by Dion Fortune
He digested this for the length of a cigarette. Finally he spoke. “I'll tell you how I'm placed.” I noticed that he never asked me what use I wanted to make of him. “I'm a married man. My wife's an invalid. She's down at the seaside. I used to go down and see her every other weekend or so, but her doctor told me to clear out, I was a nuisance, I only upset her. I'm on at the London and several places, but I could pack ‘em up if necessary. I fancy they'd be rather glad if I did, from what I've heard today. I've got to earn a certain amount in order to keep my wife going, but I could always do that. I don't need much myself. Beyond that, I am at your disposal.”
This sudden and complete capitulation took me utterly aback. It was the point at which I had known we should eventually arrive, but I only expected it to come by gradual stages, and how to handle my formidable recruit I did not know. My mind was a blank except for Hilaire Belloc's lines that kept repeating in it—
I had an aunt in Yucatan
Who bought a python from a man
And kept it as a pet.
She died, because she never knew
Some simple little rules and few—
The snake is living yet!
I spoke, though my voice did not seem like my own, and he looked round at the sound of it.
“That is an extraordinarily generous offer. Too generous for me to take you at your word straight away. You must get to know me better, and learn what I am doing. Then if you care to repeat your offer, I shall be very glad to accept it.”
“Very good. Fix things any way you like. I haven't the faintest idea what you want, but I'll do what I can.”
“Then sit down,” I said, “and I'll make you tea, and after that I'll talk to you.”
Obediently he seated himself in my own especial chair, I drew the hot peat embers forward on the wide hearth, laid them on an iron griddle, and made scones peasant-fashion. He watched me, absorbed, growing even more absorbed when the smell of the baking began to waft into the room. Finally he ate such quantities that I feared for his health.
I put the tea things on the trolley and pushed them into the kitchen that had been a vestry, for Mr. Meatyard to cope with at his leisure. My domestic methods are very simple, but perfectly efficacious. Then I slipped into my bedroom and changed into one of the loose, iridescent robes I wear in the house. This, I thought, would be good for Dr. Malcolm.
It was; but beyond a startled look and a slight uneasy movement of the hand that held his cigarette, he gave no sign.
I lit one of my own cigarettes, for it never occurred to my companion to offer me one of his—the hospital were quite right to tick him off for his manners. Nevertheless, he had offered me himself, asking nothing in return, and a man in his position had a good deal to offer. A four-figure income and, beyond any income, an enormous prestige. He was one of the Royal Physicians.
“Tell me,” I said, “why are you sick of the central nervous system?”
“It doesn't get you anywhere.”
“If you drop that, what will you take up?”
“Endocrinology.”
“Not psychology?”
“Grrr!
“Then you do not think that mind influences matter.”
“I never found it did. But I'm damn sure that matter influences mind. I beg your pardon. I shouldn't use such language to you, but I keep on forgetting you're not a man. You're so dashed like a man.”
This was rather surprising in view of his reaction to my iridescent draperies.
“I don't mean your mind's like a man's. I mean you look at life like a man.”
“How do you know how I look at life?”
“I know how you've handled me. No woman with an ordinary woman's outlook would have taken me the way you've done. They'd have been scared of me, wondering what they'd let themselves in for if they took me on.”
“How do you know I'm not scared of you?”
“You aren't, are you?”
“Not in the least, but I wondered how you knew.”
“I'd hate you to be scared of me. You've absolutely no need to be. All this time I've wanted to apologise for the way I've behaved to you—before I knew you, I mean. You must have thought me mad, or a most horrible cad. Really, I'm neither. Of course I never dreamt there was anything in telepathy beyond music hall fakes—I've been reading your book, by the by. I suppose I ought to have kept my thoughts to myself, and not begun to imagine things about you, but I never dreamt you'd get on to it. I suppose the sin's in the intention, and if so, I'm a guilty sinner. I can't make out what your attitude in the matter is though, Miss Morgan.”
