Goat Foot God

by Dion Fortune

  If he could be sure that Mona would keep her head, and neither panic at the manifestation, nor get her personal feelings involved, the way to handle Hugh was deliberately to wake the Inner Pan till it burst its inhibitions and the two sides of Hugh's nature joined up. And Jelkes knew how it could be done. Steadily, deliberately, under control all the time, as the ancient priests did it—by means of ritual. But it was Mona who would have to do it. He had no word of power that would evoke Pan to visible appearance in the soul of Hugh Paston. It is one thing to tackle a nasty job oneself; but it is quite another to put someone else on to do it. Jelkes was doing some pretty hard thinking, and was inclining towards the decision that Hugh Paston was a structure that was not worth the repairs, when Mona's voice interrupted him.

  “Do you know what I believe is the only solution of Mr Paston's problems? Do a ceremony of invocation and bring Pan through. You will have him under control then, whereas if he goes on leaking through in the way he's doing at present, he will be all over the place.”

  “That's just what I was thinking myself, Mona. But if we do that, who's going to do the invocation? I can't. Pan won't come for me.”

  “Me, I suppose,” said Mona. “Lord, what a life I I never thought I'd come to this. But it is the only thing that will straighten things out. Mr Paston will go on the rocks if we can't do something for him. And his family will have him certified if they get half a chance. They've been on the verge of it several times. That was why Mrs Macintosh wouldn't let the family doctor be sent for. He'd had a finger in the pie. He's an awful swine, I believe. Did an abortion for Mrs Paston to cover her tracks. Mr Paston seems to have been thoroughly let in by everybody.”

  “Yes, poor lad, he's got bones that are worth picking. All the same, I don't see what they stand to gain by certifying him. He doesn't need it.”

  “If they certify him, he can't go and get married again and raise a family, and then all his money will go to his little nephews and nieces. Mrs Macintosh is certain that's the game. They came round to see her, and cross-examined her up hill and down dale, trying to get evidence about his eccentricities. I believe he is pretty eccentric, at least they think he is, judged by Mayfair standards. I don't suppose he'd be considered so in Chelsea. Anyway, if we don't do something for the poor chap, he'll be in the soup, for he's an awfully defenceless sort of creature, for all his cash. From what I've seen of them I should say that millionaire's children are like Michaelmas chicken—not worth rearing. If he'd had to knock about like I have, he wouldn't have lasted long.”

  “If he'd had to knock about like you have, he wouldn't be like he is, he'd probably have been all right. But everyone he comes near exploits him, and the lad hasn't a chance.”

  “I'd like to give him a chance, Uncle, if you're willing. There's something awfully decent about him, in spite of his money.”

  “I'd like to give him a chance too, Mona, but what you're proposing is no joke, and you're the person who is going to have to stand the brunt of it. You'll have to lead him up the garden path, and then nip from under at the critical moment. I don't see any likelihood of Hugh settling down with us for keeps; we're not his sort, and he's not our sort. We'll have to put him on his feet and then say good-bye. Are you game for that?”

  “Oh yes, I'm game for that all right, Uncle. In fact, that's the only thing I am game for. I shouldn't care to have Hugh for keeps either. He wouldn't amuse me.”

  “Well, my dear, I take off my hat to you. You're saving a soul, and not cheaply, either.”

  “We must mark time till I get fit again. I can't tackle a job like this while I'm under the weather.”

  “Good God, no, child, of course you mustn't. And I don't want to move either until I'm absolutely certain as to what I'm handling. We must watch Hugh for a bit, and make sure of our diagnosis, and even then we must insert the thin end of the wedge very gently. It doesn't do to bring these things through to consciousness with a shock. Let him adjust himself gradually.”

  “But on the other hand, don't let him flounder,” said Mona.

  “He's all right. He's stood it so long, he can stand it a bit longer—until you're quite fit, anyway.”

  “I don't know about that. Once things begin to stir they soon get up pace, and if you haven't got them in hand, well, they're soon out of hand.”

  CHAPTER XVI

  HUGH would have liked to have said good-bye to Miss Wilton before he took his departure next morning, but this Mrs Macintosh would not permit, alleging that the doctor was expected. He was vouchsafed the information, however, that Miss Wilton had had a good night, and was much better this morning. Although her prescription had worked well, Mrs Macintosh had no intention of risking an overdose. Hugh, therefore, had to content himself with ordering a large bunch of flowers to be sent in from a very expensive florist who could be relied on to do the thing in style and not work off stale stock, knowing that the recipient of a present is unlikely to report the dudness of the gift.

  A fearful smash-banging greeted Hugh as he approached the farm, and he discovered that Mr Pinker had been as good as his word, and the place looked as if it had been bombed. All the raffle of unsightly shacks in the courtyard was piled in a heap in the centre, giving promise of a noble bonfire. Even as he crossed the muddy expanse, a couple of youths came out of a doorway laden with dilapidated planks to which the garish remains of flowered wallpapers still clung. Things were moving.

