Mr. Clarke, the gentleman chosen by Dr. Raymond to witness the strange
experiment of the god Pan, was a person in whose character caution and
curiosity were oddly mingled; in his sober moments he thought of the
unusual and the eccentric with undisguised aversion, and yet, deep in
his heart, there was a wide-eyed inquisitiveness with respect to all the
more recondite and esoteric elements in the nature of men. The latter
tendency had prevailed when he accepted Raymond's invitation, for though
his considered judgment had always repudiated the doctor's theories as
the wildest nonsense, yet he secretly hugged a belief in fantasy, and
would have rejoiced to see that belief confirmed. The horrors that he
witnessed in the dreary laboratory were to a certain extent salutary; he
was conscious of being involved in an affair not altogether reputable,
and for many years afterwards he clung bravely to the commonplace, and
rejected all occasions of occult investigation. Indeed, on some
hom[oe]opathic principle, he for some time attended the seances of
distinguished mediums, hoping that the clumsy tricks of these gentlemen
would make him altogether disgusted with mysticism of every kind, but
the remedy, though caustic, was not efficacious. Clarke knew that he
still pined for the unseen, and little by little, the old passion began
to reassert itself, as the face of Mary, shuddering and convulsed with
an unknowable terror, faded slowly from his memory. Occupied all day in
pursuits both serious and lucrative, the temptation to relax in the
evening was too great, especially in the winter months, when the fire
cast a warm glow over his snug bachelor apartment, and a bottle of some
choice claret stood ready by his elbow. His dinner digested, he would
make a brief pretence of reading the evening paper, but the mere
catalogue of news soon palled upon him, and Clarke would find himself
casting glances of warm desire in the direction of an old Japanese
bureau, which stood at a pleasant distance from the hearth. Like a boy
before a jam-closet, for a few minutes he would hover indecisive, but
lust always prevailed, and Clarke ended by drawing up his chair,
lighting a candle, and sitting down before the bureau. Its pigeonholes
and drawers teemed with documents on the most morbid subjects, and in
the well reposed a large manuscript volume, in which he had painfully
entered the gems of his collection. Clarke had a fine contempt for
published literature; the most ghostly story ceased to interest him if
it happened to be printed; his sole pleasure was in the reading,
compiling, and rearranging what he called his 'Memoirs to prove the
Existence of the Devil,' and engaged in this pursuit the evening seemed
to fly and the night appeared too short.
On one particular evening, an ugly December night, black with fog, and
raw with frost, Clarke hurried over his dinner, and scarcely deigned to
observe his customary ritual of taking up the paper and laying it down
again. He paced two or three times up and down the room, and opened the
bureau, stood still a moment, and sat down. He leant back, absorbed in
one of those dreams to which he was subject, and at length drew out his
book, and opened it at the last entry. There were three or four pages
densely covered with Clarke's round, set penmanship, and at the
beginning he had written in a somewhat larger hand:
Singular Narrative told me by my Friend, Dr. Phillips. He assures me
that all the facts related therein are strictly and wholly True, but
refuses to give either the Surnames of the Persons concerned, or the
Place where these Extraordinary Events occurred.
Mr. Clarke began to read over the account for the tenth time, glancing
now and then at the pencil notes he had made when it was told him by his
friend. It was one of his humours to pride himself on a certain literary
ability; he thought well of his style, and took pains in arranging the
circumstances in dramatic order. He read the following story:--
The persons concerned in this statement are Helen V., who, if she is
still alive, must now be a woman of twenty-three, Rachel M., since
deceased, who was a year younger than the above, and Trevor W., an
imbecile, aged eighteen. These persons were at the period of the story
inhabitants of a village on the borders of Wales, a place of some
importance in the time of the Roman occupation, but now a scattered
hamlet, of not more than five hundred souls. It is situated on rising
ground, about six miles from the sea, and is sheltered by a large and
picturesque forest.
Some eleven years ago, Helen V. came to the village under rather
peculiar circumstances. It is understood that she, being an orphan, was
adopted in her infancy by a distant relative, who brought her up in his
own house till she was twelve years old. Thinking, however, that it
would be better for the child to have playmates of her own age, he
advertised in several local papers for a good home in a comfortable
farmhouse for a girl of twelve, and this advertisement was answered by
Mr. R., a well-to-do farmer in the above-mentioned village. His
references proving satisfactory, the gentleman sent his adopted daughter
to Mr. R., with a letter, in which he stipulated that the girl should
have a room to herself, and stated that her guardians need be at no
trouble in the matter of education, as she was already sufficiently
educated for the position in life which she would occupy. In fact, Mr.
