* * * * *
_The Statement of William Gregg, F.R.S., etc._
It is many years since the first glimmer of the theory which is now
almost, if not quite, reduced to fact dawned first on my mind. A
somewhat extensive course of miscellaneous and obsolete reading had done
a good deal to prepare the way, and, later, when I became somewhat of a
specialist and immersed myself in the studies known as ethnological, I
was now and then startled by facts that would not square with orthodox
scientific opinion, and by discoveries that seemed to hint at something
still hidden for all our research. More particularly I became convinced
that much of the folk-lore of the world is but an exaggerated account of
events that really happened, and I was especially drawn to consider the
stories of the fairies, the good folk of the Celtic races. Here I
thought I could detect the fringe of embroidery and exaggeration, the
fantastic guise, the little people dressed in green and gold sporting in
the flowers, and I thought I saw a distinct analogy between the name
given to this race (supposed to be imaginary) and the description of
their appearance and manners. Just as our remote ancestors called the
dreaded beings "fair" and "good" precisely because they dreaded them, so
they had dressed them up in charming forms, knowing the truth to be the
very reverse. Literature, too, had gone early to work, and had lent a
powerful hand in the transformation, so that the playful elves of
Shakespeare are already far removed from the true original, and the real
horror is disguised in a form of prankish mischief. But in the older
tales, the stories that used to make men cross themselves as they sat
round the burning logs, we tread a different stage; I saw a widely
opposed spirit in certain histories of children and of men and women who
vanished strangely from the earth. They would be seen by a peasant in
the fields walking towards some green and rounded hillock, and seen no
more on earth; and there are stories of mothers who have left a child
quietly sleeping with the cottage door rudely barred with a piece of
wood, and have returned, not to find the plump and rosy little Saxon,
but a thin and wizened creature, with sallow skin and black piercing
eyes, the child of another race. Then, again, there were myths darker
still; the dread of witch and wizard, the lurid evil of the Sabbath, and
the hint of demons who mingled with the daughters of men. And just as we
have turned the terrible "fair folk" into a company of benignant, if
freakish, elves, so we have hidden from us the black foulness of the
witch and her companions under a popular _diablerie_ of old women and
broomsticks and a comic cat with tail on end. So the Greeks called the
hideous furies benevolent ladies, and thus the northern nations have
followed their example. I pursued my investigations, stealing odd hours
from other and more imperative labors, and I asked myself the question:
Supposing these traditions to be true, who were the demons who are
reported to have attended the Sabbaths? I need not say that I laid aside
what I may call the supernatural hypothesis of the middle ages, and came
to the conclusion that fairies and devils were of one and the same race
and origin; invention, no doubt, and the Gothic fancy of old days had
done much in the way of exaggeration and distortion; yet I firmly
believed that beneath all this imagery there was a black background of
truth. As for some of the alleged wonders, I hesitated. While I should
be very loth to receive any one specific instance of modern spiritualism
as containing even a grain of the genuine, yet I was not wholly prepared
to deny that human flesh may now and then, once perhaps in ten million
cases, be the veil of powers which seem magical to us; powers which, so
far from proceeding from the heights and leading men thither, are in
reality survivals from the depths of being. The amoeba and the snail
have powers which we do not possess; and I thought it possible that the
theory of reversion might explain many things which seem wholly
inexplicable. Thus stood my position; I saw good reason to believe that
much of the tradition, a vast deal of the earliest and uncorrupted
tradition of the so-called fairies, represented solid fact, and I
thought that the purely supernatural element in these traditions was to
be accounted for on the hypothesis that a race which had fallen out of
the grand march of evolution might have retained, as a survival, certain
powers which would be to us wholly miraculous. Such was my theory as it
stood conceived in my mind; and working with this in view, I seemed to
gather confirmation from every side, from the spoils of a tumulus or a
barrow, from a local paper reporting an antiquarian meeting in the
country, and from general literature of all kinds. Amongst other
instances, I remember being struck by the phrase "articulate-speaking
men" in Homer, as if the writer knew or had heard of men whose speech
was so rude that it could hardly be termed articulate; and on my
hypothesis of a race who had lagged far behind the rest, I could easily
conceive that such a folk would speak a jargon but little removed from
the inarticulate noises of brute-beasts.
