Goat Foot God

by Dion Fortune

  The essence of Ambrosius' problem had been that, placed as he was, it was exceedingly dangerous for him to break with orthodoxy and claim for his manhood the natural things that were denied to the Churchman. The essence of Hugh Paston's problem had been curiously similar, save that the inhibitions were now in his own soul and not in his circumstances. Hugh was deadly afraid of coming to grips with natural things amid all the artificiality of his life, lest in some unforseen way he let catastrophe loose. In his mind the primitive and the catastrophic were inalienably associated, as they probably had been in the experience of Ambrosius. The burnt soul dreads what seared it, even after reincarnation. Hugh could not grip the things that Ambrosius had burnt his fingers over.

  But supposing he could go back beyond that, go back as Ambrosius had tried to do? That was the game, but how was it to be done? He thought of his original plan —the evocation of Pan by a combination of the Method of St Ignatius and the very unsainted des Esseintes, Huysmans' decadent hero, and suddenly realised that, all unknown to himself, the thing had come about spontaneously, but had come about backwards. Not only was it possible by a careful ‘composition of place: to evoke the appropriate Presence, but it seemed as if, were one successful in evoking a Presence, that circumstances would produce the appropriate composition of place. This was a startling realisation.

  After all, what had his quest of Pan been save a hunger for the primitive and vital amid all the sophistication and devitalisation of his life? And Pan was leading him back to the primitive along the path of his own evolution. Provided he had the courage to sink down through his own subconsciousness he would pass through the mediseval darkness and tragedy and come out into the radiance that was Greece.

  And if Ambrosius were the medieval reality, what was the Greek reality? But was Ambrosius reality or was he phantasy? Hugh had no means of knowing, and was probably the last person to be able to form an unbiassed opinion. But whatever Ambrosius might or might not be, he corresponded to reality as the movements of the hands of a clock correspond to the passage of time. He represented something of vital importance in Hugh's soul.

  Hugh was not disposed to worry about the metaphysics of Ambrosius if by means of Ambrosius he could obtain results. Jelkes, arguing about objective and subjective reality. was probably nearer the truth than anybody; but it was Mona, who took Ambrosius for granted, who alone could handle the situation. Taking the motion of the hands of the clock as time, you would catch your train and get to your destination; take time as the fourth dimension, and you would land anywhere and nowhere.

  Hugh cast his mind back to that night in the cock-eyed old feather-bed in Jelkes' dilapidated establishment when he had invoked Pan and started everything off. Could the operation be repeated at will? What was the word of power that had brought the god? What is the ‘word of power that brings any god, save adoration? It is the heart, not the tongue that invokes. Lift up your heart unto the Lord and never mind about your hands, whether that lord be Adonai or Adonis. When Hugh had asserted to himself the Divine Right of Nature, he had evoked Pan quite effectually. Each time he had renewed the assertion, Pan had answered. Each time he had doubted the natural divinity, the god had withdrawn. When he had kissed Mona because he was man and she was woman, she had yielded as if something deep within her had acknowledged the right; but when he behaved towards her like a gentleman, she had kept him at arm's length and found nothing in him that attracted her. There is a life behind the personality that uses personalities as masks. There are times when life puts off the mask and deep answers unto deep. Unless there is elemental life behind the personality, the loveliest mask is lifeless. That is why certain marriages go astray, for a man marries a mask or a woman mates with a shadow. Liquor, love and fights are the three great inebriations, and this is a teetotal age in all departments. And at best liquor can only supplement love and fights, but not replace them. The chaste and the mild merely get maudlin in their cups; the Dionysiac inebriation is not for them.

  Hugh had a feeling that in doing what Ambrosius had always wanted to do and never managed—embrace his succuba—the force in himself that he called Ambrosius had found a channel, and the unquiet monk would walk no more. Hugh had done the thing Ambrosius set out to do—or had accomplished the thing for which Ambrosius stood, according to which way one looked at it; he had picked up the thread of his own past, and the Ambrosius factor was integrated with his personality. Whatever the terminology that might be used, there was a change in him, and he knew it. Names did not matter in face of that.

