The Sea Priestess

by Dion Fortune

  CHAPTER XIV

  LIFE for me was a series of week-ends stuck together. The eyes of Scottie grew more and more sour, and the eyes of the office boy bulged more and more eagerly as I returned to work Monday by Monday, each time more muzzy and absent-minded. All the same, there was no more asthma for the rime being, and I didn't care a hoot what happened to my immortal soul now that my body was becoming inhabitable. Even my mother, who seldom notices anything, observed my freedom from asthma, and remarked that she had always thought I should outgrow it. I have often wondered at what age my mother will consider me mature. I was living in a kind of dream-world, and the only things that were real to me were Morgan Ie Fay and the fort. But by way of compensation something else was becoming real to me--the curious kingdom of the moon and the sea. Having once seen the faces in the water I could thenceafter see nothing else, and as the waves came rolling in I sensed their mood. Every rock for me had a personality, and presently I began to sense the moods of the winds; fire, of course, has a life of its own. Getting in touch with the Unseen is like taking to drink --once you have started, you can't leave it alone. I found too that it was in my power to reconstruct the forgotten life of a place and see it as dream-pictures in a waking dream. With such toys to play with, was it any wonder that I turned away from the life that had yielded me so little nutriment and went exploring the secret paths of the Unseen? With the development of this strange awareness came also an insight into the relationship between Morgan Ie Fay and myself. There was a very curious sympathy between us, and it meant a tremendous lot to me. I was not blind to the fact that I was fully prepared to fall head over ears in love with her if she so much as crooked her little finger, which was not a thing to be surprised at in a Dickfo. d virgin of either sex. But although I was the only eligible bachelor in Dickford-- that is, if you count an asthmatic as eligible--and had been pursued like an electric hare in consequence, I had always been mindful of the poem: "When I thinks of what I is and what I used to was, I thinks I throwcd myself away without sufficient cause." I admit I have done a certain amount of necking with little bits of local fluff, but my innate caution prevented me from ever getting myself mixed up with anyone who could reasonably expect me to lead her to the altar. My pater had played the fool over half the county, so I suppose one might say I was salted before I was born. To my credit be it said that my necking ended at the neck; though in some ways perhaps that is a pity, for love is like the measles--if one gets it at the proper age, it is a childish ailment, but taken late in life, it is a serious matter. When I went down with the asthma my doctor asked me if I had been crossed in love. "Well," I said, "you know Dickford as well as I do. Is it likely?" And he agreed with me that it wasn't. Consequently, when I came within range of what could have been the genuine article, I was as susceptible as a nigger to the measles. The breed of females round Dickford are, I fancy, quite exceptionally Itless. Districts are like that. One valley will be a mass of pudding-faces, and the next will have pretty girls on every bush--and behind them, too. Anyway, Dickford offered precious little in the way of temptation, and how my pater ever managed to do what he did is a mystery to me. I suppose I am my father's son to the extent that I have nothing much in the way of a conscience in these matters, my inhibitions, such as they are, being aesthetic, not ethical. If there had been anything doing with Morgan Ie Fay, I would certainly have done it; but I knew deep down in my heart that there wasn't, and that anything of that nature would have broken the magic and messed everything up. I also knew, however, that Morgan Ie Fay did not mind my loving her, that it did not worry her in the least. Now in Dickford, if a fellow falls in love, he proposes; and if he is refused you do not meet again for a decent interval, someone going to stay with relations. Or if matrimony is not indicated, you go away together for a week-end or behind a hedge according to social position. In the literal meaning of the words I was week-ending with Miss Morgan every week of my life, and if anyone from Dickford had ever set eyes on her, the reputation of both of us would have gone to glory, so one might say that the arrangement had all the drawbacks and none of the advantages of a liaison. All the same, I was getting something very definite out of it, though what that something was, it would be very difficult to say. There were times, naturally, when I wanted more than I got, and occasional upheavals and boilings-over in consequence, of which Morgan took not the slightest notice, in the same way as one shuts the family pet up in an outhouse upon occasion, and does not refer to the matter. The great thing was that she let me love her, quite naturally and without worrying about it. I suppose temperaments vary in these matters, and some folk placed as I was would have taken carving-knives to each other; I admit that I promised myself that when things came to an end with Morgan Ie Fay I would go in off the rocks on the point, for I did not see the fun of going back to my family and the asthma and Dickford. Meanwhile I had got something