by Dion Fortune
“I hate garbage,” he said, having rendered this service to sanitation. Then he returned to the now blazing fire and began to fill his pipe.
CHAPTER III
HUGH PASTON was half asleep over his cigarette, his feet stretched out on the fireside stool and a cup of the well-stewed tea beside him. The events of the last painful days, even his married life with Frida, seemed to have slid into the remote backward and abyss of time. The old bookseller, looking at him, saw that he was more disposed to go to sleep than to do anything else. He rose, went to the window, drew back the curtain by its snaggle-toothed fringe, and peered out into the darkness. Nothing was to be seen. Rain ran in long streaks down the glass. A furious draught drove through the cracks and swayed the tassel on the cord of an undrawn blind.
“A beast of a night,” he said, dropping the curtain back into place and returning to the fire.
Hugh Paston roused himself wearily.
“What time is it? I suppose I can get a taxi ?”
“Getting on for late. No, I don't know how you'll get a taxi in this district. I'm not on the phone, and the pub at the corner's shut. Have you far to go?”
Hugh named his hotel.
“Good Lord, what are you doing there?”
“God only knows. I don't. I couldn't stand the house so I cleared out.” It never occurred to him that he had told the bookseller neither his name nor history, yet he took it for granted that the old man knew all about him, as in fact he did.
The bookseller looked at him thoughtfully.
“You can't go back there. No, you certainly mustn't go back there. Look here, sir, can I offer you a bed for the night? You're very welcome to one if you care to have it.”
“That's dashed kind of you. Yes) I'd be very glad.”
The old man took the lamp in his hand and led the way into the shop. In one corner was a narrow wooden stair with no hand-rail) no better than a glorified stepladder. Up this they mounted) coming out through an unrailed hole in the floor like the entrance to a hayloft. Apparently the shop was of the lock-up species) but its owner was also the tenant of the maisonette over it) and had solved the problem of having to go out to go to bed in this simple but adequate fashion. Hugh Paston wondered whether the landlord knew) and whether he minded having his timbers cut in this happy-go-lucky manner.
Looking round, he saw that everything was covered with a thick layer of grey dust through which wound paths made by the feet of the occupier; where he had no occasion to go, the dust lay undisturbed. Hugh wondered whether he had been wise to accept the offer of a bed.
They went up another flight. A bit of faded old felt carpeted the upper landing, but it looked as if it were shaken out of the window from time to time. A fishtailed gas-burner, turned low, cast a faint illumination. Through an open door he caught a glimpse of a high, old-fashioned bath, badly in need of a coat of paint.
His host opened a door next to the bath-room, entered, and set the lamp down on a bureau.
“Here you are,” he said. “No bugs. I guarantee that. That's all I can guarantee, though.”
Hugh thought to himself that considering the state of the stairs) he was glad to have this guarantee. His host disappeared, to return in a moment with a faded old pair of flannelette pyjamas, minus all the buttons and most of the seat.
“Here you are,” he said. “Sorry there's no buttons) but the cord's intact, and that's the main thing.”
Left alone, Hugh Paston took stock of his quarters. The bed was not exactly a four-poster, but had two high poles behind, from which a canopy stuck out in a cockeyed fashion, threatening to come down and hit the sleeper on the head at any moment. Curtains of faded red damask hung from it after the unhygienic fashion of an earlier age. Hugh got out of his clothes, and got into the seatless pyjamas, and slid into the bed, which consisted of a huge, fat old feather mattress, half a dozen washed-out blankets, and a faded patchwork quilt. Hugh had never slept in a feather bed before, and was immensely taken with it. He pulled the curtains forward cautiously, the canopy creaking ominously as he did so, and tucked them in under the mattress to keep off the draught from the dilapidated sash-window, against which the storm beat in howling gusts. From somewhere near at hand, presumably on the tiles, came the wail of a despairing cat. That was the last Hugh Paston remembered.
When he awoke it was broad daylight, and his host, still in the same old dressing-gown, but with pyjamas under it, stood looking down at him with an immense mug in his hand.
