Goat Foot God

by Dion Fortune

  “All right, go ahead. What do you want to know about him?”

  “Where do you think he is now?”

  “Good Lord, I don't know. Safe in the churchyard where they planted him after the inquest, I suppose.”

  “That's where his body is, but where is he?”

  “How should I know? Do you think his ghost walks?”

  “Not exactly walks, that implies an earthbound spirit, and I don't think he's that. But I think he would manifest, given half a chance.”

  “So do I,” said Hugh, and then could have bitten his tongue off.

  “Do you know what we've got to do?”

  “No?”

  “We've got to help him to manifest.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We've got to make him welcome and bring him back.

  There will be no peace for anyone until we do. I've made up my mind to that. That's the thing I've been turning over in my mind while I've been ill. It was that that sent my temperature up. But now I've made up my mind to it, and told you, I think it will go down. If you see Ambrosius, give him my love.” Mona smiled at him very curiously as she said the last words. He had never seen a woman smile like that before, and could not imagine what it meant.

  There came to him a most extraordinary sense of peace and relaxation, as if something he had been straining against had given way and released him.

  “That's most awfully good of you,” he said, and then looked at himself in surprise. Why should he return thanks on behalf of Ambrosius?”

  Now tell me all the news,” said Mona. “How are things going at the farm?”

  “First-rate. Do you know that what we thought was a smaller barn is really the farm-house, and quite habitable? It only wants a lick of paint and a few tintacks knocking into it. We could move in next week if we wanted to.”

  “But how gorgeous! Oh dear, I must get well quickly and get to work on it. It will be the greatest fun getting things into shape. You have no idea what possibilities that place has got from the decoration point of view. It is the most perfect background one could possibly have.”

  “So you have fallen in love with it too, have you? So have I. There is a queer fascination about it, isn't there? One would expect it to be gloomy and sinister from its history, but I don't get that, somehow. It seems as if all that were superficial, and the real thing there, that's coming to the surface now, is what Ambrosius set out to do. Have you tumbled to what that is?”

  “No, what is it?”

  “The same thing we're going to do—invoke Pan. And the house knows it. That's why we feel welcome there. It was awfully pleased to see us. That house was no more cut out for a monastery than Ambrosius was cut out for a monk. I bet you anything that all these centuries Pan has been waiting to keep that appointment the Pope's visitor interrupted.”

  “That explains a good deal,” said Mona thoughtfully. “I have been addling my brains to discover why an invocation of Pan landed you in a monastery. It seemed the most unlikely spot one could possibly imagine. But it is coming clear now. The same path leads to both Pan and Ambrosius.”

  “That has been my guess all along. That old chapel's not Christian; it is got up on conventional1ines to cover its tracks; but if it was ever meant for anything orthodox, I'll eat my hat. But all the same, I don't think Ambrosius was a bad lot, even by the local reckoning. I believe he was suffering actually from a deficient spiritual diet, and he was trying to get some vitamin P. into it.”

  “What a lovely name!”

  “Original and copyright. When he got hold of the Greek manuscripts he realised what was wrong with him, and how to remedy it, and he set to work to develop the thing on the quiet, knowing he'd be burnt as a witch—”

  “Wizard—” said Mona.

  “—If he were caught out. I think Ambrosius really meant to be a reformer, given half a chance. He wasn't just abreacting his complexes by playing with dirt. He knew, whatever they liked to say, that Pan was clean and natural.”

  There flashed before Mona's memory the expression on the sharp-featured face of the stranger who had bent over her in the empty upper room of the museum, and she wondered what chains upon the soul Ambrosius would have to break before he reached the relative freedom indicated by Hugh Paston's viewpoint. A sudden pang of fear shook her; for although she did not fear Pan, she feared, and not without reason, the overwhelming rush when barriers go down.

  “If our hypothesis is right,” Hugh went on, “Ambrosius was trying to raise Pan. At least, his contemporaries said he was trying to raise the devil, and Pan and the devil were the same thing to their medieval minds.”

  “But you don't think Pan and the devil are the same thing, do you, Mr Paston? You haven't said to evil, be thou my good?”