at last that made life worth living, and as I had neither illusions nor scruples, I developed no complexes. Our medico, warning in my hayloft after he had attended me professionally, said that in these matters folk could be divided into sadists and masochists, which in plain English is the boots and the doormat. Sadists black their donah's eye or insult her in front of the butler according to social position, and masochists arc never happy unless the lady just knocks plain hell out of them. Life is very odd. I think I incline towards masochism myself, though there is a limit to what I will stand in the way of hell. Anyway, Morgan Ie Fay as remote as the moon was a lot more to my liking than she would have been mending my socks; for then I kept my dream of moon-magic and seapalaces, and had for my love a princess of the powers of the air, and all this would have turned to dust like Dead Sea fruit had she degenerated into flesh and blood. Morgan Ie Fay, by letting me care for her without fear or favour, and by letting her woman's magnetism flow out towards me unchecked, gave me, though I never laid a finger on her, what is lacking in many marriages. Moralists talk of sublimation, but that is because they do not know what I learnt of moon-magic, out alone with Morgan Ie Fay at the fort. And so I think that to love as she let me love her is no bad remedy for sin, and a dashed sight better than the wrong sort of marriage; provided, of course, you are not of the type that blacks folks' eyes when you wax affectionate. And so we got on very nicely, Morgan Ie Fay and I; and day by day the fort turned for me into a sea-palace, and Morgan Ic Fay into a sea-priestess, and I lived more and more in another dimension where I had that which I knew I should never have on earth, and I was very happy, though possibly a little mad; but anything was better than Dickford and the asthma. And so the weeks slipped by--just a scries of week-ends as far as I was concerned. Something new had entered into life for me with my friendship for Morgan Ic Fay; I borrowed her books, and she cooked me the most amusing meals, teaching me to appreciate food as I had already learnt to appreciate wine, and talking to me of life as she had known it, and incidentally of her philosophy of life, which was exactly what my own would have been if I had not been carefully brought up. All that I had always regarded in myself as original sin I found elaborated into a code of morals by Morgan Ie Fay. There was no question whatever about it but that my asthma improved enormously. But there was something else that improved also with what I can only call, to borrow a term from our medico, the breaking down of my ethical adhesions, and that was my capacity for creative design. I remember once hearing the story of one of the greatest of modern painters. When he was young he was a good young man and minded his mother and painted like lids for chocolate boxes; but one day when he was on holiday he dived off a rock, and cracked his skull, and became a great artist--but he no longer minded his mother. I was indubitably beginning to slosh the paint on to Morgan's walls in style. There is one thing to be said for modem art, you can make up your own technique as you go, and do not have laboriously to learn a tradition so long as you get your results. The fact that I splashed house-decorator's paints on to rough plaster and combed them with the comb I used for my hair was nothing against me as an artist
--in fact with some folk it was something in my favour. I must say, however, that I had behind me the laborious draughtsman's training, for I should have been an architect if my father had not died prematurely and thrust me into a position of responsibility before my time. Consequently, when I massed my waves or my clouds, it was with the architect's innate sense of proportion, and I knew better than to try and do figures. And so, as I say, the weeks went by. I got all the donkeywork done in the designs, if that is the correct term for it, but I had to wait for inspiration from the mood of the sea before I could work in the half-seen forms that showed forth the innermost spirit. I had finished the panel of the calm shallow sea, and Morgan was thrilled by it; but I knew that it was only the beginning, and that there was more to come. And presently it came. I got up one Saturday morning and looked out of the window and couldn't see the opposite chimney-pots. "Well," said I to myself, "if it is like this here, what will it be like on the coast?" As soon as I saw that blinking fog of course I began to wheeze, though I had slept peacefully all night while it was banking up; which shows how mental asthma is, though it doesn't seem to make the slightest difference to know it. I came in to get some clean shirts which my sister was supposed to be mending but hadn't, being concerned with higher things, and she heard me wheeze and wouldn't give them to me, saying I wasn't fit to go out to the fort in that fog. So I went round to the Co-op, in my dressing-gown and bought some navvies' back-raspers, and had them put down to the housekeeping account, and brought them back over my arm unwrapped-up. That lamed her! She never tried that trick again. People who value public opinion are at a very great disadvantage in dealing with people who don't. Then I went round to Beardmore, our medico, and got him to shoot me full of dope. "You aren't fit to drive," said he to me when he