by Dion Fortune
‘This is the position, sir,’ said Jelkes. ‘My friend Hugh Paston, has recently been through a good deal of trouble — lost his wife in rather tragic circumstances.’
Watney nodded. He evidently knew.
‘The result has been to upset him a good deal, and to bring on — er — split personality. I dare say you have heard of such things?’
‘Yes, I have heard of them,’ said the man of law, dry and non-committal.
‘There are times—’ Jelkes struggled on, ‘when he shifts from his normal self into a — er — secondary personality.’
‘And the time at the museum was one of them,’ said Watney, looking at Mona. ‘I knew that wasn’t an ordinary faint.’
‘The point is this,’ said Jelkes. ‘In my opinion, and I know something of abnormal psychology, Hugh will soon right himself. But the trouble is, his family seem to want to get him certified.’
‘Why should they wish to do that, if it is not necessary?’
‘Because if he were certified, they would have the control of a very large estate, and his sisters’ children, would come in for it. Whereas, if he remains at large and — er — should marry again, he might have children, and then his children would inherit.’
‘Is he likely to marry again?’
Jelkes hesitated.
‘Not that I know of,’ said Mona.
Something, he could not say what, made Mr Watney look behind him, the others followed his glance, and there, in the doorway, stood Hugh, and, Jelkes thanked his stars, it was Hugh, and not Ambrosius.
‘I am afraid I have been an involuntary eavesdropper for the bulk of your conversation,’ said Hugh, coming slowly into the room. He never looked at Mona.
‘Then,’ said Jelkes, ‘you know the lie of the land?’
Hugh turned to the solicitor. ‘Well, Mr Watney, it looks as if I were in for a life sentence if I don’t watch my step. What about it? You are a man of law, can you suggest anything?’
‘I can only suggest that you consult your lawyer and your family physician, Mr Paston.’
‘That would be just walking into the lion’s den. It is our family physician who is in on this thing. As for my lawyers, well, I don’t know. I shouldn’t be surprised if I were worth more to them locked up than loose.’
‘Is there no person, no friend of the family, of your late father for instance, upon whose disinterestedness you can rely?’
Hugh waved his hand towards the old bookseller.
‘Jelkes, here,’ he said. ‘I don’t know of another soul. Unless, maybe—?’ he looked at Mona and hesitated.
‘I would do what I could,’ said Mona quietly.
‘I am glad to have that assurance,’ said Hugh, ‘and I shan’t—’ he hesitated, seeking the word that would express what he meant, ‘I shan’t overstep my welcome.’
There was high tension in the atmosphere, and everybody felt acutely embarrassed.
Jelkes broke it. ‘Do you know what I should do, if I were you, Hugh? I should take your affairs out of the hands of your solicitors, if you don’t feel you can trust ‘em, and get Mr Watney to look after them for you.’
‘That’s just what was in my mind,’ said Hugh. ‘That is, if Mr Watney is willing?’
‘Er — well, of course I should be very pleased. Who wouldn’t be? But — er — family lawyers, Mr Paston? Things may be complicated. Did your father tie things up with them in any way?’
‘Not with these lawyers. I shifted to them to please my wife. She couldn’t abide the others. Had no end of a row with them. We disentangled all the legal knots then. I haven’t been with these folk much over three years.’
‘Then in that case, I shall be very pleased to take charge of your affairs, though I should have felt some diffidence in taking them out of the hands of family lawyers.’
‘And I’d like you to have them,’ said Hugh, suddenly smiling at him. The little old bachelor beamed back. Hugh had pulled off his stunt once more. Mr Watney had followed Mrs Pascoe into the cohort of those who looked after Hugh far better than he could look after himself.
‘Now, Mr Paston,’ said the little lawyer, suddenly losing his diffidence and becoming authoritative. ‘I should advise you to give me the necessary authority to take over all your papers from your present firm, and I will send a clerk up first thing tomorrow morning, before they know what is afoot, and collect ‘em. Possession is nine points of the law. Secondly, if you feel sufficient confidence in us, I suggest that you give me your Power of Attorney, to come into effect in the event of your incapacity. They’ll contest that, of course, if we ever have to use it, which I hope we won’t. But again, possession is nine points of the law, and they will have to dislodge us from an entrenched position. A High Court job, Mr Paston. Plenty of publicity. The right counsel could make ‘em wish they were dead.’