  Ambrosius had started as an idea that had taken hold of his imagination; then he had passed over into the kind of semi-objective reality of dream; and on the basis of the dream Hugh had built the entirely subjective structure of the day-dream: and into it all Ambrosius had projected with the peculiar reality of the lunatic's illusion. Where was the line to be drawn between all these things, and what was the influence of the deliberately willed day-dream in the matter? What was it that made the subjective cross the line and for all practical purposes, objectify? He did not know, any more than he knew how the pendulum and the escapement correlated with the fourth dimension—and he didn't care, so long as his watch kept time and he caught his train. He knew now, as in his heart he had known all along, whose was the satiny moulded back of the woman who was not his wife, whose appearance in his dream had been the overture to the whole strange affair—the woman who had no use for him in real life but who in the subjective realms had proved responsive. What indeed was the power of the deliberately willed day-dream in this matter? Could it project itself and be shared by another? If there was anything in telepathy, it probably could.

  Hugh sat up and pushed back his cowl and looked the affair straight in the face. He knew what he wanted, but he did not know whether he was justified in going for it. But after all, can one make custards without breaking eggs? The great difference between the pagan and the Christian attitudes is that the latter sticks to custard powder.

  He groped his way down the worn, winding stairs in the gathering dusk, and made his way through the cloisters to the dwelling-house, forgetting that he still wore the monk's robe. As he crossed the garth a fearful, dreadful yell re-echoed through the twilight, and he saw Bill going for his life down the drive with Lizzie running like a hare behind him. They had seen the famous ghost of Monks Farm 1 Hugh with a pang of compunction realised that he had upset all Mona's domestic arrangements. However, the Eleusinian Mysteries do not require an audience. ‘Hekas, hekas, este bibeloi! Be ye far from us, O ye profane—' so perhaps it was just as well.

  He could see by Mona's face as he entered the livingroom how anxious she had been. She made tea for him, and he drank it with relief, for he remembered a remark of Jelkes to the effect that there is nothing like food to check psychism.

  It was pleasant to lie back in the deep chair with his feet on the hearth and a cup of tea beside him and a cigarette between his lips. For the moment, Greece and Ambrosius both seemed a long way off. But the gods are exacting, and he knew that if he strayed from the path at the present moment he might not easily find it again. He must not deviate from the concentration. Now he knew why Jelkes said that occultists trained so carefully in concentration.

  “Mona,” he said, “did you ever read ‘The Corn King and the Spring Queen'?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was the meaning of the rite in the ploughing-field, beyond the obvious, that is?”

  “It was supposed to link up with the forces behind the earth and the sun.”

  “Link up the individuals who took part in it, or the whole tribe?”

  “Link up both, I suppose. The individuals wouldn't be able to link up the tribe unless they first linked up themselves.”

  “I see.”

  “It was a sacrament. ‘An outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.'”

  “Funny thing,” said Hugh, “Christians make a sacrament of taking life, and pagans make a sacrament of giving it.”
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  “They are probably different sides of the same coin, if the truth were known,” said Mona.

  “The truth never will be known,” said Hugh, “because they always fly at each other's throats the minute they catch sight of one another. More's the pity, for we need them both, at least I do. One can't go in for complete unrepression, much as I'd like to. One would only end on the gallows. That's the weak spot in Freudianism.”

  Mona watching him closely, saw that there was a profound change in him.

  “Have you read much psychology, Mona?”

  “Yes, a fair bit. I was very interested in it at one time. Then I got tired of it because it never seemed to get you anywhere.”

