was the funniest sight you ever saw to see them trundling along in this, Trethowen and his missus in front, and all the brooms and brushes pushed in behind. He went bucketing along at a spanking ten, hooting al the rabbits. He loved hooting. I had to get him a new hooter, he soon bust the old one. He never went any faster, even on the flat; but then he never went any slower, even on the bend; to see him swing that hairpin bend at ten miles an hour was a sight to make your blood run cold. They soon got the place more or less ship-shape, though of course the finishing touches had to wait for Miss Morgan. All my part of the job was done, and I was out at the fort for the last time, bustling old Bindling into his hay-cart, for Miss Morgan had wired to say she would be arriving that afternoon, and he ought to have been out the previous day; but builders have been the same since the Tower of Babel fell down on them through their stopping to talk. There was only one train she could come by, which would get her into Dickmouth at 5.15, and then she would have an hour's drive out to the fort, so I reckoned I had ample time in hand to do my get-away before she was due, and was taking a last look round the place before leaving it. I had practically lived there all summer, bringing food out with me till the Trcthowens arrived, and then they made my meals, and only sleeping at home--a God-sent relief. Taking a last look at everything I had done, I felt like a mother whose child goes out into the world. I think that as creative artists, authors have the best of it, for an author docs not lose his book when it is published, but an artist has to give up his picture to the purchaser, and even a composer is dependent upon the interpretation of the performer. As for an architect, poor devil, he puts his soul and infinite research into a period house, and the purchasers go and paint it pink! I heard no sound to give me warning, and was mooning round at my leisure, saying good-bye to the sea-horses and other queer beasts I had brought into existence, when a little black sports car drove in under the archway, and there was Miss Morgan. I was so taken aback that I simply grinned from ear to ear and said: "Hullo?" which is not the way the best house-agents greet their clients. "Hello? How arc you?" said she, smiling at me round her collar. I had been wondering all summer how she would manage about collars in the warm weather, and whether she would be driven to appear in public in her bare face. But not a bit of it, she had managed all right. She had got on a silk raincoat with a big stand-up storm collar that came to the tips of her ears, and a ragamuffin slouch hat was pulled down to meet it, so she was just as private and secluded as ever. Luckily for me there was no need for any more effort at politeness on my part, for I had shot my conversational bolt with that one hullo. Out came the Trethowcns, beaming a welcome; and then Mr Bindling had to be introduced, and the idiot son chased off. I took on the task of heading off the idiot son while the old boy did the polite, for the poor mooncalf was determined not to be left out of it, but as he dribbled profusely, and had other even less endearing traits, he could not very well be invited very far into it. However, the old foreman came to the rescue, and pressed a boathook into his hand, and put him to fish for drift-wood from the steps leading down on to the rocks, as the tide was high. The minute he saw the drift-wood he forgot all about Miss Morgan, so everybody was happy. Old Bindling and I showed her round, and she was delighted and delightful. I saw him trying hard to peer under her hat, or over her collar, but nothing doing. The fort consisted of the officer's quarters at one end, or whoever the person might be who was in charge of that God-forgotten detachment, and a great gaunt barrack-room at the other. Knowing that there would not be many days in that exposed spot when one could sit out in comfort, I had made the barrack-room into a sun-parlour by fitting it with shop windows right across the front. The barrack-room stove, when it was pulled up by the roots, left behind it a crevasse big enough for an ingle-nook, so I had fitted it accordingly, with a wide brick hearth and two seats in the angles. For burning driftwood she wanted fire-dogs, not a grate, so I designed her a noble pair of fire-dogs and had them cast at a Bristol foundry. She hadn't commissioned them, but I hoped she would accept them as a present. Strictly speaking, I suppose they were not fire-dogs, being dolphins; fine, fat, pleasant-faced beasts, sitting up on their curly tails like a couple of c