He beamed at them all through his horn-rimmed glasses, in his element.
‘What is the point in giving you Power of Attorney?’ said Mona curtly.
‘It is this, Miss Wilton. Supposing they did certify Mr Paston, they would not obtain control of his affairs without a tremendous struggle. I’d fight them tooth and nail through every court in the country. They’ll know that, without being told. I think you will find that as soon as they know there is a Power of Attorney in existence, they will drop the idea of certification, especially if Mr Paston places himself in the hands of a doctor.’
‘I think that’s O.K.,’ said Hugh. ‘Who’ll we get for the disinterested doctor? Mrs Macintosh’s husband’s cousin?’
‘No,’ said Mona decisively. ‘He’s all right for a cold on the chest, no one better, but he’d be no good for this job. He’d be like Mrs Macintosh, incredulous and scared at the same time.’
Mr Watney pricked up his ears. He had sensed all along that there was much more in the whole transaction than met the eye.
‘Now that I am definitely acting for you, Mr Paston,’ he said, ‘I suggest you run up to town first thing tomorrow morning and see someone really first-class, whose opinion cannot be gainsaid.’
‘No,’ said Jelkes. ‘We’ll have the local saw-bones in tonight. I’m taking no chances.’
‘I know the man we want,’ continued Mr Watney. ‘A young chap who’s just set up in the district. He’ll be very pleased to have a patient from me and will do as I tell him. You leave it to me. I’ll send him along on my way back.’
Having speeded the parting guest, Jelkes returned to the living-room to find that Mona had disappeared. She had evidently got no mind for a tête a tête with Hugh in his present state. Jelkes sat down and had a good look at him, and what he saw, he did not like. He seemed suddenly to have aged in a very curious manner. He had the look, as if of a man whose work is over and who is waiting for death.
‘Well, Hugh, what are you going to do? Are you going to push on with the furnishing of this place under the circumstances?’
Hugh roused himself with an effort.
‘I am sure I don’t know. Hadn’t thought about it,’ he replied. ‘Miss Wilton can get whatever’s needful.’
They sat for a while in silence, and then a car was heard once more on the drive.
‘That’ll be Watney’s saw-bones,’ said Jelkes.
He proved to be a young fellow, masking nervousness under over-assurance. He stood looking at his patient in silence for a moment. ‘Mr Watney asked me to come and see you. I am Dr Atkins.’
‘Very good of you, I’m sure,’ said Hugh, and conversation languished, Dr Atkins trying desperately to remember what had been taught him in his scanty instruction in the law relating to certification.
‘Er, can you tell me what day of the week it is?’ he said at length.
‘It’s been Wednesday all day long, so far as I know,’ said Hugh, and silence fell again.
Dr Atkins felt himself beginning to perspire. This was his first important case in his first start in practice, and he was hashing it horribly. He felt he knew even less about psychiatry than he d
id about midwifery.
‘May I examine you?’ he said at length, hoping to warm up on the accustomed routine.
‘Certainly,’ said Hugh. ‘Anything you like.’
Dr Atkins got out his stethoscope.
‘Would you be good enough to undress?’
‘Undress?’ exclaimed Hugh, suddenly waking up. ‘Good Lord, man, I’m all right from the neck downwards. This is where my trouble is,’ and he tapped his head. ‘You don’t want to stethoscope that, do you? Come and sit down and have a cigarette.’
‘Thanks,’ said Dr Atkins, feeling he was showing tact.
‘I don’t know what we’ve got in the way of refreshments,’ said Hugh, ‘I am afraid there’s nothing but bottled beer,’ and produced some forthwith from the sideboard. Dr Atkins, what with gratitude for the beer and relief at the turn the interview had taken, forgot to be professional and became the decent, inexperienced lad Nature meant him to be.
It was Hugh who took charge of the interview.
‘I suppose Mr Watney told you all there is to tell?’ he said.
