'I am glad you came, Clarke; very glad indeed. I was not sure you could
spare the time.'
'I was able to make arrangements for a few days; things are not very
lively just now. But have you no misgivings, Raymond? Is it absolutely
safe?'
The two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of Dr. Raymond's
house. The sun still hung above the western mountain-line, but it shone
with a dull red glow that cast no shadows, and all the air was quiet; a
sweet breath came from the great wood on the hillside above, and with
it, at intervals, the soft murmuring call of the wild doves. Below, in
the long lovely valley, the river wound in and out between the lonely
hills, and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the west, a faint mist,
pure white, began to rise from the banks. Dr. Raymond turned sharply to
his friend.
'Safe? Of course it is. In itself the operation is a perfectly simple
one; any surgeon could do it.'
'And there is no danger at any other stage?'
'None; absolutely no physical danger whatever, I give you my word. You
are always timid, Clarke, always; but you know my history. I have
devoted myself to transcendental medicine for the last twenty years. I
have heard myself called quack and charlatan and impostor, but all the
while I knew I was on the right path. Five years ago I reached the goal,
and since then every day has been a preparation for what we shall do
to-night.'
'I should like to believe it is all true.' Clarke knit his brows, and
looked doubtfully at Dr. Raymond. 'Are you perfectly sure, Raymond, that
your theory is not a phantasmagoria--a splendid vision, certainly, but a
mere vision after all?'
Dr. Raymond stopped in his walk and turned sharply. He was a middle-aged
man, gaunt and thin, of a pale yellow complexion, but as he answered
Clarke and faced him, there was a flush on his cheek.
'Look about you, Clarke. You see the mountain, and hill following after
hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchards, the fields of
ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river. You
see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that
all these things--yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky
to the solid ground beneath our feet--I say that all these are but
dreams and shadows: the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes.
There _is_ a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision,
beyond these "chases in Arras, dreams in a career," beyond them all as
beyond a veil. I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted
that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted
this very night from before another's eyes. You may think all this
strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients
knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan.'
Clarke shivered; the white mist gathering over the river was chilly.
'It is wonderful indeed,' he said. 'We are standing on the brink of a
strange world, Raymond, if what you say is true. I suppose the knife is
absolutely necessary?'
'Yes; a slight lesion in the grey matter, that is all; a trifling
rearrangement of certain cells, a microscopical alteration that would
escape the attention of ninety-nine brain specialists out of a hundred.
I don't want to bother you with "shop," Clarke; I might give you a mass
of technical detail which would sound very imposing, and would leave you
as enlightened as you are now. But I suppose you have read, casually, in
out-of-the-way corners of your paper, that immense strides have been
made recently in the physiology of the brain. I saw a paragraph the
other day about Digby's theory, and Browne Faber's discoveries. Theories
and discoveries! Where they are standing now, I stood fifteen years ago,
and I need not tell you that I have not been standing still for the last
fifteen years. It will be enough if I say that five years ago I made the
discovery to which I alluded when I said that then I reached the goal.
After years of labour, after years of toiling and groping in the dark,
after days and nights of disappointment and sometimes of despair, in
which I used now and then to tremble and grow cold with the thought that
perhaps there were others seeking for what I sought, at last, after so
long, a pang of sudden joy thrilled my soul, and I knew the long journey
was at an end. By what seemed then and still seems a chance, the
suggestion of a moment's idle thought followed up upon familiar lines
and paths that I had tracked a hundred times already, the great truth
burst upon me, and I saw, mapped out in lines of light, a whole world, a
sphere unknown; continents and islands, and great oceans in which no
ship has sailed (to my belief) since a Man first lifted up his eyes and
beheld the sun, and the stars of heaven, and the quiet earth beneath.
You will think all this high-flown language, Clarke, but it is hard to
be literal. And yet; I do not know whether what I am hinting at cannot
be set forth in plain and homely terms. For instance, this world of ours
is pretty well girded now with the telegraph wires and cables; thought,
with something less than the speed of thought, flashes from sunrise to
sunset, from north to south, across the floods and the desert places.
Suppose that an electrician of to-day were suddenly to perceive that he
and his friends have merely been playing with pebbles and mistaking them
for the foundations of the world; suppose that such a man saw uttermost
space lie open before the current, and words of men flash forth to the
sun and beyond the sun into the systems beyond, and the voices of
articulate-speaking men echo in the waste void that bounds our thought.