Thus I stood, satisfied that my conjecture was at all events not far
removed from fact, when a chance paragraph in a small country print one
day arrested my attention. It was a short account of what was to all
appearance the usual sordid tragedy of the village; a young girl
unaccountably missing, and evil rumor blatant and busy with her
reputation. Yet I could read between the lines that all this scandal was
purely hypothetical, and in all probability invented to account for what
was in any other manner unaccountable. A flight to London or Liverpool,
or an undiscovered body lying with a weight about its neck in the foul
depths of a woodland pool, or perhaps murder,--such were the theories of
the wretched girl's neighbors. But as I idly scanned the paragraph, a
flash of thought passed through me with the violence of an electric
shock: What if the obscure and horrible race of the hills still
survived, still remained haunting wild places, and barren hills, and now
and then repeating the evil of Gothic legend, unchanged and
unchangeable as the Turanian Shelta, or the Basques of Spain. I have
said that the thought came with violence; and indeed I drew in my breath
sharply, and clung with both hands to my elbow-chair, in a strange
confusion of horror and elation. It was as if one of my _confrères_ of
physical science, roaming in a quiet English wood, had been suddenly
stricken aghast by the presence of the slimy and loathsome terror of the
ichthyosaurus, the original of the stories of the awful worms killed by
valorous knights, or had seen the sun darkened by the pterodactyl, the
dragon of tradition. Yet as a resolute explorer of knowledge, the
thought of such a discovery threw me into a passion of joy, and I cut
out the slip from the paper, and put it in a drawer in my old bureau,
resolved that it should be but the first piece in a collection of the
strangest significance. I sat long that evening dreaming of the
conclusions I should establish, nor did cooler reflection at first dash
my confidence. Yet as I began to put the case fairly, I saw that I might
be building on an unstable foundation; the facts might possibly be in
accordance with local opinion; and I regarded the affair with a mood of
some reserve. Yet I resolved to remain perched on the look-out, and I
hugged to myself the thought that I alone was watching and wakeful,
while the great crowd of thinkers and searchers stood heedless and
indifferent, perhaps letting the most prerogative facts pass by
unnoticed.
Several years elapsed before I was enabled to add to the contents of the
drawer; and the second find was in reality not a valuable one, for it
was a mere repetition of the first, with only the variation of another
and distant locality. Yet I gained something; for in the second case, as
in the first, the tragedy took place in a desolate and lonely country,
and so far my theory seemed justified. But the third piece was to me far
more decisive. Again, amongst outland hills, far even from a main road
of traffic, an old man was found done to death, and the instrument of
execution was left beside him. Here, indeed, there was rumor and
conjecture, for the deadly tool was a primitive stone axe, bound by gut
to the wooden handle, and surmises the most extravagant and improbable
were indulged in. Yet, as I thought with a kind of glee, the wildest
conjectures went far astray; and I took the pains to enter into
correspondence with the local doctor, who was called at the inquest. He,
a man of some acuteness, was dumfoundered. "It will not do to speak of
these things in country places," he wrote to me; "but, frankly, Professor
Gregg, there is some hideous mystery here. I have obtained possession of
the stone axe, and have been so curious as to test its powers. I took it
into the back-garden of my house one Sunday afternoon when my family and
the servants were all out, and there, sheltered by the poplar hedges, I
made my experiments. I found the thing utterly unmanageable. Whether
there is some peculiar balance, some nice adjustment of weights, which
require incessant practice, or whether an effectual blow can be struck
only by a certain trick of the muscles, I do not know; but I assure you
that I went into the house with but a sorry opinion of my athletic
capacities. It was like an inexperienced man trying 'putting the
hammer;' the force exerted seemed to return on oneself, and I found
myself hurled backwards with violence, while the axe fell harmless to
the ground. On another occasion I tried the experiment with a clever
woodman of the place; but this man, who had handled his axe for forty
years, could do nothing with the stone implement, and missed every
stroke most ludicrously. In short, if it were not so supremely absurd, I
should say that for four thousand years no one on earth could have
struck an effective blow with the tool that undoubtedly was used to
murder the old man." This, as may be imagined, was to me rare news; and
afterwards, when I heard the whole story, and learned that the
unfortunate old man had babbled tales of what might be seen at night on
a certain wild hillside, hinting at unheard-of wonders, and that he had
been found cold one morning on the very hill in question, my exultation
was extreme, for I felt I was leaving conjecture far behind me. But the
next step was of still greater importance. I had possessed for many
years an extraordinary stone seal,--a piece of dull black stone, two
inches long from the handle to the stamp, and the stamping end a rough
hexagon an inch and a quarter in diameter. Altogether, it presented the
appearance of an enlarged tobacco-stopper of an old-fashioned make. It
had been sent to me by an agent in the East, who informed me that it had
been found near the site of the ancient Babylon. But the characters
engraved on the seal were to me an intolerable puzzle. Somewhat of the
cuneiform pattern, there were yet striking differences, which I
detected at the first glance, and all efforts to read the inscription on
the hypothesis that the rules for deciphering the arrow-headed writing
would apply proved futile. A riddle such as this stung my pride, and at
odd moments I would take the Black Seal out of the cabinet, and
scrutinize it with so much idle perseverance that every letter was
familiar to my mind, and I could have drawn the inscription from memory
without the slightest error. Judge then of my surprise, when I one day
received from a correspondent in the west of England a letter and an
enclosure that positively left me thunderstruck. I saw carefully traced
on a large piece of paper the very characters of the Black Seal, without
alteration of any kind, and above the inscription my friend had written:
_Inscription found on a limestone rock on the Gray Hills, Monmouthshire.
