by Dion Fortune
“How are you proposing to set about it, Hugh?” Jelkes had in the back of his mind certain words about a seduction, and it seemed to him he might be wise to rush out and lay in a stock of wedding-rings.
“You've got to handle it along its own lines, T. J. That's the mistake people make—expecting miracles. Thinking if they say the word of power things will happen. But they won't unless you've worked up the power of the word first of all. Old Ignatius was right, if it was him who said it—Live the life and you'll develop the faith. I want to invoke Pan, so I've got to live Panishly—hence these gooseberry shanks that I saw you gazing at so reproachfully from the depths of your Inverness.”
“If you call at Billings Street in a dappled fawn-skin, you'll draw a crowd, and probably catch a cold into the bargain!”
“You choose to misunderstand me, T. J., I'm not going in for any play-acting. You won't catch me prancing down Piccadilly with a something or a lily. It's the spirit of the thing, not its outward trappings, that counts. My shirt and shorts are the modern equivalent of an ancient Greek athlete cleared for action. All the modern stream-lined furniture is sophisticated primitive. When they wanted a really antiquated throne for Eochaid in the ‘Immortal Hour’, they gave him a modern armchair without the cushions. It makes me feel unrepressed just to look at our cretonnes. Whereas if I look at Mrs Macintosh's rosebuds in the new part of the house, first I feel as pure as anything, and then presently I feel perfectly hateful. Oh yes, Mona's done her job all right. There are times when the devil enters into that girl—if he isn't there permanently.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “That's what I like about her,” he added.
“It appears to me,” said Jelkes, “that if Mona is to remain here alone with you, she would be well advised to lock her door.”
“That's what I told her,” said Hugh. “But she doesn't do it,”
“How do you know I don't?” cried Mona indignantly.
“Because I took the key away some time ago, and you've never missed it.”
Mona sprang to her feet with the heavy earthenware pitcher in her hand.
“If you throw that water over me, you'll get what's coming to you,” said Hugh, grinning delightedly.
Jelkes got onto his feet and pounded the table like a chairman at a disorderly meeting.
“I will not put up with such behaviour, Hugh Paston! This sort of thing may go on in the kind of houses you're accustomed to, but we're not going to have it here.”
“Well, I've offered to make an honest woman of her, but she doesn't take it on. I can't do more than that, can I? The offer still stands open. It's for Mona to say what she'd like. I'll dispense with the ceremony if she'd prefer it!”
They felt there was a snag in the logic somewhere, but they couldn't put their fingers on it on the spur of the moment, and could only stand and glare at Hugh. Jelkes got his wits in hand first. There was no question as to what ought to be done, no matter by what route they arrived there.
“You'd better marry him, Mona, and be done with it. It will save us all a lot of trouble.” Mona, speechless with rage, poised the heavy pitcher in her hand as if about to heave it at them both simultaneously.
“It doesn't matter to me,” said Hugh airily. “I'm not Silly Lizzie. The ceremony is not of overwhelming importance in the circles in which I move.”
“Nor in the circles in which I move,” said Mona. “But I'm damned if I'm going to be bounced in this manner.”
“Well, will you marry me or not? That's civil enough, isn't it?”
“No, blast you, I won't!”
“All right, then, don't.”
“Oh, my Gawd!” said jelkes, dropping down on the bench and resting his head on his hands.
Hugh patted him on the back. “Cheer up, Uncle; we're enjoying it, even if you aren't. This is love as she is spoke among the moderns. Look at Mona, she's thriving on it—Hi, you little devil!” He fielded the pitcher neatly, but the water went all over Jelkes, who rose and shook himself like a wet cat, looking most indignant.
“If this is love among the moderns, give me hate,” he said. “I don't know how you tell 'em apart,” and stalked off into the house, slamming the door behind him.
Hugh set down the pitcher out of Mona's reach.
“Well, what about it? Will you marry me, old thing?”
“NO! ! ! !”
“Splendid, I'll see about the licence.”
“It will be wasted.”
“Doesn't matter if it is. It's only seven-and-six. If you throw that dinner-plate, I'll spank you with it.”
