by Arthur Machen
January, 1996
[Etext #389]
[Date last updated: December 6, 2004]
This book prepared by:
Brandi Weed
from
ProjectGutenberg Website
I
THE EXPERIMENT
“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 hills. 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 whatsoever, 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 tonight.”
“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 orchard, 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 this all
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 that I alluded to when I said
that ten years ago I reached the goal. After years of labour,
after years of toiling and groping in the dark, after days and
nights of disappointments 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 sight, 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 this all 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
lonely 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 today 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 voice 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’s 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
book-case. 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
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 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 at the great shadowy
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
roaming through the woods and meadows near his own 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 again 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 thoughts; the beech alley was
transformed to a path between 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 in 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.”
“Do 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 placed 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 fell full upon her, and Clarke watched changes
fleeting over her 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 shudderingly. 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.”
II
MR. CLARKE’S
MEMOIRS
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 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 homeopathic 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 unknown 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 pigeon-holes 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 he 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 until 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 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 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 to 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 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 at
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 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,” who 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 home of a gentleman in the neighborhood, 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 form 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 the owner
of the house had recently made alterations in his premises, and
on digging the foundations for some offices, the men had found a
curious head, evidently of the Roman period, which had been
placed in the manner described. The head is pronounced by the
most experienced archaeologists of the district to be that of a
faun or satyr.
[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 until 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
figure 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:
ET DIABOLUS
INCARNATE EST. ET HOMO FACTUS EST.
III
THE CITY OF
RESURRECTIONS
“Herbert! Good God!
Is it possible?”
“Yes, my name’s Herbert. I think I know your face, too, but I
don’t remember your name. My memory is very queer.”
“Don’t you recollect Villiers of Wadham?”
“So it is, so it is. I beg your pardon, Villiers, I didn’t think
I was begging of an old college friend. Good-night.”
“My dear fellow, this haste is unnecessary. My rooms are close
by, but we won’t go there just yet. Suppose we walk up
Shaftesbury Avenue a little way? But how in heaven’s name have
you come to this pass, Herbert?”
“It’s a long story, Villiers, and a strange one too, but you can
hear it if you like.”
“Come on, then. Take my arm, you don’t seem very strong.”
The ill-assorted pair
moved slowly up Rupert Street; the one in dirty, evil-looking rags,
and the other attired in the regulation uniform of a man about town,
trim, glossy, and eminently well-to-do. Villiers had emerged from
his restaurant after an excellent dinner of many courses, assisted
by an ingratiating little flask of Chianti, and, in that frame of
mind which was with him almost chronic, had delayed a moment by the
door, peering round in the dimly-lighted street in search of those
mysterious incidents and persons with which the streets of London
teem in every quarter and every hour.
Villiers prided himself
as a practised explorer of such obscure mazes and byways of London
life, and in this unprofitable pursuit he displayed an assiduity
which was worthy of more serious employment. Thus he stood by the
lamp-post surveying the passers-by with undisguised curiosity, and
with that gravity known only to the systematic diner, had just
enunciated in his mind the formula:
“London has been
called the city of encounters; it is more than that, it is the
city of Resurrections,” when these reflections were suddenly
interrupted by a piteous whine at his elbow, and a deplorable
appeal for alms.
He looked around in some
irritation, and with a sudden shock found himself confronted with
the embodied proof of his somewhat stilted fancies. There, close
beside him, his face altered and disfigured by poverty and disgrace,
his body barely covered by greasy ill-fitting rags, stood his old
friend Charles Herbert, who had matriculated on the same day as
himself, with whom he had been merry and wise for twelve revolving
terms.
Different occupations
and varying interests had interrupted the friendship, and it was six
years since Villiers had seen Herbert; and now he looked upon this
wreck of a man with grief and dismay, mingled with a certain
inquisitiveness as to what dreary chain of circumstances had dragged
him down to such a doleful pass. Villiers felt together with
compassion all the relish of the amateur in mysteries, and
congratulated himself on his leisurely speculations outside the
restaurant.
They walked on in silence for some time, and more than one passer-by
stared in astonishment at the unaccustomed spectacle of a
well-dressed man with an unmistakable beggar hanging on to his arm,
and, observing this, Villiers led the way to an obscure street in
Soho. Here he repeated his question.
“How on earth has it
happened, Herbert? I always understood you would succeed to an
excellent position in Dorsetshire. Did your father disinherit
you? Surely not?”
“No, Villiers; I came into all the property at my poor father’s
death; he died a year after I left Oxford. He was a very good
father to me, and I mourned his death sincerely enough. But you
know what young men are; a few months later I came up to town
and went a good deal into society. Of course I had excellent
introductions, and I managed to enjoy myself very much in a
harmless sort of way. I played a little, certainly, but never
for heavy stakes, and the few bets I made on races brought me in
money—only a few pounds, you know, but enough to pay for cigars
and such petty pleasures. It was in my second season that the
tide turned. Of course you have heard of my marriage?”
“No, I never heard anything about it.”
“Yes, I married, Villiers. I met a girl, a girl of the most
wonderful and most strange beauty, at the house of some people
whom I knew. I cannot tell you her age; I never knew it, but, so
far as I can guess, I should think she must have been about
nineteen when I made her acquaintance. My friends had come to
know her at Florence; she told them she was an orphan, the child
of an English father and an Italian mother, and she charmed them
as she charmed me.
The first time I saw
her was at an evening party. I was standing by the door talking
to a friend, when suddenly above the hum and babble of
conversation I heard a voice which seemed to thrill to my heart.
She was singing an Italian song. I was introduced to her that
evening, and in three months I married Helen. Villiers, that
woman, if I can call her woman, corrupted my soul. The night of
the wedding I found myself sitting in her bedroom in the hotel,
listening to her talk. She was sitting up in bed, and I listened
to her as she spoke in her beautiful voice, spoke of things
which even now I would not dare whisper in the blackest night,
though I stood in the midst of a wilderness.
You, Villiers, you
may think you know life, and London, and what goes on day and
night in this dreadful city; for all I can say you may have
heard the talk of the vilest, but I tell you you can have no
conception of what I know, not in your most fantastic, hideous
dreams can you have imaged forth the faintest shadow of what I
have heard—and seen. Yes, seen. I have seen the incredible, such
horrors that even I myself sometimes stop in the middle of the
street and ask whether it is possible for a man to behold such
things and live. In a year, Villiers, I was a ruined man, in
body and soul—in body and soul.”
“But your property, Herbert? You had land in Dorset.”
“I sold it all; the fields and woods, the dear old
house—everything.”
“And the money?”
“She took it all from me.”
“And then left you?”
“Yes; she disappeared one night. I don’t know where she went,
but I am sure if I saw her again it would kill me. The rest of
my story is of no interest; sordid misery, that is all. You may
think, Villiers, that I have exaggerated and talked for effect;
but I have not told you half. I could tell you certain things
which would convince you, but you would never know a happy day
again. You would pass the rest of your life, as I pass mine, a
haunted man, a man who has seen hell.”
Villiers took the
unfortunate man to his rooms, and gave him a meal. Herbert could eat
little, and scarcely touched the glass of wine set before him. He
sat moody and silent by the fire, and seemed relieved when Villiers
sent him away with a small present of money.
“By the way,
Herbert,” said Villiers, as they parted at the door, “what was
your wife’s name? You said Helen, I think? Helen what?”
“The name she passed under when I met her was Helen Vaughan, but
what her real name was I can’t say. I don’t think she had a
name. No, no, not in that sense. Only human beings have names,
Villiers; I can’t say anymore. Good-bye; yes, I will not fail to
call if I see any way in which you can help me. Good-night.”
The man went out into
the bitter night, and Villiers returned to his fireside. There was
something about Herbert which shocked him inexpressibly; not his
poor rags nor the marks which poverty had set upon his face, but
rather an indefinite terror which hung about him like a mist. He had
acknowledged that he himself was not devoid of blame; the woman, he
had avowed, had corrupted him body and soul, and Villiers felt that
this man, once his friend, had been an actor in scenes evil beyond
the power of words. His story needed no confirmation: he himself was
the embodied proof of it. Villiers mused curiously over the story he
had heard, and wondered whether he had heard both the first and the
last of it.
“No,” he thought,
“certainly not the last, probably only the beginning. A case
like this is like a nest of Chinese boxes; you open one after
the other and find a quainter workmanship in every box. Most
likely poor Herbert is merely one of the outside boxes; there
are stranger ones to follow.”
Villiers could not take
his mind away from Herbert and his story, which seemed to grow
wilder as the night wore on. The fire seemed to burn low, and the
chilly air of the morning crept into the room; Villiers got up with
a glance over his shoulder, and, shivering slightly, went to bed.
A few days later he saw at his club a gentleman of his acquaintance,
named Austin, who was famous for his intimate knowledge of London
life, both in its tenebrous and luminous phases. Villiers, still
full of his encounter in Soho and its consequences, thought Austin
might possibly be able to shed some light on Herbert’s history, and
so after some casual talk he suddenly put the question:
“Do you happen to
know anything of a man named Herbert Charles Herbert?”
Austin turned round
sharply and stared at Villiers with some astonishment.
“Charles Herbert?
Weren’t you in town three years ago? No; then you have not heard
of the Paul Street case? It caused a good deal of sensation at
the time.”