  “Good Lord no, I don't feel that Pan is evil; though, mind you, I think he might be a bit of a devil if he got out of hand. I think he is something that is missing from modern life—a kind of spiritual vitamin. But you can have too much of a vitamin. I've seen it done with kids who were supposed to be leading the healthy life. Loaded too much of half the alphabet into them and brought them out in spots. Odd, isn't it, that you can have too much of a good thing, but you can.”

  “It's the same with everything,” said Mona. “You'll find it's just rhe same with Pan. If you get too much Pan, you see red, and if you get too much church, you feel blue. Funny, isn't it, that temperance has come to mean total abstinence instead of not taking too much. But tell me, when are you going down to Thorley?”

  “I'm going down tomorrow, to put up at The Green Man.”

  “Is that the name of the pub there? I suppose you know who the Green Man is? He's Pan.”

  “Good Lord, you don't say so?”

  “Yes, he is. He's Jack-in-the-green, the wood-spirit—the fairy man who runs after the maidens on midsummer eve— What's that but Pan? The British Pan? And do you know the meaning of the name of the village—Thorley? It's Thor's ley, or field. You're in the thick of the Old Gods there; the Scandinavian old gods, because it's towards the east side of England. In the west it's the old gods of the Kelts you get. But you will like the Norse gods best because you're fair. Now I'm dark. I belong with the Kelts. But it's all one, you know—the same thing with different names. Pan is the same everywhere. He's elemental force—that's all he is. He comes up from the earth under your feet, just as spiritual force, the sun-force, comes down from the sky over your head.”

  “Well, I'll be hanged! But look here, you mustn't go on talking like this. You'll have a temperature as high as a house.”

  “Oh no, I shan't. I'm feeling better already now I've got it off my chest.”

  The door opened, and Mrs Macintosh entered.

  “I think she has talked enough for one visit,” said the housekeeper, and Hugh went like a lamb. Mrs Macintosh was a woman to be obeyed, as many Mayfair staffs had found.

  CHAPTER XV

  LEFT alone, Mona dropped back on the pillows and clasped her hands behind her head and asked herself what in the world they were doing and where in the world they were heading. There were two relations to be considered-the relationship between herself and Hugh Paston as man and woman, and the relationship between the pair of them and Ambrosius, both jointly and separately.

  She considered first the relationship between herself and Hugh Paston, that being the obvious and incontrovertible one—the relationship with Ambrosius being open to more than one interpretation. Hugh liked her, that was obvious; he seemed to want her with him all the time; he referred everything to her. But all the same, he did not give her the impression of being attracted to her as a woman. He liked her as a friend, she felt. But is that relationship possible between a man and a woman to any great degree without the sex factor entering into it? Only, she knew. ifboth were adequately mated elsewhere. Old Jelkes had taught her a good deal of the secret knowledge on the subject of sex that is so important a part of the Mystery Tradition-one of its secret keys, in fact. He had steered her round a
very difficult corner by means of his knowledge, and what she had learnt was standing her in good stead now. She knew that there must be some degree of reaction between a man and a woman whenever any appreciable degree of sympathetic relationship is established between them, but under Jelkes' tuition she did not make the mistake of thinking it need be crudely sexual. She knew the subtle interplay of magnetism that goes on all the time in every relationship between the more vital and positive of the pair and the more pliant and dependent, quite irrespective of sex. She knew that, so far as magnetism went, in her relationship with Hugh Paston she was far the more positive of the pair. Hugh was peculiarly negative; peculiarly lacking in any sort of magnetism, and that was probably at the bottom of the trouble with his wife. She could not imagine him attracting or holding any woman, or for the matter of that, wanting to attract any woman. He was the most sexless male she had ever met.

  But then there was Ambrosius, who was a very different matter. But who, or what, was Ambrosius? First of all, he could be the dissociated personality of Hugh himself, and there was no need to look any further than abnormal psychology for his explanation. Secondly, he might be the spirit of the dead and gone monk manifesting through Hugh, who was quite negative enough for any sort of mediumship. Or thirdly, the explanation might lie in the far-reaching doctrine of reincarnation. But in the latter case, how did it work? There were two distinct personalities inside Hugh Paston's suit, neither of them apparently knowing anything about the other, and behaving in the exact manner that is described in the text-books of psychology that Jelkes' queer tastes and queerer collection had introduced her to. Mona had read widely in that field because it interested her and enabled her to understand some of her own problems.