Done in some red earth and quite recent_. I turned to the letter. My
friend wrote: "I send you the enclosed inscription with all due reserve.
A shepherd who passed by the stone a week ago swears that there was then
no mark of any kind. The characters, as I have noted, are formed by
drawing some red earth over the stone, and are of an average height of
one inch. They look to me like a kind of cuneiform character, a good
deal altered, but this of course is impossible. It may be either a hoax
or more probably some scribble of the gypsies, who are plentiful enough
in this wild country. They have, as you are aware, many hieroglyphics
which they use in communicating with one another. I happened to visit
the stone in question two days ago in connection with a rather painful
incident which has occurred here."
As may be supposed, I wrote immediately to my friend, thanking him for
the copy of the inscription, and asking him in a casual manner, the
history of the incident he mentioned. To be brief, I heard that a woman
named Cradock, who had lost her husband a day before, had set out to
communicate the sad news to a cousin who lived some five miles away. She
took a short cut which led by the Gray Hills. Mrs. Cradock, who was then
quite a young woman, never arrived at her relative's house. Late that
night a farmer who had lost a couple of sheep, supposed to have wandered
from the flock, was walking over the Gray Hills, with a lantern and his
dog. His attention was attracted by a noise, which he described as a
kind of wailing, mournful and pitiable to hear; and, guided by the
sound, he found the unfortunate Mrs. Cradock crouched on the ground by
the limestone rock, swaying her body to and fro, and lamenting and
crying in so heart-rending a manner that the farmer was, as he says, at
first obliged to stop his ears, or he would have run away. The woman
allowed herself to be taken home, and a neighbor came to see to her
necessities. All the night she never ceased her crying, mixing her
lament with words of some unintelligible jargon, and when the doctor
arrived he pronounced her insane. She lay on her bed for a week, now
wailing, as people said, like one lost and damned for eternity, and now
sunk in a heavy coma; it was thought that grief at the loss of her
husband had unsettled her mind, and the medical man did not at one time
expect her to live. I need not say that I was deeply interested in this
story, and I made my friend write to me at intervals with all the
particulars of the case. I heard then that in the course of six weeks
the woman gradually recovered the use of her faculties and some months
later she gave birth to a son, christened Jervase, who unhappily proved
to be of weak intellect. Such were the facts known to the village; but
to me while I whitened at the suggested thought of the hideous
enormities that had doubtless been committed, all this was nothing short
of conviction, and I incautiously hazarded a hint of something like the
truth to some scientific friends. The moment the words had left my lips
I bitterly regretted having spoken, and thus given away the great secret
of my life, but with a good deal of relief mixed with indignation, I
found my fears altogether misplaced, for my friends ridiculed me to my
face, and I was regarded as a madman; and beneath a natural anger I
chuckled to myself, feeling as secure amidst these blockheads, as if I
had confided what I knew to the desert sands.