“If I told you my attitude, Dr. Malcolm, you wouldn't understand it in the very least. Not at present, anyway. You may, later. But I wish you wouldn't call me Miss Morgan.”
He turned pink, whether from pleasure at being asked to call me by my Christian name, or panic at being expected to, I did not know. However, I soon disillusioned him.
“Morgan is not my own name, you know. I had to take it in order to benefit under a will, but I have never liked it. It just isn't “me.” My own name is Le Fay, and if we are to be friends I would sooner you used that. The other name jars me. Vivien Le Fay—that is my real name.”
“Vivien doesn't suit you either. Too like something out of Tennyson.”
“You are quite right, it doesn't. I was called after the young witch in the Arthurian legend who beguiled Merlin to his doom; but I don't think I'm in the least like her. The first name my father chose for me was the right one, only the clergyman wouldn't let him use it.”
“What was it?”
“Lilith.”
“Lilian?”
“No, Lilith.”
“Who's she?”
“She was a friend of Adam's before he knew Eve, his wife. Some say she was a fallen angel, and some say she was a soulless spirit of earth; I believe the psychologists say she is the archetypal woman of man's collective unconscious. Anyway, she was a kind of demon, or so the churchmen said, though the Qabalists did not; they said she taught Adam wisdom. But even after God, who did not approve of her, had replaced her with the mate He thought meet, Adam could not forget her. Some say it was really she, and not the Serpent, who was responsible for the Fall.”
“Hm. I see,” said Malcolm. “The archetypal woman of man's collective unconscious. Perhaps that accounts for it.”
“For what?”
“For my dreaming of you.”
“Do you really think so?”
He was silent for a minute, then:
“No, not really. My wife's name's Eve,” he added. “I wish you'd tell me what you mean to do with me,” he concluded irrelevantly.
“Do you know anything of magic?”
“Conjuring?”
“No, magic. Would you believe me if I told you I practiced it?”
“Yes, I should. You're so utterly unlike anything I've ever known, I'd believe pretty nearly anything you chose to tell me about yourself. But you aren't serious, are you?”
“I am perfectly serious. Would you believe me if I told you that you also practice magic?”
“I see what you're getting at now. You mean this queer sort of telepathic business that's been going on between us, that you wanted me to experiment with? But I thought that was spiritualism and not magic.”
“Isn't spiritualism magic?”
“Is it?”
“You take it from me, it is.”
“I'll do anything you like, Miss—Miss Le Fay. You want to do thought transference with me? What sort do you want to do?”
“The same that you have been doing.”
“My God, no, you can't mean that! You don't know what I've been doing.”
“Don't I?”
“Miss Le Fay, you do not!”
“Rupert Malcolm, I do.”
He sprang out of his chair.
“How much do you know?”
“A good deal. But of course I don't know how much there is to know.”
“You know
I'm in love with you?”
“Yes.”
He stood rigid and immobile for a long minute; then, in a perfectly controlled voice, he said:
“What are we going to do about it?”
“Transmute it into power.”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“That is the difficulty. I know exactly what I mean, but you don't. I shall have to tell you, and show you, and you will have to trust me until you see your way clear. Won't you sit down and let me talk to you? Won't you sit down, Rupert?”
I heard him catch his breath, but he dropped down into the chair and lay back in it.
“You know how I'm placed,” he said, “for I told you straight away.”
“I know exactly how you are placed,” I said, “and I shall never put you in any position that will embarrass you.”
“I don't see how you can help putting me in a position that will make things pretty difficult for me.”
“Too difficult?”
“Yes, I'm afraid so.”
“More difficult than they will be if you break with me?”
He put his hands over his face.
“Oh, my God, I don't know!”
I did not want to push this reserved man to the point when he would lose his self-control, so I spoke calmly and impersonally, as if we were consulting over someone else's case.