  It was easy enough to explain the whole affair as one of those multiple personality cases that were produced in bulk at the Salpetriere at a time when suggestion and dissociation were less well understood than they are now. It was easy to see how Hugh's repressed subconscious mind might have split off bodily from his conscious personality and built up for itselfan Ambrosius fantasy. There were all the makings ofsuch a happening. Hugh, already shaken by his own tragedy, suddenly found himself face to face with the tragic history of Ambrosius and was struck by the similarity between their aims. ‘There, but for the grace of God, goes Hugh Paston'—he might quite well have said to himself. Were Hugh Paston and Ambrosius the conscious and subconscious minds of the same man? And if so, where did she stand between them? Where she stood with Ambrosius was not merely obvious, but blatant.

  Where did she stand with Hugh? Mona had no delusions about Mayfair, or its morals. She knew that if Hugh were true to type, it was exceedingly unlikely that she stood for marriage with Hugh Paston. A few week-ends—a wrist-watch—a pendant—She doubted if it would run to a flat in these economical days when the girls of his own class gave themselves for the asking.

  Now Mona, though entirely unconventional in her manners and speech, of which latter Jelkes frequently complained bitterly, had very definite views as to what was clean and what was not in conduct. If a man who were free to offer her marriage offered her anything else, she would consider herself grossly insulted. If, on the other hand, a man who were not free to offer her marriage asked her to make a home with him, she would have considered herself entirely justified in doing so; the divorce laws being so far removed from the national conscience, no great odium attends upon being a law unto oneself in such matters nowadays. Equally, however, the offer of a clandestine flat by a man who desired to save his face with the world would have been turned down contemptuously. Mona had been through the bitter experience that awaits the woman who gives her all for what she thinks is the great love to a man who has not the slightest intention of risking his reputation. She learnt, as all the daughters of Eve must learn, that passionate love is a fire that burns itself out, and unless it is replaced by the love of comrades, there is nothing left. Never again would she make the mistake ofgiving herself for love unless the man were also willing to give himself for love and face the music with her and make a home for her. To have passing affairs of the senses she would have considered utter degradation.

  It was on the reaction from this affair that Jelkes had found her, and had helped her to pull herself together again. She too had been consoled with cups of tea and put to bed in the old feather-bed in Jelkes' spare room. It was, in fact, Mona herself who had knocked the canopy cock-eye, slaying clothes-moths. She had tremendous confidence in Jelkes' wisdom in matters of human nature, having found him a true prophet in her own affairs of the heart—a reputation he had earned simply by knowing that human nature is made after a certain pattern in such matters and will run true to form. At the very outset of her acquaintance with Hugh, Jelkes had taken her aside and given her a very straight talking-to, and warned her that Hugh was in an abnormal condition, and not to be taken too seriously. Mona herself had seen enough of the world to know the reactions ofa man who had had an emotional shock and disllusionment, and she had nodded her acquiescence. But now she was not quite so sure. The negative, purposeless, gentle-natured Hugh might be putty in anybody's hands, easily managed, and quite content with Platonics, but Ambrosius was another matter. He was anything but Platonic, and promised to be a very awkward handful, whether he were a dissociated personality or a separate entity.

  Mona did not know what to do with him because she could not be sure exactly what he was. How could one tell a dissociated personality from a spirit-control, and a spirit-control from a previous incarnation of the same person? Anyway, the practical results were the same, whatever theory might be chosen to explain them.

  At that moment the door opened and in walked Jelkes, looking uncommon grim.

  “Where's Hugh?” he exclaimed in surprise, finding Mona alone.

  “I've no idea. Mrs Macintosh turfed him out some time ago.”

  “Has he been gone long?”

  “Yes, ages. Good Lord, did you think he was spending the night with me?”

  “Mona, I wish you wouldn't talk like that. I don't like to hear it.”

  “Don't take any notice of me, Uncle Jelkes, my bark is a lot worse than my bite. You ought to know that by this time.”

  Jelkes grunted and flung a piece of coal on the fire with a crash.

  “Mrs Macintosh had quite made up her mind he'd be spending the night here. And she wasn't at all anxious to disturb him, either. I was surprised to hear she had come in after all.”

  “She's been trained in good places. All the same, she met with a disappointment. Hugh went like a lamb. That ought to teach her not to judge others by herself.”

