'That's a very queer story,' said Cotgrave, handing back the green book
to the recluse, Ambrose. 'I see the drift of a good deal, but there are
many things that I do not grasp at all. On the last page, for example,
what does she mean by "nymphs"?'
'Well, I think there are references throughout the manuscript to certain
"processes" which have been handed down by tradition from age to age.
Some of these processes are just beginning to come within the purview of
science, which has arrived at them--or rather at the steps which lead to
them--by quite different paths. I have interpreted the reference to
"nymphs" as a reference to one of these processes.'
'And you believe that there are such things?'
'Oh, I think so. Yes, I believe I could give you convincing evidence on
that point. I am afraid you have neglected the study of alchemy? It is a
pity, for the symbolism, at all events, is very beautiful, and moreover
if you were acquainted with certain books on the subject, I could recall
to your mind phrases which might explain a good deal in the manuscript
that you have been reading.'
'Yes; but I want to know whether you seriously think that there is any
foundation of fact beneath these fancies. Is it not all a department of
poetry; a curious dream with which man has indulged himself?'
'I can only say that it is no doubt better for the great mass of people
to dismiss it all as a dream. But if you ask my veritable belief--that
goes quite the other way. No; I should not say belief, but rather
knowledge. I may tell you that I have known cases in which men have
stumbled quite by accident on certain of these "processes," and have
been astonished by wholly unexpected results. In the cases I am thinking
of there could have been no possibility of "suggestion" or sub-conscious
action of any kind. One might as well suppose a schoolboy "suggesting"
the existence of AEschylus to himself, while he plods mechanically
through the declensions.
'But you have noticed the obscurity,' Ambrose went on, 'and in this
particular case it must have been dictated by instinct, since the writer
never thought that her manuscripts would fall into other hands. But the
practice is universal, and for most excellent reasons. Powerful and
sovereign medicines, which are, of necessity, virulent poisons also, are
kept in a locked cabinet. The child may find the key by chance, and
drink herself dead; but in most cases the search is educational, and the
phials contain precious elixirs for him who has patiently fashioned the
key for himself.'
'You do not care to go into details?'
'No, frankly, I do not. No, you must remain unconvinced. But you saw how
the manuscript illustrates the talk we had last week?'
'Is this girl still alive?'
'No. I was one of those who found her. I knew the father well; he was a
lawyer, and had always left her very much to herself. He thought of
nothing but deeds and leases, and the news came to him as an awful
surprise. She was missing one morning; I suppose it was about a year
after she had written what you have read. The servants were called, and
they told things, and put the only natural interpretation on them--a
perfectly erroneous one.
'They discovered that green book somewhere in her room, and I found her
in the place that she described with so much dread, lying on the ground
before the image.'
'It was an image?'
'Yes, it was hidden by the thorns and the thick undergrowth that had
surrounded it. It was a wild, lonely country; but you know what it was
like by her description, though of course you will understand that the
colours have been heightened. A child's imagination always makes the
heights higher and the depths deeper than they really are; and she had,
unfortunately for herself, something more than imagination. One might
say, perhaps, that the picture in her mind which she succeeded in a
measure in putting into words, was the scene as it would have appeared
to an imaginative artist. But it is a strange, desolate land.'
'And she was dead?'
'Yes. She had poisoned herself--in time. No; there was not a word to be
said against her in the ordinary sense. You may recollect a story I told
you the other night about a lady who saw her child's fingers crushed by
a window?'
'And what was this statue?'
'Well, it was of Roman workmanship, of a stone that with the centuries
had not blackened, but had become white and luminous. The thicket had
grown up about it and concealed it, and in the Middle Ages the followers
of a very old tradition had known how to use it for their own purposes.
In fact it had been incorporated into the monstrous mythology of the
Sabbath. You will have noted that those to whom a sight of that shining
whiteness had been vouchsafed by chance, or rather, perhaps, by apparent
chance, were required to blindfold themselves on their second approach.
That is very significant.'
'And is it there still?'
'I sent for tools, and we hammered it into dust and fragments.'
'The persistence of tradition never surprises me,' Ambrose went on after
a pause. 'I could name many an English parish where such traditions as
that girl had listened to in her childhood are still existent in occult
but unabated vigour. No, for me, it is the "story" not the "sequel,"
which is strange and awful, for I have always believed that wonder is of
the soul.'