The Sea Priestess

by Dion Fortune

  CHAPTER XXIX

  SO Molly and I settled down to our married life, I in my usual quarters, and Molly in Sally's, downstairs, for there was no question of sleeping with me; no one who wasn't chloroformed would have got a wink; for I breathe like a bulldog such times as I am asleep, and such times as I am not, I walk about. The Moon side of things had faded as if it had never been. The reconditioning of the Cedar House moved slowly; it needed a lot doing to it. Not that I could grumble at that, for I had given next to nothing for it. Moreover, there was a strike in the building trade that held up materials. Perhaps if the truth were known, I lacked the energy to chase the builders as builders needed chasing. Then I wanted to furnish altogether with Queen Anne stuff, and it had to be picked up gradually. I am afraid I wasn't taking as much interest in the business as I might have done; and so things dragged along till the autumn, and we were still over at the stables; and then the weather held up the work on the house. There wasn't much to do for an active girl like Molly in my bachelor quarters, especially as she had the tweeny for a maid, and the tweeny shaped up well; so she offered to lend Scottic a hand when he crawled back to work after Easter, so that he wouldn't have to break in a new secretary while he was feeling rotten. And somehow or other she stopped on. The only difference from her pre-nuptial days being that he paid her no salary and she no longer called me Mr Maxwell. As a matter of fact, she never called me anything. The circumlocutions she used to avoid addressing me or speaking of me as Wilfred were too marvellous. Of course living conditions were better for her than they used to be. I didn't knock her about like Muckley did; nor did I get her up as often in the night as her mother did. Nor did my profession require me to kill things on the premises, not with an axe, anyway, though I dare say we shortened a good few lives indirectly. Scottie would have let a grid in Hell as an eligible residence. Molly read a lot, and we were both keen on the wireless; we even used to turn it on at meal-times. Personally, I think that the thing that saved the situation for Molly was keeping on with her work. The thing that saved the situation for me was Mrs Muckley. There is something about a promise to a dying woman whom you respect that is very binding. I had no wish to turn up at Heaven's gate with a bottle-nose and account to her for my dealings with Molly. I had hoped there would be kids to amuse us, but the outlook in that direction did not appear very bright. It is an odd thing that when folk are without benefit of clergy, kids appear at only one remove from spontaneous generation; but when the best thing you could do would be to raise a family, nothing comes of it. And if you try to bludgeon Brother Ass in these matters, it only starts him backing. I believe Molly was happiest when I was having my attacks. Sometimes she would take my hand in hers and look at me with a very strange expression on her face. I couldn't ask her what she meant because I couldn't speak, and that is not the sort of thing you can ask in cold blood afterwards. At least I can't. I was horribly shy, and Molly was very reserved, and 1! progress was consequently slow. The condition we settled down to would have been all right for Darby and Joan on their golden wedding-day, but was a dashed thin deal for a girl like Molly. "Spring, mishandled, cometh not again." I was damned sorry for her. I had had my own youth mishandled and knew what it felt like, but what could I do? The cupboard was bare. I knew from my experience with Morgan what the relationship between a man and a woman could be. Nothing had ever come of my love for Morgan, and I had known all along that nothing ever could, and yet it had lit up my whole life; and for all the pain that came of it, I wouldn't have missed it. There was something that ought to come across in marriage that was lacking between me and Molly, and yet we had done nothing that we ought not to have done, and left undone nothing that we ought to have done according to the Prayerbook, and it is pretty explicit. The thing, as I said before, had never lit up. Yet from the very moment I laid eyes on Morgan it had not merely lit up but had given off sparks. It was not a thing of the body, and it was not even a thing of the emotions; it had nothing to do with the intellect, and it certainly wasn't spiritual. Then what was it? I could understand now why old man Coke had gone off with his synthetic charmer. I was in the Bon-bon Box one day, getting some sweets for Molly, and the girl said to me: "I suppose our little trip in the car is off now, Mr Maxwell?" "You must ask my wife that question," I said, and she giggled. All the same, she hadn't been far out; and although I would have cut her throat, and my own too, before I would have done any such thing, for I had an enormous respect for Molly, I reckoned she had spotted my state, as her business was. It was an odd thing that although I thought so much of Molly, she left