“Here's some tea for you. There's a can of hot water over there, tucked under the corner of the carpet. If you want a bath, you'll have to go out to the local washhouse for it. Bath's busted. I sat through it last summer. Anyway, there was no way of heating the water. Get up when you feel like it. There's no hurry. I've put my razor on the mantelpiece.
He waved his hand and departed.
Breakfast was one of the most agreeable meals, thought Hugh, that he had ever eaten. The tea-pot stood on the hob and kept really hot, and they made toast on their forks in front of the glowing coals. It only needed a dressing-gown like the old bookseller's, and a pair of carpet-slippers, to be perfection.
They were smoking peacefully, sharing the paper between them, when an old char-lady came in.
“Wot about food?” she demanded.
“Sausage and mash, I think, for lunch. The usual for supper, and a beef-steak pudding for Sunday's dinner. That suit you, Mr Paston?”
Hugh woke up with a start.
“Good Lord, are you going to keep me here over the week-end?”
“You're welcome if you want to. You're not in my way. I reckon you won't care for the week-end at home very much.”
“My God, no, I shouldn't think I would! Nor in that blasted hotel. I'm everlastingly grateful to you.”
The bookseller grunted.
The old dame grunted also, took up an enormous bag made of black American cloth, and sallied forth to do the week-end shopping.
As the shop-door clanged shut behind her, Hugh Paston turned to his host.
“I say, why are you doing all this for me?”
The old man wagged his tufted brows at him.
“G.O.K.,” he said.
Paston laughed. “Yes, He knows, but I'm not in His confidence. You've heard my story, I take it ?”
“I know what's in the papers, and guess the rest.”
“There's no rest. The papers got the lot.”
The old man did not answer.
“Well, I'm damned grateful to you, anyway. God knows what I'd have done to myself if I'd had to spend the night alone in that hotel.”
“You probably wouldn't have spent it alone,” said the bookseller with a slow smile.
“No, I probably shouldn't. Being after hours, that was the only resort left open to me. So much for Dora, God rest her soul.”
The bookseller rose.
“I've got work to do,” he said. “Make yourself at home. There's plenty to read. Don't let the fire out.” He disappeared through the curtain into the shop.
Left to his own devices, Hugh Paston put his feet up on the sofa and settled down to his cigarette. Uncommonly comfortable quarters, he thought. The general shabbiness and dilapidation counted for nothing. The old bookseller had got the essentials of real comfort. Among the grubby cushions lay the book that had been the alleged reason for his return to the bookshop the previous evening. He fished it out and commenced to flick over its pages.
Skipping skilfully, Hugh made his way through the novel. Bluebeard did not interest him particularly, nor the pointless French love affair; it was Canon Dacre he was after, ‘Ie formidable chanoine,’ and he found him as elusive as Durtal had done. Finally, however, he ran him to earth, and settled down to chuckle over the pages in which he celebrates the Black Mass, tastefully got up in a chasuble embroidered with billy-goats, socks and suspenders, and nothing else. He couldn't see anything horrific about it. It appeared to him simply funny.
Presently the old booksell
er finished his chores and returned to the room behind the shop. Once the mail orders had been dealt with, there was apparently nothing to do for the rest of the day but sit around and wait for casual customers to drop in, and as the weather was worse than bad, it was improbable that they would drop.
“I say, Jelkes,” said Hugh Paston,” can we do anything to this sofa? I'm gradually going through.”
“Certainly, my dear lad, why didn't you mention it before? Always ask for anything you want here. It's yours for the asking,” and he flung himself flat on his face on the hearthrug at the feet of the startled Paston, who thought the Black Mass had begun in good earnest.
But he was wrong. The old bookseller merely wanted to peer under the sofa.
“Ah,” he said, “I see what's amiss. Springs have given way.”
He reached out a long arm as he lay there, and drew towards himself a pile of loose books lying about on the floor and began to stow them scientifically under the sofa.
“There,” he said, getting up and dusting his knees. “That's the best use I know for the modern novel.”
CHAPTER IV
THERE came a great pounding at the door as Paston was about to seat himself on the now rejuvenated sofa.