“What was the case?”
“Well, a gentleman, a man of very good position, was found dead,
stark dead, in the area of a certain house in Paul Street, off
Tottenham Court Road. Of course the police did not make the
discovery; if you happen to be sitting up all night and have a
light in your window, the constable will ring the bell, but if
you happen to be lying dead in somebody’s area, you will be left
alone. In this instance, as in many others, the alarm was raised
by some kind of vagabond; I don’t mean a common tramp, or a
public-house loafer, but a gentleman, whose business or
pleasure, or both, made him a spectator of the London streets at
five o’clock in the morning.
This individual was,
as he said, ‘going home,’ it did not appear whence or whither,
and had occasion to pass through Paul Street between four and
five a.m. Something or other caught his eye at Number 20; he
said, absurdly enough, that the house had the most unpleasant
physiognomy he had ever observed, but, at any rate, he glanced
down the area and was a good deal astonished to see a man lying
on the stones, his limbs all huddled together, and his face
turned up. Our gentleman thought his face looked peculiarly
ghastly, and so set off at a run in search of the nearest
policeman.
The constable was at
first inclined to treat the matter lightly, suspecting common
drunkenness; however, he came, and after looking at the man’s
face, changed his tone, quickly enough. The early bird, who had
picked up this fine worm, was sent off for a doctor, and the
policeman rang and knocked at the door till a slatternly servant
girl came down looking more than half asleep. The constable
pointed out the contents of the area to the maid, who screamed
loudly enough to wake up the street, but she knew nothing of the
man; had never seen him at the house, and so forth. Meanwhile,
the original discoverer had come back with a medical man, and
the next thing was to get into the area.
The gate was open,
so the whole quartet stumped down the steps. The doctor hardly
needed a moment’s examination; he said the poor fellow had been
dead for several hours, and it was then the case began to get
interesting. The dead man had not been robbed, and in one of his
pockets were papers identifying him as—well, as a man of good
family and means, a favourite in society, and nobody’s enemy, as
far as could be known. I don’t give his name, Villiers, because
it has nothing to do with the story, and because it’s no good
raking up these affairs about the dead when there are no
relations living. The next curious point was that the medical
men couldn’t agree as to how he met his death.
There were some
slight bruises on his shoulders, but they were so slight that it
looked as if he had been pushed roughly out of the kitchen door,
and not thrown over the railings from the street or even dragged
down the steps. But there were positively no other marks of
violence about him, certainly none that would account for his
death; and when they came to the autopsy there wasn’t a trace of
poison of any kind. Of course the police wanted to know all
about the people at Number 20, and here again, so I have heard
from private sources, one or two other very curious points came
out. It appears that the occupants of the house were a Mr. and
Mrs. Charles Herbert; he was said to be a landed proprietor,
though it struck most people that Paul Street was not exactly
the place to look for country gentry.
As for Mrs. Herbert,
nobody seemed to know who or what she was, and, between
ourselves, I fancy the divers after her history found themselves
in rather strange waters. Of course they both denied knowing
anything about the deceased, and in default of any evidence
against them they were discharged. But some very odd things came
out about them. Though it was between five and six in the
morning when the dead man was removed, a large crowd had
collected, and several of the neighbours ran to see what was
going on. They were pretty free with their comments, by all
accounts, and from these it appeared that Number 20 was in very
bad odour in Paul Street.
The detectives tried
to trace down these rumours to some solid foundation of fact,
but could not get hold of anything. People shook their heads and
raised their eyebrows and thought the Herberts rather ‘queer,’
‘would rather not be seen going into their house,’ and so on,
but there was nothing tangible. The authorities were morally
certain the man met his death in some way or another in the
house and was thrown out by the kitchen door, but they couldn’t
prove it, and the absence of any indications of violence or
poisoning left them helpless. An odd case, wasn’t it?
But curiously
enough, there’s something more that I haven’t told you. I
happened to know one of the doctors who was consulted as to the
cause of death, and some time after the inquest I met him, and
asked him about it. ‘Do you really mean to tell me,’ I said,
‘that you were baffled by the case, that you actually don’t know
what the man died of?’ ‘Pardon me,’ he replied, ‘I know
perfectly well what caused death. Blank died of fright, of
sheer, awful terror; I never saw features so hideously contorted
in the entire course of my practice, and I have seen the faces
of a whole host of dead.’
The doctor was
usually a cool customer enough, and a certain vehemence in his
manner struck me, but I couldn’t get anything more out of him. I
suppose the Treasury didn’t see their way to prosecuting the
Herberts for frightening a man to death; at any rate, nothing
was done, and the case dropped out of men’s minds. Do you happen
to know anything of Herbert?”
“Well,” replied Villiers, “he was an old college friend of
mine.”
“You don’t say so? Have you ever seen his wife?”
“No, I haven’t. I have lost sight of Herbert for many years.”
“It’s queer, isn’t it, parting with a man at the college gate or
at Paddington, seeing nothing of him for years, and then finding
him pop up his head in such an odd place. But I should like to
have seen Mrs. Herbert; people said extraordinary things about
her.”
“What sort of things?”
“Well, I hardly know how to tell you. Everyone who saw her at
the police court said she was at once the most beautiful woman
and the most repulsive they had ever set eyes on. I have spoken
to a man who saw her, and I assure you he positively shuddered
as he tried to describe the woman, but he couldn’t tell why. She
seems to have been a sort of enigma; and I expect if that one
dead man could have told tales, he would have told some
uncommonly queer ones. And there you are again in another
puzzle; what could a respectable country gentleman like Mr.
Blank (we’ll call him that if you don’t mind) want in such a
very queer house as Number 20? It’s altogether a very odd case,
isn’t it?”
“It is indeed, Austin; an extraordinary case. I didn’t think,
when I asked you about my old friend, I should strike on such
strange metal. Well, I must be off; good-day.”
Villiers went away,
thinking of his own conceit of the Chinese boxes; here was quaint
workmanship indeed.
IV
THE DISCOVERY IN
PAUL STREET
A few months after Villiers’ meeting with Herbert, Mr. Clarke was
sitting, as usual, by his after-dinner hearth, resolutely guarding
his fancies from wandering in the direction of the bureau. For more
than a week he had succeeded in keeping away from the “Memoirs,” and
he cherished hopes of a complete self-reformation; but, in spite of
his endeavours, he could not hush the wonder and the strange
curiosity that the last case he had written down had excited within
him.
He had put the case, or
rather the outline of it, conjecturally to a scientific friend, who
shook his head, and thought Clarke getting queer, and on this
particular evening Clarke was making an effort to rationalize the
story, when a sudden knock at the door roused him from his
meditations.
“Mr. Villiers to see
you sir.”
“Dear me, Villiers, it is very kind of you to look me up; I have
not seen you for many months; I should think nearly a year. Come
in, come in. And how are you, Villiers? Want any advice about
investments?”
“No, thanks, I fancy everything I have in that way is pretty
safe. No, Clarke, I have really come to consult you about a
rather curious matter that has been brought under my notice of
late. I am afraid you will think it all rather absurd when I
tell my tale. I sometimes think so myself, and that’s just what
I made up my mind to come to you, as I know you’re a practical
man.”
Mr. Villiers was ignorant of the “Memoirs to prove the Existence
of the Devil.”
“Well, Villiers, I shall be happy to give you my advice, to the
best of my ability. What is the nature of the case?”
“It’s an extraordinary thing altogether. You know my ways; I
always keep my eyes open in the streets, and in my time I have
chanced upon some queer customers, and queer cases too, but
this, I think, beats all. I was coming out of a restaurant one
nasty winter night about three months ago; I had had a capital
dinner and a good bottle of Chianti, and I stood for a moment on
the pavement, thinking what a mystery there is about London
streets and the companies that pass along them. A bottle of red
wine encourages these fancies, Clarke, and I dare say I should
have thought a page of small type, but I was cut short by a
beggar who had come behind me, and was making the usual appeals.
Of course I looked round, and this beggar turned out to be what
was left of an old friend of mine, a man named Herbert. I asked
him how he had come to such a wretched pass, and he told me. We
walked up and down one of those long and dark Soho streets, and
there I listened to his story. He said he had married a
beautiful girl, some years younger than himself, and, as he put
it, she had corrupted him body and soul. He wouldn’t go into
details; he said he dare not, that what he had seen and heard
haunted him by night and day, and when I looked in his face I
knew he was speaking the truth. There was something about the
man that made me shiver. I don’t know why, but it was there. I
gave him a little money and sent him away, and I assure you that
when he was gone I gasped for breath. His presence seemed to
chill one’s blood.”
“Isn’t this all just a little fanciful, Villiers? I suppose the
poor fellow had made an imprudent marriage, and, in plain
English, gone to the bad.”
“Well, listen to this.” Villiers told Clarke the story he had
heard from Austin.