Mona sank down on the bench as Jelkes had done, and clutched her head.
“Oh, my God! I wouldn't have believed it of you, Hugh. I suppose I may as well. I'll get no peace till I do. But it was taking that key away that annoyed me.”
“No, it wasn't. It was not having locked your door after you'd had fair warning.”
“Well, it was a rotten thing to do, anyway, to take my key.”
“But I didn't do it. I only said I'd done it.”
“Then you're a damned liar! Whatever possessed you to say that?”
“I wanted to see if you really had locked your door after I warned you. I betted you hadn't.”
“What point was there in finding out that?”
“Because, dear heart, if you hadn't, it was safe to bully you into a wedding, for your subcon had up and spoke,” and he bent down and kissed her.
CHAPTER XXX
PENDING the three intervening weeks, while the vicar would be sulkily announcing the banns of employers and employees, Hugh bid Mona collect a suitable trousseau in which, he said, green should predominate as she was being dedicated to Pan.
Mona agreed, while doing hasty mental arithmetic. too proud to ask for a halfpenny. But when the post came in. she waved before him a printed form in speechless indignation: five hundred pounds had been placed to her credit at her bank.
“What's the meaning of this?” she demanded, as if direly insulted.
“Well. dear heart. I didn't want you to take my instructions too literally and turn out in a fig-leaf, not in this uncertain weather, anyway. I want you to do the thing properly, á la Huysmans. Now come along, put your heart into it.”
“Indeed?” said Mona, “and what would you consider to be garments appropriate to Pan?”
“Well, strictly speaking, none at all. but as it's an English spring—.”
“I wish Uncle were here to tell you what he thought of you.”
“I wish he were, too. He's well worth listening to when he's roused. But with regard to your outfit. Mona—”
“Well?”
“Can't you design something for yourself. same as you did for the house? You've made a champion job of the house. I feel unrepressed whenever I go into it.”
“And you want to feel unrepressed whenever you look at me?”
“Oh no, you can take that for granted. I do that in any case. What I want is for you to feel unrepressed.”
“I am unrepressed!” snarled Mona, furious at this aspersion on her modernity.
“No, you aren't, darling, or you wouldn't snarl. Unrepressed people have sweet tempers, for they are absolutely spontaneous and free from conflict.”
“If I were absolutely spontaneous and free from conflict, you'd be lying dead at the moment.”
“Oh no, I shouldn't. For the moment you slogged me, I'd slog you, and then we'd both feel lovely.”
“I don't know that I should be feeling lovely,” said Mona, “if you gave me one on the jaw and put your weight behind it. It's not possible to have more than one unrepressed person in a family, so far as I can see. Everyone else has to spend their time cleaning up after him if the place is to be habitable. All the unrepressed people I've ever known had to live in unfurnished bedsitting- rooms without attendance, and move every quarter-day.”
“It is a curious thing,” said Hugh, “that in the days when I was a decent citizen, you posed as a cat on the tiles, and now that I've taken
you at your word and joined you on the tiles, you bolt for the hearth-rug.”
“All right. Anything for a quiet life. I'll do what you want, but I hate you giving me money.”
“I shall be responsible for your debts and torts in eighteen days' time. Surely we can anticipate the ceremony, to this extent, anyway. You've got a frightfully middle class mind, Mona.”
“All right. I'll do what you want, but I'll do it in my own way.”
What she proposed to do he neither knew nor enquired; but he returned one afternoon from a session with Mr Whatney to find the farm-house standing empty, and felt a sudden chill feeling of hurt, for it was the first time he had ever returned to the farm and Mona had not been there to welcome him. He could not conceive of the farm without her—in fact, he could not conceive of life without her. Then a sound in the old part of the building caught his ear, and he went quickly towards it. At the foot of the beautiful spiral stair stood a woman of the Renaissance.