But now, knowing so much, I resolved I would know all, and I
concentrated my efforts on the task of deciphering the inscription on
the Black Seal. For many years I made this puzzle the sole object of my
leisure moments; for the greater portion of my time was, of course,
devoted to other duties, and it was only now and then that I could
snatch a week of clear research. If I were to tell the full history of
this curious investigation, this statement would be wearisome in the
extreme, for it would contain simply the account of long and tedious
failure. By what I knew already of ancient scripts I was well-equipped
for the chase, as I always termed it to myself. I had correspondents
amongst all the scientific men in Europe, and, indeed, in the world, and
I could not believe that in these days any character, however ancient
and however perplexed, could long resist the search-light I should bring
to bear upon it. Yet, in point of fact, it was fully fourteen years
before I succeeded. With every year my professional duties increased,
and my leisure became smaller. This no doubt retarded me a good deal;
and yet, when I look back on those years I am astonished at the vast
scope of my investigation of the Black Seal. I made my bureau a centre,
and from all the world and from all the ages I gathered transcripts of
ancient writing. Nothing, I resolved, should pass me unawares, and the
faintest hint should be welcomed and followed up. But as one covert
after another was tried and proved empty of result, I began in the
course of years to despair, and to wonder whether the Black Seal were
the sole relic of some race that had vanished from the world and left no
other trace of its existence,--had perished, in fine, as Atlantis is
said to have done, in some great cataclysm, its secrets perhaps drowned
beneath the ocean or moulded into the heart of the hills. The thought
chilled my warmth a little, and though I still persevered, it was no
longer with the same certainty of faith. A chance came to the rescue. I
was staying in a considerable town in the north of England, and took the
opportunity of going over the very creditable museum that had for some
time been established in the place. The curator was one of my
correspondents; and, as we were looking through one of the mineral
cases, my attention was struck by a specimen, a piece of black stone
some four inches square, the appearance of which reminded me in a
measure of the Black Seal. I took it up carelessly, and was turning it
over in my hand, when I saw, to my astonishment, that the under side was
inscribed. I said, quietly enough, to my friend the curator that the
specimen interested me, and that I should be much obliged if he would
allow me to take it with me to my hotel for a couple of days. He, of
course, made no objection, and I hurried to my rooms, and found that my
first glance had not deceived me. There were two inscriptions; one in
the regular cuneiform character, another in the character of the Black
Seal, and I realized that my task was accomplished. I made an exact copy
of the two inscriptions; and when I got to my London study, and had the
Seal before me, I was able seriously to grapple with the great problem.
The interpreting inscription on the museum specimen, though in itself
curious enough, did not bear on my quest, but the transliteration made
me master of the secret of the Black Seal. Conjecture, of course, had to
enter into my calculations; there was here and there uncertainty about a
particular ideograph, and one sign recurring again and again on the Seal
baffled me for many successive nights. But at last the secret stood open
before me in plain English, and I read the key of the awful
transmutation of the hills. The last word was hardly written, when with
fingers all trembling and unsteady I tore the scrap of paper into the
minutest fragments, and saw them flame and blacken in the red hollow of
the fire, and then I crushed the gray films that remained into finest
powder. Never since then have I written those words; never will I write
the phrases which tell me how man can be reduced to the slime from which
he came, and be forced to put on the flesh of the reptile and the snake.
There was now but one thing remaining. I knew; but I desired to see, and
I was after some time able to take a house in the neighborhood of the
Gray Hills, and not far from the cottage where Mrs. Cradock and her son
Jervase resided. I need not go into a full and detailed account of the
apparently inexplicable events which have occurred here, where I am
writing this. I knew that I should find in Jervase Cradock something of
the blood of the "Little People," and I found later that he had more
than once encountered his kinsmen in lonely places in that lonely land.
When I was summoned one day to the garden, and found him in a seizure
speaking or hissing the ghastly jargon of the Black Seal, I am afraid
that exultation prevailed over pity. I heard bursting from his lips the
secrets of the underworld, and the word of dread, "Ishakshar," the
signification of which I must be excused from giving.
But there is one incident I cannot pass over unnoticed. In the waste
hollow of the night I awoke at the sound of those hissing syllables I
knew so well; and on going to the wretched boy's room, I found him
convulsed and foaming at the mouth, struggling on the bed as if he
strove to escape the grasp of writhing demons. I took him down to my
room and lit the lamp, while he lay twisting on the floor, calling on
the power within his flesh to leave him. I saw his body swell and become
distended as a bladder, while the face blackened before my eyes; and
then at the crisis I did what was necessary according to the directions
on the Seal, and putting all scruple on one side, I became a man of
science, observant of what was passing. Yet the sight I had to witness
was horrible, almost beyond the power of human conception and the most
fearful fantasy; something pushed out from the body there on the floor,
and stretched forth, a slimy wavering tentacle, across the room, and
grasped the bust upon the cupboard, and laid it down on my desk.