“You see,” he concluded, “there can be but little doubt that
this Mr. Blank, whoever he was, died of sheer terror; he saw
something so awful, so terrible, that it cut short his life. And
what he saw, he most certainly saw in that house, which, somehow
or other, had got a bad name in the neighbourhood. I had the
curiosity to go and look at the place for myself. It’s a
saddening kind of street; the houses are old enough to be mean
and dreary, but not old enough to be quaint. As far as I could
see most of them are let in lodgings, furnished and unfurnished,
and almost every door has three bells to it. Here and there the
ground floors have been made into shops of the commonest kind;
it’s a dismal street in every way. I found Number 20 was to let,
and I went to the agent’s and got the key. Of course I should
have heard nothing of the Herberts in that quarter, but I asked
the man, fair and square, how long they had left the house and
whether there had been other tenants in the meanwhile. He looked
at me queerly for a minute, and told me the Herberts had left
immediately after the unpleasantness, as he called it, and since
then the house had been empty.”
Mr. Villiers paused for
a moment.
“I have always been
rather fond of going over empty houses; there’s a sort of
fascination about the desolate empty rooms, with the nails
sticking in the walls, and the dust thick upon the window-sills.
But I didn’t enjoy going over Number 20, Paul Street. I had
hardly put my foot inside the passage when I noticed a queer,
heavy feeling about the air of the house.
Of course all empty
houses are stuffy, and so forth, but this was something quite
different; I can’t describe it to you, but it seemed to stop the
breath. I went into the front room and the back room, and the
kitchens downstairs; they were all dirty and dusty enough, as
you would expect, but there was something strange about them
all. I couldn’t define it to you, I only know I felt queer. It
was one of the rooms on the first floor, though, that was the
worst. It was a largish room, and once on a time the paper must
have been cheerful enough, but when I saw it, paint, paper, and
everything were most doleful.
But the room was
full of horror; I felt my teeth grinding as I put my hand on the
door, and when I went in, I thought I should have fallen
fainting to the floor. However, I pulled myself together, and
stood against the end wall, wondering what on earth there could
be about the room to make my limbs tremble, and my heart beat as
if I were at the hour of death. In one corner there was a pile
of newspapers littered on the floor, and I began looking at
them; they were papers of three or four years ago, some of them
half torn, and some crumpled as if they had been used for
packing. I turned the whole pile over, and amongst them I found
a curious drawing; I will show it to you presently.
But I couldn’t stay
in the room; I felt it was overpowering me. I was thankful to
come out, safe and sound, into the open air. People stared at me
as I walked along the street, and one man said I was drunk. I
was staggering about from one side of the pavement to the other,
and it was as much as I could do to take the key back to the
agent and get home. I was in bed for a week, suffering from what
my doctor called nervous shock and exhaustion. One of those days
I was reading the evening paper, and happened to notice a
paragraph headed:
‘Starved to Death.’
It was the usual
style of thing; a model lodging-house in Marylebone, a door
locked for several days, and a dead man in his chair when they
broke in. ‘The deceased,’ said the paragraph, ‘was known as
Charles Herbert, and is believed to have been once a prosperous
country gentleman. His name was familiar to the public three
years ago in connection with the mysterious death in Paul
Street, Tottenham Court Road, the deceased being the tenant of
the house Number 20, in the area of which a gentleman of good
position was found dead under circumstances not devoid of
suspicion.’ A tragic ending, wasn’t it? But after all, if what
he told me were true, which I am sure it was, the man’s life was
all a tragedy, and a tragedy of a stranger sort than they put on
the boards.”
“And that is the story, is it?” said Clarke musingly.
“Yes, that is the story.”
“Well, really, Villiers, I scarcely know what to say about it.
There are, no doubt, circumstances in the case which seem
peculiar, the finding of the dead man in the area of Herbert’s
house, for instance, and the extraordinary opinion of the
physician as to the cause of death; but, after all, it is
conceivable that the facts may be explained in a straightforward
manner. As to your own sensations, when you went to see the
house, I would suggest that they were due to a vivid
imagination; you must have been brooding, in a semi-conscious
way, over what you had heard. I don’t exactly see what more can
be said or done in the matter; you evidently think there is a
mystery of some kind, but Herbert is dead; where then do you
propose to look?”
“I propose to look for the woman; the woman whom he married. She
is the mystery.”
The two men sat silent
by the fireside; Clarke secretly congratulating himself on having
successfully kept up the character of advocate of the commonplace,
and Villiers wrapped in his gloomy fancies.
“I think I will have
a cigarette,” he said at last, and put his hand in his pocket to
feel for the cigarette-case.
“Ah!” he said, starting slightly, “I forgot I had something to
show you. You remember my saying that I had found a rather
curious sketch amongst the pile of old newspapers at the house
in Paul Street? Here it is.”
Villiers drew out a
small thin parcel from his pocket. It was covered with brown paper,
and secured with string, and the knots were troublesome. In spite of
himself Clarke felt inquisitive; he bent forward on his chair as
Villiers painfully undid the string, and unfolded the outer
covering. Inside was a second wrapping of tissue, and Villiers took
it off and handed the small piece of paper to Clarke without a word.
There was dead silence in the room for five minutes or more; the two
man sat so still that they could hear the ticking of the tall
old-fashioned clock that stood outside in the hall, and in the mind
of one of them the slow monotony of sound woke up a far, far memory.
He was looking intently at the small pen-and-ink sketch of the
woman’s head; it had evidently been drawn with great care, and by a
true artist, for the woman’s soul looked out of the eyes, and the
lips were parted with a strange smile.
Clarke gazed still at
the face; it brought to his memory one summer evening, long ago; he
saw again the long lovely valley, the river winding between the
hills, the meadows and the cornfields, the dull red sun, and the
cold white mist rising from the water. He heard a voice speaking to
him across the waves of many years, and saying “Clarke, Mary will
see the god Pan!” and then he was standing in the grim room beside
the doctor, listening to the heavy ticking of the clock, waiting and
watching, watching the figure lying on the green char beneath the
lamplight. Mary rose up, and he looked into her eyes, and his heart
grew cold within him.
“Who is this woman?”
he said at last. His voice was dry and hoarse.
“That is the woman who Herbert married.”
Clarke looked again at
the sketch; it was not Mary after all. There certainly was Mary’s
face, but there was something else, something he had not seen on
Mary’s features when the white-clad girl entered the laboratory with
the doctor, nor at her terrible awakening, nor when she lay grinning
on the bed. Whatever it was, the glance that came from those eyes,
the smile on the full lips, or the expression of the whole face,
Clarke shuddered before it at his inmost soul, and thought,
unconsciously, of Dr. Phillip’s words, “the most vivid presentment
of evil I have ever seen.” He turned the paper over mechanically in
his hand and glanced at the back.
“Good God! Clarke,
what is the matter? You are as white as death.”
Villiers had started
wildly from his chair, as Clarke fell back with a groan, and let the
paper drop from his hands.
“I don’t feel very
well, Villiers, I am subject to these attacks. Pour me out a
little wine; thanks, that will do. I shall feel better in a few
minutes.”
Villiers picked up the
fallen sketch and turned it over as Clarke had done.
“You saw that?” he
said. “That’s how I identified it as being a portrait of
Herbert’s wife, or I should say his widow. How do you feel now?”
“Better, thanks, it was only a passing faintness. I don’t think
I quite catch your meaning. What did you say enabled you to
identify the picture?”
“This word—‘Helen’—was written on the back. Didn’t I tell you
her name was Helen? Yes; Helen Vaughan.”
Clarke groaned; there
could be no shadow of doubt.
n’t you agree with
me,” said Villiers, “that in the story I have told you to-night,
and in the part this woman plays in it, there are some very
strange points?”
“Yes, Villiers,” Clarke muttered, “it is a strange story indeed;
a strange story indeed. You must give me time to think it over;
I may be able to help you or I may not. Must you be going now?
Well, good-night, Villiers, good-night. Come and see me in the
course of a week.”
V
THE LETTER OF
ADVICE
“Do you know,
Austin,” said Villiers, as the two friends were pacing sedately
along Piccadilly one pleasant morning in May, “do you know I am
convinced that what you told me about Paul Street and the
Herberts is a mere episode in an extraordinary history? I may as
well confess to you that when I asked you about Herbert a few
months ago I had just seen him.”
“You had seen him? Where?”
“He begged of me in the street one night. He was in the most
pitiable plight, but I recognized the man, and I got him to tell
me his history, or at least the outline of it. In brief, it
amounted to this—he had been ruined by his wife.”
“In what manner?”
“He would not tell me; he would only say that she had destroyed
him, body and soul. The man is dead now.”
“And what has become of his wife?”
“Ah, that’s what I should like to know, and I mean to find her
sooner or later. I know a man named Clarke, a dry fellow, in
fact a man of business, but shrewd enough. You understand my
meaning; not shrewd in the mere business sense of the word, but
a man who really knows something about men and life. Well, I
laid the case before him, and he was evidently impressed. He
said it needed consideration, and asked me to come again in the
course of a week. A few days later I received this extraordinary
letter.”
Austin took the
envelope, drew out the letter, and read it curiously. It ran as
follows:
“MY DEAR VILLIERS,--I
have thought over the matter on which you consulted me the other
night, and my advice to you is this. Throw the portrait into the
fire, blot out the story from your mind. Never give it another
thought, Villiers, or you will be sorry. You will think, no
doubt, that I am in possession of some secret information, and
to a certain extent that is the case. But I only know a little;
I am like a traveller who has peered over an abyss, and has
drawn back in terror. What I know is strange enough and horrible
enough, but beyond my knowledge there are depths and horrors
more frightful still, more incredible than any tale told of
winter nights about the fire. I have resolved, and nothing shall
shake that resolve, to explore no whit farther, and if you value
your happiness you will make the same determination.