“That's Mrs Hull,” said the bookseller, and went to admit the char, who came barging in like a ship in full sail, hung about with purchases, mostly wrapped in newspaper. The old bookseller gave her some loose silver from his trouser pocket, without troubling to count it, and she barged out again.
He flung the now bulging black oilcloth bag on the table, where it disgorged everything imaginable, including a mouse-trap and a pair of braces.
“Absolutely trustworthy,” he said, “and a great comfort to me. That's the right sort of woman to have about the place. No' It.' Gets on with her job and clears off when finished.”
The bookseller began to get on with the preparations for a meal. There was a pound of pale pink pork sausages, showing through their damp bit of greaseproof paper like a beach belle through her bathing-dress. There was a large dollop of mashed potatoes in a basin, evidently fetched from the neighbouring eating-house and only needing warming. What a simple way of living, thought Hugh Paston, with an envious sigh. And how efficacious!
He thought of all the elaborations that were considered necessary when he fed, and of the not always admirable result. One thing was quite certain, nothing that had to come up from the kitchen could ever taste as it did straight out of old ]elkes' frying-pan.
He went and leant against the jamb of the door leading to the kitchenette and watched the old boy at his cooking. The frying-pan presented quite a beach scene as the pale pink sausages gradually browned.
“Do you like 'em whole or bust?” demanded Jelkes suddenly, waving a toasting-fork over the pan.
Paston, taken by surprise, answered without thinking:
“Well, I know it isn't fashionable to have much bust, but personally I prefer a reasonable amount. I think it's more feminine.”
The old bookseller looked at him in bewilderment; but before he could demand the meaning of this cryptic remark, the unpricked sausages settled the problem for themselves by splitting wide open, one after the other.
“Ah, well,” he said philosophically, “you'll have to take them as they are. They've all bust now.”
He turned them out of the frying-pan, and picking up the white china basin containing the mashed potato, held it out at arm's length and smacked its bottom, dodging skilfully back as the hot fat splashed out of the pan as the potatoes sploshed into it. Hugh Paston, cigarette between his teeth, was shaken with internal mirth. He thought of his butler. ·He thought of his chef. He thought of the head-waiters of fashionable restaurants. He wondered what his friends would make of him. He wondered what he made of himself. Changing for dinner in this establishment apparently meant putting on a dressing-gown and taking off your collar.
He suddenly realised that he was more intimate with the old bookseller than he had ever been with anybody in his life. With maturity, Hugh Paston had become a man of easy surfaces, but at heart he was still deeply reserved. Under his camaraderie there was a sensitive shyness, a disinclination to wear his heart in any spot where it might be pecked at. He had only saved the situation by refusing to look inside himself; by forcing himself to live on his own surface; by trying to make himself the man he appeared to be. He wondered how many were like him. It had often struck him how melancholy Mayfair faces were when in repose. The old bookseller, dilapidated and hard-bitten as he was, was cheerful in repose.
It suddenly occurred to him that he positively loved the old boy. What a priceless old bird he was I He had a feeling that the light-blue eyes under their thatch of whiskers saw far more. deeply into his soul than he was capable of doing himself. He felt like a sick man feels when he gets into the hands of a good doctor. He wondered what the old boy, who was not of his generation, had made of the remark about the sausages. Had he been brought up on Freud? It certainly was a brick and a half to drop on the toes of an elderly member of the middle classes.
His meditations were interrupted by having the large black tin tea-tray thrust into his hands. The old man loaded the dinner onto it, and Hugh Paston lugged the heavy load into the living-room. Without waiting to be told, he filled up the big black kettle and set it on the hob, ready for the everlasting tea. His highly polished veneer had split and peeled off him like the husk off a roast chestnut, and with it had gone his tensions and bewilderments. He reckoned that the old bookseller, with his tea-pot and his frying-pan, his broken-springed sofa and his cock-eyed feather-bed, had saved his mental balance and seen him safely through his time of crisis. How it had been done he had no means of knowing. He only knew that a human hand had been laid on him amid all the hard, bright, impersonal surfaces of Mayfair, and the human touch had in some curious way reassured him about life, as if he were a child in the dark.