  “So you're calling him Hugh, are you?”

  “Not to his face. I only called him that because you did. I know my place—”

  “'God bless the squire and all his rieb relations,

  And teach uspoor people to lenow our proper stations.'”

  “I hope you know it, for your own sake, Mona.”

  “Good Lord, yes, I know it all right. I've seen his sort before. You needn't worry about me. I've no use for Mayfair or any of its ways and works. All the same, Uncle, I think the poor chap's in a devil of a mess, just as a human being, quite apart from his old school tie.”

  “What sort of a mess?”

  “A mess inside. I say, Uncle, what is Ambrosius really, do you think?”

  “That's exactly what I have been addling my brains over, Mona. I'm dashed worried about the lad. If it's mediumship, there will be the devil to pay. He's in no state to stand it. The kind of mediumship that develops under strain is always pathological, in my opinion. I think it's a dual personality, myself. I've seen it before. There was a case at the seminary. A little lay-brother washing dishes in the kitchen. Mildest little creature in the ordinary way. Then, when he'd had enough of dish-washing, he turned into no end of a dog with the vocabulary of a bargee. I expect the invocation of Pan has stirred up all Hugh's repressions, and Ambrosius is the result.”

  “Yes, Uncle, but why A
mbrosius? Why not Henry VIII, or Solomon, or any other respectable polygamist he might fancy? Why Ambrosius, who was just as repressed as Hugh? He's no wish-fulfilment for anybody. Do you know what I believe, Uncle? I believe that Hugh was Ambrosius in his last incarnation, and what we know as Hugh today, all nerves and inhibitions, is what was left of Ambrosius after the Pope's visitor had finished with him. Then, when he invoked Pan, he opened up his own subconscious, which is what Pan always does, and the first thing he struck was the layer of memories belonging to Ambrosius, all full of emotion because Ambrosius died a terrible death. It's a psycho-pathology all right; it's a dual personality all right—two men under one hat, but it doesn't start in this incarnation, it goes back to the last.”

  Jelkes sat for a long time deep in thought. At length he spoke.

  “I believe you're right, Mona. That explains a lot of things that fit in with each other. Anyone with any knowledge knows that psychology doesn't begin with this life. You can't account for any innate qualities if it does, except by a special act of creation, and I should have thought that was out of date since Darwin.”

  “Never mind the academics,” said Mona. “What's to do about it?”

  “But it is upon the academics that the question of what to do is based,” said Jelkes. “Until I am sure what is wrong with the fellow, I don't know what to do with him. All I can do is to pursue expectant treatment, as the doctors say when they're flummoxed. We have got a choice of two things; we can lance him or let him burst naturally. The one thing we can't do is to turn Ambrosius back now he's come so far. If I had known the way things were going to work out, I'd have shoved Hugh down a drain as soon as I set eyes on him. But being as things are, we've got to do the best we can for him, damn him.”

  Mona smiled. She knew so well how much worse Jelkes' bark was than his bite.

  And Jelkes knew it too. His snarling at Hugh was to cover his own emotion. He knew that in tackling the problem in psycho-pathology presented by Hugh Paston he was taking on a very nasty job—particularly nasty, because the girl was inevitably involved in it. In order to get invocations of the old gods to work, something in the nature of a self-starter had to be provided. As St Ignatius so truly said in another context: ‘Put youself in the posture of prayer, and you will feel prayerful.' Country-folk, when a pump won't suck, pour a little water down it; this seals the valve, and the pump gets going. So it is with invocations. Rouse the Pan Within, and he makes contact with the Great God, the First-begotten Love, who is by no means merely a cosmic billy-goat. Mona Wilton had caused sufficient reflex stir of the instincts in Hugh Paston, whether he knew it or not, to serve as water down the pump. Old Jelkes, whose ideals were not of the kind that leads to selfdelusion, knew that if Mona chose to follow up her advantage, the invocation of Pan would be an unqualified success. But would she? And even if she would, could he let her? It was a tricky business. There would be a sudden rush of repressed emotion, like the bursting of a mill-dam, and then Hugh would rapidly come back to normal; and once back to normal, it was exceedingly unlikely that he would have any use for Mona Wilton, but would shake her by the hand, and thank her warmly, and return whence he came and never give her another thought.