  It was now possible to see the fan-arching and the delicate pillars of the cloisters surrounding the four sides of the yard. To the east there were no buildings backing onto the cloisters, and the grove of Scotch firs overhung them with their branches and dropped cones and needles onto the lichened stone of their roof. To the north they were overshadowed by the steep-pitched roof of the chapel. To the south, the dwelling-house backed on to them; to the west, the main building of the ancient priory.

  He entered the main building by a big door that stood wide open, and found that the last of the partitioning lay on the floor and it was possible to get a view of the big rooms. They lay one either side of the large hall with its groined roof and fine curving stone stair. The whole place appeared to be built of stone, the only timber being the doors. Hugh thought of the cold during the long winters, and the imprisoned monks in their unheated cells; there were big stone fireplaces in the two large rooms, but he doubted if the prisoners got much benefit from them.

  And yet the place did not seem melancholy to him. It was as if the terrible happenings that marked the close of its ecclesiastical career had been swept away and it was back at the days of its building, when its master, full of new hope, got his risky enterprise going.

  Hugh walked round his domain. The labourers were busy smashing out the rough woodwork that defaced the older portion of the building, but in the dwellinghouse the skilled men were at work on the repairs. Old Pinker himself was busy with the window-frames.

  “You do want to make a place weather-tight before you does aught else,” said he as Hugh greeted him. The ancient kitchener was up by the roots already, revealing the fine fire-back behind it.

  “I got a pair O' dorgs will do ye fine here,” said Mr Pinker. “Fire-dorgs,” he added, as an afterthought, in case Hugh mistook him for a fancier. “It's a shame and a sin to hide a fire-back like that. Now what about distemper? Myself, I'd fancy a nice cheerful pink; or a good green. But you have it as you've a mind to.”

  Hugh took up his fascinating little book of patterns.

  “I'll take this with me, if I may,” he said.

  “That's right,” said Mr Pinker. “It's allus best to ask the missus. Then she gets what she wants and there's peace. If she don't, there isn't. And it don't matter to a man what's on the walls. I suppose ye want the whitewash gettin' off'n the beams? It will be the heck of a job, but we kin do it if you want it. And they're oak, they are, and it's a shame and sin to hide 'em.”

  Having arrived at Thorley, Hugh did not keep on running backwards and forwards to Billin
gs Street, as he had planned to do. Things were happening inside him that made him think, and made him wish to be alone while he thought.

  He was very puzzled as to exactly what had happened in the upper room at the museum, where he was supposed to have fainted. But had he fainted? The last thing he heard before he lost consciousness had been the great bell of the Abbey striking the hour, and he had recovered consciousness to hear the chiming of the quarter. He had been sitting down when he had lost consciousness, and he had been flat on his back on the floor, well clear of any chair, when he recovered it. It does not take a man a quarter of an hour to fall from horizontal to vertical when he faints. Moreover, there had been a marked change in Mona Wilton's attitude towards him from that moment; she had registered fear in no mistakable manner. ]e1kes, too, had cooled off appreciably. Hugh was amazed to find that the defection of these two new friends cut far deeper than his wife's disloyalty or his mother's lack of sympathy had done.

  The one thing he had to hold on to was Mona's curious remark: ‘We must help Ambrosius to come through. Give him my love', and the extraordinary lifting of the cloud that had followed her words. He had done the usual promiscuous surface reading of his kind, and was familiar with spiritualistic thought, and there immediately came to his mind the idea that the disincarnate Ambrosius might have turned up and made use of him as a medium. Was it possible to go into trance without knowing it? He didn't know.

  The idea left him cold, however. It would not in the least amuse him to be a trance medium. He had always considered that a job for women. For Ambrosius, however, he had an extraordinary sympathy. An overwhelming rush of sympathy, for Ambrosius was the last thing he remembered before losing consciousness. It seemed to him that, just as on the night when fantasy turned into nightmare, he had realised so clearly what Ambrosius was trying to do and how he must have felt, that for a moment he had actually identified himself with the dead monk, and was himself feeling, rather than thinking of the feelings of another.

  And at that moment Mona Wilton had laid her hand on his. Now Hugh reckoned himself as a married man whose moonstruck days were far behind him, and he was quite accustomed to do his share at a necking party, though he was never considered to shine, and a woman's casual touch meant little or nothing to him. But when Mona laid her hand on his wrist, he had reacted as Ambrosius would have reacted. Now what was the meaning of that? He had experienced the tremendous upheaval that might have been expected to take place in the soul of the monk, totally unaccustomed to women, who had secretly broken with his religion and all its inhibitions, and was pursuing the cult of Pan.

  It was a bewildering problem, and Hugh, sitting over the fire in the stuffy little parlour at the Green Man, gave himself up to the contemplation of it.

  And as he did so, he felt the same change coming over him again. And for a brief moment he was Ambrosius. And he felt the tremendous concentration of will and energy, the daring, and at the same time the subtlety and wariness, that had characterised the renegade monk. Once again he was adrift in time and space and was afraid. But at the same time he felt a strange exhilaration and sense of flowing power. It was like being at the wheel of a racing-car when the greatest risks are being taken and are coming off successfully. Or like the critical moment on a rocky face as one comes up and over the cornice. It was for this that he had loved danger and pursued dangerous sports—for these tremendous moments of exhilaration when he was another man.