R. was given to understand that the girl was to be allowed to find her
own occupations, and to spend her time almost as she liked. Mr. R. duly
met her at the nearest station, a town some seven miles away from his
house, and seems to have remarked nothing extraordinary about the
child, except that she was reticent as to her former life and her
adopted father. She was, however, of a very different type from the
inhabitants of the village; her skin was a pale, clear olive, and her
features were strongly marked, and of a somewhat foreign character. She
appears to have settled down easily enough into farmhouse life, and
became a favourite with the children, who sometimes went with her on her
rambles in the forest, for this was her amusement. Mr. R. states that he
has known her go out by herself directly after their early breakfast,
and not return till after dusk, and that, feeling uneasy at a young girl
being out alone for so many hours, he communicated with her adopted
father, who replied in a brief note that Helen must do as she chose. In
the winter, when the forest paths are impassable, she spent most of her
time in her bedroom, where she slept alone, according to the
instructions of her relative. It was on one of these expeditions to the
forest that the first of the singular incidents with which this girl is
connected occurred, the date being about a year after her arrival at the
village. The preceding winter had been remarkably severe, the snow
drifting to a great depth, and the frost continuing for an unexampled
period, and the summer following was as noteworthy for its extreme heat.
On one of the very hottest days in this summer, Helen V. left the
farmhouse for one of her long rambles in the forest, taking with her, as
usual, some bread and meat for lunch. She was seen by some men in the
fields making for the old Roman Road, a green causeway which traverses
the highest part of the wood, and they were astonished to observe that
the girl had taken off her hat, though the heat of the sun was already
almost tropical. As it happened, a labourer, Joseph W. by name, was
working in the forest near the Roman Road, and at twelve o'clock his
little son, Trevor, brought the man his dinner of bread and cheese.
After the meal, the boy, who was about seven years old at the time, left
his father at work, and, as he said, went to look for flowers in the
wood, and the man, who could hear him shouting with delight over his
discoveries, felt no uneasiness. Suddenly, however, he was horrified at
hearing the most dreadful screams, evidently the result of great terror,
proceeding from the direction in which his son had gone, and he hastily
threw down his tools and ran to see what had happened. Tracing his path
by the sound, he met the little boy, who was running headlong, and was
evidently terribly frightened, and on questioning him the man at last
elicited that after picking a posy of flowers he felt tired, and lay
down on the grass and fell asleep. He was suddenly awakened, as he
stated, by a peculiar noise, a sort of singing he called it, and on
peeping through the branches he saw Helen V. playing on the grass with a
'strange naked man,' whom he seemed unable to describe more fully. He
said he felt dreadfully frightened, and ran away crying for his father.
Joseph W. proceeded in the direction indicated by his son, and found
Helen V. sitting on the grass in the middle of a glade or open space
left by charcoal burners. He angrily charged her with frightening his
little boy, but she entirely denied the accusation and laughed at the
child's story of a 'strange man,' to which he himself did not attach
much credence. Joseph W. came to the conclusion that the boy had woke up
with a sudden fright, as children sometimes do, but Trevor persisted in
his story, and continued in such evident distress that at last his
father took him home, hoping that his mother would be able to soothe
him. For many weeks, however, the boy gave his parents much anxiety; he
became nervous and strange in his manner, refusing to leave the cottage
by himself, and constantly alarming the household by waking in the night
with cries of 'The man in the wood! father! father!'