The old bookseller ate fast and never talked at meals. The meal concluded with a slab of moist sultana cake instead of pudding; they brewed their tea, and Paston was hoping to get down to a good chin-wag, when the old bookseller suddenly put two grubby books into his hands and said:
“Amuse yourself with these. I always have a snooze now,” and suiting the action to the words, he settled himself back in his chair, opened his mouth, and went to sleep forthwith. Hugh Paston, who could not drop off to sleep like that, settled down to look at the books that had been given him.
They were the ones that the bookseller had previously recommended: ‘The Devil 's Mistress,’ by Brodie Innes, who was a ‘writer to the Signet,’ whatever that might be, and' The Corn King and the Spring Queen,' by Naomi Mitchison, a tale of ancient Sparta. He had a vague idea of having heard that Naomi Mitchison was the daughter of a professor of Greek, or some such classical subject, so probably her facts were correct, and provided she was not too heavy-handed with them, the book might be worth reading. He wondered why old Jelkes had recommended it as a useful adjunct to Huysmans' ‘Lá-Bas,’
He dipped into her first, and read the opening chapter upon the magic of the Scythian witch.
“That,” said he to himself, “is just common or garden hypnotism.”
He had learnt something of native magic during his big game-shooting expeditions, and knew the tremendous power of auto-suggestion upon the primitive mind. The only thing in which fiction differed from fact was in that the power was here represented as being used at a distance, without the immediate use of suggestion, on which he understood it depended. Induced auto-suggestion, he had heard hypnotism called by a well-known doctor, who always talked shop at dinner-tables as a means of advertising.
He thought of incidents which he had seen with his own eyes, and seeing is believing in such cases; and he also thought of the long series of similar cases recorded in the ‘Wide World Magazine’ month by month, a magazine that claims to print nothing but true stories, and takes care to verify them for the sake of its reputation.
It was od
d, very odd, to find the same kind of witchcraft in modern Africa and ancient Scythia. He felt pretty certain that the archeology of this book was reliable; and he himself had seen certain African incidents with his own eyes; and even if his eyes misled him, there were the incidents recorded in the ‘Wide World,’ collected from all quarters of the globe. Everybody could not have been deluded.
Like all Mayfairians who go in for up to date dinner table conversation, he was an adept at skipping, and he was picking the gist out of the book as well as any reviewer. Presently, however, he came to something that arrested his attention, and settled down to read steadily the account of the rites of the spring ploughing. Naomi Mitchison was discreet; she left something to the imagination, which was more than Huysmans did; it was possible that a maiden lady might have read her book without noticing anything. Hugh Paston, however, found here an interesting addition to his knowledge of human nature. He knew his Havelock Ellis, his Kraft-Ebbing, and his Forel, but he had never come across anything quite like this before. The' Wide World,' in publishing its stories of native magic, did not publish stories of this kind of magic. It knew its public, its British public.
The dingy, cosy room disappeared from before his eyes as he saw in his imagination the woman lying nude in the centre of the great field, gazing up at the little white clouds of spring in the sky above her, and feeling the cold wind and the spring sun on her bare skin while the slow-moving, snow-white oxen dragged the primitive plough nearer and nearer as they circled the field.
He read on; but the fate of the royal house of Sparta interested him less, and he put the book down and took up the other.
Here was a tale of an entirely different calibre, based on the account of the witch-burnings in the state papers of Scotland, and as the author was a ‘Writer to the Signet,’ which sounded imposing, he judged that it too might be considered as properly documented.
The old spell: ‘Horse, hattock, to horse and away!’ delighted him. It had the authentic ring. He chuckled at the picture of the handsome, vigorous Isabel Goudie putting the broomstick to bed with her stupid and boring husband and slipping off to the witch-coven in the old churchyard to enjoy herself with the Devil, who, it subsequently turned out, was a man, though ‘very much of a man” if the witches were to be believed; and as they told their stories under torture, the truth was probably extracted from them.