saw the car outside. "That needn't worry you if it doesn't worry me," I said. "But what about the other folk on the road?" said he. "To hell with the other folk on the road," said I. "That's just what I'm afraid of," said he. It was not too bad going through the town, and one could see the sun like a tarnished brass disk sailing overhead through the fog-wreaths; but as soon as I crossed the swing-bridge into the marshes it began to coal up in good earnest. I don't suppose I could see more than a dozen feet; luckily the road was straight, and there is never anything on it except an occasional cow; but I took the car along pretty carefully, for there were deep water-cuts on either side and she was a saloon, and a saloon can drown you in three feet of water. I toiled along at about ten miles an hour for an eternity, and presently I came level with the farm, and Trethowen, hearing me, came out. He said he hadn't been able to take the car out to the fort that morning, and Mrs Treth had had to leg it, and he begged me not to try; but I knew I couldn't make it on foot, with that pull up the gradient of one in four, so I told him that what would be, would be, and he sighed and gave me the milk. Morgan, it seemed, was living on tins at the moment. I got up the gradient all right; one couldn't very well help that, for it was well banked on the side of the drop so that one slid along in a kind of slot; but I very nearly over-ran the hairpin bend, and it was only the banking that saved me. Even so, I butted a good bit of it down, for I was grinding along in bottom, and she shoved like fury. I always run a high-powered car so as to avoid gear-changing as much as possible when I am seedy. However, I survived, and came out on to the crest of the down. Then I got the full brunt of the fog in my face. There was a slow cold air moving, and the fog came sliding along in big banks; it got on to the inside of the wind-screen as well as the outside, which was a thing I have never seen before; I switched on my big headlights that I use for fast driving at night and that everybody hates me for, but it was just a waste of battery, and I switched them off again and continued to nose my way foot by foot; it would not have done to run off the road, for one stood a very good chance of rolling over and over into the sea. I couldn't see a thing, in fact I could hardly see the end of the bonnet. However, we toiled along, the radiator boiling like an urn at a school treat, what with coming up the hill at a foot-pace, and now this rake's progress. As for me, I thought I was never going to breathe again. Presently I felt the road dip towards the point, and thanked God for it. I honked to announce my arrival, and Morgan came out and opened the great gates for me, of which I was glad, for I cannot manage them when I am short of breath. If ever anything looked like a sea-priestess, she did, standing there in the fog in her sea-green gown with fog-dew on her hair. She wanted me to come in and have some coffee by the fire, but I wouldn't, for this was the n-.ood of the sea I wanted to catch, so we went out on to the rocks of the point and stood still and listened. It sounded dead quiet at first, but as soon as you listened, the air was full of sound. Away to the south the Starber lightship moaned on two notes that earned it the name of the Cow and Calf. Out to sea two or three ships called and replied, and an invisible fishing-smack rang a bell. The slow slight heave of the sea swashed and swashed among the rocks and the fog kept on the move the whole time. It wasn't as still and quiet as it seemed by any means. I told Morgan le Fay that this was the sea-mood I wanted to catch, and begged her to leave me alone and go in and make the coffee. She murmured a bit, for she was never too fond of my going out on to the point; but the tide was up, so I couldn't go far, and she agreed to go in. I watched her pass through the fog, almost invisible in her pale draperies as she moved graceful and sure-footed over the rocks. Then she was lost in the mist, and I was alone with the sea. The smother closed in around me and everything disappeared except the weed-grown rock just under my feet. The: fog passed over my face with a curious, soft, impalpable touch like the feel of fur. The big ships mooed and hoocd, and the ' smack moved slowly away, ringing its bell like a lost sea-leper. Then a sudden rift opened in the fog and a patch of pale sunlight shone down it, and I saw the sea for the first time. It was a pallid silvery-grey as if diseased, and rose and fell with a slow, languid, sickly heave; yes, it was a very sick sea, believe me; fog did not agree with it. Then the fog closed in again, and the faint far moaning went on, and a sea-gull cried from the rocks like a wandering soul. I had had enough of it, and turned to come in. But as I turned, I skidded, and before I knew where I was, I was into the rising tide up to my knees. It didn't matter, as I had plus-fours on, and could take off my shoes and stockings and dry them in front of the fire, Morgan having calmly taken the shirt off my back for the same purpose on another occasion; but it gave me a curious turn to feel that each time I communed with the sea out on the point it seemed to make a clutch at me, and each time it got hold higher up. First the ankles, and now the knees; by the time I had finished the last panel, would its cold clutch rise to my throat? Morgan Ie Fey was upset when she