“Come and see me by all means; but we will talk on more cheerful
topics than this.”
Austin folded the letter
methodically, and returned it to Villiers.
“It is certainly an
extraordinary letter,” he said, “what does he mean by the
portrait?”
“Ah! I forgot to tell you I have been to Paul Street and have
made a discovery.”
Villiers told his story
as he had told it to Clarke, and Austin listened in silence. He
seemed puzzled.
“How very curious
that you should experience such an unpleasant sensation in that
room!” he said at length. “I hardly gather that it was a mere
matter of the imagination; a feeling of repulsion, in short.”
“No, it was more physical than mental. It was as if I were
inhaling at every breath some deadly fume, which seemed to
penetrate to every nerve and bone and sinew of my body. I felt
racked from head to foot, my eyes began to grow dim; it was like
the entrance of death.”
“Yes, yes, very strange certainly. You see, your friend
confesses that there is some very black story connected with
this woman. Did you notice any particular emotion in him when
you were telling your tale?”
“Yes, I did. He became very faint, but he assured me that it was
a mere passing attack to which he was subject.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I did at the time, but I don’t now. He heard what I had to say
with a good deal of indifference, till I showed him the
portrait. It was then that he was seized with the attack of
which I spoke. He looked ghastly, I assure you.”
“Then he must have seen the woman before. But there might be
another explanation; it might have been the name, and not the
face, which was familiar to him. What do you think?”
“I couldn’t say. To the best of my belief it was after turning
the portrait in his hands that he nearly dropped from the chair.
The name, you know, was written on the back.”
“Quite so. After all, it is impossible to come to any resolution
in a case like this. I hate melodrama, and nothing strikes me as
more commonplace and tedious than the ordinary ghost story of
commerce; but really, Villiers, it looks as if there were
something very queer at the bottom of all this.”
The two men had, without
noticing it, turned up Ashley Street, leading northward from
Piccadilly. It was a long street, and rather a gloomy one, but here
and there a brighter taste had illuminated the dark houses with
flowers, and gay curtains, and a cheerful paint on the doors.
Villiers glanced up as Austin stopped speaking, and looked at one of
these houses; geraniums, red and white, drooped from every sill, and
daffodil-coloured curtains were draped back from each window.
“It looks cheerful,
doesn’t it?” he said.
“Yes, and the inside is still more cheery. One of the
pleasantest houses of the season, so I have heard. I haven’t
been there myself, but I’ve met several men who have, and they
tell me it’s uncommonly jovial.”
“Whose house is it?”
“A Mrs. Beaumont’s.”
“And who is she?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I have heard she comes from South America,
but after all, who she is is of little consequence. She is a
very wealthy woman, there’s no doubt of that, and some of the
best people have taken her up. I hear she has some wonderful
claret, really marvellous wine, which must have cost a fabulous
sum. Lord Argentine was telling me about it; he was there last
Sunday evening. He assures me he has never tasted such a wine,
and Argentine, as you know, is an expert. By the way, that
reminds me, she must be an oddish sort of woman, this Mrs.
Beaumont. Argentine asked her how old the wine was, and what do
you think she said? ‘About a thousand years, I believe.’ Lord
Argentine thought she was chaffing him, you know, but when he
laughed she said she was speaking quite seriously and offered to
show him the jar. Of course, he couldn’t say anything more after
that; but it seems rather antiquated for a beverage, doesn’t it?
Why, here we are at my rooms. Come in, won’t you?”
“Thanks, I think I will. I haven’t seen the curiosity-shop for a
while.”
It was a room furnished
richly, yet oddly, where every jar and bookcase and table, and every
rug and jar and ornament seemed to be a thing apart, preserving each
its own individuality.
“Anything fresh
lately?” said Villiers after a while.
“No; I think not; you saw those queer jugs, didn’t you? I
thought so. I don’t think I have come across anything for the
last few weeks.”
Austin glanced around
the room from cupboard to cupboard, from shelf to shelf, in search
of some new oddity. His eyes fell at last on an odd chest,
pleasantly and quaintly carved, which stood in a dark corner of the
room.
“Ah,” he said, “I
was forgetting, I have got something to show you.”
Austin unlocked the
chest, drew out a thick quarto volume, laid it on the table, and
resumed the cigar he had put down.
“Did you know Arthur
Meyrick the painter, Villiers?”
“A little; I met him two or three times at the house of a friend
of mine. What has become of him? I haven’t heard his name
mentioned for some time.”
“He’s dead.”
“You don’t say so! Quite young, wasn’t he?”
“Yes; only thirty when he died.”
“What did he die of?”
“I don’t know. He was an intimate friend of mine, and a
thoroughly good fellow. He used to come here and talk to me for
hours, and he was one of the best talkers I have met. He could
even talk about painting, and that’s more than can be said of
most painters. About eighteen months ago he was feeling rather
overworked, and partly at my suggestion he went off on a sort of
roving expedition, with no very definite end or aim about it. I
believe New York was to be his first port, but I never heard
from him. Three months ago I got this book, with a very civil
letter from an English doctor practising at Buenos Ayres,
stating that he had attended the late Mr. Meyrick during his
illness, and that the deceased had expressed an earnest wish
that the enclosed packet should be sent to me after his death.
That was all.”
“And haven’t you written for further particulars?”
“I have been thinking of doing so. You would advise me to write
to the doctor?”
“Certainly. And what about the book?”
“It was sealed up when I got it. I don’t think the doctor had
seen it.”
“It is something very rare? Meyrick was a collector, perhaps?”
“No, I think not, hardly a collector. Now, what do you think of
these Ainu jugs?”
“They are peculiar, but I like them. But aren’t you going to
show me poor Meyrick’s legacy?”
“Yes, yes, to be sure. The fact is, it’s rather a peculiar sort
of thing, and I haven’t shown it to any one. I wouldn’t say
anything about it if I were you. There it is.”
Villiers took the book,
and opened it at haphazard.
“It isn’t a printed
volume, then?” he said.
“No. It is a collection of drawings in black and white by my
poor friend Meyrick.”
Villiers turned to the
first page, it was blank; the second bore a brief inscription, which
he read:
Silet per diem
universus, nec sine horrore secretus est; lucet nocturnis
ignibus, chorus Aegipanum undique personatur: audiuntur et
cantus tibiarum, et tinnitus cymbalorum per oram maritimam.
On the third page was a
design which made Villiers start and look up at Austin; he was
gazing abstractedly out of the window. Villiers turned page after
page, absorbed, in spite of himself, in the frightful Walpurgis
Night of evil, strange monstrous evil, that the dead artist had set
forth in hard black and white. The figures of Fauns and Satyrs and
Aegipans danced before his eyes, the darkness of the thicket, the
dance on the mountain-top, the scenes by lonely shores, in green
vineyards, by rocks and desert places, passed before him: a world
before which the human soul seemed to shrink back and shudder.
Villiers whirled over the remaining pages; he had seen enough, but
the picture on the last leaf caught his eye, as he almost closed the
book.
“Austin!”
“Well, what is it?”
“Do you know who that is?”
It was a woman’s face,
alone on the white page.
“Know who it is? No,
of course not.”
“I do.”
“Who is it?”
“It is Mrs. Herbert.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am perfectly sure of it. Poor Meyrick! He is one more chapter
in her history.”
“But what do you think of the designs?”
“They are frightful. Lock the book up again, Austin. If I were
you I would burn it; it must be a terrible companion even though
it be in a chest.”
“Yes, they are singular drawings. But I wonder what connection
there could be between Meyrick and Mrs. Herbert, or what link
between her and these designs?”
“Ah, who can say? It is possible that the matter may end here,
and we shall never know, but in my own opinion this Helen
Vaughan, or Mrs. Herbert, is only the beginning. She will come
back to London, Austin; depend on it, she will come back, and we
shall hear more about her then. I doubt it will be very pleasant
news.”
VI
THE SUICIDES
Lord Argentine was a great favourite in London Society. At twenty he
had been a poor man, decked with the surname of an illustrious
family, but forced to earn a livelihood as best he could, and the
most speculative of money-lenders would not have entrusted him with
fifty pounds on the chance of his ever changing his name for a
title, and his poverty for a great fortune.
His father had been near
enough to the fountain of good things to secure one of the family
livings, but the son, even if he had taken orders, would scarcely
have obtained so much as this, and moreover felt no vocation for the
ecclesiastical estate. Thus he fronted the world with no better
armour than the bachelor’s gown and the wits of a younger son’s
grandson, with which equipment he contrived in some way to make a
very tolerable fight of it.
At twenty-five Mr.
Charles Aubernon saw himself still a man of struggles and of warfare
with the world, but out of the seven who stood before him and the
high places of his family three only remained. These three, however,
were “good lives,” but yet not proof against the Zulu assegais and
typhoid fever, and so one morning Aubernon woke up and found himself
Lord Argentine, a man of thirty who had faced the difficulties of
existence, and had conquered. The situation amused him immensely,
and he resolved that riches should be as pleasant to him as poverty
had always been.