In course of time, however, the impression seemed to have worn off, and
about three months later he accompanied his father to the house of a
gentleman in the neighbourhood, for whom Joseph W. occasionally did
work. The man was shown into the study, and the little boy was left
sitting in the hall, and a few minutes later, while the gentleman was
giving W. his instructions, they were both horrified by a piercing
shriek and the sound of a fall, and rushing out they found the child
lying senseless on the floor, his face contorted with terror. The doctor
was immediately summoned, and after some examination he pronounced the
child to be suffering from a kind of fit, apparently produced by a
sudden shock. The boy was taken to one of the bedrooms, and after some
time recovered consciousness, but only to pass into a condition
described by the medical man as one of violent hysteria. The doctor
exhibited a strong sedative, and in the course of two hours pronounced
him fit to walk home, but in passing through the hall the paroxysms of
fright returned and with additional violence. The father perceived that
the child was pointing at some object, and heard the old cry, 'The man
in the wood,' and looking in the direction indicated saw a stone head of
grotesque appearance, which had been built into the wall above one of
the doors. It seems that the owner of the house had recently made
alterations in his premises, and on digging the foundation for some
offices, the men had found a curious head, evidently of the Roman
period, which had been placed in the hall in the manner described. The
head is pronounced by the most experienced archaeologists of the
district to be that of a faun or satyr.[1]
[1] Dr. Phillips tells me that he has seen the head in question, and
assures me that he has never received such a vivid presentment of
intense evil.
From whatever cause arising, this second shock seemed too severe for the
boy Trevor, and at the present date he suffers from a weakness of
intellect, which gives but little promise of amending. The matter caused
a good deal of sensation at the time, and the girl Helen was closely
questioned by Mr. R., but to no purpose, she steadfastly denying that
she had frightened or in any way molested Trevor.
The second event with which this girl's name is connected took place
about six years ago, and is of a still more extraordinary character.
At the beginning of the summer of 1882 Helen contracted a friendship of
a peculiarly intimate character with Rachel M., the daughter of a
prosperous farmer in the neighbourhood. This girl, who was a year
younger than Helen, was considered by most people to be the prettier of
the two, though Helen's features had to a great extent softened as she
became older. The two girls, who were together on every available
opportunity, presented a singular contrast, the one with her clear,
olive skin and almost Italian appearance, and the other of the
proverbial red and white of our rural districts. It must be stated that
the payments made to Mr. R. for the maintenance of Helen were known in
the village for their excessive liberality, and the impression was
general that she would one day inherit a large sum of money from her
relative. The parents of Rachel were therefore not averse from their
daughter's friendship with the girl, and even encouraged the intimacy,
though they now bitterly regret having done so. Helen still retained her
extraordinary fondness for the forest, and on several occasions Rachel
accompanied her, the two friends setting out early in the morning, and
remaining in the wood till dusk. Once or twice after these excursions
Mrs. M. thought her daughter's manner rather peculiar; she seemed
languid and dreamy, and as it has been expressed, 'different from
herself,' but these peculiarities seem to have been thought too trifling
for remark. One evening, however, after Rachel had come home, her mother
heard a noise which sounded like suppressed weeping in the girl's room,
and on going in found her lying, half undressed, upon the bed, evidently
in the greatest distress. As soon as she saw her mother, she exclaimed,
'Ah, mother, mother, why did you let me go to the forest with Helen?'
Mrs. M. was astonished at so strange a question, and proceeded to make
inquiries. Rachel told her a wild story. She said--
Clarke closed the book with a snap, and turned his chair towards the
fire. When his friend sat one evening in that very chair, and told his
story, Clarke had interrupted him at a point a little subsequent to
this, had cut short his words in a paroxysm of horror. 'My God!' he had
exclaimed, 'think, think what you are saying. It is too incredible, too
monstrous; such things can never be in this quiet world, where men and
women live and die, and struggle, and conquer, or maybe fail, and fall
down under sorrow, and grieve and suffer strange fortunes for many a
year; but not this, Phillips, not such things as this. There must be
some explanation, some way out of the terror. Why, man, if such a case
were possible, our earth would be a nightmare.'
But Phillips had told his story to the end, concluding:
'Her flight remains a mystery to this day; she vanished in broad
sunlight; they saw her walking in a meadow, and a few moments later she
was not there.'
Clarke tried to conceive the thing again, as he sat by the fire, and
again his mind shuddered and shrank back, appalled before the sight of
such awful, unspeakable elements enthroned as it were, and triumphant in
human flesh. Before him stretched the long dim vista of the green
causeway in the forest, as his friend had described it; he saw the
swaying leaves and the quivering shadows on the grass, he saw the
sunlight and the flowers, and far away, far in the long distance, the
two figures moved toward him. One was Rachel, but the other?
Clarke had tried his best to disbelieve it all, but at the end of the
account, as he had written it in his book, he had placed the
inscription: