by Dion Fortune
He wondered what it was that made decent. sober Scottish matrons and maids kick up their heels and get their legs over the traces like this. He could understand their resorting to the rural Scottish equivalent of a night on the tiles, but why this adoration of the Devil? Why the religious element in it all?
He chuckled to himself at the idea of some respectable burgher playing the part of the Devil, complete with cow's horns. two on his head and one in his hand.
What a vogue, he thought, a well-run coven would have in Mayfair I He chortled so loudly at the thought that he woke old Jelkes, who popped up his head, brisk as a bird, to enquire the cause of his mirth.
Paston told him.
“Humph,” said Je1kes, “You stick to sausages,” and Hugh Paston collapsed completely.
But while nominally snoozing, the old man had been doing a lot of thinking. He had brought Hugh Paston to shore in the thick of the storm, it was not in him to stand idly by and watch him slip back into deep water again. Yet what could he do with the fellow? To invite him to prolong his visit, would, he felt, be an error of tactics. Paston belonged to a different world. He might be well enough content to picnic for a night or two on an old feather-bed in a bathless establishment, but he would not care to keep it up for long. No, Hugh Paston must be returned whence he came on Monday.
But what would happen to him then? There was something fundamentally wrong with the fellow. It was much more, and it dated back far earlier, than the wife's defection. That had been the occasion, not the cause, of his collapse. He wondered what inner emotional history lay behind Hugh Paston. Probably the real significance of his life was as much hidden from him as it was from the old bookseller at the moment. There were powerful undercurrents that were making the surface so choppy, and their owner was the last man to know what they were.
They made tea. Hugh Paston tried to count up the number of cups they had already drunk between them that day, but failed hopelessly. The storm had returned and was sheeting down the window, which was tight shut against it; and his cigarettes and Je1kes' pipe and the blazing fire all united to produce a most comfortable frowst in which the soul was set free to range the heights of fancy while the body sprawled, too enervated for movement.
They had allowed the fire to go too low for toast, and so they ate the soggy plum-cake that served Jelkes as ‘afters’ for all the meals at which sweets are usually served. Conversation was impossible while this cake was being consumed, as it clogged the teeth .
Presently, however, they concluded their meal, and Jelkes cleared away. Untidy as he was, he never permitted the remains of a meal to lie about, but thrust it higgledy-piggledy into the kitchenette to await the ministrations of Mrs Hull next morning, who did one mighty wash-up every twenty-four hours, a practice that no doubt was responsible for the purchase of the mousetrap.
“Well?” said the old bookseller, returning to the fireside, this tribute to Cloacina concluded. “So you've read the books, have you? And what do you make of them?”
“There's nothing specifically Black Massy in them, so far as I can see.”
“No, I told you there wasn't. But there are some very curious things if you read between the lines. Writers will put things into a novel that they daren't put in sober prose, where you have to dot the I's and cross the T's.”
“You don't tell me that they worked the Black Mass in ancient Greece, or in Calvinistic Scotland? They wouldn't know how.”
“No, precisely, they wouldn't know how. Huysmans brings that out clearly. You have to have a pucka priest for the job.”
“Why so?”
“Because no one else knows how.”
“But you can get the book of the words anywhere. It's all in the prayer-book.”
“There's a lot more in it than the words. Do you know that it takes a priest a year after he's ordained to learn to say Mass?”
“How do you know?”
“Because I very nearly became one.”
“Cripes!”
“Yes, I was educated by the Jesuits.”
“What d id you boggle at? Couldn't you manage the faith?”
“I could manage the faith all right. What I couldn't manage was the humility.”
Paston looked at the craggy old vulture, and believed him.
“Could you work the Black Mass if you wanted to?”
“If I wanted to, yes, I know enough for that. But I don't want to.”
“Then you have been actually ordained?”
“No, I never got as far as that. But one couldn't be on the inside of things, as I was in the seminary, without picking up a good deal if you had your eyes open. I saw a lot then which I learned to understand later.”
“What do you think of the Jesuits, if it isn't a tactless question?”
“I think they are the most marvellously trained body of men in the world—and the most dangerous if you get on the wrong side of them. I think they make certain fundamental mistakes, but I admire them. They taught me a lot.”
“What did they teach you?”
“They taught me the power of the trained mind.”
“Is that what makes the difference when a priest says Mass?”
“Yes, that, and the tremendous momentum of the Church itself backing him up. That is why the Roman Catholic Mass has a kick in it that the Anglo-Catholic hasn't. The C. of E. doesn't know how to train her men.”
“Then it isn't just a matter of theology?”
“No, it's a matter of psychology—in my Opinion, at any rate, though that's rank heresy, according to all the authorities.”
“Is that why they've got to have a renegade priest for the Black Mass—? Because he's a trained man?”
“That's it. He knows how to put the power behind it.”
“Look here, Jelkes, will you work the Black Mass for me, for a lark?”
“No, you bloody fool, I won't, it's much too dangerous.”
“But you've just said it's only psychology.”
“Maybe, but have you thought what you'd stir up with it?”