He halted, completely taken aback. He adored Mona, but it had never occurred to him before to consider her beautiful. She was dressed in a full-skirted, tightbodiced robe of heavy brocade—not the discreet brocade of the dress-materials, but the heavy, handsome, gorgeous stuff of the soft furnishings. The ground colour was fawn, faintly dusted with gold by an occasional gold thread in the warp, and peacocks and passion flowers interlaced all over it in a dazzle of green and blue. The neck of the tight-fitting bodice was cut square and low, and behind Mona's smooth dark head rose a high collar of gold—white linen, bought ready-made at the village shop and gilded, if Hugh had known. She was astonishingly like Beatrice d'Este, but all her splendour had cost under thirty shillings. Mona was proud. She wanted to please Hugh, but she wouldn't surrender her independence. His five hundred would not be touched till after the wedding. What she did, she would do with her own resources, and when those came to an end, she would stop.
Hugh came towards her. “What are you doing in here?” he demanded, to cover his emotion, for the sight of her in her cinquecento robes affected him beyond all reason. She was a woman of Ambrosius' age!
“I am trying on my frocks against their proper background,” said Mona with dignity, but as red as a paeony.
“I had not expected you back so soon.”
“So you've chosen the Renaissance for your period?” said Hugh slowly. “Now why that, and not Greek draperies?”
“Because I am Renaissance,” snapped Mona, tossing her head.
He looked at her without speaking. “Yes,” he said at length, “I think you are. I know a picture of someone very like you.” He wondered how the story would have ended if a certain Italian princess had visited England, or a certain English prelate had made the pilgrimage to Rome, as he certainly would have done if his enemies had not prevailed against him. Supposing Ambrosius had got his abbacy, made his pilgrimage to Rome, and met there his princess, rich with the influence of a powerful house, might not the history of European thought have been different? For the Renaissance was twosided—whereas life is a trinity, like the God who made it.
Might it be that he and Mona were making an experiment that would bear not only fruit but seed? He knew from the talk in the old book-shop how little is needed to infect the group-mind with a new idea. The thing they were doing was not desperately daring,—widowers have remarried before now; but although they were complying with convention, they were rendering no lipservice to it. If this were a remedy for sin, it was a homceopathic remedy. The Greeks quite simply, and perfectly politely, carried a phallus on a pole in the wedding processions—and after all, why not? thought Hugh; for if not, why marry? And if you marry at all, why not do it properly? Why waste seven-and-six? A line from Arnold Bennett's poem came to his mind— ‘Knowing naught of the trade of a wife—.’ The Anglo-Saxons are a curious people, and God made them a lot madder than the Kelts, despite Chesterton's statement to the contrary.
Thrown in a heap on a broad divan were a pile of garments; there was a rust-red robe with a bold gold pattern of dragons upon it; there was a deep, intense blue, patterned in silver like a moonlight night; these were heavy and stiff brocades, full-skirted, tight-bodiced. But there were also diaphanous stuffs that flowed like water, cloud-blue, dusk-grey and leaf-green. The whole pile was shimmering and opalescent, for the diaphanous stuffs seemed to have under-dresses of silver and gold tissues.
Hugh looked at them. His masculine eye was not to know the few scanty shillings that had provided the whole pile, for the hand and eye of an artist had been at work, and they glowed like the gardens of Paradise.
“You shall have jewels to go with these, Mona,” he said abruptly. His mind had seized upon a new idea that had suddenly sprung up in it. The Renaissance princess should have a Renaissance palace somewhere in London where Bohemia gathers. He would house her as Ambrosius, if he had got his cardinal's hat, would have housed his mistress. He had not heard Mona's revealing remark that she would be an unsatisfactory wife but a top-hole mistress, but he was shrewd enough, and had seen enough of the world, even if only as a spectator, to guess this for himself. To introduce Mona to his social circle would be disastrous to both Mona and the social circle. Mona would always be a cat upon the tiles for whom a window must be left open. They would picnic with Bill and Silly at the farm; they would live as artists live in London; they would, in fact, live for themselves, and not for their neighbours, their set, their relations, or posterity. Why, in fact, should we do anything for posterity? What has posterity ever done for us?