Argentine, after some
little consideration, came to the conclusion that dining, regarded
as a fine art, was perhaps the most amusing pursuit open to fallen
humanity, and thus his dinners became famous in London, and an
invitation to his table a thing covetously desired. After ten years
of lordship and dinners Argentine still declined to be jaded, still
persisted in enjoying life, and by a kind of infection had become
recognized as the cause of joy in others, in short, as the best of
company. His sudden and tragical death therefore caused a wide and
deep sensation.
People could scarcely
believe it, even though the newspaper was before their eyes, and the
cry of “Mysterious Death of a Nobleman” came ringing up from the
street. But there stood the brief paragraph:
“Lord Argentine was
found dead this morning by his valet under distressing
circumstances. It is stated that there can be no doubt that his
lordship committed suicide, though no motive can be assigned for
the act. The deceased nobleman was widely known in society, and
much liked for his genial manner and sumptuous hospitality. He
is succeeded by,” etc., etc.
By slow degrees the
details came to light, but the case still remained a mystery. The
chief witness at the inquest was the deceased’s valet, who said that
the night before his death Lord Argentine had dined with a lady of
good position, whose named was suppressed in the newspaper reports.
At about eleven o’clock Lord Argentine had returned, and informed
his man that he should not require his services till the next
morning.
A little later the valet
had occasion to cross the hall and was somewhat astonished to see
his master quietly letting himself out at the front door. He had
taken off his evening clothes, and was dressed in a Norfolk coat and
knickerbockers, and wore a low brown hat. The valet had no reason to
suppose that Lord Argentine had seen him, and though his master
rarely kept late hours, thought little of the occurrence till the
next morning, when he knocked at the bedroom door at a quarter to
nine as usual. He received no answer, and, after knocking two or
three times, entered the room, and saw Lord Argentine’s body leaning
forward at an angle from the bottom of the bed.
He found that his master
had tied a cord securely to one of the short bed-posts, and, after
making a running noose and slipping it round his neck, the
unfortunate man must have resolutely fallen forward, to die by slow
strangulation. He was dressed in the light suit in which the valet
had seen him go out, and the doctor who was summoned pronounced that
life had been extinct for more than four hours. All papers, letters,
and so forth seemed in perfect order, and nothing was discovered
which pointed in the most remote way to any scandal either great or
small.
Here the evidence ended;
nothing more could be discovered. Several persons had been present
at the dinner-party at which Lord Augustine had assisted, and to all
these he seemed in his usual genial spirits. The valet, indeed, said
he thought his master appeared a little excited when he came home,
but confessed that the alteration in his manner was very slight,
hardly noticeable, indeed. It seemed hopeless to seek for any clue,
and the suggestion that Lord Argentine had been suddenly attacked by
acute suicidal mania was generally accepted.
It was otherwise, however, when within three weeks, three more
gentlemen, one of them a nobleman, and the two others men of good
position and ample means, perished miserably in the almost precisely
the same manner. Lord Swanleigh was found one morning in his
dressing-room, hanging from a peg affixed to the wall, and Mr.
Collier-Stuart and Mr. Herries had chosen to die as Lord Argentine.
There was no explanation in either case; a few bald facts; a living
man in the evening, and a body with a black swollen face in the
morning.
The police had been
forced to confess themselves powerless to arrest or to explain the
sordid murders of Whitechapel; but before the horrible suicides of
Piccadilly and Mayfair they were dumbfoundered, for not even the
mere ferocity which did duty as an explanation of the crimes of the
East End, could be of service in the West. Each of these men who had
resolved to die a tortured shameful death was rich, prosperous, and
to all appearances in love with the world, and not the acutest
research should ferret out any shadow of a lurking motive in either
case. There was a horror in the air, and men looked at one another’s
faces when they met, each wondering whether the other was to be the
victim of the fifth nameless tragedy.
Journalists sought in
vain for their scrapbooks for materials whereof to concoct
reminiscent articles; and the morning paper was unfolded in many a
house with a feeling of awe; no man knew when or where the next blow
would light.
A short while after the last of these terrible events, Austin came
to see Mr. Villiers. He was curious to know whether Villiers had
succeeded in discovering any fresh traces of Mrs. Herbert, either
through Clarke or by other sources, and he asked the question soon
after he had sat down.
“No,” said Villiers,
“I wrote to Clarke, but he remains obdurate, and I have tried
other channels, but without any result. I can’t find out what
became of Helen Vaughan after she left Paul Street, but I think
she must have gone abroad. But to tell the truth, Austin, I
haven’t paid much attention to the matter for the last few
weeks; I knew poor Herries intimately, and his terrible death
has been a great shock to me, a great shock.”
“I can well believe it,” answered Austin gravely, “you know
Argentine was a friend of mine. If I remember rightly, we were
speaking of him that day you came to my rooms.”
“Yes; it was in connection with that house in Ashley Street,
Mrs. Beaumont’s house. You said something about Argentine’s
dining there.”
“Quite so. Of course you know it was there Argentine dined the
night before—before his death.”
“No, I had not heard that.”
“Oh, yes; the name was kept out of the papers to spare Mrs.
Beaumont. Argentine was a great favourite of hers, and it is
said she was in a terrible state for sometime after.”
A curious look came over
Villiers’ face; he seemed undecided whether to speak or not. Austin
began again.
“I never experienced
such a feeling of horror as when I read the account of
Argentine’s death. I didn’t understand it at the time, and I
don’t now. I knew him well, and it completely passes my
understanding for what possible cause he - or any of the others
for the matter of that - could have resolved in cold blood to
die in such an awful manner. You know how men babble away each
other’s characters in London, you may be sure any buried scandal
or hidden skeleton would have been brought to light in such a
case as this; but nothing of the sort has taken place. As for
the theory of mania, that is very well, of course, for the
coroner’s jury, but everybody knows that it’s all nonsense.
Suicidal mania is not small-pox.”
Austin relapsed into
gloomy silence. Villiers sat silent, also, watching his friend. The
expression of indecision still fleeted across his face; he seemed as
if weighing his thoughts in the balance, and the considerations he
was resolving left him still silent. Austin tried to shake off the
remembrance of tragedies as hopeless and perplexed as the labyrinth
of Daedalus, and began to talk in an indifferent voice of the more
pleasant incidents and adventures of the season.
“That Mrs.
Beaumont,” he said, “of whom we were speaking, is a great
success; she has taken London almost by storm. I met her the
other night at Fulham’s; she is really a remarkable woman.”
“You have met Mrs. Beaumont?”
“Yes; she had quite a court around her. She would be called very
handsome, I suppose, and yet there is something about her face
which I didn’t like. The features are exquisite, but the
expression is strange. And all the time I was looking at her,
and afterwards, when I was going home, I had a curious feeling
that very expression was in some way or another familiar to me.”
“You must have seen her in the Row.”
“No, I am sure I never set eyes on the woman before; it is that
which makes it puzzling. And to the best of my belief I have
never seen anyone like her; what I felt was a kind of dim
far-off memory, vague but persistent. The only sensation I can
compare it to, is that odd feeling one sometimes has in a dream,
when fantastic cities and wondrous lands and phantom personages
appear familiar and accustomed.”
Villiers nodded and
glanced aimlessly round the room, possibly in search of something on
which to turn the conversation. His eyes fell on an old chest
somewhat like that in which the artist’s strange legacy lay hid
beneath a Gothic scutcheon.
“Have you written to
the doctor about poor Meyrick?” he asked.
“Yes; I wrote asking for full particulars as to his illness and
death. I don’t expect to have an answer for another three weeks
or a month. I thought I might as well inquire whether Meyrick
knew an Englishwoman named Herbert, and if so, whether the
doctor could give me any information about her. But it’s very
possible that Meyrick fell in with her at New York, or Mexico,
or San Francisco; I have no idea as to the extent or direction
of his travels.”
“Yes, and it’s very possible that the woman may have more than
one name.”
“Exactly. I wish I had thought of asking you to lend me the
portrait of her which you possess. I might have enclosed it in
my letter to Dr. Matthews.”
“So you might; that never occurred to me. We might send it now.
Hark! what are those boys calling?”
While the two men had
been talking together a confused noise of shouting had been
gradually growing louder. The noise rose from the eastward and
swelled down Piccadilly, drawing nearer and nearer, a very torrent
of sound; surging up streets usually quiet, and making every window
a frame for a face, curious or excited. The cries and voices came
echoing up the silent street where Villiers lived, growing more
distinct as they advanced, and, as Villiers spoke, an answer rang up
from the pavement:
“The West End
Horrors; Another Awful Suicide; Full Details!”
Austin rushed down the
stairs and bought a paper and read out the paragraph to Villiers as
the uproar in the street rose and fell. The window was open and the
air seemed full of noise and terror.
“Another gentleman
has fallen a victim to the terrible epidemic of suicide which
for the last month has prevailed in the West End. Mr. Sidney
Crashaw, of Stoke House, Fulham, and King’s Pomeroy, Devon, was
found, after a prolonged search, hanging dead from the branch of
a tree in his garden at one o’clock today. The deceased
gentleman dined last night at the Carlton Club and seemed in his
usual health and spirits. He left the club at about ten o’clock,
and was seen walking leisurely up St. James’s Street a little
later. Subsequent to this his movements cannot be traced. On the
discovery of the body medical aid was at once summoned, but life
had evidently been long extinct. So far as is known, Mr. Crashaw
had no trouble or anxiety of any kind. This painful suicide, it
will be remembered, is the fifth of the kind in the last month.