“There are three things we can do. We can break with each other completely. We can disregard the conventions and go the whole way____”
“You aren't proposing to do that are you?” said Malcolm sharply, looking up. “I couldn't do that.”
“I am not proposing anything,” I said. “I am simply analysing the situation at the moment.”
He coloured and looked down.
I continued.
“We can break with each other completely; we can go the whole way; or we can use the power that flows between us for magical purposes.”
“That, of course, is a matter beyond my comprehension,” said Malcolm. “But I know this, that although we might postpone the decision by working magic or whatever it is, we shall have to come to it in the end. I know my own nature, so I give you fair warning. I have managed to keep straight so far by avoiding temptation. I am not by nature a pureminded man. I have to wrestle with wild beasts at Ephesus. If I see much of you, feeling as I do about you, I shall have a very difficult problem on hand, and if you give me an inch I shall probably take an ell, and we shall both be sorry afterwards.”
“If we work magic together,” I said, “it will drain off that force and make life much more manageable for you.”
“As to that, I cannot express an opinion. I have never had any experience of magic—nor ever expected to,” he added with a faint smile, which told me that the worst of the emotional crisis was now in hand.
“Will you take my word for it that it is as I say?”
He hesitated.
“I have no doubt that you speak in good faith, Miss Le Fay, but I am afraid I doubt your knowledge of a man's nature.”
“I have a very great deal of knowledge of men's natures Dr. Malcolm—all sorts of men.”
He stiffened.
“That, of course, is nobody's business but yours,” he said.
“You have been frank with me, and I will be frank with you,” I said.
“How old do you think I am?”
He looked at me under down-drawn brows.
“In the latter half of the thirties, probably, though you do not look it.”
“I am much older than that. Never mind how old, it would be a shock to you if I told you. Did you ever read Rider Haggard's “She”?
“Yes, when I was a boy.”
“I am just such another as She.”
He sat silent for a while. Then he spoke.
“That book made a great impression on me when I read it.”
“You believe me, then, when I tell you that? You do not think I am just romancing?”
“Yes, I believe you. God knows why, but I do.”
“Then—will you work magic with me?”
“Yes, if you wish it—but you realise what you are up against, don't you? I can't absolutely guarantee my good behaviour. I've behaved rottenly to you already—following you, and all that. But I expect you'll always be able to pull me up if you handle me firmly. But—Miss Le Fay—I'll never forgive you if you don't pull me up.”
“My friend,” I said, “I don't want trouble any more than you do. Rest assured of that.”
And with that he had to be content.
I knew by now his habit of long silences, when he seemed to sink deep into himself and commune with his subconscious. Oblivious of his surroundings, he would sit staring into space for minutes on end. There was at such times an absorbed, worried intensity in his face that made him look angry with life in general. On this occasion his silence lasted much longer than usual, and on his face was an even fiercer look of irritable perplexity. It was a forbidding countenance, and if I had not had glimpses of other expressions in those queer, light eyes of his, I should have been put off by it. But I was beginning to like Malcolm as well as respect him.
Finally he spoke.
“I wish you would tell me, Miss Le Fay, what your attitude is in the matter?”
“Do you think you would understand it if I told you?”
“Yes. I'll understand it all right if you'll have patience with me and let me question you. It's my business to understand things. If you don't mind being put through my sieve, I'll soon get you sorted out. Now then, give me a brief outline of the position as you see it.”
“My dear Dr. Malcolm, you are asking a most difficult thing of me. I don't know where to begin.”
“Begin anywhere. I'll get you sorted out. I'm used to dealing with illiterates.”
Luckily he was too intent on gazing into space to observe my countenance. No wonder he got into hot water with the pomposities at the hospital!
So I began on this labour of Hercules.
“Do you believe in life after death Dr. Malcolm?”
“No.”
I wondered whether my task was that of Sisyphus, not Hercules.
“Do you believe in an invisible reality behind appearances?”
“Certainly. Bound to be. We've traced it a long way; we'll trace it further yet.”
