The Sea Priestess

by Dion Fortune

  CHAPTER XIII

  NEXT morning I started roughing out the designs for the wall-paintings with charcoal on the wide expanses of none too smooth plaster. I had not bargained for wall-paintings when I had the plastering done--the War Department had considered white-washed brick good enough for its thin red line of 'croes. Miss Morgan, however, had declined to let me have it gypsum-faced, so we compromised on a coat of size slapped on by Trcthowen. Miss Morgan had a few things to say about size when next she saw me. I told her she ought to have known the fort in the days when the jackdaw was at large in the water-tank and then she would be thankful for small mercies. Size is only cows' heels. It is a perfectly wholesome smell. The whole of one end of the big room was occupied by the fireplace and the book-shelves surrounding it. It is rather a nice idea, I think, to have one's fireplace framed in one's books. I have it in my room. Morgan Ie Fay, moreover, had her bookshelves made of cedar, and they imparted a most delightful smell to the books; I know, for I was always borrowing them. An old book has a fascinating smell anyway, and when it has been kept on a cedar-wood shelf it is a delightful thing to have in one's hand. This left the spaces between the narrow Gothic windows and the blank wall at the far end to be dealt with. For the first of these I planned a wind-blown sky and an empty sea seen under fitful sunshine; the next should be drifting mist and oily dark water and things half-seen. Then came steel-grey, stormy weather and white, wind-blown crests. Lastly, a calm sea by moonlight. These were all surface scenes; but for the end of the room where the wall was unbroken I planned a panorama of the deep sea palaces, with mermaids and what-not, and Miss Morgan herself as the sea-priestess for centre-piece. This was all approved, with the exception of the centre-piece, about which she was not told, so was not able to express an opinion. The draperies were what Kipling calls "harumphroditc" and the features a smear, which is as it should be in inspirational paintings. For I had an idea that these paintings were going to be something more than my own composition. I knew that in the lights and shadows were going to appear faces half seen, as they do in some of the old puzzle-pictures such as we had in the bound volumes of antiquated magazines in the drawing-room at home. First one sees just an ordinary picture, and then one discovers that the lines make a picture within a picture, and one finds the jockey hidden in the horse. I believed that in some way, if I gave myself up to it, the life that was behind the sea would interpret itself in my paintings. I managed to get the whole scheme roughed out in charcoal that first week-end, which was about as much as I expected to do, for I knew I should spend a good deal of time talking to Miss Morgan--and I did! On the Monday morning I departed with an armful of borrowed books in the back of the car and my head humming like a hive. Morgan Ie Fay was indeed strong meat for a Dickford bachelor. Clients found me a trifle absent-minded all that week, and Scottic looked at me with a sour eye. The office boy was openly sympathetic, for which I could have cuffed him, and I believe Scottic did. Miss Morgan had talked of tempera, but when I came to investigate it, I had my doubts of it in that damp sea-air, and anyway, it was a wicked ramp for such an acreage. So she was immensely amused to see me turn up next Friday with the back of the car full of tins of house-decorator's paints, and why not? You can't beat them for bold effects because they have body. I also obtained magnificent opalescent effects in both waves and clouds by slapping on the paint in sticky streaks and then combing it with an ordinary hair-comb in the same way as the edges of books are deckled. Miss Morgan was hugely amused when she saw me at work, but she admitted that the effect was fine. Anyway, I got results, and got them quickly. Well, with all the groundwork roughed in, there still remained the finishing touches to give, and for this I had to await my inspiration. It was my intention to watch my chance, and commune with the sea in whatever mood she might be when I arrived, and then work on the corresponding panel, and the first mood she gave me was, appropriately enough, wind-blown space and broken light; so I went out to the end of the reef, although Miss Morgan made protesting noises, and there I communed with the sea-life all around me. All sense of the land fell away from me as I stood and looked to the west where no land could be seen; a seagull or two sailed past and was gone; a spar went by on the racing tide; and then the sea and the sky were empty and I was alone with the waves. The sun came and went in fitful gleams and light lay on the water in patches; here and there a wave was crested with white, but for the most part the sea ran without breaking in