by Dion Fortune
“I can, but I'd sooner not.”
“It's not as bad as it sounds. Let me put it this way. I've got to re-furnish, haven't I ?”
“No need, I'll lend you a frying-pan.”
“No use to me. You've just admitted that my psychology demands a bath with a bottom to it. And you're right. I express myself in my surroundings. I'm not content to live inside myself and ignore them, as you are.”
“You'd have to be if you had my income,” said T. Jelkes drily.
“Well, I dare say there's something in that.”
“There's a very great deal in it, as you'll know, my lad. if you ever accidentally swallow your silver spoon.”
“A silver spoon isn't all pure profit, T. J. It's a dashed difficult thing to own your money and not let your money own you if there's a lot of it. It makes you feel as if you'd got a damn sight too big a spread of sail for your hull, if you know what I mean.”
“I reckon you must pick up some pretty sticky friends.”
“That's the least of my troubles. They're welcome to what they can peck. There's enough for everybody. I'm not under any illusions nowadays, so my feelings don't get hurt any more. You expect to pay your footing in any walk in life. Now listen, T. J., if you've finished interrupting. I've got to equip some sort of a place to live in, and your damned frying-pan won't go far with me. And I'm going to do it á la Huysmans, not because I'm really a degenerate, like his blessed Des Esseintes, but because it amuses me and gives me something to do and to think about. An empty mind's as uncomfortable as an empty stomach. Believe one who knows, T. J.”
“That's all right. I've no objection to tortoises inlaid with precious stones to brighten up the drawingroom carpet, provided the tortoise is willing.”
“I don't suppose the poor old tortoise was willing. Being inlaid must be like having teeth stopped, if you come to think of it. It went and died on him, anyway. and quite right too, I say.”
“So there won't be a tortoise? You disappoint me.”
“No, T. J. Nor coal-black mammies with nothing on. waiting at an ebony dinner-table with all-black food.”
“I'm glad to hear that. I can't say I care for caviare. It tasted to me like winkles stewed in sewage. But I may be doing it an injustice. I admit I ate it off the blade of a penknife without condiments.”
“I expect it was the penknife spoilt it, T. J. Perhaps you'd been using it for something else before you ate the caviare off it.”
“Perhaps I had. It's quite likely. But anyway, what about this menage you're planning, for which you do not require the loan of my frying-pan? And how the hell have you got Ignatius Loyola and Iamblichos mixed up with it ?”
“That's quite simple when you understand it. Now look at it this way. You remember what Brodie Innes had to say in ‘The Devil's Mistress’ about all these sober Scotch housewives breaking out and going for a dance with the Devil? Well, that's me, do you see.”
“Yes, I see,” said the old bookseller drily. “God help the Devil!”
“I don't mean it quite as literally as you seem to have taken it. What I really meant was the need of a moral salt-lick.”
“You can do that without setting up housekeeping, my lad. In fact it's usually reckoned advisable to put the Channel between yourself and your moral saltlicks.”
“You've got me wrong again. What I really mean is this. You remember what Naomi Mitchison said about the way they brought through elemental power in the rite of the Corn King and the Spring Queen?”
“Now look here, Hugh Paston, please remember you're talking to the beginnings of a priest.”
“No, I don't mean what you mean. You keep on interrupting me before I've got time to make myself clear.”
“Time to make yourself clear? What you want's eternity, from what I can see of you.”
“All right, we'll drop Naomi and her pals since you're so particular. Well, you remember what Iamblichos said about the way they built up the god-forms in their imagination so as to get the invisible powers to manifest through them?”
“Yes.”
“Well now, supposing I feel I want a salt-lick—No, it's all right, I won't refer to Naomi. Supposing I feel I want a salt-lick á la Brodie, don't you think I could manage to have it á la Iamblichos without going to the trouble of erecting a platform in the middle of a ploughing-field?”
“Hugh Paston, if you talk like that any more I'll chuck ye out.”
