Goat Foot God

by Dion Fortune

  It was the first time he had visited the club since the tragedy, and his appearance created something of a sensation. Frida's father was one of the old brigade, and Trevor had been liaison officer between the two camps and a very leading light in club affairs generally, having, it was rumoured, the run of his teeth in return for his services. The general opinion was that Hugh would resign. All Trevor's friends were there, and all Frida's father's friends were there. No one expected to see him walk into the dining-room and sit down and order lunch, looking particularly sprightly. Like his one-time butler, nobody quite knew the line to take with Hugh. Condolences were obviously out of place, and congratulations not in good taste. Everybody waited to see what other people were going to do, and consequently nobody did anything. Hugh, who felt as if the tragedy belonged to an age more remote than Ambrosius, and had in fact, almost forgotten it, ate his lunch in peace.

  He strolled into the smoking-room, reserved for members only, and stood watching the tape machine. It was a huge room with a fire-place at each end. The one at the far end was sacred to the old brigade, the one near the door to the new blood. Hugh, standing with his back to the room watching the tape, was suddenly aware that he, who had always been a most undiscerning person, could clearly distinguish the difference in the spiritual atmosphere at the two ends of the room; he also became aware that he was a focus of attention, and that it was not friendly attention. He wondered why in the world it was not. What had he done? Hugh, who had always accepted as gospel other people's estimate of his imperfections, experienced the novel sensation of feeling his hackle rise. Why should he be treated like dirt by either old has-beens or young pseudo-bucks? He turned and strolled slowly, hands in trouser-pockets, towards the sacred fire-place at the far end of the room. There, as ill-luck would have it, he came face to face with one of Frida's uncles. The old gentleman stared straight through him with a stony stare. So did all the other old gentlemen, his friends.

  This was a surprise for Hugh. He had expected mutual embarrassment, which would be smoothed over by mutual courtesy; he had not expected to be outcasted by these mangy old has-beens who ought to have been apologetic. The devil entered into Hugh, and he deliberately thought of Ambrosius; as he did so, he observed a startled expression come over the faces of the old gentlemen who were supposed not to be looking at him. Hugh stared hard at his uncle-in-law, watching him slowly go from red to magenta. Still no one spoke. They probably could not if they had wanted to by now.

  Hugh broke the silence. “You act as if it was I who had seduced your niece,” he said, and turned on his heel and walked off.

  He went to the cloak-room to have a wash, and was still bending over the basin when he heard a voice behind him speaking his name in icy tones, and turned round to see his brother-in-law, the husband of his youngest sister. This brother-in-law was one of the few things Hugh's family had got out of his marriage; he had married the youngest daughter on the clear understanding that Hugh would do something for them, as Hugh had faithfully done. In return, Robert had added his voice to the general chorus of admonition and disparagement that surrounded Hugh.

  “That was a pretty ghastly thing you did just now in the smoking-room, Hugh.”

  “Was it?” said Hugh, rinsing his hands under the tap.

  “What possessed you to act like that?”

  “The devil, I expect.”

  “Do you really think you are possessed by the devil?”

  “I shouldn't be surprised. But even if I am, there is nothing to be made out of certifying me. There's a power of attorney in existence.”

  “Do you wish to pick a quarrel with me?”

  “No, not especially. You can please yourself about that. I shall be quite content as long as I see the last of you.”

  “You are insulting!”

  “Well, if you will persist in ladling out unsolicited advice, you must not be surprised if you get sloshed on the nozzle occasionally.”

  “My dear Hugh!”

  “I'm not your dear Hugh. You hate the sight of me, and you know it.”

  “Well, if you ask my opinion—”

  “I didn't,” said Hugh.

  “—there is only one thing for you to do, and that is to resign from the club, and then, in your own interests, to go to a nursing-home.”

  “I'll resign from the club all right, it's no earthly use to me. And I'll withdraw my guarantee, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn't you know I guaranteed the overdraft at the bank?”