obras. My sister's Pekinese had been the model for the heads. They were being duly admired, and I was addling my brains as to how I was to break it to Miss Morgan that they were a present and she didn't have to pay for them, and feeling hot and cold all over and wishing to God I had let well alone, when something caught the tail of my eye through the big expanse of plate-glass down one side of the room, and I turned to see the idiot Bindling, who had come off the steps where he had been left but not tethered, gaily galumphing on his shuffle-feet over the slippery rock. It was no time to explain things, so I just bolted. But even so, I was not quick enough; for as I jumped down on to the rock I was just in time to see the youth's feet go from under him on the treacherous slope, and he sat down with a smack and went tobogganing down the steep pitch with a blissful smile on his foolish face and plopped straight into the sea, and we never saw him, nor his hat, nor anything belonging to him again. I tore off my coat and started after him. It was an idiotic thing to do, for there wasn't the remotest chance of getting him. Luckily for me the foreman, who had sprinted up when he saw what was happening, threw his arms round me and stopped me. "No good throwin* your life away for the likes o' he," he said. The others climbed down and stood horror-stricken, gazing at the spot where the poor moon-calf had vanished and no trace left. Old Bindling slowly raised his hat, not in reverence, but in order to scratch his head. "Well, I dunno what to say," he said at length, and slowly replaced his hat again. "Maybe it's just as well," said the old foreman. "Maybe 'tis," said the old father, "but blood's thicker'n water." I was shaking all over, but Miss Morgan was utterly unmoved. She was very sweet to poor old Bindling, but it was a cold-blooded kind of sweetness that gave me a very queer feeling. I remembered the old man's words that a temple always demands a life in its building. Well, this one had had it. Three times the sea-gods had tried for it, and now they had got it. I also remembered that in my dream I had known that the sea-priestess had required many human victims. Miss Morgan tried to find me a drink, but couldn't; and offered me tea, but I wouldn't stop. I wanted to get home. I had had a thorough shake-up, what with the shock of the poor moon-calf, and my--I admit quite illogical--revulsion of feeling against Miss Morgan. It was no fault of hers the mooncalf fell in; if fault there were, it was mine, who hadn't fenced that rock more securely. All the same I had a queer feeling that it was the thing behind her that had taken him. She did not press me to stop when she saw I really did not want to, but walked out with me to my car to see me off. And then the damned thing wouldn't start! We had been using the headlights to work by the previous evening, and the battery was down. These arc the occasions to which swearing cannot do justice. If I had had a grain of sense I would have called Trcthowcn to start her for me, but I am always forgetting I have asthma-- though unfortunately the asthma never forgets it has me. I put my weight--what there is of it--behind the startinghandle, and gave her a couple of heaves, and then I knew I was for it. I leant up against the wing of the car and prayed; but it was no good, and I sat down on the running-board. Miss Morgan called Trethowcn, and he and his wife came running. Fortunately he had seen my asthma before, and was able to reassure her, for what with me and the moon-calf, the poor soul was having an unpleasant afternoon. I am not a nice sight when I have these bouts, and I am always torn between a dislike of being watched and a dislike of being left alone. They got me indoors and wanted to put me on the sofa, but I wouldn't; I can always manage better in a chair on these occasions. They put me in a huge arm-chair, whose legs Miss Morgan had not yet had time to saw off. I wondered how we should get on, for they were not on the phone and a doctor would be hard to come by. I reckoned I would have to make up my mind to thrash through without morphia. The actual attack itself, in its acute form, docs not usually last more than a couple of hours with me, but they can be a pretty long two hours. The Trcthowens wanted to make Miss Morgan a meal aftd her journey, but she wouldn't have it. She just stood and looked at me; it was all she could do, poor soul. "I wish I could help you," she said. It was very sweet of her, and I appreciated it enormously, but as usual was unable to make any response, this time from physical causes. I heard her mutter: "This is terrible!" andj realised she wasn't as cold-blooded as she looked. She wandered about the big room and then came back to me. "I would give anything to be able to help you," she said. But there was nothing to be done. I just had to go through with it. Then, before I realised what she was doing, she sat down on the arm of the chair and put her arm round me and tried to take my head on her shoulder. But I wouldn't let her because I knew my perspiration would make a mess of her frock. She didn't press it when she felt me resist, and then of course I wished I hadn't, and felt damned sick with myself for missing my chances. But presently I reached a point when not only my pride went, but my shyness too, and I turned round and leant up against her, and very comforting it was. The only drawback being that it gave me a taste for that sort of thing, and whenever I have had an attack since, I have wanted her so desperately. Presently, I don't know how--I think I was pretty nearly insensible towards the end, for there comes a point when Nature is her own anaesthetic--the attack wore itself out and I dropped off to sleep. So Scottie's prophecy came true, and I slept with Miss Morgan, though not in the way he meant.