me absolutely unmoved, yet synthetic charmers affected me. It was a mystery to me why this should be so. It was certainly the last thing I expected. It is easy to see how, in the animals, Nature uses them. We like to think that we are not only of more worth than many sparrows, but constructed upon entirely different principles, which we are not. You have only got to watch a cock-sparrow to see that. Nature shoves us from behind, and we call it romance. We talk about falling in love, as if love occupied a position in space, like a duck-pond; whereas the springs of love are in ourselves and we overflow when the pressure reaches a certain point, not always with due regard to the suitability of the recipient; and for the resulting tragedy we blame everything except Nature. There is a dashed lot of Nature in human nature, as Freud pointed out. Old man Coke had tried to supplement his rations at the Bon-bon Box, and the social side of his marriage had gone phut in consequence, as anyone but a fool must have known it would. I, on the other hand, without ever laying a finger on Morgan, had had my soul fertilised. We know that there has got to be give and take on the physical plane if the ovum is to develop into an infant; but there are apparently some queer things that have to go on in the subtler planes if a marriage is to be a success. I addled my brains to try and make out what Morgan had been driving at. I knew she had had in her mind a perfectly clear-cut idea of what she meant to do, and that she regarded her relationship with me as the crux of the whole matter. It had been a pretty grisly bit of vivisection so far as I was concerned, but I knew from her last letter to me that Morgan thought it had gone off all right. Morgan had deliberately made me fall in love with her, that was clear, anyway. Not that it had taken much doing, Dickford having few counter-attractions; but Morgan could have dodged it if she had wanted to; it was odd to me that she had not wanted to, for she was kind, and would never have done what she did out of idleness. I had a feeling that she had deliberately steeled herself to hurt me because she had some very big end in view, just as the Priest of the Moon had had when he took her from Atlantis. Our first Christmas was approaching, and I was dreading it. It was the anniversary of Morgan's passing--I cannot call it her death for I have never known for certain whether she was dead or not--and the Christmas bells and carols were all associated with that time in my mind. Moreover I had got to do something festive for Molly. We were completely outcast in the town. I did not mind that in the ordinary way, and neither, I think, did she, being used to it, first for her father's sake, and then for her stepfather's; but round about Christmas you feel these things, seeing everyone exchanging peace and goodwill and being left out of it yourself. I think if my sister had asked me to the Friendly Girls' party that year I should have attended. But not she! She could never forgive me for not having gone to prison for assaulting her. I went into the bank to get some cash for the festive season, and the cashier told me that the manager wanted to see me. I wondered what in the world he wanted me for. Had my sister let me in for an overdraft? She was quite capable of it. He popped his head out of his sanctum and said: "Look here, Max, whatever it was you put in the strong room has gone mouldy. I wish you'd clear it out, or at least clean it up." I went down with him to the nether regions, and there, sitting on a shelf, was the brown paper parcel I had deposited with him that night a year ago. It had gone mouldy all right. It was sitting in a little pool of its own perspiration wearing a complete set of grey whiskers. "What in the world is it?" said he. I told him. He roared. "Wha
t has become of the sapphires?" said he. "I suppose they are kicking around at the office in a cardboard box," said I. "Unless, of course, Muckley has called while I have been out. I shall have to take a look for them." Then the caretaker fetched a shovel and shovelled the carcass into the furnace. I went back to the office to look for the sapphires, and turned out both our desks and the safe, and began to think Muckley must have been calling, when they were discovered on the shelf where we keep the tea-things. I took them home and gave them to Molly for a Christmas present. I didn't know what in the world to give her. I had given her so many chocolates I thought she'd be sick if I gave her any more; besides, I had made up my mind to cut out synthetic charmers as well as whisky. I did not wish history to repeat itself. I did not want to see Molly open her parcel, which she, not recognising it, was busy doing, so went over to the window and looked out. I could tell by the voice of the river what the tide was doing away on the bay; it was at uttermost ebb and just on the turn, and I remembered how the seaweed would be slowly swinging round on the rocks of the point and streaming the other way as the tide set up-channel. Then I heard Molly's voice. "Have you read the letter?" said