The Goat-Foot God Read online

  ‘I see,’ said Mrs Macintosh. What she thought could not be discerned. She was a woman who believed in keeping herself to herself.

  A call from upstairs summoned her, and she departed, leaving Hugh to his own thoughts.

  He was very distressed indeed about Mona’s illness, blaming himself for it. But even if he took the whole responsibility upon himself, and he could hardly blame himself for fainting, he was distressed far beyond what he reasonably ought to be.

  He heard the doctor being ushered out, and then Mrs Macintosh returned to him.

  ‘Well?’ said Hugh. ‘What’s the verdict?’

  ‘A touch of bronchitis. Nothing serious in the chest. The real trouble with her is malnutrition.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Miss Wilton has had no food for the last five days except the chance meals of most unsuitable things that you and Mr Jelkes have given her.’

  ‘But, good Lord alive, what do you mean? Why hasn’t she had proper meals?’

  ‘Because, Mr Paston, the girl is out of work and starving, and you and Mr Jelkes have not had the sense to advance her any money to go on with till her wages became due, and she was too proud to ask for it.’

  Hugh said nothing. There was a dead silence between them, Mrs Macintosh watching him out of inscrutable eyes. At length he said: ‘Get whatever is necessary, Mrs Macintosh.’

  The next few days were very boring ones for Hugh. He saw nothing of Mona, whose bronchitis was running its course, and he was of too active a nature to be content to sit indefinitely on old Jelkes’ broken-down sofa and talk philosophy. He got all outstanding legal business through his hands, and then, finding himself at a loose end once more, got out the car and ran down to call on Mr Watney. The conveyancing, it seemed, was going on as well as could be expected.

  ‘Look here,’ said Mr Watney in a hushed voice, as if compounding a felony. ‘You go on and take possession. You’ve paid your deposit. We can neither of us back out now. Miss Pumfrey isn’t to know we haven’t finished with the deeds.’

  It was only three miles to Monks Farm, a mere step in a car. He went round the place at his leisure, and found to his delight that what he had first taken for a second and smaller barn, proved to be a dwelling-house of much more modern structure than the rest of the buildings. Fallen plaster littered the floors; rotted window-frames let in the weather, but the main structure appeared to be sound, and he saw that it could fairly speedily be rendered habitable.

  He returned to the car and sped down the road to the village at his usual gait. There Mr Huggins, the grocer, said he could recommend a builder, a really reliable man, who worked himself alongside his men. Hugh was led round behind the houses to the most amazing hugger-mugger tumble-down raffle of sheds in a cluttered yard, from which, at Mr Huggins’s hail, a bearded elder appeared, who was introduced as Mr Pinker.

  Yes, Mr Pinker could undertake the work — ‘And glad to do so, sir. It’s a shame to see a lovely bit of building like that going to rack and ruin.’

  Everything being arranged to everybody’s satisfaction, Hugh went racketing off down the London road. He reached the bookshop to find Mr Jelkes and Mrs Macintosh in conclave. The abrupt break-off of the conversation at his entry told him that he must have been providing the subject-matter.

  They discoursed platitudes for a few minutes, Hugh telling of his doings and his plans, and inquiring concerning Miss Wilton’s progress during the few short hours he had been away.

  ‘That’s what we have been discussing,’ said Jelkes. ‘She’s not getting on as well as she should. Her temperature still keeps up.’

  ‘What’s the cause of that?’

  Jelkes looked at Mrs Macintosh. She grasped the nettle firmly. ‘I think, Mr Paston, that when she saw you faint she had a far more severe shock than we realized. She has been a little light-headed, once or twice, and talked about it. She thinks you are going to do spiritualistic experiments, and she is afraid of that also. It is my belief that she is dreading meeting you again, and yet does not want to break with you because she needs the work.’

  ‘I’m sorry. What can I do about it?’

  ‘The best thing you can do is to go up and see her, and talk to her as if nothing had happened.’

  ‘Hugh,’ said old Jelkes, cocking a sandy eyebrow at his guest over a tea-cup, ‘do you know what it is that has bitten Mona? It’s Ambrosius — she’s scared to death of him.’