“Go on! T. J., I'm as pure as the crystal spring. It's your filthy mind that's your trouble. What I'm trying to say is this, What did they get out of the Eleusinian Mysteries? They got a kick, didn't they? Well, what sort of a kick? That's what I'm after.”
“You won't find the Dionysian kick mixed up with Des Esseintes and his turtles. He was more than half dead.”
“I should have said he was actively decomposing. I'm not taking him as my model. I'd sooner have Canon Docre, billy-goats and all. What I mean is this—what Loyola called a composition of place in your imagination and see yourself there, and by gum, you jolly soon begin to feel as you would feel if you were there! Now supposing I furnish my place á la Iamblichos; that is to say, I build up a ‘composition of place’ with a view to getting in touch with the old pagan gods, and then express it in furnishings? Supposing I live in the middle of those furnishings, day in and day out—”
“You'll get so used to ‘em you won't notice 'em after a bit.”
“I'm not so sure. Seems to me they must havesome effect on you. But supposing I put my imagination behind it all, as it were, like a priest saying Mass—won't I get some sort of a Real Presence—of a pagan kind?”
“My God, Hugh, do you realise what you're talking about?”
“Yes. I do. but you don't. You think I'm talking about the Black Mass. But I'm not. I'm simply saying that there's more than one sort of contact with the Unseen.”
“I'd be glad if you wouldn't say it in my hearing.”
“T. J., I believe you're scared! Really, genuinely scared. What are you scared of? Do you expect me to raise the Devil on the spot?”
“Laddie, I know a lot more about these things than you do. I am scared. and I don't mind admitting it. Now tell me seriously. do you really believe that these antics you propose performing will yield any genuine results. or are you just playing at them?”
“T. J., I don't know. and I want to find out. I can tell you one thing. however. if there is no invisible reality. and everything is just the surfaces I've always thought it was. I shall blow my brains out and go peacefully into oblivion. for I just can't stand it. and that's the sober truth. and I'm not joking.”
“I thought you had something like that in your mind.” said T. Jelkes.
CHAPTER VI
“I THINK I'd better make some fresh tea,” said Jelkes. “We've neglected this, and it's stewed.”
Not that stewed tea would have troubled him in the ordinary way, provided it was hot, and the tea-pot on the side-hob was practically boiling, but he wished to have a chance to do a little thinking before he committed himself in words to the psychological box of tricks sitting on his broken-down sofa. He pottered about in the kitchenette, boiling up a kettle from cold on the gas-ring instead of using old black Sukie sitting on the hob, as was his usual economical habit.
It certainly needed some thinking out. He could see exactly what Paston was driving at. He proposed to imitate Huysmans' decadent hero by making every object that surrounded him minister to his moods and have a definite psychological value. His aim, however, was not to produce: esthetic sensibility, but to get into touch with those old, forgotten forces hinted at in the various books. Hugh Paston, he saw, believed them to be objective, and Jelkes did not think it wise at the present juncture to disillusion him; he himself, however, knew from his thirty years' strange reading and experimenting, that they were subjective, and God only knew what hells and heavens a man might open up in his own nature by such means as Paston proposed to use.
But he certainly could no
t open any hell that was not already there; and if there were a hell there, according to Freud it was best to let the devils out for an airing occasionally. But even so, the old man was aghast at the possibilities that opened up. But it was too late to stop it now. Hugh Paston had got the bit between his teeth, was impatient ofall control, and would go on from sheer bravado.
It seemed to him that the best thing he could do would be to throw himself into Paston's plans, and lay at his disposal the vast stores of odd knowledge that he had acquired, but never used, in the course of a lifetime's reading. Hugh would be exceedingly busy for months to come collecting his impedimenta from the ends of the earth; that would give him something to occupy his mind, and by the time the house was equipped, he might have returned to normal. Jelkes bore the tea-pot triumphantly into the sitting-room, having arrived at this solution.
Hugh Paston, with a very flushed face as if he had been drinking, though the old bookseller knew that he had not, was busy turning over the pile of books that lay beside him on the sofa.
“T. J.,” he exclaimed as the old man entered, “I'm on the trail of something. I don't know what it is, but I can feel it in my bones.”