a short sharp swell that came cantering in and crashed on the rocks. The sea was not in strength to-day, but all the same it was not to be trifled with, and there was a darkness in the west that was more than the gathering dusk of an autumn afternoon. It was cold out there, and the tide was rising, and a wave got my ankles and made me wild; so I was glad to come in to where Morgan Ic Fay was sitting smoking, waiting to make tea beside her drift-wood fire. My feet were wet, and I had received no inspiration, and altogether felt rather cheap. However I cheered up, and we talked till late, and then I slept till late, and finally, resisting all temptations to go out to the reef again in the morning sunshine, I got to work on the first of my paintings. Now I do not know what had happened out on the reef, or what had been the real significance of the wave that caught me round the ankles, but as soon as I got to work, I knew that there was power in my painting. And I saw in my imagination all the life that is behind the sea, and it seemed to me that there was intelligence behind it; a mind not unlike our own, but vaster, and vastly simpler. The life of elemental nature differed from our life in degree, but not in kind. It had the same kind of corporate being as a hive or a herd, which is not embodied, but overshadowed. And if I chose to see this life expressed by such lines as would express a similar life in a human face, why not? So I gave to the steep short waves shadowy lineaments; here a brow, and there a mouth, but nowhere a face complete; and each of these partial forms expressed the same way of life--a bright, inhuman, heartless animation. Quite beautiful in a rather petty way, but completely soulless, as are some young girls. One only, I think, gets great beauty where there is a mind behind it, as in Morgan Ic Fay. And so all day I drew the sea-life of the smaller waves, such as had got me by the ankle. In the sunshine there was a sparkle like the gaiety of thoughtless young things, gay with their own vitality; but in the cloud-shadows one saw clearly that it was all pretty heartless. When it was finished, I was rather tired, and Morgan Le Fay came and sat beside me on a stool and talked to me as I sprawled on the sofa before the drift-wood fire, for I was too tired to eat until I had rested; and she took off her necklace of star sapphires and gave it to me to look at, and I watched the queer cross of light shift and Hash in the stones as they caught the flame, and there was a very curious magnetism about them. I have sometimes wondered why she used to let me hold her necklace and play with it. That night I dreamt of the sea; and I also dreamt of Morgan Ie Fay, but I dreamt of her as a moon-priestess rather than a sca-priestess, and in some curious way I knew that the moon dominated the sea, and that Morgan was something bigger than a sea-priestess. Next day I walked up with her to the top of the down to inspect the cairns. It was not such a scramble, going up along the spine of the down from the point, rising with the rise of the strata, as it was to go straight up among the rabbits from the road, and I managed it all right. The cairns were interesting. I know of nothing more fascinating than trying to read the life of a forgotten people from the scanty traces of mound and cairn. It was quite clear to me that there had been here on the sea-down a college of priests. The ancients, placing their temples, always looked for impressive sites, something that would fire the imagination of the hoi polloi, and wherever you get anything striking in the configuration of the ground, it is safe to look for the traces of ancient worship. These it is not always easy to find if neither barrow nor dolmen mark the site, for a druid grove is no different from any other grove, and a cairn soon disappears. Up here, however, on the bare and lonely down, no one ploughed the shallow soil and no one attempted to cart stones by that perilous road, so the c
airns lay where they fell, and one traced them by the symmetrical plan of the patches of fallen stone on the arid grass. Two by two they marched along the spine of the down, and very fine they must have looked when they were all standing beside the processional way--white stone pyramids, built as dry walling is built, to the height of the reach of a six-foot man. I guessed that they led from the point of the headland back to the spot where the perilous path took off that led to the cave of vigil; and sure enough, when I looked among the bracken and in the loose soil of the warrens, I found the white stones where I expected to find them. We were tremendously thrilled; I forgot all about my asthma and cantered about like a two-year-old. On the very crest of the down we found three great stones lying fallen, and guessed that they had been the two uprights and the lintel of a pylon; and as nearly as I could judge without instruments, one could sight through them to a similar pylon, or even a stone circle, on the crest of Bell Knowlc, and gaze right into the eye of the rising sun on the longest day. We also guessed that, as the line of cairns ran down towards the point, something special had stood on the site of the fort; but the War Department, blasting its way to perdition, had erased all that. However, I told Miss Morgan of my vision of the sea-pyre flaming at the uttermost ebb of the neap, and we wondered whether when the further rocks were laid bare we should find the traces we sought. It was a tremendous thrill, and Mrs Treth banged the gong three times before she could get us in to our dinner. That dinner!