saw I was soaked to the knees, for I think she had the same thing in mind. They had never recovered the body of the poor moon-calf; he was gone for good. The channel deepens suddenly just hereabout, and whatever docs not float on the surface slides off "to the cod and the corpse-fed conger-eel", and gets eaten before it can bloat and rise. However, Morgan gave me coffee, and I changed into dry gear and felt better. My asthma had disappeared completely. I know of nothing like a shock to clear it. I once fell downstairs during a bout, and felt absolutely normal as I sat on the mat at the bottom. Dusk closed in early, and by three in the afternoon we had to light the lights. Morgan put camphor and cedar and sandalwood oil into her paraffin, and her lamps smelt sweet as they burnt. I had brought some muffins with me, and we toasted them at the drift-wood embers and they picked up the curious iodine tang of the sea as well as the delicious flavour of woodsmoke. Morgan Ie Fay had taught me that things cook quite differently over different kinds of fire, and that a gas-oven can never take the place of bright wood-embers that diffuse a soft lambent heat instead of the dry harshness of gas. Then, she said, there were different kinds of woods, and for some dishes nothing but coals of juniper would serve, and told me the old rune-- "Take two twigs of the juniper tree. Cross them, cross them, cross them. Look in the coals of the Fire of Azraci----" and we forgot all about the cold clutching hand
s of the sea and the poor moon-calf who was gone to come no more. She asked me if one day I would like to look in the coals of the Fire of Azrael, and I asked her what it meant; and she said that one made a fire of certain woods, and gazed into the embers as it died down and saw therein the past that was dead. We would do this, she said, one day, and then we would see all the past of the high sea-down and the hollow land of the marshes reconstructing itself. When this happens, I thought to myself, the sea will get me round the neck. Morituri salutamus. We had a wonderful meal that evening, even if Morg; were killing tins with a can-opener. She cooked me clams; the Americans cook them, in butter and bread-crumbs. Sl had brought back recipes from every land she had ever tra-| veiled in, and she had travelled in a good many. It was fascinating to sit and watch her cook and hear her talk. The spirit-flame burnt blue under the great copper chafing-dish, i and all the little bottles caught the light; I felt as if she were | compounding for me the elixir of life, and to tell the truth I fancy she was. For a woman like Morgan Ie Fay, who knows the arts of the moon-magic, can compound a very curious elixir for a man's drinking. There is a virtue in her hands that passes into the food. I would fire a cantankerous cook even if I had to live on dog-biscuits for the rest of my days, for everything she touches she poisons for a sensitive person. Next day I awoke at dawn and went out on to the point and saw a marvellous sight--I saw the fog roll back as the sun came up. A light fitful wind came in from the open sea and pushed it back in great wreaths, and the sun shone down out of a cloudless sky of palest autumn blue and caught the little waves that followed in the wake of the wind. All the sea was a-sparkle with pale gold, and the fog, snowy white, lay along the coast in a bank that hid the land. It was as if all the world had sunk in the sea and only the high sea-down remained. I climbed to the crest of the down where the three fallen stones of the pylon lay, and watched Bell Knowie slowly emerge from the haze. And I thought of the vigil kept day by day in the landward-looking cave high up on the breast of the cliff, and wondered if I had ever kept it, coming down by the perilous way along the ledges before first light, or watching by a fire of drift-wood through the long darkness. I promised myself that Morgan Ie Fay should soon have her fire of sweet woods. I knew where I could lay my hands on cedar logs, for one had blown down near us in a summer storm; sandal-wood was to buy at a price, and juniper grew on the hills behind the town. Yes, we would light a Fire of Azrael before we were very much older, and I would look into its coals and see the past. Then I came back to breakfast and found Morgan Ie Fay with her eyes starting out of her head, for she had made up her mind I had gone in off the point. All that day I worked on the second panel. I painted the rift in the mist and the pale sun coming through, and the sickly silver sea that heaved so slowly. And down the sea-lane thus opening came the shade of the Flying Dutchman; a ship of antique shape; her sails hanging aslant; her ropes trailing in the water; and on her high forecastle a great barnacled bell that had been sunk long centuries in deepest ooze. Slow swirls of water followed her forefoot, and through them showed the faces of drowned mariners who clutched at her stem as she went by. And some of them had no faces, for like the poor moon-calf, they had gone down into deep water and been made one with the sea-snakes. Morgan Ie Fay did not altogether like these things. She said--had she got to live with this picture, for it was terrible? And I said: "You have chosen to live with the sea, Morgan Ie Fay, and the sea is terrible. Perhaps some day I who love you will be like these things without faces." She looked at me strangely, and I said: "But meanwhile I have to-day."