  “No, I didn't.”

  “I thought you didn't. I guess I'll withdraw a few other guarantees and subscriptions while I'm at it. I'm tired of everlastingly paying the piper and never being consulted about the tune.”

  He straightened his back and flung the damp towel into the bin and looked at Robert. The same startled look came into Robert's face as had come into the faces of the old gentlemen in the smoking-room. He suddenly lost all his loftiness and looked very much like the towel. Then he turned and walked off. Hugh felt certain he was using all his will-power to walk slowly.

  Hugh scribbled his resignation on a half-sheet of paper and tossed it into the secretary's office; said goodbye to the hall-porter, who also looked startled, got his car, and set out for Marylebone.

  In response to the clang of the bell the old bookseller appeared through the ragged curtain just as he done that night so short a while ago that had marked the turn of the lane in Hugh's life.

  Hugh walked through into the inner room without waiting to be asked. He was much more at home here than he had ever been in his club.

  “Going to give me a cup of tea, T. J.?” he said, and they indulged in desultory conversation while Jelkes fished a cup out of a pile of dirty crockery and gave it a rinse.

  Settled down with the pot on the hob, Hugh got to business.

  “Uncle Jelkes,” he said, “I'm going to seduce Mona.”

  “Good God! “said Jelkes.

  “Well, she won't marry me, so there's nothing else for it. Tell me, how had I better set about it?”

  “Are you possessed by the devil, Hugh Paston?”

  “That's the second time I've been asked that today. Would you say I was possessed by the devil, or would you say I was just beginning to be my normal self?”

  Jelkes rubbed his nose thoughtfully.

  “Who asked you if you were possessed by the devil?”

  “My brother-in-law.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn't want his advice.”

  “Is that a sign of diabolical possession?”

  “My family think it is. You see, T. J., I've always taken everybody's advice. A change of disposition is a sign of hydrophobia in dogs.”

  “What did you quarrel with your brother-in-law about?”

  “He had me on the mat for being rude to my old uncle-in-law.”

  “And what did you do that for?”

  “Oh God, T. J., if you'd seen the old bird you'd know why! Only thing to do with him—be rude to him. Look here, Jelkes, I've had a row with every blessed one of my family and resigned from my club. If you'll help me seduce Mona, I swear I'll make an honest woman of her afterwards.”

  “So this is what comes of invoking Pan, is it?” said Jelkes quietl y.

  “Well, what did you expect? Pan was a whale on nymphs.”

  Jelkes sighed. He shrewdly suspected that if Mona saw Hugh in his present mood, no assistance would be needed for the seduction. Pan had been evoked most effectually.

  “Now look here, T. J., just remember that you are talking to a dashed sight better priest than ever you were. I was running my own monastery before you had cut your pin-feathers, and it took a Pope to scrag me. Yes, I've absorbed Ambrosius, together with all his kick and go. I've only got to look at people and they wilt nowadays.”

  “Tell me, Hugh, how do you know Ambrosius is you?”

  “That's a facer, Uncle Jelkes,” said Hugh, pulled up in mid-career. “How do I know he
's me? Well, I suppose strictly speaking I don't know. I only think he is. But I think it with a kind of inner conviction that I can't describe. If he isn't me, at least he corresponds to something very deep in my subconscious; and he's worth cultivating whether he's fact or fancy.”

  Jelkes nodded. “Yes,” he said. “We don't know what these things are, but we know they work. He'll give you self-confidence if he gives you nothing else. Given that, you can get a lot of things out of your subconscious that never went into it.”

  “I don't mind what you call him, T. J. A rose by any name will smell as sweet. He's a dissociated complex, or a past incarnation, or just plain spoof, or anything else you fancy so long as you'll lend me a hand with him, for I know he'll deliver the goods. As you said yourself, time is a mode of consciousness, though what you meant by that, blowed if I know.”

  “Blowed if I do either,” said Jelkes. “We'll take Ambrosius for what he is worth and get on with him. What was your first intimation of him?”