When it was over, and I was left to walk up and down all the rest of the
night, white and shuddering, with sweat pouring from my flesh, I vainly
tried to reason with myself; I said, truly enough, that I had seen
nothing really supernatural, that a snail pushing out his horns and
drawing them in was but an instance on a smaller scale of what I had
witnessed; and yet horror broke through all such reasonings and left me
shattered and loathing myself for the share I had taken in the night's
work.
There is little more to be said. I am going now to the final trial and
encounter; for I have determined that there shall be nothing wanting,
and I shall meet the "Little People" face to face. I shall have the
Black Seal and the knowledge of its secrets to help me, and if I
unhappily do not return from my journey, there is no need to conjure up
here a picture of the awfulness of my fate.
Pausing a little at the end of Professor Gregg's statement, Miss Lally
continued her tale in the following words:--
Such was the almost incredible story that the professor had left behind
him. When I had finished reading it, it was late at night, but the next
morning I took Morgan with me, and we proceeded to search the Gray Hills
for some trace of the lost professor. I will not weary you with a
description of the savage desolation of that tract of country, a tract
of utterest loneliness, of bare green hills dotted over with gray
limestone boulders, worn by the ravage of time into fantastic semblances
of men and beasts. Finally, after many hours of weary searching, we
found what I told you--the watch and chain, the purse, and the
ring--wrapped in a piece of coarse parchment. When Morgan cut the gut
that bound the parcel together, and I saw the professor's property, I
burst into tears, but the sight of the dreaded characters of the Black
Seal repeated on the parchment froze me to silent horror, and I think I
understood for the first time the awful fate that had come upon my late
employer.
I have only to add that Professor Gregg's lawyer treated my account of
what had happened as a fairy tale, and refused even to glance at the
documents I laid before him. It was he who was responsible for the
statement that appeared in the public press, to the effect that
Professor Gregg had been drowned, and that his body must have been swept
into the open sea.
Miss Lally stopped speaking and looked at Mr. Phillipps, with a glance
of some enquiry. He, for his part, was sunken in a deep revery of
thought; and when he looked up and saw the bustle of the evening
gathering in the square, men and women hurrying to partake of dinner,
and crowds already besetting the music-halls, all the hum and press of
actual life seemed unreal and visionary, a dream in the morning after an
awakening.
"I thank you," he said at last, "for your most interesting story,
interesting to me, because I feel fully convinced of its exact truth."
"Sir," said the lady, with some energy of indignation, "you grieve and
offend me. Do you think I should waste my time and yours by concocting
fictions on a bench in Leicester Square?"
"Pardon me, Miss Lally, you have a little misunderstood me. Before you
began I knew that whatever you told would be told in good faith, but
your experiences have a far higher value than that of _bona fides_. The
most extraordinary circumstances in your account are in perfect harmony
with the very latest scientific theories. Professor Lodge would, I am
sure, value a communication from you extremely; I was charmed from the
first by his daring hypothesis in explanation of the wonders of
Spiritualism (so called), but your narrative puts the whole matter out
of the range of mere hypothesis."
"Alas, sir, all this will not help me. You forget, I have lost my
brother under the most startling and dreadful circumstances. Again, I
ask you, did you not see him as you came here? His black whiskers, his
spectacles, his timid glance to right and left; think, do not these
particulars recall his face to your memory?"
"I am sorry to say I have never seen any one of the kind," said
Phillipps, who had forgotten all about the missing brother. "But let me
ask you a few questions. Did you notice whether Professor Gregg--"
"Pardon me, sir, I have stayed too long. My employers will be expecting
me. I thank you for your sympathy. Good bye."
Before Mr. Phillipps had recovered from his amazement at this abrupt
departure, Miss Lally had disappeared from his gaze, passing into the
crowd that now thronged the approaches to the Empire. He walked home in
a pensive frame of mind, and drank too much tea. At ten o'clock he had
made his third brew, and had sketched out the outlines of a little work
to be called _Protoplasmic Reversion_.