  “I have read a certain amount, and I've seen a good deal of it done. It was all the rage in our set when it first started. So far as I can see, either nothing happens at all, or else you go up with a whizz like a rocket, and come down with a whack like the stick. What's the use of revealing to me that I want to murder my father when he died of natural causes twenty years ago? Or that I've got a fixation on my mother, when the nearest approach to a mother I've ever known was Allen and Hanbury, and you can't work up much of a crush on them. Or that I'm suffering from repression when—well, we won't go into that. Anyway, I'd no need to be any more repressed than I wished to be. No, Mona, it won't wash. There's more to it than that. I'll make you a present of Freud and never ask for the change. I think that the best thing I can do is to get on with my original idea of an invocation of Pan; if I can get a good rush of lifeforce through, it will blow all my inhibitions clear.'”

  “Have you ever departed from your original idea?”

  “Well, we haven't been able to do much about it recently, have we? What with your bronchitis and Mr Pinker and all.”

  “Hugh, you've never departed from it. As soon as ever you even thought of Pan, you began tracking back into your own subconscious, and then you picked up the trail of Ambrosius.”

  “I picked up the trail of Ambrosius through coming here, Mona. I can't blame that onto Pan.”

  “But why did you come here, where Ambrosius was to be picked up?”

  “God knows. Pure chance, I suppose.”

  “Is there such a thing as pure chance? Or is it undisclosed causation? Whatever it was, it was very appropriate.”

  “It sure was. But I think I've dealt with Ambrosius, you know. I think I've absorbed him. I don't think he'll walk again. You see, I have worked out what he wanted to do, and made up my mind to go and do it, and that settled Ambrosius. He rested quiet in his grave after that. That's the way to lay subconscious ghosts, Mona—fulfil their last wishes.”

  Mona sat silently staring into the fire, wondering what was going to develop, and whether Hugh had any idea where he was heading. At length she said,

  “How do you propose to set about all this?”

  “I don't altogether know. I've got to feel my way. The first thing is to carry out our original plan and equip the place à la Des Esseintes. I haven't felt able to tackle it before; I don't know why. But I can tackle it now all right, and I'd like to get a move on.”

  “Do you want me to start collecting Tudor pieces for you?”

  “No, I don't, I'm not after Ambrosius. I'm after the thing that was behind Ambrosius.”

  “Greek stuff would look ghastly here, Hugh.”

  “I know it would; but ultra-modern stuff wouldn't. It would look all right because it is primitive, and this place is primitive. The old craftsmen had to be simple because they were short of tools and materials; and modern design has gone simple because it was bilious with elaboration. It's on a slimming diet. So extremes meet. You pick up the ultra-modern, stream-lined stuff, and it will go in all right. Ambrosius' fan-arching is stream-lined, if you come to think of it. You mark my words, Mona, Pan is coming into his own again, and the sheer, hard, crude lines of modern design point to it. Pure force with the brake off. It suits Pan fine. Don't you go and dig up any mock-gothic. And look here, Mona, you've got twelve days till Beltane, can you get through with it by then?”

  “What do you want doing?”

  “I want a lot of things doing. Complete reorganisation, in fact. I suggest we turn this end of the building over to Bill and Lizzie. They ought to get married. They can't slosh about as they are indefinitely. The village will come up and tar and feather them. Oh, I forgot to tell you, they've bolted. Caught sight of me in my monk's kit and let out a hoot and fled. But I expect they'll flee back again in due course. They won't get much change out of Mrs Pascoe. We'll let them have these quarters and move in next door. I'll get old Pinker along to knock out all those monks' cells and make two big rooms upstairs same as downstairs. He's itching to do it. Called 'em horse-boxes. It only means a wall and a door across each end, and the job's done. Oh yes, and a few windows. We don't want to be walled up for life. Pinker's got the stone mullions for them sitting in his yard waiting. I think the job will go through all right in time. I'll attend to this end of it if you will go up to London and get busy on the furnishing. I'll have one room, and you have the other, and we'll make the chapel up in the gable into a prophet's chamber for Uncle Jelkes whenever he cares to honour us.”

  Mona looked at him. Apparently he considered her a permanency at Monks Farm. Neither did he seem to consider the possibility of tarring and feathering for any one except Lizzie and Bill.