The authorities at Scotland Yard are unable to suggest any
explanation of these terrible occurrences.”
Austin put down the
paper in mute horror.
“I shall leave
London to-morrow,” he said, “it is a city of nightmares. How
awful this is, Villiers!”
Mr. Villiers was sitting
by the window quietly looking out into the street. He had listened
to the newspaper report attentively, and the hint of indecision was
no longer on his face.
“Wait a moment,
Austin,” he replied, “I have made up my mind to mention a little
matter that occurred last night. It stated, I think, that
Crashaw was last seen alive in St. James’s Street shortly after
ten?”
“Yes, I think so. I will look again. Yes, you are quite right.”
“Quite so. Well, I am in a position to contradict that statement
at all events. Crashaw was seen after that; considerably later
indeed.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I happened to see Crashaw myself at about two o’clock
this morning.”
“You saw Crashaw? You, Villiers?”
“Yes, I saw him quite distinctly; indeed, there were but a few
feet between us.”
“Where, in Heaven’s name, did you see him?”
“Not far from here. I saw him in Ashley Street. He was just
leaving a house.”
“Did you notice what house it was?”
“Yes. It was Mrs. Beaumont’s.”
“Villiers! Think what you are saying; there must be some
mistake. How could Crashaw be in Mrs. Beaumont’s house at two
o’clock in the morning? Surely, surely, you must have been
dreaming, Villiers; you were always rather fanciful.”
“No; I was wide awake enough. Even if I had been dreaming as you
say, what I saw would have roused me effectually.”
“What you saw? What did you see? Was there anything strange
about Crashaw? But I can’t believe it; it is impossible.”
“Well, if you like I will tell you what I saw, or if you please,
what I think I saw, and you can judge for yourself.”
“Very good, Villiers.”
The noise and clamour of
the street had died away, though now and then the sound of shouting
still came from the distance, and the dull, leaden silence seemed
like the quiet after an earthquake or a storm. Villiers turned from
the window and began speaking.
“I was at a house
near Regent’s Park last night, and when I came away the fancy
took me to walk home instead of taking a hansom. It was a clear
pleasant night enough, and after a few minutes I had the streets
pretty much to myself. It’s a curious thing, Austin, to be alone
in London at night, the gas-lamps stretching away in
perspective, and the dead silence, and then perhaps the rush and
clatter of a hansom on the stones, and the fire starting up
under the horse’s hoofs. I walked along pretty briskly, for I
was feeling a little tired of being out in the night, and as the
clocks were striking two I turned down Ashley Street, which, you
know, is on my way. It was quieter than ever there, and the
lamps were fewer; altogether, it looked as dark and gloomy as a
forest in winter. I had done about half the length of the street
when I heard a door closed very softly, and naturally I looked
up to see who was abroad like myself at such an hour. As it
happens, there is a street lamp close to the house in question,
and I saw a man standing on the step. He had just shut the door
and his face was towards me, and I recognized Crashaw directly.
I never knew him to speak to, but I had often seen him, and I am
positive that I was not mistaken in my man. I looked into his
face for a moment, and then—I will confess the truth—I set off
at a good run, and kept it up till I was within my own door.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because it made my blood run cold to see that man’s face.
I could never have supposed that such an infernal medley of
passions could have glared out of any human eyes; I almost
fainted as I looked. I knew I had looked into the eyes of a lost
soul, Austin, the man’s outward form remained, but all hell was
within it. Furious lust, and hate that was like fire, and the
loss of all hope and horror that seemed to shriek aloud to the
night, though his teeth were shut; and the utter blackness of
despair. I am sure that he did not see me; he saw nothing that
you or I can see, but what he saw I hope we never shall. I do
not know when he died; I suppose in an hour, or perhaps two, but
when I passed down Ashley Street and heard the closing door,
that man no longer belonged to this world; it was a devil’s face
I looked upon.”
There was an interval of
silence in the room when Villiers ceased speaking. The light was
failing, and all the tumult of an hour ago was quite hushed. Austin
had bent his head at the close of the story, and his hand covered
his eyes.
“What can it mean?”
he said at length.
“Who knows, Austin, who knows? It’s a black business, but I
think we had better keep it to ourselves, for the present at any
rate. I will see if I cannot learn anything about that house
through private channels of information, and if I do light upon
anything I will let you know.”
VII
THE
ENCOUNTER IN SOHO
Three weeks later Austin received a note from Villiers, asking him
to call either that afternoon or the next. He chose the nearer date,
and found Villiers sitting as usual by the window, apparently lost
in meditation on the drowsy traffic of the street. There was a
bamboo table by his side, a fantastic thing, enriched with gilding
and queer painted scenes, and on it lay a little pile of papers
arranged and docketed as neatly as anything in Mr. Clarke’s office.
“Well, Villiers,
have you made any discoveries in the last three weeks?”
“I think so; I have here one or two memoranda which struck me as
singular, and there is a statement to which I shall call your
attention.”
“And these documents relate to Mrs. Beaumont? It was really
Crashaw whom you saw that night standing on the doorstep of the
house in Ashley Street?”
“As to that matter my belief remains unchanged, but neither my
inquiries nor their results have any special relation to Crashaw.
But my investigations have had a strange issue. I have found out
who Mrs. Beaumont is!”
“Who is she? In what way do you mean?”
“I mean that you and I know her better under another name.”
“What name is that?”
“Herbert.”
“Herbert!” Austin repeated the word, dazed with astonishment.
“Yes, Mrs. Herbert of Paul Street, Helen Vaughan of earlier
adventures unknown to me. You had reason to recognize the
expression of her face; when you go home look at the face in
Meyrick’s book of horrors, and you will know the sources of your
recollection.”
“And you have proof of this?”
“Yes, the best of proof; I have seen Mrs. Beaumont, or shall we
say Mrs. Herbert?”
“Where did you see her?”
“Hardly in a place where you would expect to see a lady who
lives in Ashley Street, Piccadilly. I saw her entering a house
in one of the meanest and most disreputable streets in Soho. In
fact, I had made an appointment, though not with her, and she
was precise to both time and place.”
“All this seems very wonderful, but I cannot call it incredible.
You must remember, Villiers, that I have seen this woman, in the
ordinary adventure of London society, talking and laughing, and
sipping her coffee in a commonplace drawing-room with
commonplace people. But you know what you are saying.”
“I do; I have not allowed myself to be led by surmises or
fancies. It was with no thought of finding Helen Vaughan that I
searched for Mrs. Beaumont in the dark waters of the life of
London, but such has been the issue.”
“You must have been in strange places, Villiers.”
“Yes, I have been in very strange places. It would have been
useless, you know, to go to Ashley Street, and ask Mrs. Beaumont
to give me a short sketch of her previous history. No; assuming,
as I had to assume, that her record was not of the cleanest, it
would be pretty certain that at some previous time she must have
moved in circles not quite so refined as her present ones. If
you see mud at the top of a stream, you may be sure that it was
once at the bottom. I went to the bottom. I have always been
fond of diving into Queer Street for my amusement, and I found
my knowledge of that locality and its inhabitants very useful.
It is, perhaps,
needless to say that my friends had never heard the name of
Beaumont, and as I had never seen the lady, and was quite unable
to describe her, I had to set to work in an indirect way. The
people there know me; I have been able to do some of them a
service now and again, so they made no difficulty about giving
their information; they were aware I had no communication direct
or indirect with Scotland Yard. I had to cast out a good many
lines, though, before I got what I wanted, and when I landed the
fish I did not for a moment suppose it was my fish. But I
listened to what I was told out of a constitutional liking for
useless information, and I found myself in possession of a very
curious story, though, as I imagined, not the story I was
looking for. It was to this effect. Some five or six years ago,
a woman named Raymond suddenly made her appearance in the
neighbourhood to which I am referring.
She was described to
me as being quite young, probably not more than seventeen or
eighteen, very handsome, and looking as if she came from the
country. I should be wrong in saying that she found her level in
going to this particular quarter, or associating with these
people, for from what I was told, I should think the worst den
in London far too good for her. The person from whom I got my
information, as you may suppose, no great Puritan, shuddered and
grew sick in telling me of the nameless infamies which were laid
to her charge. After living there for a year, or perhaps a
little more, she disappeared as suddenly as she came, and they
saw nothing of her till about the time of the Paul Street case.
At first she came to her old haunts only occasionally, then more
frequently, and finally took up her abode there as before, and
remained for six or eight months. It’s of no use my going into
details as to the life that woman led; if you want particulars
you can look at Meyrick’s legacy. Those designs were not drawn
from his imagination.
She again
disappeared, and the people of the place saw nothing of her till
a few months ago. My informant told me that she had taken some
rooms in a house which he pointed out, and these rooms she was
in the habit of visiting two or three times a week and always at
ten in the morning. I was led to expect that one of these visits
would be paid on a certain day about a week ago, and I
accordingly managed to be on the look-out in company with my
cicerone at a quarter to ten, and the hour and the lady came
with equal punctuality. My friend and I were standing under an
archway, a little way back from the street, but she saw us, and
gave me a glance that I shall be long in forgetting.