Jelkes grunted and slammed down the tea-pot.
“You're on the trail of a hell of a lot of trouble if you don't watch out. I reckon you'll be glad of the loan of my frying-pan before you've finished. You'll want to get out of the fire and sit in it to cool off. Now look here, Hugh, there is a way of doing what you want to do, a way of doing it properly, not in this hit or miss fashion you've got in your mind, and I'll show you what it is, provided you'll handle it the way I say, and not let us both in for a pickle.”
“I thought there was, you old devil, and that if I burnt enough sulphur under your nose, you'd come clean. Right you are, I accept your conditions. Flying with dual control to start with. But afterwards I want to fly solo, mind you. Now where do we start?”
“You start with that cup of tea. I don't want to see another pot wasted.”
“Right. Now I'll tell you what's in my mind, and we'll see if we both have the same idea. I think we ought to start by invoking the Great God Pan.”
The old bookseller groaned inwardly, shades of the seminary gathering about him. He did not repudiate the idea however.
“How do you propose to make a start?” he enquired mildly.
“I propose to get hold of a suitable house, one of those big, left-over country mansions with lots of huge rooms, that are white elephants to everybody, and fit up the different rooms as temples to the different gods of the old pantheons. Make a really artistic job of it, you know. Have some first-class frescoes done, and all the rest of it; and I'm inclined to think that if we make the temple ready, the god will indwell it, and we shall begin to learn something about him—or her.”
The old bookseller groaned again.
“Now, T. J., I'll provide the wherewithal—it's about the only thing I can provide, God help me—if you'll provide the ideas, and then we want someone to do the designing and chase about after the oddments. I know various firms who go in for designing houses from the attic to the cellar in any period or a mixture of 'em all, but I don't know of anyone who could do this job, do you? I expect we'll have to wrestle with it ourselves, and get hold of a tame artist who'll do as he's told.”
“That sort isn't usually much of an artist,” said T. Jelkes.
“Well, can we get hold of an artist who's along this line of thought?”
That was the exact crux of the matter, and that was what T. Jelkes had touched upon and discarded while he was brewing the tea. Paston had put his finger upon the spot; they must have their master-craftsman for the making of any temple of the Mysteries. The things they wanted are not to be bought in the Tottenham Court Road. There was another thing Hugh Paston must have, only he didn't know it, he must have his priestess; they two men couldn't work the thing between them. And God only knew where the thing would end if they introduced a woman into it. He knew where it usually ended in pagan times.
And he had the priestess ready to hand if he chose to lay his hand on her. But did he choose? No, he did not. Paston could go to hell before he'd do that. But on the other hand, the work would be a godsend to the girl, who needed it badly. He was very anxious about her. Things had not been going well with her lately. Two of the papers she worked for had closed down, owing her money. He suspected she was not getting anything like enough to eat. Would it be possible to get her the job of doing all the craftwork and designing, which was her trade, and yet keep Hugh Paston from playing the fool with her?
He considered his guest critically. He did not think he would be a man especially attractive to women. That had probably been his trouble. Women would want a lick at his silver spoon, but they wouldn't want the man, which was not surprising. He was singularly lacking in, ‘It’. He was tallish, loosely built, and carried himself badly, with awkward, jerky, nervous movements. He had the long-fingered, bony hands ofa psychic and sensitive, and Jelkes guessed that the rest of his physique was to match. His strength, he guessed, would not be muscular, but would depend upon nervous energy; and he judged by the jerky, awkward movements that at the present moment everything was dis-co-ordinated, and the fellow had no stamina or staying-power. He would go up in brief flares of nervous excitement, and burn out as quickly, like a fire of straw. He judged that it would be fairly safe to give him his head and let him pelt away at his new scheme because the first burst would exhaust him, and the new toy would be broken and thrown aside, after the manner of Mayfair. It might therefore be all right to give Mona a chance at the job.
He thought of Mona. He did not anticipate much danger there. Hugh Paston was probably accustomed to highly decorative females; he did not think his little brown mouse would be classed as a female at all in Paston's eyes.