she. "No," said I. She came over and put it into my hand. I continued to look out of the window. "Read it," she said. "You've got to, Wilfred." It was the first time I had ever heard her use my name, and it woke me up. I looked at the letter. There was no mistaking the writing. Hadn't I seen it on receipts and instructions ever since I came to the office as an angular adolescent when Molly's father closed the school by bolting? I began to read. "To the one to whom these sapphires are given. "The soul of a man came into my hands; it is now passing into yours. In order to achieve a certain thing, I sacrificed this man. If I have done my work rightly, the burden of humanity is perhaps a little lighter; the road will not be quite so difficult for those who come after. But that does not help this man. "If you can make yourself a priestess of the great spiritual principle which is behind womanhood you will be able to help him. Meditate upon the Moon. She will awaken your womanhood and lend you power. May the Great Goddess bless you and help you." "Do you understand it?" said Molly. "Partly," said I. She took the letter away from me and gathered up the sapphires and cleared off to her own quarters, leaving me still gazing out of the window. I wasn't upheaved, and I wasn't sulky, I had just given life up as a bad job; there was nothing I could do about it. The only thing I was worried about was Molly. I was deadly sorry for her. As for me, I had just gone like perished clastic. "Spring, mishandled, cometh not again." I drove Molly over that afternoon to the carol service at the little old church at Starbcr. It was our first Christmas and we had to do something about it. I did not particularly fancy going to Dickford Church and being glared at by the vicar. As we drove along the road through the marshes we could hear the sound of bells before and behind us--the Dickford bells gradually dying away and the Starber bells gradually coming clear. Bell Knowlc rose up on our left with a bit of mist round its crest, and a haze lay over the levels. Molly broke the silence--I don't talk when I drive. I don't talk much at any time, for that matter. "You will never do any good as long as you stop at Dickford," she said. "I can't very well leave it, Molly," I said. "It's my bread and butter." We drove on in silence again after that. Away on the right, between us and the sea, was the raw earth ramp of the new coast road that the county council was building. I must say I resented that raw scar across the marshes, breaking their ancient peace. I supposed that ribbon-building would now string out all along here from Dickmouth. We called in on the Treths and gave them their Christmas turkey. They were surprised, not expecting it, and had stood themselves a pheasant. I told them they were to regard it as an institution. Trcth shook his head. "We shan't be here next year, at least I hope not," he said. The place was too isolated for them. Mrs Treth wanted to be near the shops and a cinema. They had decided to go back to their old home in Truro, where all her relations were. He had been meaning to come and see me as soon as the holidays were over, and get me to put the farm on our books. It seemed to mark the breaking of the last link with Morgan, but somehow I did not mind. I did not mind anything much nowadays, which I don't suppose was a very wholesome symptom. Driving back from Starber through the dusk, Molly said to me: "Why don't you open a branch at Dickmouth? There isn't really enough for you and Mr Scott to do at the office. Dickmouth is the coming place." "Filthy hole. Dickmouth," I said. "I hate the place. All asphalt and lodging-houses and pierrots in the summer and wind in the winter." "Why don't you buy the farm from the Treths and let us live there? You could get into Dickmouth very easily from there when the new road is through." "Don't you like the idea of living at the Cedar House?" "I don't mind. I can be happy anywhere. But you would be happier at the farm." "How do you know I would, Molly?" "I have been talking to the Moon, and she told me." What Molly had been saying to the Moon, or what the Moon had been saying to Molly, I do not know, neither party confiding in me; but if it was the half of what the Moon said to me when I first made her acquaintance it must have been illuminating. I owed Molly so much, and there was so little I could do to repay her, that on the rare occasions when she asked me for anything I felt I ought not to refuse, though I must say I dreaded the idea of the farm. I thought it would wake all sorts of memories; moreover it meant going out of the hands of Beardmore, who was liberal with the morphia, into the hands of the Dickmouth medico, who wasn't. However, I reckoned I'd thrash through somehow. I always had, so far. I dare say it wouldn't be so bad after I had settled down to it. So I bought the farm from the Treths, and Molly saw to the move. It reminded me of taking Mrs Muckley to the nursinghome. Molly got the new offices, and engaged the new clerks, and saw to the advertising, and chivvied the furniture removers, and even succeeded