As analogies go, that is a pretty good analogy of what I have done; you
can understand now a little of what I felt as I stood here one evening;
it was a summer evening, and the valley looked much as it does now; I
stood here, and saw before me the unutterable, the unthinkable gulf that
yawns profound between two worlds, the world of matter and the world of
spirit; I saw the great empty deep stretch dim before me, and in that
instant a bridge of light leapt from the earth to the unknown shore,
and the abyss was spanned. You may look in Browne Faber's book, if you
like, and you will find that to the present day men of science are
unable to account for the presence, or to specify the functions of a
certain group of nerve-cells in the brain. That group is, as it were,
land to let, a mere waste place for fanciful theories. I am not in the
position of Browne Faber and the specialists, I am perfectly instructed
as to the possible functions of those nerve-centers in the scheme of
things. With a touch I can bring them into play, with a touch, I say, I
can set free the current, with a touch I can complete the communication
between this world of sense and----we shall be able to finish the
sentence later on. Yes, the knife is necessary; but think what that
knife will effect. It will level utterly the solid wall of sense, and
probably, for the first time since man was made, a spirit will gaze on a
spirit-world. Clarke, Mary will see the god Pan!'
'But you remember what you wrote to me? I thought it would be requisite
that she----'
He whispered the rest into the doctor's ear.
'Not at all, not at all. That is nonsense, I assure you. Indeed, it is
better as it is; I am quite certain of that.'
'Consider the matter well, Raymond. It's a great responsibility.
Something might go wrong; you would be a miserable man for the rest of
your days.'
'No, I think not, even if the worst happened. As you know, I rescued
Mary from the gutter, and from almost certain starvation, when she was a
child; I think her life is mine, to use as I see fit. Come, it is
getting late; we had better go in.'
Dr. Raymond led the way into the house, through the hall, and down a
long dark passage. He took a key from his pocket and opened a heavy
door, and motioned Clarke into his laboratory. It had once been a
billiard-room, and was lighted by a glass dome in the centre of the
ceiling, whence there still shone a sad grey light on the figure of the
doctor as he lit a lamp with a heavy shade and placed it on a table in
the middle of the room.
Clarke looked about him. Scarcely a foot of wall remained bare; there
were shelves all around laden with bottles and phials of all shapes and
colours, and at one end stood a little Chippendale bookcase. Raymond
pointed to this.
'You see that parchment Oswald Crollius? He was one of the first to show
me the way, though I don't think he ever found it himself. That is a
strange saying of his: "In every grain of wheat there lies hidden the
soul of a star."'
There was not much of furniture in the laboratory. The table in the
centre, a stone slab with a drain in one corner, the two armchairs on
which Raymond and Clarke were sitting; that was all, except an
odd-looking chair at the furthest end of the room. Clarke looked at it,
and raised his eyebrows.
'Yes, that is the chair,' said Raymond. 'We may as well place it in
position,' He got up and wheeled the chair to the light, and began
raising and lowering it, letting down the seat, setting the back at
various angles, and adjusting the foot-rest. It looked comfortable
enough, and Clarke passed his hand over the soft green velvet, as the
doctor manipulated the levers.
'Now, Clarke, make yourself quite comfortable. I have a couple of
hours' work before me; I was obliged to leave certain matters to the
last.'
Raymond went to the stone slab, and Clarke watched him drearily as he
bent over a row of phials and lit the flame under the crucible. The
doctor had a small hand-lamp, shaded as the larger one, on a ledge above
his apparatus, and Clarke, who sat in the shadows, looked down the great
dreary room, wondering at the bizarre effects of brilliant light and
undefined darkness contrasting with one another. Soon he became
conscious of an odd odour, at first the merest suggestion of odour, in
the room; and as it grew more decided he felt surprised that he was not
reminded of the chemist's shop or the surgery. Clarke found himself idly
endeavouring to analyse the sensation, and, half conscious, he began to
think of a day, fifteen years ago, that he had spent in roaming through
the woods and meadows near his old home. It was a burning day at the
beginning of August, the heat had dimmed the outlines of all things and
all distances with a faint mist, and people who observed the thermometer
spoke of an abnormal register, of a temperature that was almost
tropical. Strangely that wonderful hot day of the 'fifties rose up in
Clarke's imagination; the sense of dazzling all-pervading sunlight
seemed to blot out the shadows and the lights of the laboratory, and he
felt again the heated air beating in gusts about his face, saw the
shimmer rising from the turf, and heard the myriad murmur of the summer.
'I hope the smell doesn't annoy you, Clarke; there's nothing unwholesome
about it. It may make you a bit sleepy, that's all.'