His visitor suddenly broke in on his thoughts, and in the odd way he had done two or three times before, he voiced the very thing that the old bookseller had been turning over in his mind.
“Jelkes, can we run this show with men only, just you and I, or shall we want some women?”
Jelkes grunted non-committally.
“Got your eye on any women for the job?”
“I know of plenty who'd like to join the—er—witchcoven when we get it going, but I don't know of any who'd be any use as priestesses. But I know various folk connected with the stage, and I thought we'd probably be able to find a young actress of the right type, one of these classical dancers, you know, and teach her the job, and she could teach the others.”
Jelkes heaved a sigh of relief. That solved one of his problems anyway.
“If you can find the right sort of priestess, I think I can lay my hands on the right sort of artist.”
“That's fine. I really feel we're getting under way. T. J., I'll be a differentman if I have something to do, and feel that I'm really getting somewhere instead of chasing my tail in circles down the arches of the years. Now then, let's get down to practical politics. What's the first move? Find a house?”
“No, not quite, the first move is to decide exactly what you want to do, and then see how we can best set about doing it.”
“We, T. Jelkes? Did I hear you say ‘we’? You impenitent old heathen, I believe you're getting quite keen on the scheme.”
“I'll try anything once.” said T. Jelkes grimly.
“Well. what do we want to do? You note I say we, T. Jelkes.”
“You can leave me out of it. I'll hold your coat. and I'll flap a towel at you between rounds. but as soon as the gong goes. I'm through the ropes before you can turn round. This isn't going to be my funeral. What is it you want, Hugh Paston? By what particular route do you want to attend the Harrying of Hell?”
“What in the world's that?”
“Don't you know that King Arthur, in the days before he was taken on as a Christian king and an ideal of chivalry, set off with his warriors to harry Hell because the Devil had overstepped the limit? And they chased all t
hrough Hell, and upset everything, and Arthur came away with the Devil's big cooking-pot tied on behind as his share of the spoils. And he gave it to Keridwen, the Keltic earth-goddess, and she minded it over a fire that never went out, high up on the flanks of Snowdon; and it was an inexhaustible source of supply for all and sundry. However much they ate out of it, and whatever sort of parties Arthur gave, the cauldron always filled up again, and everyone found it contained his favourite recipe. Then when Arthur was duly whitewashed when civilisation began to be the vogue, he became the very perfect Christian knight and model of chivalry, and the Devil's cook-pot, that Keridwen used to mind, became the Graal.”
“You do take the gilt off the gingerbread, T. J.”
“Well, my lad, you can trace that story every step of the way through Keltic folklore and literature.”
“Are you suggesting that future generations will canonise me?”
“No, I wouldn't go as far as to suggest that. You're more likely to end up on the same grid as Simon Magus, to my way of thinking. What I mean is this, if we're lucky in our harrying of Hell, we may get away with the cook-pot.”
“That is all Greek to me, T. J.”
“It's meant to be, my lad, at your present stage of development.”
“You're an irritating old cuss, I must say. You try me sorely.”
“If you never get anything worse than me to try you, you won't do too badly, laddie. Now tell me straight, what are you trying to get at with your invocation of Pan and all the rest of it?”
“Well, it seems to me, T. J., that if I get Pan, I'll get all the rest of it. Now don't think that I'm suffering from delusions. I know perfectly well that no cosmic billy-goat is going to materialise on your hearth-rug: but it's my belief that if I can break out of the luminous opacity of the opal, something in me that is septic, or ingrowing, or got corns on it at the present moment, is going to touch something in the spiritual world that corresponds to it, and yet that isn't exactly spiritual. I don't want anything spiritual, it isn't my line, I had an overdose of it at Oxford. What I want is that something vital which I feel to be somewhere in the universe, which I know I need, and which I can't lay my hand on. It was that I went over to Paris after when I didn't find it in my marriage, where I expected to find it. Now I call that' something' the Great God Pan; and you know, T. J., if I don't find it, I believe I shall go off in a decline and peg out.”