‘He told me all he knew,’ said Dr Atkins, grinning. ‘But I dare say there’s plenty more if you care to tell it.’
‘I suppose Watney told you they want to certify me? I dare say they’re right, but I don’t want to be certified. I’d be glad if you could fix it so that I’m not. I’ll do anything you want me to.’
Dr Atkins, warmed by the beer, began to feel as if he were under Divine guidance, so successful did he appear to be in the management of mental cases.
‘Don’t you worry about that,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you’re not certified.’
‘Have some more beer?’ said Hugh.
‘Thanks, I will,’ said Dr Atkins.
Hugh opened another bottle. ‘Know anything about psychoanalysis?’
‘No, not much.’
‘Well, I do,’ said Hugh. ‘And I’ll wring your neck if you try it on me.’
‘Right-o,’ said Dr Atkins.
And so they parted. Hugh greatly relieved. He liked Dr Atkins personally, and had had his fears laid to rest. Dr Atkins, for his part, drove straight home and looked up the case in his books before he put the car away. He knew he had succeeded, but he did not know how, or why.
Jelkes mounted guard over the household all the following day, and the next, but no sign came from the hostile camp. As Mr Watney had surmised, the Power of Attorney stymied them neatly, and they dropped the idea of certification, for the moment, at any rate, and unless Hugh did something really outrageous, he was safe enough.
But even if that sword no longer hung over their heads, there was still a pretty serious problem or’ their hands, for it could not be denied that there was something very much wrong with Hugh. He had lapsed into a peculiar, brooding, spiritless apathy, as if his mind were away in another world and that world not a pleasant one. Jelkes, who had read widely in psychology and had seen a good many cracked-up minds among the Jesuits — a nervous breakdown, politely called surrender to God, being part of their curriculum — didn’t like the look of Hugh at all. He had a shrewd suspicion, judging him on type, that he would swing between apathy and excitability. Jelkes was deadly uneasy at the idea of leaving Mona alone with Hugh, but for the life of him did not see how he could let his business take care of itself any longer if he expected to have any business left to go back to.
CHAPTER SEVEN
By the end of the week Hugh seemed considerably more normal. The telephone was in, so in case of emergency Mona could get either Mr Watney, the doctor, or the police according to which seemed to be indicated. Jelkes decided to risk it, and heave Monks Farm to its own devices for a few days and see what was happening to his means of livelihood. Hugh ran him down into the valley in the car, and he caught the evening bus for London.
Having pushed Jelkes into his bus Hugh put the big car about and drove up into the hills. He dreaded the first meeting with Mona alone. There was a lot to be thought out. He needed to be clear on his own line of action, and very sure of his ability to carry it out. It was going to take a good deal of self-control, he thought, to go just so far and no further, and not slip into anything that would earn him a snub from Mona, which might cause him, in his strung-up state, to lose his temper and have a row with her that would lead to permanent estrangement.
The thing he feared was the loss of his own self-control. He had always known that he had no stomach for a fight, that he was as weak as ditch-water in every relationship of life, but now he found himself getting his head down and going at things like a bull at a gate. He knew the thing his whole being ached for — life, more life, fullness of life — the blessing of Pan!
All around him, where he had pulled up his car on the high common, the gorse was in flower, and its sweet almondy odour filled the air. There was a mellowness as of summer in the slow-moving wind of the warm spring dusk. April was ending; May would soon be here; and with the last day of April came the Eve of Beltane.
According to tradition Beltane was the Night of the Witches, and if anything were going to happen, it might be expected to happen then. He wondered what form Pan would take if he appeared? Would he come crudely, as a materializing stench of goat? Or would he come more subtly in the soul?
He, for his part, did not know quite what to expect, and so could not decide whether he should be disappointed that more that was spectacular had not happened, or satisfied that so much had already come about. Looking back over the weeks that had passed since he had started to break out of the luminous opacity that was his opal, he could not deny that things had happened — Ambrosius, for instance — and Mona had come into his life, with results that looked as if they were going to prove harrowing.