  ‘I’ve had a very strong impression of Ambrosius myself several times; but whereas I welcome it, it scares her. It’s pretty strong when it comes, and if you didn’t like it, as I do, I can quite believe you’d be badly scared.’

  ‘Well, anyway, leave it alone for the present, Hugh, for the love of heaven.’

  Having finished his tea, Hugh presented himself upstairs. There was no question whatever about it, she was scared of him all right. He could see it by her eyes and the way she was holding herself together. It was an extraordinary thing that Mona, who at first sight looked a very self-willed creature, was really and genuinely scared of him, and had to take her courage in both hands in order to talk to him. There was something in this that delighted Hugh profoundly, and made him esteem Mona’s companionship very highly. Something that gave him the first inkling of the self-confidence he had always lacked.

  ‘Well, how goes it?’ he said.

  ‘Not too badly,’ said Mona. ‘I’m much better than I was.’

  ‘But not as well as you might be?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I’m not. Tiresome, isn’t it?’

  Silence fell between them. Hugh cast about in every direction for some remark that would prove of interest and not lead round to Ambrosius, and he could not find it. Suddenly the problem was taken out of his hands. Mona Wilton fixed her eyes on him and said: ‘Have you found out anything more about Ambrosius?’

  ‘I — I thought you did not like Ambrosius,’ he said.

  ‘I never said that,’ said Mona. ‘He made me feel perfectly awful because of his dreadful end, but I never said I didn’t like him. As a matter of fact, I — I feel sorry for him. I think he must have had a rotten time.’

  ‘That’s exactly how I feel about him,’ said Hugh. ‘But you know I don’t think it is very good for you to talk about Ambrosius while you’re still seedy.’

  ‘He’s the best possible subject for me to talk about. I certainly shan’t sleep properly till I do. Do you know what we’ve got to do?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘We’ve got to help him to manifest. We’ve got to make him welcome and bring him back. There will be no peace for anyone until we do. That’s the thing I’ve been turning over in my mind while I’ve been ill. If you see Ambrosius, give him my love.’ Mona smiled at him very curiously as she said the last words. 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.

  ‘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.’

  ‘And Pan,’ said Mona eagerly, ‘is elemental force. He comes up from the earth under your feet, just as spiritual force, the sun-force, comes down from the sky over your head.’

  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.

  Left alo
ne, Mona dropped back on the pillows and clasped her hands behind her head. 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. Old Jelks 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. 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 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.

  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. Secondly, he might be the spirit of the dead 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.

  The negative, purposeless, gentle-natured Hugh might be putty in anybody’s hands, but Ambrosius was another matter. He 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. ‘Where’s Hugh?’ he exclaimed in surprise, finding Mona alone.

  ‘I’ve no idea. Mrs Macintosh turfed him out some time ago. 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.’ She hesitated for a moment and then said: ‘Uncle, what is Ambrosius really, do you think?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I have been addling my brains over, Mona. 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 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.’

  Jelkes knew that in tackling the problem in psychopathology presented by Hugh Paston he was taking on a very nasty job — particularly nasty, because the girl was inevitably involved in it. Rouse the Pan Within, and he makes contact with the Great God, the First-begotten Love. Mona Wilton had caused a reflex stir of the instincts in Hugh Paston, whether he knew it or not. If Mona chose to follow up her advantage, the invocation of Pan would be an unqualified success. 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.

  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.

  Mona’s voice interrupted his thoughts. ‘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.’

  ‘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 never thought I’d come to this. But it is the only thing that will straighten things out. He will go on the rocks if we can’t do something for him.’

  ‘I’d like to help him, 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.’

  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.

  A bedlam of noise 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 on to the cloisters, and the grove of Scotch firs overhung them with their branches and dropped cones and needles on to 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 dwelling-house 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.

  Having arrived at Thorley, Hugh did not keep on running backwards and forwards to Billings 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. Jelkes, too, had cooled off appreciably.

  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. There came to his mind the idea that the disincarnate Ambrosius might have turned up and made use of him as a medium. The idea left him cold, however. It would not in the least amuse him to be a trance medium. An overwhelming rush of sympathy, for Ambrosius was the last thing he remembered before losing consciousness. It seemed to him that he had realized 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.

  When Mona laid her hand on his wrist, he had reacted as Ambrosius would have reacted. 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 characterized 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.