  Was it possible, simply by thinking hard of the dead and gone monk, to produce this feeling at will? It certainly looked as if it were. He must ask Jelkes. The feeling had gone again, though leaving an aftermath of excitement behind it. He concentrated once more on the idea of Ambrosius, trying to summon him before his mind's eye and picture him as he must have been in his black habit, with his ascetic hawk's face, but failed to get anything clear. It might be easier if he had the picture of Ambrosius to remind him of his appearance. He reached for the cardboard-packed parcel that he had picked up from the photographer's on his way to Thorley, but which, in his obsession with his new idea, he had forgotten to open, tore off the wrappings, and held in his hands a full plate photograph. He examined it critically.

  The brushwork was extraordinarily fine; held a little way off, as one must hold a modern picture if one is to see it properly, he found that the enlargement gave the same striking effects of luminosity as an Impressionist work. The light and shade of the photograph revealed the formal, massive draping of the black robe and the stiff folds of the cowl, as if the material had been harsh and unyielding, as it probably was. The bold, impressionistic effect which enlargement had lent to the miniature-painter's brush-work, threw up in strong relief the modelling of the face and head and the long-fingered hands. A bare sandalled foot showed under the hem of the robe. It gave him a strange sensation to gaze upon the flesh of the man who had been horribly done to death.

  He studied the pictured face closely. It was seen in profile, as the sitting man bent over his sloping desk, pen in hand. Hugh wished it had been full face so that he could have looked into the eyes. From the features thus revealed he strove to reconstruct the nature of the man. The forehead was high under the close-cropped hair, and he judged that it would be narrow, like his own. He judged that Ambrosius had a rather lantern-jawed face altogether. What little hair appeared round the skull-cap that protected the tonsure appeared to be dark, so far as he could tell, whereas his own was of the nondescript, light mousey brown that is effectually peroxided by alleged blondes. Hugh contrasted his own indefinite countenance with the hawk-like features of the pictured face; his own vague purposelessness with the intensity of that figure, even when seated at a desk. He realised with abundant clearness that it was the intensity of the man's nature that give his driving-force to Ambrosius; whereas he, Hugh, having no intensity, simply slipped into a negative condition that was death in life when things became difficult.

  It seemed to him that Ambrosius was everything that he was not, and a far better man into the bargain. But then Hugh always felt that about people he liked. The moment he saw anything to admire, he realised how lacking it was in himself, and how hopeless it was to try and develop it in his negative, useless nature.

  At that moment Mrs Pascoe came in with his tea, and he laid aside the picture to help her clear a place for the tray among the books and papers with which he had littered the table. As he did so, the picture caught her eye.

  “My, is that you in fancy dress, Mr Paston?” she said. “Ain't it a speakin' likeness!”

  The moment she had withdrawn, Hugh went upstairs, regardless of the stewing tea, and got his shaving mirror. Then, manreuvring till he got the right angle, he managed to see his own profile reflected in the fly-blown glass over the mantel-piece. There was no question whatever about the likeness. Even its owner could see it.

  He dropped back into his chair, the tea completely forgotten. This was a most extraordinary thing. Here was he, the living image of the dead monk with whom he felt such a profound sympathy and whose house he had got I What did it all mean? He rose, pulled on his leather coat, went and fetched the car from the shed that housed it, and sped down the long mile to Monks Farm.

  There was no one there when he arrived, Mr Pinker having called his men off to give first aid to a cowshed that threatened to fall down upon its occupants. The first faint dusk was gathering as Hugh made his way round the buildings, and going well out into the rough field, stood still and considered them.

  He was gazing at the west front, with its high gable that roofed the small chapel, its statueless niche showing like an empty eye-socket in the pale reflection from the western sky. It was planned that the niche should come out to make way for a window, but this had not yet been done. He could see the small gratings up under the eaves that marked each monk's cell. Through the high windows of the rooms on either side of the door he could see the skeleton outline of ladders and planks such as decorators use. He did not desire to go in there, among all the impediment
a of the modern builder, so he turned left, and using his duplicate key, let himself into what had once been the large chapel of the priory.

  Last time he had seen it, the west end had all been boarded up, and he took it for granted that the wall had at some time fallen out and been subjected to this rough repair. The unpaved floor, too, of poultry-droppings trodden as hard as cement, he had also taken for granted. But a great change met his eyes as he entered.

  The rough boarding at the west end had been taken down, and revealed the skeleton of a stone-mullioned rose-window of lovely proportions, with fragments of stained glass still clinging here and there in the highest angles. The dirt floor had been dug out, and revealed patterned tiles. In a corner under the window, carefully laid on an old sack, was a pile of bits of broken, multicoloured glass, that had evidently been picked out of the dirt of the floor as it was shovelled away. Mr Pinker had truly said that he knew how to deal with old buildings.