Was all this the fruit of his invocation of Pan? He began to suspect that it was. For after all, what was an invocation of Pan, in the first instance, save a resolution to break out of the opal? He had given permission to his own subconscious to come up to the light. Then he had gone on to invoke the primordial forces of life to declare themselves. Not only had he let loose the Pan within, but he had called upon the Great God Pan without. Plenty of people let loose the Pan within — the most appropriate rite for that was alcoholic — but the Great God Pan — that was another matter. But was the Great God evil? ‘No!’ said Hugh aloud. ‘He isn’t. I repudiate that.’
And with that he started the engine, and put the car about once more, and returned to Monks Farm and Mona.
As he came over a rise in the ground that hid the farm from the road and saw the firelight shining out of its uncurtained windows, he felt an exquisite pleasure, and at the same time a tantalized sense of frustration. The car slid down the gentle slope and he eased it through the wide doors of the barn as silently as a ghost. The newly-rolled gravel hardly crunched, and Hugh returned to his home unobserved.
He cut across the courtyard from the barn, intending to enter by the back door. As he passed the kitchen window he glanced in, and saw there Bill, very much taking his ease by the fire, with Silly Lizzie worshipping him as if he were the Vision Beautiful. Hugh hesitated. To break in on an idyll like that was like smashing a pane of glass. He turned away, re-crossing the courtyard, and entered the chapel.
It was as black as pitch at first, but the lingering afterglow gleamed faintly through the west window, and his eyes gradually became accustomed to the dim light. The great angels in the buttressing bays were hidden in the gloom, but the dark mass of the Tree on the high wall at the eastern end showed up against its lighter background. Hugh stood staring at it, trying to picture it as he knew it to be, with its ten gaudy fruit arranged in their three symmetrical triangles with the odd one at the bottom. He had heard Jelkes discourse of the symbolism of that Tree, representing heaven and earth and the intermediate worlds between, according to the ancient rabbis. He moved slowly up the broad space of the nave, mounted the three shallow steps, and felt under his feet the smooth tessellated pavement of the sanctuary. Around him, though hidden by the darkness
, was the rude circle of the Zodiac as designed by the primitive mosaic-workers of Ambrosius’ day. His feet were treading the actual flooring that had been trodden by the sandalled feet of the dead monk. He wondered how often Ambrosius had come in thus, alone in the darkness, seeking guidance and strength as the net closed round him, and he thought how narrow his own escape had been from the spiritual equivalent of being walled up alive. He tried to reconstruct in his imagination the cubical altar of the Templars, which, according to their enemies, was the obscene throne of the goat-god, but according to themselves merely symbolized the universe.
He could imagine Ambrosius by sheer will-power dominating any one who came his way. And as he thought, imagining the mind of Ambrosius, it seemed to him as if something in his own mind opened like a door, and the two minds coincided, and once again he was Ambrosius. But this time he knew it. There was no closing-down of the one consciousness as the other opened, they were intercommunicating for a brief second.
But the door closed again as swiftly as it had opened. Hugh breathless and sweating, staggered slightly as he recovered his balance. But now he understood a good many things he had not understood before. He realized that he did not ‘get’ Ambrosius by concentrating on a mental picture of him, as he had tried to do in the stuffy little parlour at the Green Man, but by meditating on what Ambrosius must have felt or thought or done. The thing in Hugh stirred in its sleep and chuckled. A key had been found, if he had the nerve to use it. Ambrosius could be invoked at will by simply identifying with him. He must not just merely look at Ambrosius — he must be Ambrosius.
Exactly what the consequences would be, he did not know, but suspected that they might be drastic. He might even get himself certified in good earnest if he went on like this. But he did not care. He didn’t care a damn for the consequences. The renegade ecclesiastic had already begun to leave his mark behind him.
Hugh turned and left the chapel and made his way round to the south front of the priory, passing silently over the dew-soaked grass. Glancing in at the window as he passed, he saw Mona sitting over the fire, an unlit lamp beside her, her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands, staring into the flames, deep in thought. And anxious thought, too, to judge by the set of her mouth and the lines on her forehead. The door stood open to the mild spring night and he entered unheard. It was not till he spoke to her that she realized his presence, and then she leapt to her feet so startled that she sent her chair over behind her.