by Dion Fortune
“You needn't feel anything about them,” he said. “She never liked them and never wore them. I simply kept them down at the house as being safer than my rooms. They belonged to my mother.”
He took the case back from me again, and unlocked it, and I saw that it contained some very fine amethysts in heavy, old- fashioned settings, and cairngorms and agates, and suchlike. I could quite understand that the fluffy little woman Mrs Malcolm must have been could not have worn them, but they would suit me to perfection and go marvellously with my robes. I told Malcolm so, and let my pleasure appear in my voice, hoping it would distract him from his brooding.
It served its purpose, and his pleasure at my pleasure lit up his grim face and took some of the grimness out of it.
“I've had the devil of a time getting those things for you,” he said. “That's what made me so late. I never dreamt you'd be waiting for me at the station; had made up my mind, in fact, that it was too late to come round to you tonight, and was dreading the prospect, if you want to know the truth. But I wasn't going to give up these things I wanted for you if I'd had to raid Hell to get ‘em. I pretty nearly did, too. Do you know what that wretched creature, my wife's companion, had done? Got her to make a will in her favour! Poor Eva'd got nothing to leave but that didn't seem to worry either of them. She left Miss Nesbitt the house and the furniture, and all her clothes, and her income from me for life! Left her everything, in fact, save a few personal bequests to old friends, and instructed her to look after the maid, so the maid naturally stuck to her.
God, what a row there was! She'd got a solicitor of sorts, very much of sorts, if you ask me, to make the will, and he came to the funeral, and back to the house with us. I couldn't think who the dickens he was, I thought he was the undertaker's man. He looked that sort. And then we had lunch; and then we read this iniquitous will. I told the solicitor not to be silly. Miss Nesbitt was welcome to the clothes, they were no use to me, and could have the furniture if she liked, that was no use to me either, and I was willing to give her something in the way of a pension; but I wasn't going to keep on the house, I was going to sell that and be rid of it. Then the solicitor started bluffing. Asked me how I thought my professional position would be affected if the facts of my marriage came out! I took him by the scruff of his neck and the slack of his pants, and I booted him down the garden path, and over the gate, Lilith, not through it, and some way down the road. There may be a summons coming to me for assault, or there may not, I rather fancy not. He'd got plenty of grounds for it, but I'd got plenty of grounds for booting him, and he has to think of his professional position as well as me. It was the end of him for the moment, anyway.
“Then I came back to the house and told the companion to shut up and not be silly, if she wanted a pension; and she sniffled and snarled and sneered as much as she dared, but more or less shut up; anyway, she shut up as much as she was capable of. Then I went to get the jewels, but they weren't where I kept them, and the lock had been forced, and forced recently. I asked her where they were, and she said my wife had given them to her. I said they weren't Eva's to give and told her to produce them, and threatened her with the police if she refused. She stuck to her guns, and I phoned the police. The sergeant came round, and he and I went up to her room and got them out of her wardrobe from among her petticoats. He wanted to take her off then and there, but I said no, the woman was such a fool she might quite well have done what she did in good faith. In fact, I think she had. The solicitor was the real bottom of the trouble.
“Then Jenkins phoned me to come round and see him after his surgery. I didn't want to hang about any longer; I was tired out and sick to death of the whole business, and wanted to get back to you, but he insisted; said he wished to see me particularly, so I had to wait. I told the women to get me some supper, and they refused, and I lost my temper with them. I am afraid they heard some language. They got some food, but it was so foul it was uneatable, and I threw it on the floor. Then I went round to Jenkins and did his dispensing for him while he finished his surgery. I haven't done any dispensing for years. I hope no one dies.”
“Then, Lilith, there was a goal delivery! It seems he'd never had my message. They knew he would be calling at my house, so they phoned it on there, and Miss Nesbitt took it, and never said a word to anybody, but came straight through to me and told me that a second opinion was not wanted. It seems he'd protested all the time about sacking the nurse; he wasn't such a fool as to want to handle phlebitis with amateurs, but Nesbitt told him I grudged the expense and said she had got to manage as best she could. I rather fancy he'd been told a lot of tales about my brutality, and had believed them at the time, but in the light of subsequent events had begun to question them. He said what you did about the operation being a big thing.
Then he told me—my God, why had he never told me before?—“I thought you knew,” he said. Just think of it, Lilith, it's been my speciality all my life to distinguish functional from organic nervous disorders, and I never spotted Eva! There was absolutely no physical reason why we should not have led a normal married life. I don't say it was altogether fake; there was a large element of genuine hysteria, if there is such a thing; but she made her health an excuse to get rid of me, and her companion, who had a kind of infatuation for her, liked making an invalid of her. She evidently thought I'd expect her to be a wife to me if she recovered her health, and she preferred to stop in bed. Think of it, Lilith, all these years—for both of us—what a damn fool arrangement! And they call that holy matrimony, and morality, and purity! I feel a fool, Lilith, that's what I feel.”
He sat staring into the fire. I did not speak. I do not think he would have heard me if I had. I wondered what sort of a handful I should find Malcolm to handle, now that he had realised how his conscience had made a fool of him. He was quite likely to react to the other extreme.