Mona disappeared behind the stairs, to return in a moment clad in her usual garments with her glory over her arm, gathered up the heap of opalescence, and stalked off in her usual sturdy manner across the cloister garth to the farm-house, Hugh behind her. The glory was departed; Mona was back to her normal, matter of fact self again; but Hugh had had a glimpse of that other self in her, the Renaissance self, that lay there under all, waiting to be called into life, and he was not likely to forget.
There came a day when they all packed into the Rolls-Royce and turned up at the village church to supervise the making one of Bill and Silly. Mr and Mrs Huggins were there; they delighted in doing anything that could possibly annoy Miss Purnfrey, who continued ineradicably haughty, however much she owed them; moreover, they considered Hugh their private property. Mr Pinker was not there, though he turned up at the wedding breakfast and did his share and something over, explaining apologetically that he could not afford to quarrel with Miss Pumfrey and the vicar. Even Mrs Pascoe was there, to Silly Lizzie's horror, who was certain she had come to forbid the banns, and was with difficulty prevented from turning back and bolting forthwith. But Mrs Pascoe had proved a ready convert when told that Miss Pumfrey was infuriated at the idea of any orphan of hers getting married, and had threatened to invoke the power of the law to prevent such an indecency. Once converted, she showed all a convert's zeal—for the time being, at any rate. The vicar eyed them with a sour eye and broke the speed record for the diocese. Thereafter there was a noble binge at the Green Man, and Mr Huggins had to be driven home round the common in Mr Pinker's gig because he was incapable of walking across it; such a thing had never occurred before within living memory, and probably was directly due to the Dionysiac influence introduced by the Monks Farm contingent. Bill and Silly then went off for a week at Southend at Hugh's expense, and stopped on for another week at the rate-payers' expense for having been drunk and disorderly.
Thereafter Hugh and Mona were free to attend to their own affairs. They drove up to town, collected Jelkes from among his books, and as Mona's flat was just over the Marylebone boundary, set off for the registry offiee so symbolically situated half-way between the Lock Hospital and the police station, with the workhouse immediately behind and a pawn-shop directly opposite, and which, as you ascend the handsome staircase of the building that houses it, offers you the choice of the registrar and the relieving officer. Having paid this tribute to the gods of England, they both kissed the blushing Jelkes and
returned to Monks Farm and the gods of Greece.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE full moon rode high and cloudless over Monks Farm as Hugh and his bride stacked the dirty crockery of their wedding supper into the sink to await the morning's wash-up á la Jelkes. As far as their outward demeanour was concerned, this evening in no way differed from any other evening at Monks Farm, save that Lizzie was not there to do her little jobs with such painstaking care and incompetency, she and Bill being at the moment spending pennies on the Southend pier trying to see What the Butler Saw, and what it was the Curate Did In Paris. These penny bioscopes, however, proved to be quite inoffensive except for their titles, and Bill put another penny in, and then another, in case the first one had given out before they had finished, like the gas.
Monks Farm was quiet with a quietness that seemed almost uncanny to the ears that had rung with the noise of London all day. A dog barked on a far-off farm; a misguided rooster crowed; and between each sound there were long spaces of warm scented stillness as a faint breeze stirred soundlessly in a line of ancient thorns, laden with blossom. The afterglow faded from the west, and a bright low star came out over the pines. Then from the furthest thorn came: “Gluck, gluck, gluck!” and a long liquid bubble.
“Our wedding-march,” said Hugh, squeezing Mona's arm where his hand lay. “Come along, I've got something to show you. But first we must assume our wedding-garments or we'll get chucked out, same as the fellow in Scripture.”
When Mona rejoined him she wore floating green, but the moonlight took all colour from it and she looked like a grey wraith. Hugh himself wore the traditional rawnskin.
They went down between the herb borders, hoary silver in the dusk, crossed the bare pasture, and entered the pine-wood, now cleared of brambles. In the dense belt of yews an arch had been cut and an oak door fitted, an iron-studded door, reminiscent of Ambrosius. They came out into the little, lozenge-shaped glade bathed in moonlight, and away scurried dozens of rabbits, all except one baby thing that lost its head and took refuge in the shadow of the pillar and stayed there throughout the proceedings, as if representing its Master, the Lord of the Wild.