  A timid knock at the door broke in upon them, and Mona, not wishing Hugh to be seen, for he was still in his monk's robe, muttered ‘damn' and went to answer it. There stood two forlorn figures, who, as Hugh prophesied, had been driven forth ignominiously from The Green Man by its proprietress.

  Bill told the sad tale while Silly sniffed. Mrs Pascoe, though she had seen quite fit to saddle Mona with Silly, was horrified at the idea of her as a daughter-in-law, and had cast her to the geese on the common remorselessly, all clad in cap and apron as she was. Bill, who in his dim animal mind now regarded her as his mate, was infuriated by this insult, and had stalked after her, bidding mamma and all his prospects farewell for ever. Rather than put up with such treatment he had returned to Mona, braving the ghost.

  Mona, laughing, opened the door and showed them Hugh, the monk's robe hanging loose and ungirt from his shoulders like a dressing-gown, revealing reassuring trousers, and told them that it was Mr Paston who had dressed up for a lark.

  Guffaws and general relief was the result. But when asked to swear secrecy. Bill explained that it was too late, as they had already told the tale far and wide. Mrs Pascoe, it was true, had repudiated it as the result of drink, but everyone else had received it open-mouthed. He also informed them that he and Lizzie had been hand in hand to the parson, demanding to put up the banns. and parson had declined, being a friend of Miss Pumfrey's. alleging that Lizzie was under age and must return to her duly appointed guardian forthwith. and had summoned that lady by special messenger. She, being his next door neighbour. had cut off the unhappy couple in the drive and given them a piece of her mind, demanding the instant return of Lizzie and threatening all and sundry with the utmost rigours of the law.

  “But I told ‘er she was expectin', so she just turned on 'er 'eel and 'opped it,” Bill explained lucidly.

  Then they returned to the vicarage to have another try for the banns, and parson proving firm, had told him that it didn't matter, as the lady they worked for wasn't really particular. Whereupon the vicar suddenly changed his mind and promised to do the needful.

  Bill was immensely proud of his strategy, but Mona was appalled at the wreck of her reputation that now lay all over the village. However she reflected that the persons who were not kept away by the ghost would be maintained at a safe distance by the scandal, so they could be sure of the seclusion that is required for all occult matters.

  Hugh unlocked the cellarette and handed Bill two bottles of beer to celebrate with, and the now happy couple retired to their own quarters.

  CHAPTER XXV

  NEXT day Hugh drove Mona up to town and
dropped her in Oxford Street, arranging to meet her for tea at Uncle Jelkes'. She disappeared down a side turning into some purlieus known to herself, for Mona never shopped at the obvious, and Hugh, for the first time since the tragedy, went to his club.

  It was a club that Trevor Wilmott had chosen for him. In its heyday it had been a notable institution, but it had fallen on hard times since the War, and an effort had been made to introduce some new blood into it. It was even rumoured that something akin to the coupon system had been instituted, and members introducing new blood had their subscriptions reduced on a sliding scale. Perhaps on account of this blood-money not very much discretion had been used in introducing new members. and the club found itself in the same condition as unfortunate invalids in the early days of blood transfusion before donors were tested for' grouping', and in consequence dangerous clotting took place in the smoking-room and other vital spots, till in the end there were practically two clubs under one roof, the old originals and the new bloods. and God help anyone who set foot in the wrong department.

  Hugh, as usual, belonged nowhere. The new bloods were of the flashy business man type— ‘something in the City' trying to graduate into a man about town. The resignation-upon-bankruptcy clause came into action with such distressing frequency that the question was raised as to whether a member's subscription ought not to return to normal when the last of his protégés entered Carey Street. The old brigade were of the type of Frida's father, the fag-end of the old régime, hanging on by their eyebrows to privilege and prestige, and keeping up their self-respect by means of mutual admiration. The more difficult they found it to keep up appearances themselves, the more exacting were their standards for other folk. Both parties regarded Hugh as an inoffensive nonentity belonging to the rival camp.