--being Mrs Troth's idea of what was becoming on a British Sabbath, we naturally slept after it. While I slept, I dreamed. What I dreamed I do not remember, but something like a white-robed priest cleared off into the dusk as Mrs Treth roused us by throwing wood on the dying fire. We walked out to the point to look for the last of the sunset, but there wasn't any sunset that evening; everything was dull and cold and steely-grey, and we were glad to come in again. Over the tea-cups I told Morgan Ie Fay of my dream, and she looked at me strangely; I had a kind of idea that she wasn't surprised, and that things were going as she hoped, and even better than she hoped. She rose and left the room without a word. When she returned she had in her hand a leather case. She opened it, and took out a large crystal. "Would you care to look into this?" she said, and put it into my hands. It was surprisingly heavy tor its size, and I rested my elbows on my knees in order to get support for the weight, and gazed into its heart where strange lights shone, reflected from the fire. It was icy cold when I first took it, but presently with the warmth of my hands it began to warm, and as it did so, it seemed as if the light within it grew brighter. Maybe it was only that the fire was burning up--I do not know. Then I noticed that the misty golden glow within focused to one sparkling point that, as I watched, was on the move. Afterwards I realised that it had moved in time to my breathing as the rise and fall of my chest altered the angle of my arms, and consequently the point of focus of the light within the sphere. But I did not realise this at the time, and watched the moving point fascinated, thinking that here were psychic phenomena in good earnest. It has been my experience that all the objective phenomena I have ever come across admitted of a naturalistic explanation, and that the real kingdom of faery is within. Anyway, be that as it may, that moving point of light hypnotised me in the good old-fashioned manner, as I expect Morgan Ie Fay knew it would, and the warm golden glow of the crystal spread and deepened, and presently it flowed all round me and enclosed me in a golden cloud, and through the | misty glow came the voice of the sea-pricstess, commanding and asking questions. And I told her what I saw. I saw the long line of the down and the cairns standing two by two, white pyramids of moonfire. Here, where the fort now stood, was a stone-built palace, archaic, like the palaces of Knossos; and out at the point was a wide flat space with a hearth, and there they lit the sea-pyrcs when the tide was at uttermost ebb, and when the tide rose, the waves received the fire, even as I had seen in my dream. The pyre was built of sweet-smelling woods and was the sacrifice and tribute of earth to sea because the sea is the senior. Around the blazing pyre the white-robed, gold-belted, shavenheaded priests stood in a semicircle, waiting for the first long wave to lick the pile, and as the flaming brands fell hissing into the water they chanted the chant of the sea that makes peace between sea and land, and bid the sea remember that the moon ruled her and that she should be obedient thereto. They hailed the sea as the oldest of created things, older even than the hills, and the mother of all living. But they bade the ssa remember that the moon is the giver of magnetic life, and that it was from the moonlight on the sea that living forms arose. For the sea is formless, but the magnetic moon is the giver of form to the life of the waters. These things I said, and then I woke up and blinked, and Morgan Ie Fay took the crystal out of my hand and told me that it was enough for to-night. But having seen these things, I never lost them, and it was easy for me after that to reconstruct the forgotten life and see it all about me, moving in the ancient ways. The effect of that experience was curious; for as I lay back in the great chair my breath came deeply and easily for the first time since I had started with my asthma. And this thing I knew beyond all gainsaying, that the gates of life were opening to me that I had thought closed for ever when I turned down the offer to go to London, and that for me life was once more on the move and progressing, and no longer turned back on itself in stagnation.