“What do you conceive its nature to be?”
“Electrical.”
I sighed, and put my shoulder to the boulder again.
“Do you believe in the existence of an ancient, secret, traditional wisdom, handed down from one initiate to another through the ages?”
“I see no reason to; but then I have never studied along those lines, so I am not in a position to form an opinion.”
“Would you believe it if I told you so?”
“Yes, I would.”
“Very well, then, take it from me, there is.”
“Very good.”
“I am one of the recipients of this knowledge.”
“I have no difficulty in believing that.”
“I have, because of this knowledge, certain powers that are—unusual, perhaps is the best word.”
“I can vouch for that from personal experience.”
“You also have them.”
“Have I?”
“Haven't you realised it?”
“I have certainly had some unusual experiences since I came across you but I put those down to you, not to myself.”
“It takes two to have those experiences, Dr. Malcolm, I could not induce them in you if you had no capacity for response. And don't you realise that you were having these experiences independently of me—before I even knew of your existence?”
“I never had them till I came across you, Miss Le Fay. You may have had no conscious part in them, but you acted as a catalyst.”
“That is because the power in me stimulated the power in you. I will tell you another thing, Dr. Malcolm; you act as a catalyst to me.”
He turned round an
d looked at me.
“I had hunted in vain for a place to start my work; I simply could not find it. It was much more than the usual difficulty of house-hunting, for I only wanted a studio with living quarters—a very ordinary form of accommodation. Then I remembered having seen this church when I had once taken a wrong turning; but do you think I could find it again? I could not. I spent hours looking for it. I know now that I must have passed the end of the road half a dozen times, and turned down every other road except this one. Then, in despair, I was going home, when I nearly ran over you, and straight away the sun caught the west window and lit it up, and I saw where my church was.”
“Good God, was that you?”
“Yes, it was me. I am afraid I gave you a turn. I ought to have apologised before this.”
“I certainly had a turn, but not from the dunt in the back you gave me. Do you know, you were like someone in a nightmare I used to get during my student days—I used to dream I got locked in the dissecting room after every one had gone, and there was a woman with long black hair lying on a slab in the moonlight, and I had to dissect her. We hadn't heard of Freud in those days, and I took my recurring dream as a warning, and got as nervous as a cat over it.”
“Why did it make you so nervous? Surely you were used to dissections?”
“Oh, perfecly—eat my lunch with one hand and do a post mortem with the other. But this was different. I hadn't so much got to dissect her as gut her like you clean poultry, and for the job I was provided with nothing but a couple of button-hooks; no scalpel, no forceps, no nothing. And when it was over I knew they'd come and find me, and chase me down the street and kill me. Apparently I was allowed to pull the lady to pieces with button-hooks at my leisure, but as soon as I'd finished, I was to be killed.”
“And I was the lady?”
He moved uneasily.
“Yes, I am afraid you were. But I didn't ever connect her with the woman on the Embankment in the black cloak.”
I rose and went over to my bookshelves and returned with Elliot Smith's book on mummies in my hand.
“Does that strike a familiar note?” I asked, pointing him to a certain page. “My God, it does!”
“How do you explain it?”
He went into one of his silences, and I knew I must wait. Finally he spoke.
“You asked me if I believed in life after death, and I told you no. I suppose I was rash, I ought to have said I was not in a position to form an opinion. I believe there is evidence, but I have never been sufficiently interested to investigate it. I will tell you what I do believe in, though. I believe in lives before this one—always have believed in them, ever since I can remember. Nobody told me, I just knew it. I can't prove it. I simply believe it, that's all. Only act of faith I ever performed. It never occurred to me to associate my dissecting room nightmare with anything to do with another life, but this book—well, it might not be proof to anyone else, but it's good enough for me, for all my ideas have always turned round Egyptian things. I never could get on with religion, though I am a son of the manse; but I always felt that the Egyptians had a religion worth having, and I could have got on with that.”