That look was quite
enough for me; I knew Miss Raymond to be Mrs. Herbert; as for
Mrs. Beaumont she had quite gone out of my head. She went into
the house, and I watched it till four o’clock, when she came
out, and then I followed her. It was a long chase, and I had to
be very careful to keep a long way in the background, and yet
not lose sight of the woman. She took me down to the Strand, and
then to Westminster, and then up St. James’s Street, and along
Piccadilly. I felt queerish when I saw her turn up Ashley
Street; the thought that Mrs. Herbert was Mrs. Beaumont came
into my mind, but it seemed too impossible to be true. I waited
at the corner, keeping my eye on her all the time, and I took
particular care to note the house at which she stopped. It was
the house with the gay curtains, the home of flowers, the house
out of which Crashaw came the night he hanged himself in his
garden. I was just going away with my discovery, when I saw an
empty carriage come round and draw up in front of the house, and
I came to the conclusion that Mrs. Herbert was going out for a
drive, and I was right.
There, as it
happened, I met a man I know, and we stood talking together a
little distance from the carriage-way, to which I had my back.
We had not been there for ten minutes when my friend took off
his hat, and I glanced round and saw the lady I had been
following all day. ‘Who is that?’ I said, and his answer was
‘Mrs. Beaumont; lives in Ashley Street.’ Of course there could
be no doubt after that. I don’t know whether she saw me, but I
don’t think she did. I went home at once, and, on consideration,
I thought that I had a sufficiently good case with which to go
to Clarke.”
“Why to Clarke?”
“Because I am sure that Clarke is in possession of facts about
this woman, facts of which I know nothing.”
“Well, what then?”
Mr. Villiers leaned back
in his chair and looked reflectively at Austin for a moment before
he answered:
“My idea was that
Clarke and I should call on Mrs. Beaumont.”
“You would never go into such a house as that? No, no, Villiers,
you cannot do it. Besides, consider; what result...”
“I will tell you soon. But I was going to say that my
information does not end here; it has been completed in an
extraordinary manner.
“Look at this neat little packet of manuscript; it is paginated,
you see, and I have indulged in the civil coquetry of a ribbon
of red tape. It has almost a legal air, hasn’t it? Run your eye
over it, Austin. It is an account of the entertainment Mrs.
Beaumont provided for her choicer guests. The man who wrote this
escaped with his life, but I do not think he will live many
years. The doctors tell him he must have sustained some severe
shock to the nerves.”
Austin took the
manuscript, but never read it. Opening the neat pages at haphazard
his eye was caught by a word and a phrase that followed it; and,
sick at heart, with white lips and a cold sweat pouring like water
from his temples, he flung the paper down.
“Take it away,
Villiers, never speak of this again. Are you made of stone, man?
Why, the dread and horror of death itself, the thoughts of the
man who stands in the keen morning air on the black platform,
bound, the bell tolling in his ears, and waits for the harsh
rattle of the bolt, are as nothing compared to this. I will not
read it; I should never sleep again.”
“Very good. I can fancy what you saw. Yes; it is horrible
enough; but after all, it is an old story, an old mystery played
in our day, and in dim London streets instead of amidst the
vineyards and the olive gardens. We know what happened to those
who chanced to meet the Great God Pan, and those who are wise
know that all symbols are symbols of something, not of nothing.
It was, indeed, an exquisite symbol beneath which men long ago
veiled their knowledge of the most awful, most secret forces
which lie at the heart of all things; forces before which the
souls of men must wither and die and blacken, as their bodies
blacken under the electric current. Such forces cannot be named,
cannot be spoken, cannot be imagined except under a veil and a
symbol, a symbol to the most of us appearing a quaint, poetic
fancy, to some a foolish tale. But you and I, at all events,
have known something of the terror that may dwell in the secret
place of life, manifested under human flesh; that which is
without form taking to itself a form. Oh, Austin, how can it be?
How is it that the very sunlight does not turn to blackness
before this thing, the hard earth melt and boil beneath such a
burden?”
Villiers was pacing up
and down the room, and the beads of sweat stood out on his forehead.
Austin sat silent for a while, but Villiers saw him make a sign upon
his breast.
“I say again,
Villiers, you will surely never enter such a house as that? You
would never pass out alive.”
“Yes, Austin, I shall go out alive—I, and Clarke with me.”
"What do you mean? You cannot, you would not dare...”
“Wait a moment. The
air was very pleasant and fresh this morning; there was a breeze
blowing, even through this dull street, and I thought I would
take a walk. Piccadilly stretched before me a clear, bright
vista, and the sun flashed on the carriages and on the quivering
leaves in the park. It was a joyous morning, and men and women
looked at the sky and smiled as they went about their work or
their pleasure, and the wind blew as blithely as upon the
meadows and the scented gorse.
But somehow or other
I got out of the bustle and the gaiety, and found myself walking
slowly along a quiet, dull street, where there seemed to be no
sunshine and no air, and where the few foot-passengers loitered
as they walked, and hung indecisively about corners and
archways. I walked along, hardly knowing where I was going or
what I did there, but feeling impelled, as one sometimes is, to
explore still further, with a vague idea of reaching some
unknown goal. Thus I forged up the street, noting the small
traffic of the milk-shop, and wondering at the incongruous
medley of penny pipes, black tobacco, sweets, newspapers, and
comic songs which here and there jostled one another in the
short compass of a single window. I think it was a cold shudder
that suddenly passed through me that first told me that I had
found what I wanted.
I looked up from the
pavement and stopped before a dusty shop, above which the
lettering had faded, where the red bricks of two hundred years
ago had grimed to black; where the windows had gathered to
themselves the dust of winters innumerable. I saw what I
required; but I think it was five minutes before I had steadied
myself and could walk in and ask for it in a cool voice and with
a calm face. I think there must even then have been a tremor in
my words, for the old man who came out of the back parlour, and
fumbled slowly amongst his goods, looked oddly at me as he tied
the parcel.
I paid what he
asked, and stood leaning by the counter, with a strange
reluctance to take up my goods and go. I asked about the
business, and learnt that trade was bad and the profits cut down
sadly; but then the street was not what it was before traffic
had been diverted, but that was done forty years ago, ‘just
before my father died,’ he said. I got away at last, and walked
along sharply; it was a dismal street indeed, and I was glad to
return to the bustle and the noise. Would you like to see my
purchase?”
Austin said nothing, but
nodded his head slightly; he still looked white and sick. Villiers
pulled out a drawer in the bamboo table, and showed Austin a long
coil of cord, hard and new; and at one end was a running noose.
“It is the best
hempen cord,” said Villiers, “just as it used to be made for the
old trade, the man told me. Not an inch of jute from end to
end.”
Austin set his teeth
hard, and stared at Villiers, growing whiter as he looked.
“You would not do
it,” he murmured at last. “You would not have blood on your
hands. My God!” he exclaimed, with sudden vehemence, “you cannot
mean this, Villiers, that you will make yourself a hangman?”
“No. I shall offer a choice, and leave Helen Vaughan alone with
this cord in a locked room for fifteen minutes. If when we go in
it is not done, I shall call the nearest policeman. That is
all.”
“I must go now. I cannot stay here any longer; I cannot bear
this. Good-night.”
“Good-night, Austin.”
The door shut, but in a
moment it was open again, and Austin stood, white and ghastly, in
the entrance.
“I was forgetting,”
he said, “that I too have something to tell. I have received a
letter from Dr. Harding of Buenos Ayres. He says that he
attended Meyrick for three weeks before his death.”
“And does he say what carried him off in the prime of life? It
was not fever?”
“No, it was not fever. According to the doctor, it was an utter
collapse of the whole system, probably caused by some severe
shock. But he states that the patient would tell him nothing,
and that he was consequently at some disadvantage in treating
the case.”
“Is there anything more?”
“Yes. Dr. Harding ends his letter by saying: ‘I think this is
all the information I can give you about your poor friend. He
had not been long in Buenos Ayres, and knew scarcely any one,
with the exception of a person who did not bear the best of
characters, and has since left—a Mrs. Vaughan.’”
VIII
THE FRAGMENTS
[Amongst the papers of the well-known physician, Dr. Robert
Matheson, of Ashley Street, Piccadilly, who died suddenly, of
apoplectic seizure, at the beginning of 1892, a leaf of manuscript
paper was found, covered with pencil jottings. These notes were in
Latin, much abbreviated, and had evidently been made in great haste.
The MS. was only deciphered with difficulty, and some words have up
to the present time evaded all the efforts of the expert employed.
The date, “XXV Jul. 1888,” is written on the right-hand corner of
the MS. The following is a translation of Dr. Matheson’s
manuscript.]
“Whether science
would benefit by these brief notes if they could be published, I
do not know, but rather doubt. But certainly I shall never take
the responsibility of publishing or divulging one word of what
is here written, not only on account of my oath given freely to
those two persons who were present, but also because the details
are too abominable. It is probably that, upon mature
consideration, and after weighting the good and evil, I shall
one day destroy this paper, or at least leave it under seal to
my friend D., trusting in his discretion, to use it or to burn
it, as he may think fit.
“As was befitting, I did all that my knowledge suggested to make
sure that I was suffering under no delusion. At first astounded,
I could hardly think, but in a minute’s time I was sure that my
pulse was steady and regular, and that I was in my real and true
senses. I then fixed my eyes quietly on what was before me.