in making old Bindling trot up the hills, though not down them, in going out to the job. He wasn't the same man since he had lost his son, but his foreman pulled him through, same as Molly did me. Finally all I had to do was to drive the car from Dickford to the farm, with Molly beside me and the irises in at the back. For Molly had dug up half the garden at the Cedar House and we were taking it with us. Strictly illegal of course, for I had sold the Cedar House to Mucklcy of all people, he having married a rich widow. God help her. But he didn't know any more about real estate than I knew about pigs. All the same if he had known as much about human nature as I did, he would have kept an eye on Molly when she was looking after my interests. H Molly was quite right, I must say I felt a sense of relief as t soon as I arrived at the farm; it was as if a weight had rolled f from my shoulders, and the asthma was easier immediately. ^ I had spent all my life at Dickford, never getting away from it? for more than a fortnight, and all my repressions and frustrations had accumulated around me in a kind of psychological midden. I believe there is a town in Tibet which is supposed to be the dirtiest town on earth. Everybody has chucked their garbage into the street till the muck-heap is higher than the houses. That was how it was with me at Dickford. I have seen farmers in the fields moving the chicken-coops so that the chicks shall have a fresh run. Molly had very wisely moved my coop. It was really rather nice at the farm. The two spurs of Bell Head between which it lay sheltered us from the prevailing winds and left us open to the sun and the south. Treth had already planted a quantity of silvery poplars that throve like weeds in the sandy soil and would soon be giving shelter from the summer sun; and there were quick-growing cypress hedges dividing the garden up into plots to give shelter from the wind in winter. The day was one of those spring days when the first touch of strength is coming into the sun, and altogether the effect was rather pleasant. I made Molly leave her unpacking and stroll with me up to the vine-terraces to see how the little vines had fared through the winter, and whether they had lived up to their reputation for hardihood. Poor child, she was pathetically pleased; God knows, it was little enough to be pleased about, but I believe I had never done anything like that before with her, so I suppose it meant a lot. The little vines were all tucked up in matting, without even their little noses s
howing, so we couldn't see how they were; but the grey, aromatic herbs are much the same summer and winter, and we picked and crushed in our hands the leaves from first one and then another, and sampled their savour, aromatic and sweet and lemon-scented. Then we sat down on the seat in the angle under the cliff and I told Molly how, in the days when our island climate was hotter than it is now, the terraces on sunny slopes were used to grow vines; and I showed her how one could tell those terraces from the ones that fringed bare downs and were used to keep off the wolves. She loved it. I don't know that she was especially interested in archaeology, but she loved to hear me wake up and talk. I so seldom did it with her, poor child. Then, I don't know what possessing me, I told her why the grey aromatic herbs were grown along with the vines, and how they were infused in the mulled wine; and she said she would like to try that recipe when the little vines matured, and would I write and ask Mrs Troth for it, and I said I would; though privately, I thought that my promise to Mrs Muckley to refrain from fermented liquors might come in uncommon handy. Then I began to tell her what the land had been like in ancient days, and traced the line of the original Dick for her by the gleam of standing water. And she too, as Morgan had done, remarked on the straight, hard line of the quay among the winding water-ways, and I told her of the cave of Bell Knowie, and the priests, and the sea-sacrifices, and all the ancient worship, and she listened like a two-year child. I wasn't in the least upheaved, though this was the last topic I would have got on to in cold blood if I had realised where my conversation was taking me, but was immensely interested in it all, and woke up and became my old self again, like I used to be with Morgan. And all my old enthusiasm came back, and I told Molly that Morgan had left me a whole roomful of books and papers that we must tackle as soon as we were settled, and there would probably be a lot of awfully interesting stuff among them that we should find when we come to sort them. I told her how I had seen the cave of Bell Knowie in a vision and Morgan had seen it in her crystal; and I showed her the fold in the flank of the hill that I thought hid the cave. She was frightfully thrilled, and said couldn't we buy it and excavate? I said no, better let sleeping dogs lie; I had had enough of that cave, and told her of my untimely end therein. Then I felt I had dropped a brick, though I don't think Molly, dear generous soul, looked on it