  “My first intimation? Difficult to say. He didn't seem to have any beginning. He had always been there, only I hadn't realised it. Like when you look up and find someone standing in front of you. Then when I realised what he meant, I gave him his head.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well now, there's an awful lot missing from me, isn't there? And my family chivvy me in consequence till I don't know whether I'm standing on my head or my heels, and then there's still more missing. And I come across Ambrosius, and I take a fancy to him. He seemed to have everything I lack, and I have everything he lacked. That's to say, he'd got guts and no opportunity, and I've got opportunity and no guts. And I say to myself: If Ambrosius had had my opportunities, what couldn't he have made of them? And if I'd had Ambrosius' guts, what couldn't I have made of them? Then along comes Mona and says: ‘You are Ambrosius. He was you in a past life,' and tells me about reincarnation. And I cotton on to the idea, partly because I like it, and partly because it was Mona who said it. And I say to myself, ‘Gosh, if I am Ambrosius, I wonder how he'd feel?’ And I begin to think how Ambrosius would have felt, him being what he was. And then, me being him, or so I think, I begin to feel like that. And as soon as I begin to feel like that, other people feel it too, and they begin to treat me as if I were the diabolical prior, and that does me no end of good. It is extraordinary the effect it has on you when people treat you with respect. And the more impressed they are, the more impressive I become. Ambrosius is a dashed effectual method of auto-suggestion, if he's nothing else. But personally I think he is something else. There's a kind of reality about him that I can't describe.”

  “Very good, then,” said Jelkes. “We'll take Ambrosius at his face value, and refrain from looking him in the mouth. If he isn't real now, he very soon will be. Whether he was real or whether he wasn't is a question I don't suppose we shall ever settle; he stood for something valid in your life, so take him at his face value, same as you would a Bradbury. You don't bite a bank-note to see if it is genuine. It is genuine all right if it will buy goods. I'll do what I can for you, Hugh. The reason I wouldn't help with the job before was because I reckoned you'd just make use of Mona and then go back to your own kind.”

  “You were wrong, Uncle Jelkes, I'm not that sort.”

  “What made you suddenly round on all your old associates today, Hugh? When did you make up your mind you were going bald-headed for this thing?”

  “I've always wanted to go bald-headed for it, but I didn't know which way to go. And you've got such dashed cold feet you wouldn't show me. But yesterday I began to get the hang of the thing and see what could be done with it. Then I knew which way I wanted to go.”

  “Yes,” said Jelkes, “I see now that you have been working with power all along. Anyone who means business always works with power. You got Pan at the first go-off; whether he is subjective or objective doesn't matter. You mean business, and that is an effectual invocation.”

  “Can you get any of the gods in that way?

  “No, you can't, because the rest are highly specialised, and you have got to get each one in his own particular way. But Pan is All. You can get him any old way simply by wanting him. And he can introduce you to Parnassus if he sees fit.”

  “He introduced me to Ambrosius, which wasn't a bad start.”

  “He will introduce you to every blessed thing you've got in your subconscious, and to every blessed thing in the racial memory that's behind you, and to the biological memory behind that, to the morphological memory of all your organs, and the physiological memory of all your functions—” Jelkes stopped for breath.

  “Odd, isn't it,” said Hugh, “that an old billy-goat can teach you all that?”

  “Well, you see,” said Jelkes, “the billy-goat stands for unrepression, or at least so I have always understood from those who keep goats.”

  “Of course the whole thing is simply the opening-up of the subconscious,” said Hugh, “only there's a dashed sight more in the subconscious than most people suspect; or at any rate, than anyone with a reputation to lose is prepared to say on paper.”

  “Ever read ‘The Secret of the Golden Flower’, Hugh?”

  “No.”

  “It's worth reading. Add Coué and Jung to Iarnblichos and St Ignatius, and you will begin to see what has been happening.”

