Apart, I struggled with the horned difficulty, and
strove to find the solution, but without the hint of a clue; beset by
mystery and contradiction, I saw nothing that might help me, and began
to wonder whether, after all, I had not escaped from the white mist of
the suburb at too dear a rate. I hinted something of my thought to the
professor; I said enough to let him know that I was in the most acute
perplexity, but the moment after regretted what I had done, when I saw
his face contort with a spasm of pain. "My dear Miss Lally," he said, "you surely do not wish to leave us? No,
no, you would not do it. You do not know how I rely on you; how
confidently I go forward, assured that you are here to watch over my
children. You, Miss Lally, are my rear-guard; for, let me tell you, that
the business in which I am engaged is not wholly devoid of peril. You
have not forgotten what I said the first morning here; my lips are shut
by an old and firm resolve, till they can open to utter no ingenious
hypothesis or vague surmise but irrefragable fact, as certain as a
demonstration in mathematics. Think over it, Miss Lally, not for a
moment would I endeavor to keep you here against your own instincts, and
yet I tell you frankly that I am persuaded that it is here, here amidst
the woods, that your duty lies." I was touched by the eloquence of his tone, and by the remembrance that
the man, after all, had been my salvation, and I gave him my hand on a
promise to serve him loyally and without question. A few days later the
rector of our church, a little church, gray and severe and quaint, that
hovered on the very banks of the river and watched the tides swim and
return, came to see us, and Professor Gregg easily persuaded him to stay
and share our dinner. Mr. Meyrick was a member of an antique family of
squires, whose old manor house stood amongst the hills some seven miles
away, and thus rooted in the soil, the rector was a living store of all
the old fading customs and lore of the country. His manner, genial with
a deal of retired oddity, won on Professor Gregg; and towards the
cheese, when a curious Burgundy had begun its incantations, the two men
glowed like the wine, and talked of philology with the enthusiasm of a
burgess over the peerage. The parson was expounding the pronunciation of
the Welsh _ll_, and producing sounds like the gurgle of his native
brooks, when Professor Gregg struck in. "By the way," he said, "that was a very odd word I met with the other
day. You know my boy, poor Jervase Cradock. Well, he has got the bad
habit of talking to himself, and the day before yesterday I was walking
in the garden here and heard him; he was evidently quite unconscious of
my presence. A lot of what he said I couldn't make out, but one word,
struck me distinctly. It was such an odd sound; half-sibilant,
half-guttural, and as quaint as those double _ll_'s you have been
demonstrating. I do not know whether I can give you an idea of the
sound. "Ishakshar" is perhaps as near as I can get; but the _k_ ought to
be a Greek _chi_ or a Spanish _j_. Now what does it mean in Welsh?" "In Welsh?" said the parson. "There is no such word in Welsh, nor any
word remotely resembling it. I know the book-Welsh, as they call it, and
the colloquial dialects as well as any man, but there's no word like
that from Anglesea to Usk. Besides, none of the Cradocks speak a word of
Welsh; it's dying out about here." "Really. You interest me extremely, Mr. Meyrick. I confess the word
didn't strike me as having the Welsh ring. But I thought it might be
some local corruption." "No, I never heard such a word, or anything like it. Indeed," he added,
smiling whimsically, "if it belongs to any language, I should say it
must be that of the fairies,--the Tylwydd Têg, as we call them." The talk went on to the discovery of a Roman villa in the neighborhood;
and soon after I left the room, and sat down apart to wonder at the
drawing together of such strange clues of evidence. As the professor had
spoken of the curious word, I had caught the glint of his eye upon me;
and though the pronunciation he gave was grotesque in the extreme, I
recognized the name of the stone of sixty characters mentioned by
Solinus, the black seal shut up in some secret drawer of the study,
stamped forever by a vanished race with signs that no man could read,
signs that might, for all I knew, be the veils of awful things done long
ago, and forgotten before the hills were moulded into form. When, the next morning, I came down, I found Professor Gregg pacing the
terrace in his eternal walk. "Look at that bridge," he said when he saw me, "observe the quaint and
Gothic design, the angles between the arches, and the silvery gray of
the stone in the awe of the morning light. I confess it seems to me
symbolic; it should illustrate a mystical allegory of the passage from
one world to another." "Professor Gregg," I said quietly, "it is time that I knew something of
what has happened, and of what is to happen." For the moment he put me off, but I returned again with the same
question in the evening, and then Professor Gregg flamed with
excitement. "Don't you understand yet?" he cried. "But I have told you a
good deal; yes, and shown you a good deal. You have heard pretty nearly
all that I have heard, and seen what I have seen; or at least," and his
voice chilled as he spoke, "enough to make a good deal clear as noonday. The servants told you, I have no doubt, that the wretched boy Cradock
had another seizure the night before last; he awoke me with cries in
that voice you heard in the garden, and I went to him, and God forbid
you should see what I saw that night. But all this is useless; my time
here is drawing to a close; I must be back in town in three weeks, as I
have a course of lectures to prepare, and need all my books about me. In
a very few days it will be all over, and I shall no longer hint, and no
longer be liable to ridicule as a madman and a quack. No, I shall speak
plainly, and I shall be heard with such emotions as perhaps no other man
has ever drawn from the breasts of his fellows." He paused, and seemed to grow radiant with the joy of great and
wonderful discovery. "But all that is for the future, the near future certainly, but still
the future," he went on at length. "There is something to be done yet;
you will remember my telling you that my researches were not altogether
devoid of peril? Yes, there is a certain amount of danger to be faced; I
did not know how much when I spoke on the subject before, and to a
certain extent I am still in the dark. But it will be a strange
adventure, the last of all, the last demonstration in the chain." He was walking up and down the room as he spoke, and I could hear in his
voice the contending tones of exultation and despondence, or perhaps I
should say awe, the awe of a man who goes forth on unknown waters, and I
thought of his allusion to Columbus on the night he had laid his book
before me.