in the least in that light. And I explained to her how the sea-priestess had been to me not a woman at all, but all women. A sort of impersonal representation of the woman-principle that men idealised as the goddess. Molly looked at me strangely. "That was what she said in the letter. She said I ought to think of myself as that--the impersonal representative of the woman-principle.'' "So she did," said I, thinking hard. Then we heard the luncheon gong from the farmhouse far below us, and started to go down, and Molly skidded on the loose steep surface and I tucked her under my arm to steady her, and we slid down together. "My, don't the sea-air suit Mrs Maxwell!" squeaked the tweeny when we arrived back at the house. "Don't it just!" squeaked I. I think that if I hadn't been so abominably shy I should have kissed Molly, she looked so sweet as she presided over the first meal in her new home. However I managed to pat her on the back quite spontaneously and apropos of nothing in particular. Later in the evening I made a start upon Morgan's papers. For over a year they had lain locked up in one of the attics the Treths did not use, and I had never been able to bring myself to touch them. But now I was eager to be at them, for they no longer seemed reminders of an irreparable loss, but communications from a friend. And among them I found the words of the songs she had sung to me. Also the words of some songs she had not sung to me. I showed all these to Molly, and told her about the strange ceremony Morgan had performed before she had gone out and passed away, and sang her what I could remember of the tune she had used for her chanting. It was an odd tune, on a very limited range of notes, rising and falling by quarter-tones. Just a few short monotonous musical phrases, repeated over and over again in different pitches, and it got you! Kipling speaks of "Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw", and this was it! It was mantra all right --Western mantra. We sat up talking till nearly one that morning. I started to tell Molly of ancient Atlantis, and the way they trained the priestesses there, and how they paid no attention to their inclinations, but paired them off as they saw fit; and that had been Morgan's attitude in the matter--that she did not consider the personality the important thing, but the force. I told her that I hadn't reached that point myself, and didn't suppose I ever should, but that I could quite see that the force counted as well as the personality. I had enough tact not to mention it to Molly, but in the light of our talk I realised that the pinchbeck Aphrodite in the sweet-shop was a transmitter of the force all right, though she very decidedly wasn't a lovable personality; whereas Molly was a very lovable personality but wasn't a transmitter of the force. It struck me as an odd thing that the second generation had been within sight of getting left on the shelf of the Bon-bon Box. It was Molly herself who voiced the thing. "I think I have been too nicely brought up," she said. "It was not until I read her letter that I had any idea that you could do anything for a man except love him and look after him. "It is a great drawback," she added with a sigh, "to be too well brought up." Then I had my clue. The Bon-bon Boxer, who from the looks of her must have been thoroughly badly brought up, knew how to deliver the goods, and Molly and her mother didn't. For the mother obviously hadn't known any more than Molly, for she hadn't been able to hold her man; therefore she hadn't been able pass on the tricks of the trade to her daughter, and the kid was what Havelock Ellis calls erotically illiterate. These things may come by instinct, like mousing in kittens, and I believe they do; but if you train a kid away from them the whole time, you produce a state of chronic virginity that nobody can do anything with, and folk like old man Coke bolt into the Bon-bon Box, and we call them wicked. But after all, he'd had his problems as well as her. What was really needed was a course of Mac West on the pictures for the old grandmother; but then that wasn't a practical solution. God knows I hold no brief for the pictures; I would just as soon sit in the back kitchen and read penny novelettes as go to them, but they have certainly raised the standard of feminine immorality. It began to dawn on me that the same thing applied to Molly, as Morgan had said flat out and made no bones about--that emotional initiative should rest with the woman, and that a modest woman is one that has no emotional initiative. It is, of course, her protection when she doesn't want attentions, but the woman who is permanently modest is a non-starter in the matrimonial stakes. It was, I think, George Robcy who spoke of the kind of woman you could leave on a bench in Hydc Park after dark while you went to have a drink, and find her there waiting for you when you came back. Now what sort of use is that woman to anybody? What use is she, poor soul, to herself? After all, you can hire a cook, you can engage a housekeeper, and you can phone up the Co-op, for a nurse: why marry