  “I'll leave the metaphysics to you, Uncle, I want to get on with the composition of place. It is my idea to equip Monks Farm with absolutely modern stuff instead of the mock-gothic, which was my original notion. Mona was disposed to hoot at me at first, but she sees my point now. You see, T. J., I think that modern design embodies the idea of the straight run-through of force with the brakes off, and what is that but Pan? How do you think Ambrosius will like it? Will he turn poltergeist and start chucking the stuff about?”

  “Well, laddie, he was a modernist in his day. What you want to recapture is not Ambrosius' limitations, but his spirit, just as he was trying to recapture the Greek spirit.”

  “Then in that case we might as well go to the fountain-head and see what word the Greeks had for it.”

  “That is what you will have to do. But you had to work through the Ambrosius phase before you could get there. Otherwise he and his problems would be like an unconquered fortress in your rear.”

  There was a clang of the shop-bell, and Jelkes dived through the curtain to deal with the customer, but returned instead with Mona. He watched the pair of them closely as they greeted each other. It seemed to him that there was a humorous twinkle in Hugh's eye, as if he had got something up his sleeve for Mona, but she herself was carefully noncommittal.

  “Well, what luck have you had?” said Hugh.

  Mona did not reply, but began to unpack a small brown paper parcel she was carrying, and there appeared a little terra cotta figure of the dancing Pan, skipping along with his pipes and glancing over his shoulder with a very come-hither look in his eye indeed.

  “Huh,” said Jelkes. “Very suitable. But I should keep him done up in brown paper for the present, if I were you.”

  CHAPTER XXVI

  THE days that followed were fascinating ones for Hugh and Mona. She took him among the craft-workers, disdaining shop-fronts and show-cases, and he realised the peculiar life conveyed to an article by the hand of a creative worker who is putting himself into it. But she was not of those who believe in the sanctity of handwork, however crude. There is no particular point in doing by hand what can be done as well and better by machine. The industrial designer also puts life into a thing provided he is doing creative and not hack-work. Then the man masters the machine instead of the machine dictating to the man.

  Always, everywhere, through all the studios and workshops, Mona went looking for the creative spirit. Hugh was amazed to see how much of it was abroad.

  “This is period furniture,” said Mona, looking at a number of newly-turned chair-legs lying among the shavings. “And if you choose it carefully it will become antique in time. After all
, the only reason why antiques were so highly prized was because Victorian design was so vile. And I'll tell you what made it so vile, if you like, Hugh, it was the repressions of the Victorian Age. All force was twisted out of shape, or cut off from its roots and left hanging limply. There was no elemental drive behind anything. The only thing that really flourished in the Victorian Age was the music-hall, where they became unrepressed for a bit. Say what you like, Hugh, it was the only art-form that really developed.”

  The cold grey stone of the old buildings made a wonderful background for the modern colours—which are the colours of the semi-precious stones—the green of the turquoise, the yellow of amber, the red of the garnet, the blue of the aquamarine. The stark line of modern design was at home with the simplicity of the ancient builders, though their simplicity was of necessity dictated by primitive tools and materials. The simplicity of limitation had been fed full by expansion and invention, and now, from a surfeit of richness, it was going onto an eliminatory diet for the good of its health. Civilisation had lost touch with its foundations, and, sick in heart and head in consequence, was groping desperately for fundamentals. Everything was ripe for the return of Pan, as Pan had probably known when he answered the cry of his invoker.

  The nuptials of Bill and Lizzie were due for celebration in the near future—(officially, that is. Unofficially, of course, they had been in full blast for some time), and the problem of housing had to be considered. Bill and Lizzie, in their dunder-headed, shuffle-footed, faithful, easy-going fashion, suited the Monks Farm ménage uncommonly well—suited it in a way that Miss Pumfrey's parlour-maid or Mrs Macintosh would never have done. The obvious thing was for the newly-married couple to move into the farm-house end of Monks Farm, and for Mona and Hugh to move out into the main building and settle down as they meant to go on.