“Though horror and revolting nausea rose up within me, and an
odour of corruption choked my breath, I remained firm. I was
then privileged or accursed, I dare not say which, to see that
which was on the bed, lying there black like ink, transformed
before my eyes. The skin, and the flesh, and the muscles, and
the bones, and the firm structure of the human body that I had
thought to be unchangeable, and permanent as adamant, began to
melt and dissolve.
“I know that the body may be separated into its elements by
external agencies, but I should have refused to believe what I
saw. For here there was some internal force, of which I knew
nothing, that caused dissolution and change.
“Here too was all the work by which man had been made repeated
before my eyes. I saw the form waver from sex to sex, dividing
itself from itself, and then again reunited. Then I saw the body
descend to the beasts whence it ascended, and that which was on
the heights go down to the depths, even to the abyss of all
being. The principle of life, which makes organism, always
remained, while the outward form changed.
“The light within the room had turned to blackness, not the
darkness of night, in which objects are seen dimly, for I could
see clearly and without difficulty. But it was the negation of
light; objects were presented to my eyes, if I may say so,
without any medium, in such a manner that if there had been a
prism in the room I should have seen no colours represented in
it.
“I watched, and at last I saw nothing but a substance as jelly.
Then the ladder was ascended again... [here the MS. is
illegible] ...for one instance I saw a Form, shaped in dimness
before me, which I will not farther describe. But the symbol of
this form may be seen in ancient sculptures, and in paintings
which survived beneath the lava, too foul to be spoken of... as
a horrible and unspeakable shape, neither man nor beast, was
changed into human form, there came finally death.
“I who saw all this, not without great horror and loathing of
soul, here write my name, declaring all that I have set on this
paper to be true.
“ROBERT MATHESON, Med. Dr.”
...Such, Raymond, is the story of what I know and what I have seen.
The burden of it was too heavy for me to bear alone, and yet I could
tell it to none but you. Villiers, who was with me at the last,
knows nothing of that awful secret of the wood, of how what we both
saw die, lay upon the smooth, sweet turf amidst the summer flowers,
half in sun and half in shadow, and holding the girl Rachel’s hand,
called and summoned those companions, and shaped in solid form, upon
the earth we tread upon, the horror which we can but hint at, which
we can only name under a figure.
I would not tell
Villiers of this, nor of that resemblance, which struck me as with a
blow upon my heart, when I saw the portrait, which filled the cup of
terror at the end. What this can mean I dare not guess. I know that
what I saw perish was not Mary, and yet in the last agony Mary’s
eyes looked into mine. Whether there can be any one who can show the
last link in this chain of awful mystery, I do not know, but if
there be any one who can do this, you, Raymond, are the man. And if
you know the secret, it rests with you to tell it or not, as you
please.
I am writing this letter to you immediately on my getting back to
town. I have been in the country for the last few days; perhaps you
may be able to guess in which part. While the horror and wonder of
London was at its height—for “Mrs. Beaumont,” as I have told you,
was well known in society—I wrote to my friend Dr. Phillips, giving
some brief outline, or rather hint, of what happened, and asking him
to tell me the name of the village where the events he had related
to me occurred. He gave me the name, as he said with the less
hesitation, because Rachel’s father and mother were dead, and the
rest of the family had gone to a relative in the State of Washington
six months before.
The parents, he said,
had undoubtedly died of grief and horror caused by the terrible
death of their daughter, and by what had gone before that death. On
the evening of the day which I received Phillips’ letter I was at
Caermaen, and standing beneath the mouldering Roman walls, white
with the winters of seventeen hundred years, I looked over the
meadow where once had stood the older temple of the “God of the
Deeps,” and saw a house gleaming in the sunlight. It was the house
where Helen had lived. I stayed at Caermaen for several days. The
people of the place, I found, knew little and had guessed less.
Those whom I spoke to on
the matter seemed surprised that an antiquarian (as I professed
myself to be) should trouble about a village tragedy, of which they
gave a very commonplace version, and, as you may imagine, I told
nothing of what I knew. Most of my time was spent in the great wood
that rises just above the village and climbs the hillside, and goes
down to the river in the valley; such another long lovely valley,
Raymond, as that on which we looked one summer night, walking to and
fro before your house. For many an hour I strayed through the maze
of the forest, turning now to right and now to left, pacing slowly
down long alleys of undergrowth, shadowy and chill, even under the
midday sun, and halting beneath great oaks; lying on the short turf
of a clearing where the faint sweet scent of wild roses came to me
on the wind and mixed with the heavy perfume of the elder, whose
mingled odour is like the odour of the room of the dead, a vapour of
incense and corruption.
I stood at the edges of
the wood, gazing at all the pomp and procession of the foxgloves
towering amidst the bracken and shining red in the broad sunshine,
and beyond them into deep thickets of close undergrowth where
springs boil up from the rock and nourish the water-weeds, dank and
evil. But in all my wanderings I avoided one part of the wood; it
was not till yesterday that I climbed to the summit of the hill, and
stood upon the ancient Roman road that threads the highest ridge of
the wood. Here they had walked, Helen and Rachel, along this quiet
causeway, upon the pavement of green turf, shut in on either side by
high banks of red earth, and tall hedges of shining beech, and here
I followed in their steps, looking out, now and again, through
partings in the boughs, and seeing on one side the sweep of the wood
stretching far to right and left, and sinking into the broad level,
and beyond, the yellow sea, and the land over the sea.
On the other side was
the valley and the river and hill following hill as wave on wave,
and wood and meadow, and cornfield, and white houses gleaming, and a
great wall of mountain, and far blue peaks in the north. And so at
least I came to the place. The track went up a gentle slope, and
widened out into an open space with a wall of thick undergrowth
around it, and then, narrowing again, passed on into the distance
and the faint blue mist of summer heat. And into this pleasant
summer glade Rachel passed a girl, and left it, who shall say what?
I did not stay long there.
In a small town near Caermaen there is a museum, containing for the
most part Roman remains which have been found in the neighbourhood
at various times. On the day after my arrival in Caermaen I walked
over to the town in question, and took the opportunity of inspecting
the museum. After I had seen most of the sculptured stones, the
coffins, rings, coins, and fragments of tessellated pavement which
the place contains, I was shown a small square pillar of white
stone, which had been recently discovered in the wood of which I
have been speaking, and, as I found on inquiry, in that open space
where the Roman road broadens out. On one side of the pillar was an
inscription, of which I took a note. Some of the letters have been
defaced, but I do not think there can be any doubt as to those which
I supply.
The inscription is as
follows:
DEVOMNODENTi
FLAvIVSSENILISPOSSvit
PROPTERNVPtias
quaSVIDITSVBVMra
“To the great god
Nodens (the god of the Great Deep or Abyss) Flavius Senilis has
erected this pillar on account of the marriage which he saw
beneath the shade.”
The custodian of the
museum informed me that local antiquaries were much puzzled, not by
the inscription, or by any difficulty in translating it, but as to
the circumstance or rite to which allusion is made.
...And now, my dear Clarke, as to what you tell me about Helen
Vaughan, whom you say you saw die under circumstances of the utmost
and almost incredible horror. I was interested in your account, but
a good deal, nay all, of what you told me I knew already. I can
understand the strange likeness you remarked in both the portrait
and in the actual face; you have seen Helen’s mother. You remember
that still summer night so many years ago, when I talked to you of
the world beyond the shadows, and of the god Pan. You remember Mary.
She was the mother of Helen Vaughan, who was born nine months after
that night.
Mary never recovered her reason. She lay, as you saw her, all the
while upon her bed, and a few days after the child was born she
died. I fancy that just at the last she knew me; I was standing by
the bed, and the old look came into her eyes for a second, and then
she shuddered and groaned and died. It was an ill work I did that
night when you were present; I broke open the door of the house of
life, without knowing or caring what might pass forth or enter in. I
recollect your telling me at the time, sharply enough, and rightly
too, in one sense, that I had ruined the reason of a human being by
a foolish experiment, based on an absurd theory. You did well to
blame me, but my theory was not all absurdity.
What I said Mary would
see she saw, but I forgot that no human eyes can look on such a
sight with impunity. And I forgot, as I have just said, that when
the house of life is thus thrown open, there may enter in that for
which we have no name, and human flesh may become the veil of a
horror one dare not express. I played with energies which I did not
understand, you have seen the ending of it. Helen Vaughan did well
to bind the cord about her neck and die, though the death was
horrible.
The blackened face, the
hideous form upon the bed, changing and melting before your eyes
from woman to man, from man to beast, and from beast to worse than
beast, all the strange horror that you witness, surprises me but
little. What you say the doctor whom you sent for saw and shuddered
at I noticed long ago; I knew what I had done the moment the child
was born, and when it was scarcely five years old I surprised it,
not once or twice but several times with a playmate, you may guess
of what kind. It was for me a constant, an incarnate horror, and
after a few years I felt I could bear it no more, and I sent Helen
Vaughan away. You know now what frightened the boy in the wood.
The rest of the strange
story, and all else that you tell me, as discovered by your friend,
I have contrived to learn from time to time, almost to the last
chapter. And now Helen is with her companions...
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