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.