them? I couldn't for the life of me see how I was to put all this to Molly, and yet it needed putting; but she must have had an inkling of it, for she said to me: "What effect will it have on me, Wilfred, if I meditate on the Moon?" I said I didn't know. She had better try and see, and I would do anything I could to help her. I began to see now the value of a classical education. Old man Coke, though a B.A. himself, had given us a strictly modernist curriculum, which was considered to be a great advantage in Dickford, as all the lads that were sent to him might expect to have their livings to earn in illiberal walks in life. I had only picked up Latin enough to be able to gather the drift of the footnotes to Gibbon, which, though illuminating, arc not uplifting. Whereas if you learn to read the ancients in the original, you get a viewpoint which is a very valuable corrective to what passes tor ethics in places like Dickford. I sometimes think in this connection of the "ca* canny" strikes on the railway, which consist in observing literally the "safety first" rules, with the consequence that all the trains run late and some of the goods trains don't run at all. There are some codes that can only be honoured by breeching them. So I turned Molly
loose on the Locb Library and left her to get on with it, and she changed most remarkably in the course of the next few weeks. They were pretty strenuous weeks, for Molly had been quite right about there being an opening for a house-agent at Dickmouth. I had not much of either time or energy to give her, but we were much happier together, and I let her dig among Morgan's papers and books, for I trusted her utterly. What she found she did not say, and to tell you the truth, I forgot to ask; for I was up to my eyes in trying to persuade, cajole, blackmail and intimidate the Dickmouth town council into applying the Town Planning Act to the place before it developed bungaloid growths in every direction. Then they turned the tables on me by cajoling me into standing for the council, and before I knew where I was, I was a city father. Shades of the black sheep of Dickford! I had never worked so hard in my born days. I had no time to attend to my asthma. It had to fend for itself. Things were much better with me. I was looked upon as the coming man instead of the black sheep; all the letters of lodgings and takers-in of boarders seemed to want someone to give them a lead in building up the place and seeing that its prosperity did not spoil it, and they seemed to think that I was their man. It was even suggested in a rash moment that I might stand for Parliament in the Socialist interest, though why I should be suspected of Socialistic tendencies I do not know, save that I used to pull the vicar's leg, and if anyone docs that in a country place, he is credited with leanings towards anarchy. It was for that reason I had probably been made a member of the Labour Club at Dickford; that, and because I am incorrigibly hail-fellow-well-met with all the wrong persons. As a matter of fact, I have no tendencies of any sort. It made an enormous difference to be in good odour for once in my life. I had not realised, until I got away from it, what a brake on the wheel a general atmosphere of antagonism and disapproval can be; until I kicked over the traces I was always considered more or less of a half-wit. My family were rcsponTHE sibte for that; they were convinced that I never would, and never could, grow up; and unless they held me one by either hand, I would sit down with a flop in the nearest puddle and spoil my pants. I think there must have been something pretty tough in me somewhere to have kept alive my self-confidence despite the fact that no one else had any confidence in me. If the whole town sits down round you and says steadily: "Every day in every way you get worse and worse," it is bound to affect you if they persevere. At any rate, that was the way they got results at Nancy. People realise the possibility of psychotherapy, but they don't realise what you can do by psychologising people backwards, which is, in my opinion, on a par with putting poison down wells. So altogether things were a lot better with me in every way. My asthma was better, consequently my temper was better, and therefore things were easier for Molly. She had no rime to listen to the wireless nowadays, for when I came home she had to listen to me. I had got over the terrible sense of loss and frustration and emptiness that had simply knocked me flat when I lost Morgan, though I still missed the things she stood for in my life. But although things were going quite decently between Molly and myself, they had never lit up as they had between me and Morgan. I often used to talk to Molly about those days; they had been well worth having, even if they hadn't lasted long. She wasn't in the least jealous of Morgan, which I thought was rather marvellous, and she used to encourage me to talk because she said it gave her ideas. Once started, I did not need much encouragement. I saw that Molly was taking it all in, but I had no idea what she was making of it.