“Stir up in what?”
“In yourself.”
“What do you stir up in yourself?..”
“Well, think; think it out”
“I don't know that I can think it out. I haven't got enough data.”
“You've got plenty if you take the trouble to use it.”
“Well, I can understand A. E. W. Mason's kind of Black Mass, where the villain had got this rather sporty female ‘mid nodings on’ to act as altar, and did the job on her tummy. One can see where the kick came in that, and its commonplace enough, and I know dozens of better kicks of the same kind. What I can't understand is why Canon Docre's pals, after he had merely done everything backwards and upside down, all rolled about in heaps and bit each other. He just struck me as being funny, him and his billy-goats.”
“It wouldn't strike you as funny if you were a believing Catholic.”
“No, maybe it wouldn't. I suppose it would be a desecration of everything I held sacred. And as there's nothing I know of that I hold sacred, Huysmans' kind of Black Mass wouldn't have any kick in it for me. And as there's nothing I'm shocked at, I don't suppose Mason's kind would have either. So I must give it up as a bad job, then, and resign myself to a kickless life?..”
“I didn't say that.”
“Now look here, T. ]elkes, you come clean. You keep on dangling the carrot in front of the donkey's nose, and I keep on hee-hawing at it, but as fast as I try to close with it, you move it away.”
“Well, what is it you want?”
“Oh, damn it all, I don't know what I want. But I want something, that's quite certain. You know what I want a dashed sight better than I do.”
“Do you ‘yearn beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down’?”
“No,” said Paston, suddenly thoughtful,” and that's my trouble, I believe. There aren't any roads in my life, not even strange ones. It would be better for me to have devil-worship than nothing; only y
ou won't let me, you disobliging old cuss.”
Jelkes grinned his camel-grin.
“We may be able to manage something a bit better for you than devil-worship,” he said.
“Who's we?” asked Paston quickly, catching onto the plural.
The bookseller brushed him aside with a wave of his hand.
“I used the plural in a generic sense,” he said airily.
“I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by that,” said Paston.
“Neither do I,” said Jelkes, “but it sounds well.”
“Oh, come clean!”
“Why should I? I prefer being comfortably dirty, as you may have observed.”
“You're a sore trial to me, T. Jelkes. Here, give me some more tea to sooth my troubled soul.”
“But you still haven't told me what you make of these books?”
“I told you what I made of ‘The Devil's Mistress’ and you laughed at me. I shan't tell you any more.”
“You've told me quite enough.”
“I've told you too much, you damned old psychoanalyst, I'm going home.”
Jelkes gurgled. “So you have discovered that these fantastic stories come home to men's business and bosoms?”
“Yes, T. Jelkes, I have.”
“And do they speak to your condition?”
“Yes, damn you, they do.”
“Why?”
“I've no idea why, but they do, and in a very odd way. Jelkes, they're alive. These things are alive. There's a kick in them.”
“You say these books come home to your business and bosom and speak to your condition. Now tell me, what is it about them that attracts you?”
“The smell of sulphur, I think, if you want the sober truth.”
“Well, my son, there are times when civilised men—and women too, for that matter, need sulphur, just the same as horses need salt.”
“Was that what sent Isabel Goudie and Co. out to dance with the Devil in churchyards?”
“It was. And it was the same thing that sent the Bacchantes out to dance with Dionysos on the mountains and tear fawns to bits.”
“Ever read' The Bacchae,' T. J.?”
“Yes.”
“You know, I've always wondered why a man of Euripides' calibre was so down on poor old Pentheus. After all, he only objected to all the respectable women in his kingdom going on the tiles, as any decent fellow would. I suppose the explanation is that they all went off for a sulphur-lick. Is that it ?”
“Yes, that's it. And Euripides, who had knowledge, knew it; and that was what he was trying to tell his fellow-citizens. He knew that man cannot live by bread alone. He wants a pinch of sulphur occasionally.”
“Yes, granted, from the psychological point of view. And it might have been all right for the Greeks, who took most things in their stride; but if I go up to happy Hampstead, and take off my togs and tear a leg of mutton to bits, there 'll be trouble with the police.”
“Yes,” said the old bookseller sadly, staring thoughtfully into the fire, “I'm afraid there will.”
“Is the Black Mass the same sort of thing, T. J.? A sort of break-away from convention?”
“Yes, that's it. That's what it really is at bottom; it's a reaction, my son, a reaction to an overdose of the true Mass.”
“Can one have an overdose of that?”
“One can have an overdose of anything that is strong enough to be medicinal. You take too much health salts and see how you feel.”
“T. J., you're an awful old pagan.”
“I'm a comfortable old pagan, my lad, and I thank God for it.”
“Well, I'm a pagan, T. J., but I'm not comfortable.”
“When were you happy last, Hugh?”
“It's odd you should ask me that question, because it's one I've been asking myself. Do you know, I can hardly remember. I've had precious little happiness in my life, and yet I suppose I've had everything a fellow could want. I've always seemed to be sort of making the best of things and enduring them as philosophically as I could. Probably the trouble is that I've never had to exert myself. I honestly don't believe I've ever been happy, except when half-tight, since I left school.”
