It is a
pity, for the symbolism, at all events, is very beautiful, and moreover
if you were acquainted with certain books on the subject, I could recall
to your mind phrases which might explain a good deal in the manuscript
that you have been reading.' 'Yes; but I want to know whether you seriously think that there is any
foundation of fact beneath these fancies. Is it not all a department of
poetry; a curious dream with which man has indulged himself?' 'I can only say that it is no doubt better for the great mass of people
to dismiss it all as a dream. But if you ask my veritable belief--that
goes quite the other way. No; I should not say belief, but rather
knowledge. I may tell you that I have known cases in which men have
stumbled quite by accident on certain of these "processes," and have
been astonished by wholly unexpected results. In the cases I am thinking
of there could have been no possibility of "suggestion" or sub-conscious
action of any kind. One might as well suppose a schoolboy "suggesting"
the existence of Æschylus to himself, while he plods mechanically
through the declensions. 'But you have noticed the obscurity,' Ambrose went on, 'and in this
particular case it must have been dictated by instinct, since the writer
never thought that her manuscripts would fall into other hands. But the
practice is universal, and for most excellent reasons. Powerful and
sovereign medicines, which are, of necessity, virulent poisons also, are
kept in a locked cabinet. The child may find the key by chance, and
drink herself dead; but in most cases the search is educational, and the
phials contain precious elixirs for him who has patiently fashioned the
key for himself.' 'You do not care to go into details?' 'No, frankly, I do not. No, you must remain unconvinced. But you saw how
the manuscript illustrates the talk we had last week?' 'Is this girl still alive?' 'No. I was one of those who found her. I knew the father well; he was a
lawyer, and had always left her very much to herself. He thought of
nothing but deeds and leases, and the news came to him as an awful
surprise. She was missing one morning; I suppose it was about a year
after she had written what you have read. The servants were called, and
they told things, and put the only natural interpretation on them--a
perfectly erroneous one. 'They discovered that green book somewhere in her room, and I found her
in the place that she described with so much dread, lying on the ground
before the image.' 'It was an image?' 'Yes, it was hidden by the thorns and the thick undergrowth that had
surrounded it. It was a wild, lonely country; but you know what it was
like by her description, though of course you will understand that the
colours have been heightened. A child's imagination always makes the
heights higher and the depths deeper than they really are; and she had,
unfortunately for herself, something more than imagination. One might
say, perhaps, that the picture in her mind which she succeeded in a
measure in putting into words, was the scene as it would have appeared
to an imaginative artist. But it is a strange, desolate land.' 'And she was dead?' 'Yes. She had poisoned herself--in time. No; there was not a word to be
said against her in the ordinary sense. You may recollect a story I told
you the other night about a lady who saw her child's fingers crushed by
a window?' 'And what was this statue?' 'Well, it was of Roman workmanship, of a stone that with the centuries
had not blackened, but had become white and luminous. The thicket had
grown up about it and concealed it, and in the Middle Ages the followers
of a very old tradition had known how to use it for their own purposes. In fact it had been incorporated into the monstrous mythology of the
Sabbath. You will have noted that those to whom a sight of that shining
whiteness had been vouchsafed by chance, or rather, perhaps, by apparent
chance, were required to blindfold themselves on their second approach. That is very significant.' 'And is it there still?' 'I sent for tools, and we hammered it into dust and fragments.' 'The persistence of tradition never surprises me,' Ambrose went on after
a pause. 'I could name many an English parish where such traditions as
that girl had listened to in her childhood are still existent in occult
but unabated vigour. No, for me, it is the "story" not the "sequel,"
which is strange and awful, for I have always believed that wonder is of
the soul.' The Great God Pan


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 banks. Dr. Raymond turned sharply to
his friend. 'Safe? Of course it is. In itself the operation is a perfectly simple
one; any surgeon could do it.' 'And there is no danger at any other stage?' 'None; absolutely no physical danger whatever, I give you my word. You
are always timid, Clarke, always; but you know my history. I have
devoted myself to transcendental medicine for the last twenty years. I
have heard myself called quack and charlatan and impostor, but all the
while I knew I was on the right path. Five years ago I reached the goal,
and since then every day has been a preparation for what we shall do
to-night.' 'I should like to believe it is all true.' Clarke knit his brows, and
looked doubtfully at Dr. Raymond. 'Are you perfectly sure, Raymond, that
your theory is not a phantasmagoria--a splendid vision, certainly, but a
mere vision after all?' Dr. Raymond stopped in his walk and turned sharply. He was a middle-aged
man, gaunt and thin, of a pale yellow complexion, but as he answered
Clarke and faced him, there was a flush on his cheek. 'Look about you, Clarke. You see the mountain, and hill following after
hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchards, the fields of
ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river. You
see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that
all these things--yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky
to the solid ground beneath our feet--I say that all these are but
dreams and shadows: the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes. There _is_ a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision,
beyond these "chases in Arras, dreams in a career," beyond them all as
beyond a veil.