At length, towards two o'clock in the morning, he spoke.
“You said that no change in my circumstances would made any difference in our relationship. Had you got something such as this in mind when you spoke?”
“I had. I felt certain your problem had been worked out. It had the feel of a finished thing to me. I did not know how the way would open before you, but I knew it would.”
“You gave me that warning so that I shouldn't be—disappointed? For you must have known that if you hadn't I should have come straight to you and asked you to marry me. So I am still in bondage, Lilith, it seems. Free from the law of the land, but in bondage to your will.”
“In bondage to nothing but yourself, Rupert. You haven't changed though your circumstances have.”
“I suppose you mean I am like one of my wife's birds—been caged so long I don't know how to fly now I'm free. Lilith, I'm going to say a strange thing to you—I know you won't marry me, but do you mind my loving you?”
“Not in the least,” said I.
“What do you feel about me? I wish you'd be perfectly frank with me, then I'll know better how to adjust my life.”
“I have two sets of feelings for you, one as a woman and one as a priestess. As a woman I am very fond of you; there is a deep sympathy between us; but I think you'd make a dreadful husband, Rupert, and even if I were the marrying sort I wouldn't marry you. As a priestess—it is not easy to make you understand, I'll try to explain. As a priestess, I know that you are a priest, that I have to work opposite you, whether I like you or whether I don't, and I'd work opposite you if you were the Devil from Hell. You are a priest because you bring through the right kind of force and you have the stamina to handle the power. I work with the force, Rupert, not with you.
But there is also a bond between us because you were the sacrificing priest. Your will was magical, and you died a magical death, willing to possess me. That is what brought you to where you are. Strictly speaking, you have not got the grade to be where you are, and that is one of the things that is handicapping us. I have got to break you in, as it were; to train you and initiate you be
fore I can use you.”
“How did you come to take up with me at all, Lilith? That is what I have never been able to understand.”
“I know my own. I know who belong and who do not; who are on my own Ray, and who are not. I know what is latent in your subconscious mind even if you don't.”
“Tell me what is it you see in me?
“I see two things. One is a capacity for selfless devotion, and the other is a tremendous surplus of vital force; a surplus that has been knocking you to pieces for want of an outlet; I can draw off that force from you magically and make use of it, and you will be all the happier for it.”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“You—feel strongly towards me?
“Yes.”
“Well, the strength of your feeling projects it.”
“Supposing I had not fallen in love with you of my own accord would you have deliberately drawn me to you?”
“I should. I have ends to serve that are not mine. I would have done even that for their sake.”
“In cold blood?”
“There is no other way in which magic can be worked.”
“Then—you have nothing but a cold-blooded policy towards me?”
“I have a cold-blooded policy towards you from which nothing will turn me, but there is something more than that, Rupert. Do you think I could work with you as I do if there were not sympathy between us? The magic breeds sympathy. How do you suppose the force could flow from you to me without a return flow from me to you?”
“Even so, it seems a cold-blooded proposition to me. I don't understand all this talk of forces. I love spontaneously, and I love you with everything that is in me. I can't help it. It wouldn't make any difference if you hated me and kicked me out. I couldn't stop loving you. You fascinate me. Everything you do fascinates me—every movement you make, every line of your body, the way your clothes hang on you, the flash of your jewels. And this house fascinates me—everything about you—even the river fascinates me because I associate it with you. It's not sensuality—that's never been a problem where you've been concerned, not so far anyway, we've both been too dashed careful. It's a kind of glamour and it feeds my soul, and my soul being fed, my body can manage. Besides—I don't know how to describe it, but you manage me so well. You've never once failed to send me away from here on a high tide of happiness. I don't know how you do it, but you do it.”
“That,” said I, “is my magic. Has it never occurred to you, Rupert, that other relationships are possible between a man and a woman besides what usually passes for sex?”
“I can't say that it has, but I know that there is a very curious relationship between you and me that both is, and is not, sexual. I know what I could feel for you if I let myself go; and normally I should expect to feel upheaved because I can't let myself go. But I don't. Why is it? Is that your magic art?”
“It is.”
“Aren't we sailing uncommonly near the wind?”
“That is reckoned good sailing in a boat.”
“Yes, of course it is. The sail should be just a-shiver. A fraction more helm, and over goes the boom and we're off on another tack. I get you. But you take chances, don't you, Lilith?”
“It is my business to take chances, the same as a surgeon. We've both got the surgeon's instinct, Rupert, that's why we pull together so well in magic.”
“You think we do? I am afraid I don't understand things well enough to know whether we do or we don't. I only know I am happy with you. Lilith, I wish you would tell me, absolutely frankly, what you are trying to do, and what you are really aiming at with me. The time has come for plain speaking. I wasn't free either to ask or answer questions before. There were things that were better not spoken of, placed as I was. They were manageable as long as they were intangible, but if I had tried to define them, or lift the veil you kept in front of them, I felt we might have precipitated trouble and I did not dare risk it. Maybe I have known more than you think I have; maybe there is more to know than I realise; but anyway the time has come to go into the Holy of Holies, Lilith, to go behind that black curtain you talked of, and that you made me see. I'm not claiming it as a right; I'm not even asking it as a favour—I'm just telling you that it is so, and I think you know it.”