“But you've played games and kept fit?”
“I used to. But then I got so fed up with it I dropped it. The only thing I have got any kick out of, of recent years, is big game shooting. I should probably have got a kick out of flying if I hadn't been so dashed air-sick.”
“You love danger then?”
“Yes, I love danger. It wakes me up and makes me feel as if I were alive.”
“Don't you feel alive at other times?”
“No, not really, Or else I feel too much alive and don't know what to do with myself.”
“Was your marriage happy till it cracked up?”
“Yes, T. J., it was. Frida was the perfect wife. I had no fault to find with her until the inquest.”
“And yet you don't impress me as having been particularly fond of her.”
“Well, I was and I wasn't. I was loyal to her, and we got on all right. We never had a wrong word. She'd always seemed perfectly contented. And yet the marriage could not have satisfied her or she wouldn't have stepped outside, would she?”
“Did you ever step outside yourself?”
“Well now, T. J., believe it or not, but I never did much in that line. Of course nobody'd have minded if! had, in the set in which I move; but I'd had a good old Calvinistic Scotch nurse, and she brought me up in the way I should go, and it had always cost me a tremendous effort to run off the rails, and I don't enjoy it much when I do.”
“Ignatius Loyola said: ‘Give me a child till he is seven, and anyone who pleases can have him afterwards’.”
“In the early days of my marriage I had a kind of upheaval; I suppose everyone goes through it, like distemper in dogs. And I went over to Paris and got a pal to take me to call on a really high-class Parisian cocotte. I suppose it was my Black Mass, as you might say. But she didn't come up to expectation. I got the same feeling with her that I got with Frida, as if she wasn't there. The same feeling you get when you listen at the telephone and the line's dead. After that, I gave it up as a bad job and settled down with Frida. I reckoned I'd got as good as I could expect, and ought to be thankful she was even-tempered.”
“Well, my son, you couldn't expect a professional to give you herself. You paid for her body, and you got her body, but naturally the woman wasn't there, and the line was dead.”
“Well then, why wasn't it different with Frida?”
“Ah, why wasn't it? Was she forced into the marriage against her inclinations, or did you get her on the rebound from some one else?”
Hugh Paston sat staring into the fire, his cigarette extinct between his lips. At last he removed it and said:
“T. J., you've put your finger on a point I've been puzzling over ever since the inquest. Do you know who it was introduced me to Frida, and practically made the marriage?”
“No, who was it?”
“Her cousin, Trevor Wilmott, the fellow she subsequently carried on with.”
Jelkes raised his massive eyebrows.
“Was it now? What was the game?”
“I don't know. It never struck me there was a game. Trevor was my great pal at college, and when we came down, we were both rather at a loose end; he couldn't get a job, and I had nothing to do but chew a silver spoon, and we went on an expedition together.”
“And you stood treat?”
“Oh, yes, I stood treat. Trevor hadn't a bean. But that meant nothing to me. He wasn't under any obligation. It didn't cost me any sacrifice.”
“And then what happened?”
“Well, Trevor's cousin joined the boat at Marseilles. I was fresh back from womanless wilds, and I was rather struck with her, and I suppose I showed it. Anyway, old Trevor smelt a rat and he played matchmaker, and the next thing I knew, he was taking me down with him for the fishing at her father's place. Frida and I were thrown together a
good deal. Her family smiled on me—or my silver spoon, I don't know which. That's the drawback of having a silver spoon in your mouth, you never quite know what's being smiled at. However, I was young and unsuspicious, and when Frida made it clear that she liked my society, I fell for it in one. Her people were pleased because they were as poor as church mice. My people were pleased because she was related to all and sundry. Everyone was pleased, including me. It couldn't have been more ideal. I concluded my best pal was pleased, as he'd pulled off the match; and I presumed she was pleased, as she'd made the running. What more could anybody want?”
“And yet it wasn't a success from the first?”
“Well, T. J., I don't know. I've no means of judging. I've never been married before, or since. I thought it wasn't, and went on the binge to Paris to console myself. But I found Paris wasn't any better than London, so I came home with my tail between my legs and settled down. And then I found it wasn't so bad. Frida was a damn good sort. She was a good wife to me, T. J., I've no fault to find with her. We never had a wrong word.”
“That's your trouble. If you'd been in love with each other you'd have had some fine old dust-ups whenever either of you fell short of perfection.”
“You think I was married for my money, then.”
“Looks like it to me.”
“Yes, I suppose I was.”
Silence fell in the dingy room, darkening to twilight. The fire was low, but the old bookseller did not stir to put coal on.
Finally Paston broke the silence. A considerable time had elapsed, but he spoke as if he were continuing a sentence.
“You know, that's a bitter thing, T. J. One gives of one's best—. There have been a lot of novels written about girls being forced into marriages with rich men, and what they suffer; but I don't know anything that's been written about what a fellow feels like when he's fond of the girl and finds he's been married for his money.”