Clarke heard the words quite distinctly, and knew that Raymond was
speaking to him, but for the life of him he could not rouse himself from
his lethargy. He could only think of the lonely walk he had taken
fifteen years ago; it was his last look at the fields and woods he had
known since he was a child, and now it all stood out in brilliant light,
as a picture, before him. Above all there came to his nostrils the scent
of summer, the smell of flowers mingled, and the odour of the woods, of
cool shaded places, deep in the green depths, drawn forth by the sun's
heat; and the scent of the good earth, lying as it were with arms
stretched forth, and smiling lips, overpowered all. His fancies made him
wander, as he had wandered long ago, from the fields into the wood,
tracking a little path between the shining undergrowth of beech-trees;
and the trickle of water dropping from the limestone rock sounded as a
clear melody in the dream. Thoughts began to go astray and to mingle
with other recollections; the beech alley was transformed to a path
beneath ilex-trees, and here and there a vine climbed from bough to
bough, and sent up waving tendrils and drooped with purple grapes, and
the sparse grey-green leaves of a wild olive-tree stood out against the
dark shadows of the ilex. Clarke, in the deep folds of dream, was
conscious that the path from his father's house had led him into an
undiscovered country, and he was wondering at the strangeness of it all,
when suddenly, in place of the hum and murmur of the summer, an infinite
silence seemed to fall on all things, and the wood was hushed, and for a
moment of time he stood face to face there with a presence, that was
neither man nor beast, neither the living nor the dead, but all things
mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all form. And in that
moment, the sacrament of body and soul was dissolved, and a voice seemed
to cry 'Let us go hence,' and then the darkness of darkness beyond the
stars, the darkness of everlasting.
When Clarke woke up with a start he saw Raymond pouring a few drops of
some oily fluid into a green phial, which he stoppered tightly.
'You have been dozing,' he said; 'the journey must have tired you out.
It is done now. I am going to fetch Mary; I shall be back in ten
minutes.'
Clarke lay back in his chair and wondered. It seemed as if he had but
passed from one dream into another. He half expected to see the walls of
the laboratory melt and disappear, and to awake in London, shuddering at
his own sleeping fancies. But at last the door opened, and the doctor
returned, and behind him came a girl of about seventeen, dressed all in
white. She was so beautiful that Clarke did not wonder at what the
doctor had written to him. She was blushing now over face and neck and
arms, but Raymond seemed unmoved.
'Mary,' he said, 'the time has come. You are quite free. Are you willing
to trust yourself to me entirely?'
'Yes, dear.'
'You hear that, Clarke? You are my witness. Here is the chair, Mary. It
is quite easy. Just sit in it and lean back. Are you ready?'
'Yes, dear, quite ready. Give me a kiss before you begin.'
The doctor stooped and kissed her mouth, kindly enough. 'Now shut your
eyes,' he said. The girl closed her eyelids, as if she were tired, and
longed for sleep, and Raymond held the green phial to her nostrils. Her
face grew white, whiter than her dress; she struggled faintly, and then
with the feeling of submission strong within her, crossed her arms upon
her breast as a little child about to say her prayers. The bright light
of the lamp beat full upon her, and Clarke watched changes fleeting over
that face as the changes of the hills when the summer clouds float
across the sun. And then she lay all white and still, and the doctor
turned up one of her eyelids. She was quite unconscious. Raymond pressed
hard on one of the levers and the chair instantly sank back. Clarke saw
him cutting away a circle, like a tonsure, from her hair, and the lamp
was moved nearer. Raymond took a small glittering instrument from a
little case, and Clarke turned away shuddering. When he looked again the
doctor was binding up the wound he had made.
'She will awake in five minutes.' Raymond was still perfectly cool.
'There is nothing more to be done; we can only wait.'
The minutes passed slowly; they could hear a slow, heavy ticking. There
was an old clock in the passage. Clarke felt sick and faint; his knees
shook beneath him, he could hardly stand.
Suddenly, as they watched, they heard a long-drawn sigh, and suddenly
did the colour that had vanished return to the girl's cheeks, and
suddenly her eyes opened. Clarke quailed before them. They shone with an
awful light, looking far away, and a great wonder fell upon her face,
and her hands stretched out as if to touch what was invisible; but in an
instant the wonder faded, and gave place to the most awful terror. The
muscles of her face were hideously convulsed, she shook from head to
foot; the soul seemed struggling and shuddering within the house of
flesh. It was a horrible sight, and Clarke rushed forward, as she fell
shrieking to the floor.
Three days later Raymond took Clarke to Mary's bedside. She was lying
wide-awake, rolling her head from side to side, and grinning vacantly.
'Yes,' said the doctor, still quite cool, 'it is a great pity; she is a
hopeless idiot. However, it could not be helped; and, after all, she has
seen the Great God Pan.'