Lawrence Durrell - The Dark Labyrinth

But if Hogarth prepared Fearmax to renounce his gift with a good grace, he also showed great curiosity as to the nature of the trance-condition, and even encouraged the medium to give two or three séances for friends, despite the uncertainty of reception. Hogarth listened solemnly to the ridiculous gibberish of inferior spirits, and asked very firmly for some contact to be made with his wife — without effect. Fearmax had sunk, it seemed, to the rank of third-class medium; he could not induce the preliminary seizure at will; his spirit-guides were either tongue-tied or frivolous; he could not guarantee a séance at all, in fact. It was, professionally speaking, no use at all.

“French Marie”—the only woman he had ever really loved — had gone, and with her his esteem among the general. There remained only the whole unbeaten jungle of the occult for a province of study.

During the war Fearmax had gone into a strict retreat of atonement for the sin of war, together with a few friends. They had spent their time in Cornwall obstructing the wareffort, answering foolish questions at C.O. Boards, and working vaguely on the land to the intense annoyance of their employers. During this time he founded the group which afterwards came to be known as the Astrophysical Believers. There is not room to go into the philosophy propounded by its founder, but the society flourished and had continued to grow. It had lecture rooms in the Euston Road, and a small publishing house of its own, through which the official propaganda of the body was conducted. It was to this society that Fearmax turned during the period of his analysis by Hogarth, devoting nearly all his spare time to elaborating his Swedenborgian system, and clearing up the obscurer points in a series of extremely well-written pamphlets. It was something to do. The system demanded an immense amount of elaboration: it professed to bring the whole body of occult thought (even branches like palmistry, alchemy, and astrology) into line with the latest metaphysical ideas of the age. Its existence served as a perpetual irritant to Professor Joad. It was attacked by Ouspensky, Hotchkiss, Eustace Pfoff, and Joseph G. Sthyker, the exponent of Dynamic Massage, as well as the Rudolf Steiner Society. It prospered so greatly that even the Baconian Society attacked it. Fearmax felt that he was making up for lost ground. Perhaps he was to be a new Blavatsky or Krisnamurti.

“As one crank to another,” said Hogarth one day, “why don’t you go abroad and give the whole thing a rest?”

The idea was echoed by the inner circle of the Believers. The one outstanding metaphysical account that remained to be settled was with the Society of the Great Pyramid. Their publications were beginning to disturb the Believers with their implications. Someone should visit the Pyramids, make independent observations, and fit them into the general scheme.

“Whether you believe the world is an egg or an onion,” said Hogarth, “it doesn’t matter. The point is that you are run down, and you will suddenly start going off your rocker unless you take a rest.”

Fearmax had aged a great deal. “Hogarth,” he said, “if I don’t return …” Hogarth snorted. “No. I’m serious,” said Fearmax, “quite serious. I’ve seen something here.” He held out his wrinkled palm. Hogarth looked at it through the huge magnifying glass. “It’s probably a love affair. You’ll probably meet ‘French Marie’ on the boat-train and elope with her.”

Fearmax winced and put his hand back in his pocket. He did not refer to the subject again, but at the end of the week he informed Hogarth that he planned to leave towards the end of the month. Hogarth congratulated him. To tell the truth he was getting rather bored with Fearmax. He had been a most useful case to treat because of his professional pursuits. Fearmax would, in the long run, have to work out his own destiny.

Campion listened with intense concentration to this recital of Fearmax’s life. His eyes never moved from the face of the elder man, and he never attempted to smile at any of the half-humorous asides of the medium. He seemed to find the story quite absorbing. It seemed in some way to bear comparison with his own experience, but he did not say how, or to what degree. He simply smoked in silence and, when Fearmax had finished, stayed gazing at the floor in an abstracted sort of way.

Fearmax felt tired and yet proud of himself, to be able to drag out these torn susceptibilities and old memories so fluently before a stranger — a non-professional stranger, that is.

It was something that Hogarth had made possible — an estimate of his life and work in objective terms. He was filled with gratitude suddenly for the absent Hogarth, who had so patiently endured his growing pains, his faults, his lapses.

“And you expect to get some further bearing on reality from the Great Pyramid?” said Campion with the faintest note of cynicism.

“Let me put it this way,” said Fearmax. “To endeavour to reduce the universe to a system is one thing. To maintain that system as anything but a personal view is another. If I seem touchy or slightly ashamed of some of the things I say it is not because I don’t believe in them. They are valid for me; but I have the horrifying knowledge that several hundred men and women have become my disciples, and accept my view of the world as right for them, without bothering to think for themselves along original lines. In the final analysis the Great Pyramid will give me only what I set out to find in it. It is unlikely that it will conflict with the general theories I have erected into a philosophy; if it did, I should probably neglect those elements quite unconsciously, and find myself selecting others. But it’s the disciples that bother me. Tell me, as a painter, have you ever influenced enough people to find a school growing up devoted to your manner ?”

“Yes,” said Campion.

“It is horrible, is it not?”

“Yes.”

“A total disregard for the experience, the struggle, the whatnot, that lies behind every new step in technique, of expression. Well, what ails me is that my own original man, the suffering part, is prevented from growing by the dead weight of discipleship.”

“Why don’t you shake it off? Renounce it?”

“Why don’t I? I ask myself. I don’t.”

“There are things one can’t.” Campion was thinking now of Francesca. She would be looking out of the window and weeping. If he could eliminate women from his scheme of things how smooth everything would be. Fearmax was saying softly, “I’m not sure that the weakness, the corruption of one’s doctrine, if you like, isn’t necessary. After all, what one discovers one must unload — the imperative is inflexible.”

Yes, there was the rub. “Here I stand. I can do no other.” Campion lit another cigarette and, taking leave of Fearmax, sauntered on deck. A fierce competition in deck quoits was going on. Mrs. Truman was winning. In the lee of a ventilator Graecen was doing his bit towards the post office career of Miss Dale.

“It’s more than just melody,” he was saying. “It’s form too. Now, you just compare this one with John Gilpin.”

Baird was lying flat on his back with a pipe between his teeth. He was asleep.

“Come on, Mother,” said Campion to Mrs. Truman. “Time to do your pitcher.” He had immediately struck a chord of sympathy with the Trumans, immediately adopted something of Truman’s own benevolent attitude towards her. He saw her almost as soon as he boarded the Europa , a fine-looking woman with a grave and noble head in repose. He had noticed her standing at the rail — her hair lifted from the side of her head by the wind to disclose small well-shaped ears, a cigarette in her mouth. Later at dinner their eyes had met in one of those unspeaking, spontaneous recognitions upon which the inner erotic world of each of us is built. Elsie Truman was beautiful. Later he had joined the little circle of pontoon-players and had met her husband. Truman was warm and friendly. They found Campion capital company, and when the sea became calm, he dragged his little folding easel and paints on deck, and promised to paint her portrait.