“It is so if you feel that way about it, Rupert. If you know enough to ask a question of that nature, you are entitled to the answer. But tell me first, what do you conceive the Holy of Holies to be like?”
“I conceive it as an empty room. I think it has a domed ceiling, and I think there are concealed windows high up in the roof that can be uncovered to let in the moonlight. In shape I think it is oval.”
“No, it is not oval, it is ovoid. Do you realise that the moon temple is the shape of the crux ansata—the Sign of Life? The Court of the Lotus pool is the shaft with the great pylon at its foot; the Hall of the Sphinxes is the cross-bar, and the Holy of Holies the loop. Now you know its geography you can move about there in the vision. But tell me further, what do you conceive to be the purpose of the windows up in the dome?”
“To let in the moonlight. I believe you work with moonlight in some way, and I have to help you.”
“Yes, that is correct. And what do I do with the moonlight, and why?
“Ah, there you have me, Lilith. I don't know what you do with the moonlight, nor how you do it, nor why you do it. I know you can't do it by yourself, though. You need me.”
“You, or someone else.”
“Yes, I suppose so. If it wasn't me it would be somebody else. I don't mean to you what you mean to me.”
“Rupert, I am not being unkind to you deliberately, but I cannot, dare not, deny the law of my being. If I dared to become dependent on you I should lose you. As long as I can work with you impersonally, in cold blood, I can give you much, but if I once allowed myself to become personally involved with you, the magic would break and it would be the end of everything.”
“Very good. I don't understand it but I accept it. If you say it is so, that is good enough for me. I have been given much, very much, far beyond my deserts. I don't want to spoil it by trying for too much. Forget my lapse and tell me about the moonlight.”
“I cannot tell you much about the moonlight because not much is known. I can only tell you there are four things—space, the sun, the moon and the earth. Power arises in space, how, we do not know; it passes from space to the sun, and the sun transmits it to this universe. All the planets receive it, each after its kind, and relay it on—that is the basis of astrology. I am a moon priestess, however, and am only concerned with the moon-power. I receive power from the moon—I receive it from behind, at the nape of the neck mainly. You, on the other hand, receive power from the sun, and you meet the sun face to face. On the physical plane you, the male, are positive, and I, the woman, am negative, receptive; but on the inner planes, in magic, the polarity is reversed, and I am positive and you are negative, needing my influence to make you active and creative.
But remember, it is always the negative pole that does the work—the positive pole only gives the stimulus. On the physical plane you can only give life through me, and on the inner planes I can only give life through you. The position reverses. I shall never give life on the physical plane; all moon priestesses must be sterile, that is why I will not marry, there is no purpose in it. My work is on the inner planes and concerns the life of the race. I have certain things to do; I am a channel for their doing; it is in these that I want your help. They have to be done—once—in actuality, so as to bring the magic through on to the physical plane. The images are built, the forces are brought to a focus, on the inner planes, but to bring them through into manifestation on the physical plane they have to be done—once—in actuality.”
“And what is my part in all this, Lilith?”
“First of all, I draw on your magnetism to supplement my own. I have been doing that for some time past, that is why you have felt so much more peaceful and contented, for you have m
ore vitality than you know what to do with, and it knocks you to pieces. With what I draw from you I build up what is called my magical personality; I become as I imagine myself to be. I cannot do this with my own vitality alone, because one's own vitality only suffices for one's normal personality, and one has to borrow from someone else in order to build up a magical personality.”
“How do you do it?”
“I will show you presently. You give to me when you feel strongly towards me; but there is a way of building, a magical way, that I will show you in due course.”
“I am glad to know I do something. It is an awfully strong instinct with me to pour out my life for you. I don't know how to describe it. To give of myself, to make you take me. I had always thought a man wanted to possess a woman, but I don't; I want to be possessed by you.”
“It was the last thing one would have thought, to look at that rugged, dynamic man; but I have noticed that it is always the weaklings who are most possessive; they are so habituated to being dominated that they want to compensate in favour of their self-esteem in the secret kingdom of love. A man like Malcolm, who dominates automatically by sheer weight of metal, likes being dominated by the woman he loves.
He spoke again. “I have been accustomed all my life to doing without what most men take as a matter of course. I don't fancy the physical abstinence has done me any particular harm—that takes care of itself more or less automatically. The thing I have felt most keenly is a kind of emptiness that is very hard to describe. It's not just loneliness. I can feel it with a crowd of students jostling round me and hanging on my words; I can feel it when I've been dealing with human beings all day till I'm sick of the sight of them and long to be alone. After all, human beings are my trade, and God knows I get my fill of them. It isn't lack of companionship—people are only too glad to listen to what I've got to say; I've only got to crook my finger and they sit up and beg. I could have a dinner invitation for every night of the week if I wanted it; you mightn't think it, to look at my ugly face and hear me bark, but I could—you take my word for it.’
